Christmas Every Day

1836

The Goliad Massacre

In October 1835 American settlers in the province of Texas rebelled against the Mexican government of General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna. After a series of inconsequential battles, Santa Anna’s army began to rack up victories over the disorganized Texians, first at the Battle of the Alamo and then at Coleto. His policy was to follow up military successes with calculated atrocities, killing prisoners so as to deter any further flood of volunteers from the United States. A Mexican law passed in December 1835 declared that all armed foreigners taken in combat were to be treated as pirates and executed: no quarter was given at the Alamo and in March 1836, Santa Anna order the massacre of hundreds of American prisoners which had been gathered at Goliad.

Despite pleas for mercy from his junior officers, Santa Anna remained adamant. On Palm Sunday, 1836 nearly 500 prisoners were shot, bayoneted or bludgeoned to death. Some were able to escape and some were rescued due to the efforts of “The Angel of Goliad”, Franchita Alavez, the mistress of a Mexican officer. Rather than deterring American efforts, the massacre seems to have inspired the Texians to become more united and attract more support. In April a force of rebels encountered a larger body of Mexican troops at San Jacinto. With shouts of “Remember Goliad, Remember the Alamo!” the Texians defeated Santa Anna’s force and captured him the next day. In return for his freedom and a safe return to Mexico he acceded to the creation of an independent Republic of Texas.

1807

Britain Ends its Slave Trade

Slavery seems to be as old as human history and though its cruelties were often deplored, particularly by the religious who sought to mitigate its brutality, systematic attempts to eliminate the practice altogether did not take place until the eighteenth century. The most significant of these attempts took place in Great Britain where slavery had long been illegal on its own soil but whose empire owed much of its prosperity to slave-run economies. (The French had briefly abolished slavery during the 1790s but reinstituted it under Napoleon.)

Led by Quakers, Anglicans and evangelical Protestants, a movement to abolish the trade in human beings gained momentum in the 1780s and 1790s but faced resistance from those who believed that slavery was a natural condition and those who saw the economic benefit to Britain from its colonial sugar, cotton, rice, and tobacco plantations. William Wilberforce, M.P., had persuaded many of his fellow parliamentarians of the justice of the cause but it took him 20 years before his efforts met with the passage of the 1807 “An Act for the Abolition of the Slave Trade”.

Just as importantly, Britain used its diplomatic muscle and Royal Navy to persuade other countries to follow suit. Their West Africa Squadron captured slave ships and freed 150,000 captives; treaties were made with African states to persuade them to cease selling their prisoners to the Atlantic slavers; and other European countries were pressured to get out of the business. It would, however, not be until 1833 that Britain abolished slavery itself in its overseas holdings.

And two cheers for us. In 1793, Upper Canada’s Act Against Slavery banned the importation of slaves and ordered that children born to female slaves would be freed upon reaching the age of 25.

1413 The Death of Henry IV

Henry IV of England(1367-1413)  was a usurper who assumed the throne after the deposition of Richard II. His claim was not as good as that of the Earl of March but, as the latter was too young, Henry succeeded and is considered the founder of the Lancastrian dynasty.

The focus of today’s entry is the prophecy that Henry would die in Jerusalem (and other predictions).

Robert Fabian was the first to relate the since often-quoted account of the circumstances attending the death of the fourth Henry:

‘In this year’ [1412], says the worthy citizen, ‘and twentieth day of the month of November, was a great council holden at the Whitefriars of London, by the which it was, among other things, concluded, that for the King’s great journey he intended to take in visiting the Holy Sepulchre of our Lord, certain galleys of war should be made, and other purveyance concerning the same journey.

Whereupon, all hasty and possible speed was made, but after the feast of Christmas, while he was making his prayers at St. Edward’s shrine, to take there his leave, and so to speed him on his journey, he became so sick, that such as were about him feared that he would have died right there: wherefore they, for his comfort, bore him into the Abbot’s place, and lodged him in a chamber; and there, upon a pallet, laid him before the fire, where he lay in great agony a certain of time.’

‘At length, when he was come to himself, not knowing where he was, freyned [inquired] of such as then were about him, what place that was: the which shewed to him, that it belonged unto the Abbot of Westminster: and for he felt himself so sick, he commanded to ask if that chamber had any special name. Whereunto it was answered, that it was named Jerusalem. Then said the king—”Loving be to the Father of Heaven, for now I know I shall die in this chamber, according to the prophecy of me before said that I should die in Jerusalem:” and so after, he made himself ready, and died shortly after, upon the day of St. Cuthbert, or the twentieth day of March 1413.’

