Brigham Young and the Struggle for Religious Freedom in the 19th Century

In the decades preceding the American Civil War, the United States found itself facing an identity crisis. The principles of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness as espoused by an earlier generation began to come under threat from the same institutions erected to protect them. It seemed that in the agrarian democracy Americans were building, there were many who felt marginalized and ignored. As the nation continued to expand and leaders wrestled with the existence of slavery the Union, the question of religious freedom remained.

Marvin McCrary explains.

Brigham Young while Governor of Utah. By Charles Roscoe Savage.

Exodus

By the 1850s, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints had a significant presence on the American landscape. Members of the church were known as Mormons, the name deriving from the Book of Mormon, a set of holy scriptures which served as the keystone of the religion. The Latter-Day Saint movement had been founded in 1830 by Joseph Smith who, while not possessing much of a formal education, seemed endowed with great oratorical skill and personal charisma. Smith declared that where other churches had strayed, his would restore the faith as it had been conceived by Christ himself. Over the next few years, church membership would grow rapidly, drawing the ire of those settlers who felt threatened by the Mormons' practice of settling in concentrated numbers and voting as a bloc. Such instances often led to conflict and violence, and Joseph Smith’s life would be cut tragically short when he found himself jailed in the town of Carthage, Illinois under false pretenses in 1844. During a raid on the jail, an anti-Mormon mob shot Smith and his brother to death. He was only 38 years old.

The fledgling religious movement entered a time of great uncertainty, as they had not anticipated losing their leader so suddenly. The ruling body of the church, the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, took control of church affairs in the interim, until it was determined who would be best suited to succeed Smith. It was a man named Brigham Young, then serving as President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, who would become the next leader of the church in 1847. Like Smith, Young was a man of humble origins from the Northeast. Young was noted for his strong determination, straightforwardness, and unyielding faith. In 1846, Young led the beginnings of what would become an exodus of “Saints'' (the preferred term used by members, especially after 1834), determined to establish their faith beyond the reach of both American laws and resentment. In July, 1847, Brigham Young beheld his first glimpse of the Great Salt Lake Valley. The historian Leonard J. Arrington wrote that church leadership knew about the area from trappers' journals, explorers' reports and interviews with travelers familiar with the region. Having endured much persecution for the sake of their beliefs, the Saints undoubtedly believed they could finally enjoy a semblance of peace, and the swath of untamed wilderness would become a new Zion for the Saints. Young believed that the isolation of Utah would ensure the Saints the right to freely practice their religion. Many of the pioneers had Puritan ancestry, and felt a strong bond with those earlier settlers, who had likewise been forced to leave their homeland in search of a land where they might know freedom.

Brigham Young understood that the Saints could not "leave the political orbit of the United States", nor were they desirous to do so. The Saints possessed an unwavering belief that personal liberty as written in the Constitution should allow one the right to exercise faith without infringement, despite the lack of support and recalcitrance they witnessed from the American government. When gold was discovered in California in 1848, thousands began moving westward on trails that passed directly through the territory which had been settled by the Saints. This proved a double-edged sword, as not only did this  bring plenty of opportunities for trade and commerce, it also served as a catalyst towards ending the Saints’ isolation. Barely had the dust settled from the wagons of their arrival, did the church leadership sought to put forth a proposal that the territory be incorporated into the United States as the State of Deseret. The name “Deseret” came from a term in the Book of Mormon for honeybee; it signified industry and cooperation. This spoke to the Saints’ desire to make their new Zion as large and industrious as possible, while not seeking to infringe upon territory important to others, such as California and New Mexico.

Establishing Zion in the Mountains

The Saints believed that a state run by their own leadership would be able maintain their hard-fought religious freedom. There were concerns amongst the membership in regard to whether the territory would be governed by men of their own choosing, or federal government officials who would be sent from Washington, as was customary. The proposal put forth by the Church would be rejected by the federal government. Congress was reluctant to allow the creation of a state encompassing such a large area as it had been proposed; the State of Deseret would have included both the Great Basin and the Colorado River Valley. It was believed that only a carefully crafted compromise could provide satisfactory resolution. The Compromise of 1850 would assuage the growing tensions over slavery, while also satisfying the needs of settlers in western territories. It was felt that territories added to the United States after the Mexican-American War (1846-48) should be given the choice to decide for themselves whether they would enter the union as a slave state or a free state. With regards to the Saints in the Salt Lake Valley, Congress did not like the name “deseret” as it sounded too much like “desert,” therefore, it was proposed that the territory be reduced and named Utah, the name taken from the Ute indigenous people.

The establishment of western territories was inextricably tied to the issue of slavery. By the 1850s the United States had become a nation divided by specific regional identities. The South held a pro-slavery identity that supported the expansion of slavery into western territories, while the North largely held abolitionist sentiments and opposed the institution’s westward expansion. In the summer of 1850, Millard Fillmore became president when Zachary Taylor, a hero of the Mexican-American War, died unexpectedly. In response to the efforts of Thomas L. Kane, a man who had proven himself friendly to the Saints on previous occasions, Fillmore named Brigham Young the first Governor of Utah Territory in 1850, despite concerns about Young’s willingness to cooperate with the government. Kane had first encountered the Latter-Day Saints in 1846, during the early stages of the Mexican-American War. It was under these circumstances that he became convinced of the Latter-day Saints’ sincerity and sympathized with their plight. Although he did not share their religious faith, Kane would become the Latter-day Saints’ most influential outside advocate and adviser, working to secure religious and political rights on their behalf. The granting of territorial status gave the federal government greater authority over regional affairs than statehood, but the Saints were pleased with this development. Unfortunately, it would also prove to be a move which inadvertently set the stage for a clash between the Church and the federal government.

Over the next few years as governor, Brigham Young’s leadership took a theodemocratic approach. Theodemocracy was the fusion of traditional republican democratic principles along with theocratic rule. Young holding both political and ecclesiastical authority was natural and efficient from the view of the Saints, but this practice drew criticism from the outside. Church leaders also grew suspicious of both the character and intent of federal appointees, and a succession of federal officers—judges, Indian agents, surveyors—came to the territory only to have their decisions circumvented or reversed. Federal appointees returned East frustrated, intimidated, or both, and the amicable relationship with the government began to break down. In 1854, Brigham Young's term as governor expired and President Franklin Pierce, taking the reports out of Utah into consideration, wished to appoint someone else. In addition to not having many interested in the position, Pierce knew that Young, despite the nature of his leadership, enjoyed great popularity. Pierce decided to allow him to remain as governor, but Anti-Mormon sentiment would continue to spread, with particular regard towards the alleged practice of plural marriage.

The Saints' embrace of plural marriage was based on a revelation received by Joseph Smith. Following in the example of the biblical patriarchs such as Abraham and Jacob, the practice was instituted among members of the Church in the early 1840s. Brigham Young may have taken his first plural wife in 1842, but he did so with hesitation. Throughout the remainder of his life, Young would adamantly maintain that he had been reluctant to indulge in the practice. He would later write that "I was not desirous of shrinking from any duty, nor of failing in the least to do as I was commanded.” Although he had misgivings, Brigham also understood that to everything there is a season. He explains further, adding that "it was the first time in my life that I had desired the grave." With the passage of time, those members engaged in the practice had overcome their own prejudice and adjusted to life in polygamous families. It has been speculated that probably half of those living in Utah Territory in the mid-1800s experienced life in a polygamous family as a husband, wife, or child. Church leaders would publicly acknowledge plural marriage for the first time in 1852, at a general conference in Salt Lake City. Orson Pratt, a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, delivered a lengthy discourse, inviting the members to "look upon Abraham's blessings as your own, for the Lord blessed him with a promise of seed as numerous as the sand upon the seashore." After Pratt finished, Young read aloud Smith's 1831 revelation on plural marriage. The public disclosure seemed to satiate the national interest, but it quashed any hopes for statehood under Brigham Young’s leadership.

Annus Horribilis

By 1857, Young had been serving as governor for several years. Feeding on the tensions between the Saints and the United States government, newspapers from New York to California began reporting that the Saints were seeking the Indians' allegiance in preparation for a clash with the United States. Some accounts were based on briefings from disgruntled officials who had returned to Washington; others, based on gossip, tended toward a more alarmist tone. For example, the National Intelligencer, a Washington newspaper, put the number of the Mormons' Indian allies at 300,000, even though the total Indian population of the Utah Territory had been 20,000 at most. Young would characterize the press coverage as “the prolonged howl of baseless slander." In the spring of 1857, almost every federal official had left Utah. James Buchanan–a tall, stately and stiffly formal man– had been elected in 1856. It would be Buchnan’s misfortune to preside over a rapidly dividing nation. Scarcely had the ink dried on his inaugural address than reports concerning the Saints in Utah turned his attention to the far west.

The election of 1856 had been closely observed in Utah for two primary reasons. It was expected that the new president would appoint a new governor. The second reason was because anti-Mormon sentiments had risen during the election. For example, the Republican Party platform sought to dismantle the “twin relics of barbarism” polygamy and slavery. Buchanan made no speeches during his presidential campaign, and as such, Utahns were curious about the character of the man who would become the next president. "We would much prefer Buchanan to Fremont for President," wrote Young early in the campaign. Upon learning of Buchanan's election, Young declared, "We are satisfied with the appointment of Buchanan as future president, we believe he will be a friend to the good." Such hopeful sentiments were soon dashed, as Buchanan viewed the Saints in Utah as a problem, and he would find someone to replace Brigham Young as governor and bring order.

Buchanan found that there were few interested in the position, just as his predecessor had discovered. Utah was seen as a distant frontier, and the Saints were regarded as “peculiar people” who would bear the yoke of the American government quietly. William Smith, brother of the late Joseph Smith, was among those who had applied, but the man Buchanan eventually chose was Alfred E. Cumming, an experienced administrator, former mayor of Augusta, Georgia, and he was already serving as an Indian-affairs superintendent based in St. Louis, Missouri. Buchanan ordered federal troops to accompany Cumming and enforce federal rule in Utah. It came to pass that travelers passing through the Utah Territory from the Kansas-Missouri border soon brought word that federal troops were on the march. Brigham Young soon found himself in the unenviable position of once again guiding the Saints through yet another crisis. On July 24, 1857, the tenth anniversary of their arrival in the Salt Lake Valley, Young delivered the alarming news: The rumors were true–President James Buchanan had ordered federal troops to march on the Utah Territory. It would appear that 1857 would prove to be an annus horribilis.

The Utah Expedition

In September, Cumming and roughly 1,500 federal troops were about a month from reaching Fort Bridger, which lay approximately 100 miles (160 km) northeast of Salt Lake City. Brigham Young desperately needed time to prepare an evacuation of the city, and so he mobilized the Utah militia to delay the army. Even though they were thoroughly outnumbered, militiamen engaged in guerrilla warfare tactics over the next several weeks, as they raided supplies, burned the grass to deny forage to the soldiers' horses, cattle and mules. In what must have been seen as an act of divine intervention, snowstorms brought the army to a halt. Snowbound and lacking supplies, the troops' commander, Colonel Albert Sidney Johnston, decided to spend the winter at what was left of Fort Bridger, it having been burned by the militia.

The spring thaw began in 1858, and Johnston prepared to receive reinforcements that would bring his force to almost 5,000—a third of the entire U.S. Army at the time. Meanwhile, Young initiated what became known as the Move South, an exodus of some 30,000 people from settlements in northern Utah. Before leaving Salt Lake City, Saints buried the foundation of their temple, their most sacred building, and planted wheat to camouflage it from the invaders' eyes. A few men remained behind, ready to put houses and barns and orchards to the torch if it would keep them out of the soldiers' hands. The Saints, it seemed, were fated to be once again driven from their land, or face extermination. William Hyde recounts the distressing situation, writing in his journal that they prayed for deliverance.Deliverance would come in the form of Thomas Kane, who would once again advocate for the Saints. Over the winter, Kane had set out for Utah to try to mediate what was being called "the Mormon crisis." Kane arrived in Salt Lake City in February 1858, and by the next month, he had secured Brigham Young's agreement to step aside for the new governor in exchange for peace.  While it remains unclear as to the reason, Buchanan never notified Young that he would be replaced as governor, which led many to believe that the Utah expedition was a needlessly expensive venture. In addition, the fact that the federal army had been so easily outwitted by a much smaller force resulted in further humiliation for Buchanan. Seeing a chance to end his embarrassment quickly, Buchanan sent a peace commission westward, offering a pardon to those Utah citizens who would submit to federal laws. Brigham Young accepted the offer that June, ending the Utah War. On April 12,1858, Cumming succeeded Young as Governor of Utah Territory.

Conclusion

Brigham Young would serve as leader of the Saints’ until he passed away in 1877. It was due to his leadership and steadfast determination that the Mormons are to be credited with helping in the settlement and expansion of the American West. Abraham Lincoln, was more successful in establishing a cooperative and respectful relationship between Utah and the federal government. Shortly after his election, Lincoln would remark in a letter to Brigham Young that “if you will let me alone, I will let you alone.” George A. Hubbard writes that was “precisely the kind of governmental policy which the Mormons had sought” since the church was organized some thirty-three years earlier. The Saints ensured the right to religious liberty as they overcame the difficulties placed before them, not only for themselves, but for the sake of all the subsequent generations who would follow in the footsteps of those early pioneers.

What do you think of Brigham Young and religious freedom in the USA? Let us know below.

Now read Marvin’s article on Major General Gordon in North Africa here.

Sources

Arrington, Leonard J. Brigham Young: American Moses. New York: Knopf, 1985.

Bushman, Claudia and Richard Bushman. Building the Kingdom: A History of Mormons in America. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.

