My Irish Roots and the Irish Troubles

Here, author Karen Millie-James considers her Irish roots and Ireland’s history. She looks at the background to the Irish Troubles and what happened during the Troubles.

The eviction of Irish tenants during the Famine era. Source: Public domain, Crawford Gallery, available here.

Background

What has always impressed me about Irish people is their strength of character to survive unbearable hardship, without losing their identity. For centuries, Ireland has experienced conquest, religious discrimination, famine, emigration, and political violence. Yet, their culture has endured plus a profound sense of remaining Irish which has been passed down each generation to this day.

When I started writing about the Troubles in my third novel of the Cydney Granger Series, A Thousand Silent Cries, I was unaware of where my research would lead. My grandmother was born in Dublin in 1897, the daughter of Russian immigrants who fled the pogroms in Russia, and then left for England in 1912 or thereabouts, and I wanted to do justice to her story. This added another depth to my story. Her family understood oppression and being forced to leave their country. There was certainly an identity similar to the history of the Irish people, and also the stories and culture within the two communities which were so vital to retain. It was a dream subject for any author.

However, first it was important to me to explore the history of Ireland. I needed to understand the present by understanding the past. I am not an historian but after my extensive research, it became clear to me why there has been so much conflict in such a small country.

The theme running through is the involvement of the British from as far back as 1169 during the Anglo-Norman invasion, and the time of Henry VIII and Elizabeth I. The English Crown have always attempted to control the whole island by confiscating land from Irish families and granting them to settlers loyal to the monarchy. Religion always paid a huge part in this especially as there were so many changes from Catholic to Protestant rule.

In 1609, James I, under the Plantation of Ulster, organised the settlement of English and Scottish Protestants in Ulster in return for their building towns and defences to support English rule. Many Catholics lost land or were pushed out into poorer areas. This enabled the Protestants to expand further into the north of Ireland which divided the country by religion, caused political conflict and questioned the identity of the British and Irish; the root of the Troubles centuries later. These settlers wanted Ulster governed by the English king under English law, whereas the Catholics wanted to preserve their land, and their faith.

            Between 1649 and 1653, Oliver Cromwell set a campaign for further land confiscations and atrocities in the name of the Crown with the aim of crushing the alliance between the Irish Catholic confederates and the English Royalist. He wanted to secure Ireland for Parliament and prevent it being used as a base for the Royalists to return to power in England. The two sieges of Drogheda and Wexford in 1649 are still remembered as traumatic events in history denoting the extent of the massacre of large numbers in the towns by Cromwell’s army, in the most brutal manner.

            As a result, the Catholics landowners lost most of their land to Protestant settlers and backers of Parliament and faced severe restrictions. Even though the monarchy was restored in 1660 and Charles II became King, Protestant power remained firmly in place and only some Catholics were able to recover their property. Twenty-five years later, King James II became king and as a Catholic, many Irish supported him in the hope he would restore their rights. However, the Protestant political elite in England replaced him with the Dutch Protestant ruler, William of Orange – the Glorious Revolution.

            At this point, any political power held by the Catholics was eliminated and the Penal Laws restricted Catholics from owning or inheriting land, holding public office, voting, bearing arms, practicing law, and generally having any voice in politics.

            Under the influence of the French Revolution, many groups sought Irish independence and unity between the Catholics and Protestants with a view to making Ireland easier to govern and defend. Ireland had its own parliament in Dublin but it was dominated by Protestant landowners and controlled by Britain. The Act of Union effective 1801 abolished the separate Irish Parliament and Ireland was incorporated into one new state as the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Still Catholics were not permitted to sit in Parliament.

            This is central to why Irish nationalists sought Home Rule or independence, whilst unionists wanted to maintain the Union.

            I began to understand why the Irish held such anger towards the British and this became worse during the Great Famine of 1845 to 1852 when the potato blight destroyed crops and over a million people died with a similar number emigrating, primarily to America. Much of the Irish population were poor and relied heavily on potatoes for their survival. They could not afford grain, meat or dairy, relief was non-existent, and landlords evicted tenants who could not pay rent and sent them to the harsh and inhumane conditions of the workhouses.

            Blame was firmly placed on the British for their failures to help the lives of their people causing the immense suffering they were forced to endure. The belief was it could all have been prevented with different polices in place. Most of these people were Catholic living in rural towns and villages.

Those who emigrated to the United States of America must have felt relieved to escape. However, many died on the ships crossing the Atlantic due to the unsafe conditions, poor food and disease. On arrival, normally New York or Boston, they were settled in crowded neighbourhoods and faced difficult and labour-intensive work which were low paid. Many were responsible for building canals and railways, working in mining and construction.

Ireland changed. It’s population fell dramatically and many families relied on monies sent from their families in America. As time passed, the Irish emigrants in the US, integrated more into society and built strong networks within the Catholic church, and in political groups, which resulted in their becoming more accepted and influential as their families spread throughout the country.

The Irish people have long memories. The stories of the past, the influence of the British, the losses during the potato famine of generations of families, have been passed down, and not just as myths to be told at Christmas time but in literature, music, the arts. These are real-life stories of resilience which have bearings on the lives of those today. It has created for them a strong sense of Irish identity which will continue for centuries to come.

Background to the Troubles

Ireland is full of rich culture, humour, the arts. I love being there and I have been many times both in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. However, there is a backdrop of loss, suffering,  persecution, and huge emotion. The idea that nothing is forgotten.

The fight for Ireland to have its own independence from the British Crown is centuries old. At the turn of the twentieth century, Ireland was governed by the British Crown since the Act of Union but there were two opposing sides; Home Rule by the Catholics and nationalists predominantly, and the Protestants and unionists in the north, particularly around Belfast, who considered themselves to be British from not only a political view, but in terms of religion and economy. Belfast was the centre of shipbuilding and engineering which were closely tied to Britain and its Empire and they had no desire to separate from Great Britain which would seriously affect their economy.

            1n 1912 a third Home Rule Bill was introduced and the resistance by the Unionists became more organized with nearly half a million signing the Ulster Covenant and Declaration to oppose Home Rule. In 1913, the Unionists formed the Ulster Volunteer Group. In retaliation, the Nationalists established the Irish Volunteers. This was truly frightening time with Ireland being on the brink of civil war and both sides now having paramilitary organisations.

With the advent of the First World War, the Home Rule Act 1914 became law but was suspended. Both Catholics and Protestants served in the British Army but for different reasons, the Catholics believing they would be rewarded with Home Rule, although some factions wanted to strike out against British rule, whereas the Protestants gave their support to Britain.

The Easter Rising of 1916 was an important date in Ireland’s history when 1200 rebels seized various buildings in Dublin and declared an Irish Republic. Much of Dublin was damaged and although the Rising was defeated within a week, there was a turning point when public opinion changed due to the response by the British of having fifteen leaders executed by firing squad with thousands arrested.

Support for Sinn Fein, which was established in 1905 to support the desire for Ireland to have its own government, increased after the Rising  and they won an overwhelming majority of Irish seats in the general election of December 1918 and the elected members assembled in Dublin to form an independent Irish parliament, declaring Ireland a republic. The Unionists rejected the Dublin government and maintained their stance to remain in the United Kingdom.

In 1919 the Irish War of Independence began with the IRA, the Irish Republican Army, with its roots in the Irish Volunteers supporting the new republic. During this time, the IRA fought British forces, the Royal Irish Constabulary and the government in any way they could. They had a massive intelligence network and waged constant attacks on police barracks, destroyed homes, businesses and public buildings, and generally evoked fear amongst civilians, murdering many they deemed as informers. In the north, people were killed and driven from their home due to the violence between the Catholics and Protestants. They also regarded themselves as a legitimate army whereas Britain viewed them as insurgents and murderers.

The Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921 ended that war but divided the IRA into those who accepted the Irish Free State, pro-treaty, and those who rejected it and wanted a united republic, anti-treaty. Former comrades were now fighting against each other. The Irish Civil War of 1922 – 1923 was ultimately won by the pro-treaty faction and they continued to use the name, IRA. This was later changed to the Provisional IRA in 1969 who fought the British security forces and loyalist paramilitaries during the Troubles.

The Government of Ireland Act 1920, whilst the war continued, created two territories, one in Northern Ireland consisting of six counties, and the other in Southern Ireland consisting of the remaining twenty-six counties, each with their own governments. However, this was not accepted by Sinn Fein who refused to recognize the separation. Thus the populations were still not cleanly divided. Members of the southern parliament had to swear an oath connected to the Crown, but Northern Ireland opted out of this and remained within Great Britain. As the Civil War raged, former comrades continued fighting each other and families were divided.

The Troubles and the IRA – Why do I Write About this?

The partition of Ireland did not solve the political problem but made it worse. There were a large number of Catholics remaining in the North who would not accept British rule, and the Protestants would not accept the stance of the Catholics. There was no solution.

The remaining IRA was weaker than it had been and between 1956 and 1962 they conducted an unsuccessful Border Campaign. The Irish Government treated the IRA as terrorists and stopped it from using the Republic as a base for their activities.

During the late 1960’s, the IRA divided again between the Official IRA and the Provisional IRA, the role of which was to defend Catholic communities and put an end to British rule and force them to withdraw from Northern Ireland and establish a united Irish republic. There were bombings, assassinations, attacks in England , kidnappings, and executions of suspected informers including some Catholic civilians. The Republican communities held mixed views with some helping the IRA, and others rejecting the violence but staying silent as they feared repercussions. For some Catholics, they wanted the IRA to protect them against the Protestants who were carrying out campaigns of violence by burning their homes and attacking them. Not all of them wanted a war or felt the IRA spoke for them.

Sinn Fein was politically on the side on the Republicans and tried to negotiate for peace. It wasn’t until 1994 that the Provisional IRA declared the first ceasefire which broke down, and then a second in 1997. The Good Friday Agreement was signed in 1998, but the IRA did not end its campaign until 2005.

What a troubled history, but fascinating, and a perfect background which I could use to my advantage when writing as an ideal story of revenge. Rufus Tomlinson aka William Latimer grew up in a poor Catholic family in Belfast. Joining the IRA gave him a sense of purpose and he was responsible for a multitude of bombings and murders in Northern Ireland and mainland England and for this he was revered and treated like a celebrity, or maybe more so because he instilled fear wherever he went.