This story has been frequently told with variations of places and persons; among the rest, of Gerbert, Pope Sylvester II, who died in 1003. Gerbert was a native of France, but, being imbued with a strong thirst for knowledge, he pursued his studies at Seville, then the great seat of learning among the Moors of Spain. Becoming an eminent mathematician and astronomer, he introduced the use of the Arabic numerals to the Christian nations of Europe; and, in consequence, acquired the name and fame of a most potent necromancer. So, as the tale is told, Gerbert, being very anxious to inquire into the future, but at the same time determined not to be cheated, by what Macbeth terms the juggling fiends, long considered how he could effect his purpose.

At last he hit upon a plan, which he put into execution by making, under certain favourable planetary conjunctions, a brazen head, and endowing it with speech. But still dreading diabolical deception, he gave the head power to utter only two words—plain ‘yes’ and ‘no.’ Now, there were two all-important questions, to which Gerbert anxiously desired responses. The first, prompted by ambition, regarded his advancement to the papal chair: the second referred to the length of his life,—for Gerbert, in his pursuit of magical knowledge, had entered into certain engagements with a certain party who shall be nameless: which rendered it very desirable that his life should reach to the longest possible span, the reversion, so to speak, being a very uncomfortable prospect. 

Accordingly Gerbert asked the head, ‘Shall I become Pope? ‘The head replied, ‘Yes!’ The next question was, ‘Shall I die before I chant mass in Jerusalem?’ The answer was, `No!’ Of course, Gerbert had previously determined, that if the answer should be in the negative, he would take good care never to go to Jerusalem. But the certain party, previously hinted at, is not so easily cheated. Gerbert became Pope Sylvester, and one day while chanting mass in a church at Rome found himself suddenly very ill. On making inquiry, he learned that the church he was then in was named Jerusalem. At once, knowing his fate, he made preparations for his approaching end, which took place in a very short time.

Malispini relates in his Florentine history that the Emperor Frederick II had been warned, by a soothsayer, that he would die a violent death in Firenze (Florence). So Frederick avoided Firenze, and, that there might be no mistake about the matter, he shunned the town of Faenza also. But he thought there was no danger in visiting Firenzuolo, in the Appenines. There he was treacherously murdered in 1250, by his illegitimate son Manfred [No, he wasn’t; he died of dysentery. – GQB] Thus, says Malispini, he was unable to prevent the fulfilment of the prophecy.

The old English chroniclers tell a somewhat similar story of an Earl of Pembroke, who, being informed that he would be slain at Warwick, solicited and obtained the governorship of Berwick-upon-Tweed; to the end that he might not have an opportunity of even approaching the fatal district of Warwickshire. But a short time afterwards, the Earl being killed in repelling an invasion of the Scots, it was discovered that Barwick, as it was then pronounced, was the place meant by the quibbling prophet.

The period of the death of Henry IV was one of great political excitement, and consequently highly favourable to the propagation of prophecies of all kinds. The deposition of Richard and usurpation of Henry were said to have been foretold, many centuries previous, by the enchanter Merlin; and both parties, during the desolating civil wars that ensued, invented prophecies whenever it suited their purpose. Two prophecies of the ambiguous kind, ‘equivocations of the fiend that lies like truth,’ are recorded by the historians of the wars of the roses, and noticed by Shakspeare.

William de la Pole, first Duke of Suffolk, had been warned by a wizard, to beware of water and avoid the tower. So when his fall came, and he was ordered to leave England in three days, he made all haste from London, on his way to France, naturally supposing that the Tower of London, to which traitors were conveyed by water, was the place of danger indicated. On his passage across the Channel, however, he was captured by a ship named Nicholas of the Tower, commanded by a man surnamed Walter. 

The other instance refers to Edmund Beaufort, Duke of Somerset, who is said to have consulted Margery Jourdemayne, the celebrated witch of Eye, with respect to his conduct and fate during the impending conflicts. She told him that he would be defeated and slain at a castle: but as long as he arrayed his forces and fought in the open field, he would be victorious and safe from harm. Shakspeare represents her familiar spirit saying:

‘Let him shun castles.
Safer shall he be on the sandy plain
Than where castles mounted stand.’

After the first battle of St. Albans, when the trembling monks crept from their cells to succour the wounded and inter the slain, they found the dead body of Somerset lying at the threshold of a mean alehouse, the sign of which was a castle. And thus,

‘Underneath an alehouse’ paltry sign,
The Castle, in St. Albans, Somerset
Hath made the wizard famous in his death.’

