For the sick, half-starved inhabitants of Tenochtitlán, island capital of the beleaguered Aztec empire, the new year of 1521 offered only severe hardship and continued bloodshed. Over the past eight months the city’s quarter million residents had suffered through the deaths of two emperors, Montezuma II and his brother Cuitláhuac; the loss of the entire upper echelon of the empire’s military and political elites to a cowardly Spanish massacre; and a 70-day scourge of smallpox that killed tens of thousands and claimed Cuitláhuac’s life, on December 4. His nephew Cuauhtémoc, as 11th Aztec emperor (known as the huey tlahtoani, or “great speaker”) and commander in chief, was left to defend the city against a coalition army of aggrieved Indians and determined Spanish conquistadors led by Hernán Cortés.  

After reaching Hispaniola in 1506, Cortés prospered in the West Indies. Several years of civil service in Cuba, in the wake of its 1511 conquest by Diego Velásquez de Cuéllar, had earned him an encomienda, a large estate complete with thousands of indigenous laborers compelled to work in mining and agriculture. Appointed governor of Cuba, Velásquez was planning to finance his own campaign of conquest on the mainland of Mexico when he sent his secretary, Cortés, on a limited mission to explore the coast in 1519. Cortés and several veteran officers, however, opted to pursue a far more ambitious, albeit unsanctioned, undertaking—the expansion of the Spanish empire into Mexico and beyond, in the name of Christianity, while acquiring vast wealth, land and renown for themselves.  

Disembarking at Tabasco on March 12, Cortés and 630 Spaniards moved inland and encountered the Mayans of Potonchán, who answered his request for talks with torrents of arrows, spears and stones that had little effect on Spanish armor. Facing overwhelming numbers, Spanish soldiers armed with harquebuses, crossbows, pikes and steel swords and accompanied by heavy artillery, mounted lancers and war dogs routed some 10,000 attackers, after which the defeated Mayans provided Cortés with 20 women slaves, among them the Nahuatl-speaking Malinche, who became Cortés’ invaluable interpreter, consort and mother of his first son.  

Sailing north along the coast, the Spaniards came ashore near San Juan de Ulúa on April 21 and, in a veiled attempt to legitimize their expedition, founded a new colony at Veracruz “in His Majesty’s name.” Cortés then marched north to Cempoala, home to the Totonacs, where for the first time the conquistador leader moved to exploit a tributary population’s bitterness toward Tenochtitlán. Resentful subjects of the empire since 1480, the Totonacs forged an alliance with Cortés, who directed them to cease paying tribute, which could include military service, gold, foodstuffs, trade goods or captives (some of the latter were enslaved, while others were ritually sacrificed and eaten). After scuttling all but one of his ships (which sailed for Spain carrying slaves and treasure to be presented to Charles V, king of Spain and Holy Roman emperor), Cortés pushed inland on August 16 accompanied by 800 Totonac warriors.  

Cortés and his host had barely entered Tlaxcalan territory when they were ambushed by a disciplined force of warriors led by their commander in chief, Xicotencatl the Younger. Home to upward of 150,000 people, Tlaxcala was a confederation of four hill provinces united against their Aztec archenemies in Tenochtitlán, who for decades had oppressed them with embargoes on salt, gold and cotton and demands for captives as tribute. After several clashes with the Spaniards, Xicotencatl the Elder and the city’s other lords halted hostilities and invited Cortés into their capital on September 23. Awed by the expedition’s horses and gunpowder weapons, Xicotencatl the Elder, who like Cortés was looking for powerful allies, agreed to an alliance (see “The Warriors Who Nearly Destroyed Cortés—Before Joining Him,” by Justin D. Lyons, online at HistoryNet.com).  

this article first appeared in Military History magazine

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On November 8, with 2,000 Tlaxcalan warriors, porters, guides and cooks added to the Spanish ranks (the Totonacs had returned home), Cortés boldly marched into Tenochtitlán, where Montezuma extended the Spaniards a diplomatic if wary welcome. A week later events on the Gulf of Mexico gave Cortés a pretext to act. After Aztec tax collectors in the town of Nauhtla demanded local Totonacs pay their customary tribute and were refused, fighting broke out, and the Aztecs slew several Spaniards and Totonacs. Accusing Montezuma of collusion in the bloodshed, Cortés brazenly arrested the stunned emperor and ordered him to reside in the Spanish quarters under guard. After getting assurances of his safety from Malinche, the shaken emperor acquiesced, allowing Cortés to usurp his host and take effective control of the city for the next six months.  

The Spaniards had amassed eight tons of looted gold and silver when, with Cortés absent from the city, his deputy, Pedro de Alvarado, led an unprovoked attack against celebrants at the Festival of Toxcatl, hacking to death hundreds of senior military and political leaders and their families. The atrocity touched off a violent citywide revolt that trapped the Spanish/Tlaxcalan forces inside their quarters under a rain of spears, stones and arrows from surrounding rooftops. Cortés returned on June 24, 1520, to find Alvarado’s actions had put the entire expedition in peril, leaving the Spaniards no choice but to flee the city with their sick, wounded, artillery and treasure in tow.  

At midnight on the rainy night of June 30, Cortés led his assembled host—1,300 Spaniards and 2,000 allies—from Tenochtitlán onto the Tacuba causeway, heading west out of the city. The van had marched but a quarter mile along the causeway when the escape attempt was discovered. Hundreds of canoes soon filled surrounding Lake Texcoco, bringing the long column strung out along the span under withering missile fire while warriors streamed out of the city on foot to attack the column from the rear. After six terrifying hours Cortés and other survivors stumbled ashore, having lost as many as 800 Spaniards and more than 1,000 allies killed, captured or drowned, along with most of the horses and all the gunpowder, cannons and treasure.  

Incredibly, the crushing defeat—recorded by the Spanish as La Noche Triste (“The Night of Sorrows”)—wasn’t enough to convince the redoubtable Cortés to abandon the campaign. Most of his veteran captains and mounted lancers, his interpreter, Malinche, and shipwright Martin López, the one man who could construct new warships for a return assault on Tenochtitlán, had survived the carnage. Gathering his wounded, hungry forces—about 500 Spaniards and 800 Tlaxcalans—Cortés led the small band 150 miles through hostile territory armed only with swords, crossbows, lances and pikes, reaching Tlaxcalan territory on July 9.  

As Cortés himself recovered from a fractured skull, his fortunes turned for the better. Xicotencatl the Elder refused Cuauhtémoc’s offer of tribute relief and instead agreed to a new “perpetual alliance” with Cortés, while supply ships from Spain and Cuba—the Crown having dismissed mutiny charges against the expedition leader—arrived at Veracruz laden with men, horses, weapons, gunpowder and provisions. In August, backed by 2,000 loyal Tlaxcalans, Cortés captured the mountaintop redoubt of Tepeaca, a critical Aztecan ally, then used it as a base to subdue the surrounding villages. Some towns submitted voluntarily. Others were sacked, their male populations executed, their women and children branded and sold into slavery. By autumn 1520 Cortés was the strongest entity in the vast flatlands between the Popocatépetl and Pico de Orizaba volcanoes and had effectively cut off Tenochtitlán from the Gulf of Mexico. Before leaving Tepeaca, Cortés tasked López with constructing a fleet of 13 brigantines at Tlaxcala using native labor and salvaged hardware, after which the finished ships would be dismantled, carried over the mountains, reassembled and launched on Lake Texcoco.  

Intent on first subduing the cities ringing the lake, Cortés gathered 550 Spanish infantry, 40 horsemen and 10,000 handpicked Tlaxcalans and in late December 1520 marched for Texcoco, still nominally an Aztec ally. As the Spaniards approached, they were met by emissaries from rebel Texcocan warlord Ixtlilxochitl II, who joined the advance with his own warriors and thousands of canoes. Arriving at Texcoco, Cortés and his growing force found it virtually abandoned, its tlahtoani and citizens having fled across the lake to Tenochtitlán. After sacking the city, Cortés pronounced Ixtlilxochitl Texcoco’s new tlahtoani, at a stroke bloodlessly adding another powerful ally to his ranks. The consequent Aztec loss of Texcoco, with its bountiful harvests and strategic location on the lake’s eastern shore, was a crippling blow to Tenochtitlán. As occurred at Tepeaca, the Spaniards’ success compelled the lords of neighboring cities to visit Cortés’ camp and offer their allegiance.  

In early January 1521, on learning that Chalca cities south of the lake were restive, Cortés led 200 Spaniards and 4,000 allies to sack Iztapalapa, while his lieutenant Gonzalo de Sandoval evicted Aztec garrisons from Chalco and Tlamanalco, loosening Tenochtitlán’s grip on the region. At the urging of his two powerful allies, Cortés further isolated Tenochtitlán by subduing Tlacopán, the last city-state of the Aztec Triple Alliance. (In 1427–28 Itzcoatl, the fourth Aztec emperor, had led Tenochtitlán, Texcoco and Tlacopán to decisive victory in their rebellion against Azcapotzalco, after which the victors had formed the Triple Alliance to share in future wars of conquest. By 1519, after nearly a century of aggressive expansion, the alliance was dominated by Tenochtitlán, its borders stretching from the Pacific Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico south almost to Guatemala, which extracted tribute from nearly 500 cities and towns in the Valley of Mexico and beyond, backed by the constant threat of military force.)  

After Sandoval repulsed a major Aztec attempt to retake Chalco on March 25, Cortés moved to subdue the region south of Lake Texcoco. With 300 infantry, 30 horsemen, 35 crossbowmen and harquebusiers, and 20,000 Tlaxcalan/Texcocan allies he seized Tlayacapan and Oaxtepec, then sacked Cuernavaca (April 13) and Xochimilco (April 16), further isolating Tenochtitlán from sources of supply and reinforcement. After five months of campaigning, Cortés had subdued or accepted the submission of almost all the cities on the lakeshore and in the Valley of Mexico, had received supplies and reinforcements, and was ready to march for Tenochtitlán. Intent on obtaining Cuauhtémoc’s unconditional surrender, Cortés was prepared to destroy the city block by block and let his allies sack it if necessary.  

Cortés received good news when he returned to Texcoco: The brigantines were ready. Averaging 50 feet in length (Cortés’ flagship, La Capitana, was 65 feet long), each was armed with two guns and carried a captain, 12 oarsmen, six harquebusiers and six crossbowmen. The Spaniards launched them on Lake Texcoco on April 28. Cortés organized his remaining forces into three infantry divisions under Alvarado, Sandoval and Cristóbal de Olid, their objective to seize control of the main causeways into the city. Each division was allotted some 150 foot soldiers, 30 horsemen, 15 crossbowmen and harquebusiers and a detachment of native allies numbering around 8,000. Thousands more Texcocans and Tlaxcalans would follow Cortés’ brigantines in a flotilla of canoes commanded by Ixtlilxochitl, and the combined fleets would support the land assaults, blockade the city and destroy enemy vessels.  

Alvarado and Olid departed Texcoco first, arriving at Tlacopán on May 25. The next morning they rode to Chapultepec, on the lake’s western edge, broke through the Aztec defenses and destroyed the aqueduct there, permanently severing Tenochtitlán’s source of fresh water. Over the next 75 days the city’s citizens would have to rely on grossly inadequate supplies of brackish water extracted from wells and springs.  

Versus Armor

Tipped with razor-sharp obsidian points like that above, Aztec spears and arrows had little effect on Spanish armor. Cortés’ men carried harquebuses, crossbows and swords and were supported by artillery, mounted lancers and war dogs. That said, they were few in number.

With his ground units deployed, Cortés committed the brigantines to the fight on June 1. Observing smoke signals rising from the tiny island city of Tepepolco, warning Cuauhtémoc of the Spanish advance, Cortés landed with 150 men and wiped out that city’s entire garrison. Setting off once more, Cortés’ warships smashed through a flotilla of 600 Aztec canoes sent to intercept them, the brigantines’ high decks thwarting boarders and providing cover for harquebusiers and crossbowmen to fire and reload. “Nothing in the world gave me such joy as to see all 13 sails with a fair wind scatter the enemy,” recalled Sandoval, who observed the engagement from Iztapalapa. Following in Cortés’ wake, the Texcocan canoes destroyed any Aztec canoes that remained afloat. Exploiting his success, Cortés sailed on and seized the key fortress of Xoloc, on the southern causeway from Iztapalapa to Tenochtitlán. Olid then joined Cortés and Sandoval at Xoloc, further improving their strategic situation.  

