Christmas Every Day

490 B.C. Athens defeats the Persians at Marathon

Darius, the Persian emperor, was bent on expanding his realm into the Greek world. The help given by the newly-democratized city of Athens to Greek cities in Asia Minor in their resistance to Persia persuaded Darius to invade their territory with a huge fleet and army. He landed his army at Marathon, some 25 miles from Athens, because it was an area supposedly loyal to Hippias, a former Athenian tyrant who accompanied the Persians and who hoped to be restored as a puppet ruler under Darius.

Sparta declined to send help immediately to its fellow Greeks, using the excuse of a religious festival, but the small city of Plataea sent 1,000 men to aid the Athenian force of 9,000 hoplites — heavy infantry. Under Miltiades the Athenians blocked the Persians from moving inland and forced a battle, despite being outnumbered by at least 2 to 1. The Persians seem to have been taken by surprise by a sudden Greek charge, panicked, and were slaughtered in great numbers on the beach.

The Athenian victory was important because it convinced Greece that Persia was not unbeatable and because, had they lost the battle, their experiment with democracy would have ended.  

Ten years later, the son of Darius, Xerxes, returned to Greece with an even larger force and confronted the Hellenes in battles at Thermopylae, Salamis, and Plataea. 

The lifting of the siege of Malta

When we think of September 11 we are apt to most quickly remember the horrors visited on New York and the Pentagon in 2001, but there are many other noteworthy events which have taken place on that date. On this day in history William Wallace and his Scots defeated the English at Stirling Bridge, Oliver Cromwell’s troops stormed the Irish town of Drogheda and massacred the inhabitants, and the American consulate in Benghazi was overrun by Islamic militants.

Of more significance than any of those was the conclusion of the Great Siege of Malta in 1565. The Turkish emperor Suleiman the Magnificent had launched an expedition against the  pesky Knights of St John at Malta who dared to contest Islamic naval supremacy in the Mediterranean. 48,000 troops were landed on Malta from 150 ships — Barbary pirates, Turkish cavalry, regular Janissaries and sundry religious fanatics and volunteer adventurers, opposing 500 Knights of St John, 2500 Italian and Spanish infantry and a few thousand Maltese volunteers. The siege lasted for four months and was waged with intense cruelty and bravery on both sides. The Knights’ town and fort were pounded into rubble but they repelled every attack. In September 1565 the Turks finally sailed away leaving behind at least 25,000 dead. 

This victory and a naval battle at Lepanto in 1571 kept Italy safe from a Turkish invasion that would have spread Islam deeper into Europe.

384 The birth of a nincompoop

It was the ill-fortune of the Roman Empire at the beginning of the fifth century to be governed by a pair of useless twits, the sons of the capable Theodosius I, Honorius in the West and Arcadius in the East.

Honorius succeed to the imperial throne at the age of ten. As long as he was under the tutelage of Stilicho, the half-Vandal general who had married into the royal family, things went fairly smoothly: revolts were put down and barbarian invasions were thwarted. In 408, however, Honorius had Stilicho and his family murdered. This not only deprived him of an able general but prompted barbarian troops in the service of Rome to defect to the Visigoths, who in 410 sacked Rome while Honorius hid out in Ravenna. 

Thomas Hodgkin, the 19th-century historian and author of the massive Italy and her Invaders sums up the life of this hapless emperor:

Let us now turn from poetry to fact, and see what mark the real Honorius made upon the men and things that surrounded him. None. It is impossible to imagine a character more utterly destitute of moral colour, of self-determining energy, than that of the younger son of Theodosius. In Arcadius we do at length discover traces of uxoriousness, a blemish in some rulers, but which becomes almost a merit in him when contrasted with the absolute vacancy, the inability to love, to hate, to think, to execute, almost to be, which marks the impersonal personality of Honorius. After earnestly scrutinising his life to discover some traces of human emotion under the stolid mask of his countenance, we may perhaps pronounce with some confidence on the three following points.

1. He perceived, through life, the extreme importance of keeping the sacred person of the Emperor of the West out of the reach of danger.

2. He was, at any rate in youth, a sportsman.

3. In his later years he showed considerable interest in the rearing of poultry.

 

 

1397 The murder of the Duke of Gloucester

The arrest and murder of Thomas of Woodstock, Duke of Gloucester, is one of the most tragical episodes of English history. However guilty he might be, the proceedings against him were executed with such treachery and cruelty, as to render them revolting to humanity. He was the seventh and youngest son of Edward III, and consequently the uncle of Richard II. Being himself a resolute and warlike man, he was dissatisfied with what he considered the unprincipled and pusillanimous conduct of his nephew, and, either from a spirit of patriotism or ambition, or, more probably, a combination of both, he promoted two or three measures against the king, more by mere words than by acts. On confessing this to the king, and expressing his sorrow for it, he was promised forgiveness, and restored to the royal favour. Trusting to this reconciliation, he was residing peaceably in his castle at Pleshy, near London, where be received a visit from the king, not only without suspicion, but with the fullest confidence of his friendly intentions. The incident is thus touchingly related by Froissart, a contemporary chronicler:

The king went after dinner, with part of his retinue, to Fleshy, about five o’clock. The Duke of Gloucester had already supped; for he was very sober, and sat but a short time at table, either at dinner or supper. He came to meet the king, and honoured him as we ought to honour our lord, so did the duchess and her children, who were there. The king entered the hall, and thence into the chamber. A table was spread for the king, and he supped a little. He said to the duke: “Fair uncle! have your horses saddled: but not all; only five or six; you must accompany me to London; we shall find there my uncles Lancaster and York, and I mean to be governed by your advice on a request they intend making to me. Bid your maitre-d’hotel follow you with your people to London.”