However, Rufus made one mistake which he lived to regret. On the orders of the IRA, he set up a bomb in the house of a banker in London and killed him and his wife but failed to kill the son. His mistake was to stay and watch the house explode and he was seen by the son, James Carrington, now a prominent barrister, who had been placed into a child witness protection program after losing his parents. Later, Rufus was arrested in 1972 following Bloody Sunday. He then escaped from jail and was helped by sympathisers to the Cause in the Republic of Ireland and on to Boston.

I interviewed an officer from the British army who was stationed in Belfast during this period. He advised that the IRA had many sympathisers, and one means of escape that was discovered was via Forkhill in the south of County Armagh and then through underground tunnels built on loyal farmers’ land to the Republic of Ireland and then into Dundalk just over the border. They were then taken to Dublin and were able to board a ship to Boston or New York. Everything was tightly planned, even though the British were closely monitoring activity from Slieve Gullion, the highest point in the county.

You have to remember that millions of Americans were descended from Irish immigrants particularly those who left during the Great Famine, and there were many stories of British rule. The memories compounded over the years, and many supported the Republicans by raising funds to help the IRA in its pursuit for freedom from Britain and supplying weapons which were bought both legally and illegally and shipped over. Many of the Irish in the States had become wealthy through businesses and politically, but were they aware they were not only helping Catholic families, but also funding terrorists and murderers? They did not see the daily problems.

On his return to the UK decades later under a new name, Rufus discovered James by chance and set in motion a psychological game of cat and mouse with the intent on silencing James before he could identify his IRA background. Due to the Troubles being fairly recent in our history and my memories of the conflict, it gave me a perfect opportunity to really delve into the psyche of Rufus and imagine his family life and his senior role within the IRA. I wanted to really comprehend why he, like many other young men, joined this terrorist organisation and what it took for anyone to kill many of their countrymen, albeit another religion. Was it really just a means to escape poverty and not work like many others, for example, in the shipyards or in other low-paid jobs? Or were there some who were simply angry individuals wanting to commit violence no matter the consequences as a means of gratification or compulsion to kill?

The fact is that Rufus was boastful of his actions, incapable of living a normal life after his murderous activities He was ‘somebody’ and because people acknowledged him, he could live a life of fantasy where he was both revered and feared, possibly hated. When he was arrested, this caused him to lose face, and he had to escape to maintain his failure of succumbing to his enemy. By striving to kill James and anyone that got in the way, he was back in his previous life where the war was not finished. He was still a soldier.

My question, which I cannot answer, is whether this was the same for all operatives in the IRA? Was Rufus a narcissist, or just an idealist, an angry young man brought up in an environment where tales were handed down over the generations within his family of the awful treatment of the Catholics by the Protestants and, more importantly, of the belief that Great Britain was occupying his beloved country? Was he a product of his own making, or was it peer pressure, excitement even, a sense of belonging and status?  I chose to describe Rufus as having all these traits, but also as a narcissist because it made him more interesting. He had a complete belief in his own importance, someone who craved admiration, who couldn’t admit his errors, and hated his authority being challenged. Now he had a task, annihilating James, and that blinkered every one of his thoughts and actions. He was never wrong. He was back in the IRA. His self-righteousness made him powerful.

            Writing about the Troubles brings together the subjects that are close to my heart, that draw me as a writer. My grandmother and her story, and my dad who fled from Nazi Germany on the Kindertransport in 1939 to escape persecution. He later served in military intelligence for Great Britain. My family history is shaped by people forced to leave their country of birth, to leave their lives behind, and adopt a new existence but retaining the memories that pass down the generations.

            We don’t choose our history, but we can choose what we do with it, whether that be seeking justice and revenge and dwelling on the past, or taking all the advantages of what we have inherited which is resilience and the belief in our ability to continue our lives despite everything that went before, and the secrets that remain buried.

A Thousand Silent Cries by Karen Millie-James is out now.

The third novel in Karen Millie James' Cydney Granger crime thriller series, A Thousand Silent Cries sees corporate forensics investigator and spiritual medium Cydney Granger drawn into her most personal and dangerous case yet.

Known for uncovering truths others cannot see, Cydney has built her career investigating secrets, deception and hidden motives. But this time, the mystery centres on someone close to her.

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The Avignon Papacy and the Fight for France: Part 5 - The Beginning of the End

The Avignon Papacy (1309-1376) was the period during which seven successive popes resided at Avignon, in modern-day southern France, rather than at Rome. It followed a bitter conflict between the papacy and King Philip IV of France, and the death of Pope Boniface VIII in 1303 marked a decisive shift in the balance of power within the Church. Talia Bega explains — and looks at where it was the beginning of the end for France.

You can read part 1 on the Church in the 13th century here, part 2 on the Rise of Philip IV and financial problems here, part 3 on the start of the Papacy here, and part 4 on is it over for France here.

Poppe Innocent VI. Source: Public domain, part of Andrea di Bonaiuto’s Via veritas, available here.

One Death to Another

After Clement VI died in 1352, a France already shattered by war faced years of crisis at the hands of an ambitious English monarchy. Clement had led a lavish lifestyle, raising the question of whether the Church was a symbol of strength or of excess. He was, however, a strong supporter of France and showed great sympathy for the French cause after the brutal defeat at Crécy in 1346.

His successor, Innocent VI (r. 1352–1362), was faced with the task of keeping France stable. Born Étienne Aubert near Limoges in 1282, he grew up in France and rose quickly through the Church hierarchy. He became Bishop of Noyon in 1338 and of Clermont in 1340, and was made a cardinal in 1342. In 1347 he accompanied Cardinal Annibaldo di Ceccano on the papal peace mission that produced the Truce of Calais. When Clement died in 1352, the conclave elected Aubert on December 18, and he was crowned on December 30. One of his first acts as pope was to annul the agreement, signed by the cardinals during the conclave, that declared the College of Cardinals superior to the pope. In 1353 he also sent Cardinal Gil Álvarez de Albornoz to reconquer papal lands that had fallen to the Italian signori, a task that proved challenging (Housley, 1982, 255). In 1355 he permitted the coronation in Rome of the new Holy Roman Emperor, Charles IV, hoping it would bring peace to the city after years of warfare.

In 1356, King John II of France was captured at the Battle of Poitiers. The defeat was a profound shock to a country that had already suffered heavy losses, and the king’s absence brought further internal conflict, including a feud between the dauphin and Charles of Navarre in 1357 and the revolts of 1358. Relatively little is known of how the papacy responded to a crisis in which a reigning monarch was held captive. In 1360, however, Innocent’s envoys helped mediate the Treaty of Brétigny, which secured the king’s release after four years in English hands. The papacy’s finances, already strained by debts accumulated under previous popes, deteriorated badly under Innocent, and by 1357 he was complaining of poverty.

Innocent died in 1362 after a decade of reform intended to preserve the power and authority of the Church. In his final years, his authority was weakened by the French crown and by the constant struggle between France and England for influence over the papacy, which arguably contributed to the papacy’s weakened state later on. There were attempts at peace, notably the negotiations at Guînes in 1353–54 overseen by Cardinal Guy of Boulogne, bishop of Porto, but the resulting treaty was never ratified. Innocent also struggled with the mercenary companies and warfare in Italy, which drained papal resources (Housley, 1982, 356). Was the papacy really shrinking in France, or did it remain in power?

Chaos in France

After the death of Innocent VI, Urban V took up the challenge of saving the papacy. Born Guillaume de Grimoard in 1310, he came from a family with strong Church connections; his brother, Anglic, later became a cardinal in 1366. He was educated at Montpellier and in 1327 became a Benedictine monk. From there he rose through the ranks of the Church, holding various teaching positions and becoming abbot of Saint-Germain in Auxerre in 1352. Before becoming pope, he was sent on several missions to Italy: in 1352 Clement VI dispatched him to deal with the powerful Visconti family, whose influence was growing in the north, and in 1354 Innocent VI sent him to Rome to address disorders at St. Peter’s Basilica.

His last mission, in 1360, was to assist Cardinal Albornoz in the papacy’s dispute with Bernabò Visconti. When Innocent died, Guillaume was serving as apostolic nuncio in Italy. At a conclave that opened in September 1362, the cardinals chose him as the new pope, even though he was not a cardinal himself. As pope, he continued to wear his Benedictine habit, keeping his monastic vows. He undertook reforms of justice and of the papal administration, and he showed concern for the Jewish community, threatening with excommunication anyone who molested them.

Above all, Urban wanted to return the papacy to Rome. He ordered a crusade against Bernabò Visconti, whom he declared a heretic (Housley, 1982, 255). He also planned a crusade in the eastern Mediterranean with the support of the kings of France and Cyprus, but it stalled when King John II, who had voluntarily returned to captivity in England, died in London in 1364. King Peter I of Cyprus nonetheless achieved some success, sacking Alexandria the following year. In 1367, Urban became the first pope in more than sixty years to set foot in Rome, and in 1368 he crowned Charles IV’s wife, Elizabeth of Pomerania, as empress in a lavish ceremony (Bolgia, 2002, 565). Yet war surrounded the Papal States, and many of the French cardinals were eager to return to Avignon. In 1370, Bridget of Sweden predicted, in the presence of Cardinal Pierre Roger de Beaufort, that the pope would die if he left Rome. Urban returned to Avignon regardless, fell ill, and died a few months later at his brother’s residence.

Urban risked a great deal for the papacy. The Avignon papacy was at a low point, but his ambition saw a chance to restore it to Rome. Although conflict surrounded the papacy, Urban saw an opportunity to restore its power, even if that meant making peace with his enemies. He is also the only Avignon pope to have been beatified. His successor, Gregory XI, sought his canonization after reports of miracles, but the process took centuries: he was not beatified until 1870, under Pius IX. What came next would raise questions of its own, but the six years that followed would mark the final chapter of the papacy in Avignon that Philip IV’s ambitions had set in motion.

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Now read about the War of the Breton Succession here.

References

Bolgia, Claudia. “Cassiano’s Popes Rediscovered: Urban V in Rome.” Zeitschrift Für Kunstgeschichte 65, no. 4 (2002): 562–74. https://doi.org/10.2307/4150676.

HOUSLEY, NORMAN. “THE MERCENARY COMPANIES, THE PAPACY, AND THE CRUSADES, 1356–1378.” Traditio38 (1982): 253–80. http://www.jstor.org/stable/27831116.