For his part, Cuauhtémoc was directing operations from a canoe in the lake, sending waves of Aztec warriors armed with spears and steel arrows (fashioned from Spanish swords retrieved from the lake) against Cortés, Sandoval and Olid at Xoloc and Alvarado at Tlacopán. Meanwhile, Aztec laborers erected fortifications, opened breaches along each causeway to close the roads to Spanish horsemen and planted sharp stakes in the lake’s shallow waters to pinion the brigantines. The emperor’s aggressive tactics and vast manpower reserves made Cortés’ advance slow and costly.  

In mid-June, however, Sandoval sailed north of the city and blocked the last open causeway, leading from Tlatelolco (a subject of Tenochtitlán since 1473) to Tepeyac. Tenochtitlán was surrounded, cut off from all supplies, food, water and hope.  

On June 10 and again on the 15th, as Sandoval and Alvarado pressed their respective attacks along the northern and western causeways, Cortés led Olid’s division on major assaults into the city from the south, encountering fierce Aztec resistance before withdrawing. A pattern soon emerged: Escorted by the brigantines, the Spaniards and their allies advanced each morning as far as possible into the city and fought all day before falling back to their fortified camps in the evening, destroying buildings along the way. Aztec laborers appeared each night to again dig ditches in the causeways, forcing the attackers to fill them in again the following day. By late June the besiegers were penetrating into the city at will, though Cortés was well aware of the danger of being ambushed and trapped inside the city. The tenacity of the defenders—facing land and water assaults daily on three fronts—was astounding.  

As Aztec fortunes waned, more of its former allies joined Cortés, including contingents from Huexotzinco and Xochimilco. Morale inside the city plummeted when no festivals were held or crops were planted in June. The lack of able-bodied commoners available to sow crops brought on starvation and finally famine.  

An increasingly desperate Cuauhtémoc abruptly changed tactics and moved his remaining warriors to the neighboring island suburb of Tlatelolco, whose narrow streets and fortified marketplace precinct were better suited to urban warfare. Believing the Aztecs were fleeing, Cortés led a three-pronged attack against Tlatelolco on June 30 that he hoped would end all resistance. After initial gains, the attackers fell into an ambush and, with their withdrawal route blocked, suffered a stinging defeat in which some 20 conquistadors and 2,000 allies were slain. Worse yet, dozens of Spaniards and allied warriors were captured and ritually sacrificed. After watching their comrades slaughtered, most of the remaining allied warriors melted away, leaving Cortés to fear another Noche Triste.  

In the final crisis of the campaign Cortés dispatched Spanish/allied contingents to aid two of his new allies against Aztec threats. Two quick victories restored the strategic advantage to Cortés, and the indigenous army that had abandoned him returned, leaving Cuauhtémoc unable to exploit his victory. After his allies returned, daily incursions into both Tlatelolco and Tenochtitlán proper resumed, and though several brigantines had been lost, the allied fleets still controlled Lake Texcoco, and the blockade of the city remained in place.  

By mid-July conditions within Tenochtitlán were appalling. Sick, starving refugees filled the streets, tribute was being interdicted and most of the chinampas (floating gardens) that provided the bulk of the city’s food had been destroyed. On their daily sorties the attackers had taken to dismantling entire city blocks, tearing down temples and houses to give Spanish horsemen room to operate and crossbowmen and harquebusiers fields of fire.  

By month’s end Aztec attacks on the Spanish camps had ceased and exhausted laborers were no longer able to sever the causeways. Aztec prisoners reported that the city’s inhabitants were starving, and Cuauhtémoc had resorted to conscripting women to fill his ranks. Early on July 27 Cortés was at Xoloc when he saw smoke rising from Tlatelolco’s main temple, a sign Alvarado had overrun the last Aztec line of defenses there and captured the great marketplace, ending all organized resistance. Cuauhtémoc refused to surrender, though, prolonging his people’s suffering, and it wasn’t until August 13 that he was apprehended while fleeing across the lake with his family. With Tenochtitlán reduced to smoking ruins, the Aztec empire had ceased to exist. Brought before Cortés, Cuauhtémoc was tortured in a futile attempt to discover the whereabouts of any stashed gold, then was forced to play the role of puppet ruler before being executed on false charges in 1525.  

After reaching Tenochtitlán in September 1520, smallpox claimed almost 100,000 citizens’ lives. In the ensuing decades epidemics of measles, whooping cough, mumps, influenza and typhus helped reduce the population of central Mexico from the more than 8 million when Cortés landed to little more than 1 million a half century later. The steady depopulation of the Taino peoples of Hispaniola due to disease and overwork—their numbers fell from 200,000 in 1492 to 90,000 in 1515—forced its Spanish governor in February 1510 to authorize the transport of 250 African slaves from Spain to work its gold mines. In August 1517 Charles V authorized the governor to import 4,000 more. Meanwhile, in the two centuries after 1492 some 750,000 people left Spain to escape poverty or seek adventure in the New World.  

With almost no oversight from the mother country Cortés and his men acted as a law unto themselves, destroying and founding new cities and turning entire conquered populations into indentured servants, their legacy one of conquest, colonization, depopulation and exploitation. Indeed, at their peak fully a quarter of all imperial Spanish revenues would be bullion from Mexico and Peru; 180 tons of gold and 16,000 tons of silver reached Spanish shores from the New World between 1500 and 1650, fueling Spain’s rise as a superpower and funding Charles V’s wars in Italy and against the Protestant Reformation.  

The conquest of central and southern Mexico was followed by the violent subjugation of the rest of Mesoamerica—comprising the modern countries of Nicaragua, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala and Belize—and parts of South America. Gradually, Franciscan friars arrived to spread Christianity, bureaucrats replaced the conquistadors, and in 1535 Antonio de Mendoza became 1st Viceroy of New Spain. “The conquistadors, who put an end to human sacrifice and torture on the Great Pyramid in Mexico City,” wrote historian Victor Davis Hanson, “sailed from a society reeling from the Grand Inquisition and the ferocious Reconquista and left a diseased and nearly ruined New World in their wake.”  

John Walker is a California-based freelance writer and a Vietnam War veteran. For further reading he recommends Tenochtitlán 1519–21: Clash of Civilizations, by Si Sheppard; Conquistadores: A New History of Spanish Discovery and Conquest, by Fernando Cervantes; and Carnage and Culture: Landmark Battles in the Rise to Western Power, by Victor Davis Hanson.

This story appeared in the Winter 2024 issue of Military History magazine.

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Even though it officially lasted 116 years, the Hundred Years War was really just part of a long-running rivalry over land, power and inheritance between England and France that one may say, allowing for interruptions, raged from the Norman invasion of 1066 to Emperor Napoleon’s downfall in 1815. In the course of multiple reigns, the Hundred Years War was, as with its predecessors, replete with major and minor players, including such national heroes as England’s Henry V and France’s Maid of Orleans.

One of the war’s most intriguing characters, however, was not exactly heroic… but then again, he did not really exist. Or did he? At least in part?

Enter Shakespeare

In 1597 William Shakespeare published Henry IV Part 1, and with it introduced a corpulent, boastful knight who when not performing feats of extreme self-preservation on the battlefield, where he states “the better part of valor is discretion,” is carousing on borrowed or stolen money at the Boar’s Head Inn. Such is the perverse charisma of this “villainous, abominable misleader of youth” that he spends much of the play leading the young Prince Hal down a primrose path of self-indulgent dissolution. In the sequel, Henry IV Part 2, the old king dies and Hal assumes not only the throne but the responsibilities that it requires—and in so doing, puts aside “childish things,” starting with Sir John Falstaff.

Although Falstaff does not appear in Henry V, his death is mentioned, heralding an essential final step in the new king’s maturity. Such was the popularity of this outrageous but amiable reprobate, however, that one of Shakespeare’s most avid fans, Queen Elizabeth I, allegedly (though not confirmed for certain) suggested that he turn him loose once more, this time in the realm of romantic farce, a request that the bard brought to the stage in 1602 as The Merry Wives of Windsor.

Although no knight of the Hundred Years War quite matched the girth or gall of Sir John Falstaff, the evolution of his name includes an intriguing element of reality. Initially, Shakespeare was going to name the character Sir John Oldcastle, who really existed as a leader of the Lollards, a proto-Protestant sect—and a friend of Prince Hal’s until even that proved insufficient to prevent his being burned at the stake on Dec. 14, 1417.

When one of Oldcastle’s descendants, Henry Brooke, 11th Earl Cobham, learned of Shakespeare’s latest play and its intended comic lead, he bitterly objected. Deciding, like his character, that “the better part of valor is discretion,” Shakespeare switched to another name from the era, only this time altering it somewhat—from Sir John Fastolf to Sir John Falstaff.

The rest was theatrical history… or was it? It turns out that Falstaff’s faux namesake had a cloud of disgrace hanging over his own head for more than a decade—and for Fastolf, it was no laughing matter.

The Real ‘Falstaff’

Sir John Fastolf was born on Nov. 6, 1380 in Caister Hall, Norfolk, to minor gentry. His father, also John Fastolf, died in 1383 and his mother, Mary Park, on May 2, 1406. Amid his education he claimed to have made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem in 1392-93, and also served as squire to Sir Thomas Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk. In 1401 he joined the retinue of King Henry IV’s second son, Thomas of Lancaster (later Duke of Clarence), with whom his first military duty was to keep the peace in the parts of Ireland ruled by the English. While there he met Millicent Tibetot, heiress of Robert, Lord Tiptoft, whose first husband, Sir Stephen Scrope, had died in 1408. At age 40, she was a dozen years Fastolf’s senior, but that did not stop their being wed on Jan. 13, 1409.

Whatever else Millicent had to offer, the marriage increased John’s assets five times over, with land holdings in Castle Combe and Bathampton in Wiltshire, Oxtenton in Gloucestershire and plots in Somerset and Yorkshire. He was entitled to 240 pounds per year, 100 of which he gave his wife but none to his stepson by her previous marriage, Stephen Scrope. John and Millicent had no children. To paraphrase The Taming of the Shrew, Fastolf had “wived it wealthfully,” a not uncommon factor in medieval weddings. In so doing, by funny coincidence, he handily achieved with one widow what his semi-namesake, Falstaff, failed to do with two in The Merry Wives of Windsor. 

In 1415 Fastolf sailed to northern France to take part in King Henry V’s invasion, under the direct command of John of Lancaster, Duke of Bedford. A surviving warrant from the Exchequer dated June 18 noted payment due Fastolf and the 10 men-at-arms and 30 archers who came with him.

To Battle

On Aug. 18 he and his men were among the 2,300 men-at-arms and 9,000 archers under the Duke of Clarence, investing the Norman port of Harfleur. Although the ensuring siege featured a dozen large cannons—their first use by the English—Harfleur’s fortifications made it possible for a 100-man garrison under Jean, Sieur de’Estouteville to hold out long enough for 300 reinforcements to arrive under Raoul, Sieur de Gaucourt, who took charge of the defense.

The French stated that if their army did not come to their relief by Sept. 23, they would surrender. They capitulated a day earlier, leaving it to the paroled knights to collect their own ransom while townsfolk willing to swear fealty to King Henry were allowed to return home and others were ordered to depart.

The heaviest losses in the Siege of Harfleur were due to dysentery rather than combat. Many of Henry’s 5,000 casualties fell victim to the “bloody flux,” with at least 39 dead and 1,330 sent back to England to convalesce. Among its victims was Fastolf, who consequently was absent from the “band of brothers” who slaughtered the French at Agincourt on Oct. 25. He returned to Harfleur that winter, however, to help fend off a French attempt to retake the town. 

Fastolf’s fortunes rose significantly thereafter, when he was formally dubbed a knight in January 1416. In 1420 King Henry compelled the French to sign the Treaty of Troyes, naming him regent to King Charles VI, a deal sealed by his marriage to the king’s daughter, Catherine, while the king’s son, the dauphin Charles, was disinherited. In the wake of this event, Fastolf was made Master of the Household to the Duke of Bedford, governor of Maine and Anjou, and when the English occupied Paris in 1421, he was appointed “governor” of the Bastille.