Cornwall, Maria, Camela Courtright, and Laga Van Beek, “How Common the Principle? Women as Plural Wives in 1860,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 26 (Summer 1993): 149

Hubbard, George A. “Abraham Lincoln as Seen by the Mormons,” Utah Historical Quarterly 31, no. 2 (Spring 1963): 103.

The History of the Bikini - And How it was Inspired by a Nuclear Test

It was the summer of 1946, the place: the vast wastes of the Pacific. A mighty armada of military personnel and scientists gathered around a cluster of tiny islands and coral reefs. They were about to unleash something terrifying: the first planned atomic test, named Operation Crossroads. The location chosen, as far away from human beings as possible, was a small island group called the Bikini Atoll, a part of the Marshall Islands. These pin-prick islands thrusting their head just above the western Pacific could have been on the far side of the moon as far as most people were concerned. But they would soon become a household word. One reason was the atomic test, the other, although notably less violent, would send even greater tremors throughout the world than the 23-kiloton bomb exploded on July 1, 1946. In one of the more enjoyable examples of the Law of Unexpected Consequences, the result of this test was the increased popularity of a very skimpy type of clothing called the Bikini. How did a cutting-edge weapon of mass destruction become linked with popular beach wear? The story begins in that first post-war summer.

Victor Gamma explains.

Micheline Bernardini wearing a bikini in 1946. Source: Hulton Archive, here.

Ever since Hiroshima, atomic energy had intrigued the general public and produced far-reaching cultural effects as well. In the United States, the Atomic Cafe opened in Los Angeles that year. Not long afterward, Lyle Griffin would found “Atomic Records” as a label.  France would have its own unique reaction: a daring new line of swimwear. With this design the redoubtable French recaptured the lead in the post-war fashion industry while barely missing a beat. The product they unleashed on the world would have a more far-reaching impact than a cafe in California.

The bikini was the latest result of the ultimate product of historical processes reaching back generations. The twentieth century could be called the Age of the Plummeting hem line. From the turn-of-the century, when bathing gowns and bathing machines dominated the scene without a leg showing, to the 1940’s two-piece, Inch by inch the women’s beachwear shrunk until by the 1940s two piece outfits that exposed the midriff were well established. The hips, back and breast were still well-covered and it was still unacceptable for women to expose their belly button in public. World War II sped up the trend towards greater skimpiness. War-time shortages of fabrics led to rationing. On March 8, 1942 the United States War Production Board issued Regulation L-85 which ordered the swimwear industry to reduce by 10% the amount of fabric for women. The swimwear industry responded with a number of changes. Basically they became less frilly, more functional and in the process, exposed more skin, including two-piece suits with bare midriffs. In the United States, geographically the war was a distant event Americans only read or heard about. Thus, unlike in war-torn Europe, Americans were free to indulge their favorite habits, such as enjoying a day at the beach. American fashion designers had done their patriotic best to meet war-time shortages by removing some superfluous material.  But those worn in the US were quite modest compared to the bombshell French designers were about to drop.  

In 1946, after years of shortages and air raid sirens, Europeans looked forward to the first peace-time summer in 6 years. That and the reality of conditions in France led many to seek distractions. The economy was in shambles, citizens felt the bite of food shortages and much of decaying buildings in Paris showed the results of years of neglect. More than anything, the war-weary French yearned to enjoy sunny days at the traditional vacation spots. For many this meant packing up the family and heading to the beach. These had been closed for much of the war. In the spirit of healthy patriotic capitalism, some saw a way to help out and make money at the same time. Said one fashion designer, “In 1946 France had just come out of the war and people needed to live again - I felt I had to design something that would make people understand that life can start over and be beautiful.” Men like this were busy at their design desks focusing on ideas that would match the liberated mood of the season.  Among these were a former auto engineer named Louis Réard and clothing designer Jacques Heim.

An Unlikely Connection 

The fashion industry thrives on novelty and the changing of seasons. Knowing this, Réard and Heim both raced to create a new swimwear for the fast approaching summer. Partly influenced by on-going shortages of material caused by the recent World War, both were intent on pushing the limits on size. Both also shared the current obsession with atomic energy. Heim, who owned a beach-supply shop on the French Riviera, introduced a two-piece swimwear in May, 1946. This was actually a re-launching of an earlier design influenced by Tahitian dancers. He called his creation “The Atom” after the smallest known particle of matter. It featured a bottom that covered the navel, even if barely. Heim hired skywriters to fly over the most popular beaches declaring the “Atom:the world’s smallest bathing suit.”

Unfortunately for Heim, his ambition and talent was shared by Réard. He followed Heim’s progress with the attention of a shark and decided to use his product and marketing as a launch pad for his own creation. Despite his engineering background, he found himself running his mother’s lingerie shop by the 1940s. A natural competitor, Heim’s creation pushed him to do something even more attention-getting. The observant engineer noticed women at the beach at St. Tropez rolling up the edges of their swimwear to get more tan. In what would be a fortuitous turn of events, his mother’s shop also served as the shoe shop for the famous cabaret Les Folies bergère. Here he most likely saw costumes very similar to his own creation. Some dancers wore outfits using as little as 30 inches of fabric consisting of a bra and two inverted triangles. All of this inspired the intrepid engineer to surpass Heim. Why couldn’t he take what was basically a cabaret outfit and merchandise it for use in a mainstream setting? He rushed to his design desk and trimmed material off the bottom design. The result was a daring combination of halter top connected by a neck and back strap. The lower piece was simply two inverted triangles connected by a gstring. It was indeed smaller than Heim’s, using a mere 30 inches of fabric. The main difference between Réard and Heim’s design was that Réard challenged convention by exposing the navel and much of the buttocks. He promoted his creation as a direct challenge to Heim “smaller than the smallest bathing suit in the world.”  Réard chose a newspaper pattern for his new swimwear confident that it would be newsworthy. It was also a shameless ploy to win the favor of the journalist community. 

Next came the task of choosing an appropriate name. What would resonate with the public? The news-savvy engineer knew that the attention of all France was riveted on the atomic tests taking place that summer. Réard could thank Operation Crossroads for choosing the location they did. They could have easily selected a nearby island such as Allinglaplap. As it was, the site chosen contained just the perfect combination of syllables. As the engineer-turned-fashion icon later explained “At that time everybody spoke of the island of Bikini in the pacific, enchanted, tiny, fine sand, a paradise. The idea came to me to make a swimsuit tiny like that island.” More likely, Réard simply wanted to beat Heim in the competition. Réard’s creative genius made the connection between two seemingly unrelated things: his daring swimwear and the current atomic tests. With the natural instincts of a Madison Avenue advertising talent, he put the two together: The new atomic age and a revolutionary new line of swimwear. Next, he chose a very attention-getting slogan - 'The Bikini will be explosive.’ Two weeks after the Able atomic bomb test, Réard registered the name Bikini for his latest swimwear creations. What the wily Frenchman was in effect saying was that his design was as momentous an occasion as the Atomic Bomb. In his words, “Like the bomb, the bikini is small but devastating.” 

Search for a Model    

Of course, the full effect could not be appreciated without someone to wear it for the public. He especially needed models who specialized in swimwear. Since the design would be considered scandalous, this took some doing. His string two-piece left very little to the imagination. Essentially, the model would be appearing semi-naked in public. None of the usual models were willing to wear his ‘bikini’ let alone waltz around in public in a skimpy two-piece. Réard, in fact, was forced to find a strip-tease dancer. Fortunately for Réard there were dancers of the other type: someone not shy about exposure in public. In a fortuitous circumstance, Réard’s shop was located not too distant from the Casino de Paris. This was a well-established music hall that attracted patrons from all over the world for generations. Famed for the lavish costumes, the Casino dancers wore a wild diversity of costumes including some resembling Réard’s later bikini. The Casino de Paris also sometimes featured topless and nude dancing. Among the dancers in 1946 was an 18-year old strip-dancer named Micheline Bernardini.  When Réard offered to hire her to model his new two-piece, she readily agreed. She donned the string two-piece bathing attire and stepped into history. 

Public Exposure

Next Réard arranged a press conference to take place as an outdoor fashion show at the Piscine Molitor, a popular public swimming pool in Paris. The date was July 5, 1946, five days after the Atomic detonation at Bikini Atoll. At the event she posed for a number of photographs. Reard arranged a press conference. Bernardini posed and held a matchbox, indicating that the entire outfit could fit in the tiny container. Never one to miss a beat, Réard kept repeating his advertising slogan; "Bikini--smaller than the smallest bathing suit in the world." 

That summer’s fashion wars waxed hot the following weeks as Heim and Réard vied with each other to capture the market. Réard hired his own skywriters to specifically counter Heim’s claim, beachgoers looked up to see "smaller than the smallest swimming suit in the world.” The merciless engineer continued his campaign to overshadow Heim by proclaiming that he had “split the atom.” Sadly for Heim, his competitor was a natural showman and, although he was first and initially sold more, it was Réard’s name bikini that stuck.

Reaction

The reaction was indeed explosive. Like it or hate it - it could not be ignored. “Four triangles of nothing,” asserted one newspaper. Heim and Réard’s instincts proved correct. France, buoyed by recent liberation and excited to enjoy life again (a French specialty), fixed its attention on the latest fashion breakthrough. Some in the press remarked that the bikini design must have been inspired by the atomic tests because the wearer looked like a survivor from a nuclear blast, whose clothes were reduced to tatters. Others speculated that the primitive islanders living near the blast influenced the simplicity of the design. Whatever the press commentary, much of the public loved the daring new outfit. The delighted Réard was deluged by fan mail to the tune of 50,000 within a short-time of the event at Piscine Molitor. The obscure Miss Bernardini also became something of a celebrity, receiving at least 500,000 fan letters. Réard would continue hammering his message with an advertising campaign that included the slogan “It’s not a genuine bikini unless it could be pulled through a wedding ring.” The witty engineer followed up with such descriptions of this design that it "reveals everything about a girl except for her mother's maiden name." Another gem from the quotable designer was that the bikini had "just enough to protect the property without spoiling the view." 

Despite the sensationalism generated by the press, as well the pronouncements of cultural spokespersons such as Diana Vreeland: “The bikini is the most important thing since the atom bomb,” mainstream life at the beach continued to reflect more conservative dress until the 1960s. Except for the jet-set that adopted the latest Paris fashions and took them to their favorite hot place, international sales were disappointing. Other than a core of enthusiastic supporters and women of the more daring type, the insubstantial design was too revealing for most people. Although by the 1930s women’s swimwear displayed the entire leg, midriff and had a plunging neckline, Réard’s design pushed well beyond those limits. "I can't think of any situation in the thousand years before the 1960s when it was acceptable to show the navel, " said Kevin Jones, a curator and fashion historian at the Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising in Los Angeles. “It was avant-garde; it was ahead of its time,” said Miss Rayer, co-author of a book on the bikini’s history. “In that epoch, we were still puritan.”

Legacy

When the bikini began to appear on the beaches, it was banned almost everywhere. Citations were given in Italy for wearing a bikini as late as 1957. In more progressive nations, the bikini began to gain traction, so promoters attempted to endorse it. But time was on the side of the bikini. They, of course, dominate most beaches today. By the 2000s the bikini industry generated over $800 million yearly. By the time Réard died in 1984, bikinis would amount to as much as 20% of the swimwear market. But more than introducing a popular product, Réard’s creation reflected changing standards. What Réard essentially did was to mainstream a mode of dress that had up to that point been relegated to places of ill-repute. In 2007 Le Figaro trumpeted “For women, wearing a bikini signaled a kind of second liberation…It was … a celebration of freedom and a return to the joys of life.” Since Réard’s time the bikini and swimwear have continued to evolve, as have cultural attitudes about issues related to femininity and modesty. In the future, innovation, creativity and the continuous quest to push the boundaries of acceptability are sure to provide new expressions. 

What do you think of the history of the bikini? Let us know below.

Now read Victor’s series on how the US misjudged Fidel Castro here.

Bibliography

Rubin, Alissa J. “From Bikinis to Burkinis, Regulating What women Wear.” The New York Times, August 27, 2016.

From Bikinis to Burkinis, Regulating What Women Wear - The New York Times 

Hendrix, Steve. “You have this French man to thank - or chastise - for creating the modern bikini.” The Lily News, July 10, 2018.

You have this French man to thank — or chastise — for creating the modern bikini

“Man Who Invented the Bikini Bares his Thoughts.” The Dispatch, Nov. 5, 1974. 

The Dispatch - Google News Archive Search 

Stanton, Audrey. “The Scandalous History Of The Bikini.” The Good Trade, August 2, 2019.

 The Scandalous History Of The Bikini — The Good Trade

Image fair use rationale: Educational. This photograph plays a fundamental part in the history of the bikini. It is essential to explain the history of the bikini in the post-war period.

Medicine at Sea in the 18th and 19th Centuries

Even today life at sea can be difficult when there are medical issues. But what was it like in earlier periods? Here, Amy Chandler returns and explores life at sea and naval medicine on board naval fleets throughout the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

Hospital Ships in the Second Opium War. Illustration for The Illustrated London News, 21 January 1860. Source: Wellcome Images, here. This file comes from Wellcome Images, a website operated by Wellcome Trust, a global charitable foundation based in the United Kingdom. Refer to Wellcome blog post (archive).

