Food for the Crows: The Whole Bloody History of Human Conflict

[Trollheart]

Whether it's Hitler jack-booting his way across Europe, Genghis Khan sweeping down from the Mongolian Steppes or the invasion of Iraq, or even just that guy eyeing your girlfriend and having had one pint too many, humans have always been up for a fight. Why? At heart, though we like to pretend otherwise, we're just animals, with instincts honed over thousands of years of trying to not only survive, but rise to be the dominant life-form on this planet, and one of those instincts is the need for combat. Whether to protect our loved ones, our land, or our homes, or to take those of another; whether to satisfy the call of duty or the bonds of friendship; whether to enrich ourselves or consolidate our power, or just for the sheer dumb hell of it, we love to fight. At heart, we all do. If men didn't have an instinct for war, then kings and emperors would never have built and held the realms they did, and huge armies would not, for long periods of time, have held sway over vast sections of the world.

But what is it that really makes men - and many women - want to fight? What is it that makes young people enlist in the army, or sign up for kickboxing lessons? What is it that makes that guy talking loudly in the cinema a worthy recipient in your mind for a knuckle sandwich? Why do the strong prey on the weak, and the many on the few? And what part does false courage, such as alcohol or the encouragement of mates, play in our desire to inflict violence on others? There's surely  no one answer, and the possibilities I've outlined above may go some way towards providing reasons, but no doubt there are  many others. Men and women fight because they've been wronged, or feel they have. They fight against oppression and tyranny, they fight for their country out of a sense of national pride, or to protect their families. And of course, without question, two of the main reasons people fight is for religion and money, the two sometimes going hand in hand.

In this new journal I'll be looking at all instances of man's desire for conflict, so we'll be examining the major and minor battles of history, trying to see why they took place, if they met their goal, and what, if any, impact they had on later history. But I won't be just checking out the battlefields of humanity, oh no: the title of this journal is The History of Human Conflict, and for there to be conflict there does not necessarily have to be battle, or war, or even physical confrontation. Man's entire history is built on conflict. Sometimes this is a good thing, as a society without conflict can be seen to be a stagnant one, and we all know what happened to the Eloi in H.G Wells's novel. Out of wars and empires have come some incredible advances in science and technology, agriculture and of course warfare, architecture, art and music, and education. These can be the by-products of war; they are usually not  the goal. But conflict does move humanity on, and every so often, to be crude and inaccurate, the human race needs a good kick up the arse to get it going, or keep it going, in case it gets lazy and starts to atrophy.

Nobody would deny though that the main product of wars is death, loss, famine, destruction and a reduction in population. But as I said, human conflict is not limited to wars and battles, so my intention is to look into all other forms of struggle - union strikes, the vote for women, slavery, poverty, ideological battles as well as physical ones, from the smallest to the largest and from the most important to the least. Naturally, I don't intend, nor do I have any hope of covering every conflict in our history - nobody could live that long - so I will be choosing my subjects carefully. Unlike some of my other history projects, this one will not adhere to a timeline, so we may check out a battle in Ancient Greece and then hop over to World War I for the Battle of Jutland, or maybe look in on the Bay of Pigs or the Tet Offensive, all the while stopping off to examine women's suffrage, the plight of Palestinians or the unfair treatment meted out to the workers by heartless employers and global conglomerates.

Throughout this I will be maintaining my usual mix of wit and personal observation (shut up), while researching from multiple sources. I hope to make this an interesting, perhaps surprising tour through the many and varied confrontations man has had with his fellow man, and no doubt will continue to have as long as he exists.

[Trollheart]

For no particular reason, let's first check out one of the bloodiest wars in man's history, the biggest battle and the largest loss of life ever sustained by the British Army, over a period of 141 days in 1916. When people speak of the First World War, this is the battle that most frequently comes up, not only due to the massive casualties but also the belief that, in essence, it really accomplished very little.


Timeline: 1916

The Battle of the Somme (July 1 - November 18, 1916)

Era: Twentieth century
Year: 1916
Campaign: The Somme Offensive
Conflict: World War I
Country: France
Region: The River Somme, Picardy, France
Combatants: Britain, France and Germany (others took part but these three were the main powers)
Commander(s): Allies side: (British) General (later Field Marshal) Douglas Haig, General Henry Rawlinson, General Sir Hubert de Poer Gough (French) Marshall Joseph Jaques Joffre, General Ferdinand Foch, General Joseph Alfred Micheler.
German side: Crown Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria, General Max von Gallwitz, General Fritz von Below
Reason: Britain and France were at war against Germany, and had been for two years at this point
Objective: Originally to push the Germans out of Belgium, where their U-Boat fleets were harrying Allied shipping, but after the Verdun offensive the Somme became more a battle of attrition to relieve pressure on the French forces (see full text for more)
Casualties* (approx): Allied total: 620,000 German: 434,000 - 600,000 (varies)
Objective Achieved? No
Victor: Neither

* Casualties refers to both those killed and those wounded

Note before we begin: Oh, seriously? Within the command structure for the battle we had a JJJ (Get me an interview with Spiderman!), a German general called Foch and another called von Below? You have to laugh, don't you? Over a million dead did not...

By December 1915, Field Marshal (then General)l Sir Douglas Haig had been placed in charge as Commander-in-Chief of the British Expeditionary Forces (BEF) and with the French commander, Joseph Joffre, had agreed to mount a combined offensive at the River Somme. The Germans, however, threw a spanner in the Allied works by attacking Verdun a week later, forcing the French to commit most of their forces to that battle, leaving the British basically facing the Germans at the Somme on their own. The idea of the attack at Verdun was to defeat the French by exhausting and demoralising them, thereby leaving the British as easy pickings, and bringing the war to an end. Unfortunately for the Germans, as Hitler would discover twenty-five years later, battles don't always go to plan, and just as would be the case at Stalingrad, the German commander overreached himself and by doing so depleted his reserves for the Somme, leaving them fighting a desperate rearguard action.

Unbelievably, the night before the battle began General Rawlinson telephoned the troops to wish them good luck; this message was intercepted by the Germans, who then knew an attack was imminent! Prior to the infantry offensive, the British and French had spent seven days shelling the German positions, the intent being to wipe out most if not all resistance, leaving their infantry nothing more than a mopping-up campaign, hence the infamous "walk, don't run towards the enemy" instruction which cost so many British soldiers their lives when they realised that the enemy was not so badly defeated. Hardly at all, in fact: the artillery the Allies had used was not powerful enough to penetrate the German trenches, many of the shells failed even to explode and the barbed wire marking the border of their territory was not, as originally envisioned and intended, destroyed but mostly left in place. Once the shelling stopped, the Germans came out of their entrenchments and manned their machine guns, cutting down the advancing troops.

For all that, in strictly military and not human terms, the battle, which was more an offensive and was to last 141 days, began well for the Allies, as they pushed the Germans back from both the north and south banks of the Somme. However it was simultaneously the day when the British suffered their highest casualties, almost 20,000 men being killed over a twenty-four hour period. Probably due to being in retreat at the time, the Germans only had about half that number killed. Things began to go badly for the British by the middle of the month, due to a combination of inexperienced troops, bad planning and poor communication, as German strengths were underestimated. Near the end of August, meetings between the four Allied commanders failed to establish a proper strategy, and shortly thereafter the Germans launched a massive counter-attack.

In mid-September the first usage of tanks in war was seen, but, new and temperamental as these machines were, they were prone to breaking down and often got mired in the mud. The tanks of WWI were far different to those seen in war films of the Second World War, and were basically big lumbering slabs of metal with tracks wound right around them. Consensus is that they were pretty useless, but as a morale-draining tactic they must have been quite effective. Seeing one of these roll out of the smoke towards you can not have been a good way to start your day if you were a German soldier! Weather became an increasingly regular obstacle to progress, heavy rain hampering any attempts to move forward, and further miring the new tanks in deep, sucking mud.

In the end, tired, battered, losing more men every day and unable to battle the increasingly foul weather, the campaign was called off on November 19. A mere seven miles of ground had been won, none of it strategic, and between them the Allies and the Germans had sustained over a million casualties. Perhaps the most telling and succinct legacy of the Battle of the Somme can be found in the words of Friedrich Steinbrecher: "Somme. The whole history of the world cannot contain a more ghastly word." Or, as another, unnamed witness described it, "monotonous, mutual mass murder."

It's probably hard for we in the twenty-first century, with all the technology at our hands that allows us now to kill from a distance of thousands of miles, with drones and cruise missiles and a more almost understanding attitude taken by most of the world's armies towards things like PTSD to understand and appreciate how men could crouch in trenches, wait for the signal and then literally walk to their deaths. Not against an enemy who came towards them, but right into static machine-gun fire, being cut down like stalks of wheat by a scythe. But remember, or understand, if you don't know: any soldier who refused to go "over the top" when the whistle blew would be shot by the officer in charge, and if there was anything worse than dying in the war it was to be shot for cowardice, as those of us who've seen Downton Abbey know.

Your family would be disgraced, any medals you had been awarded would be rescinded, your regiment might find itself out of favour, and after the war was won your family would be remembered as the one whose son wasn't brave enough to fight for his country. It's possible, too, though I can't confirm, that you might not be buried in consecrated ground. All things being equal, considering you were going to probably die anyway, might as well take your chance with your mates against the German guns. Hell, maybe you'd get lucky and make it. Small chance, but if you were shot as a coward you would definitely die.

But who couldn't be terrified in such a war, or any war? Most of these men were young, often no more than boys, boys who thought they were going off on a great adventure, a "lark" after which they would be heroes, loved by girls and respected by men. None of them expected to die - they surely knew the possibility was there, but it lurked likely in the back of the mind, pushed away and ignored, because if you really thought about your chances of coming back, at least in one piece, from such a wholesale slaughter, you'd never enlist in the first place.

Not that that would save you, either, as during World War I conscription was in effect, and anyone who didn't sign up would receive a letter from the war ministry advising them they had been drafted, and to report to their local army office. Only people who, for reasons of health, social standing or other factors which made them unsuitable would escape being called up, and there was no way to refuse, unless you wanted to become a "conshy", a conscientious objector, for which you would likely be thrown in prison, and for which beliefs you would be vilified by everyone, especially the women who, not being eligible to fight, were very quick to disparage, embarrass and sneer at any man who did not join the war effort.

The Battle of the Somme would go down as not only the bloodiest in World War I, but one of the most brutal ones in all of history, and according to some commentators, one of the most mismanaged and bungled, and indeed pointless and least successful of the First World War. It would mark the first use of both tanks and sustained air power, but neither did much to sway the outcome of either the battle or the remainder of the war, and "the war to end all wars" was going to continue to be decided mostly by the boots on the ground, by the senseless slaughter of the flower of youth of England, France, Germany and their allies, until finally the war would grind to a shuddering halt, with nothing really resolved on either side, and the population of the planet severely depleted.

Why will this battle be remembered?

I'll be putting this as a postscript to each entry, to look at the reason(s) why a battle went down in history, why it's still talked about, what lessons can be or were learned from it, and what overall effect, if any, it had, either on the overall campaign in which it was fought, or in history, or both.

Obviously, the main thing the Somme is remembered for is the huge loss of life for what turned out to be very little gain, leading to the epithet later for Haig as "the Butcher of the Somme". Instead of being relieved of his command or tried for war crimes (this was the real world, after all) Haig was promoted to Field Marshal in 1917. The general belief was that the commanding officers, at too far a remove from the field of battle, completely misinterpreted and misunderstood the situation, and sent their men in without the proper information, and therefore unprepared. The comedy series Blackadder Goes Forth illustrates this very well, in many scenes but in one particular one. General Melchet is looking admiringly at a small clod of earth on a table, which his adjuntant tells him is the amount of ground they have gained that day. When asked what scale the model is on, he's told, one to one, and nods. "So this is the actual ground taken, eh?"

It's satire, but it does serve to show how so little terrain was gained, and often, once gained quickly lost again as the Allies and the Germans moved back and forth across the lines in a murderous and insane game of capture-the-flag, or to quote Roger Waters "Generals sat and the lines on the map moved from side to side." Indeed. Opinions vary on whether the Battle of the Somme was a victory for anyone, or just a costly exercise in how not to direct a battle. Poems were written about it, films made, and protests raised. It certainly wouldn't have done much for the morale at home for the folks to hear that, yes, we "won" (I'm sure that was the official line) but that many towns and villages had likely lost all of their young men, and almost half a million of them would not be coming home, or would be returning badly wounded, and would never again be the same.

In military terms, the Somme allowed the British army to see how this sort of warfare was conducted (if badly) and to "bed in" their inexperienced troops - those that survived, that was. It also badly damaged the German resistance, leading to their exhausted defeat two years later. In addition, as already mentioned, it was something of a proving ground for the new weapon, the Mark I tank, which, though it failed to turn the tide of the battle or even contribute in any real meaningful way, did impress Haig so much that he ordered a thousand more.

In the end though, the Battle of the Somme will always be synonymous with pointless and wholesale slaughter of youth, the cream of England's manhood cut down like blades of grass beneath an uncaring, out of control lawnmower, propelled by someone who had no clue how to use it and just pushed on regardless.

[Trollheart]

Let's jump back a little in time now, almost exactly five hundred years in fact, to a time when England was once again at war with her old enemy, France, and had been for nearly a century at this point. Seems down through history England was always at war with someone: if it wasn't the French it was the Scottish, if not them the Spanish, or the Dutch, or the Germans. I suppose it comes from having both a large standing army that had to be kept busy, rivalries between kings and old grudges over land, religion or both. If, as I stated in my History of Ireland journal, we are a nation of begrudgers, then the same can certainly be said of the English, who did not allow sleeping dogs to lie, and to muddy the metaphor slightly, were always looking for an excuse to stir up the hornet's nest.


Timeline: 1415

The Battle of Agincourt (October 25 1415)


Era: Fifteenth Century
Year: 1415
Campaign: The Lancastrian War
Conflict: The Hundred Years' War
Country: France
Region: Agincourt (Azincourt) near Calais, Northern France
Combatants: France and England
Commander(s): (English) King Henry V, Edward, Duke of York, Sir Thomas Camoys, Sir Thomas Erpingham (French) Constable Charles d'Albret, Jean de Maingre, Charles, Duke of Orleans, John, Duke of Alencon, Jean, Duke of Bourbon
Reason: King Henry had been trying to take back land in France he believed to be England's by right. Negotiations between France and England had stalled, and Henry, perceiving an insult in the French response to his demands, moved to invade France.
Objective: Ostensibly, to claim the throne of France, which Henry believed to be his by right of his great-grandfather, Edward III, but in reality just to provoke the French and secure better terms to allow him to renounce his claim.
Casualties (approx): (English) Up to 600 killed (French) Up to 8000, of which up to 6000 killed
Objective Achieved? Yes
Victor: England
Legacy: The battle destroyed much of the French nobility, led to the fracturing of power structures and the collapse of alliances within the country, and showed the value both of the use of longbows and the choice of terrain, as well as the folly of being too heavily armoured, to say nothing of overconfidence. Agincourt also quickly established Henry V as one of England's finest commanders and most respected kings.

On opposite sides this time, as they would be, mostly, up until the twentieth century, England and France had been at war for literally almost a hundred years, hence the name given to the war, which had seen the rise and fall of four separate monarchs both of England and France over its duration, and would see too one more on each throne before it came to an end. The war as usual was about territory and perceived rights, with England demanding its lands in France, particularly Aquitaine, Normandy, Brittany, Flanders, Anjou and Touraine and France wishing to claim them back for the Crown. Of course, the war had not been going for a century non-stop; there were periods of peace, or truce, which lasted decades in some cases, but by 1415 the last truce was over, and the  period known to history as The Lancastrian War had begun. This would last till 1453, when it would bring to a close the final phase in the longest war in European history.

Having only succeeded to the throne two years earlier, Henry V was anxious both to stamp his authority on his new realm and to avenge what was seen as the humiliation of his forebears as their lands in France were taken back by the French Crown while they were otherwise engaged, fighting Scotland or Spain. After a period of peace, a truce lasting twenty-six years, Henry was tired of negotiating with the French king and decided to sue for war. He accordingly invaded France on August 13 with a fleet reported to have been over a thousand ships strong. However due to bad weather, disease and a siege that took longer than expected, he had only taken one town, the port of Harfleur, by the time winter began drawing in. Having a stronghold in Calais he decided to march there, to make his presence known and hopefully to tempt the French into battle.

They didn't quite take the bait, but did move to block him at - wait for it - the River Somme. He managed to find a way through though and continued on north while the French army shadowed him, unwilling to force a pitched battle. A sense of overconfidence, even contempt of the English army seems to have contributed to the French army's downfall, as did the terrain. Content to wait out Henry, the French commanders did not force a battle, allowing the English king time to have his men construct obstacles of sharpened wooden stakes which would deflect their cavalry. They would have reason to rue this later. They did outnumber the English though - some accounts claim a ratio of ten French soldiers to every English, though accounts of the French army totalling around fifty thousand men to the English's nine makes this more likely to have been five to one - and largely ignored their archers, who were in fact to prove critical to the success of the English. Mostly, the French nobles seemed more eager to capture and ransom the high-ranking English lords and considered them beneath them as an adversary, believing the battle would be a foregone conclusion.

They were, of course, very much mistaken.

Although technically on home ground, the French were hampered by the wooded terrain, and the rain made the ground thick and mucky, which in turn made progress for the more heavily-armoured French knights difficult. The armour tended to drag them down, and made it all but impossible to rise once they had fallen. Reports speak of knights actually drowning inside their helmets. The narrow woodland forced the French to send only their infantry forward, with no way for their archers to provide covering fire without hitting their own men, while the narrow defile in turn created an easily-defended area for the English to hold. When the French surged forward, so great was their combined momentum that as men at the front fell and died, the ones coming up behind could not stop and fell on top of them, many of them sharing the same fate, or being trampled by even more coming behind them.