1066: The Norman Conquest and the Birth of Medieval England: Stamford Bridge: The Battle That Changed 1066 – Part 3

By September 1066, England had become the prize in one of the most extraordinary succession crises of the medieval world. King Edward the Confessor was dead, Harold Godwinson occupied the English throne, and two powerful foreign rulers had already claimed that the crown belonged to them. Duke William of Normandy was preparing an invasion across the Channel, but before William could strike, another claimant had arrived in England. From Scandinavia came Harald Hardrada, King of Norway, one of the most formidable warriors of his age. His invasion would force Harold Godwinson into a desperate gamble: to march north, defeat the Viking army, and then somehow return south before William could land.

Terry Bailey explains.

Read part 1 on the pre-invasion world of 1066 here, and part 2 on the road to invasion here.

The Battle of Stamford Bridge. Source: public domain, he Life of King Edward the Confessor by Matthew Paris. 13th century, available here.

The Norwegian invasion was not a minor raid. Hardrada was an experienced military commander who had spent much of his life fighting across Europe and beyond. His claim to the English throne rested partly upon an agreement allegedly made between the Norwegian king Magnus the Good and the English king Harthacnut, under which each was said to have inherited the other's kingdom if one died without an heir. Although the legal basis of Hardrada's claim was disputed, the Norwegian king possessed something more immediately important than legal arguments: a powerful army and a fleet capable of carrying an invasion force into England.

Hardrada did not act alone. He was joined by Tostig Godwinson, Harold's estranged brother. Once one of the most powerful men in England, Tostig had been Earl of Northumbria until rebellion against his rule forced him into exile in 1065. His alliance with Hardrada transformed the Norwegian expedition from a foreign invasion into something even more dangerous. Tostig knew England, understood its politics, and possessed his own claim to influence. For Harold, the invasion was therefore both a military and a deeply personal crisis.

In September, Hardrada's forces sailed into northern England. The Norwegians first seized York, one of the most important centres in the north, after defeating an English army at the Battle of Fulford on the 20th of September. The English forces were commanded by the northern earls Edwin of Mercia and Morcar of Northumbria, and their defeat demonstrated how serious the invasion had become. York was effectively at the mercy of the invaders, and Hardrada appeared to have established a powerful base from which he could extend his control.

For Harold Godwinson, the news could hardly have been worse. His army had spent much of the summer waiting in southern England for William's expected invasion. Maintaining a large army in the field was enormously difficult because many of Harold's troops were drawn from the fyrd, the system through which free men were called upon to serve. They could not remain indefinitely away from their homes and farms. As supplies diminished and the campaigning season advanced, Harold had been forced to release many of his men.

Then came the news from the north; Harold reacted with remarkable speed. Gathering the forces available to him, he began one of the most extraordinary marches in English military history. His army travelled north towards York, covering hundreds of miles in a remarkably short period. Medieval armies normally moved at a relatively slow pace, constrained by roads, terrain, supplies, horses and the physical limitations of thousands of men. Harold nevertheless succeeded in concentrating a substantial force in the north before Hardrada and Tostig fully appreciated the danger approaching them.

The speed of Harold's advance was itself a weapon. Hardrada had every reason to believe that the English king would need considerable time to respond. Instead, Harold appeared with an army close to York. The Norwegian forces were caught in a vulnerable position at Stamford Bridge, several miles east of the city. According to the traditional accounts, the Norwegians were not expecting an immediate attack and some were without their armour. Whether every detail of the later accounts is accurate is uncertain, but the essential fact is clear: Harold had achieved surprise.

The two armies met on the 25th of September 1066 and the battle that followed became one of the great encounters of the Viking Age. Hardrada's army initially formed a defensive position, with the English attacking across the River Derwent. The traditional accounts describe a fierce struggle in which the Norwegian position proved extremely difficult to break. One of the most famous episodes tells of a lone Norwegian warrior holding the bridge against the English long enough to delay their advance before eventually being killed. Whether the story is entirely historical cannot be established with certainty, but it reflects the ferocity of the fighting.

As the battle developed, the advantage gradually shifted towards Harold. The Norwegian army had been divided by the speed of the English advance, and Hardrada was forced to fight without the full protection of his preparations. Yet the Norwegians fought with extraordinary determination. Hardrada himself was at the centre of the fighting, as was characteristic of the warrior kings of the period; however, Harald Hardrada was eventually killed.

The Norwegian king was struck in the throat by an arrow, according to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and later accounts, although the precise circumstances surrounding his death remain uncertain. With Hardrada dead, the invasion lost its principal commander. Tostig continued the fight, but Harold reportedly offered him the opportunity to abandon the battle. Tostig refused, and the struggle continued until he too was killed.

With the deaths of Hardrada and Tostig, Norwegian resistance collapsed. The Viking invasion of England had been decisively defeated. The scale of the victory was extraordinary. Hardrada had arrived as one of the most formidable military leaders of his generation, accompanied by a substantial invasion force. Within a single day, his ambitions had been destroyed and the last great Scandinavian attempt to conquer England had effectively come to an end.

For Harold Godwinson, Stamford Bridge was an extraordinary personal and political triumph. He had defended his kingdom against a major invasion, defeated a renowned warrior king, and eliminated one of the two principal foreign threats to his crown. Had the story of 1066 ended there, Stamford Bridge might have been remembered simply as one of the greatest victories in English history.

However, the story was only halfway finished; the victory came at a terrible price. The fighting had been exceptionally violent, and the English army suffered substantial casualties. Even more importantly, Harold's force was now exhausted. Many of the men who had marched north had already endured a rapid journey across England followed by a major battle. The army that emerged victorious from Stamford Bridge was therefore very different from the force that Harold had originally assembled to defend the south.

Harold had also lost valuable time. While he had been marching north and fighting Hardrada, Duke William of Normandyhad been waiting for favourable conditions to cross the Channel. The winds that had kept William's fleet in Normandy eventually changed. By the end of September, William was finally able to set sail; the timing was disastrous for Harold.

Only days after Stamford Bridge, the English king received news that William had landed in southern England. The Norman invasion he had anticipated for months had finally begun. Harold now faced an extraordinary military problem. He had just defeated a powerful Scandinavian army in the north, but his kingdom was being invaded from the opposite direction.

There was no easy choice. Harold could remain in the north and allow William to establish himself in southern England, gathering reinforcements and strengthening his position. Alternatively, he could march south once again and confront the Normans before their army became too powerful. Harold chose the second course.

His decision reveals both the strength and the weakness of the English position. Harold's ability to move rapidly across England was impressive, but the same speed that had helped him defeat Hardrada now demanded an extraordinary physical and logistical effort from his army. His men had marched north, fought a major battle and then had to turn around and march south again. Some had been killed or wounded. Others were exhausted. Reinforcements had to be gathered along the way, but there was no time for the leisurely preparation of a campaign.

The two battles of 1066 were therefore becoming connected by more than chronology. Stamford Bridge had removed one enemy, but it had also shaped the conditions under which Harold would face the other. His army had been bloodied, depleted and exhausted. William's army, meanwhile, had arrived fresh in southern England after crossing the Channel and had begun establishing itself on English soil.

There was another crucial difference. Harold had been forced to react to events throughout the year. William, by contrast, had spent months preparing his invasion. He had assembled ships, gathered troops from Normandy and elsewhere, secured the support of powerful nobles and waited for the opportunity to cross. When that opportunity finally came, he landed in England with his army intact.

The road from Stamford Bridge to Hastings would therefore become one of the most consequential marches in English history. Harold's army moved south once again, knowing that another enemy was waiting. The king had achieved what appeared to be the impossible: he had defeated Hardrada, destroyed the Norwegian invasion and demonstrated the military strength of the English kingdom. Yet the victory had not secured his crown. It had merely removed one claimant.

On the 28th of September, William landed at Pevensey on the Sussex coast. The Norman invasion had begun. The irony of Stamford Bridge is therefore at the heart of the story of 1066. Harold's victory was spectacular, but it came at precisely the moment when he could least afford the losses and exhaustion that accompanied it. The battle demonstrated the remarkable speed and military effectiveness of the English king, but it also left him facing the second invasion with an army that had already endured an extraordinary campaign.

Stamford Bridge was not simply the destruction of the last great Viking invasion of England. It was the turning point that connected the Scandinavian struggle for England with the Norman conquest that followed. Within days, the battlefield in Yorkshire would be replaced by another battlefield hundreds of miles to the south. The English army that had celebrated victory over Hardrada would soon be marching towards Hastings.

Harold had defeated one invasion but another had already begun. The succession crisis that had started with the death of Edward the Confessor had now entered its most dangerous stage. England had survived the Viking challenge, but the fate of the English crown would soon be decided not in the north, but on a hill overlooking the Sussex coast.

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Now, you can read Terry’s series on cruel King John here.

The Winchester Mystery House: A Factual Timeline of America's Most Famous Haunted Mansion Legend

Interest in historical sites where popular legend has substantially diverged from the documentary record has remained strong among readers of American history, particularly cases involving a private individual's life story overtaken by commercially convenient folklore after their death. The Winchester Mystery House in San Jose, California, represents one of the clearest such cases in American architectural and cultural history, and tracing its documentary record from beginning to end reveals a gap between legend and evidence wide enough to constitute its own separate historical lesson. Sami Hashem explains.

Sarah Winchester. Source: Public domain, History San Jose Research Library, available here.

A Well-Educated Woman From a Prosperous Family (1839–1862)

Sarah Lockwood Pardee was born in 1839 in New Haven, Connecticut, into a prosperous and socially prominent family. She received an unusually extensive education for a woman of her era, studying four languages, including Latin, French, Spanish, and Italian, at a female scholastic institution affiliated with Yale College. Contemporary accounts describe her as intelligent, musically accomplished, and socially admired, and she became known locally as the "Belle of New Haven" during her young adulthood.

In 1862, Sarah married William Wirt Winchester, son of Oliver Winchester, founder of the Winchester Repeating Arms Company, one of the era's most successful and rapidly growing firearms manufacturers. The marriage placed Sarah within one of Connecticut's wealthiest and most prominent industrial families.

A Decade and a Half of Successive Loss (1866–1881)

The couple's only child, a daughter named Annie Pardee Winchester, was born in 1866 and died within weeks, from a condition contemporary medical accounts describe as marasmus, a form of severe malnutrition whose underlying cause in infants of this era was often poorly understood. Sarah reportedly never fully recovered emotionally from this loss, and the couple had no further children.

