Christmas Every Day

1775 Lord Dunmore’s Proclamation

In order to hinder the rebellion of some American colonists in Virginia, British Governor John Murray, Earl of Dunmore, issues a proclamation calling loyal citizens to arms and offering to free any slaves who will serve the crown militarily. Perhaps as many as 2,000 slaves flee the plantations and take up Dunmore’s offer. The move outraged many prominent Virginians (loyal and disloyal) who supported slavery. They in turn issued proclamations that threatened runaway slaves with death. In the end, Dunsmore and hundreds of freed slaves were forced out of the colony but throughout the conflict the British kept offering freedom to escaping slaves whether they joined the army or not. When the revolutionary war ended, thousands of black slaves migrated to the loyal colony of Nova Scotia and slavery continued to plague America until the 1860s.

1839 The Newport Rising. The last significant rebellion in Britain was crushed on this day when police and army units faced thousands of armed peasants and workers supporting democratic reform and attempting to liberate some jailed rebels in Newport, Wales. Firing broke out in which 22 demonstrators were killed and 50 wounded.

1922 British archaeologist Howard Carter discovers the entrance to Pharaoh Tutankhamun’s (King Tut’s) tomb.

1979 Iran Hostage Crisis. A mob of students attacks the U.S. embassy in Tehran, taking 90 hostages and starting a major diplomatic standoff that lasted until early 1981.

1995 Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin is assassinated by a Jewish extremist who opposed Rabin’s peace proposals.

1881 Gunfight at the O.K. Corral

Thirty bloody seconds in an alley in Tombstone, Arizona created an enduring legend of the Old West.

In 1881, Tombstone was a prosperous town of 7,000 near the Mexican border, rich from a silver boom and full of legitimate merchants and their families, rubbing shoulders with smugglers, rustlers and murderers. The nature of social life may be be deduced by the presence of 110 saloons, 14 gambling halls, numerous brothels and four churches. Such law as existed was provided by the Earp clan, brothers Wyatt (a deputy US Marshal), James, Vergil, Morgan, and Warren, and dissolute dentist “Doc” Holliday.

Providing a touch of colour and menace to the neighbourhood were “the Cowboys”, a gang of rustlers and smugglers led by Johnny Ringo, including Billy and Ike Clanton, “Curly” Bill Brocius, and the McLaury brothers. Animosity between them and the Earps was overt with the Cowboys making death threats against the lawmen. To some extent, the trouble stemmed from ranchers’ resentment of the dominance by townsfolk of local politics and the economy.

On the night of October 25, the animosities were fuelled by heavy drinking and threats against the Earps and Holliday by Ike Clanton who told listeners that on the morrow he would gun down his enemies. On the 26th Virgil and Morgan encountered Clanton, who was armed in violation of town ordinances; they pistol-whipped and arrested him. Later that day Wyatt also assaulted Tom McClaury. As more Cowboys drifted into town they heard the news and became incensed, loading themselves up with ammunition.The Earps decided to disarm them.

In a side-street, Doc Holliday with Wyatt, Virgil, and Morgan Earp confronted five Cowboys who ignored a call to hand over their weapons. Firing broke out at a distance of about 6′ and when the smoke cleared Ike Clanton and Billy Clairborne had fled, Billy Clanton, Tom McLaury and his brother Frank were dead; Virgil and Morgan were wounded slightly.

Public opinion at the time was divided, with some feeling the Earps had been justified and others claiming that the Cowboys had been ambushed. A trial cleared the Earps but the armed hostility continued. More Earps and Cowboys were to die.

1415 St Crispin’s Day Battle of Agincourt

The Hundred Years War pitted England against France, a a conflict that should easily have been won by the French, a much larger and richer nation. France, however, was militarily hampered by relying on their cavalry of heavily armoured aristocrats in an age when English longbow men could dominate a battle field. After years of a truce, Henry V of England decided to press his (dubious) claim to the French throne and invaded France. On this day in 1415 his small army of 5,000 archers and 800 men-at-arms was forced to meet a much larger French army (perhaps 20,000-30,000 men) in a muddy field near the village of Agincourt.

The English fought on foot with a line stretched between two forest groves that would protect their flanks. In front of their line the archers had hammered in sharp stakes to deter the French horsemen. The French relied on their cavalry, knights eager to be in the first lines so as to benefit from the ransoms they hoped to take from English prisoners. It was a vain hope. Waves of French cavalry were cut down by the archers; those who fell drowned in the mud or had their throats cut by nimble English infantry. Those who were taken prisoner and moved to the rear were murdered when Henry feared they might escape. After losing about 10,000 men in four hours the French retreated and Henry’s force was allowed to slip away with rich booty and high-ranking prisoners.

Today this bloody encounter is remembered by English-speakers mostly for the speech that Shakespeare puts in Henry’ mouth on the eve of the battle but at the time this was the song that was on the lips of folks back home, the “Agincourt Carol”:

Deo gratias Anglia redde pro victoria!

[Give thanks, England, to God for victory!]