The cavalrymen fared little better. Although on horseback and therefore (as long as they remained there) not subject to the sucking mud, they were unable to charge the English longbowmen due to the sharpened stakes set before them. The Englishmen had no such restriction, and as their arrows hit the French horses the animals panicked and charged back through the French lines, many trampling advancing infantry who could not get out of the way. Those who managed to continue pressing forward towards enemy lines had to lower their heads so as to protect their eyes and mouths from the hail of arrows filling the sky from the English lines, as these were the weak points in their helmets. This made both breathing and progress difficult, and tired the French knights out even more; by the time they had made it to the woodland fortification, it's said many had not the strength to even lift their weapons, exhausted by the trek through mud, arrows and heat.

With so many prisoners captured, Henry feared the French would realise their superiority in numbers and would turn against their captors, so in a move that perhaps should have shocked the medieval world, but seems to have been generally accepted by historians as understandable, he had thousands of the French prisoners slaughtered, going against the ancient laws of chivalry that governed both his and the French knights. Though many of his men balked at such an order, he threatened to kill anyone who disobeyed, and all but the most senior (and therefore most valuable for ransom) were executed. Of course, this was half a millennium ago and so accounts may not be reliable, but there are those who maintain the order to slay the prisoners was merely a terrorising tactic, designed to prevent the French from attacking from within his own lines, and that Henry countermanded the order when the main force of the French army retreated and the day was won.

Why will this battle be remembered?

Mostly, it will be looked to as a glorious victory for England against overwhelming odds, a battle they were expected to lose, being outnumbered, in a foreign land and almost under siege. It is also pointed to as an example of terrain deciding the turn of the tide, and the folly of the French in persisting in wearing heavier armour, whereas the English, in lighter armour, were able to deal with the treacherous conditions more effectively. It is feted as the time when an all but newly-crowned king personally led his forces to a decisive and unexpected victory, and when, due to his St. Crispin's Day speech, a king identified with his men as being more than just employees or servants, leading to Shakespeare's famous "band of brothers" dialogue nearly two hundred years later.

But it will be mostly remembered for the use of the longbow by the English and the frustration of the superior French cavalry by the use of the sharpened spikes. Had either or both not been effectively employed by Henry's men, the battle could easily have turned against them. Cavalry was a tried and trusted way to win battles, men on horseback either running down and routing infantry, or cavalry fighting it out against other cavalry, but at Agincourt this did not work, as related above, and in fact the horses of the French were turned into weapons against their own people. The French archers were next to useless, unable to fire into the narrow space through which their countrymen attacked for fear of hitting their own forces, and though the French held the high ground, which should always be the superior position, the usage by the English of the woodland frustrated their opponents and made them hard to get at.

It will not be remembered, as such, though perhaps it should, as a war crime. The decision of King Henry V to massacre his prisoners is almost a footnote in the history of the Battle of Agincourt, overshadowed by the amazing victory, and while this reprehensible action has not quite been airbrushed out of the account, it seems to be viewed by historians now as excusable, understandable, even necessary. Are these apologists who make such claims? Possibly: it won't be to anyone's surprise to find that few if any commentators who excuse or explain the slaughter are French. No doubt they would have a different view on the matter. And no doubt, too, that had it been the English who had been slaughtered after having been taken prisoner by the French, the event would have gone down in English history as one of unmitigated horror and savagery. To the victor, the spoils, after all.

Though Agincourt was a massive victory for the English, it didn't lead to more successes, at least not right away. Henry had been essentially on his way home, and he continued there after the rout at Agincourt, returning as a hero and a saviour, one of the first and most important victories of his relatively short reign. However, the cream of the French nobility had been decimated by the battle. With losses said to be ten times that suffered by the English, the Kingdom of France lost most of its top men - dukes, counts, other nobles - including three of the commanders of the French forces at Agincourt. After Henry left, internal strife began to tear the French factions apart, weakening their strength and leaving them primed for a fresh attack by the victorious English two years later.

Agincourt also demonstrated that England was indeed a power to be reckoned with, having defeated a far better armed and more numerous contingent of what was, at the time, one of the most powerful kingdoms on Earth. The Hundred Years' War would end in 1453 in a victory for the French, but civil war, famine and social unrest would work to destabilise the old seats of power, leading to the rise of Napoleon and the eventual French Revolution, while on the English side peace would not last long either, as anger over the right of succession to the English throne would lead in two short years to the Wars of the Roses, when England would be plunged into bloody conflict for thirty years.

[Trollheart]

Timeline: 490 BC

The Battle of Marathon (September 10 490 BC)

Era: Fifth Century BC
Year: 490 BC
Campaign: First Persian Invasion of Greece
Conflict: Greco-Persian Wars
Country: Greece
Region: Marathon
Combatants: Perisan Empire, City State of Athens
Commander(s): (Athens) Miltiades, Callimachus, Aristides the Just, Xanthippus, Themistocles, Stesilaos, Arimnestos, Cynaegirus, (Persia) Datis, Artaphernes, Hippias
Reason: An attempt to subjugate both Athens and Sparta in retribution for standing against the Persian Empire
Objective: To take Attica, and then Athens and Sparta, and eventually all of Greece
Casualties (approx): 203 (Athens) 4,000 -5,000 (Persia)
Objective Achieved? No
Victor: Athens
Legacy: This battle served to show two things, which had not been apparent before: firstly, that the mighty Persian Empire could be beaten, and secondly, that the Athenians could do so without having to rely on their traditional ally, the Spartans.

Some people just can't let a grudge go. After the Greek colonies in Asia Minor were conquered by the forces of Darius I, Emperor of Persia, they revolted and were helped in that endeavour by soldiers from Athens, who came to help their Greek brothers. This was in 498 BC. Darius, who had not seemingly even heard of Athens before, demanded to know who these upstarts were who dared attack and burn his city of Sardis, capital of Lydia, one of Persia's most important cities. When told they were Athenians, he swore revenge on them, and to this end had a slave whisper in his ear three times a day "Master, remember the Athenians."

And so he did. Let's take a moment to look at some of the major players here, beginning with the emperor himself. It's critical to remember that at the time, the Persian Empire was one of the biggest and most powerful empires in the known world, and you simply didn't stand up to them. If they wanted your country, it was best just to hand it over without any fuss, because if you didn't, well, they were going to take it from you anyway, and leave a whole lot of children without fathers and wives without husbands, and fill the air with the acrid stench both of burning masonry and flesh.


Darius the Great, c. 550 - 486 BC

Darius I, also known as The Great, was the third king of the Achaemenid Empire, essentially the First Persian Empire, established in Iran (then known as Persia) around 550 BC by Cyrus the Great. At its height, the Achae - sod it, let's just call it the Persian Empire, huh? - stretched from the Balkans of Eastern Europe to the Indus Valley in Asia, and was possibly the first major empire, though I'd have to check that. It was the first to devolve rule under its authority to governors or satraps, who each reported to the Persian King. Darius presided over the biggest expansion of the empire, and had among his other titles, King of Kings, King of Babylon and Pharaoh of Egypt. What does seem odd, to me (though it probably wasn't uncommon at the time) is that Darius did not ascend the throne due to any right of birth, but rather, in a sort of military coup.

He was not born of royal parents (but then, for all I know, neither was Cyrus, whose son, Cambyses II, succeeded him on his death and then promptly went mad) but served in the army and though the king at the time, Cyrus the Great (guess everyone was "the Great" in those days, eh?) had a prophetic dream about Darius taking his throne, this seems to have happened only after Cambyses lost it. Killing, it is said, his own brother, Bardiya, he then died of an infected wound. The murder was, it seems, kept secret and so when an imposter called Gaumata came and proclaimed himself as the brother, Bardiya, the people accepted him - having become restless under the rule of the increasingly-loopy Cambyses - and it was up to Darius, with a cohort of allies, to depose him. It's pretty likely there was no imposter and that Darius removed the obstacle to his reign by killing Cambyses's would-be successor, but as they say, history is written by the victors.

You have to admire the selection process for who would become king of these six or seven nobles then. They decided they'd all sit on their horses outside at sunrise, and whoever's horse neighed first would be king. Hey, it beats 270 electoral college votes, doesn't it? So our friend Darius took the throne, and became the third ruler of the Persian Empire. However taking the throne and holding it are two different things, and Darius found that the official story from the palace of how he took power was not always believed, leading to revolts in Assyria, Babylonia and Egypt, all of which he ruthlessly put down, claiming he had killed "nine lying kings" in the process. Rebellion was closer to home, too, though, much closer. One of the nobles who had helped him to the throne, Intaphernes (is this where the word interfere comes from?) paid Darius a terrible insult which led the ruler to believe his ex-comrade was planning to seize power for himself, so, as you do, he slaughtered him and almost all his family.

Darius conquered all before him, but it was his attempts - eventually successful - to put down the Ionian Revolt in the Greek-inhabited areas of Asia Minor and the surrounding islands which drew support from Athens and Eretria, actions which would cause him to turn his eyes towards Greece itself, and especially Athens, and which would lead to the first major defeat for his army under his rule.



Miltiades the Younger (c. 550 - 489 BC)

Odd as it may seem, though there was a Miltiades the Elder, he was not his father, the Elder dying without issue, and passing his kingdom on his death on to his nephew, Stesagoras. Miltiades the Elder had set himself up as tyrant of the Thrace Chersonese (which is now the Gallipoli Peninsula in Turkey) which he ruled for 35 years until his death in 520 BC. Note: although today the word tyrant is used as a pejorative for a despot or dictator, in ancient times it had a different meaning, simply indicating that  the holder of the title was the unchallenged ruler, who had taken power by his own hands and had not been elected. There were a lot of tyrants in ancient Greece, as we will see. Anyway, poor old Stesagoras didn't last long, dying in 516, a mere four years after taking power, felled by "an axe to the head". That'll do it all right. Mind you, it doesn't say who wielded the axe.

Back in Athens, Miltiades the Younger, Stesagoras's brother, was doing well and had become the archon, or chief magistrate, of the city, under the rule of the tyrant (see? I told you) Hippias. When someone perhaps misunderstood the term "let's bury the hatchet" with regard to Stesagoras, Miltiades the Younger (who, given his uncle is now dead we will just in future refer to as Miltiades) was sent to take over. He immediately established his power and tricked the  nobles into being captured, then consolidated his hold over the city. Around 513, our friend Darius made his appearance and subjugated the Thrace Chersonese, making Miltiades a vassal and forcing him to fight for him. However when word came to the Persian king that his Athenian vassal had been plotting to destroy a bridge he and his men had been left to guard, to prevent Darius's crossing the Danube into Scythia, he was less than pleased and Militades had to flee. He joined the Ionian Revolt, and when that was crushed, legged it back to Athens, possibly to await the vengeance of his ex-master, which was surely to come.

He wasn't exactly welcomed back with open arms though. Hippias had been deposed and exiled, tyranny abolished in Athens and democracy had taken its place. As a tyrant himself, the Athenians were sceptical of Miltiades, but his knowledge of Persian tactics and experience fighting them would be invaluable, and so he was forgiven and allowed to rejoin the city, which he would defend in the battle to come.

Hippias (c. 547 - 490 BC)

We've heard of this guy already. In a tactic which would be repeated by deposed rulers or out-of-favour nobles or generals down through history, Hippias would lead the Persians back to his old stomping ground of Athens, in the hope of being able to claim it back and being re-established as the tyrant there once Darius and his boys had kicked the crap out of the fledgling democracy and reinstalled tyranny. Not saying they all didn't anyway, but Hippias seems to have lived up to the more modern interpretation of the word tyrant, being a cruel ruler who executed his subjects on a whim, and levelled crippling taxes on the ones he spared. Eventually the people had had enough and Hippias was deposed and exiled. Given that he had looked to the Persian empire for assistance against his growing enemies when in power, it was only natural that he should seek shelter among them, always hoping one day to return and retake power. Unbeknownst to him, he had allies in the Spartans, who didn't much like this idea of democracy and thought Athens was becoming a threat under it. Get the tyranny back, they thought, and scotch this whole stupid idea before it had a chance to breathe. But despite threats from Persia, at the urging of the Spartans, that they would attack if Athens didn't take Hippias back, they were told to bog off. Understandably, they did not take this well.

When the Ionian Revolt kicked off (yes, this again!) Hippias was delighted when Athens aided the rebels as, once they were defeated, he was able to float the idea of an invasion of Greece to Darius, who nodded sagely, remembering the words his slave was commanded to whisper in his ear. "Let's go get them bastards!" he may have said, though there are no records of his actual words. Hippias suggested Marathon as a good place to land, and Darius agreed.

The Battle

So Darius's fleet arrived in the Bay of Marathon, 25 miles from Athens. Before they could move inland though, Miltiades, familiar with the Persians' tactics, marched his army there and blocked off the only two exits from the plain. Seeing they were hopeless outnumbered (around 125,000 to 10,000, very roughly, though not every man fought in the battle or was used) he sent a runner to Sparta, hoping they would come to their aid as a fellow Greek city state. Unfortunately the Spartans were in the middle of a holy festival which could not be disturbed (so they said) and would not be able to send reinforcements for ten days. This could have been a ploy of course; as mentioned, the Spartans had no love for the Athenians (though I haven't read here any actual accounts of them fighting each other) and had in fact tried to force them to take back their deposed tyrant, on pain of being attacked by the very forces who were now threatening them. Then again, they might have been looking at the longer game. If Darius did succeed in taking Athens he was unlikely to stop there, and the Spartans would find themselves fighting not only his forces, but those of Athens, now newly under the control of the triumphantly returned Hippias.

Anyway, whatever the truth, Sparta were no help, but the small town of Plataea did send 1000 men, which is not to be sneezed at when you're up against an army over ten times your size) and for five days the armies faced each other across the plain of Marathon in stalemate, the Athenians waiting for the Spartans to arrive, the Persians unable to break out without great losses. Look, democracy is all well and good, but can we really trust a system of command that had ten generals directing the battle, and who rotated the command between them every day? So one day General X was in charge, the next General Y and then General Z, and so on, until it came time for General X to have his shot again? Sounds like a recipe for disaster. But that's apparently how they did it, and Miltiades was one of those ten generals. In overall command was the polearch, Callimachus, to whom all ten deferred.

Or did they? Because according to accounts, even on days when he wasn't in command Callimachus ordered the generals to report to Miltiades. Sounds like a man who perhaps was looking for a fall guy. At any rate, the battle seems to have been a case of the old "game of two halves", with the first half being the two armies eyeing each other across the plain for - well, some accounts say five, others say eight days, but days certainly - and the second half seems to have, if you'll forgive extending the football analogy a little, kicked off with a sudden rush from the Athenians down a slope, which took the Persians by surprise.

But there was a hell of a lot riding on this. In terms of the Persians, of course, the prize was the whole of Greece and the destruction of the Athenian (and, presumably, the Spartan) states, removing any further interference from them to the now-subjugated Greeks in Asia Minor, further tightening Darius's grip on and extending his empire. Failure here would mean a humiliating defeat for the Persian king - the first of his rule - and reputations are both built and lost on decisive battles. For the Athenians it was all in: they had to take all their soldiers to Marathon, but this left Athens undefended should they lose and the Persian fleet make the relatively short trip up the river to the city state. It would mean the reinstallation of the tyranny under the traitor Hippias, the abolition of the almost embryonic democracy, and, though they couldn't have known it at the time of course, this would have had catastrophic repercussions for the rest of the western world, as we owe so much to Greek art, literature, politics and science. It could have been the beginning of a dark age worse than that in Europe during the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and would surely (I assume) have seen Islam as the ruling religion in most of the world, fundamentally changing the balance of power.

[Trollheart]

Solidarity was another thing in the Athenians' favour, which is to say, other than the thousand or so warriors from Plataea, every soldier was from Athens, spoke Greek, spoke the same dialect as his brothers and was fighting for the very survival of his city state. Orders would be easily understood, and men would be willing to die to protect their homeland. Although the Persian contingent was far larger (let's run with the generally accepted figure of 25,000, though some commentators have wildly speculated at figures from 100 to even 600 thousand) it was made up of soldiers from many parts and countries, vassal states who perhaps were only there because they had to be and were fighting under duress, with many different languages, ways of looking at things and, let's not forget, being essentially bossed around by an ex-tyrant who was in fact their old enemy, for whom they were now forced to fight.

Darius wanted revenge, but the men who fought and died for him more than likely just wanted to survive and get home. It's fair to assume that, in any army, there's a percentage of glory-hunters, those with a death wish, those who want to prove themselves and those who have a genuine and often rabid hatred for the enemy, or, conversely, a rabid zeal for and loyalty towards their leader. But it's also fair to assume that these may not have been in the majority, and that the larger part of Darius's army of many nations just wanted to get it over with and get home. They weren't fighting for their homeland - that was thousands of miles away - and they weren't, presumably, fighting to avenge their king's hurt honour. I would venture to suggest most of them thought Darius could stick it where the sun never shone, but could do no more than go along with the invasion.

So on the one hand you have the Athenians, fiercely protective of their city, ready to die to defend it, aware that if they fell it was all over. And on the other side the Persians who probably mostly just wanted to have this done and make their way home. One highly motivated side, one more or less pushed into the conflict. Not to mention the Spartans, who, though the Persians had not fought them (they didn't deign to come to the aid of their fellow Greeks in the Ionian Revolt) were surely well known and feared as some of the most capable and indefatigable warriors in the world. They were on the way, so they said, and all the Athenians had to do was hold out another few days and they would join them at Marathon.

The Athenians were heavily armoured against the lighter protection the Persians wore. The latter preferred not open combat but to launch arrows from behind shields, which made them more static an adversary. They did have cavalry, which the Athenians did not, though why they didn't use them is debated. There are stories of the horses still being aboard the ships, or being re-embarked in order that those ships could sail after the battle to take Athens. Other accounts mention the densely-forested and hilly terrain, suited to the Athenians' charge but not to men on horseback (remember Agincourt?) and of course there were their own archers for the Persians to consider: not a lot of point firing arrows if your cavalry are trying to charge, to say nothing of the Athenians being on top of the hill with the Persians at the base of it, making any cavalry charge (should they have mounted one) difficult for the invading army.