Scotland had entered the conflict on France’s side in 1419, and on March 22, 1421, the French, bolstered by the Army of Scotland, won a major victory at Baugé, in which the Duke of Clarence was killed. Worse for the English, Henry V died of a sudden bout of illness on Aug. 31 that same year. That left the English crown sitting unsteadily on the 9-year-old head of Henry VI, with the Duke of Bedford serving as his regent. On Oct. 21, 1422, King Charles VI died and Dauphin Charles set out to regain his throne. The Hundred Years War resumed.

The Battle of the Herrings

Fastolf was in Bedford’s army at the Battle of Verneuil-sur-Avre on Aug. 17, 1424, in which the again-outnumbered English turned the tables on the French, Scots and Milanese mercenaries after a climactic 45-minute struggle on foot. For the loss of 1,600 Englishmen, 6,000 of the enemy were killed. Most of the dead were Scots, for whom the English declared no quarter, including John Stewart, Duke of Buchan, Archibald, Earl of Douglas, and Sir Alexander Buchanan, the last of whom had been credited with slaying Clarence at Baugé.

The 200 French nobles taken prisoner and then ransomed included Jean II, duc d’Alençon and Gilbert Motier, Maréchal de La Fayette. Touted at the time as a second Agincourt, Verneuil crippled the Army of Scotland for the rest of the war. On Feb.  5, 1426, Fastolf’s cumulative battlefield exploits reached an apex when he was made a Knight Companion of the Most Noble Order of the Garter. A few years later, however, the veteran knight faced an unlikely nemesis in his most controversial battle.

On Oct. 12, 1428, the English invested the city of Orléans, opening more than six months of siege punctuated by numerous sallies, battles and supply attempts. One of the more prominent examples of the latter involved a convoy of 300 carts and wagons, carrying crossbow shafts, cannons, cannonballs and barrels of herring for the coming Lenten holiday. These departed Paris with a 1,600-man escort commanded by Fastolf. At the same time, Charles de Bourbon, comte de Clermont was leading a Franco-Scottish force he’d assembled to relieve Orléans while the commander of the city’s defenders, Jean de Dunois, led a force out to intercept the English convoy.

On Feb. 12, 1429, the two French forces met, totaling 4,000 men, and fell upon the convoy in a wide field at Rouvray-Sainte-Croix, about 10 miles north of Orléans. Fastolf ordered the wagons into a circular defensive laager. Clermont responded by deploying his cannons, which began inflicting casualties. At that point, the Scots’ leader, John Stewart of Darnley, ran too quickly out of patience and led a cavalry charge on the laager that forced the startled French to hold their fire rather than cannonade their allies. While the main French force hesitated, English bowmen rained arrows and crossbow bolts on the Scots. Then Fastolf unleashed his own cavalry, which overwhelmed the Scots, then lapped around the French flanks and rear, and drove them off in a disorganized rout. Darnley was among the 500 to 600 dead and Dunois was wounded.

Joan of Arc

Because of the special provisions Fastolf had been defending, his victory entered the history books as the Battle of the Herrings. On that same day, however, a teenage girl was trying to convince Robert de Baudricourt, the Dauphinois captain of Vaucouleurs, to let her confer with the Dauphin so that she could carry out her divinely ordained mission of saving France. She informed Baudricourt that the Dauphinois forces had just suffered a stinging defeat near Orléans, and that more would follow unless she was granted an audience with the Dauphin. Shortly after that, word arrived about the debacle at Rouvray and Baudricourt arranged the meeting that led to Joan of Arc taking a place alongside the hardened warriors defending Orléans—and contributing to the lifting of the siege on May 8, 1429. 

Whatever direct role she had in raising the siege of Orléans, “la Pucelle” (the maid) indisputably elevated French morale. As the English forces withdrew to garrisons in the Loire River region, the veteran knights surrounding her were keen to make the most of it while they could. Jean II, duc d’Alençon, ransomed from English captivity, set his eyes on the Loire bridges. On June 12, French forces stormed Jargeau and captured the bridge at Meung-sur-Loire.

On the 15th they besieged Beaugency. Fastolf left Paris with reinforcements, which reached Meung to join forces with some of Orléans’ besiegers, led by John, 1st Earl of Talbot, and Thomas, 7th Baron Scales. With a total of 3,100 men at their disposal on June 18, Talbot urged an immediate attack on the French at Beaugency, but Fastolf recommended more caution in the face of a much larger enemy army. The defenders were unaware of the relief force’s proximity, but learned that a Breton contingent under Arthur de Richemont had just joined the French besiegers. The discouraged garrison surrendered. 

Learning of Beaugency’s capitulation, Talbot agreed with Fastolf’s proposal that they withdraw to Paris. The French knew of the English presence, however, and being of no mind to call it a day, hastened off in pursuit, headed by a 180-knight vanguard under Etienne de Vignolles, nicknamed “La Hire” (the wrath), one of the first to accept Joan’s claims to divine inspiration. Close at hand were Jean de Xaintrailles, Antoine de Chabannes, Hugh Kennedy of Ardstinshar at the head of 800 Scots and the Maid herself. They caught up with their quarry near the village of Patay.

Fastolf’s Retreat

Since most of his army were archers, Talbot tried to engage the French using roughly the same tactics that had succeeded at Crécy in 1346 and at Agincourt in 1415, with most of his bowmen lined up behind a row of sharpened stakes. He also ordered 500 of them to take up ambush positions in the woods along the road. As they made their preparations, however, a stag ventured out in the field and one of the bowmen, thinking the French were still far away, gave a hunting cry.

The French vanguard was, in fact, close enough to hear that indiscreet call and, worse for the English, their archers had not yet fully deployed. Sending couriers to report the situation to the rest of their men-at-arms but not waiting for them to arrive, La Hire, Xaintrailles, Chabannes, Kennedy and Joan led a head-on charge that crashed into the English positions and exposed their flanks. Soon after that, 1,300 more mounted French men-at-arms advanced along a ridge south of the action, then deployed behind the English rear. As they began their charge, Fastolf led his contingent to join up with the mounted men-at-arms in the English vanguard, only to see them already quitting the field in disorder. Misinterpreting an order, his own men began to scatter, at which point he saw no alternative but to join them in retreat.  

The rest of the battle amounted to a mopping-up operation for the French horsemen against little organized resistance. In the worst English defeat since Baugé in 1421, an estimated 2,500 were killed or captured, while the French only lost 100 (20 of whom were Scottish). The captured nobility included Talbot, Scales and Sir Thomas Rempston II, with only one knight of note escaping the debacle: Fastolf. Patay went down in history as Joan of Arc’s first victory in open battle. It also heralded a general French resurgence that led to the dauphin’s coronation as King Charles VII of France at Reims on July 17. For Sir John Fastolf, the engagement held different consequences.

Cowardice?

In 1431 another of Joan of Arc’s retinue, Jean Paton de Xaintrailles, was taken prisoner by Richard Beauchamp 13th Earl of Warwick, in a minor skirmish at Savignies. In 1433 a prisoner exchange returned Poton and Talbot to their respective armies. No sooner did Talbot return than he accused Fastolf of deserting him on the field at Patay. Fastolf, of course, hotly denied the charge, but by that time the Plantagenet aristocracy was starting to choose sides in regard to Henry VI’s fitness for the throne and as to who should succeed him.

Though nobody knew it at the time, the Hundred Years’ War for France was winding down and as the English soil was being furrowed for the War of the Roses, Fastolf found his protestations accepted by friends, such as Richard, 3rd Duke of York, and disbelieved by political enemies such as William de la Pole, 1st Earl of Suffolk. In between the Duke of Bedford accepted Talbot’s version of the battle but forgave Fastolf and continued to trust him.

The Order of the Garter conducted an enquiry on Fastolf and concluded that he had done his best at Patay, showing prudence rather than cowardice. Yet Suffolk and others persisted in questioning his honor and Fastolf spent over a decade defending himself. Such is the closest parallel history can find between Fastolf the tarnished warlord and Falstaff, Shakespeare’s unapologetic slacker. 

Fastolf lost a friend when Bedford died in 1435. He himself retired from military service in 1440. He lost a powerful enemy a decade later when the Earl of Suffolk was condemned in Parliament for maladministration and banished from England for five years, only to be intercepted in the Channel by his own enemies while enroute to Calais and beheaded on May 2, 1450. Fastolf himself subsequently was almost convicted of treason for his association with the Duke of York, who would later make a direct bid for the Crown. 

Where Fact Meets Fiction

While hostility grew within the Plantagenet family, England’s century-old effort in France officially ended when Talbot was defeated and killed at Castillon-sur-Dordogne, July 17, 1453. Less than two years later the eruption of hostilities at St. Albans on May 22, 1455, launched what amounted to civil war as the royal houses of Lancaster and York fell upon each other.

By then Fastolf’s ambitions were limited to keeping and administering his land holdings, which may explain his death on Nov. 5, 1459, at the exceptional old age of 78. His neighbor and close friend, John Paston, wrote the most detailed account of Fastolf, describing him in his last years as “an irascible, acquisitive old man, ruthless in his business dealings.” Buried at Saint Benet’s Abbey in the Broads, Norfolk, he bequeathed some of his possessions toward pious works, such as New Magdelen College at University of Oxford, but most went to Paston.

A unique aspect of Henry VI Part 1 is the appearance of both the real Fastolf and the fictional Falstaff—neither flattering. Despite the Order of the Garter’s decree, Shakespeare’s Fastolf appears as a cowardly antithesis to Talbot’s sometimes reckless bravery, deserting his comrade-in-arms not only at Patay, but at Rouen. The fictional Falstaff takes over from there for more serious frivolity. 

Another intriguing coincidence lies in the place where Prince Hal, Falstaff and their retinue of ne’er-do-wells spend their mostly leisure time. Among the properties that John Fastolf is said to have owned as part-time proprietor was a tavern in Southwark, London called the Boar’s Head Inn.

this article first appeared in military history quarterly

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Debate about which guns actually “won the West” will probably go on indefinitely. The Colt, Winchester, Sharps, Springfield and other arms all have their advocates. But one firearm played a critical role in the West more than two centuries before Samuel Colt or Oliver Winchester saw the light of day. In the hands of Spanish frontiersmen—frontiersmen no less than Jim Bridger or Kit Carson—the comparatively primitive harquebus counterbalanced often overwhelming odds.

The vaunted Spanish expedition under Francisco Vásquez de Coronado that marched from New Spain (present-day Mexico) through parts of what today are Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas between 1540 and ’42 left scant evidence of its passage, and for the next four decades Spanish colonial authorities showed little interest in the region. In 1580, however, Friar Agustín Rodríguez, a Franciscan lay brother eager to convert heathen souls to Christianity, convinced the powers that be that many such souls were waiting to be saved north of the existing mining settlements in New Spain. So, in the largest of the northernmost settlements, Santa Bárbara, Chihuahua, an expedition took shape. As a friar (or three, as it turned out) could hardly travel through hostile country alone, eight soldiers and a captain joined the party.

For such a venture a detachment of nine soldiers was remarkably small. But its captain, Francisco Sánchez—nicknamed Chamuscado (“scorched”) for his flaming red beard—was a veteran of frontier service and knew his business. He made certain his men were well armed and well mounted, with a remuda of 90 horses at their disposal. For arms and armor the soldiers had harquebuses, swords, chain mail coats and breeches, and steel helmets. Armor also shielded their horses. Paramount were the harquebuses. Hernán Gallegos, who kept a journal of the expedition, wrote of a telling encounter with Indians soon after the party set out. “We fired quite a few harquebus shots,” he recalled, “at which the natives were very much frightened and said that they did not wish to quarrel with the Spaniards, but instead wanted to be our friends.”

Harquebuses of the late 16th century were of two basic types: the simple matchlock and the more advanced—albeit more complex and more expensive—wheellock. Writing in the early 1580s, Baltasar Obregón, another veteran of the frontier, offered this advice to explorers:

“Good harquebuses with supplies and duplicate parts should be carried. Most of them should be operated by fuse [match] because it often happens that the damp powder makes the firing of the flintlocks [wheellocks] difficult. Moreover, the harquebuses with fuses are easier to handle. The ones with flintlocks [wheellocks] often need a mechanic to make repairs and to replace the pieces that get out of order.”

In practiced hands a matchlock harquebus could fire two shots a minute. That wasn’t nearly as fast as a man could discharge arrows from a bow, but with six or eight armor-clad soldiers alternately loading and firing, harquebuses could be formidable weapons—or so the Spaniards hoped.