Life at sea can be treacherous with unpredictable weather, ever-changing climate and deadly predators that hold the authority of the underwater world. The changing climate, environmental factors and trade expansion throughout history has created an uneasy co-existence between the sea and land dwellers. The climate crisis has altered the habitats and patterns of many sea creatures lives, for example, reports of sharks migrating and swimming closer to shorelines in parts of Australia in the summer months. While in the twenty-first century, we have processes to mitigate risks, in the event of an incident, there are processes to follow to ensure a quick rescue or help when needed through lifeguards, sea rescue services, air ambulances and constant communication routes and satellites to monitor those at sea.

Before modern technology, life at sea was perilous with threats of pirates, sinking, mutiny, and naval warfare created a world away from the control and comforts of land and away from the law. The threat to health caused by disease, poor living conditions and long periods at sea contributed to an environment that killed many sailors. Modern cruise and military ships now have dedicated medical teams, and during the coronavirus pandemic, cruise ships isolated during their voyage with Covid-19 positive patients on board. The crew had the necessary equipment and medicines on board. This advancement gives travellers comfort and peace of mind when travelling for a long time away from land and the familiarity of home comfort to have easy access to medical treatment.

Life at sea

Throughout history life at sea has become an image romanticised by popular culture and is unrealistic. A sailor’s life was hard work full of manual labour, volatile conditions, wet and disease was rife. However, for many men the alternatives to life at sea was equally volatile, miserable, poverty-stricken and hard work, with the only exception that life at sea offered a sense of adventure. By the eighteenth century, London’s port and docks were vital to Britain’s trade and the public were dependent on the wealth and trade it generated. By this point, the Royal Navy was also becoming a significant presence in British politics and economy and required more men to sail and work on the ships. Historians have commented that the majority of recruited men were from the “lower socio economic strata […including mostly] illiterate, the dregs of society” and were seen as “uncouth, rude [and] riff raff”.(1) Some of these men were prisoners for committing minor crimes like pickpocketing, and could choose a life at sea under sanction of the Royal Navy.(2) The rapid expansion of the Royal Navy and the industrial revolution in Britain prompted the need for more men and these types of individuals solved their problem. Men on board would receive three meals a day, a ration of rum (often called ‘Grog’ or ‘Tot’) a day and offered a way to escape their miserable, poverty life on land. Parliament also sanctioned the use of ‘Press gangs’ to recruit men into the Royal Navy when non-violent methods were sufficient, this method granted by the Crown the “right to seize men of seafaring experience” and was intensely enforced during periods of naval battle, for example 1703, 1705, 1740 and 1779.(3)  All ages were recruited into the crew and when boys turned sixteen they became able-bodied sailors. The uniform worn by officers were different to the ordinary crew and the clothes were designed to signal status and emulate the fashion of wealthy men in the eighteenth century, while life at sea, away from the authority of land, was still subject to hierarchy and class bias.

Moreover, the ration of rum was introduced as storing water in wooden barrels did not keep for long periods and other drinks with a low-alcohol level was also difficult to store. Therefore rum was the best option and kept morale up for the men by receiving 10 ounces of rum a day, which reduced to 2.5 ounces in 1850.(4) It was not until 1970 that this daily ration was stopped as the Royal Navy expanded and modernised, the need for crew to be sober was seen as imperative. The manual labour of working on a large ship everyday required a diet to supply enough energy to keep the men fit, healthy and sustained. However, during this period fresh food was difficult to store and preserve for long voyages, therefore salted meat, pickled food and hard biscuits were the normal diet.

The role of the naval surgeon

Throughout history, the surgeon was the main and only person responsible for treating the ill, injured or psychologically distressed on board naval ships. The unpredictable weather, the threat of naval warfare and spending long periods away from land, friends and family created an unstable environment. While these factors contributed to a high mortality rate, the most common killer was disease. Life at sea was “continually hit by lethal epidemics of dysentery, typhus, scurvy, malaria and yellow fever”, that could easily wipe out or weaken the majority of the crew.(5)

There were strict procedures for becoming a ship’s surgeon, such as obtaining a university education and progressing to the lead surgeon. Individuals who trained through apprenticeships assisted at local hospitals or learnt through observation became the first, second or third ship surgeon mates to assist the fully qualified surgeons. University qualified medical professionals were usually privileged members of society who had access to wealth and opportunity to train at a University. There were different types of medical professionals in the eighteenth centuries; the university-qualified physician who was a member of the College of Surgeons, apothecaries, who dispensed prescribed medicine, and surgeons who dealt with external issues, such as amputation or removal of boils.(6) However, when sailing at sea for long periods, the surgeon was in a position that needed to include all three branches of the medical profession and be able to treat all kinds of diseases and injuries. During the voyages and expeditions, the ship was busy and crowded and needed access to all the necessary equipment, weapons and supplies on board, as the time and distance between ports were long. Therefore, the ship’s surgeon needed enough medicine and equipment to treat the ill and injured during these long voyages. Surgeons were required and responsible for obtaining their own set of instruments and treatments in preparation for their journey. This requirement changed in the 1800s as the Company of Surgeons was responsible for approving surgeons of their eligibility to practise and their instrument chest before a voyage. The Royal Navy Regulations of 1731 ordered that medicine chests were locked bearing the “seals of the physician and of the Surgeons’ Company” and no other chests were permitted on board.(7) Official examination of the surgeon’s credentials, medical knowledge and instruments was necessary to ensure the individual had the necessary knowledge to attend to ailments and injuries. Also, this safeguarded the equipment from being stolen and sold for a profit before the ship set sail. Despite the privilege and reputation bestowed on medical professionals on land, this same reputation was not extended to naval surgeons, who were underpaid.

Towards the end of the eighteenth century, the duties and responsibilities of naval surgeons were officially documented in the Regulations and Instructions Relating to His Majesty’s Service at Sea, which was initially published in 1731.(8) Duties included visiting ill patients twice a day and informing the captain of the daily number and name of unwell and injured crewmembers. The Company of Surgeons ordered every ship surgeon to write daily logs and diary entries of their daily activities. The ill or injured were isolated from the rest of the crew in the sick bay, a space below the waterline and away from potential dangers during battles. However, when the epidemics overwhelmed the crew, this space was unsuitable, and surgeons demanded a larger area to house and treat patients. The orlop deck was the most common area for surgeons to work and included their cabin to sleep and eat. This deck was usually the lowest deck on the ship and used to store cables and rope. The orlop was considered the safer part of the ship but was dark, hot and lacked sufficient ventilation, with lanterns being the only light source. This area was extremely noisy during battles as the cannons were located on the deck above and created ear-shattering noise from cannon fire.

It is also important to understand that while the surgeon was an invaluable and life-saving asset on board. Their medical knowledge was informed by the contemporary scientific discoveries of the time of the Four Humours rather than understanding how bacteria caused disease. Medical knowledge during this time focused on Hippocrates’ theory of the Four Humours and was later expanded by Galen. This theory suggested that the human body had four elements connected to the seasons. The elements were blood, yellow bile, black bile and phlegm. A healthy lifestyle and body meant these elements were in balance, and unbalanced humours caused illness because the body had too much of one humour. Treatments for unbalanced humours included bloodletting. The surgeons would perform and use contemporary medicine and treatments to diagnose the patient. These treatments, in some cases, were lethal and could result in unintentional death, as the use of mercury, no anaesthetics or antiseptics meant many could die from infection or poisoning during surgery. While battle injuries from canon fire and wounds caused by swords were a threat to life, the everyday living and working conditions were equally as deadly.

The Royal Navy in the Napoleonic Wars

Throughout the Napoleonic wars of 1792 to 1815, the British Royal Navy employed roughly 109,846 men, with an average of 3,518 men a year.(9) On average, 1 in 31 men died of disease or accident, and roughly 1 in 405 died in or from wounds caused by battle.(10) These statistics highlighted that despite the threat and dangers of naval combat, the true enemy to was disease. However, the Royal Navy was keen to keep their crews in good health as this meant they could continue sailing for longer and had a complete crew to engage in naval battles and missions. Horatio Nelson, Admiral of the HMS Victory was also aware of the importance of health while sailing and he is quoted to have said “the great thing in all military service is health; and you will agree with me that it is easier for an officer to keep his men healthy, than for a physician to cure them.”(11) An admiral can only lead their crew to victory if they are alive, healthy and have enough of them to engage in battle. Therefore it was in the Royal Navy’s best interest to ensure the working and living conditions were suitable. Even Nelson was not immune to the threats caused by living and working at sea, with reports of him contracting malaria, yellow fever and his death at the brink of victory during the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805.

The HMS Victory had an estimated 820 crew members, and the surgeon in charge was William Beatty, who tended to Nelson after his fatal wound at the Battle of Trafalgar. Beatty served as a naval surgeon for many years before entering the crew of HMS Victory and reported that Trafalgar was his first voyage that involved large-scale fleets in battle. Historians have noted that Trafalgar was a “baptism of fire” that placed his skills as a surgeon and medical knowledge to the test.(12) Nelson is an interesting figure in British history, and historians often remark on his strength of character. A fascinating story of his life and legacy is how despite suffering numerous battle wounds, he still managed to secure victory for Britain at the Battle of Trafalgar. Nelson lost his right arm in the Battle of Santa Cruz de Tenerife and because of this injury, he adapted to writing with his left hand, and his writing became even more legible than with his dominant right hand. This adaption highlights that life after battle for many injured was challenging and left the individual with life-altering damage. Furthermore, the amputation of Nelson’s right arm was carried out on board and like many other amputations and surgeries there was usually no other choice but to operate immediately in an attempt to save the patient’s life. The lack of anaesthetics and antiseptic, which were not discovered until the late 1840-60s, meant that many operations were barbaric, unimaginably painful and risky.

Hospital ships in the Napoleonic war

During the Napoleonic War, measures were introduced to provide medical treatment for men injured or ill during their voyages. Ships were far away from land resulting in the sick or injured, and this was a measure introduced since the third Dutch war of 1672 – 74. A hospital ship that would care for, treat and transport long-term sick patients, who could not stay aboard their ship, supported each naval fleet.(13) In 1743, aboard HMS Blenheim the upper and lower decks were converted to house 255 patients, segregated into four areas for “skin irritation, simple fever, dysentery, or malaria”.(14) The ships that were used and converted were usually going to be decommissioned and not purpose-built vessels. Historians have called these hospital ships the “medical command centre of a naval fleet” commanded by a senior surgeon with a university qualification, experience with life at sea and was responsible for the overall health of the crew.(15) The responsibilities included visiting, inspecting and other naval surgeons’ medical chests, journal entries and creating weekly reports for the Admiral on the health and conditions of the ship.(16) While this figure had no authority over individual surgeons – that still resided with each ship’s captain – they could recommend individuals for promotion. The mortality rate decreased with these regular inspections and authority figures on board, and one in particular, Thomas Trotter was pivotal in the ‘Nelsonian’ era. Trotter was a physician in the mid-1790s of the Channel Fleet under the command of Admiral Howe. Trotter reformed medicine and life at sea while he worked on the hospital ship Charon through his persistent suggestion of medical reform, such as improved ventilation, pay and living conditions, and his publication Medicina Nautica (1797 – 1802).

Conclusion

In conclusion, life at sea was a treacherous and unpredictable experience, with the increase in Britain's expansion of the empire, trade routes and exploration, the need for an on board medical professional became increasingly important. The Royal Navy rapidly gained momentum and power in the eighteenth century and required more men to join their forces. The bleak reality for many was not about a choice but the knowledge that their alternative option of a life in poverty and disease ridden living accommodation and a lack of employment was a contributing factor for many to join. However, one of the recurring motifs of history is that medicine can only do so much, but improvement in living and working conditions is vital to improving overall health. Nelson is remembered for his heroic contribution to the Royal Navy and Britain’s maritime legacy, but the crews that served and endured harsh environments are also vital to Britain’s success and should be recognised. Popular culture attempts to romanticise the life of a sailor through comedic and sanitised versions of the past and hide the reality of the harsh and miserable life away from land. While popular culture contributes to the myth that life at sea was a lawless and deadly place of hedonistic debauchery throughout history, there was still a hierarchy and laws to abide by that reaffirmed the class structures that dominated British society.

What do you think of medicine at sea? Let us know below.

Now read Amy’s article on the Great Stench in 19th century London here.

Bibliography

Brocklis, L, Cardwell, J, Moss, M, Nelson’s Surgeon: William Beatty, Naval Medicine, and the Battle of Trafalgar (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2005).

Brown, K, The Seasick Admiral: Nelson and the health and the navy (England, Pen & Sword Books,2015).

Goddard, J C, ‘The Navy Surgeon’s Chest: Surgical instruments of the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic War’, JR Soc Med, vol. 97, no. 4, April., 2004, pp.191 - 197 < https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1079363/ >.

Hickox, R. All you wanted to know about the 18th Century Royal Navy (USA, Rex Publishing, 2005).

Pappalardo, B, How to survive in the Georgian Navy (London, Bloomsbury Publishing,2019).

Sachs, T.  ‘The Rum the Royal Navy Once Rationed to Sailors…’,Robb Report, 2020 < https://robbreport.com/food-drink/spirits/black-tot-rum-british-navy-ration-for-sale-2939203/ >.

UK Parliament, ‘Press gangs’, UK Parliament, 2022 < https://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/transformingsociety/private-lives/yourcountry/overview/pressgangs-/ >.

References

1 R.Hickox, All you wanted to know about the 18th Century Royal Navy (USA, Rex Publishing, 2005), p.15. https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/All_You_Wanted_to_Know_about_18th_Centur/_sKZ3rZK4dQC?hl=en&gbpv=1

2 Ibid.

3 UK Parliament, ‘Press gangs’, UK Parliament, 2022 < https://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/transformingsociety/private-lives/yourcountry/overview/pressgangs-/ > [accessed 9 December 2022].