In the end, it seems to have been the shock tactics of the Athenians attacking so fiercely that won the day. The Persians, used to being feared and probably expecting the Athenians to stay where they were and wait for reinforcements, or try to contain them at Marathon, were not prepared for the sudden, ferocious charge down the hill towards them. I suppose it might have been similar to say a band of some African warlord's militia charging headlong at the US Army or something. Not expected, seemingly suicidal, but if so, suicidal like a fox. I'm no master of strategy or tactics and such details bore me even reading about them - wing this, phalanx that, feint the other - but it seems that the Athenians broke through the defences of the Persians and then closed in behind them (classic pincer movement?) sending them flying back to their ships. Some got confused and, unfamiliar with the terrain, stumbled into the nearby swamp. The Athenians captured a handful of their ships, but the rest managed to sail for Athens. The defenders however marched back home and were able to greet Darius's fleet as it arrived and the Persians, seeing their chance to catch the city undefended lost, gave it up as a bad job and limped home.

As detailed in the statistics above, less than 200 of the almost 10,000-strong Athenian army were killed, while somewhere around 6,000 of the Persians lost their lives. Making it about two percent deaths for Athens, as opposed to nearly (assuming we use the 25,000 estimate) nearly a quarter of their forces. A stunning victory for the little guy, and almost the last time Persia tried to invade Greece.

Oh, and in either a classic case of poor or clever timing, the long-hoped-for reinforcements from Sparta arrived the day after the battle. No longer needed, it's reported they looked over the battlefield and shrugged, and said the ancient Greek equivalent to "Gnarly battle, dude. A righteous victory." They had to admit the rival city state had done fine without them, and it probably hurt. Maybe they should have marched a little faster.

Why will this battle be remembered?

Marathon was the first real defeat of the Persian empire; whether it was the first defeat of a force superior in numbers to its enemy I don't know, but I wonder. It didn't serve to break the power of the Persian empire but it certainly stopped its expansion, and Darius died a few years later, revolt in Egypt putting paid to his plans to again try to invade Greece.

The most popular legend to come out of the battle is of course the name, which has been attributed variously to the runner who was sent back to ask the Spartans for help, and who ran approximately 140 miles, and who dropped dead after delivering his message; the quick march by the victorious Athenians back to their city to counter the arriving Persian fleet (a distance of approximately 25 miles), and another runner who was supposedly dispatched from the battlefield to announce the victory. Whatever the truth (if any) of these stories, the marathon run was named after this feat, and it with us still.

As mentioned, the defeat of the Persians essentially saved Greek, and by extension, western culture. Had Athens been returned to the days of Hippias, it's unlikely such enlightened scholars as Plato, Aristotle, Euclid or Socrates would have flourished in such a tightly-regimented and controlled society as a tyranny. It was only the open and free nature of the new democracy that allowed such men to share the ideas they had and bring them to a wider audience, and in so doing enhance and enrich all of western civilisation.

The real legacy of the battle, at least to the Greeks and to any enemies of Persia, was that it proved the empire was not invincible, that it could be defeated, and even that you didn't have to be a huge army to bring that about. This can be seen in the Egyptian revolts which plagued Darius's last years and prevented him returning to take on Greece again. It wasn't the end of the Persian empire by any means, but it was perhaps the beginning of the end. Darius was succeeded by his son Xerxes I, who did manage to take control of Greece but was defeated in two battles that took place in 479 and 480 BC, emboldening another Ionian Revolt which this time was not put down and resulted in the Persians losing control of Europe. The empire lasted more or less for another 150 or so years, when the rise of Alexander the Great finally defeated and destroyed its power in 334 BC.

[Trollheart]

Timeline: 1976

The Soweto Uprising ( 16 June 1976)

Era: Late twentieth century
Year: 1976
Campaign: None, as such, but essentially part of the fight against Apartheid, the struggle for the right to be treated with dignity and respect
Conflict: Apartheid
Country: South Africa
Region: Soweto, Johannesburg
Combatants: South African Police and black protesting students
Commander(s): (Students) Teboho "Tsietsi" MacDonald Mashinini (very nominally) Archbishop Desmond Tutu (Police - no name given of the commander so blame must fall on the heads of) Prime Minister (later State President) B.J. Vorster, Minister for Bantu Education J.G. Erasmus, Deputy Minister of Bantu Education Punt Janson. Probably the Minister of Justice too, but I can't find out who he was at the time.
Reason: A protest against the forced imposition of the Afrikaans language in schools
Objective: To force authorities to rethink their position and allow children to learn in their own native languages
Casualties: From 176 to 700
Objective Achieved? Yes
Victor: Technically, South African Police and State, though in the long term the protest (and the brutal crackdown) was seen as a watershed moment in South African politics and the beginning of the end of Apartheid
Legacy: A massacre that shocked even white South Africans, to say nothing of the world at large (even though we, as usual, made a lot of noise but did nothing) and which began the slow process of dismantling the system of Apartheid in South Africa, leading eventually to the triumphant release of Nelson Mandela.

Well, I said when I began this journal that it would not only focus on battles and wars, but all areas of human conflict, as it says in the title, and while this was not a battle as such - unarmed children against heavily-armoured police - it does cover one of the most shameful periods in man's history, when too much innocent blood was shed for reasons of repression and racism.

To understand the reason behind this protest, and the resultant confrontation with police, it's necessary to understand what apartheid was. Thankfully now, we can say this in the past tense, as when I was growing up apartheid was a factor of daily life for black South Africans, and we heard about it on the news all the time. With the eventual release of Nelson Mandela that all changed, but it took over thirty years for it to happen.


Apartheid: It Did Matter If You Were Black or White

I have no intention of trying to write a treatise on the system of social and racial segregation instigated in South Africa for over four decades, as it would be both presumptuous of me, as a white, to try to do so, and, more importantly, would require almost another journal to cover it as it deserves to be. But I'll do my best to quickly explain, for anyone who isn't familiar with the term - and if so, thank god or the absence of a god that you are - what this entailed. As usual, it stemmed from the conquest and occupation of a country, in this case South Africa by the Dutch who, being largely white by ethnicity, regarded the natives as little more than slaves. The Dutch East India Company arrived in 1652, establishing a trading colony at the Cape of Good Hope, and members were allowed to settle and farm the land there, much to the anger and resentment of, and resistance by the native African tribes. Many of these settlers would end up fighting the British in the Boer Wars a few centuries later, as Britain took over the colony in 1798, having fought the French (now in control) for passage to India.

Britain's abolition of slavery in South Africa in 1834 irked the Dutch settlers, the Boers, and their dislike for the natives led to their own Boer Republics around the Transvaal and the Orange Free State passing laws that promoted racial segregation. With the rise to power of the Afrikaaner-led National Party (Afrikaaners being mostly Boers and other whites) in 1948, the practice of apartheid, or separateness, was installed as policy, and South Africa came under white rule. As more and more anti-black laws were passed (The Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act a year later, The Immorality Amendment of 1950, which expanded on the 1949 Act by prohibiting sexual relationships, not just marriage, between races, and the Population Registration Act of the same year, which officially and legally divided all South Africans into one of four groups - Black, White, Coloured and Indian) - the days of slavery were back in South Africa in all but name. Blacks lost the right to vote, to hold any sort of meaningful or well-paid job, were relegated to live in the poorest towns and villages, and were forbidden to run for any sort of public office.

Opposition, though, was growing against the regime during the 1970s and 1980s, led internally by Nelson Mandela's Africa National Congress, though he himself was jailed in 1962, and the world constantly protested (although did not intervene), holding benefit concerts, placing embargos on South African imports and exports, and boycotting events there. Eventually, inevitably, the pressure would tell and the tide would turn, and Soweto was one of the events on which this seachange depended.

Dirty Rotten Afrikaants...

I suppose it would be similar to a country conquered by Nazi Germany being forced to use German as their only language, or the Roman Empire insisting everyone spoke Latin. It was the language of the enemy, the tongue of the oppressor, and while we Irish may have been pushed into speaking English as our own national language slowly died out, the South Africans weren't standing for it and they protested. The trouble was that back in the bad old days of apartheid-driven South Africa, protests were not allowed, not by blacks, and were met with unbelievably disproportionate violence. White South Africans, especially the hated and feared South African Police, barely recognised blacks as human, and did not consider them to have any rights.

The Deputy Minister of Education pronounced the edict without any sort of consultation with the black community, even the respected Bishop Desmond Tutu spoke out against it, but the policy was to be installed in the schools and nobody was allowed to say anything against it. The Africa Teachers Association of South Africa objected to it on logical grounds, pointing out that few of the students even knew Afrikaans, so it was a language they would have to learn first, which would take the focus off their attention to the subject. Like learning maths in Spanish I guess, if you can't speak Spanish. Ridiculous. But that was South Africa in the seventies for you. All about tightening the hold of white supremacy over the black population and removing the cultural and traditional supports they relied upon. English was also allowed as an acceptable alternative by the authorities, but this wasn't much help as most of the indigenous population didn't speak that either.

Faced with an intractable, uncaring government who wanted to stunt their educational development and further limit their almost laughable opportunities in this world run by the white man, students went on strike at Orlando West Junior School, refusing to go to school. This protest quickly spread, until the Soweto Students Representative Council met on June 13 1976 and organised a mass rally to make their voices heard. This was set for three days later, on June 16.

Load Up, Load Up, Load Up, With, um, Real Bullets

On the morning of June 16 an estimated 10,000 to 20,000 children, students and teachers began the march to the rally, but police, somehow aware of the event, blocked the road with barricades. Reluctant to provoke them, the protesters took another route, their numbers having dropped to from 10,000 to 3,000 by the time they reached the wellspring of the revolt, Orlando West Junior School. As the peaceful protesters chanted slogans and demanded equal treatment, police turned their dogs loose on the crowd. The protesters killed the dogs, and the police began to shoot.

Okay, let me just make that very clear, because in these days of more enlightened thinking it's almost impossible to contemplate such a thing, but yes, the South African Police, facing a crowd of protesters, most of which were children of school-going age, opened fire. With live ammunition.

One more time, in case you don't get it.
Police. Shot. And killed. Children.

As panic swept through the crowd and it began to break up, the police kept shooting, until 23 people lay dead. That night, violence erupted as shops and government buildings were targeted, and the police responded with lethal force. By the end, estimates of deaths range from 176 to 700, with thousands wounded. A measure of the arrogance and ignorance of the apartheid regime for blacks was an order sent by the South African Police to the hospitals for the names of any wounded found to have bullet holes in them to be sent to them, so that they could later prosecute them for rioting! Thankfully, doctors treated this request/order with the contempt it was due, and no names were passed back to them.

Legacy

There are always watershed moments that can lead to revolution, and it's usually a case of the oppressed being pushed just too far, and deciding they're no longer going to take it. In America, the former colony was furious at the government tax on tea, and this led to the American War of Independence, resulting in the creation of the United States of America, a huge step towards breaking England's status as a major power. In Ireland, the Easter Rising quickly led to the establishment of the Irish Free State, and here the Soweto Uprising stunned people with the force of the ferocity and inhumanity with which it was put down. Central to the problems that began to beset the South African government was that even white people were outraged, and a day later white students marched in protest. They couldn't be shot and cowed into submission, and as other black townships rebelled, international pressure on the regime grew and the stranglehold of the National Party began to slip, and the Rand devalued in the wake of economic depression, the troubled and bloody walk towards a new and brighter horizon had begun.

The massacre also helped the ANC to rise as a real force for protest and change, as student rallies and protests were coordinated under its banner, strikes organised and resistance channelled through their offices, but a slow and painful march it would be. Ten years later police would again massacre up to 25 people in a raid intended to evict them for non-payment of rent, and tear gas would later be dropped on mourners at a mass funeral for these same victims. The USA, meanwhile, making plenty of noise from the safety of the White House, declined the opportunity to bring up the Soweto massacre when Secretary of State Henry Kissinger met President B.J. Vorster a week afterwards in Germany, steering well clear of the subject. I guess with the US's record on civil rights, even now, he may have felt that was a step too close towards the pot conversing with the kettle about its colour.

It would take another fourteen years before Mandela would be freed, in a new climate of change and (kind of) acceptance of the rights of blacks, and indeed he would go on to become South Africa's first black president, dying in 2013, having experienced a mere twenty-three years freedom. June 16 is now forever commemorated as Youth Day, a holiday in South Africa, honouring and remembering the children and youths who died at Soweto.

Why will this conflict be remembered?

How could it not? It may not have been the first time, but it's the first time I ever heard of armed police opening fire on children. They may have shot unarmed protesters before, probably did, but I think shooting children brought the apartheid regime to a new low, and it could really sink no lower. Nevertheless, it seems the government did not learn its lesson easily or quickly, as related above with another massacre in 1986. However the tide was turning by then, and four short years (not to him, I'm sure, but in relative terms) later Nelson Mandela would secure his freedom and walk from Robben Island a national hero and icon. It all started with a bunch of kids who decided they'd had enough, and took on a gargantuan, immovable relic of their past which clung grimly and determinedly to power as the world changed around it, and took the unthinkable final step that would eventually bring it crashing down in the dust.

Suffer the children, indeed. Lends new and chilling meaning to the words from the Bible, "and a child shall lead them."

[Trollheart]

Timeline: 2016

The Siege of Fallujah (February - June 2016)

Era: Twenty-first century
Year: 2016
Campaign: Anbar Campaign
Conflict: Iraq War/War on Terror
Country: Iraq
Region: Fallujah, Anbar Province
Combatants: ISIS, Iraqi Security and Armed Forces (with air support from Coalition Forces - USA, UK, Australia) and also Iran
Commander(s): (Iraqi/Iranian) Haidel al-Abadi, Suhaib al-Rawi, Issa Sayyar al-Isawi , Major Sayeer al-EsIsawie, Qaem Soleimani (ISIS) Abu Waheeb, Hussein Alawi, Ayad Marzouk al-Anbari
Reason: To retake the city after its fall two years previously
Objective: Regain control of the city and thus the province, push ISIS back
Casualties (approx): Very roughly about 5,000 on both sides
Objective Achieved? Yes
Victor: Iraqi army and its allies
Legacy: A major defeat for ISIS and secured the safety of Baghdad. Many top-level leaders killed; a demonstration that the Iraqi army could defend its own country without (too much) intervention by or help from the USA or other outside allies. Created a humanitarian disaster and left thousands of people homeless and destitute, and set the template for later conflicts.

Like most battles in the Iraqi War, this one was heavily connected to others and was in fact also known as the Third Battle of Fallujah. In Iraq, control of this territory or that territory was contested almost on a monthly basis, with one side gaining the upper hand only to lose it soon after, and the whole thing taking on the aspect of a deadly game of tag. One day, the local Iraqi forces were "it", the next, they were chasing ISIS. One is reminded, grimly, of a nevertheless funny scene in Star Wars (or if you prefer, A New Hope, though it will always be the former to me, the original) where Harrison Ford, seized by a sudden sense of either courage or madness, charges a squad of stormtroopers on the Death Star and they run off, with him in hot pursuit. Off-camera, someone eventually realises this is just one man, and they turn and begin chasing him, back the way he came.

So it would seem was the case with Iraq, where ground won, rather like the trench warfare stage of the First World War, was rarely held, and everything was in a perpetual state of flux, including the government. Fallujah was an important and strategic town, and I'm about to tell you why, but in order to do so, I need to take you back two years, to the original Battle for Fallujah, which did not go the west's way.

To understand why this city became such a focal point for resistance (even if, in the end, the actual citizens became nothing more than a cross between cannon fodder and prisoners) we need to look back to almost the very beginnings of the Iraq war, the 2003 invasion. Fallujah had been a stronghold and powerbase of the powerful Ba'ath Party, which was, yes, the party of soon-to-be-deposed-and-later-hanged President Saddam Hussein. It was primarily a Sunni city, this being the ethnic group Hussein belonged to, the other being the Shi'ites, and each hated the other with the kind of revulsion and anger you might have seen on the streets of Belfast on the Twelfth, when the Unionist Orangemen marched through the Republican areas where lived those loyal to the IRA.

As usual, the coalition forces almost literally shot themselves in the foot from the start, "accidentally" bombing a market and killing hundreds of civilians. Quite how, with the supposed "infallible" computer-aided guidance systems we're supposed to have now, a bomb can go so spectacularly off target is something I find hard to understand, but you kill civilians at your peril, and so the resistance against George W. Bush's coalition forces hardened, and it never really thawed, as Fallujah became a rallying call for then-Al Qaeda fighters, and for those who had lost everything when their leader had been deposed. Before March 2003, the most profitable and cushiest jobs went to members of the Ba'ath Party only, so with the ousting of Saddam Hussein also went their meal ticket, and things changed radically as their city, and their country, was taken over by foreign invaders.

And let's not make any mistake about it: this was an invasion. Not a response to a cry for help, not a strategic and necessary moving in of assets, not a pre-emptive strike to forestall an attack. Iraq, while certainly ruled by a despot, was no threat at all to the USA, to the west or to the world outside of the Middle East. Hussein's posturing had proven to be just that, empty braggadocio spouted by a windbag who, when someone actually stood up to him, when he met a bully as big and powerful as he was, went scurrying home and hid under his bed. The First Gulf War, barely deserving of the name, was over in a matter of a month, and over decisively. Hussein knew he could never take on the mighty powers of the west - especially USA and Britain - on his own, and he had few allies that were willing to step up and help him, and thus alienate not only the Americans but also the rich and powerful Saudis, who were nominally allies of the US (despite almost all of the 9/11 attackers being from there, but that's another story).

