Christmas Every Day

1919 The murders of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht

The collapse of the armies of the German Empire in November, 1918 led to the end of Word War I and the beginning of a period of chaos and instability in Germany. The Kaiser, Wilhelm II, abdicated and fled to Holland; a new national republic dominated by Social Democrats had been announced in Berlin; and numerous uprisings on the left and right sought to impose a new order on the country.

Marxist lawyer Karl Liebknecht (1871-1919) had declared a Free Socialist Republic, founded the Spartakasbund (the origins of the Communist Party of Germany, the KPD) and plotted how to achieve power in the anarchic few months after the war’s end. With his associate Rosa Luxemburg (1871-1919) he participated in an ill-fated revolution of Spartacists which was crushed by right-wing militia groups, the Freikorps. Luxemburg and Liebknecht were arrested, tortured and murdered but became martyrs of the Left. Their opposition to Leninism was overlooked by later Communists in East Germany (the DDR) who venerated the slain pair in numerous ways.

2004

Georgia adopts the “Five-Cross” flag

Georgia was one of the first nations to adopt Christianity and has fought hard over the centuries to maintain the faith despite the efforts of hostile neighbours. In the fifth century their armies were led by a white flag with a red St George’s cross (identical to England’s national banner). In the Middle Ages, supposedly in the reign of Giorgi V “the Magnificent” (1286-1346) who drove out Mongol overlords, four Jerusalem crosses were added. This flag was forgotten when Georgia became a Russian province and then a Soviet republic. After the collapse of the USSR, a newly-independent Georgia chose a drab tricolour flag briefly used after World War I but finally decided on the five crosses as a symbol of the nation’s long Christian tradition.

1507 Birth of a brutal duke

Fernando Álvarez de Toledo y Pimentel, Duke of Alva (or Alba) (1507-82) was an illustrious Spanish general during the many wars waged by King Charles I (known better as Charles V of the Holy Roman Empire) and his son Philip II. He won victories against the corsair pirates of the Barbary Coast, rebellious Dutch Protestants and rebellious German Protestant princes. Of him Chamber’s Book of Days says:

This great general of the Imperial army and Minister of State of Charles V, was educated both for the field and the cabinet, though he owed his promotion in the former service rather to the caprice than the perception of his sovereign, who promoted him to the first rank in the army more as a mark of favour than from any consideration of his military talents. He was undoubtedly the ablest general of his age. He was principally distinguished for his skill and prudence in choosing his positions, and for maintaining strict discipline in his troops. He often obtained, by patient stratagem, those advantages which would have been thrown away or dearly acquired by a precipitate encounter with the enemy. On the Emperor wishing to know his opinion about attacking the Turks, he advised him rather to build them a golden bridge than offer them a decisive battle. Being at Cologne, and avoiding, as he always did, an engagement with the Dutch troops, the Archbishop urged him to fight. ‘The object of a general,’ answered the Duke, ‘is not to fight, but to conquer; he fights enough who obtains the victory.’ During a career of so many years, he never lost a battle.

While we admire the astute commander, we can never hear the name of Alva without horror for the cruelties of which he was guilty in his endeavours to preserve the Low Countries for Spain. During his government in Holland, he is reckoned to have put 18,000 of the citizens to death. Such were the extremities to which fanaticism could carry men generally not deficient in estimable qualities, during the great controversies which rose in Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

Pieter Brueghel’s masterpiece “The Massacre of the Innocents” sets Herod’s Biblical slaughter of the boy babies of Bethlehem in a Dutch village overrun by Spanish troops. The black-armoured figure on horse-back is said to be based on the Duke of Alva.

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.