4 T. Sachs, ‘The Rum the Royal Navy Once Rationed to Sailors…’,Robb Report, 2020 < https://robbreport.com/food-drink/spirits/black-tot-rum-british-navy-ration-for-sale-2939203/ >[accessed 9 December 2022].

5 L. Brocklis, J. Cardwell and M. Moss, Nelson’s Surgeon: William Beatty, Naval Medicine, and the Battle of Trafalgar (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2005),p.5.

6 JC. Goddard, ‘The Navy Surgeon’s Chest: Surgical instruments of the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic War’, JR Soc Med, vol. 97 (2004),p.191 < https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1079363/ >[accessed 25 November 2022].

7 Ibid.

8 L. Brocklis, J. Cardwell and M. Moss, Nelson’s Surgeon, p.6.

9 B. Pappalardo, How to survive the Georgian Navy (London, Bloomsbury Publishing,2019),p. 56.

10 Ibid.,p.56.

11 Pappalardo, op.cit.,p.56.

12 L. Brocklis, J. Cardwell and M. Moss,op.cit.,p.viii.

13 L. Brocklis, J. Cardwell and M. Moss,op.cit.,pp.7-8.

14 Ibid.

15 Ibid, p.8.

16 Ibid.

The European Revolutions of 1848: A Failed Turning Point

In the year 1848, a series of revolutions swept across the European continent. Motivated by a variety of liberal, nationalist, and other radical ideas, these revolutions were initially very successful in toppling their respective governments. Countries from the great powers of France, Austria, and Prussia to the smaller states in Italy and Germany had their monarchical governments bound by constitutions or replaced by republics. However, within a few years, these new liberal governments were supplanted by counter revolutionaries and replaced by conservative regimes once again.

Nolan Douglas explains.

An 1841 portrait of King Louis Philippe I of France. By Franz Xaver Winterhalter.

Liberalism and Conservatism in the 19th Century

It needs to be understood that the beliefs of liberalism and conservatism in 19th century Europe are far different from how we perceive these ideologies now. At the time, liberalism was a fairly new ideology with a focus on securing individual rights, modernizing feudal systems and replacing them with capitalism, varying degrees of democracy, and constitutional government. The constitution of the United States is an excellent example of what European liberalism looked like in the 19th century. On the other hand, 19th century European conservatism was about order and tradition, focusing on maintaining powerful monarchies and aristocracies with little to no restrictions on their power.

The Conservative Order in Europe

In the wake of the Napoleonic Wars, Europe was reorganized at the 1814-1815 Congress of Vienna. At the congress, the great powers of Europe, the United Kingdom, France, Prussia, Austria, and Russia agreed to maintain a new status quo in hopes of avoiding a repeat of the upheavals of the last twenty years. Because Napoleon had abolished the old Holy Roman Empire, which had previously encompassed what is today Germany, Austria, and the Czech Republic, this territory was reorganized as a loose German Confederation, dominated by Austria and, to a lesser extent, Prussia. France was now a constitutional monarchy under the Bourbon dynasty, the same family which had ruled the country before the 1789 French Revolution. Italy was divided between a number of small states, the most powerful of which were the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia, the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, and the Papal States (which were ruled by the Pope). The Austrian Empire also controlled the rich provinces of Lombardy and Venetia, containing the major cities of Milan and Venice. Klemens von Metternich, the Austrian foreign minister, was an important architect of the new conservative order in Europe and would be a symbol of the status quo until 1848.

France: A New Republic

Following Napoleon's final defeat in 1815, France was again a monarchy under King Louis XVIII. This new King Louis was the younger brother of King Louis XVI who was executed during the 1789 French Revolution. In the period from 1815 to 1830, France was a constitutional monarchy, but with a very limited electorate I. In 1830, Charles X was overthrown in the 1830 July Revolution and replaced by King Louis Philippe, a more liberal-minded constitutional monarch from the Orléans branch of the Bourbon dynasty. While Louis Phillippe's regime (known as the July Monarchy) was more popular than that of Charles X, many people in France wanted a more representative government. While France under the July Monarchy had a bit more representation in its parliament than the regime of Charles X, only around 170,000 of France's richest men could vote under this more liberal government. In 1832, there had been an unsuccessful republican revolt which was violently crushed by the July Monarchy (this is the revolt depicted in Les Misérables). This massacre further tainted the image of the July Monarchy and Louis Philippe, increasing the desire for a republic.

On February 22, 1848, a pro-republican protest erupted in violence as the government called in the National Guard to break up the crowd. Overnight, Paris was embroiled in Revolution once again with barricades popping up across the city. On February 23, Louis Philippe abdicated his throne, and French republicans began to build the Second French Republic. The constitution of this new republic guaranteed universal suffrage and was initially popular, but would be even more short lived than its predecessor. The Second French Republic was composed mostly of moderate, liberal republicans with a huge majority in the Constituent Assembly, although conservatives and democratic socialists held significant numbers of seats as well. In June of 1848, more radical republican workers rose up in Paris against the republic, believing it wasn't democratic enough. Although these radical insurgents were put down by the government, the fear created by this uprising caused many French people to grow wary of the more radical elements of the revolution. As a result, conservatives began gaining ground in the republic. In December, Louis Napoleon, nephew of the famous conqueror, was elected president. In the elections of 1849, the conservative Party of Order won a majority in the Constituent Assembly, unseating the moderate liberal majority. In December of 1851, Louis Napoleon organized a coup and overthrew the government, establishing himself as a dictator. On 2 December, 1852, the same date as his uncle in 1804, Louis Napoleon was crowned Emperor of the French under the name Napoleon III. Within just a few years, the Second French Republic had met the same fate as the first.

Italy: A War for Unification

The revolutions in Italy began January 12 of 1848 with a revolt in Palermo against the Bourbon King Ferdinand II of the Two Sicilies. Within a month, Ferdinand II was forced to grant a liberal constitution in his kingdom or be dethroned. Throughout the spring of 1848, the monarchs of Tuscany, Piedmont-Sardinia, and the Papal States all followed suit by granting liberal constitutions limiting their power. Initially, many Italian revolutionaries hoped to establish a united Italy under the leadership of Pope Pius IX who was seen as a liberal reformer and might be willing to take up the role. Other revolutionaries wanted a constitutional monarchy under the Piedmontese monarchy while more radical revolutionaries hoped to establish a united and democratic Italian Republic. On March 18, the city of Milan rose up against the Austrians in a revolt known as the Five Days of Milan. After five days of fighting, the Austrian troops, led by the Czech Marshal Radetzky, were driven out of the city. During this revolt, another revolt began in Venice on March 22 and a republic was declared in Venetia. The following day, the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia, led by King Charles Albert, declared war on the Austrian Empire, beginning the First Italian War of Independence with support from Italian revolutionary volunteers from across the peninsula. While the Sardinians and other Italian revolutionaries had some initial successes and advanced into Lombardy-Venetia, they were ultimately defeated by the better trained Austrian troops under Marshal Radetzky by March of 1849.

While the Austrians fought the Piedmontese and Italian volunteer forces, central and southern Italy were in the midst of their own revolutions. Although he had agreed to a constitution, Pope Pius IX fled Rome to seek refuge in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies on November 25, 1848 following the assassination of Pellegrino Rossi, his minister of interior. Now leaderless, Italian revolutionaries in the Papal States founded a new Roman Republic on February 9, 1849. Soon after, a Tuscan Republic was founded in Tuscany following the flight of its Grand Duke. In March of 1849, French troops landed in the Roman Republic. Initially there was hope that these French troops would aid the revolution, but the French instead seized the city of Rome and toppled the Roman Republic under orders from President Louis Napoleon. With this act, France had sided with the counterrevolution. With Austrian troops victorious in the north, the Roman Republic crushed, and the Two-Sicilies siding with the Austrians, the revolutions in Italy were quelled. Because of divides and mistrust between the revolutionaries Italian nationalists would have to wait for their dream of a united Italy to come to fruition. While Italy remained divided , Piedmont-Sardinia retained a constitutional monarchy as an artifact of 1848, eventually completing the Unification of Italy in 1870.

Austrian Empire: Habsburg Rule in Turmoil

The Austrian Empire was built over the course of centuries by the Habsburg family, mainly through dynastic marriages with very little military conquest. Through these marriages, the Habsburgs built a vast, multi-ethnic empire in the center of Europe. While it had been a major European power for several centuries, the Austrian Empire was rife with ethnic divisions. Habsburg subjects included Austrian Germans, Magyars (Hungarians), Czechs, Slovaks, Italians, Poles, Ruthenians (Ukrainians), Romanians, Slovenes, Serbs, and Croats. Although the Austrian Germans were the ruling class, they made up a fairly small proportion of the overall population of the empire. These ethnicities were divided in their goals and hopes for the future of the empire, and this showed in the revolutions. While many German revolutionaries sought to join Austria with the German unification efforts centered in Frankfurt, most Magyar revolutionaries wanted either autonomy or independence for the Hungarian nation. Many Czechs hoped for the same for their own people.

Throughout the spring of 1848, revolts began across the empire. By the end of March, Austrian Emperor Ferdinand I promised to accept a constitution. In the chaos, liberal nationalists in Hungary, led by Lajos Kossuth, seized their moment and passed liberal legislation. This liberal legislation, known as the April Laws, transformed the Kingdom of Hungary into an autonomous, parliamentary democracy within the Habsburg empire, abolished serfdom, created a Hungarian National Guard, and established freedom of the press and religious equality. With these laws, Hungary became one of the most liberal nations in Europe, but also placed itself at odds with the Habsburg monarchy. However, the April Laws also alienated some minorities within Hungary, such as Transylvanians, Germans, Slovaks, Croats, and Serbs because the laws established Hungary as an ethnic nation state. While Hungary became the center of the revolutions in the Austrian Empire, revolutionaries also seized power in Prague and Vienna. On May 17, despite promising a constitution two days earlier, Emperor Ferdinand I fled Vienna. In the summer, the counterrevolution began as Prague was bombarded and captured by Habsburg forces in June. In September, Croatian forces loyal to the Habsburgs invaded Hungary, and Vienna was bombarded and captured by Habsburg forces on October 31. For the next few months, a civil war raged between Austria and Hungary, with Hungary declaring an independent republic on April 13, 1849. However, in June of 1849, Russian forces invaded Hungary in support of the counterrevolution, sealing the fate of the young republic and putting the revolutions in the Austrian Empire to an end. Over the course of the revolutions in Austria, Emperor Ferdinand was forced to abdicate and was replaced by his eighteen year old nephew, Franz Joseph, who would reign until his death in 1916.

Prussia and Germany: A Crown from the Gutter

Similarly to Italy in this period, Germany too was divided between many small states, albeit many more than Italy. Unlike Italy, Germany was loosely united under the German Confederation which could be compared to the modern European Union on a smaller scale. The Austrian Emperor was somewhat of a leader of this loose confederation as the president of the Federal Convention, but held little real power over the other German states. The Kingdom of Prussia was the other major power within the German Confederation and competed for influence among the smaller German states with Austria. With the Austrian Empire in turmoil in 1848, the rest of Germany too was engulfed in revolution. On March 15, protests erupted in the Prussian capital of Berlin. The Prussian king, Frederick William IV, quickly accepted the demands of the protesters, promising to grant them a liberal constitution. However, on March 18, a true revolution broke out in the city when Prussian troops fired on protesters. King Frederick William, although still promising a constitution and siding with the liberals on paper, fled the city. Conservative monarchs throughout the small states of the German Confederation were similarly forced to accept liberal constitutions in the spring of 1848. On May 18, 1848, a new German National Assembly made up of representatives from across Germany, including Prussia and Austria, met in Frankfurt. Soon after, a Prussian Constituent Assembly was formed. The Frankfurt Parliament would spend the next year creating a constitution and ironing out the details of a united Germany.

For months, the Frankfurt Parliament debated the specifics of what shape this new Germany would take. Would it be a centralized, democratic republic in the same vein as France? Would it be a more decentralized, liberal empire? If so, who would be its Emperor? Should Austria be included? If so, should the entire Austrian Empire be integrated into Germany, or just the German speaking parts? These questions divided the Parliament and made creating a constitution difficult. Ultimately, it was decided that a liberal constitutional monarchy under the King of Prussia would be created, excluding Austria entirely. However, by the time the Frankfurt Constitution was completed On March 27, 1849, Prussia had crushed its revolution and the King had dissolved the Constituent Assembly the previous December. When the Frankfurt Parliament offered King Frederick William IV the crown of a united German Empire, he rejected it, calling it a "crown from the gutter." This was the nail in the coffin for a united liberal Germany. Despite most of the minor German states ratifying the constitution, a united Germany could not be forged without support from Prussia or Austria.

The Failed Turning Point

English historian A.J.P. Taylor once said of the Revolutions of 1848 that "German history reached its turning point and failed to turn." While he was specifically referencing the revolutions in Germany, this quote rings true for all of the revolutions across the continent. Despite being quickly and widely successful at their initial goals, the revolutionaries of 1848 could not agree on their end goals, allowing the counterrevolution to sweep through Europe just as quickly.

What do you think of the European Revolutions of 1848? Let us know below.

Nolan writes at The Era of Change blog here.

References

"Napoleonic Germany and the Revolution of 1848." In A Brief History of Germany, by Jason P. Coy. Facts On File, 2010.

"Whose Empire? The Revolutions of 1848–1849" In The Habsburg Empire : A New History, by Pieter M. Judson. 2016. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Belknap Press.

Rapport, Mike. 1848: Year Of Revolution. United Kingdom: Little, Brown Book Group, 2010.