So there was zero chance of Iraq launching any sort of offensive at the west, and the best it could do would be to throw shapes at Iran - as it did, and was again beaten - and fume to itself, impotent and unimportant. The idea of Saddam Hussein possessing WMDs - weapons of mass destruction, such as biological and chemical weapons or even nuclear bombs - was as ludicrous as the idea Donald Trump actually won the 2020 Presidential election. It just could never happen. But fear is a great motivator, and most of the time you just have to say the right words to make people shit themselves and demand action (let's not forget Hitler's dire warnings about the "international Jew", shall we?), action you've just been waiting to be asked to take.

So there was no basis - no true basis - on which the USA and its allies invaded Iraq, on the face of it and being entirely fair, a peaceful country which threatened nobody and had as much to do with 9/11 as I did. But they did it anyway. The USA has been used to "intervening" in any conflict in which they believe they should get involved, whether on grounds which are ideological, religious, financial or territorial. In the case of Iraq, it was money, pure and simple. Iraq had oil, America wanted it, and what America, the biggest bully in the world's playground, wants, it takes.

This time, however, it was about to bite off a whole lot more than it could chew.


The American combat mission in Iraq has ended. Operation Iraqi Freedom is over, and the Iraqi people now have lead responsibility for the security of their country." President Barack Obama, The White House, August 31 2010

The Fall of Fallujah,  December 30  2013 - January 4 2014

After seven years in Iraq following its invasion by the US-led coalition forces in ostensible response to the terror attacks of September 11 2001 which brought down the twin towers of the World Trade Centre, a new president was in office and Barack Obama had been elected partially on a promise of bringing the troops home, and ending an occupation America was getting increasingly dissatisfied with, seeing another Vietnam unfolding before their eyes. As the words of former President George W. Bush at the outset of the invasion, that there would be no US casualties, rang hollow in the wake of over 4,000 coffins arriving in American airports during the period up to 2008, the new president realised the US was never going to win this war, and it was time to exit as gracefully as possible. To that end, he began preparations to reduce, and finally remove all US troops from Iraq, and by 2010 the last brigade had departed.

While this decision is easy to criticise, especially with the benefit of hindsight, and while its historical repetition is being played out in Afghanistan as I write this, a permanent presence in Iraq was never going to be of benefit to the US government, and at some point the question had to be faced: what were all these young men and women dying for? Given that the Iraq War had been predicated on a bald-faced lie, or two actually - that Saddam Hussein was somehow tenuously and nebulously responsible for 9/11, and that he was amassing weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) for use against his enemies - there really was no reason for America to be there at all. They weren't guarding or protecting any US interests (unless you count peace in the Middle East, which had totally failed as an endeavour, and was always doomed to), there weren't any American citizens in Iraq who needed their protection (other than those in the US embassy, who could easily be evacuated) and nobody really wanted them there. Over seven years they had destroyed the country, plundered it of its riches, forced it to pay big American corporations such as Haliburton to rebuild what its countrymen had destroyed, and made the situation there much worse than it had been before the first bombs had fallen.

However, without an effective US presence there, insurgents became emboldened and moved in. The Islamic State - variously also known as ISIL, Daesh or ISIS  - gathered followers and pointed to the weakness of their opponents, citing American withdrawal from Iraq as their victory over the crusaders (just what Randy Crawford had to do with it I don't know) and pushed to take advantage of the power vacuum. The government set up by the US, essentially the normal puppet power installed by the invader, was weak and shaky, and with their protectors gone back home were easy prey, though this did not mean they would not fight hard to retain what they had already struggled for, and what had been built, with the help of Uncle Sam. Nevertheless, they were fighting a lost cause when the forces of ISIS hammered into the city of Fallujah in Anbar Province (it's a trap! Oh no wait; that's Admiral Ackbar, isn't it?) and took it in a few days.

This was a great victory for ISIS, and Al-Qaeda, the capture of their first city in Iraq, and a base from which they could launch an attack against the capital, Baghdad, only forty kilometres away. It was clear this could not be allowed to happen, and so an offensive was launched to recapture the city. It began with the taking of Al-Karmah, 15 kilometres from Fallujah, in May 2015, which gave them something of a base from which to plan and prepare their attack on Fallujah. However later that month ISIS forces took Ramadi, another town in the Al Anbar province, which was not recaptured by Iraqi forces until the following February. Having captured several villages around Fallujah in the same month, the stage was now set for the siege of the ISIS-occupied city.

"There is a volcano of resentment boiling inside Fallujah." Iraqi military, February 19 2016

"If those groups inside aren't supported, Daesh will have huge revenge. There will be the biggest bloodshed ever." - Issa al-Issawi, Fallujah Mayor-in-exile, February 19 2016

Siege of Fallujah

If there's one thing you can be guaranteed in any siege - at least, one of any appreciable length - it's that civilians will suffer. As the Iraqi forces took all of the neighbouring Khalidiya Island and effectively cut off the city of Fallujah, the supply lines feeding the city were completely severed, and it was estimated that from 30,000 to 60,000 people would starve, but the siege went ahead as planned. Inside the city, unrest bubbled. This was no siege by an army protecting its citizens, supported by them and concerned for their welfare. There was no attempt at negotiating the release of any of the civilians, not even the women or children, and as what food there was was reportedly hoarded by the ISIS militia, leaving the ordinary folk to starve, and with repressive action being taken against the citizens, an uprising was being born.

Reports emanated from the city (impossible to corroborate, as ISIS had, as per standard procedure, cut off all communications with the media and the outside world, destroyed mobile telephone networks and cut off internet access), of elderly men being "humiliated" when they asked for food, women being beaten, and Sunni tribesmen inside the city finally had enough and attacked the headquarters of the hisbah, the ISIS moral police, for want of another word, they who rigidly enforced Sharia law on the streets. The building was burned and everyone inside killed. The uprising quickly spread, but it was obvious that the tribesmen would need assistance from outside the city if they were to retake it and put ISIS to flight. The revolt however did not succeed and was crushed ruthlessly (why ruthless I often wonder? Does anyone ever do something with ruth? Who is ruth anyway? Sorry) and took 180 prisoners, but just then the Iraqi military began shelling the city, and moved troops towards the city in preparation for its storming. The siege was about to become a battle.

[Trollheart]

The Third Battle of Fallujah

Having retaken the town of Al-Kharmah on February 23 and with a coalition airstrike taking out 30 ISIS militants in the town of Karama, Iraqi forces moved into Fallujah on February 25.The battle did not go well for ISIS and it was reported over 600 of them had fled to neighbouring Mosul. This left, according to sources within the city, less than 400 militants defending it.

Of these, an estimated 150 were killed on April 4 as the Iraqi forces pushed further into the city, backed up by air support from the coalition forces. As usual, civilians fared badly as artillery shells and missiles from aircraft landed in markets and residential areas, however on April 21 the top commander in the city was killed as airstrikes took out most of his command structure, including his base and six of his officers. Three more leaders died on April 28 as a result of airstrikes, a fight broke out over money between two ISIS factions on May 5 (so much for their lofty ideals, huh? When it came down to it they killed each other over gold just as any westerner would) which resulted in the deaths of 10 militants, and another headquarters was destroyed on May 5, taking another 25 enemy combatants with it.

From here on in it was pretty much bad news constantly for the defenders, and the villagers in Albu Huwa and Haisa began to be employed by the surviving ISIS fighters as human shields. As more fell every day, they did have the odd victory, such as the suicide attack in which a reported 100 Iraqi soldiers died, but as May began to wind down the Iraqi military stepped up their attacks, preparatory to a full-scale assault on the city. They advised civilians to be ready to leave through pre-prepared routes they had somehow made for them (don't ask me how; had they spies inside the city? Was this the remnants of the Sunni tribesmen who had survived the rising trying to help the families?) but ISIS warned that anyone who tried to leave would be killed. As Iraqi forces took town after town and village after village, it was announced on May 25 that their forces were almost at the eastern gate of Fallujah.

By May 31 the city had been breached from three directions, but even so there was a lot of street-fighting yet to be done. ISIS did not, seldom ever do, go quietly, and they seldom if ever surrender, preferring to die and, if possible, take their enemies with them. Fighting continued on through June as the Iraqi army and its allies moved slowly through the shell of a city, street by street and house by house clearing Fallujah of ISIS militants. On June 12 they secured the first escape route for civilians, evacuating about 4,000, and despite what I said above (which just goes to show how much I know!) 546 militants were arrested the next day trying to leave the city disguised as civilians. By June 16 ISIS was in full retreat and flight, as those who could broke and made their way out of the city, although Iraqi forces had at this time recaptured a mere quarter of the city. They had, however, secured the barrage (dam), various bridges, tunnels and all exits from Fallujah. From then on, the Iraqi forces met little to no resistance, and by the end of the day the city was theirs.

Small pockets of resistance remained as die-hards were dealt with in various parts of the city, but by June 26 the battle was over and the city was completely under Iraqi control. Clearly the estimates of how many militants remained in the city in April and May were way off, as Brigadier General Haider al-Obeidei reported the enemy casualties over the period of the siege as 2,500, while as the militants retreated from the city and its outskirts another 2,000 were killed by Iraqi forces while coalition air support took out a further 250, and destroying more than 600 vehicles.

The mopping-up operation included disarming IEDs (Improvised Explosive Devices, as if you didn't know) and destroying a laboratory wherein explosives and vehicles intended for use as booby-traps had been manufactured.

Twenty-first Century Stalingrad: The Ordinary People's Suffering

I mentioned earlier that in any siege, the locals come off worst, or to put it another way, if you live in a town or city that gets besieged, don't expect it to end well. Usually this is due to outside forces - the army attacking or at least surrounding the city or town or castle, and denying the ordinary folk escape. But in some cases it also comes from within the siege, as defenders may be worried that any who leave the siege may share important secrets such as the town or city's defences, weak points, personality clashes between leaders and so on, information the enemy can use to gain access to the city and around which they can plan, or reshape their strategy. It's generally not considered, either by the defending army or the one attacking, that the safety, or even lives of the inhabitants are worth worrying about. Nine times out of ten, they're thought of as the enemy anyway, so why lose sleep over their predicament? They could have left, if they had wanted, before the siege began, but now they're stuck there and it's their own fault.

Such often goes the logic of the commander of a besieging army - if he even thinks about the civilians at all - and it seems Fallujah was no different, with both sides causing mayhem for the villagers and townsfolk. First, the siege was not telegraphed to them in any way by the Iraqi forces: they just cut off the supply lines without making any provision for those within the city who would be trapped there. The many airstrikes conducted by coalition forces made the lives of the citizens unbearable: schools, hospitals, shops and homes were bombed, more or less indiscriminately, and what they missed, the artillery finished off. Power quickly went out. There was no electricity, little water, and without these two vital necessities for life, disease and starvation began to stalk the city. People were forced to sleep outside, with no way to heat or light their homes (assuming those homes still stood) and as mentioned already, food was only for fighters and sympathisers, so if you were neither, then tough, and that very much included children and babies.

No help was forthcoming from within the city either. ISIS did not hold Fallujah to protect its citizens. They gave less of a fuck about them than did the Iraqi forces. They were merely in the way. They could be used as human shields, but other than that they were an annoyance, entirely and eminently expendable, and no use to them whatever. They kept them inside the city by threats and force, promising to kill anyone who tried to leave, while at the same time watching them starve and sicken, without a compassionate bone in the body of even one of the fighters. Estimates of how many innocent civilians were trapped in Fallujah varied from 50,000 to almost 200,000; efforts by the Red Cross to gain access to the city for humanitarian purposes were rebuffed by ISIS, and even though the Iraqi army itself had tried to get food in to the citizens they had been thwarted and thrown back by the defenders.


Far from helping the citizenry, ISIS began executing people for the heinous crime of trying to save their lives, and those of their families, by attempting to escape the city. Some of these were burned alive publicly, a report unfortunately accompanied by the above picture as confirmation of the savage punishment, and if you need further proof that this is not just Iraqi propaganda, here  . As in all such executions, it's more the warning it sends than the death of the people involved that is important. The more who saw how brutally ISIS treated those who tried to leave the city, the less would be inclined to copy them. Other citizens, who were accused of collaborating with the enemy and passing information to them (no idea if they were or not; I'm sure no evidence was needed or presented, nor likely any sort of trial held at all) were electrocuted, while many women were killed for trying to escape.

All of this is bad enough, but even some of those who actually made it out of the city - estimated at around 80 families - were detained and later executed by the Iraqi military forces, who accused them - often falsely - of being ISIS fighters, when really they were prosecuting the ongoing sectarian agenda which had and continues to pit Sunni against Shi'ite. Many were abducted but their whereabouts remain unknown to this day, just more of the disappeared.

[Trollheart]

Timeline: 1992

Ruby Ridge (August 21 - 31, 1992)

Era: Twentieth Century
Year: 1992
Campaign: n/a
Conflict: n/a
Country: USA
Region: Idaho
Combatants: The Weaver family, US Marshals, FBI, ATF
Commander(s): Randy Weaver; Deputy US Marshals Art Roderick, Larry Cooper, Bill Degan, USMS Associate Director of Operations Duke Nukem sorry Smith, FBI SAC Eugene Glenn, SWAT Team Leader Gregory Sexton
Reason: Refusal by Weaver to appear in court on firearms charges; fears he and his family were stockpiling weapons
Objective: Disarm the family and deliver Randy Weaver into custody
Casualties (approx): 3 (plus one dog)
Objective Achieved? Yes
Victor: US Government forces
Legacy: Further distrust of FBI and other federal law enforcement agencies, the inexorable rise of domestic terrorism in America

Hands Off My Weapons: The Second Amendment to the United States Constitution

"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed" - Second Amendment to the US Constitution, December 15 1791

The meaning of the above has been argued and debated, and not only by scholars but ordinary people, for over two hundred years now, and there's still disagreement. Some maintain the Second Amendment refers only to arms for militias, others contend it confers a god-given (or at least, founding-fathers-given) right upon them to amass as many deadly weapons as they see fit to possess. Republican politicians and lawmakers, judges and associations such as the National Rifle Association (NRA, not to be confused with the IRA!) continue to fight and lobby fiercely to protect the rights of the citizens to bear arms, while deaths from shootings in America continue to climb, and mass shootings are becoming more and more a regular occurrence.

The debate is too hotly contested on both sides and has too much political capital to ever be resolved to anyone's satisfaction, but for an ignorant Irishman like me I think it's vital to look into the reason why the Amendment was written, what it was supposed to mean, and how it has been often misinterpreted or even abused in the United States, especially most recently.

Written, as you can see above if you're not an American and know this already, in 1791, only fourteen years after the American colony declared its independence and eight after that independence was finally won and recognised by Great Britain, the Amendment seems to have been couched in terms that would allow states to raise armed militias to defend themselves against what is termed "oppressive governments". Quite how you define that is very much open to interpretation: surely the administration led by Donald Trump from 2017 to 2020 was an oppressive government, and just as surely, those on the red side of the nation see the government of his successor in the same way? Surely indeed, for did not Trump supporters, QAnon members and other assorted paramilitary crazies descend on the Capitol building on January 6, intent on wresting power from the lawmakers in a coup d'etat?

To my own, completely uninformed mind, the idea of even including such a phrase in the Constitution sounds like it was a bad one, as it was obviously going to be abused and cited as reason for various acts of violence, as it was indeed in the case of Miller vs Texas, 1889, when Franklin Miller, charged in the shooting death of a Texas cop with an illegal firearm, protested that his Second Amendment rights had been violated (never mind that he had committed murder!) - obviously he got nowhere and was sentenced to death. Or that of Presser v Illinois, in which Herman Presser, having paraded his paramilitary group through the streets argued that his arrest was unconstitutional under the Second Amendment. He actually won his case. The landmark District of Columbia vs Heller decision as recently as 2008 ratified for the first time the right of private citizens to own weapons, whether or not they were connected with any militia, and overturned the state's ban on handguns.

In general, it seems, the tide of public opinion may flow this way and that, rising whenever a new outrage such as the all-too-familiar school shooting, or a mass killing of any kind occurs, then receding quietly, is almost almost shouted down by those in whose interests it is to keep the possession and use of guns legal and a basic American right. I believe the US is the only country in the world to have such a right enshrined in its laws. It isn't too hard to understand why any challenge to restrict the sale or possession of guns is doomed to fail, particularly with the Supreme Court now so right-leaning, but mostly because of the revenue such sales bring in for major corporations, the work of their lobbyists on the Hill, and in the end, the fact that once people have got used to having something - and having a right to it - it's incredibly difficult to dispossess them of it.

But it should be remembered that the Amendment, like the very Constitution itself, was written at a time when the USA had just won its first war, and its independence, and so was set down with a view to preventing the loss of that freedom by way of another war, whether from without or within. As time passed, apart from actual times of war, it should probably have been taken note of that the need - not the desire, but the need - for weapons to be possessed by individuals had passed, and with the merging of the Western frontier with the rest of America, the ending of the Civil War should have negated that right. But I say this as a non-American, and I expect many of you are burning effigies of me as I write, and you're probably correct: I know nothing of American life, your traditions and your entitlements, though I am learning about your history. What I say is a mere comment, passed most likely in ignorance, and not to be taken as any sort of commentary on the use of guns in America.

What can't be denied though, other than all the mass shootings that have taken place over the last fifty years or so, is that some major incidents have occurred where the government has literally tried to - and in some cases, succeeded in doing so - disarm people they believed were stockpiling weapons for use against them, or against their people. We all know of the siege at Waco, but there is another one, just before that, which this article is concerned with, and the above is more a preface to try to frame the narrative that will now follow.

