Christmas Every Day

525 Constantinople burns

Christian emperors of Rome banned the homicidal gladiator games in the arenas, leaving chariot racing to become the most popular spectator sport. As in today’s professional soccer, supporters of the various teams (especially the Blues and the Greens) could become violent, warring against each other and against the forces of order. In 6th-century Constantinople, the Blues and the Greens also represented differing views on politics and religion, so they often acted as goon squads for various factions.

In January 525, the usual rioting broke out and the usual arrests were made. Some of the malefactors were hanged but some of the leaders of both groups took refuge in the same church; there they decided to unite and turn their fury on the emperor, Justinian. Their battle cry was “Nike! Nike! (Victory!) Blues and Greens together!” For the next week, their mobs ruled the streets, arson and looting ran unchecked and much of the city was burnt down including the Hagia Sophia, the Church of Holy Wisdom. A  hapless member of the ruling elite, Hypatius, was crowned emperor against his will.

Justinian’s first thought was to flee but his formidable wife Theodora stiffened his spine and plans were laid to regain control. Leaders of the Blue faction were bribed to abandon the disorder and the army massacred thousands of dissidents inside the Hippodrome race track. Hypatius was duly executed, his high-ranking supporters were exiled and Justinian began the task of rebuilding the city.

49 BC

Julius Caesar crosses the Rubicon

In the last days of the Roman republic, politics had degenerated into a series of struggles between the armies of various politicians of the senatorial rank. Civil war had been waged on and off for decades when three faction leaders agreed on kind of a truce known as the First Triumvirate in 60 BC. To keep their rivalries at a safe distance from Rome, Julius Caesar was alloted Gaul for his ambitions, Pompey was given Spain, and Crassus the Middle East. In 53 BC, Crassus died in battle against the Persians, leaving Caesar and Pompey to maneuver against each other. While Caesar was completing a genocidal conquest of Gaul, Pompey was securing his position in the capital; in 50 BC the Senate, at Pompey’s direction, summoned Caesar home.

Fearing a rigged trial, Caesar decided to come back, but with his army. It was illegal for him to cross the border into Italy, the Rubicon River, with such a force but on this day in 49 BC he did so, at the head of the XIIIth Legion. As he crossed the Rubicon, he is said to have remarked, Alea iacta est, “the die is cast.” Caesar’s invasion forced Pompey to flee but Caesar followed and defeated him at the Battle of Pharsalus, paving the way for his dictatorship, and, eventually, his own assassination.

1918 Woodrow Wilson Issues His 14 Points

American President Woodrow Wilson had taken his country into the Great War despite having campaigned on a peace platform. Germany’s attempts to incite a Mexican invasion of the U.S.A., and its policy of unrestricted submarine warfare had made it impossible for the United States to remain aloof. In January 1918 Wilson enunciated the issues which he felt were at stake in the war and which would guide the peace treaties. These were the hopelessly idealistic 14 Points which were ignored by Britain and France at the Treaty of Versailles discussions.

I. Open covenants of peace, openly arrived at, after which there shall be no private international understandings of any kind but diplomacy shall proceed always frankly and in the public view.

II. Absolute freedom of navigation upon the seas, outside territorial waters, alike in peace and in war, except as the seas may be closed in whole or in part by international action for the enforcement of international covenants.

III. The removal, so far as possible, of all economic barriers and the establishment of an equality of trade conditions among all the nations consenting to the peace and associating themselves for its maintenance.

IV. Adequate guarantees given and taken that national armaments will be reduced to the lowest point consistent with domestic safety.

V. A free, open-minded, and absolutely impartial adjustment of all colonial claims, based upon a strict observance of the principle that in determining all such questions of sovereignty the interests of the populations concerned must have equal weight with the equitable claims of the government whose title is to be determined.

VI. The evacuation of all Russian territory and such a settlement of all questions affecting Russia as will secure the best and freest cooperation of the other nations of the world in obtaining for her an unhampered and unembarrassed opportunity for the independent determination of her own political development and national policy and assure her of a sincere welcome into the society of free nations under institutions of her own choosing; and, more than a welcome, assistance also of every kind that she may need and may herself desire. The treatment accorded Russia by her sister nations in the months to come will be the acid test of their good will, of their comprehension of her needs as distinguished from their own interests, and of their intelligent and unselfish sympathy.