Nazi Involvement in the Spanish Civil War: The Nazis Longest Lasting Political and Military Victory

Nazi Germany was actively involved in the Spanish Civil War on the side of General Franco’s Nationalists. The Nazis helped the Nationalists in various ways. Here, Daniel Boustead looks at how the Nazis supported them militarily.

The aftermath of the bombing of Guernica, Spain. Source: Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-H25224 / Unknown author / CC-BY-SA 3.0, available here.

Nazi Germany’s involvement in the Spanish Civil War has been well documented by historians. The origins of Nazis support for the Spanish Nationalists was between 1931 and 1936. Nazi military support for Francisco Franco’s Nationalist forces was entirely motivated by political and financial reasons. The Nazi support helped the Nationalists achieve important military and strategic victories during the conflict. In the Spanish Civil War the Nazis got to test out new military weapons and tactics which would be later used effectively in World War II. In fact the Nazis were probably the decisive factor in bringing Francisco Franco to power in Spain.

In 1931 the monarchy fell in Spain, and it became a republic (1). Spain was thrown into further disarray and chaos after the results of the February 16, 1936, elections. These elections resulted in the left-wing “People’s Front” achieving a majority 473 seats to the other parties 256 seats in the Spanish Parliament. Fearing Spain would drift into a left-wing Communist government, on July 17, 1936, General Mola led, directed and organized a successful uprising in Melilla, Spanish Morocco(2). General Francisco Franco y Bahamonde, was in exile on the Canary Islands and upon hearing the news of the Nationalist uprising in Melilla, he was thrilled.

The government had placed General Francisco Franco as military commander of the Canary Islands as a form of banishment because of his opposition to the government. Franco had previously served as Chief of the General Staff of the Spanish Army of the Second Republic in 1935(4). He had long hated the Spanish government. In short order Franco and General Orgaz assumed the military command of the Canary Islands group. On July 18, 1936, Franco departed for Tetuan, Spanish Morocco aboard a British aircraft, where he arrived on July 19, after an en route stop at Casablanca (3). On that day, having already been informed of the objectives of the revolt by officers allied to Franco, the entire garrison of the city of Tetuan declared itself for the Nationalist side.

The Republican government  had no concern about Franco’s forces in Spanish Morocco. The Republican Naval fleets were carefully watching the Straits of Gibraltar, making transport of any Nationalist units by sea all but impossible. Later, on October 1, 1936, General Franco’s investiture as the New Chief of State of the Spanish State was proclaimed to the Nationalist forces and a ceremony took place (11).

A request to the Nazis

On July 23, 1936, a dispatch arrived at the German Foreign Affairs Office from Tetuan via the German Military Attache in Paris(5). In the dispatch, General Franco and Oberstleutnant Beigbeder, (former Spanish Military Attaché in Berlin), requested the delivery of ten military transport aircraft to Spanish Morocco. The recommendation of the Foreign Affairs Office to the Reich War Ministry, was absolutely neutral and tended to be rather negatively inclined towards Franco’s request. On July 24, 1936, a further telegram reached the German Foreign Affairs Office. It contained an announcement from the Tetuan Consulate that the requestioned and later charted DLH Ju 52 was to fly to Berlin. This flight would bring the Germans Johannes Bernhardt and Adolf Langenheim and a Spanish Air Force Officer Captain Arranz to present a handwritten note from General Franco to the Nazis. Adolf Langenheim was a member of the Nazi Party’s foreign branch in Tetuan and had numerous business dealings with General Franco and was thus well connected with him. Langenheim’s primary motives for supporting and seeking aid to General Franco were more business than idealistic aims. On July 24, 1936, Adolf Langenheim, Johannes Bernhardt, and Spanish Air Force Captain Arrantz arrived at Berlin-Gatow and were sent to see Adolf Hitler who was enjoying the Richard Wagner Festival at Bayreuth. On July 25, 1936, Johannes Bernhardt, Adolf Langenheim, and Captain Arranz, met with Adolf Hitler, Generalfeldmarchall Goring, War Minister Von Blomberg, and a representative of Vizadmiral Raeder, Kapitan zur See Coupette of the German Navy. The meetings between these two parties from July 25-26, 1936, succeeded in giving Nazi support to General Franco’s forces.

Reasons for support

The primary reasons the Nazis wanted to support General Franco was to make Spain a bulwark against Communism, to seek improvement in Germany’s foreign exchange situation, the future of Germany’s trade agreement with Spain, and to improve the interests of the 10,000 ethnic Germans living in Spain. The Initial discussions on the organization and extent of the aid for Spain then moved to the RLM. On July 26, 1936, the Reich RLM’s General der Fleiger Milch gave Generalleutnant Helmut Wilberg the job of creating Sondertab W, a central office for supplying the material and personnel needs of the German volunteers in Spain(6).

On July 26, the mixed delegation’s request for 10 Ju 52 transport aircrafts was increased to 20 Ju 52 transport aircrafts, which were to be delivered to Sevilla and Tetuan by DLH pilots via the shortest possible route that was approved by both sides. Also, in July the organization of HISMA Ltda was formed to act as a cover organization for the agreed upon transport of troops from Spanish Morocco to the mainland, as well as the delivery of German aircraft and materiel. The registered owners of HISMA Ltda was the Spanish Admiral Ramon Carrazanna and Johannes Bernhardt. Until the start of the Legion Condor, HISMA was responsible for supplying, accommodating and paying the German volunteers; in addition, it was the administrative office for all German aid deliveries and the liaison center between the Spanish headquarters and “Sonderstab Wilberg”. On August 6, 1936, the first German equipment, troops and personnel arrived at Cadiz (7). On October 2, 1936, the purely German partner company of HISMA was created in Berlin and was known as ROWAK GmbH, an indication of the Third Reich’s increasing economic interest in events in Spain.

The initial German troops and equipment that landed on Cadiz on August 6, 1936, were quickly transported by rail cars to Sevilla on August 7. In the meantime, ten Ju 52 transports had been ferried to Tablada airfield near Sevilla by Lufthansa captains, so that Bubb Moreau and his forty-two man group were able to begin transport flights from Tetuan to Sevilla at once. The Germans had originally been forbidden to fly operational sorties, except to provide escort to the transport aircraft in these operations(8). The sole task of the volunteer pilots was to train Spanish crews to fly and use the Ju 52 and He 51.

The Nazi supply chain was a success. Indeed, by the time German aerial supply flights ended in mid- October 1936, a total of 13,500 Nationalist men and 269 tons of war material had been flown to Spain(9).

On November 7, the Legion Condor was created under the command of Hugo Sperrle (10). The Legion Condor arrived at the Port of Cadiz and Sevilla on November 29, 1936, helping expand the Nazi’s military role. This unit consisted of an air force unit, anti-aircraft unit, a ground forces unit, and other miscellaneous units (12). On April 26, 1937, the Nazi Condor Legion in conjunction with the Italian Air Force bombed the Basque town of Guernica (13). The bombing of Guernica resulted in blocking the avenue of retreat for the Spanish Republican forces. The bombed out and collapsed structures in Guernica hindered this retreat. According to recent studies, the bombing of Guernica resulted in some 126 tragic deaths (14).

By the end of Spanish Civil War, the Condor Legion had shot down 277 Republican aircraft in air-to-air combat, and 58 by anti-aircraft fire (guns supplied and manned by Germans). This is a grand total of 335 Republican aircraft destroyed by the Legion Condor(18).

The BF 109 Fighter got its combat debut in Spain the from 1937 to 1939 (15). On May 11, 1937, Spanish Gun batteries equipped with 88 mm guns opened fire on two Soviet T-26 B tanks in the grounds of “La Buena Vista”, south of Toledo (16). The German 88 millimeter gun would later become a much-feared anti-tank weapon during World War II.  It was also in the Spanish Civil War where Luftwaffe began to operate as teams as opposed to operating alone in World War I like the Red Baron did  (17). On March 12, 1938, the Legion Condor’s F/88s 88/56 mm anti-aircraft guns were used in conjunction with tanks and ground planes to help the 5th Navarra Division’s advance of 36 kilometers between Belchite and Escatron (19). The unit F/88’s coordination in this attack with tanks and ground attack planes, and the need to change the positions of the anti-aircraft guns three times was a success. This would later be used during the “Blitzkrieg” tactics of World War II .

The Nazi support for Franco helped him get into power and provided the Nazis with their longest lasting military and political victory. Francisco Franco remained in power from 1939 to 1975.

Now, read our book on the Spanish Civil War here.

Now, you can read World War II history from Daniel: “Did World War Two Japanese Kamikaze Attacks have more Impact than Nazi V-2 Rockets?” here, “Japanese attacks on the USA in World War II” here, and “Was the Italian Military in World War 2 Really that Bad?” here.

References

1 Ries, Karl and Ring, Hans.  The Legion Condor: A History of the Luftwaffe in the Spanish Civil War-1936-1939. Atglen: Pennsylvania. Schiffer Publishing Ltd. 1992. 9.

2 Ries, Karl and Ring, Hans. The Legion Condor: A History of the Luftwaffe in the Spanish Civil War-1936-1939. Atglen: Pennsylvania.  Schiffer Publishing Ltd. 1992. 10.

3 Ries, Karl and Ring, Hans. The Legion Condor: A History of the Luftwaffe in the Spanish Civil War-1936-1939. Atglen: Pennsylvania.  Schiffer Publishing Ltd. 1992. 10 to 11.

4 Preston, Paul. FRANCO: A Biography. New York: New York. Basic Books. 1994. 109.

5 Ries, Karl and Ring, Hans. The Legion Condor: A History of the Luftwaffe in the Spanish Civil War 1936-1939. Atglen: Pennsylvania.  Schiffer Publishing Ltd. 1992 12.

6 Ries, Karl and Ring, Hans. The Legion Condor: A History of the Luftwaffe in the Spanish Civil War 1936-1939. Atglen: Pennsylvania. Schiffer Publishing Ltd.1992. 12 to 13.

7 Ries, Karl and Ring, Hans. The Legion Condor: A History of the Luftwaffe in the Spanish Civil War 1936-1939. Atglen: Pennsylvania.  Schiffer Publishing Ltd. 1992. 14.

8 Ries, Karl and Ring, Hans. The Legion Condor: A History of the Luftwaffe in the Spanish Civil War 1936-1939. Atglen: Pennsylvania. Schiffer Publishing Ltd. 1992. 15.

9 Ries, Karl and Ring, Hans. The Legion Condor; A History of the Luftwaffe in the Spanish Civil War 1936-1939.  Atglen: Pennsylvania. Schiffer Publishing Ltd. 1992. 17.

10 Ries, Karl and Ring, Hans. The Legion Condor: A History of the Luftwaffe in the Spanish Civil War 1936-1939. Atglen: Pennsylvania. Schiffer Publishing Ltd. 1992. 37 to 38.

11 Preston, Paul. FRANCO: A Biography. New York: New York. Basic Books. 1994. 184 to 185.

12 Arias, Raul, Molina, Lucas, and Permuy, Rafel. LEGION CONDOR: HISTORY. ORGANIZATION.UNIFORMS.AWARDS. MEMROBILA 1936-1939. Atglen: Pennsylvania. Schiffer Publishing Ltd. 2013. 40 to 41.

13 Ries, Karl and Ring, Hans. The Legion Condor: A History of the Luftwaffe in the Spanish Civil War 1936-1939. Atglen: Pennsylvania. Schiffer Publishing Ltd. 1992 62 to 64.

14 Arias, Raul, Molina, Lucas, and Permuy, Rafael. LEGION CONDOR: HISTORY. ORGANIZATION. UNIFORMS. AWARDS. MEMROBILA. 1936-1939.  Atglen: Pennsylvania. Schiffer Publishing Ltd. 2013. 62 to 63.

15 Ries, Karl and Ring, Hans. The Legion Condor: A History of the Luftwaffe in the Spanish Civil War 1936-1939. Atglen: Pennsylvania. Schiffer Publishing Ltd. 1992. 261 to 262.

16 Garcia, Jose Ma Manrique and Molina, Lucas. Flak Artillery of the LEGION CONDOR: FLAK Abteilung(mot.) F/88 in the Spanish Civil War . 1936-1939. Atglen: Pennsylvania. Schiffer Publishing. Ltd. 2009. 46.

17 Pavelec, S. Mike. World War II DATA BOOK: The Luftwaffe 1933-1945: The Essential Facts and Figures for Goring’s Air Force. London: United Kingdom. Amber Books Ltd. 2010. 14.

18 Pavelec, S. Mike. World War II DATA BOOK: The Luftwaffe 1933-1945: The Essential Facts and Figures for Goring’s Air Force. London: United Kingdom. Amber Books Ltd. 2010. 15.

19 Garcia, Jose Ma Manrique and Molina. Lucas. Flak Artillery of the LEGION CONDOR: FLAK Abteilung (mot.) F/88 in the Spanish Civil War. 1936-1939. Atglen: Pennsylvania.  Schiffer Publishing Ltd. 2009. 61.

What Caused the Hundred Years War?

The Hundred Years War took place between France and England in the 14th and 15th centuries, but the causes of the war are many and complex. Here, Jonathan Riley concludes his series and considers what the key reasons for the Hundred Years War truly were.

If you missed it, you can read Jonathan’s first piece on the rise of Capetian power here, and the expansion of Plantagenet power here, and Anglo-French conflict in the 13th century here.

A depiction of the marriage of King Charles IV of France and Marie of Luxembourg. By Jean Fouquet.