Repent! For the End is Nigh! Randy Get Your Gun

When his wife Vicki began having visions of the coming end of the world in 1978, Iowa factory worker Randy Weaver moved his family to an isolated plot of land he had purchased at Ruby Ridge, Naples, Idaho, intending to live a survivalist existence there and cutting themselves off from the "wicked" world. Randy and his wife built a cabin where they lived with their four children and dog. One year after moving there, the Weavers had a dispute over land with a local man, Terry Kinnison, who lost the court case and was ordered to pay reparations to Randy. He then got in touch with the FBI and Secret Service, and the county sheriff, claiming the Weavers had a cache of automatic weapons on their land and that Randy had threatened to kill President Ronald Reagan, Pope John Paul II and the Governor of Idaho. The feds investigated these claims, interviewed Weaver but found no evidence to support them. However he was now on their radar.

The Secret Service had been told that Weaver was a member of the white supremacist organisation Aryan Nations, a charge he denied, though he was seen attending rallies and one of his associates did belong to a Christian white supermacist group, The Covenant, the Sword and the Arm of the Lord. Weaver filed an affidavit claiming he was being set up, that his enemies (presumably Kinnison) were trying to create conditions which would force or encourage the FBI to storm their compound, Waco-like, and kill them. They also wrote to Reagan, saying that if he got any threatening letters purporting to be from the Weavers, they had not sent them. This proved to be a bad move, as the letter was used as evidence later in their trial.

The ATF - Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms - got involved in 1986, when Weaver attended his first Aryan Nations Congress, and became linked with a man who later turned out to be an informant for the ATF, and after dealing with him over the next three years, sold him a sawn-off shotgun. It's odd, but it appears both the ATF and the FBI had CIs (Confidential Informants) working undercover at Aryan Nations, and the FBI mole, perhaps in an attempt to ingratiate himself with the leaders and throw suspicion off himself, or perhaps as yet another example of the often fierce rivalry between the two agencies, warned Weaver he was dealing with an ATF spy. Weaver was arrested and charged with possession of the guns, but the ATF could not make a charge of selling them stick. Indicted by a Grand Jury, Weaver was arrested by stealth, the ATF believing it would be too dangerous to approach him on his home turf, and he was advised of the charges and released on bail.

Oops! A Catalogue of Errors: Justice Goes Off the Rails

From here on in, you can make up your own mind whether the ATF and the courts manipulated the circumstances to ensure Weaver missed his court date, whether they were incompetent and there was a lack of communication, or whether it was just bad luck, but whatever the case, the trial date was changed due to a federal holiday. Weaver's attorney was advised but not the accused himself, and the attorney spent some time trying to get in touch with him, but as Weaver had not given him a phone number (given their reluctance to trust even electricity, it's doubtful whether he even had one) he was unable to contact him. A letter was sent to Weaver, but in an absolutely incredible piece of oversight or laziness, the date was shown as March, not February 20. When the February trial date arrived, Weaver of course did not show. A bench warrant was issued for his arrest.

The judge doesn't seem to have considered the possibility that Weaver, having received - or at least, having been sent - a letter with the wrong date might have been waiting till then to show up. I mean, given his relationship with the ATF he probably had no intention of attending at all,  but nevertheless, everyone except the judge seems to have allowed for the possibility. He refused to rescind the arrest warrant, and so events were set in motion that could not be stopped.

The US Marshals, perhaps exercising a bit more commonsense and no doubt worried about kicking off an armed confrontation if they went to arrest the guy and it turned out all to have been a misunderstanding, delayed executing the arrest warrant until the date on Weaver's letter, March 20. However in another case of classic incompetence or lack of communication - or maybe a rush to judgement - the US  Attorneys Office called a grand jury on March 14, apparently unaware that the date for Weaver to turn up had been extended, and issued an indictment for failure to appear. The US Marshals now had no choice but to execute the warrant, and we'll never know if Weaver intended to turn up six days later, though as I say it seems doubtful.

Nevertheless, that was not the end of the dark comedy of errors. Back before he had been arrested, the ATF had tried to turn Weaver by using the threat of a prosecution against him for the weapons he had sold their informant, but he had told them where to stick it. This information was not passed on to the USMS by the ATF, and further, his attorney had made a major blunder by warning him that if he lost his case, he would also lose his land and his children. I mean, it wasn't the kind of thing to encourage a man who was already deeply suspicious of the government, and the world at large, to turn up and have his fate decided by twelve good men and true, now was it? You can see where the conspiracy theories begin. Did they want to kill the guy?

It might seem like I'm on Weaver's side, as if I have sympathy for him. I'm not. From what I read about him, he wasn't a particularly nice guy, and if he was into white supremacist groups he's not someone I would want to know. However, every man and woman in America deserves justice and due process of law, and should be assured of a fair trial, and here I just don't think that was the case with Weaver. As far as I can see, the ATF got miffed when he refused to be a snitch for them, and started building the strongest case they could against him. When that failed to pass as they would have liked, either there was an amazing string of ****-ups and bad coincidences, as detailed above, or there was a concerted effort to deny him justice, and to increase the severity of the charges against him. From being tried for a relatively simple infringement of gun laws, he was now considered a fugitive, and,  given the information received by ATF, armed and dangerous. It was all building towards something that would take on a life of its own, and take three lives before it was spent.

As Weaver refused to come quietly, barricaded into his cabin with his family, the US Marshals tried to negotiate with him, to get him to surrender without bloodshed. From March 5 till March 12 1991 they talked to him through intermediaries, but on March 12 negotiations ceased, on the orders of the DAO, and the US Marshals began making plans to take him by force. They set up surveillance on the Ridge and watched the family; Weaver surely knew he was under watch and viewed all people and vehicles that approached with suspicion and hostility, the former at least not unfounded.

Four years later, the role of the USMS, the ATF and the FBI would come under severe criticism by the Department of Justice, which maintained that there were many inconsistencies in the profile put together about Randy Weaver and the supposed threat he posed, and that the people used to talk to him were as radical as he was said to be, if not more so, and therefore had a vested interest in responding with hostility to any suggestions of a peaceful end to the crisis. In short, they probably were rooting for Randy, and wanted him to go out in a blaze of glory, whether that was his own intention or not. A report in 1995 stated that "The assumptions of federal and some state and local law enforcement personnel about Weaver—that he was a Green Beret, that he would shoot on sight anyone who attempted to arrest him, that he had collected certain types of arms, that he had "booby-trapped" and tunneled his property—exaggerated the threat he posed."

Things quickly began to fall apart. A helicopter that flew over Weaver's land - not a military or police one, but one owned by a news network which handled the talk show host Geraldo Rivera's television programme - was said to have been fired on by Randy, though this was later disputed by everyone including the US Marshals AND the pilot. Nevertheless, with absolutely zero evidence that any shots had been fired, and with the testimony of the pilot completely to the contrary, the charge was entered in Randy Weaver's indictment that he had fired on the helicopter. Operations were suspended for three months, but it was only delaying the tragic inevitable.

[Trollheart]

Tragedy Strikes: Dog Day Afternoon

Having been spooked by US Deputy Marshals sent in August to scout out the area and recon places they believed Weaver could be arrested, the Weavers' dogs came out with Randy's 14-year old son Sammy and his (Randy's) friend Kevin Harris. One of the dogs, Striker, was shot and killed by the deputies and a firefight erupted. In running from the lawmen, Sammy was struck in the back and died on the spot. Harris killed one of them, DUSM Bill Degan.

And here let's stop and consider. Sure, it's always easier with hindsight,  but did this have to happen? We now have a dead kid, a dead dog and a dead deputy (I resist the urge to write Deputy Dawg - oh no wait, I don't!) and a chain of events that inevitably led from one to the other. Had the dog not been shot and killed, is it likely Sammy Weaver would have started shooting? Well, maybe he would have, or maybe Harris would have and he would have backed him up, but let's consider two things here before we go any further. One: the kid's dog had been shot. Now, whatever you or I may think of the Weavers, a boy's dog is precious, and he wasn't even a threat, like a German Shepherd or a Rottweiler, that the men could have been in fear of. Striker was a golden labrador, one of the most gentle dogs there is, and while he might have been excited, it's unlikely that he was actually attacking.

If he was, and the men feared him, why not throw something at the dog, or just wound him? Surely big bad US Deputy Marshals have faced worse in their career than a family dog bounding at them? Yes, the two men (man and a boy) were armed, and they probably had to take that into consideration, but all things being equal, what's more likely to kick off gunfire than shooting the family pet? So was it just a bad decision, something done in the heat of the moment that escalated the situation, or was it even done deliberately, to try to provoke the two and allow the deputies the chance and give them the excuse they needed to start firing at them? Consider the bullets fired. On the part of the DUSM, a total of fifteen, with a third of that from Harris and Weaver, five shots in all. So who was firing more wildly, and doing the bulk of the shooting? Trained lawmen with two M16s and a submachine-gun against a kid with a rifle and another guy with a rifle. Was gunplay necessary?

Second, Sammy fired after his dog had been killed by the deputies, most likely in rage and grief. Knowing they had killed his pet, should the deputies not have pulled back, realising they had perhaps fucked up and made the situation even more volatile? And if they had to shoot, considering Sammy was shot in the back and therefore retreating, what kind of arsehole shoots a fourteen-year-old kid in the fucking back? Whether Harris fired after Sammy had been killed or before is unknown, but if the former, then he was certainly driven by anger and a need to revenge a kid he had surely grown up with, or at least spent a lot of time with, being the family friend. Finally, the deputies outnumbered the two of them to their three, and were better armed. There was no order to shoot or kill anyone - this was supposed to be an arrest, not an execution. So why did they fire, exacerbating an already volatile situation and turning it into a bloodbath? Even if the dog was killed in a sort of bad reaction or even panic, couldn't they have withdrawn? But they decided to push things, and I personally think that after months of frustration they were spoiling for a fight.

It's probably no surprise that the two versions differ wildly, with each group trying to exonerate themselves and blaming the other for firing the first shot. Sammy, of course, was dead and could not confirm, but Deputies Roderick and Cooper contended that Striker ran out of the woods with the two men behind him. They say Degan identified himself as a Deputy US Marshal and that Harris shot and killed him before he could get off a shot. Roderick shot Striker, then Sammy shot at him, and Roderick returned fire. Oddly, Cooper says he saw Sammy run off (kind of hard to do, when you've been shot dead but however) and that Harris was hit, and possibly thought killed or at least wounded.

In the version related to the Weavers by Harris, it went like this: coming out of the woods, Striker went first to Cooper, then to Roderick, who shot him out of hand. Sammy, furious, shot at Roderick. Degan came out of the woods and shot at Sammy, wounding him in the arm. Harris turned and shot Degan dead. Cooper then shot at him, and he dived for cover, while Cooper shot Sammy dead. According to Harris, it was only moments later that Cooper identified himself as a Deputy US Marshal. Finding Sammy dead, Harris broke cover and ran back for the cabin.

Of course everyone will want to paint themselves in the best light, but there are some pretty big inconsistencies in both stories I feel, so let's look at them both.

First, the Deputies' story. They affirm that Degan announced who and what he was and then Harris shot him. This is possible, though I doubt likely, as Harris would have known they were outnumbered. I'm not sure what Sammy's level of expertise with a rifle was, but he was fourteen years old and most likely had never shot at anyone, much less killed anyone. By starting the shooting - even in response to the killing of the dog - Harris would have known that not only would he have been putting his buddy's kid in danger, but that he stood a good chance of being wounded or killed himself. In essence, you don't run out of the woods with a kid by your side and start shooting at heavily-armed USMS men. So I think that part of the story that the Deputies tell is at best dubious.

Not only that, but Harris would have known that no court (assuming he made it to stand before one) would look kindly on a man who shot an agent of the government who had clearly identified himself as one. Finally, if Degan had identified himself - and assuming the Deputies were in the usual USMS gear, why would he have had to? - Harris would have known he was dealing with some badasses, not just local cops, and might, surely would, have been reluctant to take them on. Again, we're talking basically three to one, if you discount the kid.

Cooper testified that he saw Sammy run away, but Sammy was shot down and killed, so how could that be right? Given that it was more or less accepted that it was his bullet that killed Sammy, Is he saying that he saw him running away and still shot him? Shot him in the back, while he was no longer a threat? If not, how does he explain who shot Sammy and how? Is he placing the blame on his partner, Roderick? Degan was already dead by now, so that only leaves him out of the party. Either way, that looks bad for Cooper. Either he admitted to shooting a suspect who was fleeing the scene - and killing him - or he is intimating that his partner did. Not a good look, either way.

As for the account given by the Weavers later after speaking to Harris, that's got holes in it, too.

Is it really likely that Striker would have come to Cooper, then gone to Roderick, who shot him? Why would a dog do that? It would have known neither of these men, and in all likelihood should, with a dog's instincts, have realised they were hostile to its master. I doubt any dog in that situation would approach such a person, unless attacking him, but Harris does not make this claim, merely says the dog went to Cooper first, then Roderick, who shot it. Why would the Deputy do that? There's no explanation, no reason. When I first read this, I thought it was that Striker had run out of the woods and gone for the DUSMs, and Roderick had fired in response to that, thinking he was under attack and perhaps in fear of his life. But no, not according to Harris. The dog, he says, approached the other deputy (he doesn't reference any hostile or violent behaviour by Striker) and then Roderick. Of course, he would be striving to place the dog in the best light possible, to make it seem that he was shot without provocation, but the facts look a little shaky.

I would imagine, using pure logic, the dog went for one or other of the deputies, and Roderick shot it. That's the only way it makes sense, and for a dog to be "on the hunt" as it were, this would be a natural attempt to protect its master, typical behaviour, perhaps not the kind of act you might expect from a lab, but still, when push comes to shove and its owner is in danger...

On the face of it, Harris's version of events regarding the death of Deputy Degan sounds more plausible than that advanced by the USMS. Although this guy was a gun nut, a survivalist and an anti-government guy, I still feel he would have known how all but suicidal it would be to shoot a Deputy US Marshal. For one thing, with the charges (against Randy) not what you would call absolutely mega-serious at that time, ramping them up to murder (and by association, against Randy now too as an accessory) seems little short of insane. There is no good reason why a level-headed person who did not want to go to jail or be shot would kill a fed without due cause. But if he was threatened, he might see no way out. And if the dog had been killed and then Sammy shot, well, a red mist might have descended all right. But I'd have to say, on the balance of the evidence and taking human nature as it is, only after Sammy and/or the dog had been shot.

As with most things, the truth is probably somewhere in the middle, but it really didn't matter, as now the ante had been upped. Lives had been taken on both sides, and there was unlikely to be any quarter given now.

The Siege Begins

With the death of a Deputy US Marshal (never mind the death of a fourteen-year old kid, nobody cared about that!) the full force of the US Government swung into action at Ruby Ridge. The sheriff's office, the Idaho State police, SWAT, the Marshals Service Operations Group, The FBI, even the National Guard all descended on the place. The FBI sent a Hostage Rescue Team. Why I don't know, but I guess I'll find out. I mean, unless the area they surrounded was bigger than Weaver's twenty acre plot, who did they think was liable to have been taken hostage? There should only have been that family and Harris. Deadly force was authorised if anyone was seen in the compound or around it bearing a weapon, and this authorisation extended to dogs too.

The rather stark order was greeted with some dismay by most of the SWAT teams, as it departed strongly from the standard FBI Rules of Engagement, which states that "Agents are not to use deadly force against any person except as necessary in self-defense or the defense of another, when they have reason to believe that they or another are in danger of death or grievous bodily harm. Whenever feasible, verbal warnings should be given before deadly force is applied." Reacting to the new rules, one of the SWAT members (unnamed) responded with "You've got to be kidding." The snipers did not seem too bothered, and took the rules as a green light to shoot on sight. By now there were hundreds of federal agents at Ruby Ridge, and a maximum of three adults and four children in the cabin. Overkill much?

Overkill, surely. Kill, definitely. Next to die was Vicki Weaver, who was shot as a sniper wounded Randy as he visited the dead body of his son in the shed where they had lain it, and Vicki, standing behind the door, was killed. She was holding their ten-month old baby at the time. None of them were reported to be armed, and when Randy was shot the second time (the bullet that took his wife's life) he was, again, running away, and so was clearly an unarmed man in full retreat, and therefore no threat. This didn't stop the sniper, who fired anyway. There was, a senate judiciary committee later found, no order to surrender, and no chance given to the targets to do so, and so this amounted to an execution, summary justice meted out at the barrel of a federal agent's sniper rifle.

Surprisingly, or not, the FBI continued to try to negotiate the surrender of a man whose son and wife had both been killed (and his dog) and who deeply distrusted them. On August 24 the ROE was changed to the proper, normal FBI one, a little late at this stage. Harris, wounded badly, finally surrendered and Weaver allowed a helicopter to airlift him to hospital, also allowing the removal of his wife's body. After all the ham-fisted efforts of the so-called professional FBI hostage negotiators, it was a civilian one who convinced Weaver first to allow Harris to leave and shortly afterwards to surrender himself.

Listen to this though. Even after all the carnage they had caused, two deaths and with only Weaver and his daughters remaining in the cabin; after it must surely have become clear that the FBI had completely ballsed up this thing and that it would be a public relations disaster for the bureau and a stain on their already-tarnished reputation, the agent in charge warned that if Weaver did not surrender by the next day he would send in the troops and take them out. I mean, for fuck's sake! Was this guy living in a cowboy movie or what? He still wanted to kill Weaver, and he was perfectly willing to take down two teenage girls at the same time?

In the event, Weaver did surrender, and he and one of his daughters were arrested. The FBI must have known their case was shaky as a man with Parkinson's, and they lost big. Put on trial in April 1993, Randy Weaver was acquitted of all charges other than missing his court date and violating bail, which bought him sixteen months in prison. Harris was acquitted of all charges and walked free. Five years later the USMS tried to get him again for the murder of their Deputy, but under the double jeopardy rule they failed, and he remains a free man.

But things were only starting to heat up for the FBI.