Oliver Winchester, William's father, died in 1880, passing control of the Winchester Repeating Arms Company to William. William himself, who had suffered from tuberculosis for a considerable period, died only months later, in March 1881, at age 43. Within the span of roughly fifteen years, Sarah Winchester had lost her only child, her father-in-law, and her husband, while inheriting a substantial personal fortune along with nearly half ownership of the Winchester firearms company, an inheritance whose value has been estimated in later accounts at approximately 20 million dollars, an immense sum for the period.

Relocation to California (1884–1886)

Following William's death, Sarah Winchester left New Haven and eventually relocated to California's Santa Clara Valley, an area then known for its agricultural prosperity rather than the urban development that would later define it. She purchased an unfinished eight-room farmhouse on approximately 45 acres of land, which she named Llanada Villa.

According to family correspondence and biographical accounts drawn from archival research, Sarah's initial intention in expanding the property was notably practical rather than mysterious: she hoped to eventually house extended family members in a communal living arrangement on the growing estate. Some of her relatives, for reasons not fully documented, ultimately declined to relocate and join her, though construction on the property continued regardless of this outcome.

Thirty-Six Years of Continuous Construction (1886–1922)

Construction on the property proceeded with little interruption from 1886 until Sarah Winchester's death on September 5, 1922, gradually expanding the original eight-room structure into a mansion of approximately 160 rooms, featuring numerous staircases, an extensive network of hallways, and architectural details that would later be characterized as bizarre or disorienting. In 1888, Winchester's niece, Marion Daisy Merriman, moved into the estate and lived alongside her aunt for approximately fifteen years.

Sarah Winchester employed a substantial household staff and construction crew throughout this period, and by most contemporary accounts maintained an active, hands-on role in directing the ongoing work, though no master architectural blueprint for the property as a whole has ever been located, a detail consistent with decades of incremental, ad hoc expansion rather than a single unified design.

The Origins of the Curse Legend (1895 Onward)

The earliest known published account connecting Sarah Winchester to any supernatural narrative appeared in an 1895 San Francisco Chronicle article, which drew public attention to the unusual scale and continuous pace of the house's construction without yet presenting the full curse mythology later associated with the property. The now-familiar legend, holding that a medium had informed Winchester that the vengeful spirits of individuals killed by Winchester rifles were haunting her family, and that she could only appease them through unceasing construction, developed and expanded considerably through subsequent decades of retelling, well beyond anything documented in that original 1895 account.

No journal, letter, diary entry, or other document written directly by Sarah Winchester has ever been located describing this supernatural motivation, or any belief in a curse connected to her late husband's family firearms business. This absence is particularly notable given that a substantial body of Sarah's personal correspondence with family members has survived and been examined by historians and archivists, none of which corroborates the curse narrative in her own words.

What Household Staff and Family Actually Reported

Household staff members who worked for Sarah Winchester, interviewed in the years following her death, consistently reported that she showed no particular interest in séances or organized spiritualist practice, a detail that stands in direct tension with the popular legend's central premise. Surviving family members likewise did not corroborate later characterizations of Sarah as unusually superstitious or preoccupied with the supernatural. Instead, the picture that emerges from these firsthand accounts is of a highly intelligent, physically frail, and increasingly reclusive woman who withdrew substantially from public society following her successive personal losses, and who found in continuous home renovation and expansion a genuinely engaging project that her considerable wealth allowed her to pursue without any practical limit.

Historians examining Sarah Winchester's likely physical condition have pointed to evidence suggesting she suffered from a form of arthritis or related chronic ailment during her later years, which would help explain both her withdrawal from public life and certain accommodations built into the house's design, including numerous ramps and reduced-height steps in some sections, details that align more naturally with a practical response to mobility difficulties than with any supernatural instruction.

The 1906 Earthquake's Lasting Physical Impact

The 1906 San Francisco earthquake caused significant structural damage to portions of the Winchester house, an event that permanently altered the property in ways later visitors and storytellers would come to associate with its mysterious reputation. Some damaged sections were sealed off entirely rather than repaired, contributing directly to the now-famous architectural oddities associated with the mansion: staircases that terminate abruptly, doors that open onto blank walls, and disorienting hallway configurations that decades of later ghost-story tellers would attribute to deliberate, superstition-driven design choices rather than to ordinary earthquake damage combined with decades of unplanned, incremental construction.

Death, Sale, and the Birth of a Tourist Attraction (1922–1923)

Sarah Winchester died on September 5, 1922, at her California estate. Following her death, the property passed out of family ownership entirely. New owners acquired the mansion and opened it to the public for guided tours beginning June 30, 1923, less than a year after Winchester's death, marketing the property explicitly around both its unusual architecture and, with increasing emphasis over subsequent decades, its purported supernatural history.

This commercial framing proved remarkably durable and lucrative. Unlike the comparatively mundane, if genuinely poignant, documented facts of Sarah Winchester's actual life, the curse narrative offered visitors a considerably more dramatic and marketable story, one that has continued generating substantial tourism revenue for the property's owners for over a century since her death.

The Legend's Continued Growth Through Popular Culture

Over the following decades, the Winchester curse legend continued to expand through books, television specials, and eventually feature films, including a 2018 horror film titled Winchester starring Helen Mirren as Sarah Winchester, which presented a heavily dramatized version of the curse narrative for a contemporary audience largely unfamiliar with the more measured, and less cinematic, documentary record underlying Sarah Winchester's actual life.

Current Historical Assessment

Contemporary historical research, including analysis conducted by California-based historians and archival researchers associated with institutions such as History San Jose, has found little to no documentary support for the traditional ghost-story narrative. Instead, current historical consensus attributes Sarah Winchester's decades of continuous construction to a combination of substantial personal wealth, a genuine and sustained interest in architecture and design, and social withdrawal likely connected to chronic physical ailments and the compounding grief of her early adulthood losses, rather than to any documented belief in a curse or supernatural compulsion.

What the Case Ultimately Demonstrates

The Winchester Mystery House endures as a particularly clear case study in how thoroughly a documentary vacuum can be filled by whichever narrative best serves the commercial and cultural interests of those telling it after the fact. Sarah Winchester left no manifesto, journal, or explanatory letter describing her own motivations for the decades of construction she personally financed and oversaw. That silence created an opening later commercial owners, journalists, and generations of ghost-story tellers were free to fill, and the version of her story that ultimately prevailed, and that continues drawing visitors to San Jose today, was never seriously required to compete against her own words, because she never left any behind to contradict it.

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Sources

National Park Service, "Winchester House."

HISTORY, "Why People Believe California's Winchester House Is Haunted," 2025.

History San Jose, "Sarah Winchester at History San Jose."

California Travel, "The Winchester Mystery House: California's Original Haunted Mansion?" 2024.

Ancestral Findings, "History's Mysteries: The Winchester Mystery House," 2026.

Alexander Cartwright: The Invention of Baseball’s Inventor

From Manhattan firehouses to Honolulu, the surprising life of the man history turned into baseball’s founding father. Brian D’Ambrosio explains.

Said to be the New York Knickerbockers Base Ball Club, circa 1847 - Alexander Cartwright, top-centre. Source: Public domain, 19cbaseball.com, available here.

Alexander Cartwright did not invent baseball.

That statement sounds almost sacrilegious in Cooperstown, where his name has long been attached to the phrase “Father of Modern Base Ball.” It is also considerably less attention-grabbing than the truth.

Cartwright was there when the New York game began taking a more organized form. He was an important member of the Knickerbocker Base Ball Club, helped recruit its players and served as one of its officers. The club adopted written rules in 1845, and Cartwright belonged to the generation of New Yorkers who helped turn an old bat-and-ball amusement into a more structured competitive game.

But baseball did not spring from his head out of a perfect blue sky. The game had been played in various forms long before the Knickerbockers appeared, and the rules that eventually became modern baseball emerged gradually, through the work of many men and clubs.

Somewhere along the way, Cartwright's legitimate place in that story was inflated into something else.

The Fireman Who Played Ball

Cartwright was born in New York City on April 17, 1820. By sixteen he was working as a clerk on Wall Street. After business hours he played bat-and-ball games with local young men, many of them volunteer firefighters.

He became a volunteer fireman himself, first with Oceana Hose Company No. 36 and later with Knickerbocker Engine Company No. 12. The fire companies of antebellum New York were neighborhood institutions—part fraternity, part emergency service, part competitive brotherhood. The men who pulled hoses through the city's streets also spent their leisure hours together, and the boundaries between their work, friendships and amusements were porous.

It was in this world that Cartwright became involved with the Knickerbocker Base Ball Club.

The Knickerbockers were not inventing baseball from scratch. They were organizing a version of a game already known in New York and elsewhere. In the spring of 1845, Cartwright proposed a more formal organization, joining William R. Wheaton, Duncan F. Curry, E.R. Dupignac Jr. and W.H. Tucker in recruiting members. The club soon established itself as one of the city's most prominent baseball organizations.

On Sept. 23, 1845, the Knickerbockers adopted a written set of rules. They helped give the New York game a recognizable structure. The rules addressed such matters as fair and foul territory and replaced the old practice of putting out a runner by throwing the ball at him with the tag. The club played at Elysian Fields in Hoboken, across the Hudson from Manhattan, where the open ground offered room that the crowded city increasingly could not.

Cartwright became secretary in 1846 and vice president in 1847 and 1848.

That is a substantial contribution. It is not the same thing as inventing baseball.

The distinction matters because later generations attached inventions to Cartwright that the evidence does not support. The 1845 Knickerbocker rules did not specify nine players to a side or nine innings. The famous 90-foot basepaths were not established in the manner later attributed to him. The number of players and innings developed later, with nine becoming standard only after subsequent changes in the 1850s.

Even the celebrated Knickerbocker game of June 19, 1846, requires clarity. The Knickerbockers lost 23-1 at Elysian Fields to the New York Club. Cartwright was not in the lineup, and the surviving score sheet does not establish that he umpired the contest. The game became famous partly because later histories wanted it to occupy a particular place in baseball's origin story.

The actual history is messier.

It is also better.

The Man Who Left the Game Behind

In 1849, Cartwright left New York for California during the Gold Rush. He did not stop there. Later that year he sailed to Hawaii, where he would spend the rest of his life.

Honolulu became the center of a second and remarkably different life. Cartwright became the city's first appointed fire chief, a prominent civic figure and an adviser to Queen Emma. He later helped found the Honolulu Library and Reading Room and served his adopted community for decades.

The contrast is striking.

The man later remembered as baseball's founding father spent more than four decades of his adult life thousands of miles from the New York fields where his legend supposedly began. Baseball was only one chapter in his life, and eventually a distant one.

