Christmas Every Day

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.