[Trollheart]

Aftermath: Hearings and Charges

Randy Weaver brought a civil suit against the them for the unlawful killing of his wife and son, and settled out of court for just over three million dollars. Harris also settled his suit to the tune of just under half a million dollars. The Ruby Ridge Task Force, set up to investigate the circumstances behind the handling of the siege, returned a report in June 1994 that was highly critical of the usage of the extreme deadly force order issued by the FBI which resulted in the death of Vicki. Lon Horiuchi, the sniper who had killed her, was charged with manslaughter in 1997 but the case was dropped when it transferred to a federal court, and Horiuchi was said to have been acting in the line of duty. In 2001 that decision was overturned by the Circuit Court, but the new prosecutor in the county, unwilling to rock the boat and make enemies, and pleading the old line of "healing for the country" (the dead can't heal, Mr. Prosecutor, didn't you know?) again dismissed and dropped the case.

Hard questions remain about Ruby Ridge and how it was handled. Firstly, why did the ATF give credence to testimony given by known opponents of Weaver, who clearly had an axe to grind, and believe they had stockpiled weapons? Secondly, why did they take the word of known radicals, and believe that there was no way Randy was surrendering peacefully? Also, what in the name of blue Hell was an HRT doing there? Who were the hostages? Weaver's kids? And if this was believed to be the case, why was one of those kids gunned down and the HRT prepared to possibly kill the others in a tactical assault if Weaver did not surrender? If the ATF and the FBI had checked the records they would surely have known that the Weavers moved to Ruby Ridge in 1982, unwilling to be around other people, and with few if any friends. Nobody was forced to move or held there against their will, so could the reason for the HRT being there have been simply to escalate the perceived threat, and thus requisition more men, material and also justify a shoot-to-kill policy? Tension always goes up in a hostage situation, so perhaps the feds wanted to manufacture one in order to be able to take the action they wished to.

Where was the cache of weapons spoken of, and which made, apparently, besieging the cabin so necessary? If the Weavers had had automatic weapons in abundance, would they not have used them? But the only weapons fired on their side seem to have been two rifles. Randy did not fire any weapon - it's doubtful he even had one. Why was the story about them shooting at the helicopter so readily believed when it was easily discounted and contradicted, and why then did this end up in the indictment against Randy Weaver? How was a sniper allowed to fire at a target with no warning and no demand for that target to yield?

Why was the judge so completely obdurate, refusing to rescind or even delay the arrest warrant, when it was pretty clear that Randy's failure to appear could have been due to an administrative screw-up on the part of the court? Why were shoot-to-kill orders issued by the FBI, when they vastly outnumbered and outgunned the Weavers and could have brought about a peaceful conclusion of the siege?

Ruby Ridge finally came to a tragic end - though perhaps not as tragic as it could have been, at least there were survivors - on August 31 1992. Less than eight months later, the mistakes and miscommunications and usage of unnecessary lethal force that characterised the siege would again be played out in Waco, Texas. Short memories, these FBI agents.

Why will this conflict be remembered?

The kind of sad thing is it really isn't. If only for the greater tragedy of Waco coming so soon afterwards, or the change in administration, nobody outside of the USA - and probably many within it - remember or know too much about Ruby Ridge. Before I started researching it I knew the barest details, and while surely it's remembered by survivalists, white supremacists and anti-government types, in general I believe most people have forgotten it, which is a pity, as it's a fascinating and horrifying story, and a true indictment of the heavy-handed and impatient nature of the federal law enforcement agencies, especially the FBI.

When I began researching this, as I say, I knew nothing much about it, and I expected, perhaps naively, to learn of a right-wing gun nut who holed up in his cabin and took on the FBI and lost. After making myself familiar with the story, I have a far different view of it now. While there's probably little doubt that Randy Weaver was a gun nut, and a racist, and that he sold two sawn-off shotguns, he paid a high price, one that was completely disproportionate to his crime. I'm irresistibly drawn to the tale of Jean Valjean, from Victor Hugo's classic masterpiece Les Miserables, who goes to jail for the least of crimes and keeps getting into deeper trouble, extending his jail sentence through mostly no fault of his own, but a broken and corrupt and unforgiving and uncaring legal system. Weaver may have deserved to be punished for his crimes, but this spiralled out of control and became a farce, a deadly one, in which the FBI come out, to my mind, looking like the bad guys.

It certainly must have served as a rallying call to others and a vindication of the belief held among many that the government could not be trusted. It led to further incidents, Waco as already mentioned but a few years later the Oklahoma City bombing, which culprit Timothy McVeigh claimed was in retaliation for the events at Ruby Ridge, and fed the growth of anti-government feeling and the rise of right-wing militias and domestic terrorism. It again showed the USA in a bad light to the world, and while it would be nice and simple to be able to blame the Republican administration of Ronald Reagan, he was gone when Waco happened and a Democrat was in the White House. Bill Clinton didn't do any better, so if nothing else that must prove that stupidity, arrogance and gung-ho heavy-handedness is bipartisan, and probably eternal too.

It's also easy to see, as I mentioned earlier, how conspiracy theories sprang up as to how Randy Weaver was scapegoated and used as a way for the FBI to make an example of someone who dared stand up to them, in an almost totalitarian crackdown the likes of which we had been used to seeing only in the Soviet Union or its many satellite independent states. I have some sympathy for Weaver, despite what I said before, and while he should have paid for his crime, every man and woman deserves a fair trial and deserves justice, and I don't think it can be said that Randy Weaver got either, or that the US Government intended to do so. Perhaps it was easier for them if he was shot in the siege - save them the cost of a trial. Witness the HRT commander's threat to end the siege by force if Bo Gritz, the civilian negotiator who finally did what the FBI should have been doing, did not get the Weavers to surrender before his deadline. Could he have been ordered to do all he could to ensure none of the family got out alive to testify? And what about Vicki and Sammy? What crimes had they committed, yet they were shot as if they were as "dangerous" targets as Randy was believed to be. Accidentally, in Vicki's case, yes, but no accountability was accepted by the FBI, nor was anyone charged with any crime in the shooting of an innocent woman.

Yes, conspiracy theories are usually just that, theories with often little to no substance in them. But if it wasn't a conspiracy, it was certainly one of the worst-handled (until Waco, of course) sieges and so-called hostage negotiations - again, who were the hostages? None were ever identified - in the recent history of the FBI, and their abject failure to bring the siege to a peaceful conclusion was not helped by the incompetence or compliance in the conspiracy of the court, from the letter with the wrong date to the judge's refusal to rescind the arrest warrant, and even Weaver's defence attorney's wild warnings of what he faced if he lost the case. Everything seems, on the face of it, to have been arranged to ensure Randy did not dare turn up to court, necessitating a manhunt which turned into a siege and ended in tragedy.

As a post-script, this memo was sent by the FBI Assistant Director, two days after Vicki Weaver had been shot dead with her baby in her arms. It kind of underlines the overall stupidity of the course the feds took, if two days too late:

Something to Consider
1. Charge against Weaver is Bull S___.
2. No one saw Weaver do any shooting.
3. Vicki has no charges against her.
4. Weaver's defense. He ran down the hill to see what dog was barking at. Some guys in camys [camouflage] shot his dog. Started shooting at him. Killed his son. Harris did the shooting. He is in pretty strong legal position.

He was, and the government paid a heavy price.
But not as heavy as Randy Weaver did, losing his wife and young son.

[Trollheart]

Spartacus's Slave Revolt (73 - 71 BC)

Timeline: 73 BC

Era: First Century B.C.
Year: 73 – 71 BC
Campaign: The Third Servile War
Conflict: The Servile Wars
Country: Italy
Region: Various
Combatants: Slaves and Gladiators, Roman Empire
Commander(s): (Slaves) Spartacus, Crixus, Gannicus, Oenomaus, Castus; (Rome) Marcus Licinius Crassus, Pompey, Lucius Gellius, Quintus Marcius Rufus, Publius Varinius, Gaius Claudius Glaber, Gaius Cassius Longinus, Gnaeus Manlius, Marcus Lucullus, Biggus Dickus (just kidding on that last one!)
Reason: Revolt against Rome for freedom from slavery
Objective: Get the fuck out of Italy and captivity; possible attack on Rome
Casualties (approx): 61,000
Objective Achieved? No
Victor: Rome
Legacy: The end of any further slave revolts; made the political career of Crassus and Pompey, led – eventually – to slightly better treatment for slaves

We all know the story of Spartacus, if only from old Biblical movies or even references in Monty Python's Life of Brian, but what we know about the gladiator slave leader is really only his ending. The fact is that the revolt he led was part of an entire series of wars, three in fact, called above The Servile Wars, for I hope obvious reasons. Although I don't intend to go into the entire series of wars, a quick recap might help.

The First Servile War took place in 135 BC and ran to 132, when Eunus, a Syrian slave who claimed to be a prophet, actually took the island city of Enna in Sicily and held it with a small army of four hundred slaves. Emboldened by this, another slave leader, Cleon, took Tauromenium and then joined up with Eunus, who had proclaimed himself king. The revolt then moved east, pulling in more rebel slave armies, and held out until an army commanded by Publius Rupilius managed to breach the walls of Tauromenium thanks to that reliable standby, traitors and turncoats. Cleon was killed repelling the assault while Eunus died in captivity, awaiting his fate. The deaths of the two slave leaders were of course insufficient retribution for Rome, and Rupilius is said to have crucified about 20,000 rebels.

The Second Servile War began thirty years later, in 104 BC, and was the result of a somewhat hamfisted attempt by Rome to free slaves from countries they were allied with (or were part of the empire) so that those now-freed men could be conscripted into the Roman legions. It backfired though, and when the consul, Publius Licinius Nerva, in obedience to orders freed slaves in Sicily (again with Sicily, huh?) it had two unexpected and unwelcome consequences. First, the slaves from other nations who had not been freed began to wonder why, and unrest fomented. Second, the plantation owners (sure doesn't your heart go out to them?) whined that their slaves were being freed and leaving them without unpaid labour. What: were they supposed to pay for workers? Outrageous! Living up to his surname, Nerva got nervous and reversed the order, re-enslaving the freed slaves, who got together and said "Oh no you don't son. We're not going back there!"

And so began the Second Servile War.

This too lasted four years, and its commanders were Salvius (who I'm tempted to misspell but I won't) and Athenion. When Salvius heard that the annoyingly-named praetor Lucius Licinius Lucullus was on the way with 17,000 men and a strongly-worded letter of complaint from the emperor maybe, he not surprisingly wanted to retreat inside his stronghold and hope they'd go away, but his general, Athenion, said "fuck that! Let those Roman bastards come! We'll slaughter them all!" These may not have been his actual words, but the upshot is that he convinced his leader to meet the Romans in open battle, which was a serious mistake. You never met the Romans in open battle. The Romans were shit hot in open battle, in fact I have it on good authority that they had the Latin phrase Nosums Caloric Excretus inscribed on their shields, which literally translates to "We're shit hot in open battle." If you wanted to take on the Roman Empire, you did so by subterfuge, siege, using the territory to your advantage, tricking them into narrow defiles and so on. You did not, Braveheart like, wave your arse at them and tell them to come and have a go.

To be fair, the odds were on the slaves' side, outnumbering Lucius's lads by at least two to one, but if there was one thing the Romans had learned about slaves by now it was that they were not born soldiers, and usually the only thing keeping them fighting was belief in their leader. Once Athenion fell, they all said to each other "fuck this! I'd rather be a live slave than a dead soldier!" and ran headlong. That of course did not save them, and half of Athenion's army was killed before night fell. Athenion was not dead, but his men thought he was, and so did his boss, Salvius, seeing the mad charge and realising that it had all gone tits-up, roared "Wait for me you bastards! I'm your king!"

Well, his actual words are not recorded, as in the panic and heat of full retreat his scribe, who should have been immortalising the king's speeches for posterity, had decided discretion was the greater part of sticking around to have various parts of you hacked off by Roman legionnaires, and was but a rapidly-vanishing dot in the distance. I don't know: scribes these days. One little massacre and they're away on their toes. Or, I guess I should say, on their horse's toes. Anyway Salvius, emulating the action of his soon-to-be-sacked scribe (by which I mean they would seal him up in a sack with several live and not very happy animals and throw it into the river) retreated with them as they were chased back to their stronghold in Triocala.

Here's where it gets, not so much weird but kind of ironic. Lucius arrived at a leisurely pace at Triocola, kicking slave butt as he went, and got out plans for his big siege engines, but on arrival a carrier pigeon (or whatever the fuck they used for transmitting news in ancient Rome – slave with a message maybe? Imperial telegram? Mobile phone Rome-ing? Sorry) gave him the news that he had been replaced, and he then snapped "Tear it all down lads, we're going home." Leaving the city desperately un-sieged, he fucked off back home and grinned as he considered how the fuck who was replacing him was going to explain that one! Talk about biting your nose off to spite your own face.

His spiteful tactics worked. In 102 BC, his successor, Gaius Servilius the Augur (what a tool – sorry) had the living shit kicked out of him when Athenion, now in command since Salvius had gone to the Great Slave Compound in the Sky, attacked his camp and sent him running. A year later the consul Gaius Marius called his boy Manius Aquillius to him and said "those bastards in Sicily are really getting on my wick. Those two useless fucktards couldn't even take a fucking small city from a bunch of slaves and gladiators, but I bet you can, can't you, eh? You're my man, ain't ya?"

And Aquillius was. He took a shitload of crack troops to the rebel city, and when his troops weren't on crack they were shit hot, and as much as slaughtered the slaves once they got to the gates, possibly without having to use the old Roman ploy of pretending to be taking a survey in order to get in. Aquillius is said to have growled "take that you cunt," as he killed Athenion himself, and then they took a thousand prisoners back and threw them to the lions. Literally: they were sent to fight in the arena, not against men but against beasts. But spite reared its head again, and in a sort of caricature of the guy who stabbed himself rather than have his skin be used as a canoe in the old joke, they killed each other instead, the last one falling on his own sword, no doubt while the animals looked on in surprise and bewilderment, and wondered if they would be paid anyway for their appearance as per their contract?

And so, with, it seems, uncharacteristically for the empire, a total absence of crucifixions this time, Rome had once again shown the slaves who was boss, and were confident there would not be a repeat of this, um, repeat.

The Third Servile War

But of course we know there was, and it became one of the most famous of them all, and it was the first to threaten the Roman capital, indeed the first to take place on the Italian mainland. The First and Second Servile Wars had not really been considered wars at all by Rome, more revolts and civil disturbances that, though they took time to be put down, were no real threat to the empire. They also took place on the island of Sicily, therefore would have been seen as more provincial uprisings that the people in Rome would frown at but never expect to be dealing with directly themselves.

But even if those first two had been, in the end, unsuccessful (as would this one be, though more effective) they certainly planted the idea in the minds of slaves that a) they could rebel against their masters and b) Rome was not invulnerable. It had taken a total of eight years for the first two outbreaks to be put down. This single, third one would stretch out over almost as long. With the air of disaffection and the idea of freedom in the air, the time was right for a proper rebellion, and this time, they didn't need any pretext to kick it off. Other than wanting out, of course.

In ancient Rome, as you may, and probably do know, the fighting men known as gladiators came from two classes of people: criminals and slaves. Life was tough for gladiators, a large percentage of whom died in training, but for those who made it to the actual games, the chances of survival were slim. Even if they did really well and survived several matches, their increasing fame would only bring more challengers their way, eager to take them down. Being slaves, they were of course not paid for their efforts and reaped no reward from it, so it's not at all surprising that in one of the gladiatorial schools in Capua, just outside Naples, a bunch of them got together and decided on a jailbreak.

Whenever there's a plot there's almost always someone willing to run and tell the authorities against whom that plot is set, and this was no exception, but even betrayed as they were, the gladiators went ahead with their breakout. Well, they had little choice really, as surely only death awaited them if they stepped back? Only seventy of the original two hundred made it out, fighting their way out with kitchen knives and other implements (love the idea of a gladiator holding off a legionnaire with a rolling pin or a whisk!) and though a force was sent after them they easily defeated it. As in other slave revolts, more joined them as they made their way through Capua, and then they literally headed for the hills, making their base on Mount Vesuvius, which would become well known to all inhabitants of Pompeii. Perhaps there was an unspoken hint there?

Rome was not impressed. This was not backwater Sicily, an island few Romans cared about back then, removed from the centre of power. Campania , the region in which the revolt began, was a holiday spot for the well-to-do, maybe an equivalent of the Hamptons or something, a place where rich people (the only kind who counted) came to relax and kick back. The last thing these wealthy folk expected was to be overrun by thousands of "common slaves" thirsty for their blood. One simply does not have such things happen in Campania, darling! So the Empire had to do something about it.

The slaves had picked three men from out of their ranks to be their leaders: Crixus, Oneomaus and Spartacus. It was this latter who outfoxed the Romans on Mount Vesuvius, breaking a siege laid by Gaius Claudius Glaber, by fashioning rope ladders out of vines and trees which enabled them to rappel down the side of the mountain and circle around, taking Gaius Claudius by surprise, and winning the day. A second commander sent against them, Publius Varanius, was also defeated, his weapons and equipment appropriated by the rebels. This of course led to their ranks swelling, and at its height the army now commanded more or less by Spartacus, with Oneomaus having fallen at the siege of Vesuvius, numbered about seventy thousand. In addition to slaves, shepherds and herdsmen also flocked to Spartacus's banner.

With no further attempts by the Romans to dislodge them – they surely already smarting from the embarrassment of a rag-tag army of former gladiators and probably what they characterised as scum having beaten their mighty forces – Spartacus and his army remained on Mount Vesuvius through the winter, as 73 BC turned to 72 BC, training and equipping their new recruits, and venturing out to take other towns, adding Nola, Nuceria, Thurii and Metapontum.