When Cartwright died in Honolulu on July 12, 1892, his obituary did not make baseball the centerpiece of his life. It concentrated instead on his experiences in California and Hawaii. The omission is revealing. The national myth had not yet caught up with the man himself.

Then the past began to change.

The Invention of an Inventor

Cartwright's transformation into baseball's founding father gathered force decades after his death.

In 1938, he was elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame. The honor helped cement him within the national memory of baseball's beginnings. His Hall of Fame plaque went further, crediting him with setting bases 90 feet apart, establishing nine innings as the game and establishing nine players as a team. Modern baseball scholarship has found no adequate evidence for those claims as Cartwright's individual accomplishments.

The larger problem is the premise itself.

By the twentieth century, Americans had become accustomed to looking for a single inventor of baseball. Abner Doubleday had served that purpose in one version of the story. Cartwright eventually became the alternative for those who rejected Doubleday but still wanted a lone founding father.

SABR's research into the Cartwright myth shows how that transformation occurred. The nineteenth-century record did not describe Cartwright as the inventor of baseball. Even the 1866 history of the Knickerbockers presented him as the man who proposed organizing the club, not as the man who created the game. The inventor story came later.

Then came Congress—or, more precisely, the story about Congress.

A persistent account holds that on June 3, 1953, the 83rd U.S. Congress formally recognized Cartwright as the inventor of modern baseball. The story has survived because it sounds official, authoritative and wonderfully final.

It never happened.

The supposed 1953 congressional endorsement is another piece of the mythology, not a fact of the historical record.

What remains is a more complicated figure.

Cartwright helped organize the Knickerbockers. He belonged to the men who formalized and promoted one important version of the New York game. He helped give baseball a place to gather, rules to argue over and a club through which the game could develop.

He did not create baseball alone.

No one did.

The game evolved through accumulated customs, competing rules, rival clubs and generations of players who altered it as they went. Cartwright was part of that process. His importance is real. The folklore surrounding it is something else.

Perhaps that is the irony worth remembering.

The man baseball turned into an inventor spent most of his life far from the diamond, building a life in Hawaii that had little to do with the game that eventually made his name famous.

The myth wanted an inventor.

The evidence gives us a man.

Brian D'Ambrosio is the author of Montana Eccentrics, New Mexico Eccentrics,  Italian-Americana: Explorers, Entertainers, and Eccentrics, and American Eccentrics: Mavericks, Misfits, and Visionaries. Available here: Amazon US | Amazon UK You may follow him on Substack here: (7) Brian D'Ambrosio | Substack

Top Sources: National Baseball League Hall of Fame: Cartwright, Alexander | Baseball Hall of Fame Society for American Baseball Research: Alexander Cartwright – Society for American Baseball Research

Andrew Carnegie: Philanthropic Hero or Exploitative ‘Robber Baron’?

As one of the wealthiest figures in American history, Andrew Carnegie left behind a legacy that remains deeply contested among historians and the public alike. While his name is permanently memorialized on thousands of public libraries, universities, and cultural institutions across the globe, his rise to unprecedented economic dominance was achieved through methods that raise fundamental questions regarding the true human cost of his late-in-life generosity.

Shubh Samant explains.

A depiction of Andrew Carnegie's philanthropy. Source: Public domain, Puck magazine cartoon by Louis Dalrymple, published New York City 1903, available here.

During the Gilded Age, which was an era defined by rapid industrialization, unchecked corporate growth, and stark economic inequality, Carnegie transformed the American steel industry into a dominant global force. However, he accomplished this scale of expansion by embracing key tenets of Social Darwinism. This ideology framed relentless economic competition as a natural law of societal progress and was routinely invoked to justify the aggressive suppression of labor unions. Consequently, Carnegie subjected his workforce to dangerous working conditions and grueling shifts while accumulating an extraordinary personal fortune.

The central historical debate surrounding Carnegie centers on whether his vast philanthropic legacy can truly redeem his moral character and business methods. Although Carnegie ultimately donated hundreds of millions of dollars to humanitarian, educational, and civic causes, he cannot be characterized simply as an unblemished hero of American industry. A rigorous examination of his career reveals that his philanthropic endeavors were frequently self-serving and paternalistic, his massive fortune was built directly upon the severe exploitation of industrial labor, and he relied on monopolistic strategies to manipulate municipal governments and eliminate market competition.

Charitable giving

First, Carnegie’s charitable giving was not driven solely by pure altruism; rather, it often served to advance his personal prestige, shape his public image, and promote his specific political objectives. For instance, Carnegie directed substantial funding to Princeton University specifically to establish a synthetic lake named in his own honor—Lake Carnegie—demonstrating a desire for personal vanity and self-aggrandizement. In other instances, he funneled major financial contributions into political causes, such as funding international peace initiatives to promote his personal anti-war agenda on the world stage. These actions reflect a broader pattern characteristic of Gilded Age industrial magnates, who strategically utilized high-profile philanthropy to divert attention from their aggressive business tactics, cultivate political influence, and secure high social status. By retaining strict personal authority over where, how, and when his money was spent, Carnegie exemplified industrial paternalism—the prevailing belief among the Gilded Age elite that wealthy industrial captains understood the needs of the working class far better than the workers themselves. Consequently, his philanthropic model reinforced elite control over public life rather than fostering genuine democratic participation or worker empowerment.

Labor

Second, and perhaps the biggest of reasons: the foundational wealth that enabled Carnegie’s philanthropy was the direct product of severe labor exploitation, defined by long workdays, unsafe environments, and repeated wage cuts. Historical records from the period demonstrate a consistent operational pattern: Carnegie Steel routinely slashed employee compensation and extended work shifts to maximize production efficiency while Carnegie’s personal net worth reached astronomical heights. This strategy aligned with the broader industrial drive to maximize profit margins by minimizing labor costs, a dynamic that directly precipitated major industrial crises, most notably the Homestead Strike of 1892. When workers at the Homestead steel mill organized to protest steep wage reductions, company management—operating under Carnegie’s ultimate authority and directly managed by his associate Henry Clay Frick—locked out the workforce and hired private Pinkerton guards to break the strike. The resulting violence left multiple workers dead and exposed the extreme measures industrial corporations were willing to employ to crush collective bargaining rights. This tragic episode underscores the core contradiction embedded within Carnegie’s famous essay, "The Gospel of Wealth." Carnegie curtailed the living standards and financial independence of his own employees, only to claim moral authority later in life by using those same extracted profits to endow public institutions.

Furthermore, while defenders of Carnegie argue that he provided a vital ladder of social mobility by establishing thousands of free public libraries and educational foundations, his systematic reliance on monopolistic practices suggests a primary concern with economic dominance and control. Carnegie aggressively pursued horizontal and vertical integration to control every stage of the steelmaking process, from the iron ore mines to the transport railroads. In doing so, he eliminated competitors and gained an unmatched hold over the market. Historical evidence indicates that Carnegie also utilized his massive financial reserves to influence municipal governments in key industrial centers ranging from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to his native Scotland. By funding public infrastructure projects and making targeted civic contributions in these municipalities, Carnegie ensured that local governments maintained a favorable operating environment for his mills, often shielding his enterprises from regulatory oversight while he continued to suppress worker wages. Although the libraries, schools, and research centers he endowed undeniably yielded long-term public benefits, these institutions were erected upon a foundation of unchecked corporate power and economic coercion. Philanthropy, in this context, operated as a mechanism to legitimize an industrial structure that systematically restricted worker rights and economic fairness.

Ultimately, while Carnegie’s "Gospel of Wealth" established over 2,500 public libraries and supported scientific institutions that continue to benefit society today, these public goods cannot erase the systemic exploitation that generated the fortune that enabled these in the first place The enduring controversy surrounding his career reflects fundamental questions about the ethics of extreme wealth concentration and the limits of private charity in democratic societies. Because Carnegie's vast donations were underwritten by the grueling labor of thousands of workers subjected to harsh conditions and low wages, late-in-life charitable giving cannot retroactively excuse the human suffering endured during the accumulation process. Indeed, the public outcry against the ruthless business practices of Carnegie and his contemporaries helped catalyze the Progressive Era, inspiring sweeping federal regulations, antitrust laws, and labor protections. Today, the debate over Andrew Carnegie’s legacy continues to resonate, serving as a historic parallel to contemporary discussions regarding modern billionaires, corporate monopolies, and the true social responsibilities of wealth. Carnegie’s life remains a compelling case study in American history: while private philanthropy can create lasting public resources, it cannot purchase a moral pass for the human cost of unchecked monopolistic power.

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The Tariff of 1828, Sectional Economics, and the Origins of States’ Rights Doctrine

The controversy surrounding the Tariff of 1828, often identified as the “Tariff of Abominations,” represents one of the earliest and clearest moments when sectional identity and constitutional theory collided in the early United States. What began as a dispute over duties on imported goods evolved into a foundational argument about the nature of the Union itself—an argument later carried forward by John C. Calhoun and ultimately echoed in the secession crisis of 1860–61.

To understand why the tariff provoked such an intense reaction, one must examine four interrelated questions: what the tariff actually did, why it passed, who bore its costs and benefits, and why resistance, especially in South Carolina, took the form it did.

Lloyd W Klein explains.

John C. Calhoun. Source: Public domain, National Portrait Gallery, available here.

The Tariff and Its Economic Purpose

The Tariff of 1828 imposed some of the highest duties in American history up to that point, with rates often reaching 35 to 45 percent on dutiable goods, and in some categories exceeding 50 percent. At the same time, it is important to note that tariffs provided roughly 85–90 percent of total federal revenue in the 1820s, making them not only an instrument of protection but the central mechanism of national finance.¹

Its purpose was to protect emerging American industry, particularly in the North, from foreign competition, especially from Great Britain, whose industrial economy was far more advanced and whose post-Napoleonic Wars surplus goods were entering global markets at low prices.

This policy reflected a broader national ambition. Following the War of 1812, many American leaders believed that economic independence required a domestic manufacturing base, particularly for strategic goods like iron and textiles. Earlier legislation, such as the Tariff of 1816, had already introduced protective duties, but the 1828 tariff went much further, signaling a more assertive commitment to industrial development.²

From one perspective, this was entirely rational. Nearly every developing nation in the nineteenth century used tariffs to nurture domestic industry. The United States was doing what Britain itself had done in an earlier phase of its growth. But what made the tariff so contentious was not its logic but rather its uneven regional impact.

