Christmas Every Day

1349

Hundreds of Jews are burnt to death in Strasbourg as people blame them for the Black Plague. This is despite the decree from the pope absolving Jews of any such responsibility and urging authorities to protect them.

1400

The deposed King of England Richard II dies, probably of starvation and mistreatment in prison, on the orders of the usurper Henry IV.

1502

Despite a treaty granting them religious toleration the Muslims of Granada are ordered to convert or face expulsion.

1556

Archbishop Thomas Cranmer is declared a heretic; he will be burnt at the stake within a month.

1779

Captain James Cook and four Royal Marines are murdered by natives on a beach in Hawaii.

1929

Seven members of Bugs Moran’s North Side Gang are shot to death by gunmen from Al Capone’s Chicago Outfit in the St Valentine’s Day Massacre.

1945

The R.A.F. and the American air force start the fire-bombing of Dresden. 25,000 German civilians will die.

1989

Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini issues a fatwa urging the murder of the author Salman Rushdie.

1258

Mongols take Baghdad

For 500 years Baghdad had served as the capital of the Abbasid caliphate and the centre of Islamic culture. Though in the 13th century the city and empire were in decline, Baghdad was still rich and populous with a million inhabitants, the site of many architectural marvels and impressive libraries.

The eruption of massive Mongol armies early in the 1200s completely change the geopolitical arrangements in Asia. The mighty Chinese empire fell and the borders of the caliphate crumbled as old Islamic conquests now were in Mongol hands. In the 1230s raids came closer and closer to Baghdad and it was clear that paying tribute to the hordes was a shrewd policy. The coming to power of a new more aggressive set of Mongol warlords altered the equation: they demanded that the Abbasid caliphate now pledge allegiance to the khans and that the Caliph himself come in person to their capital in Karakoram in Mongolia to submit. This was refused and Baghdad’s days were numbered.

In January 1258 the city was besieged by 150,000 Mongols under Hulagu, aided by Chinese artillery, disgruntled Shiites, and detachments from various Christian kingdoms who had long fought against the Caliphs: crusader knights from Palestine and troops from Georgia and Armenia. The walls were soon breached and on February 10 the city surrendered, leading to an epic sack and orgy of killing and destruction. The Caliph was wrapped in a carpet, beaten with clubs and trampled to death by Mongol horses. Casualties were in the hundreds of thousands; priceless palaces, mosques and libraries were burnt; and vast amounts of treasure were taken away. The dams on the Tigris and the Euphrates that the Abbasids had built up over a period of five centuries were demolished. The destruction of dams throughout Central Asia depressed agriculture and slowed population and economic recovery for many centuries. Baghdad, which was once the premier city of the world, became a ghost town.

For many historians this sack marked the end of the Islamic Golden Age. The caliphate ceased to matter for centuries and Muslim learning and science suffered a great setback.

1952 Elizabeth II becomes queen

George VI of the House of Windsor, the last Emperor of India, and By the Grace of God, of Great Britain, Ireland and the British Dominions beyond the Seas King, Defender of the Faith, had long been in ill health but his sudden death of a heart attack took the world by surprise. His daughter, Elizabeth (b. 1926), heir to the throne, was on an African tour at the time, up a tree in Kenya. She returned home with her husband, Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, to assume the duties of Queen and prepare for her coronation.

On her 21st birthday in a radio message to the Commonwealth she had said, “I declare before you all that my whole life, whether it be long or short, shall be devoted to your service and the service of our great imperial family to which we all belong.” She has kept that promise for 67 years. God save the Queen.

1509

The Battle of Diu

When the Portuguese explorers in the late 15th century rounded the Cape of Good Hope and headed up the east coast of Africa, they were on a mission that would revolutionize geopolitics in Asia for centuries. Empires would rise and fall, trade routes would be changed, the balance of wealth would shift to the Atlantic from the Mediterranean, and Christianity and Islam would clash on a new battlefront.

For centuries the Italian city states controlled international commerce between Europe and Asia, acting as a middle man between Christian nations and the Turks and Egyptians. What was termed the “spice trade” really meant the importing of a host of chemicals, preservatives, foods, timber, and cloth from Asia. Between the money their ships made from the transport of these goods and the mark-up they charged their European markets, cities like Venice and Genoa prospered.

The Atlantic-facing states — England, Spain, Portugal and France — all took to the sea at the turn of the 16th century to find a direct way to Asia. While others sailed west, the Portuguese sailed south around Africa and finally intruded into Asian waters in 1494. They found that while their trade goods were little valued by sophisticated Asians, their maritime technology was irresistible. With large sailing vessels propelled by square and lateen sails and bristling with heavy artillery, they could outfight any Arab or Indian fleet and bombard ports into submission. With easy brutality the Portuguese set about erecting a trade empire and alarming those who had held a monopoly hitherto.

In 1509 a unique alliance of Christian trading cities (Venice and Ragusa) and Islamic powers (the Mamluks of Egypt who had controlled the Red Sea, the Ottoman Turks, and various Indian states) gathered a fleet to oppose the Portuguese. Outside the port of Diu on the Arabian Sea, 18 Portuguese carracks and caravels blew 100 small allied vessels, many of them Mediterranean galleys, out of the water.