Given both that this was seven decades before the birth of Christ, and that the rebellion failed and all its leaders were executed, it's become very difficult to know what exactly the goal of the uprising was, other than getting the fuck out of Dodge. There are theories of factions developing within the slave army, with those under Spartacus wishing to hightail it over the Alps to freedom, while the remaining leader, Crixus, seems to have been more focused on revenge and kicking shit out of Romans. Nobody can say if this was the case, but as historians do, they argue about this and we'll consider it as a plausible occurrence in a movement which began as a simple escape attempt and whose leaders suddenly find they have an army at their command. The question "what now?" probably occurred to both the army and its two leaders, and each had different responses, maybe.

As for some romantic idea of ending slavery in Rome – mostly put about by Kirk Douglas in the fictionalised version in the movie of the same name? Nah. Those debating historians don't debate about that. As far as those who are far more in the know about this than I am are concerned, neither of the leaders gave a rat's ass for helping their brothers in bondage. They would probably have been crazier than a Christian to have tried it: slavery had existed in the empire for thousands of years, and was not likely to crumble just because less than a hundred thousand slaves said "Guys let's think about this. Is this really fair? Is this really the face Rome wants to present to the world?" Neither Spartacus nor Crixus seem to have been prepared to lay down their lives for other slaves, and I think the general feeling prevalent was "We're free. Fuck them. Let's haul ass out of here."

But while the Romans may have been temporarily thwarted by the slaves, they weren't about to give up. Bad enough the empire being defeated by a foreign army, but an army of fucking slaves? Over their crucified bodies, pal! Crixus fell at the Battle of Mons Garganus, a victim to a force led by Gnaeus Cornelius; the Senate had finally started to take the slave revolt seriously as it piled up victory upon victory and took town after town. Now proper legions were sent against the escapees, and with the death of Crixus, Spartacus was left in sole command of the rebels. However he was so pissed at the death of his friend that he had three hundred Roman captives fight each other in gladiatorial-like games, turning the tables on his hated oppressors as they were forced to fight to the death. He then headed north, to Cisalpine Gaul, where he planned to reprovision his troops.

Shadowed by Lucius Gellius behind him and Lentulus Clodanius ahead, he nevertheless managed to defeat both forces and sent them scuttling for cover. These stunning victories brought even more recruits to the cause of Spartacus, increasing his army to almost 120,000 as it marched directly to the heart of Roman power, Rome itself. Gellius and Clondanius had already legged it back home, and while they awaited the arrival of the slave army reinforced their troops and prepared to meet it on their home turf. Then Lucius Gellius turned to his fellow consul and said "Dude, I have a gnarly idea! Instead of just, you know, waiting for this most heinous army to get to our gates, let's go out and attack them, yeah? We'll be heroes, man!" And Clondanius grinned in agreement. "Sweet," spake he. "Let's do this thing, brother!"

They both had occasion to regret this, as once again Spartacus's army, now even bigger and more organised than when they had first met, kicked the living crap out of them again and sent them once more howling for home, no doubt moaning "No way man! He totally beat us again!" And he had. Nor would they be the last, as several more armies sent out to deal with the mighty slave general met with the same fate. Spartacus, for his part, had second thoughts. He knew his army was big, compared to what it had been when he and his buddies had broken out of gladiatorial school in the ultimate expression of truancy, but he also knew that within Rome was hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of Roman soldiers; it was their base, their headquarters, their supply point and the centre of their power. He would be riding into the lion's den, or, I guess we should say, the eagle's aerie. He wasn't quite ready to do that yet.

So he turned around on possibly the eve of victory, and headed back south, where he prepared for the next confrontation. We'll never know, but it may have been the first time he had misjudged the situation, though he would not get the chance to reflect on that. Rome, released from the pressure of an imminent attack, began to sow the seeds of his destruction. And it all began when Lucius Gellius and Clondanius were dismissed and replaced by this man.

[Trollheart]

Marcus Licinius Crassus (115 – 53BC)

Known as the richest man in Rome, Crassus (pronounced creases) was no stranger to combat. Born into wealth and power, his father and younger brother had died at the hands of supporters of Gaius Marius (or possibly taken their own lives, but hunted by them anyway), he having to flee to Hispania (Iberian peninsula) to avoid the death squads. Here he built up a small army and began to use his power to extort money from the cities to finance his campaign. In Greece he fought alongside Pompey against the enemies of Lucius Cornelius Sulla in his Second Civil War, eventually laying the groundwork for Sulla to retake Rome and become the first of the new dictators, and the first man in the Roman Republic (not then an empire) to take the city by force of arms. Crassus was rewarded handsomely for his assistance, and was not slow to take his revenge.

Having fallen under proscriptions decreed by Gaius Marius, Crassus was ready to pay him back. By the way, in case you didn't know, a proscription was not what a Roman doctor gave you if you were suffering from the pox, but rather a death list, or at least a list wherein it was declared that those on it had to give up all their wealth (often too their lives), that their female relatives (daughters, wives, aunts) were forbidden to remarry and that basically the position of their family was destroyed with no hope of ever being rebuilt. One of the most powerful men in Rome now, under the patronage of the new dictator, Crassus not only reaped all the wealth from his enemies who were now on the list, but added those whose fortune he fancied making his. Nobody dared to protest, even if they were innocent. In real terms of today, it's estimated that Crassus's net worth exceeded thirteen billion US Dollars.

He also dealt in somewhat less dodgy enterprises, purchasing slaves and buying real estate up cheap and selling it for a profit when renovated by those slaves, and by speculating in mineral acquisition such as silver. He also created the first ever Fire Brigade, though extinguishing of any fire was always made conditional on whether or not the frantic owner would sell him the property at a knockdown price, otherwise his men were instructed to shove their hands in their pockets (did they have pockets back then? Well, whatever the equivalent would be if not) and whistle, leaving the fire to consume the building. Talk about a fire sale! To add insult to injury, having got the property at literally a steal, he would often then lease it back, refurbished and rebuilt, at exorbitant terms to the owner who had sold it to him. Even vestal virgins, the purest and most hands-off women in Rome, could not stand in his way if he wanted their property, and in pursuing one called Licinia he almost overstepped and was accused in court, but as ever, money talks and bull**** walks, and so did he, a free man. He later got the property he had wanted. No idea what happened to the vestal virgin, but consorting with men was a huge no-no back then, so I doubt it was pleasant.

The basis of Crassus's defence seems to have hinged on the rather odd premise that "I was only trying to get her villa, Your Honour, not into her panties." Apparently this was a much less serious crime (if it was a crime at all) and the judges shrugged and said "Sounds fair," and let him go. In 73 BC he was elected praetor, which spelled the beginning of the end for our friend Spartacus.

Crassus taking over command of the legions was bad news for them too. He took the word "discipline" to new heights (or at least, revived old ones), re-instigating a practice that had not taken place for two hundred years, called decimation (from which, of course, we get today's word decimate), involving the breaking up of legions or cohorts into groups of ten, each man selecting a straw and the man who got the short straw got beaten to death by his mates. Hardly fair, as the one unlucky enough to draw the short straw (yes, that's where we get that phrase from too probably) might have been courageous and loyal, while one of those selected to kick his head in might be a coward. Didn't matter. Decimation was the utlimate expression of unfair and unbiased punishment, where your luck could just literally run out and you would be the one to die. Presumably, were you to refuse to take part you would either be killed or put in another group to be selected. Either way, it was you or your mate.

Although this was a harsh and very inequitable form of discipline, it did actually work, as nobody in a Crassus legion even thought of running, knowing the fate that might – almost certainly would – befall them if they were to choose the short straw. Better to die in battle, even a hopeless one, than be bludgeoned to death in disgrace by your comrades.

As he progressed towards Spartacus's forces, Crassus detailed two legions to approach from behind but not to attack. Their leader, Mummius, saw an opportunity and thought he'd impress the chief, but had the shit kicked out of him by Spartacus, and later lost more of his men when Crassus decimated his legion. Should have obeyed orders, son! Despite this setback, Crassus pressed his advantage and pushed Spartacus back. On the run, the rebel leader made the fatal mistake of forgetting the old axiom, "never trust a pirate", and did just that, striking a deal for passage to Sicily, the original scene of the crime and a real hotbed of resentment, just ripe for a new revolt. To nobody's surprise but his, the pirates took his money and then fucked off, leaving his army at the mercy of the advancing Crassus. Retreating to Rhegium in modern Calabria, they prepared for the final battle.

Building fortifications across the isthmus, Crassus effectively cut the rebels off, placing them under siege. As Spartacus tried to broker a truce with Crassus, the Roman realised the rebel was desperate and refused. Spartacus then proved this to be true when he attempted to break out with 50,000 men. Crassus, aware that his hated rival Pompey was on the way back from a successful campaign and had been ordered to lend his assistance, and unwilling to share the glory and look as if he had had to be rescued by his rival, engaged Spartacus in full combat at the River Silarius, and though the battle went this way then that, the discipline of the Roman troops (with no doubt the shadow of decimation foremost in their minds) told, and Spartacus himself was killed while trying in vain to get to where Crassus sat serenely on his horse, overlooking the battle. Though the body of Spartacus was never found, the road did not lack for them, as Crassus ordered the crucifixion of 5,000 while in the north, Pompey, who had run to ground those who had escaped while Spartacus took on Crassus, outdid his fellow general by a thousand, nailing up 6,000.

It had not been by any means a walkover for Rome. Crassus is estimated to have lost in the region of 20,000 men (whether this includes his later decimations or not I don't know) – almost half of those killed in the rebel army, if you take into account all the crucifixions later. In fact, speaking of those, how long and how much wood must it have taken to nail up five thousand (or in Pompey's case, 6,000) men? It must have gone on for days, even weeks! And a line of crucified men that big must have stretched for miles. A deadly warning from the empire (well, at the time it was a republic but you know what I mean) of the folly of rising against its power.

Why will this battle be remembered?

Well, technically it won't. This account doesn't focus on a battle but a war, and a long one (seven years before Spartacus was defeated), but even then it really was forgotten about until 1960, when the movie of the same name was released. Even though this is littered with historical inaccuracies and made-up stuff (Spartacus being crucified, the famous "I'm Spartacus!" scene etc) it awakened both a new interest in the story (coming as it did on the heels of such huge Biblical-era epics as The Ten Commandments, Ben-Hur and The Robe, and of course the two giants to come after it, The Greatest Story Ever Told and King of Kings and in the concept of slavery itself.

But perhaps ironically and in some ways sadly, it will be, and is, remembered mostly for the spoof on the life of Jesus by the Monty Python team, when the inimitable phrase becomes "I'm Brian, and so is my wife!" Nonetheless, the idea of a bunch of people all standing up and claiming to be the one sought in order to protect him, or her, has taken root now in film and television, and it happens relatively frequently. All of which, I guess, keeps Spartacus alive in people's memories, even if the larger percentage of the world (including me, till I researched for this article) believe he was crucified along with his men.

On the other hand, the three Servile Wars between them did serve to show the people that the Roman Empire or Republic was not impossible to defeat, or at least stand up to, and though there were no more revolts after the brutal manner in which Spartacus's followers were dealt after their defeat, attitudes did begin – very slowly – to change about the legitimacy of keeping slaves, with certain rights being conferred on them, such as – wow – the right not to be killed out of hand by their owners. This became a punishable offence during the reign of Antoninus Pius, who ruled from 138 – 161 (so it only took, what, another two hundred years?) and slowly, the idea of slavery, while it never truly vanished from Roman life (and was of course taken up by other civilisations after them) became quietly distasteful and less accepted as the empire progressed.

[Trollheart]

The Battle of Waterloo, June 18 1815

Timeline: 1815

Era: Nineteenth century
Year: 1815
Campaign: Waterloo
Conflict: Napoleonic Wars
Country: Belgium
Region: Waterloo duh
Combatants: French Empire v Coaltion led by England (Prussia, Hanover, Holland, Nassau, Brunswick)
Commander(s): (French) Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte, Michel Levy (England) Arthur Wellseley, Duke of Wellington, Genhard Leberecht Blucher
Reason: To try to break the power of Napoleon and bring the war to an end
Objective: Defeat of the French empire
Casualties (approx): 65,000
Objective Achieved? Yes
Victor: England and her allies
Legacy: The power of Napoleon was broken forever, he exiled to St. Helena for the rest of his days. France returned to the authority of the monarchy; greatest and most famous of victories for the Duke of Wellington, and provided a Eurovision-winning song for a new group called ABBA.



Napoleon Bonaparte (1769 – 1821)

Who doesn't know about Napoleon? Well you may not know as much as you think, so before we head into the details of what would be his final battle, here's a brief potted history.

Okay, not so brief. You know me so well!

The first interesting thing about Napoleon is that he wasn't even French, born to Italian parents on the island of Corsica on August 15 1769, and even stranger, his father fought against the French for the independence of his homeland, and later became the Corsican representative to the court of King Louis XVI. At the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789, Napoleon became enamoured of the revolutionaries' ideals and fought on their side against the monarchy, where he distinguished himself, helping to put down the royalist counter-revolution called the Convention. He faced the British in Egypt, and here and in the Middle East he became famed both for his military prowess and his harsh treatment of the vanquished, particularly illustrated in his taking of the Israeli city of Jaffa, where he ordered all prisoners executed, but rather than waste bullets on them had them drowned or bayonetted, and the women and children raped and murdered. Despite these atrocities (or perhaps due to them) he was hailed as a hero when he returned to France in 1799, and set himself up its leader, proclaiming himself first consul.

This was all in line with Roman precedent (he was, after all, Italian-born): Julius Caesar had entered Rome in a triumph and declared himself as its dictator, and indeed it wasn't long before Napoleon took that title for himself too, in 1802. After the signing of the Treaty of Amiens that year, which brought the Revolutionary Wars to an end, Napoleon consolidated his power, extended his influence and a year later was back at war with the old enemy. In the wake of royalist assassination plots, Napoleon now had himself crowned emperor, an action that did not go down well with the English at all. After a long and protracted war which stretched out across the continent to Spain, Holland, Portugal and Germany, Napoleon was eventually defeated and officially deposed in April 1814, exiled to the island of Elba, off the Tuscan coast of Italy. He spent, however, less than a year in exile, escaping in February 1815 and heading back to France, where he was received with rapture and put to flight the unpopular King Louis XVIII. Napoleon was back in power. A coalition of nations headed by Britain and including Holland, Prussia, Austria and Russia then declared war on France.

It is against this background that we take up the story.

Napoleon knew his grasp on power this time was weak, and that his armies could not hope to stand against the combined might of the Coalition, so his plan was to break it up. If he could force the British out of Brussels he could knock Prussia out of the war, and gather his reinforcements. He hoped that a French victory would sway the Belgians – many of whom spoke and identified as French – to his side, restoring the balance a little. Also, with the War of 1812 in full swing, the crack British troops had been sent to America, so those serving in the coalition forces were of lower quality, and could not be expected to fight as well as would the top of the line soldiers. It was definitely an opportunity, if he could grasp it.

One man, of course, would be the obstacle in the way of that plan, would ensure its failure and lead to the ultimate and permanent defeat of the French Emperor.

Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington (1769 – 1852)

An Irish Protestant, a member of the Ascendancy, Arthur Wellesley was born in Dublin but in one of those strange twists of fate moved when he was sixteen to Belgium, the country which was to be the scene of his most famous triumph. Far from showing any signs of the war hero he would later become, Arthur was a lazy, indolent boy right up to his twenties, showing little sign of interest in anything, or any career, and leading his mother to despair for her son's future. To her immense surprise and delight though, this changed entirely when he enrolled at the French Royal Academy of Equitation in Angers, where he distinguished himself and did so well that when he returned home on leave his mother found it hard to believe this was the same idler she had anguished over. Arthur had found his calling, and his destiny, in the military.

He gained a commission in the army, and began to rise through the ranks. He was elected as MP for Trim in 1789, just about the time of the Irish uprising, though he does not seem to have been involved in its repression, most of the action taking place around the Wexford area. He served in Flanders (his first experience of combat abroad), the West Indies and India, where he continued to make a name for himself, now promoted to lieutenant-colonel, later major-general, and was known for being one of the "new breed" of generals who refused to survey the battle from the safety of pavilions or tents, and demanded to be down among his men, fighting alongside them. During the Battle of Assaye, part of the Second Anglo-Marathan War of the Indian campaign, one of his men put it into words:

"The General was in the thick of the action the whole time ... I never saw a man so cool and collected as he was ... though I can assure you, 'til our troops got the order to advance the fate of the day seemed doubtful ..."

After winning fame and glory in India, Wellesley obtained permission to return home. Now knighted, he again came up against one of those weird coincidences of history when, on the way back, he stopped off at a small island in the Caribbean which would later house his greatest enemy, the defeated Napoleon Bonaparte, and even stayed in the same house in which the French emperor was fated to live out the last years of his life. On his return from St. Helena he briefly met Lord Nelson, less than two months before the great man lost his life at Trafalgar, and became MP for Newport, on the Isle of Wight before being made Chief Secretary for Ireland. He fought in the Battle of Copenhagen then, diverted from his original intention of sailing to South America to take on the Spanish, ended up in Portugal in 1808. Later that year he got his postponed chance to face the Spanish (though on their home soil and not in their South American colonies) and also fought the French. In both cases he was victorious. After his triumphs in Spain and Portugal he was elevated to the peerage, made Viscount Wellington. This was later upgraded to Earl in 1812 and six months later Marquess. Ironically perhaps, shortly afterwards he was forced to begin a series of retreats out of Spain and Portugal as the French army pressed forward.

He was soon on the attack again though, and this time won some victories, though fought to a stalemate at Toulouse. The news of the first defeat and forced abdication of Napoleon though knocked the heart out of the French and they agreed to a truce. Wellesley was made Duke of Wellington. On the escape and return to power of Napoleon, he left Vienna, where he had been holding a diplomatic post as Ambassador to France, and marched to Holland, preparatory to meeting England's old adversary on the fields of Waterloo.

It should be noted that, though I've really only scanned down through the account on the duke, I have not seen yet any indication that he previously faced Napoleon; indeed, while the French emperor was at large it seems Wellesley was abroad in the Iberian peninsula fighting, so I think I can safely say that, while the two of them are linked forever by history as bitter rivals and well-matched generals, Waterloo, which we now return to, was the first actual meeting of the two great men.