A Divided Economy: North and South

By the 1820s, the United States was already developing along two distinct economic paths. In the North, especially in Massachusetts and Pennsylvania, industrialization was accelerating. By 1830, the North contained the overwhelming majority of the nation’s manufacturing capacity—over 80 percent by most estimates.³

In the South, however, the economy was fundamentally different. South Carolina and Mississippi were overwhelmingly agrarian and export-oriented. Their wealth was tied to staple crops, especially cotton, which by the late 1820s accounted for approximately 50–60 percent of total U.S. export value.⁴ They imported most of their manufactured goods, particularly from Britain. By some estimates, as much as two-thirds to three-quarters of manufactured goods consumed in the South were imported rather than domestically produced.³

For the South, the tariff had a very different effect than the northern industrial states. It raised the cost of imported goods without offering a corresponding benefit. Southern planters could not easily shift to domestic manufacturing, nor could they pass increased costs on to buyers, since cotton prices were set globally. The result was a perceived, and to a large extent real, economic squeeze: stable or declining income combined with rising costs. This disparity explains why the tariff came to be seen in the South not merely as bad policy, but as sectional exploitation.

Who Was Harmed—and Who Benefited

The economic impact of the tariff did not fall neatly along class lines; rather, it followed regional and structural divisions. The clearest beneficiaries were Northern industrialists. Protected from foreign competition, they could expand production and charge higher prices within the domestic market. The tariff effectively transferred advantage to them, accelerating the development of American industry.

Those most directly harmed were Southern plantation owners. They faced higher costs for imported goods and feared that Britain might retaliate. Although Britain continued to rely heavily on American cotton, the fear of losing market share was economically and politically significant.⁴

The burden did not fall exclusively on the Southern elite. Ordinary white Southerners, including small farmers, also paid higher prices for everyday goods. In a region with little industrial base, alternatives were limited. Thus, the tariff imposed a broad consumer cost across Southern society. Given that the South produced relatively little manufactured output of its own, less than 20 percent of national manufacturing despite holding roughly one-third of the population, its consumers had few alternatives.³

In the North, the picture was more mixed. Consumers paid higher prices as well, but these costs were often offset by the benefits of industrial growth: jobs, wages, and local economic development. The tariff, in effect, redistributed wealth not simply from poor to rich, but from one region to another

Why the Tariff Passed

Given its uneven effects, the passage of the tariff might seem puzzling. It did not reflect a unified national consensus. The tariff emerged from a complex political process tied to the rivalry between John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson. Martin Van Buren and other Jacksonian allies helped construct a bill designed, in part, to fail.⁵ The idea was to create a bill that included extremely high, and in some cases deliberately excessive rates. Their expectation was that the bill would be so unpalatable that it would fail, allowing them to embarrass the Adams administration.

But this strategy backfired. Instead, the bill passed and became law by attracting support from multiple sectors Northern representatives backed it for protectionist reasons. Some Western politicians supported it as part of a broader agenda of economic development and internal improvements. Through the legislative compromise and “logrolling,” a coalition formed that was sufficient to secure passage. In this sense, the tariff was not the product of a coherent national policy so much as the unintended result of political maneuvering. What was conceived partly as a tactical move became, in practice, a transformative and deeply divisive law.

The structure of representation amplified sectional effects. While the South held parity in the Senate, the North’s faster population growth was already translating into increasing dominance in the House of Representatives—shaping fiscal legislation such as tariffs.⁶

Why South Carolina Took the Lead

South Carolina was uniquely exposed economically and psychologically. Its dependence on cotton exports, combined with declining agricultural productivity, made it especially vulnerable.

Crucially, the state also possessed the intellectual leadership of John C. Calhoun, whose South Carolina Exposition and Protest transformed opposition into constitutional doctrine rooted in compact theory.⁵ His theory of nullification provided not just grievance, but justification. Other Southern states hesitated. Virginia and Georgia shared concerns but feared disunion and responded to Andrew Jackson’s firm opposition.

While regions like New York and Pennsylvania were expanding economically, South Carolina’s older plantation system appeared to stagnate. The tariff became, in the minds of many of its leaders, a symbol of a national system working against them. South Carolina’s political culture was more unified and more inclined toward opposition, which made it willing to move where others would not. The plantation owners in South Carolina had strong control over the politics of their state, and they chose to fight.

From Economic Grievance to Constitutional Doctrine

The crisis came to a head in the Nullification Crisis, when South Carolina asserted it could nullify federal tariff laws. President Andrew Jackson rejected this doctrine, asserting the supremacy of federal law and the permanence of the Union. What is critical is that Calhoun’s argument was about permanent minority status. If one section could consistently outvote another, constitutional remedies, or separation, became logical responses.⁵ This argument transformed an economic dispute into a fundamental constitutional question: was the United States a single nation governed by majority rule, or a compact of states retaining ultimate sovereignty?

The most consequential aspect of the tariff controversy was not the policy itself, but the intellectual and political response it provoked. In the South Carolina Exposition and Protest, Calhoun argued that the Constitution was a compact among sovereign states, and that a state had the right to nullify federal laws it deemed unconstitutional. The tariff, in his view, demonstrated that a national majority could impose policies that systematically disadvantaged a minority region.

Compromise and Resolution

Compromise was strained and delayed. The eventual resolution came with the Tariff of 1833, crafted by Henry Clay, which gradually reduced tariff rates and defused the immediate confrontation.

But compromise took several years for several reasons. The dispute had moved beyond rates to principles. For Calhoun and his allies, the issue was not simply how high the tariff should be, but whether a state had the right to resist federal policy altogether. Further, sectional trust was eroding. The North and South were developing increasingly distinct economic systems, and each began to suspect that the other would use political power to its long-term advantage. Moreover, the structure of national politics made lasting balance difficult. As Northern population and influence grew, the South increasingly saw itself as a permanent minority, vulnerable to policies it could not control. The fact that northern and western states formed an alliance in opposition to southern interests made the South concerned that they were losing power to control national politics. Thus, while compromise was achieved in the short term, it did not resolve the underlying issue. The South increasingly viewed itself as a permanent minority in a system where population growth, immigration, and economic development were strengthening the North. By 1860, the free states held a decisive advantage in population, industrial output, and infrastructure.⁶

Conclusion

The Tariff of 1828 revealed structural divisions within the United States and demonstrated how economic policy could produce unequal regional effects. Most importantly, the tariff controversy provided a framework for thinking about states’ rights that would later be invoked in far more consequential circumstances. It introduced a framework for understanding political power in sectional terms. Calhoun’s doctrine articulated a central fear: that a unified national government could become an instrument of regional dominance. This argument would resurface in the secession crisis three decades later. In this sense, the tariff was more than a tax. It was an early warning sign of a deeper conflict, one rooted in competing economic systems, divergent regional interests, and fundamentally different understandings of the Union itself.

This argument carried forward directly into the secession crisis of 1860–61. By then, the South’s concern was not tariffs but rather the structural reality that it could be outvoted on an issue central to its social and economic system: slavery and its expansion. The underlying argument remained the same: that the South, as a minority section, could not rely on the federal government to protect its interests within the Union. When Southern states justified secession, they drew on the same constitutional reasoning first sharpened during the tariff crisis: the compact theory of the Union, the right of a state to judge federal overreach, and the claim that withdrawal was legitimate when sectional balance had been lost. In this sense, the Tariff of 1828 was not an isolated controversy but an early articulation of a political logic that would ultimately lead to disunion.

References

·       Douglas A. Irwin, Clashing over Commerce: A History of U.S. Trade Policy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017).

·       Daniel Walker Howe, What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815–1848 (Oxford, 2007).

·       Sean Wilentz, The Rise of American Democracy (Norton, 2005).

·       Sven Beckert, Empire of Cotton (Knopf, 2014).

·       William W. Freehling, Prelude to Civil War: The Nullification Controversy in South Carolina (Oxford, 1965).

·       James M. McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom (Oxford, 1988).

1066: The Norman Conquest and the Birth of Medieval England: Three Kings and a Crown: The Road to Invasion – Part 2

When Edward the Confessor died on the 5th January 1066, England did not simply lose a king. It lost the political center around which a fragile succession had been organized. Within hours, the kingdom had a new ruler, but that ruler was immediately confronted by men who believed that the English crown belonged to them. Harold Godwinson had been crowned King of England, yet across the Channel Duke William of Normandy was preparing an invasion, while in Scandinavia Harald Hardrada, King of Norway, was also preparing to claim the throne by force. The succession crisis described had become something much more dangerous: a struggle in which competing interpretations of legitimacy were about to be settled by armies.

Terry Bailey explains.

Read part 1 on the pre-invasion world of 1066 here.

The funeral of Edward the Confessor being crowned from the Bayeux Tapestry. Source: Public domain, Bayeux Tapestry Museum, available here.

The situation was particularly complicated because medieval kingship did not operate according to a single, universally accepted rule of inheritance. Blood relationship mattered, but so did previous promises, oaths, political support and, ultimately, the ability to command the loyalty of powerful men. Harold possessed enormous political authority within England and had the support of leading members of the English ruling elite. William argued that Edward had previously promised him the throne and that Harold himself had sworn an oath supporting William's claim. Harald Hardrada approached the succession from an entirely different direction, invoking the Scandinavian connections that had bound England to the Viking world for generations. Each claimant therefore possessed a different version of legitimacy, and each believed that the circumstances of 1066 justified decisive action.

Harold Godwinson's position was nevertheless the most immediate and practical. He was the most powerful nobleman in England, Earl of Wessex, an experienced military commander and the brother of Queen Edith, Edward's wife. When Edward died, the leading English nobles supported Harold's accession, and he was crowned at Westminster on the 6th of January, the day after Edward's burial. His coronation represented the established political machinery of the English kingdom functioning according to its own traditions. Yet from the moment the crown was placed upon Harold's head, England was effectively on a war footing. William regarded Harold's accession as an act that had violated his own rights, while Hardrada saw an opportunity to revive an older Scandinavian claim.

William, Duke of Normandy, was not a random foreign adventurer seeking an opportunity to seize a wealthy kingdom. He was a powerful ruler with a longstanding connection to the English royal family. Edward the Confessor had spent much of his early life in Normandy, and William was related to him through the Norman ducal family. According to Norman accounts, Edward had promised William the English succession. The precise circumstances of this alleged promise remain difficult to establish, and English sources do not provide the same version of events. Nevertheless, William regarded the promise as genuine and regarded Harold's accession as a betrayal of an existing commitment.