The Hundred Years War did not just begin as a dynastic dispute which left the throne of France having multiple claimants with the death of Charles IV of France, the last male of the mainline of the Capet dynasties, in 1328. The driving forces behind this conflict were geopolitical, historical, and dynastic disputes over the succession and the expansion of Capet’s dynastic power in France during the 12th and 13th centuries.

The End of the Capetian Kings of France

During Charles’ six years as the King of France from 1322 CE to 1328 CE, he launched his attempt to claim Gascony from King Edward III’s father, Edward II of England, who reigned from 1307 CE to 1327 CE. Philip VI of France, the successor to Charles IV and the first Valois King of France from 1328 CE to 1350 CE, attempted to seize Gascony from King Edward III of England the same way the French kings from 1295 tried to take Gascony away from the Plantagenet dynasty. Philip VI also blocked trade or attempted to block English wool merchants from selling their wool to be turned into cloth in Flanders; this was an economic reason for the Hundred Years' War (Sumption, 1999). Another reason that contributed to the conflict was the renewed alliance between King David I of Scotland and Philip Vi of France during the 1330s, when King Edward III attempted to bring Scotland into the English crown. This meant an inevitable clash between the kings of England and France over territory, economics, security, and the aims of both dynasties in England and France. Another factor that must be considered is the weight of history. Since Hugh Capet was elected King of the Franks in 987, this conflict became an inevitability because since Hugh became King, his descendants have all slowly expanded the role, dynastic prestige, and other avenues of symbolism, practicality to expand their power within and without the kingdom of France. This goes to show that the Hundred Years War was not created from a vacuum, merely a continuation of foreign policy and the conflict between territorial princes that began as early as the 1050s with Henry I of France fighting Duke William II of Normandy due to him being a threat to royal power in the north of France.

The Political and Geopolitics Between the Kingdoms of England & France

The kingdoms of England and France have historically been fighting each other since the Norman conquest. Until the battle of Waterloo in 1815 CE, this violence and conflict spanned the globe and Europe for centuries, although it did not come purely from the Hundred Years War. Still, there is a political and geopolitical dimension to this. There is a reason why nations, kingdoms, and even civilizations did not survive until the modern era; the answer can be summed up in simple geography. The kingdom of England, by the 13th century encompassed the principalities of Wales and parts of Scotland and Ireland, and by the start of the Hundred Years War in the mid-14th century, England had many good reasons to fight France. One of these reasons was that English territory too often did not enable trade - England was also full of swampland and hard to navigate terrain, with areas such as East Anglia and northern England being far from London. Equally, Wales is hilly and not useful for growing crops. So, why did this contribute to the Hundred Years War? The answer to that is that the kings of England no longer had useful territories that could be taken within the British Isles and that the ancestral Plantagenet lands in Europe were a good option for the continued growth of the kingdom.

As for the French, the rulers of the country had been in or wanted some type of conflict with England for centuries. The Valois dynasty that succeeded after the death of Charles IV of France in many ways continued the policy of Capetian Kings since 987 CE in securing and expanding the Royal domains. Indeed, Philip IV and his successors had attempted to remove Plantagenets from the mainland European continent.

All told, the reasons for the Hundred Years War were varied and complex - and they form part of a long history of conflict between England and France.

What do you think the key reasons for the Hundred Years War were? Let us know below.

Bibliography

Brown, E. A. R. (2012). Moral Imperatives and Conundrums of Conscience: Reflections on Philip the Fair of France. Speculum, 87(1), 1–36. https://www.jstor.o rg/stable/41409273?searchText=Philip%20iV%20of%20France&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3FQuery%3DPhilip%2BiV%2Bof%2BFrance&ab_segments=0%2Fbasic_search_gsv2%2Fcontrol&refreqid=fastly-default%3A53cb91140781cd8dbcae9f5db0030351

Bates, D. (2018). William the Conqueror (The English Monarchs Series) (Reprint). Yale University Press.  

Gold, C. (2019). King of the North Wind: The Life of Henry II in Five Acts (Reprint). William Collins. 

Hallam, E. M., & West, C. (2020). Capetian France, 987-1328. Routledge.

Higham, J. K. (2022). Summary of Powers and Thrones: A New History of the Middle Ages By Dan Jones. Independently published. 

Jones, D. (2014). The Plantagenets: the warrior kings and queens who made England. Viking Penguin Books.  

Jones, D. (2015). The Hollow Crown (Main). Faber & Faber.

King, A. (2016). Edward I (Penguin Monarchs). Penguin UK.

Morris, M. (2016). A great and terrible king: Edward I and the forging of Britain. Pegasus Books.  

Morris, M. (2016). King John: Treachery, Tyranny and the Road to Magna Carta. RANDOM HOUSE.

Rothwell, H. (1927). Edward I’s Case against Philip the Fair over Gascony in 1298. The English Historical Review, 42(168), 572–582. https://www.jstor.org/stable/552416?searchText=French%20and%20English%20war%201294%20to%201298&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3FQuery%3DFrench%2Band%2BEnglish%2Bwar%2B1294%2Bto%2B1298&ab_segments=0%2Fbasic_search_gsv2%2Fcontrol&refreqid=fastly-default%3A39802e10c624f58a2f9bb666a21bdb4a

Strayer, J. R. (1956). Philip the Fair--A “Constitutional” King. The American Historical Review, 62(1), 18. https://doi.org/10.2307/1848510

Sumption, J. (1999). The Hundred Years War: Trial by Battle (The Middle Ages Series, Volume 1). University of Pennsylvania Press. 

Wood, C. T. (1979). The English Crisis of 1297 in the Light of French Experience. Journal of British Studies, 18(2), 1–13. https://doi.org/10.1086/385734

van Gorp, D. (2011). Historical introduction: The War of Bouvines. Medieval Warfare, 1(1), 6–9. In- https://www.jstor.org/stable/48579318?searchText=Philip%20II%20of%20France&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3FQuery%3DPhilip%2BII%2Bof%2BFrance%26efqs%3DeyJjdHkiOlsiYW05MWNtNWhiQT09Il19&ab_segments=0%2Fbasic_search_gsv2%2Fcontrol&refreqid=fastly-default%3A3364281838a88ad84064941ed698cf13

Zeihan, P. (2020). Disunited Nations: The Scramble for Power in an Ungoverned World (Illustrated). Harper Business.

Zeihan, P. (2022). The End of the World Is Just the Beginning: Mapping the Collapse of Globalization. Harper Business.

Conflict Between England and France in the 13th Century

The Hundred Years War took place between France and England in the 14th and 15th centuries, but the causes of the war are many and complex. Here, Jonathan Riley looks at how France and England interacted during the 13th century, including the framework between France and England, and France’s alliance with Scotland.

If you missed it, you can read Jonathan’s first piece on the rise of Capetian power here, and the expansion of Plantagenet power here.

An apparent depiction of King Edward I of England.

The cause of The Hundred Years War were a series of territorial and legal disputes between the French crown and their vassals, the kings of England, regarding their continental holdings. The Treaty of Paris in 1259 established a framework of peace between both kingdoms. It lasted until the Anglo-French war of 1294 to 1298, with the peace ending due to Philip iV of France’s war in the Netherlands and alliance with Scotland. The peace was only temporarily restored with the second marriage of Edward I of England and Princess Margaret, the daughter of King Philip III of France.

Constitutional Legal Framework

The constitutional legal framework that sparked the conflict was King Edward I of England’s inability to pay homage to the King of France in the 1290s. His inability to come to Paris caused the war to begin. Historians debate why King Philip, known as Philip the fair or Philip the Iron King, restarted the conflict with the Plantagenet kings of England. Some believed Philip was given poor council and others described Philip as highly intelligent and like an “owl all-seeing” (Brown, 2012). Regardless of the reasons, the most plausible is that Philip was a long line of Capetian kings that have merely continued the dynasties policy of centralizing the kingdom within the feudal structures of their age by reducing the powers and independence of its leaders. By the late 13th century the dukedom of Normandy was incorporated into the Royal French lands permanently with the lands of Poitier, Champagne, Valois, greater Anjou and Artos going to cadet branches of the ruling French dynasties. In this context, we have a strong plausible reason why the conflict known as the Hundred Years War was destined to happen (Hallam & West, 2020). No feudal dynasty would willingly give up their ancestral lands. This meant the Plantagenets had no choice but to keep fighting to expand or retain what remained of their continental holdings, which the family did until their disposition in 1485 CE (Jones, 2015).

Origins of the Hundred Years War

Before the Hundred Years War there was an alliance between King John I of Scotland and King Philip iV of France. This alliance would last until 1560, and was known as the Auild alliance or old alliance. The reason why this alliance made the Hundred Years War inevitable was that King Edward I of England was establishing a legal framework for him to be the arbitrator of justice and law in the kingdom of Scotland. King Edward undermined the King of Scots royal authority, which led to a 30 years war between the kings of England and Scotland over control over the kingdom of Scotland. This began with Edwards’ first invasion in 1295 over the alliance between Scotland and France, which was deemed a direct threat to the English crown. With the continued backing of the French crown for the kings of Scotland, this meant that for the kings of England to subdue Scotland, they would have to make peace with France or fight a two-way war, one to the north against Scotland and one to the south protecting the Plantagenet domains in Gascony and the English Channel from French invasions.

Wars in the 1290s

King Edward I became King of England in 1272, and he was England’s fifth Plantagenet king since 1154. In practical terms, this meant that the dynasties transformed from one being a descendant of William to a legitimate and established kingdom with its own legal and royal traditions that were becoming increasingly independent, and an English identity was starting to emerge. It was this growing independence and the growing confidence of the English nation and the English kingship that enabled Edward I of England to have the support of his nobility when fighting. Wars in France, the Netherlands, Wales, Gascony, and Scotland with the support for the four-way conflict shows that the balance between the monarchies of England and France was changing (King, 2016). Previous Plantagenet kings could not rely on their nobility when it came to conflicts with the kings of France. With this dynamic changing, it meant that England’s seventh Plantagenet king, Edward III of England, who reigned from 1327 CE until 1377 CE, had the support and dynastic legitimacy to fight a war against the kings of France and the descendants of Charlemagne - something that previous Norman and Plantagenet kings of England did not have.

What do you think of the engagements between England and France in the 13th century? Let us know below.

Bibliography

Brown, E. A. R. (2012). Moral Imperatives and Conundrums of Conscience: Reflections on Philip the Fair of France. Speculum, 87(1), 1–36. https://www.jstor.o rg/stable/41409273?searchText=Philip%20iV%20of%20France&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3FQuery%3DPhilip%2BiV%2Bof%2BFrance&ab_segments=0%2Fbasic_search_gsv2%2Fcontrol&refreqid=fastly-default%3A53cb91140781cd8dbcae9f5db0030351

Bates, D. (2018). William the Conqueror (The English Monarchs Series) (Reprint). Yale University Press.  

Gold, C. (2019). King of the North Wind: The Life of Henry II in Five Acts (Reprint). William Collins. 

Hallam, E. M., & West, C. (2020). Capetian France, 987-1328. Routledge.

Higham, J. K. (2022). Summary of Powers and Thrones: A New History of the Middle Ages By Dan Jones. Independently published. 

Jones, D. (2014). The Plantagenets: the warrior kings and queens who made England. Viking Penguin Books.  

Jones, D. (2015). The Hollow Crown (Main). Faber & Faber.

King, A. (2016). Edward I (Penguin Monarchs). Penguin UK.

Morris, M. (2016). A great and terrible king: Edward I and the forging of Britain. Pegasus Books.  

Morris, M. (2016). King John: Treachery, Tyranny and the Road to Magna Carta. RANDOM HOUSE.

Rothwell, H. (1927). Edward I’s Case against Philip the Fair over Gascony in 1298. The English Historical Review, 42(168), 572–582. https://www.jstor.org/stable/552416?searchText=French%20and%20English%20war%201294%20to%201298&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3FQuery%3DFrench%2Band%2BEnglish%2Bwar%2B1294%2Bto%2B1298&ab_segments=0%2Fbasic_search_gsv2%2Fcontrol&refreqid=fastly-default%3A39802e10c624f58a2f9bb666a21bdb4a

Strayer, J. R. (1956). Philip the Fair--A “Constitutional” King. The American Historical Review, 62(1), 18. https://doi.org/10.2307/1848510

Sumption, J. (1999). The Hundred Years War: Trial by Battle (The Middle Ages Series, Volume 1). University of Pennsylvania Press. 

Wood, C. T. (1979). The English Crisis of 1297 in the Light of French Experience. Journal of British Studies, 18(2), 1–13. https://doi.org/10.1086/385734

van Gorp, D. (2011). Historical introduction: The War of Bouvines. Medieval Warfare, 1(1), 6–9. In- https://www.jstor.org/stable/48579318?searchText=Philip%20II%20of%20France&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3FQuery%3DPhilip%2BII%2Bof%2BFrance%26efqs%3DeyJjdHkiOlsiYW05MWNtNWhiQT09Il19&ab_segments=0%2Fbasic_search_gsv2%2Fcontrol&refreqid=fastly-default%3A3364281838a88ad84064941ed698cf13

Zeihan, P. (2020). Disunited Nations: The Scramble for Power in an Ungoverned World (Illustrated). Harper Business.

Zeihan, P. (2022). The End of the World Is Just the Beginning: Mapping the Collapse of Globalization. Harper Business. 

The Mexican War of Independence: Hidalgo’s Insurgents - Part 2

By the latter half of the 17th century, the rule of Spain in the New World was reaching 200 years. Times were changing, both in the New World and in Europe, and the leaders of Spain knew it. Their problem was what to do about it. Spain had never had a coherent policy in its imperial rule. Since 1492, Spain was seemingly constantly at war, with an endless series of crises thrown into the mix. Solutions had to be found for the here and now, the future would take care of itself.