VII. Belgium, the whole world will agree, must be evacuated and restored, without any attempt to limit the sovereignty which she enjoys in common with all other free nations. No other single act will serve as this will serve to restore confidence among the nations in the laws which they have themselves set and determined for the government of their relations with one another. Without this healing act the whole structure and validity of international law is forever impaired.

VIII. All French territory should be freed and the invaded portions restored, and the wrong done to France by Prussia in 1871 in the matter of Alsace-Lorraine, which has unsettled the peace of the world for nearly fifty years, should be righted, in order that peace may once more be made secure in the interest of all.

IX. A readjustment of the frontiers of Italy should be effected along clearly recognizable lines of nationality.

X. The peoples of Austria-Hungary, whose place among the nations we wish to see safeguarded and assured, should be accorded the freest opportunity of autonomous development.

XI. Rumania, Serbia, and Montenegro should be evacuated; occupied territories restored; Serbia accorded free and secure access to the sea; and the relations of the several Balkan states to one another determined by friendly counsel along historically established lines of allegiance and nationality; and international guarantees of the political and economic independence and territorial integrity of the several Balkan states should be entered into.

XII. The Turkish portions of the present Ottoman Empire should be assured a secure sovereignty, but the other nationalities which are now under the Turkish rule should be assured an undoubted security of life and an absolutely unmolested opportunity of autonomous development, and the Dardanelles should be permanently opened as a free passage to the ships and commerce of all nations under international guarantees.

XIII. An independent Polish state should be erected which should include the territories inhabited by indisputably Polish populations, which should be assured a free and secure access to the sea, and whose political and economic independence and territorial integrity should be guaranteed by international covenant.

XIV. A general association of nations must be formed under specific covenants for the purpose of affording mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity to great and small states alike

1066 Death of Edward the Confessor

The second-last Anglo-Saxon king of England, Edward the Confessor was a strange bird. He was the seventh son of the incompetent Aethelred the Unready and was forced to flee to Normandy when his father lost the throne to a Danish invasion. After the death of his father and brothers, and the marriage of his mother to the Danish ruler Cnut, Edward spent decades in exile on the Continent as the leading Saxon claimant to the throne. When Cnut died, his sons Harthacnut and Harold Harefoot quarrelled over the succession with Edward wisely staying out of reach until his rivals died and he was acclaimed king in 1042.

Edward’s rule was marked by the need for the support of the powerful English earls, particularly Godwin of Wessex. Edward despised Godwin who had murdered Edward’s brother but he married the earl’s daughter and gave his brothers-in-law considerable land holdings and positions of power. In foreign affairs Edward was successful in quelling the ambitions of the Welsh and Scots but he gave up trying to curb the acquisitive Godwin clan. When he died childless, he was immediately succeeded by Harold Godwinson. Harold was challenged by a Viking invasion aided by his brother Tostig; this Harold crushed, only to fall shortly thereafter to an invasion by Normans, led by William the Bastard who claimed that the English throne had been promised to him. William became thereby “the Conqueror” and erased Saxon power in England.

Edward’s most lasting contribution was the commissioning of Westminster Abbey. He was canonised as a saint in 1161, the only English king to be granted that status.

1868 The Meiji Restoration

For centuries the Japanese emperors had been puppet rulers, subject to the oversight of a series of warlords. Since the 1630s these shoguns had been drawn from the Tokugawa dynasty which had followed a policy of isolating Japan from the rest of the world. With the exception of a few Dutch ships allowed to trade at Nagasaki, it was the death penalty for attempting to enter, or leave, the country.

In 1854 an American fleet under Commodore Perry forced Japan to open up to trade with the West. The realization that Europeans and Americans had a vast military and technological advantage over Japan, and the chaotic experience that China was undergoing at the hands of westerners, led elements inside the government to press for an end to the shogunate and a program of modernization.