Chamuscado Heads North

On June 5, 1581, equipped with the requisite arms and armor, Chamuscado’s party—nine soldiers, three Franciscans (Friars Agustín, Francisco López and Juan de Santa María) and 19 Indian servants—rode north from Santa Bárbara, driving 600 head of stock before them. Descending the Río Conchos through rough country to its junction with the Río Grande (the site of present-day Presidio, Texas), they followed the latter northwest past the site of present-day El Paso. By August they had entered what today is central New Mexico and encountered the first of the multistory Indian pueblos. Such pueblos had no exterior doors at ground level. “The natives have ladders by means of which they climb to their quarters,” Gallegos observed. “These are movable wooden ladders, for when the Indians retire at night, they pull them up to protect themselves against enemies.” Meetings with the inhabitants proved peaceful, and the Spaniards were careful to keep things so.

In early September the party arrived at a cluster of pueblos along the Río Grande north of the site of present-day Albuquerque. Eager to return to New Spain with news of the expedition, Friar Juan set out alone from there on September 10, only to be killed by suspicious Indians. The party wouldn’t learn of his fate for weeks. 

Moving on to San Marcos Pueblo (in the Galisteo Basin, south of the site of present-day Santa Fe), Chamuscado questioned its inhabitants about rumored mines and about wild cattle (buffalo), of which the party had heard mention since leaving the Río Conchos. Taking up handfuls of earth, the Indians pointed eastward and said such beasts were as numerous as the grains they held. Days later, after crossing the higher, pinyon-dotted country to the east, the Spaniards came to a river—the upper reaches of the Pecos. In the distance downriver rose a column of smoke. Perhaps recalling Obregón’s caution that Indians used smoke signals to warn one another, the party approached guardedly and, in Gallegos’ recollection,  came upon “50 huts and tents made of hides with strong white flaps after the fashion of field tents. Here we were met by more than 400 warlike men armed with bows and arrows who asked us by means of signs what we wanted.”

Chamuscado and his men had come face to face with Plains Indians. Far outnumbered, they handled the situation with a proven tactic, as Gallegos recalled:

“We called the attention of all the Indians and then discharged a harquebus among them. They were terrified by the loud report and fell to the ground as if stunned.…We [then] asked them where the buffalo were, and they told us that there were large numbers two days farther on, as thick as grass on the plains.”

So, with an Indian guiding the way, they pressed on and soon encountered their quarry:

“At the water holes on the plains we found many buffalo, which roamed in great herds or droves of more than 500 head, both cows and bulls.…We killed 40 head with our harquebuses, to be used as food.…Indeed, it seemed as if the will of God had planned that no one should fire his harquebus at the cattle without felling one. This greatly astonished the guide who had led us to the said cattle. After leaving us, he told [others] of what he had seen us do.”

Around the campfire that evening the Spaniards agreed that efforts to find the buffalo had been well worth it. “Their meat is delicious,” Gallegos wrote, “and to our taste as palatable as that of our [beef] cattle.” They dried the remainder into jerky for the journey ahead.

For another week or two they explored the surrounding country, possibly reaching the headwaters of the Cimarron River. Finally, in mid-October they made their way back to San Marcos Pueblo. There they faced a challenge that called for a decisive response. “While we were at [San Marcos] some Indians from another settlement, which we named Malagón, killed three of our horses,” Gallegos recalled. Chamuscado promptly ordered five soldiers to saddle up and bring back the culprits, by force if necessary. When the soldiers reached Malagón, a pueblo of three to four stories with plazas and streets, they called out to its inhabitants, who had sought refuge on the rooftops, and asked who had killed the horses. When the Indians replied they had committed no such deed, the Spaniards again made a show of force, as recorded by Gallegos:

“We discharged the harquebuses to make the Indians think we were going to kill them, although we incurred great risk in doing so, for we were only five men facing the task of attacking 80 houses with more than a thousand inhabitants. When we had fired our harquebuses, the natives became frightened, went into their houses and stayed there.…We challenged them to come out of their pueblo into the open so that we might see how brave they were; [then] some hurled themselves from the corridors into the open in an attempt to escape, whereupon [two soldiers] rushed after them [on horseback], and each seized an Indian by the hair. The natives were very swift, but the horses overtook them.”

With the captives under their gun muzzles, the soldiers took them to San Marcos for punishment. The proposed penalty was grim indeed—public execution by beheading. Then one of the soldiers came up with an ingenious plan.

“It was agreed that at the time when the Indians were to be beheaded the friars should rush out to free them—tussle with us and snatch the victims away from us in order that the Indians should love their rescuers.…All was so done. At the moment when the soldiers were about to cut off the heads of the Indians, the friars came out in flowing robes and saved the captives from their perilous plight.”

The plan worked. On Indian assurances of the friars’ well-being, Chamuscado and his men then set out to explore more of the pueblo country, first riding west to fortresslike Acoma Pueblo, atop a mesa some 50 miles beyond the Río Grande valley. Rumors told of riches somewhere in the region, but time was running out due to the approach of winter. Finding no gold near Acoma, the soldiers pushed farther west, riding another 70 miles to Zuni Pueblo (in present-day west-central New Mexico). There they heard of yet more fabled mines and pueblos. But provisions were running low, and their supply of horseshoes was nearly exhausted.

So, amid falling snow, they turned back for the Río Grande. When they reached the pueblos and announced their intention to head home, Friars Agustín and Francisco demurred. After all, in their eyes the whole purpose of the expedition had been to convert lost souls. Thus, despite the since-discovered murder of Friar Juan, they insisted on remaining with the Indians. Reluctantly, Chamuscado agreed, and on the last day of January 1582, after setting aside tools and trade goods for the friars’ use, he and his men started south for New Spain.

The return trip down the Río Grande was no easy journey. “We were beset by many difficulties,” Gallegos recalled, “[and] we had to stand guard every night wearing armor.” Chamuscado fell ill to the point his men “decided to build a litter, which, slung between two horses, could take him quickly to Christian lands.” Having no tools, they had to cut the timber to construct a litter with their swords. Days later, despite their efforts, Chamuscado died. His men buried him—among the first of many graves Spaniards would dig along that trail in years to come. Finally, on April 15, 1582, the party straggled into Santa Bárbara, firing their harquebuses to alert townsfolk of their arrival.

Espejo’s Expedition

Among those who witnessed the homecoming of Chamuscado’s men was a prosperous cattle rancher from central New Spain named Antonio de Espejo—who, at the time, was hiding from the law. Months earlier, near Aguas Calientes, Antonio and brother Pedro had confronted two vaqueros for having shirked their labors during a roundup. Pedro had killed one of the men and wounded the other, whereupon local authorities had jailed him and imposed a heavy fine on Antonio. Unwilling to pay it, Antonio had slipped away and ridden north, reaching Santa Bárbara shortly before Chamuscado’s men. Espejo listened carefully as the soldiers described the region they had explored. He also noted grumbling from local Franciscans that two of their number had been left behind in pueblo country.

Like other adventurers who had found success in the New World, Espejo was intelligent, observant and willing to take risks. After weighing the circumstances, he proposed to organize, finance and lead an expedition north to “rescue” the Franciscans. With a willing friar and 15 soldiers—the latter armed and armored as Chamuscado’s party had been—Espejo left Santa Bárbara in November 1582. Accompanying the party were Indian servants, interpreters and a remuda of 115 horses and mules.

Down the Río Conchos they went, then up the Río Grande, retracing Chamuscado’s route. On reaching a point just south of the site of present-day El Paso, the horses were spent, so the men halted for a week to reshoe their mounts and craft stocks for their harquebuses. Diego Pérez de Luxán, who kept a journal of the entrada, described their gunsmithing work:

“[The Indians’] mode of fighting is with Turkish bows and arrows and bludgeons half a yard in length made of tornillo wood [screwbean mesquite], which is very strong and flexible. We all made stocks for our harquebuses from this tornillo because the wood was very suitable for the purpose.”

Their guns restocked and horses rested, the men pressed on. By mid-January 1583 they had entered future New Mexico in weather cold enough to freeze the water holes. Moving steadily north along the Río Grande, they halted in early February at a pueblo near the site of present-day La Joya and there received grim news. “The Indians told us by means of signs that the friars had been killed,” Luxán wrote, likely for the tools and trade goods Chamuscado had left with them. Girding for battle, Espejo and his men rode north to Puaray Pueblo (mistakenly referred to by expedition members as Puala, just north of the site of present-day Albuquerque), where the friars had been slain. It lay abandoned.

At that point Espejo could have, and perhaps should have, turned for home. En route, however, he’d heard the usual rumors about rich mines and resolved to seek them out. Breaking away from the Río Grande, the party headed northwest along the Jemez River and then turned west, passing Acoma Pueblo and riding through intermittent snowfalls. As the Spaniards rested their horses just beyond Zuni Pueblo, an Indian came into camp. The man, Obregón recalled, picked up a Spanish trumpet and “said that 60 days from his town toward the northwest was something shiny like that.” When pressed for specifics, the Indian said the people of that region wear the shiny metal on their arms and heads.

That was enough for Espejo’s men. Saddling up, they rode hard west. Days prior Zuni elders had assured them they would have no trouble, Obregón noted, as their harquebuses “shot fire and made the stones crumble like the lightning from heaven.”

There was no Indian trouble, at least initially, but their journey was long, and the country rugged. Just west of the Little Colorado River (near the site of present-day Winslow, Ariz.) the party negotiated a narrow, dangerous trail through a dense, rough woodland. “We descended a slope so steep and perilous,” Luxán recalled, “that a mule belongingto Captain Antonio de Espejo fell and was dashed to pieces.” Regardless, the Spaniards pressed on and finally found the mines “in a very rough sierra, and so worthless that we did not find in any of them a trace of silver, as they were copper mines and poor.” By then it was early May, and they had traveled some 260 miles west of the Río Grande.

So, they turned back, retracing their steps to Zuni by month’s end. At that point the party split, half the soldiers having agreed to escort the discouraged friar back to New Spain. Espejo and eight others continued east without incident until approaching a rancheria near Acoma. There real trouble started. “[The Indians] surprised us with a shower of arrows and much shouting,” Luxán recalled. “We rushed at once to the horses, firing our harquebuses. For this reason they wounded only one horse.”

The reason for the attack soon came to light. Days earlier one of Espejo’s men, Francisco Barreto, had “acquired” an unwilling Indian woman as a servant, and she had managed to slip away and forewarn her people. Determined to get her back, Barreto sought a parley with the attackers, offering to exchange other captive women. He asked Luxán to cover his back. As a gesture of good faith, Barreto left both his sword and harquebus on his saddle. He beseeched Luxán to do the same. Against his better judgment, Luxán laid down his arms and approached the Indians afoot with Barreto and the captive women.

Luxán’s misgivings were justified, as the group walked into another shower of arrows, two of which hit Barreto in the cheek and arm. In the confusion the captive women escaped. Meanwhile, Luxán and Barreto promptly retreated to their horses to recover their weapons. Considering the odds against them, the Spaniards decided it best to leave the field and continue toward the Río Grande.

There more trouble awaited them, for Puaray Pueblo, the site of the friars’ murders, was no longer abandoned. As the Spaniards approached, some 30 Indians hurled insults at them from the rooftops. In no mood to negotiate, Espejo ordered an attack. “The corners of the pueblo were taken by four men,” Luxán recalled, “and four others with two servants began to seize those natives who showed themselves.” Placing their captives in a kiva, the Spaniards set fire to the pueblo. “At once we took out the prisoners, two at a time, and lined them up against some cottonwoods close to the pueblo of Puala [sic], where they were garroted and shot many times until they were dead. Sixteen were executed, not counting those who burned to death.”

With that murderous matter settled, the party continued east across the Río Grande, still on the lookout for mines. Food was getting scarce, so they halted at Pecos Pueblo to ask for provisions. But word had spread of their depredations at Puaray. When the terrified Indians at Pecos retreated to their rooftops, the Spaniards edged into the pueblo, Obregón recalled, “with much precaution and care [and] discharged some of the harquebuses while passing through the plaza and streets. When [the Indians] saw that they were so determined and well equipped with arms, they became so frightened that hardly one of them dared to appear.” Finally, an old man showed himself, begging the intruders “not to fire the harquebuses, nor to start fighting, because they wished to be their friends and would give everything they desired and needed.”