Erick Redington continues his look at the independence of Spanish America by looking at the Mexican War of Independence. Here he looks at the evolution of the war and some successes for the revolutionaries.

If you missed them, Erick’s article on the four viceroyalties is here, Francisco de Miranda’s early life is here, his travels in Europe and the US is here, and his later years is here. Then, you can read about the Abdications of Bayonne here, and the start of the Mexican War of Independence here.

A painting of Ignacio Allende. By Ramon Perez, 1865.

Revolutionary Fire

When Hidalgo went to his parish church and assembled the people, he summoned all of his natural charisma and speaking abilities. He knew he had one chance to rally the common people to the cause of rebellion.

The speech that Hidalgo gave, known to history as the Cry of Dolores, was not written down and has varied in its retelling over the years. What is known is that Hidalgo’s theme was to revolt against oppression and tyranny. For him, the symbols of that tyranny were the Spanish peninsulares, or as they were called resentfully, the gachupines. For Hidalgo and the others in the conspiracy, it was the peninsulares who kept them from the highest orders in society. So, Hidalgo laid it on to the people. If only they could get rid of the gachupines, tyranny would be abolished. To add further insult to injury, he told the crowd that the hated gachupines were going to surrender the colony to the Bonaparte usurper carried on the coattails of the invading French army. These atheistic Frenchmen would further oppress them if they did nothing.

This was to be a rebellion, not to destroy the established authorities, which went directly against Biblical teaching, and would be odd coming from a priest, it would be a holy crusade for both religion and their true king, Ferdinand VII, still living a prisoner of the French. The cry went up from Hidalgo, “Long live the King! Long live America! Death to bad government!” Ominously, the response he got back from the crowd was “Death to the gachupines!”

There is no known telling of this story that says Hidalgo attempted to tamp down on this spirit of bloodlust from the crowd. Indeed, he fostered it. This first stage of the Mexican War of Independence lost the character of the clean military coup with little bloodshed that men like Allende hoped for. This was to be a social revolution intending the destruction of the social class at the top of the social pyramid. Hidalgo, like many revolutionary leaders, understood that to will a result implies an absolute acceptance of the means to achieve that result. If the end of Spanish tyranny meant the deaths of everyone who exercised such tyranny, then so be it.

The Revolutionaries Move

Revolutionary movements have a history of either growing or dying. Hidalgo understood that with the passions of his followers at a fever pitch, they had to move out of the colonial backwater they were located in and gain new followers. Further, the passions of the people could glow white hot, but without proper channeling, those passions could dissipate just as fast as they grew. The insurgent army had to strike.

To secure his local region, Hidalgo first ordered the emptying of the local jails. This was to make room for the hated gachupines whose haciendas he authorized to be plundered and burned. The people took to this work with gusto. Homes were burned and their Spanish owners were beaten, imprisoned, and killed. The people who had lived on these haciendas and worked them would, in the frenzy, join the insurgents. Hidalgo’s army grew with every hacienda burned.

“Take, my children! Everything is yours!” This was the battle cry from Hidalgo to his followers at this stage (yes, he really did say this). One thing that was taken by Hidalgo himself was a representation of the Virgin of Guadalupe. Located at a shrine in Atotonilco, this representation became the symbol of the budding revolution.

At San Miguel, the birthplace of Allende, the insurgents sacked the properties of the gachupines. For the primarily indio and mestizo insurgents, they could not tell the difference between a creole and a gachupine. This led to many creoles being attacked and beaten, and their property seized. For Hidalgo, this was just the justifiable rage of the people. For the original conspirators, such as Allende, this was terrifying. All the bloody scenes of revolutionary Paris were coming to New Spain. This was not a targeted activity to change the government, this was a mob indiscriminately committing crimes.

For Allende, this was doubly frustrating. He was supposed to be the military leader of the revolution. Yet, Hidalgo would not allow him to exercise any command. Hidalgo had even proclaimed himself the “Captain-General of America,” assuming a military rank higher than the professional conspirators. Their leader was now bestowing grandiloquent titles on himself while leading a mob on an excursion of pillage and murder.

First Resistance

As the insurgent army approached Guanajuato, the leader of the Spanish forces there, José Antonio Raiño, decided to make a stand against the rebel army. He ordered the fortification of a granary, and much of the wealth of the city was stored there for defense, including almost three million pesos in cash and gold. On September 28, 1810, the battle began.

The insurgents up to this point had relied upon numbers and fury to carry them forward. This was the first time they had encountered an organized military force armed with cannons. When Hidalgo ordered an attack upon the granary, he found that his men were joined by many locals, especially miners, who were eager to destroy the gachupines and get some of that gold.

Wave after wave of insurgents flung themselves at the granary. Hidalgo, who had read books on military tactics as part of his Enlightenment studies, did not have military experience, despite his title. Allende, the man with experience was not able to exert command authority. So, bodies piled up in front of the granary. Yet the fervor of the insurgents did not flag in this trial. Raiño was shot in the head leading the defense. In the confusion that the lack of leadership caused, the insurgents were able to set fire to the building. The defenders tried to surrender. With the insurgents’ blood up, surrender was not an option. The defenders were killed to a man.

The Turning Point

The fall of the granary was not the end of the insurgents’ first battle. The capture of Guanajuato had just begun. Angered by the deaths of their friends and family, the insurgents proceeded to put the city to the torch. Three hundred years of hate, oppression, slavery, and ignorance were brought out on this one night. Guanajuato was burned and pillaged. Any Spaniard that could be found was killed out of hand. Worse happened to the Spanish women of the city. Since this movement had a working-class tinge to it, the machinery used to work the mines was also destroyed in the hatred of their labor.

It was at Guanajuato that the Hidalgo insurgency showed its most important characteristic. It was not really about the future. The idea did not exist in the minds of the movement that it was working to create a free and prosperous Mexico, unshackled by tyranny and foreign, racial domination. No, this was about the past. The actions of everyone in New Spain since November 8, 1519, the day Cortés met Montezuma II, had led to this moment. This revolution was about the hacienda system, the racial caste system, the destruction of indio independence, and a thousand other incidences in the almost three hundred years since. Hidalgo’s enlightenment ideals on the superiority of human reason over emotional barbarism and superstition were held in the balance and found wanting. For Hidalgo, this was only a minor obstacle. Consistency is for fools; he was the leader of a movement. Ever onward.

Guanajuato also taught one other lesson, the price of failure. For the leadership in Mexico City, they saw a preview on a smaller scale of what would happen in case the insurgents took the capital. Negotiating and compromising with the insurgents was no longer an option. For both sides, it was only victory or death.

The Revolution Moves Forward

Hidalgo’s next target was the city of Valladolid. This city of about 50,000 people was one he was intimately familiar with. As a young man, Hidalgo had been a teacher here. The Bishop, Manuel Abad y Queipo, had been a friend of Hidalgo’s. Abad, however, believed that Hidalgo’s ideas were heretical, and did not support the atrocities carried out in Hidalgo’s name. On his own authority, Abad excommunicated Hidalgo. Despite this, the garrison of the city went over to the insurgents, as the people of the city did not want to see the scenes of Guanajuato repeated. Abad abandoned the city, and it was peacefully occupied.

From the regional capital of Valladolid, Hidalgo began sending out agents throughout New Spain to attract new followers. Hearing of the collapse of authority among the gachupines, many, especially in the north of New Spain, began declaring for Hidalgo. Many leaders in San Luis Potosí, Saltillo, and many others were all in on destroying the hated Spanish. It had seemed that despite the scenes in Guanajuato, Hidalgo would sweep all before him, mostly without a fight.

The defection of the north to the insurgents presented a problem for the Spanish. Where to focus efforts? In the north, the revolution was sweeping everything before it, but there was no organized army, and could seemingly be reconquered easily. In the south, Hidalgo had what passed for an army, but its numbers were enormous. With limited resources at his disposal, the viceroy could not directly confront both threats. In the end, he chose to send an army north under an able, if extremely ruthless, general, Félix María Calleja.

Attempting to Bring Order to Chaos

Relieved of any pressure from the viceroy, Hidalgo tried to put some organizational and ideological backing into his revolution. He attempted to assuage the creoles by emphasizing that his only goal was to create a new congress, and that would be under the authority of Ferdinand VII. He did not support independence or a republic, he assured the creole leaders. To marry patriotism and self-interest, Hidalgo passed out military ranks and offices in his new government to men of influence., hoping to win them over.

At the same time, Hidalgo attempted to shore up his support with the lower classes. He abolished the privileges of the haciendas and ended all tribute that the indios owed to the haciendados. Slavery was to be abolished. Despite the promises made, and regardless of the merit of any of Hidalgo’s decrees, many of the potential intellectual, political, and military leaders of the revolution saw Hidalgo’s support for, what was in their minds, economic and social radicalism as an existential threat to their position in the economic and political order, let alone their hoped-for societal dominance. Hidalgo even allowed himself to be addressed by his indio followers as “His Most Serene Highness.” Social revolution by a racial underclass exacting bloody revenge had precedent in their minds: Haiti. The specter of a Haitian-style race war hovered over Hidalgo’s insurgency. Many creoles with Hidalgo’s main force now began to slowly filter out of the insurgent army.

Despite offering ranks and titles to some, while at Valladolid, Hidalgo was unable to bring any semblance of order to what was in essence, a mob. Placing the indios and mestizos under military discipline would defeat the purpose of the revolution in his eyes. It went against the core ideals of what he, and they, were fighting for. This lack of discipline would be one of the primary undoings of the insurgent army.

Attempt on the Capital

Understanding he had to keep moving, Hidalgo ordered his army to advance on Mexico City at the end of October. The insurgents numbered almost 80,000 by this point, dwarfing the numbers that the Spanish could deploy. The lesson of Guanajuato was ever-present. For the viceregal government and army, despite being heavily outnumbered, there could be no surrender. The Spanish had to fight.

The viceroy ordered a small force under General Torcuato Trujillo to engage the rebels. Trujillo, having the advantage in firepower, decided to find the most defensible ground possible and fight on his own ground. He chose the Sierra de las Cruces located between Toluca and Mexico City. Riddled with forests and steep ridges, this was the perfect defensive position.

On October 30, the battle began. The insurgent strategy was simple. With a colossal advantage in numbers, the most simplistic path to victory was to surround the Spanish force by enveloping it. For the Spanish, the imperative was survival on their part and killing as many insurgents as possible until one side had to retreat.

All day the battle raged. The insurgents sent waves of men into the teeth of Trujillo’s cannon. Thousands of insurgents would fall this day attempting to storm the Spanish lines. With only a few thousand men, time was not on Trujillo’s side. Although his men rebuffed attack after attack, in the end, they ran out of time. With the size advantage Hidalgo’s army enjoyed, it was almost inevitable he would find a weak spot in Trujillo’s defenses, and the Spanish were nearly surrounded.

Trujillo ordered the withdrawal of his forces. While the Spanish had lost less than 2,000 men, the insurgents had lost, by some estimates, 5,000. Although he would claim victory to the viceroy, Trujillo and everyone else knew that the battle was lost, despite the disproportionate casualties. The path to Mexico City now appeared clear.

Victory in the Palm of His Hand

Mexico City, the most populated city in the Western Hemisphere and the second city of all the Spanish realms, was now open to attack. The people in the city panicked. The viceroy ordered a service held at the cathedral, naming the Virgin of Remedios as the new Captain-General of New Spain. The army sent north was hastily recalled, but everyone knew it could not make it back in time. Many prominent peninsulares prepared to hastily evacuate the city. Everyone was prepared for an orgy of violence, pillage, and bloodshed.

In the insurgent army, Allende urged Hidalgo to immediately march on the capital. This was their chance. It was, unfortunately for the insurgents, the first time Hidalgo had been seen to vacillate. What was he waiting for? The hated gachupines were at his mercy. After waiting three days, Hidalgo made his decision. He ordered the insurgents to march back to Toluca.

Hidalgo told Allende that he planned to move back and finally allow him and the other creole officers to turn the disorganized mob into a disciplined army, one that could engage Calleja once he returned from the north. The officers were incredulous. Now, right on the cusp of victory, with the best chance they would have for total victory, now was when they would sit and attempt to create a real army. The professional soldiers could see the writing on the wall. This was all going to end in catastrophic failure.

Unlike the earlier ad hoc attempt, Hidalgo also tried to create a true government and outline his purpose. From Guanajuato, he would issue proclamation after proclamation, but it was too late. Desertions, from the highest creole officers to the lowest indio pikeman, were endemic. Momentum was lost. The local population was turning against the insurgents.

Insurgent Denouement

Calleja had by now arrived from the north. The viceregal government had declared that anyone found armed would be declared a rebel and executed. This only brought further reprisals from the insurgents. Spanish prisoners were taken out and executed in retaliation for Spanish atrocities. Soon hangings and throat-slittings, the favored execution methods of the Spanish, and garrotings, the favored method of the insurgents, were common, daily occurrences. Reprisal begat reprisal and hate begat hate. Men commonly changed sides and executed their former comrades. Betrayals became as common as executions.

Hidalgo and his insurgents now only had thoughts of escape. The insurgent army began moving north to escape, possibly to the United States. Throughout the march, insurgents deserted, and the size of the once enormous army shrank daily. Finally, at Baján, a former supporter of Hidalgo, Ignacio Elizondo betrayed the rebels into Spanish hands. Elizondo had wanted to be appointed a Lieutenant-General in the insurgent army and had been rebuffed. His resentment over rank led him to surrender the rebel leaders into Spanish custody. On March 21, 1811, Hidalgo and the other leaders of the insurgency were captured.