Cardinal Wolsey, it is said, had been warned to beware of Kingston. And supposing that the town of Kingston was indicated by the person who gave the warning, the cardinal took care never to pass through that town: preferring to go many miles about, though it lay in the direct road between his palaces of Esher and Hampton Court. But after his fall, when arrested by Sir William Kingston, and taken to the Abbey of Leicester, he said, ‘Father Abbot, I am come to leave my bones among you,’ for he knew that his end was at hand.

1940 Hitler and Mussolini meet at the Brenner Pass

By March 1940 the Second World War was six months old. Hitler’s armies had conquered Poland but had not faced much resistance from Britain and France: this was the period of the so-called sitzkrieg or “Phoney War”. Italy, though sympathetic to German aims, had remained on the sidelines. On this date the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini met the train carrying Hitler and the German foreign minister von Ribbentrop at a station in the Alps.

Both countries were intent on war with Britain and France but Mussolini entered the conference reluctant to act quickly. His war aims were to drive Britain from its Mediterranean possessions such as Malta and Gibraltar and to recover Corsica and Nice from the French.

Mussolini’s son-in-law Gian Galeazzo Ciano, the Italian foreign minister (whom Mussolini will later order executed), kept notes of the encounter:

The Hitler meeting is very cordial on both sides. The conference … is more a monologue than anything else. Hitler talks all the time, but is less agitated than usual. He makes few gestures and speaks in a quiet tone. He looks physically fit. Mussolini listens to him with interest and with deference. He speaks little and confirms his intention to move with Germany. He reserves to himself only the choice of the right moment . .. The conference ends with a short meal.

Later Mussolini gives me his impressions. He did not find in Hitler that uncompromising attitude which von Ribbentrop had led him to suspect. Yesterday, as well, von Ribbentrop only opened his mouth to harp on Hitler’s intransigency. Mussolini believes that Hitler will think twice before he begins an offensive on land.

The meeting has not substantially changed our position.

The Italians seem to have been deceived about Hitler’s plans because within weeks German armies were rolling in the west, invading Belgium, the Netherlands and France. At the point where the French were sure to lose, Mussolini joined in and attacked them from the south.

44 BC The Assassination of Julius Caesar

Tullius seized his toga with both hands and pulled it down from his neck. This was the signal for the assault. It was Casca who gave him the first blow with his dagger, in the neck, not a mortal wound, nor even a deep one, for which he was too much confused, as was natural at the beginning of a deed of great daring; so that Caesar turned about, grasped the knife, and held it fast.  At almost the same instant both cried out, the smitten man in Latin: “Accursed Casca, what does thou?” and the smiter, in Greek, to his brother: “Brother, help!”

So the affair began, and those who were not privy to the plot were filled with consternation and horror at what was going on; they dared not fly, nor go to Caesar’s help, nay, nor even utter a word. But those who had prepared themselves for the murder bared each of them his dagger, and Caesar, hemmed in on all sides, whichever way he turned confronting blows of weapons aimed at his face and eyes, driven hither and thither like a wild beast, was entangled in the hands of all; for all had to take part in the sacrifice and taste of the slaughter. Therefore Brutus also gave him one blow in the groin.  And it is said by some writers that although Caesar defended himself against the rest and darted this way and that and cried aloud, when he saw that Brutus had drawn his dagger, he pulled his toga down over his head and sank, either by chance or because pushed there by his murderers, against the pedestal on which the statue of Pompey stood.

And the pedestal was drenched with his blood, so that one might have thought that Pompey himself was presiding over this vengeance upon his enemy, who now lay prostrate at his feet, quivering from a multitude of wounds. For it is said that he received twenty-three; and many of the conspirators were wounded by one another, as they struggled to plant all those blows in one body.

Thus the account of the death of the Roman dictator by Plutarch. Julius Caesar was a monster and had it coming but his death, which was supposed to save the aristocratic republic, led quickly to its demise and the beginning of imperial rule.