Thus reprovisioned, Espejo’s men turned south for New Spain, following the Pecos River. On Sept. 10, 1583, after 10 months on the trail, they arrived home. Espejo’s exaggerated account of the entrada made no mention of the disappointing mines or the 16 Indians executed at Puaray. But it did include a note that practically guaranteed other expeditions would follow:

“In the greater part of those provinces, there is an abundance of game beasts and birds.…There are also fine wooded mountains with trees of all kinds, salines and rivers containing a great variety of fish. Carts and wagons can be driven through most of this region; and there are good pastures for cattle as well as lands suitable for vegetables or grain crops, whether irrigated or depending on seasonal rains. There are many rich mines, too.”

Other expeditions did follow, one in 1590 and another in 1598, both larger and more heavily armed than Espejo’s. The era of the frontier firearm had begun. 

this article first appeared in wild west magazine

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For further reading on this topic author Garavaglia recommends The Rediscovery of New Mexico, 1580–1594 and Obregón’s History of 16th Century Explorations in Western America, both translated and edited by George Peter Hammond and Agapito Rey.

Kilts allowed Scottish warriors increased mobility in battle as they dashed around the Highlands, but these proud traditional tartan garments had one major problem: no pockets. A man without pockets to stash things in is a man in a state of clutter and confusion. This was as true in the Middle Ages as it is today. Yet as early as the 12th century, Highlanders had developed a clever solution in a small all-purpose bag which became known as the sporran. 

The sporran, which is still a part of traditional Scottish menswear, was the ideal travel bag for the Scottish warrior on the go. Worn slung from a belt over the kilt, the sporran could be used to stash knives, food, bullets as soon as they were invented and whatever else an enterprising warrior wanted to take on the road. Early sporrans were made from leather or animal hide. Starting in the late 17th century, sporrans were furnished with metal clasps and gradually came to incorporate more intricate metal designs. 

Ceremonial sporrans were developed for military use in the 18th century. These are made with animal hair and are known as sporran molach. Animal hair used to make them have typically included goat hair, horsehair and rabbit fur. Soldiers’ sporrans feature tassels, which swing when the kilt-wearing trooper is marching. The number of tassels, as well as their placement, weave and colors, are rich in meaning and vary depending on regiment and wearer.

Some officers have had custom sporrans made for them. The Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders have traditionally worn a tassel arrangement known as the “Swinging Six” style and sporrans made from badger heads. Sometimes fox heads have been used for sporrans as well. A sporran can be worn sideways over the hip or more boldly front and center.

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Judas Maccabeus (190-160 bce)

The third of five sons born to Mattathias of the Hasmonean family, priest (cohen) of Modein—the others being Eleazar, Simon, John and Jonathan—the man more widely known by his Greek name was known in Hebrew as Yehuda HaMakab, or Judah the Hammer. Judas was a cohen in his own right and would have remained so had his Seleucid overlord, Antiochus IV Epiphanes (“God Manifest”), not sought to promote homogeneity in his multi-ethnic kingdom by imposing Hellenic culture and religion on all his subjects in 168 bce. That included installing images of Hellenic gods in the Second Temple of Jerusalem, provoking a revolt by Mattathias, his sons and other Jewish pietists. 

During this war for control over Judea, Judas came to the fore. After winning a string of victories, he led his makeshift army into Jerusalem on the 25th day in the Hebrew month of Kislev (approximately December), 164 bce. In the course of cleansing the Temple, tradition has it that there was only enough oil to light it for a single day, but it burned through eight nights until more oil was found. 

The fighting was far from over, however. Eleazar was killed in 161 and at Elasa in 160. Judas was outgeneraled by Bacchides and died fighting. His burial ended with a quotation from King David’s lament to King Saul: “How the mighty have fallen!” Jonathan and Simon subsequently died, leaving John the last Maccabee standing by 142 bce, when Judea finally won autonomy within the Seleucid kingdom and independence in 141.

Narses (c.ad 478-568)

The exact dates of Narses’ birth and death are uncertain, as is how he came to be castrated. What is known is that he was a Romanized Armenian who served as steward, chief treasurer and grand chamber of the court to the Eastern Roman Emperor Justinian I. 

He played a vital role in putting down the Nika riots on 532, but there is no evidence of military training leading to Justinian’s ordering him in 538 to Italy, where Count Flavius Belisarius, after having conquered the Vandals in North Africa in 533, was trying to wrest the Western Roman Empire from the Ostrogoths. Although Narses demonstrated a surprising grasp of command, he and Belisarius did not trust one another and Justinian recalled Narses. Working with minimal resources, Belisarius conduced a brilliant defense of Rome in 538, but in 541 Justinian, suspecting his loyalty, reassigned him to fight the Sassanians in Mesopotamia. Narses took Belisarius’ place in Italy and by June 551 was the supreme commander at age 73 with a string of victories. In 554 the undersized eunuch was feted to the first Triumph held in Rome in 150 years—and the last. On Nov. 14, 565, Justinian died and the new emperor, Justin II, recalled Narses to Constantinople in 567. Some accounts claim he died enroute in April 568, but others describe his death in peaceful retirement in 574 at what might have been age 96—itself an achievement in the treacherous cauldron of Byzantine politics. 

Genghis Khan (c. 1162-1227)

Born to a Mongol chieftain of the Borjigin clan, Temujin was eight when his father died. Certainly he would have learned the standard Mongol mounted warrior repertoire, but his accomplishments had gone far beyond that by 1206, when a kurultai of his peers elected him their first khagan, under the name of Genghis Khan. Among the most intriguing mysteries surrounding his rise to power is how he learned, hands-on, to forge alliances, turn an unwieldy collection of steppe warriors into a vast, well-disciplined army capable of conquering continents and, while he was at it, create a political entity of unprecedented scope to administer his holdings, complete with a codified legal system—all conceived virtually from scratch.

Although the victims of his ruthless expansion of empire have been estimated as high as 17 million—one-fifth the earth’s population at the time—Genghis Khan conquered the largest contiguous land mass in history and laid the foundation for a meritocracy allowing universal religious tolerance, which in times of peace connected the western world by pan-Eurasian trade. All this was without precedent in the Mongol world, but it lasted a quarter of a millennium. Is it any wonder that, however controversial he is elsewhere, Genghis Khan is still at the top of Mongolia’s hierarchy of national heroes?

Johann Tserclaes, Count of Tilly (1559-1632)

Born in the Brabant in the Spanish Netherlands (now Belgium), Johann Tserclaes, Count of Tilly attended Jesuit school in Cologne, but at age 15 enlisted as a soldier in the Spanish army against the Dutch in the Eighty Years War. In 1600 he served in a mercenary unit with the Holy Roman Empire fighting Ottoman forces in Hungary and Transylvania. It was not uncommon for professional soldiers to learn hands-on as they rose in the ranks in the 17th century, but Tilly was exceptional in that he ascended from private to field marshal in just five years. In 1610 Duke Maximilian I gave him command of the Catholic League. 

When the Thirty Years War broke out in Bohemia in 1618, Tilly’s victory at White Mountain in 1620 knocked Bohemia out of the conflict at almost the beginning. As other Protestant countries rose against the Empire, Tilly defeated each in turn, seeming to be invincible.

Tilly’s career began to tarnish when King Gustavus II Adolphus put the Thirty Years War through a new phase with his innovatively mobile Swedish army. After a 20-day siege, on May 20, 1631 Tilly’s forces stormed Magdeburg and for the first time he lost control over his troops, who butchered 20,000 of the city’s 25,000 population. On Sept. 17, Tilly confronted Gustavus at Breitenfeld and was convincingly outmaneuvered and beaten, suffering 27,000 casualties. Tilly scored a modest victory at Bamberg on March 9, 1632, but at Rain am Lech on April 15 he was struck in the thigh by an arquebus round and died of osteomyelitis in Ingolstadt on the 30th.

Oliver Cromwell (1599-1658)

When the English Civil War broke out, its most famous—and notorious—figure was known among the merchant community and had been a member of Parliament for his home county of Huntingdon in 1628-29 and 1640-42. His only military experience had been raising a cavalry troop in Cambridgeshire for the Parliamentarians, which arrived too late to participate in the opening battle at Edgehill on Oct. 23, 1642. Oliver Cromwell proved avid at learning from experience, most notably at Gainesborough on July 23, 1643, at which point he was a colonel. He was involved in redeveloping the Parliamentary forces into a “New Model Army,” which proved its worth in the pivotal battles of Marston Moor in July 1644 and Naseby on June 14, 1645. By 1652 Cromwell’s subsequent campaigns in Scotland and Ireland sealed his place among Britain’s most successful generals. If appraised by his own standard, however—“warts and all”—he is also remembered as a regicide (he was the third of 59 to sign King Charles I’s death warrant), the revolutionary who dissolved Parliament and made himself “Lord Protector,” i.e. dictator, and one of those oppressors the Irish still love to hate.

Nathanael Greene (1742-1786)

Born in Warwick, Rhode Island, Nathanael Greene was running a mill when the American Revolution broke out, but he was an avid reader with—despite being a Quaker—a fascination with military science. That and his advocating the break with Britain led to his being expelled from his congregation, although he still regarded himself as a Quaker. When the battles of Lexington and Concord occurred, Greene’s only contribution was to form a militia unit, the Kentish Guard. On June 14, 1775 Greene met Maj. Gen. George Washington, the new commander of the Continental Army, in Boston, and the two became close friends. Serving as quartermaster-general, Greene distinguished himself in combat at Brandywine Creek, Valley Forge and Monmouth Court House. On Dec. 2, 1780 Washington sent Greene to Charlotte, N.C., where he reorganized the beaten Continental forces in the southern colonies and set out to retake them from British Lt. Gen. Charles Cornwallis’ army. Greene choreographed an artful campaign of fighting retreats, climaxing at Guilford Court House, N.C., on March 15, 1781. Although Cornwallis ended up holding the ground and technically winning the battle, the 633 casualties he suffered compelled him to disengage and retire to Virginia. While Cornwallis was trapped at Yorktown, Greene took the offensive, driving the last British in the South from Charleston, S.C. on Dec. 14, 1782. Before his death of heatstroke in Georgia on June 19, 1786, Greene summed up how he wore Cornwallis down: “We fight, get beat, rise and fight again.”

François-Dominique Toussaint Louverture (1743-1803)

The son of an educated slave on French-owned Saint-Domingue, François-Dominique Toussaint got some education of his own from Jesuit contacts while serving as a livestock handler, herder, coachman and steward until 1776, when he attained freedom. A slave revolt broke out between oppressed blacks and their white and mulatto overseers in August 1791. By 1793 he was leading rebels in a self-developed guerrilla force and had adopted the surname “Louverture” (“opening”). Later that year he and his followers helped a newly-Republican France fight off Spanish and British forces and was encouraged to learn that the French National Assembly ended slavery in May 1794. Over the following years Louverture displayed a remarkable grasp of civil leadership, restoring the economy in 1795 and overrunning Spanish San Domingo in January 1801, declaring the liberation of its white, black and mulatto population. In January 1802, however, Sainte-Domingue was invaded by a French army led by Maj. Gen. Charles Victoire Emmanuel Leclerc, brother-in-law of First Consul Napoleon Bonaparte, with orders to reinstate slavery on the island. Overwhelmed and losing followers, Louverture agreed to lay down his arms in May and retire to his plantation. Instead, Bonaparte ordered his arrest. He died in Fort-de-Joux in the Jura Mountains on April 7, 1803. 

Bonaparte’s treachery backfired. Leclerc died of yellow fever in November 1802. On May 18, 1803 Bonaparte made some quick cash for his European operations by approving American President Jefferson’s Louisiana Purchase, effectively writing off his ambitions in the New World. On Jan. 1, 1804 one of Louverture’s disciples, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, declared himself governor-general of Haiti, the world’s first black republic. 