The Battle of Diu allowed the Portuguese to continue snapping up Indian ports and led to the overthrow of the Mamluks for their failure to protect the sea routes that were part of the pilgrimage to Mecca. This latter change made the Turkish Sultans the new caliphs of Sunni Islam and their Ottoman Empire the dominant Islamic power.

If you were around Westminster in London on this date in 1649 you would have noticed a rare event: a king being put on trial for treason.

Charles I, the second of the Stuart dynasty, had quarrelled with Parliament and had fallen (or jumped) into a bitter Civil War which he and his royalist cause had lost decisively. Now he was being tried for warring against his people and “all the treasons, murders, rapines, burnings, spoils, desolations, damages and mischiefs to this nation, acted and committed in the said wars.”

1916

The end of the Battle of Gallipoli

One of the most consequential battles of the 20th century took place beside the straits that lead from the Aegean Sea to the Black Sea. On April 25, 1915 Allied forces began to land on the Gallipoli peninsula as part of a plan to capture Constantinople, capital of the Ottoman Empire and thus drive Turkey, a German ally, out of the First World War. Less than nine months later after bloody stalemate, the British, French, Australian, New Zealand troops withdrew, with a regiment of Newfoundlanders serving as the rear guard covering their retreat.

Instead of victoriously marching up the peninsula toward Constantinople, the Allies barely succeeded in penetrating the hills beyond the beaches. The Turks, under the command of German officers and a colonel by the name of Mustafa Kemal, held the heights tenaciously at great cost to both sides. With trenches mere yards apart at some points, the fighting was often vicious and personal. Casualties were high and eventually the Allies chose to withdraw and abandon the ambitious plan.

The fall-out of this defeat was enormous. Both present-day Turkey, New Zealand and Australia regard it as a foundational moment in their histories. Kemal would go on to overthrow the Ottoman Empire and become known as Atatürk, the founder of a secular, new republic. Winston Churchill, whose brainchild the invasion was, lost his job as head of the Admiralty and amphibious invasions were regarded with great trepidation until the success of the D-Day landings in 1944. Most importantly, the failure to clear a path to the Black Sea prevented the western Allies from reaching Russia with supplies. Russia’s subsequent military set-backs led directly to the overthrow of the Czar, the establishment of a nascent democracy, and the toppiling of that democracy by the Bolsheviks. The history of the 20th century would have been vastly different if the Allies ahd won at Gallipoli.

St Distaff’s Day

January 7 is so called because the Christmas season in the United Kingdom ended on Epiphany, and on the following day women returned to their distaffs or daily work. It is also called Rock Day, after the antique term for a distaff. A seventeenth-century poem by Thomas Herrick states:

St. Distaff’s Day; Or, the Morrow after Twelfth-day

Partly work and partly play
You must on St. Distaffs Day:
From the plough soon free your team;
Then cane home and fother them:
If the maids a-spinning go,
Burn the flax and fire the tow.
Bring in pails of water then,
Let the maids bewash the men.
Give St. Distaff all the right:
Then bid Christmas sport good night,
And next morrow every one
To his own vocation.

1642 Charles I invades the House of Commons

Animosity had been growing for years between a large section of the Parliamentary class and the second king of the Stuart dynasty, Charles I. Charles had attempted to rule without Parliament, introduced a number of unpopular and possibly unconstitutional taxes, and given the impression he favoured the return of Catholicism by supporting the Arminian practices of Archbishop Laud and marrying a French Catholic wife. In 1640 he abruptly cancelled the parliamentary sitting when Members demanded reform. In 1642, acting on the rumour that his wife, Queen Henrietta Maria, was to be impeached, Charles brought troops into the House of Commons demanding that five of his critics be arrested.

Sitting in the chair of the Speaker of the House, Charles directed the Speaker to tell him where his opponents had gone. On his knees William Lenthall replied, “May it please your Majesty, I have neither eyes to see nor tongue to speak in this place but as the House is pleased to direct me, whose servant I am here.” The king left in disgust, but his actions had greatly exacerbated tensions and further cast him in the light of a tyrant. Within months the English Civil War had begun.

Words fail me.

Big Chief put his war paint on and kissed his squaw goodbye
Throw away his pipe of peace, and went to do or die
He said, “Uncle Sammy feeds me, gives me all I get
Now that Uncle Sammy needs me, Big Chief no forget”

Chorus:
Big Chief’s on his way to Berlin, just to do his share
Big Chief’s goin’ to make ’em squawk
When he hits ’em with his tomahawk
Big Chief’s goin’ to scalp the Kaiser, take away his gun
Oh! oh he have heap much fun
Goodbye Herman, no more German
Big Chief Kill-a-Hun

Pershing wants to catch the Kaiser, take him live or dead
Big chief says he’s satisfied if he can get his head
There will be no more Budweiser, in the Kaiser’s brew
All he’s goin’ to get to drink will be some Waterloo