Hidalgo was turned over to an ecclesiastical court. Because he was a priest, the civil authorities could not judge him. He refused to ask for a pardon. He wrote a statement, abjuring support for his own revolution. Later, it would be said that he wrote this due to being coerced and under torture, but the truth is unknown. Since he had been defrocked and excommunicated by the church, part of his sentence included the flaying of his hands. After this, he was executed, probably by firing squad. This was carried out by the civil authorities. Some of his last words were alleged to be “Though I may die, I shall be remembered forever. You all will soon be forgotten.” After his execution, his head was removed from his body and placed on display with those of the other insurgent leaders. The first phase of the Mexican War of Independence was over.

What do you think of the start of various changes in the Mexican War of Independence? Let us know below.

Now, read about Francisco Solano Lopez, the Paraguayan president who brought his country to military catastrophe in the War of the Triple Alliance here.

The Evolution of War-time Counter-Intelligence From World War II to Today

During World War II, psychological warfare was an incredibly important, yet under-appreciated aspect of strategic combat that played an essential role in the Allied Powers’ victory. Whether it was used to misinform enemies with propaganda, or incite fear with inflatable vehicles and dummies, psychological warfare was used by both the Allied Powers and the Axis Alliance during World War II. In the modern day, psychological warfare is still used to intimidate; however overtime, methods and applications have evolved.

Christopher Cho explains.

An inflatable dummy tank based on the M4 Sherman tank.

One of the smartest tactics used by the allied forces were inflatable tanks and paradummies. Developed by a special task force known as, “The Ghost Army,” made up of the most intelligent soldiers and best artists, the Allied Powers utilized a variety of mediums to trick the Nazis, including, “inflatable tanks and vehicles, fake radio traffic, sound effects, even phony generals.” (Ghost Army) Because they were inflatable, these tanks were light enough to be carried by four men across a battlefield and gave the illusion of a much larger military presence. Paradummies, also known as Operation Titanic, were dolls used in place of real paratroopers in order to distract enemies and would often combust upon landing.

Planned by Ralph Ingersoll and Billy Harris and led by Colonel Harry L. Leeder, the Ghost Army and their devices gave the Allied Powers huge advantages during the war and would play a pivotal role in sowing key information for the D-Day invasion. To deceive Germany about the whereabouts of the invasion that would ultimately happen at Normandy, the Ghost Army placed inflatable tanks and military jeeps, where the battles were supposed to take place. Paradummies were dropped along with rifle simulators and SAS (Special Air Service) men to further deceive German soldiers.

The Allied forces had a lot of smart ways of using psychological warfare against their enemy. However, the Nazis and the Axis Powers also had their own forms of psychological warfare. The Axis Alliance were also quite successful when it came to their strategy in psychological warfare, but unlike the allies, they used propaganda as psychological warfare to further their ideological objectives, instead of trying to trick the enemy with fake soldiers and vehicles in order to win military battles. While the Allies tried weakening the Axis, the Axis convinced their soldiers to believe that the systematic extermination of many groups would restore order, using propaganda. Using the radio and other media outlets, Hitler had made the German population believe the Allies (mostly Great Britain and the United States of America) were under the control of Jewish people, creating nationwide antisemitism and justifying the murder of millions solely based on their identity.

Modern day

Though many psychological warfare strategies used during World War II were very successful, most of these strategies have become obsolete in modern day because of advancements in technology. For example, if a country tried to use inflatable tanks or paradummies, modern surveillance technology would easily detect a ruse. Modern day examples can be seen in the Russo-Ukraine war, during Russian protests. Whereas the radio allowed Nazi Germany to disseminate its propaganda in ways never imagined, social media allows the dissemination of propaganda and brings psychological warfare individualized directly to particular tastes. Social media propaganda could be used to make people believe whatever its creator wanted them to believe. Competing interests have simultaneously made citizens of Russia go against Putin and his need for war, but also have been used to further Russian objectives. Many citizens of Russia have started protests, which “... have emerged as the core of Russia’s antiwar movement. This effort includes hundreds of online communities and projects that have sprung up overnight to resist specific war-related government initiatives,” (Olimpieva) Consequently, there are reports of many Russian soldiers who didn't want to fight but were drafted and forced to. This is only one of many examples of psychological warfare being used in modern day, as Russian propaganda has had to work overtime to explain unexpected military losses and to stifle dissent at home.

D-Day was necessary for victory in World War II and the psychological tricks used were essential to the success of the mission. In contrast, the Nazis used their psychological warfare to further their ideological objectives and were also successful in doing this. As Russia continues to employ its psychological warfare to bolster propaganda for their war, the cost of that choice just might be paid in retreat, casualties and more propaganda to explain the failures of the Ukraine invasion to an increasingly sceptical Russian public.

What do you think of wartime counter-intelligence and psychological warfare? Let us know below.

Works Cited

https://www.history.com/news/ghost-army-world-war-ii

https://www.forces-war-records.co.uk/blog/2013/10/04/old-wwii-d-day-paradummy-found-residing-in-garden-shed#:~:text=Paradummies%20were%20used%20as%20a,movie%20'The%20Longest%20Day'

The Norman Conquest of England and the Expansion of Plantagenet Power in the 11th and 12th Centuries

The Hundred Years War took place between France and England in the 14th and 15th centuries, but the causes of the war are many and complex. Here, Jonathan Riley looks at the Norman conquest of England and the expansion of Plantagenet power in the 11th and 12th Centuries as factors for the later outbreak of war.

If you missed it, you can read Jonathan’s first piece on the rise of Capetian power here.

William the Conqueror, or William II of Normandy, as shown in the Bayeux Tapestry.

William II of Normandy, was nominated heir to the throne of England in 1066 CE. This created unfortunate political conflicts between the thrones of England and France because, under feudal politics, God’s anointed cannot bow to other kings or emperors (Bates, 2018). This meant that in practical terms, the relationship between the Dukes of Normandy, who were also kings of England from 1066 to 1204, was that there was an un-codified feudal, political and social relationship between the Dukes of Normandy and the Kings of the Franks.

Feudal Relationships 

There is such contention in the feudal relationship between the kings of England after the Norman conquest and the Kings of the Franks because of the vast territories the kings of England held within the kingdom of modern day France by 1154. The Norman dynasty’s crown, after the extinction of the male line of William the Conqueror in 1135 with the death of King Henry I of England, passed to Stephen of Balos, who became King Stephen I of England. He fought for control of the crown from Empress Matilda who was the only legitimate surviving child of Henry I of England, thus leading to over 20 years of anarchy from 1135 to 1154. When the Plantagenets managed to finally secure the crown with a peace deal with King Stephen, the Plantagenets were not only the Counts of greater Anjou but also the Dukes of Normandy and Dukes of Aquitaine. This massive territorial expansion placed the Plantagenet dynasties and Capetian Kings of France on a collision course of conflict and war (Jones, 2014).

To reiterate, the kings of the Franks did not truly have centralized government to control their lords. This meant a constant power struggle between the territorial princes over power and prestige with the crown, at least symbolically the head of the kingdom. With the rapid expansion of Norman power with the conquest of England, England and Normandy during the 11th and 12th centuries were probably the most centralized kingdoms in Europe in terms of resources. This meant that the kings of England, also as Dukes of Normandy, could outcompete the kings of France, Dukes of Brittany, Counts of Anjou, and other lords within the kingdom of the Franks. The massive gains of King Henry II of England with his marriage to the heiress of the Aquitaine, Eleanor of Aquitaine, further catapulted the kings of England as the most powerful rulers in Western Europe for a time. However, even with these gains, the accurate picture is not that simple. King Henry II of England did not rule his continental domains as a fiefdom of the kingdom of England; this can be hard to grasp with the modern concepts of nationhood and country. It is essential to highlight that from 1066 CE until 1399 CE, the language of the English nobility was not English, but French. The coronation oath was not spoken predominantly in English until the rule of King Henry IV of England (1399 CE to 1413 CE). In practical terms, until the beginning of the Hundred Years War and the long divorce between the English and French nobility, England and its aristocracy would be predominantly French and involved in affairs on the continent. Henry II of England styled himself as the King of the English, Lord of the Normans, Lord of the Angevin, and the Lord of Aquitania (Gold, 2019). What this meant in practical terms was that the Plantagenets were not ruling monarchs in their continental lands; they were still subservient to the throne of the Franks, for these holdings created a constitutional, legal and diplomatic problem regarding the legal relationship between the kings of England and the kings of France which contributed to the causes of the Hundred Years War (Strayer, 1956).

Anglo-Norman Realm and Hundred Years War 

The establishment of the Anglo-Norman realm between 1066 CE and 1204 CE placed the dynasties of England and France on a collision course towards war and conflict, and it is more accurate to say that there have been three different Hundred Years’ War between the kingdoms. The first was from 1052 CE to 1214 CE, the second was from 1294 CE to 1453 CE, and the final conflict was from 1689 CE to 1814 CE. Though these dates are all more than 100 years, and historians have debated the start of these conflicts, the main point is that over nearly 800 years, England and France have been trying to conquer one another (Zeihan, 2020).

The cause of the Hundred Years War was the feudal relationship between the English kings as Dukes of Normandy, Dukes of Aquitaine and other territories on the continent as vassals to the King of France. This position was untenable and was one of the driving factors in conflicts between the dynasties (Sumption, 1999). Even after Philip II, Augustus of France (1180 CE to 1223 CE) won back the bulk of the Plantagenet and Norman territories from King John of England in the early 13th century. Then, after the Battle of Bouvines in 1214, which was a pivotal battle in French history which is the cultural equivalent of the Battle of Hastings in 1066 or the Battle of Bosworth Field which ended the Plantagenets rule in England in 1485. The battle of Bouvines was significant in the emergence of French national identity, with proto-nationalism in France and England starting to emerge in the 13th and 14th centuries (van Gorp, 2011). Philip II and his son Louis VIII of France, who between them ruled from 1180 CE to 1226 CE, established Capetian authority in northern, central and southern France, reaching its apex under Philip IV of France in the late 13th and early 14th centuries. This is relevant to the causes of the Hundred Years War. Until their destruction in 1485, the Plantagenet dynasty would continue to try to reclaim its lost territories. However, this answer is not entirely clear cut because King Henry III of England, who reigned from 1216 CE to 1272 CE, made a peace treaty with St Louis or Louis IX of France, who reigned from 1226 CE to 1270 CE. This peace treaty was the Treaty of Paris signed in 1259 CE (Rothwell, 1927). The treaty would be important because it maintained peace between the kingdoms from 1259 CE to 1294 CE. After all, no framework split the duties of the kings of England and their duties as the Dukes of Aquitaine/Gascony. It was this legal framework that, by a technicality, gave Philip IV of France’s claims to dominion or at least legal dominion over the kings of England. This legal framework was a massive contributor towards the beginning of the Hundred Years War (Morris, 2016).

What do you think of the rise of the expansion of Plantagenet power Let us know below.

Bibliography

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Bates, D. (2018). William the Conqueror (The English Monarchs Series) (Reprint). Yale University Press.  

Gold, C. (2019). King of the North Wind: The Life of Henry II in Five Acts (Reprint). William Collins. 

Hallam, E. M., & West, C. (2020). Capetian France, 987-1328. Routledge.

Higham, J. K. (2022). Summary of Powers and Thrones: A New History of the Middle Ages By Dan Jones. Independently published. 

Jones, D. (2014). The Plantagenets: the warrior kings and queens who made England. Viking Penguin Books.  

Jones, D. (2015). The Hollow Crown (Main). Faber & Faber.

King, A. (2016). Edward I (Penguin Monarchs). Penguin UK.

Morris, M. (2016). A great and terrible king: Edward I and the forging of Britain. Pegasus Books.  

Morris, M. (2016). King John: Treachery, Tyranny and the Road to Magna Carta. RANDOM HOUSE.

Rothwell, H. (1927). Edward I’s Case against Philip the Fair over Gascony in 1298. The English Historical Review, 42(168), 572–582. https://www.jstor.org/stable/552416?searchText=French%20and%20English%20war%201294%20to%201298&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3FQuery%3DFrench%2Band%2BEnglish%2Bwar%2B1294%2Bto%2B1298&ab_segments=0%2Fbasic_search_gsv2%2Fcontrol&refreqid=fastly-default%3A39802e10c624f58a2f9bb666a21bdb4a

Strayer, J. R. (1956). Philip the Fair--A “Constitutional” King. The American Historical Review, 62(1), 18. https://doi.org/10.2307/1848510

Sumption, J. (1999). The Hundred Years War: Trial by Battle (The Middle Ages Series, Volume 1). University of Pennsylvania Press. 

Wood, C. T. (1979). The English Crisis of 1297 in the Light of French Experience. Journal of British Studies, 18(2), 1–13. https://doi.org/10.1086/385734

van Gorp, D. (2011). Historical introduction: The War of Bouvines. Medieval Warfare, 1(1), 6–9. In- https://www.jstor.org/stable/48579318?searchText=Philip%20II%20of%20France&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3FQuery%3DPhilip%2BII%2Bof%2BFrance%26efqs%3DeyJjdHkiOlsiYW05MWNtNWhiQT09Il19&ab_segments=0%2Fbasic_search_gsv2%2Fcontrol&refreqid=fastly-default%3A3364281838a88ad84064941ed698cf13

Zeihan, P. (2020). Disunited Nations: The Scramble for Power in an Ungoverned World (Illustrated). Harper Business.

Zeihan, P. (2022). The End of the World Is Just the Beginning: Mapping the Collapse of Globalization. Harper Business.