Although he had only been at large again for just over four months, the strength of feeling and support for Napoleon was such that he had already a force of 300,000 men fighting for him, though only a third of them had marched with him to Waterloo. Though this was still more than Wellington commanded, it was less than the combined forces of he and Blucher, so mindful of the power of propaganda and disinformation, Napoleon had spread rumours that Wellington's forces would be unable to access supplies, as their lines at the coastal ports would be cut. He then moved towards Charleroi, intending to get between the two forces and separate them, to allow him to take on first one then the other instead of having to face them both together. He struck in the small hours of the morning (I think I'm right in saying he may have gone against what would have been seen as chivalric rules here, which usually demanded combat during the day, but I could have got that wrong. Either way, I doubt they were prepared for such an attack) and pushed the Prussian forces back as morning turned to afternoon, and by midnight they had crossed the River Sambre, the only obstacle between them and Brussels, where Wellington was camped.

Perhaps it demonstrates how "civilised" war was seen as back then, but Wellington was actually at a ball when he got the news of the French breaking through. To be fair, he and Blucher had both expected, knowing Napoleon's tactics, that the emperor might make a feint on one side while attacking on the other, thereby drawing off their forces on the wrong side, so they were both reluctant to commit to any perceived attack until they were sure it was a genuine one. Once he learned this was "it", so to speak, Wellington moved fast. He joined the Prince of Orange at Quatre Bras, which, although it sounds like an endorsement of a very heavily-endowed woman and how she has to restrain her cleavage, is in fact a small hamlet in Belgium. Marshal Ney was forcing back the Prince when Wellington arrived and drove him off, securing the crossroads. His arrival was too late to help the Prussians though, who had already been defeated. Napoleon, with his ingrained contempt for the English – he had once described them, famously, as "a nation of shop-keepers", believed the army under Blucher the bigger threat, and so led the attack against Wellington's ally. The two armies clashed in what became known as the Battle of Ligny.


One thing that could not be said about the French under Napoleon was that they were lacking in experience. They were all brave men, fanatically loyal to their emperor, and most were veterans of his many campaigns. However, on the flip side of that, Napoleon had had to assemble his army rather hastily after his escape, and as a result few of the men had fought previously alongside each other, and so did not know each other. Trust in the emperor was total, trust among the ranks in each other was not so much so. Against this, the Prussians were also in a state of reorganisation, so much so that they were short of artillery and this continued to arrive even as the battle took place. Talk about your JIT! * As if that wasn't enough, many of the men, in contrast to their enemy, were new and untrained, and lacked weapons. Saxon and Rhinelander regiments, which had been recently part of the French Army, mostly deserted and fucked off home, unwilling to take part in a battle that was basically against their own people and really having nothing to gain by standing and dying with these verdammt Prussians.

In addition to this, Napoleon brought his Imperial Guard, his crack troops to bear on Ligny and the fighting was intense. Like many battles, ground was won, lost, retaken, lost again and so on, but the main casualty of this battle was the loss – temporarily, but morally crushing – of Blucher, whose own horse fell upon him when it was shot, and who had to be carried from the field. Blucher, not his horse. His command was taken over by Lieutenant-General August von Gneisnau, who, rather than retreat and leave Wellington alone, instead pushed towards him, keeping lines of communication open.

As we learned in my History of Ireland journal, he who can select the terrain for a battle often wins it, and as Napoleon was approaching the site Wellington had chosen – Waterloo – the Duke was able to use the setting to his advantage. Neither were on home soil, of course, but Wellington knew how to use the terrain and his enemy was forced to come to him. In effect, Wellington was fighting a defensive action while the French attacked. Wellington was able to garrison troops in the large Château d'Hougomont, which would be difficult for Napoleon's forces to take. He also garrisoned the hamlet of Papolotte, which covered his northern flank and also commanded the road along which his reinforcements from Gneisnau were due to approach. To the west he was covered by placing another garrison in the country house of La Haye Sainte and sharpshooters – what we would call today snipers – across the road in a disused quarry.

The reinforcements, however, had to contend with heavy rain and even a fire breaking out in Wavre, slowing their movements as they tried to drag their artillery through thick muck and along narrow streets. Even so, they arrived far quicker than Napoleon expected. He had anticipated the Prussians would need two days at least to reach Waterloo; they began arriving five hours after he had sat down, apparently unconcerned and full of confidence (or arrogance) to breakfast like a man with no worries. The rain-sodden terrain affected him too, of course, and he opted to delay moving in his artillery and cavalry. Had he known how close the Prussians were, presumably he would have forced their deployment despite the less than ideal conditions.

Attacking on two fronts, Napoleon sent a brigade to take the forest and park around the Chataeau, and another to attack Hougoumont itself. The force attacking the woods cleared it of all English and Coalition troops but its general was killed, and the companies forced back, as British artillery opened up. As they began an exchange of fire with the French guns, the assault on Hougoumont allowed the French to force open the gate and they poured into the courtyard, but reinforcements from the Coldstream Guards and the Scots Guard trapped them there, and they were all killed. French artillery shelled the house, all but destroying it, as the battle heated up, but the defenders held out. Wellington was later to remark that "the success of the battle turned upon closing the gates at Hougoumont"

Meanwhile, the King's German Legion defended the other building, the farmhouse La Haye Sainte, which came under attack during the afternoon and fared worse. A charge by cavalry helped but ultimately left the British in a worse situation, as cavalry officers were well known for their "charge first, strategise later" attitude, and finding themselves more or less having been carried headlong beyond La Haye Sainte, and facing the French guns, charged at the artillery batteries with no real idea of what they were doing. Though they had some success, they were routed as the French retaliated, most of them trapped in the valley.

Wellington had little time or respect for cavalry, declaring "Our officers of cavalry have acquired a trick of galloping at everything. They never consider the situation, never think of manoeuvring before an enemy, and never keep back or provide a reserve." He also believed them inferior to those of the French, admitting "I considered one squadron a match for two French, I didn't like to see four British opposed to four French: and as the numbers increased and order, of course, became more necessary I was the more unwilling to risk our men without having a superiority in numbers." Estimates vary about even the number of cavalry present at the battle, but even on a very basic reading of figures it seems they lost half their strength in men and horses.

Blunders and overexuberance were not however confined to the British side. At around 4pm, Marshal Ney mistook the movement of casualties to the rear of Wellington's forces as a sign they were retreating, and thought this a good time to bring in his own cavalry. The British formed up in squares, four ranks of men supporting each other and therefore impregnable to cavalry attack, and the French suffered great losses. However they were more successful back at La Haye Sainte, where the defenders had literally run out of ammunition, and were overrun. Setting this up now as an artillery spot, Ney was able to do great damage to the British lines from what had been one of their own strongholds. The Prince of Orange, never the greatest of tacticians and more about show than strategy, ordered a battalion to take it back, and only succeeded in having them all killed while trying to do so.

* JIT: Just In Time, a strategy employed by companies which aims to ensure new stock is only ordered as it is needed, and will arrive, you know, just in time, before the old stock runs out, so that there is never a surplus of stock, for which perhaps higher freight rates have been paid, and which is now lying idle until it is needed.

[Trollheart]

The tide was beginning to turn in favour of the French. Many of Wellington's officers and generals were killed, his regiments were being decimated, one of his own staging points was being used against him, and darkness was approaching. Edward Cotton, of the 7th Hussars, put in into stark words:

"The banks on the road side, the garden wall, the knoll and sandpit swarmed with skirmishers, who seemed determined to keep down our fire in front; those behind the artificial bank seemed more intent upon destroying the 27th, who at this time, it may literally be said, were lying dead in square; their loss after La Haye Sainte had fallen was awful, without the satisfaction of having scarcely fired a shot, and many of our troops in rear of the ridge were similarly situated."

The French now expected Marshal Grouchy (no, seriously) who was to reinforce them, but when it turned out to be Blucher and the Prussians who appeared, it struck a terrible blow to their morale, despite their having the upper hand. They knew the Prussians had been due to arrive, and it was imperative that Grouchy got there first. With the appearance of Blucher the pendulum began to swing in the opposite direction, as French troops raged at their ill fortune. Wellington, of course, was delighted when the news reached him. He had earlier gloomily prophesied that "Night or the Prussians must come." To his relief, it had been the latter.

As the reinforcements wreaked havoc on the French lines – though not without serious losses themselves – Napoleon desperately threw his last die, and led the crack Imperial Guard into the fray. Though they bolstered wavering French morale, and did a lot of damage, they were thrown back and when the French soldiers saw or heard of the unimaginable evidence of the Imperial Guard in retreat, they broke and fled, and Wellington urged his army onwards to victory. Napoleon fought a valiant rearguard action, but his men were breaking and running even as he tried to marshal them. Two separate accounts, on from the French side, one from the British, of the end of the battle and the realisation that the day was lost for Napoleon.

"There remained to us still four squares of the Old Guard to protect the retreat. These brave grenadiers, the choice of the army, forced successively to retire, yielded ground foot by foot, till, overwhelmed by numbers, they were almost entirely annihilated. From that moment, a retrograde movement was declared, and the army formed nothing but a confused mass. There was not, however, a total rout, nor the cry of sauve qui peut, as has been calumniously stated in the bulletin."
— Marshal M. Ney.

"In the middle of the position occupied by the French army, and exactly upon the height, is a farm (sic), called La Belle Alliance. The march of all the Prussian columns was directed towards this farm, which was visible from every side. It was there that Napoleon was during the battle; it was thence that he gave his orders, that he flattered himself with the hopes of victory; and it was there that his ruin was decided. There, too, it was that, by happy chance, Field Marshal Blücher and Lord Wellington met in the dark, and mutually saluted each other as victors."
— General Gneisenau

And amid all the glory and self-congratulation, a view of the harsh reality of war:

"22 June. This morning I went to visit the field of battle, which is a little beyond the village of Waterloo, on the plateau of Mont-Saint-Jean; but on arrival there the sight was too horrible to behold. I felt sick in the stomach and was obliged to return. The multitude of carcasses, the heaps of wounded men with mangled limbs unable to move, and perishing from not having their wounds dressed or from hunger, as the Allies were, of course, obliged to take their surgeons and waggons with them, formed a spectacle I shall never forget. The wounded, both of the Allies and the French, remain in an equally deplorable state."

After the battle was lost, Napoleon legged it back to Paris, arriving just as dawn broke on midsummer's day. With perhaps characteristic stubbornness, or a Trumpian refusal to face reality, he believed he could raise another army and counter-attack, but his defeat and humiliation on the fields of Waterloo had stripped him of support, and as his plans to take over as dictator threatened to push France towards civil war, he was forced to abdicate, went on the run (some say) trying to escape to North America, was captured by the British and exiled, for the second time. This time though it was St. Helena, in the Caribbean, from which there was to be no escape. Six years after landing on the island he died.

In November of 1815 the Treaty of Paris was signed, and King Louis XVIII returned to the throne of France. The First French Empire was gone, the monarchy restored and the threat from Napoleon Bonaparte extinguished forever.

Theories advanced for the defeat of Napoleon range from this one, from a general and leading writer on military history:

"In my opinion, four principal causes led to this disaster:
The first, and most influential, was the arrival, skilfully combined, of Blücher, and the false movement that favoured this arrival; the second, was the admirable firmness of the British infantry, joined to the sang-froid and aplomb of its chiefs; the third, was the horrible weather, that had softened the ground, and rendered the offensive movements so toilsome, and retarded till one o'clock the attack that should have been made in the morning; the fourth, was the inconceivable formation of the first corps, in masses very much too deep for the first grand attack."
— Antoine-Henri Jomini.

To those of a Prussian soldier and historian, who had served at the battle:

"Bonaparte and the authors who support him have always attempted to portray the great catastrophes that befell him as the result of chance. They seek to make their readers believe that through his great wisdom and extraordinary energy the whole project had already moved forward with the greatest confidence, that complete success was but a hair's breadth away, when treachery, accident, or even fate, as they sometimes call it, ruined everything. He and his supporters do not want to admit that huge mistakes, sheer recklessness, and, above all, overreaching ambition that exceeded all realistic possibilities, were the true causes."
— Carl von Clausewitz

And even Wellington, unsurprisingly, had his say:

"I should not do justice to my own feelings, or to Marshal Blücher and the Prussian army, if I did not attribute the successful result of this arduous day to the cordial and timely assistance I received from them. The operation of General Bülow upon the enemy's flank was a most decisive one; and, even if I had not found myself in a situation to make the attack which produced the final result, it would have forced the enemy to retire if his attacks should have failed, and would have prevented him from taking advantage of them if they should unfortunately have succeeded"

Aftermath: The Reality of Victory

Having seen this on various programmes and documentaries - not least Bernard Cornwell's wonderfully-observed Sharpe series, and the movie Peterloo - it came as something of a shock to me (and will, I imagine, to you also) to find that after the battle, and thus, really the war, was won, there was no provision whatsoever for the men to get home.

In one way, maybe, you can understand this. Wellington's army had got to Waterloo not on board troop carriers or military aircraft - of which there were none - but by the simple and rather brutal expedient of marching there. Of course, they could not march across the English Channel, so at some point they had to have been aboard ships, but I don't think any special transport was laid on for them, or if it was, it sure as hell wasn't waiting for them to get the war over with and take them back, nor was it on call to return.

So the nasty, brutal reality seems to have been that after Napoleon had been chased back to Paris, and after the cheering had died down and - possibly, though old Wellington was known to be a disciplinarian, so maybe not, but surely - a few bevys had been drunk to the victory, it was a case of "Thanks lads. See you back in Blighty!" Or possibly no address at all, I'm not sure. The important point is that these men, who had risked their lives - and possibly picked up horrible injuries in doing so - for their country, were basically left to find their own way home.

They were in an unfamiliar country, not necessarily any more welcoming to them now as the victors as they had been, and with surely some French still hanging around, or at least their supporters; unable, probably, to speak the language and with, more than likely, no money, unless they had engaged in the time-honoured (but surely not cricket, old chap!) tradition of corpse-looting.

Many of these men would more than likely die before they would see home, with no support structure for them, no guides, no maps and, let's be blunt here, nobody in authority giving two bent fucks whether they ever saw the shores of England again. You can bet Wellington had his exit strategy planned - or maybe he went on to other battles? Probably took in a few parties along the way, visited noble mates, had a grand old time, revelling in the praise and the congratulations of the great and the good.

But his men? Who cared about his men? They had, after all, only put their lives on the line for him, and for their country, and followed him to a strange land, fighting the ancient enemy, and now that they had fulfilled their purpose, well, they could just fuck off. The true face, sadly, of the comedown after the high of victory in war.

Where to now? Somewhere over that way, mate. Don't bother me: can't you see the countess is eyeing me up? Go on, do one! You expect me to sort everything out for you? Second star to the right, pal, and straight on till morning. Now hop it!

Why will this battle be remembered?

The defeat of Napoleon was more than just victory in a battle – although a decisive one – or even a war. Waterloo brought to an end wars that had raged across Europe since the French Revolution exploded, and it ushered in a rare era of peace that lasted for about forty years. It broke the power forever of Napoleon Bonaparte, erased the French Empire from history, and established the Duke of Wellington as one of Britain's greatest heroes. It also showcased the co-operation between countries: as the Duke himself admits above, victory would likely never have been possible without the timely arrival of the Prussians under Blucher and Bulow, like something out of a movie, and working together a number of different countries and states were able to remove a threat to all of Europe – indeed, much of the world – in a manner that would not really occur again for another hundred years.

In Britain, the name was commemorated in the names of a bridge, a railway station, a road and even an entire area. The climactic defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo came, for a time, to refer to any inevitable defeat, being known as "facing or meeting one's Waterloo", though to be honest till ABBA's song popularised it I'd never heard it be used. Napoleon of course was himself caricatured in George Orwell's Animal Farm.

It could be argued that with this great victory Britain had defeated France and proven her military might, but there are several things to consider. First, Britain was not technically at war with France at all. Since the Revolution she had been, but only with the Revolutionary government – the Directory – and soon after with Napoleon. In exile, the French king was an ally of the British and they were working to have him reinstated.

Secondly, Britain had not defeated the forces of Napoleon by themselves. It had been a coalition – explained above – of many countries and states, which had banded together to take on the French emperor, and as already stated, the only reason the British/Coalition forces, having been fought to a standstill by Napoleon, were not defeated at Waterloo was due to the intervention of the Prussians. In effect, and as Wellington himself observed above, though not in so many words, you could almost say it was the Prussians and not the British who won Waterloo, though of course it was a joint effort, while most of the glory back home would be Wellington's.

And thirdly, Britain, along with Europe, was sick of war. Though a victory had been achieved here, British losses during the battle were staggering, and cumulative deaths and injuries throughout the entire period of the Napoleonic Wars must have come close to rivalling those of World War I, to be fought a century later, the two old enemies for possibly the first time standing shoulder to shoulder. There was not the resources, the manpower nor the appetite for further war, and Britain would have been content to have won the peace.

Add to this Queen Victoria's advancing age, and she certainly would have been unlikely to have wished for further conflict in her twilight years. Besides, after the menace of Napoleon was removed, it seems (though for some reason is incredibly hard to confirm) that the last major threat to European peace was removed, and while there were still countries and kingdoms to fight against, unlike in the earlier centuries kings and queens no longer did this for political gain, and so everyone sat back and enjoyed what became known as the Pax Britannia. I would imagine, in the case of France, that the monarchy having been shown up as not god-given nor unshakeable, was probably not as powerful as it had been, and existed in a state of uneasy truce with Republicans until the founding of the French Third Republic after the Franco-Prussian War (1870 – 1871) – a year? A year? Pfft! You call that a war? A minor disagreement! After that, the monarchy was abolished and France has been a republic ever since.