1757

The death of an admiral to encourage the others

A passage in Voltaire’s Candide reads thus:

Talking thus, we approached Portsmouth. A multitude of people covered the shore, looking attentively at a stout gentleman who was on his knees with his eyes bandaged, on the quarter-deck of one of the vessels of the fleet. Four soldiers, placed in front of him, put each three balls in his head, in the most peaceable manner, and all the assembly then dispersed quite satisfied.  What is all this?” quoth Candide, “and what devil reigns here?” He asked who was the stout gentleman who came to die in this ceremonious manner. “It is an Admiral,” they answered. “And why kill the Admiral?” “It is because he has not killed enough of other people. He had to give battle to a French Admiral, and they find that he did not go near enough to him.” “But,” said Candide, “the French Admiral was as far from him as he was from the French Admiral.” “That is very true,” replied they; “but in this country it is useful to kill an Admiral now and then, just to encourage the rest [pour encourager les autres].”‘

John Byng (1704-57) was a successful British admiral, Member of Parliament, and former governor of Newfoundland who had the misfortune of failing in a single battle. For this misdeed he was judged by the British Admiralty to have failed in his duties and was executed on the deck of his flagship.

The island of Minorca, off the Spanish coast, had been captured by the British in 1708 but in the Seven Years War was threatened with invasion by a French fleet. Byng was ordered to take a hastily-assembled and under-manned flotilla to reinforce the island but when he arrived in Minorcan waters in May of 1756 he found the French were already there in strength. After an inconclusive naval engagement, Byng concluded that the island was lost (indeed, it was to capitulate) and that he would return to Gibraltar for repairs. There he found orders commanding him to return to England for trial for a breach of the Articles of War.

The 1757 court martial acquitted him of cowardice but convicted him of not doing his utmost, a crime punishable by death. There were influential voices calling on King George II to extend mercy but the monarch declined and Byng was executed, himself giving the signal to fire by dropping his handkerchief. Most agree that this was an unjust result but some historians argue that the death of Byng served to inculcate a spirit of aggression in British naval commanders which would serve them well in future wars.

His epitaph reads:

To the perpetual Disgrace
of PUBLICK JUSTICE
The Honble. JOHN BYNG Esqr
Admiral of the Blue
Fell a MARTYR to
POLITICAL PERSECUTION
March 14th in the year 1757 when
BRAVERY and LOYALTY
were Insufficient Securities
For the
Life and Honour
of a
NAVAL OFFICER

1890

Birth of an American Fascist

William Dudley Pelley (1890-1965) was a fascinating mixture of spiritualist loon, aspiring dictator, talented writer, and fantasist. His short-lived Silver Legion was one of a number of fascist organizations that sprang up across the world in the 1930s in imitation of Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler.

Pelley rose to fame in the 1920s with his short stories, two of which won the coveted O. Henry Prize, and his journalistic skills. He spent time working with the Red Cross in Siberia during the Russian Civil War, where he developed a hatred of Communism and of Jews, who, he said, lay behind global Bolshevism. His way with words took him to Hollywood and a screenwriting career but he left in disillusion and anger with Jewish studio bosses.

In the 1930s he developed a new religion based on visions in which he claimed to have seen God the Father and Jesus and been given the power to levitate and see through walls. Many of his religious followers also became devotees of his new political movement, the Silver Legion, who wore silver shirts with a blue tie, in imitation of Mussolini’s Blackshirts, and Hitler’s Brownshirts. His group, he declared, would take part in the “the ultimate contest for existence between Aryan mankind and Jewry.” The party opposed Communism, Jews, involvement in foreign wars, and the Roosevelt administration. He claimed his Legion numbered 25,000 but when he ran for president in 1936 he received only 1,600 votes.

The government began to harass Pelley; he was placed under investigation by the House Committee on Un-American Activities and his property seized. When World War II broke out Pelley disbanded the Silver Shirts but continued to rail against Roosevelt. He was arrested and convicted of sedition, obstructing military recruiting and fomenting insurrection within the military. He was released from prison in 1950 whereupon his interests turned to UFOs and a new religion called Soulcraft. His writings live on in neo-Nazi websites.

1619 The Witches of Belvoir

On the 11^th of March 1619, two women named Margaret and Philippa Flower, were burnt at Lincoln for the alleged crime of witchcraft. With their mother, Joan Flower, they had been confidential servants of the Earl and Countess of Rutland, at Belvoir Castle. Dissatisfaction with their employers seems to have gradually seduced these three women into the practice of hidden arts in order to obtain revenge. According to their own confession, they had entered into communion with familiar spirits, by which they were assisted in their wicked designs. 

Joan Flower, the mother, had hers in the bodily form of a cat, which she called Rutterkin. They used to get the hair of a member of the family and burn it: they would steal one of his gloves and plunge it in boiling water, or rub it on the back of Rutterkin, in order to effect bodily harm to its owner. They would also use frightful imprecations of wrath and malice towards the objects of their hatred. In these ways they were believed to have accomplished the death of Lord Ross, the Earl of Rutland’s son, besides inflicting frightful sicknesses upon other members of the family.