Thomas-Alexandre Dumas-Davy de la Pailleterie (1762-1806)

Thomas-Alexandre Dumas-Davy de la Pailleterie was the issue of Alexandre Davy, Marquis de la Pailleterie, a minor French noble plantation owner in Jérémie, Saint-Domingue (now Haiti), and one of his slaves, Marie-Céssette Dumas (whose surname Thomas-Alexandre adopted). The boy accompanied his father to France, where he could be free and get an education. In 1786, however, he enlisted in the French army’s 5th Dragoon Regiment (Queen). When the French Revolution broke out, he found numerous opportunities to show his military talents. On June 2, 1792 he was promoted to corporal, but over the next few years he was commissioned a lieutenant, then rose to lieutenant colonel and, in July 1793–the first person of African descent in history to attain the rank of brigadier general. Although not the most gifted strategist, he was exceptionally strong and reveled in leading by example. Among others, Dumas commanded the Army of the West in 1796 and the Army of Italy in 1796. On March 25, 1797, during a fighting retreat from Brixen and Botzen in the Tyrol, Dumas held the Brixen bridge against an Austrian cavalry squadron singlehanded. From 1798 to 1799 he served in Napoleon Bonaparte’s Army of the Orient. 

Retiring in 1802, Dumas died of stomach cancer in 1806. Undoubtedly his lifetime of adventure inspired his son, Alexandre Dumas Sr., to write adventure novels, such as The Three Musketeers, The Man in the Iron Mask and The Count of Monte Cristo. His grandson, Alexandre Dumas Jr. also became an esteemed novelist and playwright, best known for La Dame aux Camélias.

Benjamin H. Grierson (1826-1911)

One of the iconic names in American Civil War cavalry had no military training and was afraid of horses. Born in Pittsburgh, Pa. on July 8, 1826, Benjamin Henry Grierson was nearly kicked to death by a horse at age eight and distrusted the beasts ever since. Educated in Ohio, he became a music teacher and shopkeeper in Illinois when war broke out and joined the U.S. Army at Cairo on May 8, 1861, as a volunteer aide to Brig. Gen. Benjamin M. Prentiss. On Oct. 24, however, Grierson was assigned to the 6th Illinois Cavalry and on March 26, 1862 his men elected him colonel.

Mastering his horse problem, Grierson led his troopers on raids and skirmishes throughout Tennessee and Mississippi. This climaxed with a diversionary raid in which Grierson led 1,700 troopers of the 6th and 7th Illinois and 2nd Iowa Cavalry regiments from La Grange, Tenn. on April 17, 1863 600 miles to Baton Rouge, La. on May 2. A step ahead of Confederate pursuers, Grierson’s raiders inflicted 100 casualties, took 500 prisoners, captured 3,000 arms and destroyed 50 to 60 railroad and telegraph lines. Of greatest strategic importance, the raid diverted a division’s worth of Confederate soldiers while Maj. Gen. Ulysses Grant’s forces slipped south of the Mississippi fortress of Vicksburg, leading to its July 4 surrender. After the war, Grierson decided to make a career of Army service, spending most on the frontier, his commands including the 10th U.S. Cavalry Regiment (Colored). On April 5, 1890 he was given a rare promotion to brigadier general in the Regular Army, shortly before retiring on July 8 of that year. 

Vo Nguyen Giap (1911-2013)

The son of a well-to-do farmer who died in a French prison, Vo Nguyen Giap attended a Catholic lycée in Hue, joined the Indochinese Communist Party in 1931, gained a law degree in 1938 and worked as a history teacher while self-studying military history. In May 1940 he met Ho Chi Minh in China, where he learned tactics and strategy as practiced by Mao Zedong. By the end of World War II Giap was Minister of Defense for the communist-nationalist People’s Army of Vietnam (PAVN). 

Between 1946 and 1954 Giap blended guerrilla and conventional warfare, winning some campaigns and suffering some stinging defeats but learning from experience. His decisive victory over the French at Dien Bien Phu in 1954 shocked the Western powers, as did his success in wearing down U.S. forces between 1965 and 1973. Giap viewed himself as more soldier than politician, which may explain his being sidelined by North Vietnamese General Secretary Le Duan, whose “big battle” strategy prevailed over Giap’s during the 1968 Tet and 1972 Easter offensives, resulting in bloody tactical defeats. In the end, the PAVN prevailed over the American-backed Saigon government in 1975. In 1978 Giap oversaw an invasion of Kampuchea that toppled Pol Pot’s radical Maoist Khmer Rouge government. When the Chinese retaliated with a punitive expedition into Vietnam on Feb. 12, 1979, the PAVN’s stout defense convinced the invaders to withdraw on March 16. 

Although Vo Nguyen Giap is widely touted as one of the military geniuses of his century, much of his self-taught strategy and tactics could only have worked in Indochina’s unique conditions in the second half of the 20th century.

this article first appeared in military history quarterly

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As an instrument of war, the flail was a handheld, two-piece, jointed weapon, consisting of a wooden handle of varying length (up to 5-6 feet long) and a shorter, perhaps 1–2-feet long, heavy impact rod serving as a “striking-head” which was attached to the handle by a flexible rope, leather strap or chain links, allowing it to swing freely up and down and in a full circle.

By making a sweeping, downward blow with the flail’s handle, the weapon’s wielder greatly increased the impact energy of his blow through the increased energy generated by the centripetal force of the free-swinging “striking-head,” thereby inflicting a more powerful blow on the target. Some flail wielders even increased the lethality of their flail’s striking-head by replacing the rod with a longer-chain-linked, spiked head, orb-shaped ball, creating the Kettenmorgenstern (chain morning star).

Peasant farmers just trying to survive medieval combat added spikes and metal studs, considering any lethal enhancement a battlefield “plus” if it helped them get through a battle alive.

Flail weapons are best classified as “peasant levy’ weapons” since they evolved from the flail grain thresher, an agricultural tool typically used by farmers to separate grain from their husks (dating from ancient Roman times) through heavy beating, and therefore one of the commonly-available farming tools that peasant levies who were involuntarily conscripted into military service had readily available.

Other such peasant farming/foresting tools that could be quickly converted into military use when peasants were called up included axes, billhooks, knives, adzes and heavy mallets. Certainly, at least by the 15th century—as Czech Hussite peasant infantry who fought with flails demonstrate—flails were in use and there are accounts confirming its use through the 17th century.

Variations of the flail weapon were developed in widespread world regions. In medieval Russia and East Asia, steppe warriors wielded kisten, flails with smooth metal or bone balls attached to the haft by rope or a leather strap. Similar, flail-like, hand-wielded impact weapons were developed by the Chinese (nunchakus, three-section-staff, and the knotted-rope knout) and the Koreans (pyeongong). Yet, the most famous flail-pattern weapon may never have been part of the Medieval armored knight’s weapons array.

Today, the most popular and well-known image of the flail weapon—perpetuated by modern-era novels and films—is of fully-armored Medieval knights (literally) “flailing” away in knight-to-knight combat, bashing at each other brandishing short-hafted “morning star” flails sporting long-chain-linked, spiked balls.

Yet, today’s medieval armored knight combat historians are at odds as to whether such weapons even existed. Contemporary paintings depict such weapons, and post-medieval examples do exist, but many historians doubt if these were more than conceptual imaginings. Indeed, a short-handled, long-chained “morning star” flail, in practical use, could have been more dangerous to the flail weapon’s wielder than to the weapon’s target!

Certainly, the flail was used in medieval combat, but the version depicted in 19th century and later romantic “knighthood” novels and films was likely never used in knightly combat.

this article first appeared in military history quarterly

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A large group of forgotten combatants stare out at us every day from the annals of war history. They are visible to us in everything from ancient stone reliefs to elegant oil paintings to scratched early black-and-white photos; they regularly appear in statuary alongside famous war leaders, and they have taken part in too many historical battles to name. They are horses, and many avid military history enthusiasts usually don’t give much pause to think about them. This is because horses are animals and, as such, are often taken for granted.

Considered within conflict history, horses have often been viewed as little more than vehicles or baggage conveyors for warriors of the past. Yet horses were warriors in their own right.

In addition to bearing the stresses of combat, horses have also borne another burden alongside soldiers of yore—armor.

In medieval and Renaissance Europe, horses were essential for battle as well as tournament sports like jousting. A complete set of horse armor could weigh between 40 to 90 pounds—and that’s not even counting the added weight of the rider.

Most horses selected for battle or tournament challenges were robust breeds—the four-legged equivalent of tanks. Breeds capable of charging into combat wearing armor were known as destriers, coursers and rounceys. As with humans, armor for a horse was not always intended for merely protective functions, but could also be ceremonial and an indicator of its owner’s status in society.

While body armor for horses varied according to the riders’ culture, traditions and available materials, a universal and common element of horse armor across the globe tended to be the chanfron (also called shaffron or chamfron), head and facial armor which might fairly be called a “horse helmet.” The following is a roundup of some unusual examples of chanfrons and other elements of horse armor from around the world.

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East meets West in this innovative Japanese fire arrow known as the bo-hiya. The fire arrow is a basic projectile that found use across the globe for many centuries. Japanese warriors are recorded as loosing them from their bows (yumi) since at least the fifth century of the common era.

Gunpowder began to appear in Chinese armies in the 10th century and Japanese contact with the outside world—most tellingly, being invaded twice by the Mongols in the late 13th century—exposed them to new technology and the motivation to develop it for their own defense. Among the weapon concepts this exposure advanced was that of the fire arrow.

Japanese military technology got a fresh jump start in 1543, when the Portuguese established trade relations with Japan. Consequently the Japanese acquired European-style matchlock muskets or arquebuses, more advanced than the Chinese firearms they had previously used up until that point.

Besides reverse engineering muskets that gradually transformed their approach to warfare, the Japanese used Portuguese gunpowder technology to put a new spin on the flaming arrow—literally. 

Arrows, with wooden shafts for carrying flame and deadly tips of metal to pierce foes, were given fins and repurposed to be launched from gunpowder weapons. Hemp rope, coated with an oxidizer such as potassium nitrate to render it waterproof but flammable, was wrapped around the shaft to form a fuze.

These powerful fiery arrows became known as bo-hiya. Some could be launched from cannons called hiya taihu while others, like this example, were fired from a type of tanegashima hand-held firearm called the hiya zutsu. 

A multifaceted projectile, the bo-hiya was used on land by samurai gunners as well as at sea, where its ability to set wooden vessels aflame led to it becoming a standard shipboard weapon—used by both the pirates (kaizuku or wako) that preyed on maritime commerce and by the seagoing imperial samurai who hunted them down. 

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The Mongol Subjugation of Novgorod (1238)

In 1238, a 40,000-man Mongol horde led by Genghiz Khan’s grandson, Batu Khan, embarked on a campaign of conquest against the Rus. By the end of 1238 they had taken 14 major cities and razed them for failing to heed Batu’s ultimatums. Only two major cities in the northern Rus territories were spared: Pskov and Novgorod, which pledged fealty to the Great Khan and agreed to annually pay a tax based on 10 percent of their produce. Novgorod, a vital fur-trading center, was surrounded by potential enemies, including not only the Mongols, but the Swedes and an order of German warrior-monks known as the Teutonic Knights.

Both western powers coveted the lands to the east, declaring their purpose to spread Catholicism while destroying the Eastern Orthodox Church. Appointed kniaz (prince) of Novgorod in 1236 at age 15, Alexsandr Yaroslavich was compelled to choose his friends and enemies carefully. He knew resisting the Mongols was suicide, but they tended to spare those who surrendered and left them to their own domestic affairs…whereas the Swedes would seize land and the Germans would kill nearly everybody.

As the Mongols marched on Novgorod in 1238, the spring thaws hampered their horses, halting the campaign 120 kilometers short of its objective. Seizing his opportunity, Alexsandr met the Mongols and accepted their terms. Pskov did the same. The Mongols moved on, establishing their western headquarters at Sarai under a yellow banner for which their force became known as the Golden Horde. Alexsandr made the right choice. He would later have to battle both his western enemies, defeating the Swedes on the Neva River on July 15, 1240 (for which he acquired the moniker Alexsandr Nevsky) and the Livonian Knights at Lake Peipus on April 5, 1242. Credited with preserving Russian civilization at a time of terrible duress, Alexsandr did so by knowing both when to fight and when not to.

The 335-Years War (1651-1986)

What if they gave a war and nobody came? Better still, what if they gave a war and nobody noticed? During the English Civil War, the United Provinces of the Netherlands sided with the English Parliament. As one consequence many Dutch ships were seized or sunk by the Royalist navy, which by 1651 was based in the Isles of Scilly, supporting the last diehards in Cornwall.