The issue became even more complicated because of Harold's journey to Normandy in the years before the Conquest. Norman accounts claimed that Harold had sworn an oath to William, promising to support the duke's claim to the English throne. The Bayeux Tapestry famously depicts Harold placing his hands upon sacred relics during an oath-taking ceremony. To William, therefore, Harold was not merely a rival claimant who had been chosen by the English. He was, according to the Norman interpretation, a man who had broken a solemn and religiously significant oath. English sources are much less explicit about the episode, and historians continue to debate its precise nature and circumstances.

For William, however, the distinction between political dispute and moral obligation was extremely useful. His invasion could be presented not simply as an attempt to conquer England but as an effort to recover what he believed had been promised to him. His case was strengthened when Pope Alexander II gave his support to the Norman enterprise and sent William a papal banner. The papal approval gave William's campaign an important religious and political dimension, although it should not be mistaken for proof that the papacy had established William's legal right to the English throne. It nevertheless provided the Norman duke with a powerful symbol around which his supporters could rally.

William now had to turn a claim into an invasion. That required considerably more than assembling a group of knights and sailing across the Channel. An invasion force needed ships, horses, weapons, armor, food, water and equipment, as well as thousands of men capable of fighting together. William therefore spent much of the summer of 1066 preparing an expedition on a substantial scale. Norman nobles and knights had to be persuaded to participate, and the promise of land, wealth and advancement in England provided powerful incentives. The undertaking was sufficiently ambitious that its success depended not only upon military strength but upon careful organization and favorable circumstances.

The resulting invasion fleet became one of the largest military transport operations attempted in western Europe during the eleventh century. The exact number of vessels remains uncertain, and medieval sources do not provide figures that can be accepted without qualification. What is clear is that William needed enough ships to transport an army and its horses across the Channel. The operation therefore represented a remarkable logistical challenge. The Normans were not merely preparing for a raid; they were preparing to land an army capable of fighting a major battle and then maintaining itself in hostile territory.

Yet the Channel itself became an unexpected obstacle. William's army gathered in Normandy and waited for the right moment, but an invasion fleet could not simply depart whenever its commander wished. Wind, tides and weather were fundamental considerations. The fleet remained in readiness while William waited for conditions that would allow the crossing. This delay proved extraordinarily important because, while William was unable to move, Harold was forced to maintain his own defensive preparations in England.

Harold understood that the Norman invasion was coming. He could not know precisely when William would cross, or where the main landing would take place, but the threat was sufficiently serious for him to mobilize an army and fleet along the southern coast. According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, the force assembled was exceptionally large by English standards. Harold positioned his troops in anticipation of William's arrival and personally operated in the south, while his fleet also watched the approaches to England.

The English military system gave Harold significant defensive resources, but those resources had limitations. The fyrd was not a permanent professional army in the modern sense. It was a system through which men could be called upon for military service, drawing upon the population and obligations of local communities and landholders. Alongside these forces were the king's household troops, the elite warriors known as the housecarls. Together they could produce a formidable army, particularly when fighting on home territory. But maintaining a large force in the field for an extended period was expensive and placed considerable demands upon the kingdom.

This created one of Harold's first major strategic problems. An army waiting for an invasion cannot remain mobilized indefinitely. Soldiers needed food and supplies, and many had land, families and responsibilities to return to. Harold's forces remained ready through the summer, but eventually supplies became exhausted. In early September, the army was stood down and Harold returned to London. The Norman fleet, meanwhile, had still not crossed the Channel.

For a brief moment, the great invasion appeared to have stalled. But England's danger had not disappeared. It had merely changed direction.

Far to the north, another claimant was preparing to enter the struggle. Harald Hardrada, King of Norway, was one of the most formidable warriors of his generation. His career had taken him across Europe and beyond, and by 1066 he ruled Norway with considerable authority. His claim to England was rooted in the Scandinavian history of the English crown. The reign of Cnut in the eleventh century had created a political world in which England and Scandinavia were deeply connected, and the memory of Danish and Norwegian kings ruling England remained very real.

Hardrada's particular claim was complicated and considerably less straightforward than the Norman case sometimes suggests. It drew upon the succession arrangements and agreements associated with the Scandinavian kingdoms and the descendants and successors of Cnut. Hardrada believed that he possessed a legitimate claim to the English crown, but the precise legal basis was contested and depended upon political agreements made years earlier. Like William, however, Hardrada possessed something more immediately important than an argument about succession: an army capable of enforcing his interpretation of events.

Hardrada's cause was strengthened by an Englishman who had his own reasons for opposing Harold: Tostig Godwinson. Harold's brother had once been Earl of Northumbria, but his rule had become increasingly unpopular. A rebellion in Northumbria in 1065 resulted in Tostig's removal from power and exile. The humiliation was profound. Tostig was not merely a disgraced nobleman; he was Harold's brother, a member of the same family that dominated English politics. His subsequent decision to seek foreign assistance transformed a family feud into an international threat.

Tostig initially sought support elsewhere, but eventually found a willing ally in Harald Hardrada. Their interests were very different but temporarily compatible. Hardrada wanted the English crown, while Tostig wanted to recover the position and influence he had lost. Together they could exploit a weakness in Harold's kingdom that William's invasion threatened to expose: England could not easily defend its southern and northern approaches at the same time.

In September, Hardrada's fleet sailed for England. Medieval accounts give widely varying estimates for its size, but it was clearly a substantial force. Hardrada was not attempting a minor raid. This was a serious invasion conducted by a king who intended to replace Harold as ruler of England. Tostig joined him with his own supporters, turning the expedition into something more complicated than a purely Norwegian invasion.

The northern invasion immediately changed Harold's strategic situation. The king had spent months preparing for William's arrival in the south, only to discover that the first major attack would come from Scandinavia. Hardrada's forces moved into northern England, and the threat to York was especially serious. York was one of the most important cities in the kingdom and the center of a wealthy and strategically significant region. If Hardrada could establish control over the north, he would possess an important base from which to challenge Harold's authority.

Harold reacted with extraordinary speed. The English king had to move from defending the southern coast against William to confronting Hardrada in the north. The army that had been prepared to stop a Norman invasion now had to march hundreds of miles towards Yorkshire. The sudden movement demonstrates the fundamental problem confronting Harold: England's greatest strength, its ability to mobilize a large army, could also become a weakness if that army had to be repeatedly moved across the length of the kingdom.

The geographical problem was immense. England was not a small battlefield around London. It was a substantial kingdom stretching from the southern Channel coast to the Scottish border and beyond. An invading army landing in one region could force the king to abandon another. Harold therefore faced a strategic dilemma that no amount of personal courage could completely solve. If he remained in the south, Hardrada might establish himself in the north. If he marched north, William could cross the Channel into an undefended southern England.

And that was precisely the situation developing as September progressed. William remained in Normandy, still waiting for the opportunity to cross. Hardrada, meanwhile, had already brought his army into England. Harold was forced to respond to the invasion that had actually arrived rather than the one he had spent months expecting.

The timing was devastatingly significant. Harold marched north with remarkable speed, gathering the forces available to him as he went. The English king's response demonstrated both the mobility of the Anglo-Saxon military system and the seriousness of the threat. Hardrada was not expecting such a rapid concentration of English forces. On the 25th of September 1066, the two armies met at Stamford Bridge near York. The battle that followed would become one of the most famous victories in English military history, but its consequences would extend far beyond the battlefield.

Before Stamford Bridge was fought, however, England stood in an extraordinary state of uncertainty. Harold had spent the summer watching the southern horizon for William's ships. William had spent the same summer waiting for the winds that would carry his fleet across the Channel. Hardrada had then appeared from the north, accompanied by Harold's own exiled brother. The English king had been forced to abandon one front in order to confront another.

The irony was profound. Harold's greatest immediate victory would eventually become part of the chain of events that weakened his ability to resist William. When Hardrada invaded, Harold had no choice but to meet him. When Hardrada was defeated, Harold could not simply return to London and wait. Another invasion was still possible, and the Norman threat had never disappeared. The two invasions were therefore not separate episodes but parts of one extraordinary strategic crisis.

By late September, the succession dispute had become a struggle of kings, armies and geography. Harold Godwinson possessed the English crown and the support of the English political establishment. William of Normandy possessed a claim based upon alleged promises and oaths, reinforced by military preparation and papal approval. Harald Hardrada possessed a Scandinavian claim and the formidable military reputation necessary to attempt its enforcement. Tostig Godwinson added a deeply personal dimension, transforming the conflict from a contest between foreign rulers and an English king into a struggle that also divided Harold's own family.

The fate of England now depended upon a remarkable sequence of movements. William was still waiting in Normandy. Hardrada had invaded from the north. Harold had marched north to meet him. The English king was about to fight one of the most decisive battles of the Viking Age, believing that defeating Hardrada would remove the immediate threat to his kingdom.

But while Harold was looking north, the winds across the Channel were changing. The Norman fleet was still waiting and somewhere across the sea, William was preparing to sail. The succession crisis that had begun with the death of Edward the Confessor had now reached the point where claims could no longer be settled through ceremony, negotiation or oaths. England had entered the age of invasion. Yet the most extraordinary part of the story was still to come. Harold was about to defeat one invading army at Stamford Bridge, only to discover that another army had finally reached the English coast.

Now read part 3 on the Battle of Stamford Bridge here.

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Carl von Clausewitz and Military Strategy: On War

Carl von Clausewitz is one of the most celebrated, referenced, and original military strategists: his magnum opus On War is eclipsed in popularity and impact on the philosophy of war only by The Art of War. The philosophy of war according to Clausewitz is illustrated in the book’s most enduring quote:

‘War is merely the continuation of politics by other means.’

Craig Heslop explains.

Carl von Clausewitz by William Wach. Source: Public domain, available here.

Meant For War

Clausewitz began his relationship with war from an early age: in 1792 at the age of 12, he enlisted in the Prussian army as a cadet, starting out as a Lance Corporal (he would eventually ascend to Major General). He fought against Revolutionary France from 1793-1795 in the First Coalition campaigns after being commissioned. At the still-young age of 21, he would conduct his major studies under the tutelage of Gerhard Johann David von Scharnhorst at the Berlin Military Academy, Kriegsakademie, becoming a protégé under Scharnhorst, the institute’s head. This was a seminal event in the life of one of the greatest military strategists and philosophers to live; it begun his exploration of the philosophy of war, combined with broadening his knowledge and awareness on worldly subjects, transforming him into a profound thinker and theorist in military affairs, culminating in him finishing first in his class. Arguably his most notable military involvement was in the final campaigns that eventually led to Napoleon’s defeat, from 1813-1815. He served as chief of staff to one of the four Prussian army corps in the ultimate Napoleonic battle at Waterloo, having a hand in defeating not only the most powerful General (later Emperor) since Caesar, but also one of the most formidable and distinguished military strategists in Napoleon himself. The fact that he was involved in the eventual defeat of an enemy who is himself considered one of the best military strategists not only illustrates Clausewitz’s nerve in war, but especially his calibre of strategy in war.