Owre Kynge went forth to Normandy

With grace and myght of chyvalry

Ther God for hym wrought mervelusly;

Wherefore Englonde may call and cry

Chorus

Deo gratias!

Deo gratias Anglia redde pro victoria!

He sette sege, forsothe to say,

To Harfleur towne with ryal aray;

That toune he wan and made afray

That Fraunce shal rewe tyl domesday.

Chorus

Then went hym forth, owre king comely,

In Agincourt feld he faught manly;

Throw grace of God most marvelsuly,

He had both feld and victory.

Chorus

Ther lordys, erles and barone

Were slayne and taken and that full soon,

Ans summe were broght into Lundone

With joye and blisse and gret renone.

Chorus

Almighty God he keep owre kynge,

His peple, and alle his well-wyllynge,

And give them grace wythoute endyng;

Then may we call and savely syng:

Chorus

1943 The Provisional Government of Free India is formed

Though most people associate the non-violent methods of M.K. Gandhi as the means by which India achieved its independence, there were many in the movement who were prepared to use force against their British rulers. Among those was Subhas Chandra Bose, who had been the charismatic president of the Indian National Congress in the pre-war years. When war broke out in 1939, Bose was put under house arrest by the British but he escaped and made his way to Nazi Germany. His view was that he would cooperate with anyone who could bring about an end to the British Raj.

Attempts by Bose and the Germans to set up an army drawn from the ranks of Indian soldiers in the British army who had been taken prisoner proved to be a failure, so Bose and his Nazi hosts decided he could be better employed in Asia. He journeyed by submarine to Japanese-occupied territory and set about to form an Indian puppet government and construct an army from prisoners held by the Japanese. On this day in 1943 the Provisional Government of Free India was formed, with its own currency, postage stamps, courts and laws but its only territory being a couple of islands in the Indian Ocean.

Troops of Bose’s new Indian National Army (INA) accompanied the Imperial Japanese army in its invasion of Burma and India but they met little success. British and Indian troops loyal to the British blunted the Japanese attack and pushed them back through the jungles of Burma, killing over half the INA in the process. Bose could see that the Japanese attempt to form a Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere and its plans for a free India were doomed. He planned to defect to the Soviet Union but died in 1945 in a plane crash on Taiwan.

Free India failed in its war-time efforts but within a few years the British agreed to withdraw from the Indian subcontinent where Bose is now regarded as a national hero.

1947 HUAC begins its investigation of Communism in Hollywood

Since World War I the American House of Representatives had set up a number of committees to investigate foreign subversion in the United States. Their scrutiny fell on supporters of both fascism and communism, or anyone who might incite disloyalty, such as Japanese residents of California during World War II.

In 1945 these ad hoc investigations were replaced with a permanent format: the House Committee on Un-American Activities which came to be known as HUAC. It was HUAC that would unmask Alger Hiss as a Russian agent who had worked in the White House, and in 1947 the committee turned its attention on Communist infiltration of Hollywood.

This set of hearings found easy pickings. Hollywood was full of those who had supported the Soviet Union at one time or other, particularly during the Spanish Civil War (1936-39) and during World War II when the Soviets were an ally. Having been associated with such pro-Stalin movies as Mission to Moscow (1943), which praised the infamous show trials and accused Leon Trotsky of collaborating with the Nazis, or one of the groups set up to send aid to the Spanish Republic, now left many open to charges of sympathizing with Bolshevism. And, to be sure, there was no shortage of genuine Communists and party members in Hollywood, especially among screenwriters and the craft unions. (See the Coen brothers’ comedy Hail Caesar for an exploration of this.)

The committee summoned a string of Hollywood luminaries to testify about their experience with Communism in the film industry. Some of them such as Walt Disney identified others who were suspected of party membership or sympathies but some refused to testify at all. This group, known as the Hollywood Ten included no actors but prominent screenwriters and directors: Herbert Biberman, Ring Lardner Jr, Dalton Trumbo, Edward Dymytryk. They made no apologies about their left-wing sympathies – one of them, Alvah Bessie, boasted that he had inserted pro-Soviet propaganda “subversive as all hell” into his work – but stood on their First Amendment Rights. They were convicted on contempt of Congress and sentenced to a year in jail.

These hearings led to a blacklist of the Ten and hundreds of other perceived Communist sympathizers who were not permitted to openly work in the film industry for decades. Though HUAC had successfully exposed pro-Soviet elements in Hollywood, popular culture would come to view it as part of a witch hunt and make heroes of those who refused to “name names”.

1529 The Siege of Vienna Fails

Since the late 1300s the Ottoman Turks had been expanding into eastern Europe, conquering a number of Christian states and levying tribute from others on their borders. In 1453 they stormed the walls of Constantinople and ended the Byzantine Empire which had stood as a bulwark against Islam for 800 years. The Turks gradually moved out of the Balkans toward central Europe. In 1526 they smashed the Hungarians at Mohács and set their eyes on Vienna, capital of the Holy Roman empire.