On March 30 Lt. Adm. Maarten Harpertsoon Tromp arrived at Scilly, demanding reparation for damages to Dutch ships. Receiving no satisfactory answer, Tromp declared war but then sailed away—and never returned. Critics of that so-called “war” have since noted that as an admiral, not a sovereign, Tromp was really in no position to formally declare war. The issue seemed moot in June 1651 when a Parliamentarian fleet under General at Sea Robert Blake arrived at Scilly to compel the last Royalists to surrender.

So things stood until 1986, when historian Roy Duncan chanced upon Tromp’s idle threat and in the course of investigation concluded that, the utter lack of hostilities notwithstanding, the Netherlands and Isles of Scilly had spent the past 335 years at war but had never gotten around to declaring peace. That oversight was finally remedied on April 17, 1986, when Dutch ambassador to Britain Jonkheer Rein Huydecoper formally declared one of history’s longest conflicts at an end—adding that it must have horrified the islands’ inhabitants “to know we could have attacked at any moment.” 

The Kettle War (1784)

Along with winning independence, in 1585 the Republic of the Netherlands closed off the Scheldt River to trade from the Spanish Netherlands to the south, adversely affecting Antwerp’s and Ghent’s access to the North Sea while serving to Amsterdam’s advantage. Spain accepted that arrangement again in the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia, but in 1714 Spain ceded the southern Netherlands to Habsburg Austria. Between 1780 and 1784 the Netherlands allied with the fledgling United States of America in hopes of gaining an advantage over Britain but was defeated. Seeking to take advantage of that situation, on Oct. 9, 1784, Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II sent three ships, headed by the large merchantman Le Louis, into the Scheldt.

Calling his bluff, the Dutch sent the warship Dolfijn to intercept the Austrians, firing a shot through a soup kettle aboard Le Louis. At this point the Austrian flagship surrendered. On Oct. 30 Emperor Joseph declared war and the Netherlands began mobilizing its forces. Austrian troops invaded the Netherlands, razing a custom house and occupying Fort Lillo, whose withdrawing garrison broke the dikes and inundated the region, drowning many locals but halting the Austrian advance. France mediated a settlement signed on Feb. 8, 1785, as the Treaty of Fontainebleau, upholding the Netherlands’ control over the Scheldt but recompensing the Austrian Netherlands with 10 million florins.

The Anglo-Swedish War (1810–1812)

With the signing of the Treaty of Paris on Jan. 6, 1810, Emperor Napoleon imposed his Continental System throughout Europe and placing a trade embargo on one of his remaining enemies, Great Britain. That included Sweden, Britain’s longtime trading partner. A booming smuggling trade led Napoleon to issue an ultimatum on Nov.13, 1810, giving his reluctant ally five days to declare war and confiscate all British shipping and goods found on Swedish soil, or itself face war from France and all its allies. Sweden duly declared war on Nov. 17, but there were no direct hostilities over the next year and a half—in fact, Sweden looked the other way while the Royal Navy occupied and used its isle of Hanö as a base.

Ironically, this delicate standoff was upset by a Frenchman, Marshal Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte, who with the death of Sweden’s Crown Prince Charles August on May 28, 1810, was elected crown prince on Aug. 21. Although King Charles XIII was Sweden’s official ruler, his illness and disinterest in national affairs caused him to leave Crown Prince Bernadotte as the de facto ruler—who put Swedish interests above France’s. Relations with Napoleon deteriorated until France occupied Swedish Pomerania and the isle of Rügen in 1812. Bernadotte’s response included the Treaty of Örebro on July 18, 1812, formally ending the bloodless war against Britain and thus declaring a soon-to-be bloodier war against Napoleon’s France.

The Aroostook War (1838–1839)

Both the American Revolutionary War and the War of 1812 ended with unfinished business regarding the boundaries between the United States and British North America. On several occasions both countries came to the brink of further conflicts. One such was the “Aroostook War” regarding unresolved land claims between Lower Canada and Massachusetts, exacerbated in 1820 when a new state, Maine, broke away from Massachusetts. By 1839 the U.S. had raised 6,000 militia and local posses to patrol the disputed territory while British troop strength rose to as high as 15,000.

There were no direct confrontations.

Two British militiamen were injured by bears. The decisive action came in 1842 in the form of negotiations between British Master of the Mint Alexander Baring, 1st Baron Ashburton and U.S. Secretary of State Daniel Webster. As was often the case, the resultant Webster-Ashburton Treaty was a compromise. Most land went to Maine, leaving a vital area northeast for the Halifax Road to connect Lower Canada with the Maritime provinces of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. In 1840 Maine created Aroostook County to administer civil authority in its expected territory, from which the incident got its name in the history books.  

The Pig War (1859)

Since at least the 1844 American presidential election that got James K. Polk elected on a slogan of “Fifty-four-Forty or Fight,” the United States set its sights on raising the northern border of the “Oregon Territory” (including what is now Oregon, Washington, Idaho and British Columbia) to 54 degrees 40 minutes north latitude, rather than 49 degrees north as it had been in 1846. That border bisected San Juan Island, in the Straits of Juan de Fuca between Seattle and Vancouver, where on June 15, 1859, American resident Lyman Cutlar caught Charlie Griffin’s pig rooting in his garden and shot it dead.

Cutlar subsequently offered to compensate his British neighbor $10 for his loss. Griffin angrily demanded that local authorities arrest Cutlar. The U.S. authorities would not countenance Britain arresting an American citizen. Soon both sides were reinforcing the island with troops and offshore warships. Things came to a head when the governor of British Columbia ordered the commander of the British Pacific Fleet, Adm. Robert Baynes, to invade the island.

At that critical hour Baynes became the voice of reason when he disobeyed the order, declaring that he would “not involve two great nations in a war over a squabble about a pig!”

News of the standoff spurred Washington and London to negotiate while reducing troop strength on San Juan to 100 each. Finally in 1872, an international commission headed by Kaiser Wilhelm I of Germany settled the matter by ceding the entire island to the United States. Total casualties: one British pig.

The Pembina Raid (1871)

Following the American Civil War a committee of radical nationalists called the Irish Brotherhood, or Fenians, embarked on three attempts to capture large areas of British North America to ransom for an independent Irish republic. Although the participants were mostly hardened Civil War veterans—from both sides—their first attempt to seize the Niagara Falls peninsula in 1866 failed. A second attempt launched from New York and Vermont in 1870 was a greater failure—largely because the Fenians were facing better-prepared militiamen now defending their own sovereign state, the Dominion of Canada. Although the Irish Brotherhood itself had given up on the idea, Col. John O’Neill set out west for one more try, planning to invade Manitoba and form an alliance with the half-blood Métis, then rebelling against the Canadian authorities for land, ethnic and religious rights. By late 1871, however, Ottawa was acquiescing to Métis demands. Consequently the Métis had no intention of allying with the Fenians. 

Undeterred, at 7:30 a.m. on the morning of Oct. 5, 1871, O’Neill led 37 followers to seize the Hudson’s Bay Company trading post and the nearby East Lynne Customs House in Pembina. Of 20 people taken prisoner, a young boy escaped and ran to the U.S. Army base at Fort Pembina. While about a thousand Canadian militia marched south to deal with the threat, Capt. Loyd Wheaton led 30 soldiers of Company I, 20th U.S. Infantry Regiment to the settlement. O’Neill later said he was loath to fight bluecoats alongside whom he had served during the Civil War.

The Fenians fled north, but O’Neill and 10 others were quickly captured. By 3 p.m. the crisis was over. Canada had seen off its last invasion threat without firing a shot. Taken to St. Paul, Minnesota, O’Neill was tried twice for violating the Neutrality Acts and twice acquitted on the grounds that he had not really done so. Unknown to O’Neill, in May 1870 the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers had straightened out the disputed Canadian border, resulting in Pembina no longer being a quarter mile north of the border, but three-quarters of a mile south in Dakota Territory. O’Neill gave up his invasion ambitions under an avalanche of public ridicule over not only failing to conquer Canada but failing to even find Canada!

The Lobster War (1961–1963)

There have been numerous conflicts over territory and others over the natural resources they produce. One example began in 1961 when French fishermen seeking spiny lobsters off Mauretania tried their luck on the other side of the Atlantic and discovered crustacean gold on underwater shelves 250 to 650 feet deep. Soon, however, the French vessels were intercepted and driven off by Brazilian corvettes upholding a government claim that that part of the Continental Shelf was their territory, as was any sea life that walked on it. On Jan. 1, 1962 Brazilian warships apprehended the French Cassiopée, but the next time two Brazilian corvettes went after French lobstermen they were in turn intercepted by the French destroyer Tartu.

By April 1963 both sides were considering war. Fortunately, an international tribunal summarized the French claim as being that lobsters, like fish, were swimming in the sea, not walking on the shelf. This prompted Brazilian Admiral Paolo Moreira da Silva’s counterclaim that that argument was akin to saying that if a kangaroo hops through the air, that made it a bird.

The matter was finally settled by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea on Dec. 10, 1964. By it, Brazilian coastal waters were extended to 200 nautical miles but permitted 26 French ships to catch lobsters for five years in “designated areas,” paying a small percentage of their catch to Brazil. Otherwise the two nations might have warred for a pretender to the throne of the true lobster—spiny lobsters, a.k.a. langustas, don’t have claws like their North Atlantic cousins and are thus not considered true lobsters. Although often used for “lobster tails,” some might not find them tasty enough “to die for.” 

The Sumdorong Chu Standoff (1986–1987)

While the United States and the Soviet Union were having a nuclear Cold War faceoff, in October 1962 border tensions in the Himalayas between India and the People’s Republic of China flared when Indian troops seized Thag La Ridge. The People’s Liberation Army reacted in force, inflicting a stinging defeat on the Indians at Namka Chu. Over the next 24 years both sides reformed and improved their military capabilities while still eying one another suspiciously. On Oct. 18-20, 1986, India staged Operation Falcon, an airlift that occupied Zemithang and several other high ground positions, including Hathung La ridge and Sumdorong Chu. The PLA responded by moving in reinforcements, calling on India for a flag meeting on Nov. 15. This was not forthcoming.

In the spring of 1987 the Indians conducted Operation Chequerboard, an aerial redeployment of troops involving 10 divisions and several warplane squadrons along the North East India border. China declared these activities a provocation, but India showed no intention of withdrawing from its positions. By May 1997 soldiers of both powers were staring down each other’s gun barrels while Western diplomats, recognizing similar language to that preceding the 1962 clash, braced for a major war.

Cooler heads seem to have prevailed, for on Aug. 5, 1987, Indian and Chinese officials held a flag meeting at Bum. Both sides agreed to discuss the situation and in 1988 Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi visited Beijing, reciprocating for the first time Zhou Enlai’s April 1960 visit to India. The talks were accompanied by mutual reductions in forces from a Line of Actual Control that was agreed upon in 1993. With the crisis defused, there would be no major Sino-Indian border incidents again until 2020.

The Whisky War (1984–2022)

The disagreement over the exact national boundaries dividing little Hans Island involved two of the least likely adversaries, both members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization: Canada and Denmark. Lying in the Kennedy Channel between Ellesmere and the autonomous Danish territory of Greenland, Hans was divided in half by a line that left a gap in its exact border descriptions. That gap went ignored until 1980, when the Canadian firm Dome Petroleum began four years of research on and around the island.

Matters took a more specific direction in 1984, however, when Canadian soldiers landed on Hans and left behind a Maple Leaf flag and a bottle of whisky. In that same year the Danish Minister for Greenland Affairs arrived to plant the Danish flag with a bottle of schnapps and a letter saying, “Welcome to the Danish Island.” These provocations heralded decades of escalating mutual visits and gestures that left all manner of souvenirs behind. Finally, on Aug. 8, 2005—following a particularly busy July—the Danish press announced that Canada wished to commence serious negotiations to settle the remaining boundary dispute once and for all.

Even so, it took the Russian “special military operation” against Ukraine to remind the world how serious war could be, resulting in the rivals unveiling a plan on June 14 for satisfactorily dividing the unresolved remnants of Hans Island between the Canadian territory of Nunavut and Danish Greenland.

this article first appeared in military history quarterly

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It is a tale of paranoia, revenge, of kings and divided loyalties, and one family’s quest for honor. No, it is not the Wars of the Roses nor Julius Caesar’s civil war in Rome. It is the story of Spain’s Guzman family, and their epic generational mission to dominate the narrow peninsula of Gibraltar, slightly less than 3 miles wide, known popularly as “The Rock.”