It was long before the earl and countess, who were an amiable couple, suspected any harm in these servants, although we are told that for some years there was a manifest change in the countenance of the mother, a diabolic expression being assumed. At length, at Christmas, 1618, the noble pair became convinced that they were the victims of a hellish plot, and the three women were apprehended, taken to Lincoln jail, and examined. The mother loudly protested innocence, and, calling for bread and butter, wished it might choke her if she were guilty of the offences laid to her charge. Immediately, taking a piece into her mouth, she fell down dead, probably, as we may allowably conjecture, overpowered by consciousness of the contrariety between these protestations and the guilty design which she had entertained in her mind.

Margaret Flower, on being examined, acknowledged that she had stolen the glove of the young heir of the family, and given it to her mother, who stroked Rutterkin with it, dipped it in hot water, and pricked it: whereupon Lord Ross fell ill and suffered extremely. In order to prevent Lord and Lady Rutland from having any more children, they had taken some feathers from their bed, and a pair of gloves, which they boiled in water, mingled with a little blood. In all these particulars, Philippa corroborated her sister. Both women admitted that they had familiar spirits, which came and sucked them at various parts of their bodies: and they also described visions of devils in various forms which they had had from time to time.

The examinations of these wretched women were taken by magistrates of rank and credit, and when the judges came to Lincoln the two surviving Flowers were duly tried, and on their own confessions condemned to death by the Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, Sir Henry Hobbert.

The above account from Chambers’ Book of Days omits several interesting points: the death of another of the earl’s children, the possible escape from the gallows of one of the accused, and the recent suggestion that the boys were poisoned to leave the earl without a male heir, allowing the poisoner to inherit the estate by marrying one of the earl’s daughters.

1925

Pink’s War

“First, plan your retreat.  All expeditions into tribal lands end in retreat.”  The obdurate and indomitable nature of the tribes of the Northwest Frontier of India is legendary. Warlike, fiercely independent, and clannish, they have bedevilled every attempt to curb their raids and blood feuds. For over a century they repelled the British Army, just as today they are a challenge to the Pakistani government.

In 1925, the Mahsud tribe of southern Waziristan was holding out against the British Raj and continuing to attack army outposts. The Royal Air Force, determined to succeed where the Army had failed, conducted its first independent action in strikes on Mahsud villages. Under Wing Commander Richard Pink, flying Bristol fighters and deHavilland DH9A light bombers, the RAF first leafleted the mountain strongholds to warn of impending attacks so that there would be no civilian casualties and then proceeded, day and night, to strafe, bomb (over 250 tons of ordinance) and harass the territory for weeks until the tribesmen finally agreed to a treaty.

An interesting day in history.

1836 Fall of the Alamo

After a 13-day siege Mexican troops under General Santa Ana pour into the Alamo fort and massacre the defenders. The painting above shows the death of Davy Crockett.

1857 The Dred Scott decision

Dred Scott, a black slave, had been taken by his master to a non-slave state and sued for his freedom. The Supreme Court ruled against him, saying that “a negro, whose ancestors were imported into [the U.S.], and sold as slaves”, whether enslaved or free, could not be an American citizen and therefore had no standing to sue in federal court. Moreover, the court said the federal government could not regulate slavery in territories acquired after the creation of the U.S.  This ruling inflamed anti-slavery passions and contributed to the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861.

1912 First use of airships in war

Italian forces in two dirigibles drop bombs on Turkish troops in what is now Libya.

1970 A Weather Underground bomb explodes

Left-wing terrorist groups emerged out of the anti-war and civil rights movements of the 1960s. One of these was the Weathermen, (later the Weather Underground) whose name derived from the Bob Dylan song “Subterranean Homesick Blues” containing the line “You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.” The group incited riots, declared war on the USA, and bombed the Pentagon, Capitol Building and State Department. On this date three terrorists, all white graduate students, died when one of their own bombs exploded in their Greenwich Village safe house.

1984 British miners’ strike begins

Until this strike the British miners had been among the best-paid and most militant of the UK’s labour unions. For years, the the National Union of Miners had successfully resisted government plans to make the coal industry more efficient and reduce subsidies; their strike in 1974 had brought down Edward Heath’s Conservative government. In 1984, without calling a national ballot, NUM president Arthur Scargill led the miners out again, but this time Margaret Thatcher’s government was prepared. Coal stockpiles at power plants were enormous, and police strategies were devised to counter the union tactic of flying pickets. After a year of bitter conflict, the union conceded defeat.