The Turkish sultan was Suleiman the Magnificent, victor of battles against Wallachians, Serbs, Hungarians, the Knights of Rhodes, and Persia. He styled himself the Kayser-i-Rum, emperor of Rome and successor to Alexander the Great, the Byzantines and the Caesars. In 1529 he assembled a massive army of over 100,000 men and marched into Austria. His elite cavalry, the sipahis, and his elite infantry, the janissaries, were accompanied by artillery, often pulled by camels, and a force of Christian infantry from territories in Serbia subject to the Turks. They reached Vienna in late September and laid siege to the city.

Vienna was not well fortified nor were her walls manned by an abundance of troops. The Emperor Charles V was off in western Europe making war on the French and could spare only a very few soldiers, Spanish musketeers. The rest of the defenders were townsfolk and German landsknecht mercenaries, wielders of long swords and pikes. Fortunately, the defence was led by a cunning old strategist, Count Nicholas von Salm, a German mercenary who had been a soldier since the 1470s and who countered the Turkish siege attempts by intercepting the tunnels beneath the walls and occasional sallies against enemy trenches. In the end, sickness, heavy rain and snow sapped Turkish morale and on this date Suleiman abandoned the siege. Islamic forces would not penetrate this deep into Europe again until another disastrous siege of Vienna in 1683.

1066

In the first year of the War of 1812, the United States hoped to invade and conquer Canada by a four-pronged attack over a number of fronts. One army was to aim at Montreal, another at Kingston, another would cross into the Niagara region, and the last would be launched from Detroit against Amherstburg.

The plans never fully materialized. The American general Hull would be besieged in Detroit and forced to surrender to British General Isaac Brock, General Dearborn dallied in Albany, and the assault on Kingston never materialized. The thrust into the Niagara area did have profound consequences.

In October, General Van Rensselaer, based in Lewiston, New York, planned to cross the Niagara River and seize Queenston Heights. There he would establish a fort from which he could mount further attacks into Upper Canada. To do this, he assembled a force of 900 American army regulars and 2,650 militia men; opposing him was Brock’s contingent of 1,900 British regulars, Canadian militia, and Mohawk natives.

Though the boats carrying the invasion force on October 13 were heavily damaged by British artillery, American troops stormed gamely ashore and, advancing up the hill, took the guns and “spiked” them, putting them out of commission. Their capture of the Heights, and the death from sniper fire of General Brock and his replacement Lieutenant Colonel John Macdonnell, seemed to signal an American victory but British and Canadian reinforcement and a dread of the Mohawks caused nerves to fail and troops refuse to advance to consolidate their position. A bayonet charge and Mohawk war whoops finally brought about an American surrender.

The USA lost 100 killed, 170 wounded, and 835 captured; the defenders lost 21 killed, 85 wounded, and 22 captured. Canada lost a very able general in Brock (that’s him dying in the bottom right of the picture above) but the American invasion had been, not for the first, nor the last, time, thwarted.

The victory is commemorated by the towering Queenston Monument and is memorialized in song. The battle is celebrated in what really ought to be the Canadian national anthem, “The Maple Leaf Forever”, Stan Roger’s ballad “Macdonnell on the Heights”, and the 1959 novelty tune “The Battle of Queenston Heights”, penned in answer to Johnny Horton’s hit single “The Battle of New Orleans”.

From Chambers’ Book of Days:

On 12^th October 1492, Columbus with his followers landed on Guanahani or San Salvador, one of the Bahama Isles, and planted there the cross in token of gratitude to the Divine mercy, which, after guiding him safely through a perilous voyage, had at last, in the discovery of a western world, crowned with success the darling aspiration of his life. Land had already been descried on the previous evening, but it was not till the ensuing morning that the intrepid admiral beheld the flat and densely-wooded shores gleaming beneath the rays of an autumn sun, and by actually setting his foot on them, realized the fulfilment of his hopes.

It is now well known that although Columbus was unquestionably the first to proclaim to the world at large the existence of a new and vast region in the direction of the setting sun, he cannot literally be said to have been the first European discoverer of America. The ancient Scandinavians or Norsemen, so renowned for their maritime enterprise, had, at the commencement of the 11^th century, not only settled colonies in Greenland, but explored the whole east coast of America as far south as lat. 41° 30′ N, and there, near New Bedford, in the state of Massachusetts, they planted a colony. An intercourse by way of Greenland and Iceland subsisted between this settlement and Norway down to the fourteenth century.

There is also satisfactory evidence for believing, that in the twelfth century the celebrated Welsh prince, Madoc, having sailed from his native country with a small fleet, landed and founded a colony on the coast of Virginia. But to Columbus still belongs the merit of having philosophically reasoned out the existence of a New World, and by practically ascertaining the truth of his propositions, of inaugurating that connection between the Eastern and Western Hemispheres which has effected so remarkable a revolution in the world’s history.

The story of Prince Madoc continues to fascinate. Check out this site for the possibility of a tribe of Welsh Indians: https://www.thestar.com/news/insight/2007/07/22/will_dna_turn_madoc_myth_into_reality.html