The duke, who thought no ill from it, assented to it pleasantly enough. As soon as the king had supped, and all were ready, the king took leave of the duchess and her children, and mounted his horse. So did the duke, who left Fleshy with only three esquires and four varlets. They avoided the high-road to London, but rode with speed, conversing on various topics, till they came to Stratford. The king then pushed on before him, and the earl marshal came suddenly behind him, with a great body of horsemen, and springing on the duke, said: “I arrest you in the king’s name!” The duke, astonished, saw that he was betrayed, and cried with a loud voice after the king. I do not know if the king heard him or not, but he did not return, but rode away.’

The duke was then hurried off to Calais, where he was placed in the hands of some of the king’s minions, under the Duke of Norfolk. Two of these ruffians, Serle, a valet of the king’s, and Franceys, a valet of the Duke of Albemarle, then told the Duke of Gloucester, that ‘it was the king’s will that he should die. He answered, that if it was his will, it must be so. They asked him to have a chaplain, he agreed, and confessed. They then made him lie down on a bed; the two valets threw a feather-bed upon him; three other persons held down the sides of it, while Serle and Franceys pressed on the mouth of the duke till he expired, three others of the assistants all the while on their knees weeping and praying for his soul, and Halle keeping guard at the door.  When he was dead, the Duke of Norfolk came to them, and saw the dead body.

The body of the Duke of Gloucester was conveyed with great pomp to England, and first buried in the abbey of Pleshy, his own foundation, in a tomb which he himself had provided for the purpose. Subsequently, his remains were removed to Westminster, and deposited in the king’s chapel, under a marble slab inlaid with brass. Immediately after his murder, his widow, who was the daughter of Humphry de Bohun, Earl of Hereford, became a nun in the abbey of Barking; at her death she was buried beside her husband in Westminster Abbey.

A good day for terror.

1793

The French Revolution institute the Reign  of Terror.

“Let’s make terror the order of the day!” said the French politician Bertrand Barère in the National Assembly. The revolutionaries of 1793 were afraid both of the unpredictable violence of the Parisian mob and the gathering forces of counter-revolution, so they launched an attack not only on the aristocrats and clergy but also political moderates such as the Girondists. Over 16,000 death sentences were passed in less than a year. Former leaders of the Revolution such as Georges Danton, Louis Hébert, and Camille Desmoulins, found themselves being sent to the guillotine by their old comrades. Maximilien Robespierre explained the ideological underpinnings of this bloody project: “If the basis of popular government in peacetime is virtue, the basis of popular government during a revolution is both virtue and terror; virtue, without which terror is baneful; terror, without which virtue is powerless. Terror is nothing more than speedy, severe and inflexible justice; it is thus an emanation of virtue; it is less a principle in itself, than a consequence of the general principle of democracy, applied to the most pressing needs of the patrie.”

But the Revolution always eats its own children. In July 1794 Robespierre and his followers were executed and the steam went out of the Terror.

1918

The Bolsheviks unleash the Red Terror.

The assassination of Moisei Uritsky, the secret police chief in St Petersburg, and the attempt on the life of Vladimir Lenin led the Bolshevik secret police, the Cheka, on the orders of Lenin, to issue the decree “On Red Terror”. Frightful violence against class enemies was necessary to save the Revolution. It was not necessary to have actually done anything to merit death. Martin Latsis, the head of the Chekists in Ukraine, proclaimed: “Do not look in the file of incriminating evidence to see whether or not the accused rose up against the Soviets with arms or words. Ask him instead to which class he belongs, what is his background, his education, his profession. These are the questions that will determine the fate of the accused. That is the meaning and essence of the Red Terror.” Communist leader Grigory Zinoviev declared: “To overcome our enemies we must have our own socialist militarism. We must carry along with us 90 million out of the 100 million of Soviet Russia’s population. As for the rest, we have nothing to say to them. They must be annihilated.”  And annihilated they were, by gunfire, drowning, burning, crucifixion, live burial, and starvation. It aroused similar atrocities by the White counter-revolutionary forces and inspired other Communist revolutions to practise their own Terrors.  As is usual, the perpetrators themselves were later victims of their own methods: Latsis, Zinoviev and Leon Trotsky (see illustration above) and many more of the Bolshevik revolutionaries of 1918 perished at the hands of their former colleagues.