Martial Philosophy

In his masterpiece, On War, Clausewitz echoes his main belief: War & Politics are inextricably linked. Although some military theorists disagree, more so in modern times, this proposition was highly influential in military thought. Clausewitz’s view rationalizes war, arguing for the maintenance of political objectives, the state’s agenda, in carrying out and pursuing war, lest you commit strategic failures due to a lack of focus. This broad and formal view of war serves as a clear example of not only why Clausewitz succeeded in the area of military theory, but also why he is well-read in politics, even to this day. Notably, President Eisenhower was influenced by On War after reading it in the 1920’s as a young officer. This greatly inspired the nuclear deterrence strategy of the 1950’s as Eisenhower was impressed with the clarity of his ‘absolute war’ concept, using it to demonstrate the futility of all out war in the nuclear age by testing, and thus showing, nuclear bombs and their devastation. Clausewitz simply held that War is politics continued, achieving what couldn’t be attained civilly, under international law and agreements, by instead using the proverbial sword when the pen failed. His intertwining of state and warfare continues to influence those in government, the armed forces, and military thinkers of the modern era, leaving a lasting legacy on military strategy which is still having effect today.

Strategy is Forever

Clausewitz is a name that will not fade into obscurity; his principles are still being taught at War colleges, governments continue to reference his thinking and look to it for support, and On War is being discovered by new readers and burgeoning military thinkers. All of this is in spite of the fact that some military theorists claim Clausewitz’s main tenet of war being politics continued, is no longer applicable to modern warfare, or even further that it was never universally applicable. Major military strategists after Clausewitz vehemently disagreed with his political angle on war: where Clausewtiz refused to even conceive of war not being an extension of politics, his main critics argue that this takes for granted a formal, cohesive nation state existing in the first place. Essentially, this theory of war discounts and overlooks rebellions, guerrilla war, revolutions, and civil wars, i.e. domestic wars. You could argue there is a political agenda behind all of these, but there is certainly a lack of cohesive government and state in times of civil war, revolutions, and rebellions when the nation is divided, supporting the idea that there isn’t always grand politics and ‘objectives’ being sought in the political regard, as much as more unreasoned, perhaps even emotional, motives for war.

Ultimately, despite being controversial, having many detractors, the master strategist certainly has more supporters, even lending his name to the type of military strategy he champions — ‘Clausewitzian’. The effect of his writing is overwhelmingly positive, regardless of your own stance on his theories. Warning of the importance of keeping war focused on political objectives precludes senseless belligerence, calling for a rational approach to war as simply a more intensive means of attaining sought after victories for the state’s political agenda. Now more than ever, this approach may deem Clausewitz more important than he’s ever been. In our modern world, the concept of war has shrunk: the ease of deployment and abundance of nuclear weapons and lesser weapons have become so significant that war may not even be necessary — this is what Eisenhower emphasized in the early Cold War era of the 1950s with his nuclear deterrence strategy being analogized to Clausewitz’s concept of ‘absolute war’, and the futility of such a war now that nuclear weapons provided mutually assured destruction (MAD). Focusing on political ends, and the rationality of war, restricts it, at least in theory, to the realm of responsibility in international affairs and military policy. It advises focusing on objectives, not senseless conflict, and clarity in the use of strategy, avoiding rash decisions and catastrophic failures of the government of a state. All in all, Clausewitz’s central philosophy of ‘War is merely the continuation of politics by other means’, provides a rational, clear, and responsible martial philosophy for states and governments, most important to our modern era of warfare where destruction and warfare are at their most ‘absolute’ and swift.

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Walking With Destiny? Churchill, Napoleon II, and the Fickleness of Fate

As young men, both Winston Churchill and Napoleon’s only son were certain that destiny had marked them out for greatness. Here, Bilal Junejo asks why one lived to save his country while the other died at 21, remembered today as little more than a footnote.

Winston Churchill in 1900. Source: Public domain, Imperial War Museum, available here.

Ever since the erudite Doctor Andrew Roberts — who is, of course, now The Lord Roberts of Belgravia — brought out his magisterial, single-volume biography of the most celebrated statesman in British history, there has been no possibility of ignorance, on the part of anyone who professes to be a student of this country’s chequered past since the beginning of the last century, in relation to that abiding faith in his own destiny which had begun to inform Winston Churchill’s perception of himself even before he entered public life. Entitled ‘Churchill’, and sub-titled ‘Walking with destiny’, what has every right to be considered the magnum opus of His Lordship (at least to date) has a name which is suitably derived from what the subject of this indispensable book wrote with such moving simplicity as he recollected, long after the end of the Second World War, the occasion of his having become prime minister of Great Britain at the height of it — namely that “I felt as if I were walking with Destiny, and that all my past life had been but a preparation for this hour and for this trial.” That the scion of one of England’s oldest and most illustrious political families was destined not merely to achieve greatness, but also to have it thrust upon him, is a view to which it has seldom, if ever, seemed hard to subscribe — not least because it was held so tenaciously by the great man himself. Even as a stripling, he had confided in — or, at any rate, assured — a friend and fellow Harrovian, Murland Evans ,that

“I can see vast changes coming over a now peaceful world, great upheavals, terrible struggles; wars such as onecannot imagine; and I tell you London will be in danger

— London will be attacked and I shall be very prominent in the defence of London … I see into the future. Thiscountry will be subjected, somehow, to a tremendous invasion, by what means I do not know, but I tell you I shall be in command of the defences of London and I shall save London and England from disaster … Dreams of the future are blurred but the main objective is clear. I repeat — London will be in danger and in the high position I shall occupy, it will fall to me to save the capital and save the Empire.”

Words of courage — and, in the event, of prescience — indeed. But were they vindicated by destiny, or by chance alone? Was Churchill’s fulfilment of his own prediction anything more than a most remarkable coincidence? Was he fated to become prime minister in 1940, or was he merely able to? After all, the First World War had come before the Second, but his war was at best mixed, and the Dardanelles came close to ending his career - even if the credit for a prepared Royal Navy in 1914 belongs largely to him. Whatever his contribution between 1914 and 1918, no one credited him with having saved the capital or the Empire, as everyone would after 1945. So was it destiny which gave us the life and times of Winston Churchill? Or was everything over which we gush merely the ticking of one more broken clock that, like any damaged timepiece, just had to be right twice a day?

These are all questions over which I have mulled not as a result of any sudden or regrettable discovery in the story of Winston Churchill, but rather in that of another. Someone whose faith in his destiny was, if the historical record is anything to go by, every bit as great and complete as was Churchill’s in his own — but who was nevertheless condemned not to walk with it. I am speaking, it may surprise you to learn, of one whose place shall forever be among those of whom the poet spoke when he wondered in that rural churchyard whether

“Some village Hampden, that, with dauntless breast, The little tyrant of his fields withstood,

Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest, Some Cromwell guiltless of hiscountry’s blood.”

In The Times in 1932, there appears a short editorial entitled “Napoleon’s son”. Marking the centenary of his untimely death in 1832, when he was but one and twenty years of age, the editorial observes, among other things, that“[w]hen his father clasped him in his arms on a January night of the year 1814, before leaving Paris to fight his losing campaign against the Allies, he was not yet three years old. He never saw his father again. Within a few months he had gone with his mother to live at the palace of Schoenbrunn at Vienna as a member of the House of Hapsburg.” But from this young quintessence of filial devotion, not even the beauty pervading those Danubian banks could conceal their harrowing distance from an island in the South Atlantic called St Helena. As the editorial continues,

“The more Napoleon was hidden the more eager his son became to know him. The spirit of his father, which he had inherited, supplied the means. Thus, when Marie Louise came on one occasion to see her boy, she found him playing Robinson Crusoe in a hut in the garden, and with anxious misgiving perceived that another island and another hero were in his thoughts. It was not, however, until the news of Napoleon’s death reached Vienna and was communicated to his son that the full extent of the failure of Metternich’s plan became apparent. Napoleon Francis, now ten years of age, flung himself down in a passion of tears and refused during many days to be comforted. From that time hiswhole life was directed to preparing himself for the task which had been bequeathed to him from St. Helena and which, as he believed, he would be called upon one day to perform. One of his last letters to his mother, written while at twenty-one years of age he lay dying of consumption, remains to attest his faith:— ‘For the sake of mankind I must somehow or other get over my weakness,’he wrote; ‘I must fulfil my destiny. With so much to do, is it to be believed that I shall not recover?’”

Marie Louise would probably have treated her son’s effusion with less incredulity than young Murland Evans might have done his equally young friend’s — but we all know who was ‘destined’ not to recover only from one illness, and who was ‘destined’ not to recover from even one. Whose vehemence was going to be vindicated, and whose not. But why? For what ‘earthly’ reason were two individuals apparently so similar fated to be treated so differently? Why did one become the saviour of his country, but the other only one more addition to the ranks of so many mute, inglorious Miltons, Hampdens, and Cromwells? Each had blood as illustrious as the other’s. Each grew up in the shadow of a famous and largely absent father. And neither, it would seem, was given to doubting the authority of destiny. Then why can we not speak today of the Duke of Reichstadt with that same breathless adoration which pervades almost every mention of the 7th Duke of Marlborough’s grandson? “I am so conceited,” wrote ayoung Churchill to his mother from India, that “I do not believe the gods would create so potent a being as myself for so prosaic an ending” — and he was right. But the young son of Napoleon, who had also expressed similar sentiments to his own mother some sixty-five years earlier (and when he too, like Churchill, had been only in his early twenties), was not. Mais pourquoi? Has a person’s destiny, after all,absolutely nothing to do with their own convictions? Is everything in spite, and nothing because, of us in our lives? Are we really a lot of flies to wanton boys? It is, I daresay, a mystery which you and Imight contemplate as we stand in the churchyard and look about us — as well as up at the night sky. What might not have happened had Lieutenant Churchill perished, we may wonder. But what might have happened had Napoleon II lived, we shall never know.

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