On this date in 1868 the Meiji Emperor announced that he was resuming power:

The Emperor of Japan announces to the sovereigns of all foreign countries and to their subjects that permission has been granted to the Shogun Tokugawa Yoshinobu to return the governing power in accordance with his own request. We shall henceforward exercise supreme authority in all the internal and external affairs of the country. Consequently the title of Emperor must be substituted for that of Taikun, in which the treaties have been made. Officers are being appointed by us to the conduct of foreign affairs. It is desirable that the representatives of the treaty powers recognize this announcement.

A brief civil war against traditionalists was necessary to achieve the emperor’s victory but Japan was soon on the way to modernization and world power status.

1809

The curious case of a cask of wine

A case was tried at the end of December 1809, between the crown and Mr. Constable, lord of the manor of Holdernesse, in Yorkshire. It was a struggle who should obtain a cask of wine, thrown ashore on the coast of that particular manor. The lord’s bailiff, and some custom-house officers, hearing of the circumstance, hastened to the spot, striving which should get there first. The officers laid hold of one end of the cask, saying: ‘This belongs to the king.’ The bailiff laid hold of the other end, and claimed it for the lord of the manor. An argumentative dispute arose. The officers declared that it was smuggled, ‘not having paid the port duty.’ The bailiff retorted that he believed the wine to be Madeira, not port. The officers, smiling, said that they meant port of entry, not port wine—a fact that possibly the bailiff knew already, but chose to ignore. The bailiff replied: ‘It has been in no port, it has come by itself on the beach.’ The officers resolved to go for further instructions to the custom-house. But here arose a dilemma: what to do with the cask of wine in the interim  As the bailiff could not very well drink the wine while they were gone, they proposed to place it in a small hut hard by. They did so; but during their absence, the bailiff removed it to the cellar of the lord of the manor. The officers, when they returned, said: ‘ Oh, ho! now we have you; the wine is the king’s now, under any supposition; for it has been removed without a permit.’ To which the bailiff responded: ‘If I had not removed the wine without a permit, the sea would have done so the next tide.’ The attorney-general afterwards filed an information against the lord of the manor; and the case came on at York—on the question whether the bailiff was right in removing the wine without a custom-house “permit”.

The arguments pro and con were very lengthy and very learned; for although the cask of wine could not possibly be worth so much as the costs of the case, each party attached importance to the decision as a precedent. The decision of the court at York was a special verdict, which transferred the case to the court of Exchequer. The judgment finally announced was in favour of the lord of the manor — on the grounds that no permit is required for the removal of wine unless it has paid duty; that wine to be liable to duty, must be imported; that wine cannot be imported by ‘itself, but requires the agency of some one else to do so; and that therefore wine wrecked, having come on shore by itself, or without human volition or intention, was not ‘imported,’ and was not subject to duty, and did not require a permit for its removal.

The trial virtually admitted the right of the lord of the manor to the wine, as having been thrown ashore on his estate; the only question was whether he had forfeited it by the act of his servant in removing it from the spot without a permit from the custom-house officers; and the decision of the court was in his favour on this point. But it proved to be by far the most costly cask of wine he ever possessed; for by a strange arrangement in these Exchequer matters, even though the verdict be with the defendant, he does not get his costs.

1066 Granada Massacre

The occupation of Spain by Muslims during the Middle Ages is said to have produced a brilliant civilization marked by religious tolerance. Though we rightly celebrate the art, architecture and literature of Moorish Andalusia, the story of toleration has definitely been overplayed. The fact is that Jews and Christians under Islamic rule were always considered inferiors and subject to humiliating social and legal disabilities. They were protected, in the public mind, by a pact that reflected this enforced inferiority and when an individual “dhimmi”, or a community of Jews or Christians, seemed to have too much influence there could often be a backlash.

On this date in 1066 mobs of Muslims in Granada, in southern Spain, rose up against their ruler’s Jewish adviser Joseph ibn Naghrela whom they accused of controlling and plotting against their king. They stormed the palace, crucified Joseph on the city’s main gate, and massacred much of the city’s Jewish population. This poem is believed to have inspired the violence and makes clear the resentment felt when one of the inferior races achieves prominence:

Do not consider it a breach of faith to kill them,

the breach of faith would be to let them carry on.

They have violated our covenant with them,

so how can you be held guilty against the violators?

How can they have any pact when we are obscure and they are prominent?

Now we are humble, beside them, as if we were wrong and they were right.