Cue up the “Game of Thrones” theme song and envision a giant boulder in the middle of the ocean.  

The Ancestor Who Started It All  

Gibraltar, the tip of the Iberian Peninsula known for its iconic rock formation that shoots up 1,398 feet into the air, had been a traffic stop for a motley assortment of Romans, Phoenicians, Visigoths, Byzantines and whoever else happened to be floating around the coast of Spain at any given time. The Almohad Caliphate constructed a large fortress upon it—which might have contributed to the Rock envy that gripped various neighboring powers for the next several centuries.

Gibraltar eventually fell into the hands of the Marinid Sultanate and was basking in scenic isolation when King Ferdinand IV of Castile decided he wanted to claim it as part of Spain’s Reconquista in 1309.

The man chosen for this task was Alonzo Perez de Guzman, the king’s loyal retainer, known as Guzman “the Good.” But Guzman had not earned the epithet of “the Good” for his congenial personality. In fact he was notoriously ruthless. A loyal buddy of the king, Guzman had previously (in)famously refused to negotiate the release of his own son from captivity by one of the king’s rivals—instead Guzman is reputed to have offered his own knife to be used for the execution. The boy was murdered, and his head was allegedly catapulted into the midst of Guzman’s men to their great distress. Guzman however remained emotionless and is said to have informed his wife about the whole thing later. She is reported to have been, justifiably, horrified. In any case, the king considered “Guzman the Good” an ideal henchman. Guzman also had another son, who would carry on his legacy for years to come.

Arriving at Gibraltar in June 1309, Guzman attacked the peninsula by land and sea and bombarded the place with catapults. The Muslim garrison surrendered by September, and Gibraltar became a feather in Spain’s cap.

But Guzman’s success was short-lived. Although by then an older man over 50, he was ever eager to be in the thick of slaughter and mayhem. He sallied forth to Algeciras, where the king’s forces successfully ousted a Muslim garrison. Apparently Guzman failed to notice that enemy troops had not been ousted from the surrounding countryside, which he decided to “tour” with his troops. The tour was short-lived—Muslim forces annihilated Guzman along with his encampment.

In a show of generosity, the king awarded governorship of Gibraltar to Guzman’s son, Juan Alonso Perez de Guzmán y Coronel, thereby tying the family to “the Rock” for which they would battle for years to come.

Guzman 2.0 and Even More Sieges

Unlike his famous father, Juan Alonso Perez de Guzmán y Coronel proved to be an absentee warrior. He appears not to have been present on Gibraltar when the Emirate of Granada, unhappy that the Rock had been unceremoniously snatched by the Spanish, tried to reclaim it in 1315 but failed during the peninsula’s second siege.

This was far from the end of the story. The Marinid Sultanate hadn’t given up on the Rock and made a grab for Gibraltar in 1333. This time they took it—much to the despair of Juan Alonso Perez de Guzmán y Coronel, who finally showed up at Gibraltar. He arrived too late for the third siege, just in time to see victory go to the opposing side.  

The Spanish decided they weren’t just going to accept this new score, so they immediately mounted a rematch—the fourth siege, also in 1333. Guzman wanted to make good on his name this time…or at least as much as he was able to. He is described as vigorously helping make preparations for the great reconquest. What he actually did during the battle is unknown, since there don’t seem to be many, if any, historical sources describing him doing any fighting during the siege. However he was at least in attendance for it.

A Stalemate

The end result of the fourth siege was that both sides exhausted each other, ran out of food, and became so miserable that they drew up a truce agreement. The Spanish sailed away without taking the Rock and the sultan of Granada was assassinated by indignant followers who, despite the fact that they were technically victorious, didn’t approve of the truce being signed.

A fifth siege took place afterwards, which ended with a fizzle after King Alfonso XI of Castile died of the Plague in 1350. Guzman—again—seems to have failed to appear for that engagement.

Gibraltar was out of Spain’s hands. A sixth siege took place between two opposing Muslim factions when the Spanish weren’t looking, with the victors being the Nasrid kingdom of Granada.

Drowned On Arrival

Two generations later the Guzman family was at it again—specifically, Enrique Pérez de Guzmán y Castilla, who launched an adventure in 1436 to take the Rock for his family honor once and for all…and failed with a freak accident.

After temporarily abandoning their conquest of the Rock, the Guzmans had married into Spain’s royal family. Their fortunes and standing had improved. Enrique intended to imitate his famous ancestor, Guzman the Good, and seize Gibraltar for honor and glory in a feat of military might. He organized a campaign and rallied men to his cause. They were going to launch assaults from both land and sea. They were going to take the Rock.

Things quickly went askew. Enrique failed to take the high tide into account. When D-Day arrived, Enrique and his men washed up on the wrong side of the Rock below the sheer cliffs. Landing boats flipped over and men were tossed overboard. Among them was Enrique.

Legend says he was trying to save his men when the accident happened. No one knows for sure. In any case his boat was overloaded with men from another boat who didn’t want to drown and thus inevitably sank, drowning their commander.

Thus Enrique Pérez de Guzmán y Castilla died before the seventh siege even began. We can only wonder what the Muslim garrison, looking down from the cliffs, must have thought as they watched the Spanish floundering in the water below.

In any case, the Muslim defenders recovered Enrique’s body from the surf, posthumously decapitated him and hung his body in a basket from the fortress walls, presumably as a warning to would-be besiegers.

A Son’s Revenge—Siege No. 8

Meanwhile, on another side of the Rock, Enrique’s son, who was supposed to be commanding the land forces, fell into despair at his father’s drowning. He pulled back his troops and is said to have tried to negotiate with the Muslim garrison to return his father’s body, but was rebuffed. The young man withdrew in anger and humiliation…but, in classic Guzman fashion, he would definitely return. His name was Juan Alonso de Guzmán y Suárez de Figueroa Orozco. He was determined to avenge the accidental death of his father.

Guzman came back to Gibraltar to roost 26 years later in 1462, resolved that the Rock would be his at last. He had spent years fuming about the failure to possess Gibraltar and his father’s ignominious demise. An informant brought news to Spain that the Muslim garrison at Gibraltar had been slacking off in terms of its defenses.

Forces led by Alonzo of Arcos were the first to get there, but couldn’t do the job without help and asked for aid from Spanish nobles. Guzman decided it was the right time to settle scores and jumped into the fray. The eighth siege was soon underway.

However, if Guzman had inherited the iron pride of his ancestor Guzman the Good, he also seems to have been plagued by the curse of another ancestor—he arrived late. The siege was pretty well over and Rodrigo Ponce de Leon, Duke of Cadiz, was already in control of the city gates, ready to accept surrender, when the indignant Guzman finally arrived on the scene.

There was a spat such as could only have happened between two proud Spanish noblemen. According to lore, Guzman and Ponce de Leon narrowly avoided a physical fight over which one of them would be allowed to actually take the Rock. To avoid an all-out duel, they worked out a deal to walk into the fortress together and politely set up their banners at the same time. Thus the siege ended and the families hated each other ever since.

Rebelling against The Crown

To add insult to injury, King Enrique IV of Spain gave Guzman the boot after the siege was won. Ordering Guzman to leave the Rock’s premises, the king awarded himself the title of “King of Gibraltar.” Of course Guzman would have none of it. Guzman launched the ninth siege of Gibraltar, against his own king, on July 26, 1467—and actually achieved his life’s goal of taking the Rock for his family.

However, after all of that trouble, his son Enrique Perez de Guzmán y Fonseca didn’t seem to have been very passionate about the Rock or building up family roots there. He was more interested in money than war. Reputed to have been the richest man in Spain, he was known for crooked dealings and treating those who engaged in business with him unjustly.

Queen Isabella I of Castile gave him the title of Marquis of Gibraltar, but changed her mind after he died and took the title away from the family. Seemingly it was Isabella’s chance to rectify the fact that the Rock had technically been stolen from the crown previously.

In the style of his ancestors before him, the late nobleman’s son, Juan Alonso Pérez de Guzmán y de Ribera, was furious that the Rock had been taken away from him and dared to write to the queen exactly what he thought about it. It seems that Isabella ignored him. She removed the Guzman family banners from Gibraltar and decorated the place with Spanish royal emblems.

After Isabella died in 1504, Guzman decided he was going to reverse this redecorating project and restore the Rock to Guzman family ownership. Gathering an army, he mounted the tenth siege of the Rock with the help of his son, named Enrique.

The Fate of Gibraltar

Guzman expected that the city would welcome him with open arms. The opposite occurred. Royal troops in the fortress barricaded themselves inside and local Gibraltarians rallied to Spain’s cause. The Guzmans sat outside the city for four months before eventually realizing that victory just wasn’t going to happen.

Counseled by the church, the Guzman family finally gave up on Gibraltar—temporarily. Juan de Guzman firmly believed that the Rock was his rightful property and was actually planning to launch an eleventh siege before he perished at age 40 in 1507.

After having shed blood, sweat and tears for Gibraltar from 1309 to 1507, the Guzman family ceased to besiege the Rock. However it definitely wasn’t the last time the family would leave an unusual footprint in Spain’s military history.    

A Guzman descendant, Alonso Pérez de Guzmán y de Zuniga-Sotomayor, was placed in charge of the doomed Spanish Armada in 1588—against his wishes. In contrast to his fierce ancestors, Guzman protested against being given command, pleading ignorance of naval matters and an alleged tendency toward seasickness.

Nevertheless Guzman got the job despite expressly not wanting it. Needless to say the Spanish Armada was soundly defeated by the English, who would also ultimately take ownership of the Guzman family treasure, Gibraltar.   

A peculiar drink materializes across the United States every winter holiday season—at Christmas parties, in grocery stores, and at family gatherings for example. It is eggnog. As its name suggests, it contains eggs, along with milk, sugar, and heavy cream, plus spices such as nutmeg, vanilla or cinnamon. Alcoholic spirits, like whiskey, rum or bourbon, can also add some zing to eggnog.

The creamy drink is a weird mix, and it tends to divide opinion. Maybe the mere sight of it is enough to make you duck for cover…or alternatively you might be called an eggnog hog. How did this strange beverage find its way into our lives in the first place?  

Medieval Remedy

There are debates about how exactly eggnog came to be. However, most people who have probed its mysterious origins agree that it seems to have morphed from an English drink called “posset.”

Posset was used as a remedy in England as far back as the 15^th century. One early reference to it is Russell’s “Boke of Nurture,” which dates from about 1460. Posset’s main ingredient was milk, which was heated, flavored with alcoholic drinks, and curdled before being sweetened with the same types of spices used for eggnog—namely, nutmeg and cinnamon.

It was considered a healthy and comforting drink, and was thought to help people recover from various colds and illnesses. Posset varied and evolved over time; it could include ingredients like egg yolks, and sometimes breadcrumbs. Wealthier people who had more dairy products on hand—and who could afford to make more frivolous use of them—whipped up possets as desserts. Sets for making possets were popular gifts among the well-to-do.

Posset might have been “the medieval eggnog,” according to Smithsonian Magazine. It made several cameo appearances in the writings of William Shakespeare, including being used as a Mickey Finn by Lady Macbeth on two unsuspecting guards.

George Washington And The Eggnog Riot

It is likely that eggnog sprung up as a colonial cousin of posset in British North America. It was generally easier for ordinary people in the American colonies to make their own versions of “posset” due to entrepreneurial spirit and sheer abundance of resources. Dairy farms were everywhere and there was no shortage of brewers of alcoholic beverages.

The term “eggnog” started popping up in North America in the late 1700s. As well as the name, the ingredients differ from what went into a traditional English posset, and are more or less the same as what we have now.

Aside from being “first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen,” George Washington is also rumored to be among the first Americans to publicize his own boozy eggnog recipe for Christmas parties. Yet contrary to popular belief, Washington is unlikely to have written his own eggnog recipe. The one commonly attributed to him contained rye whiskey, brandy, rum and sherry, but Mount Vernon claims the recipe has no tie to Washington.

Although it might not be linked to the first commander-in-chief, eggnog has an inglorious tie with the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. The academy became the scene of the infamous Eggnog Riot of 1826, in which cadets revolted against a disciplinarian superintendent who attempted to ban them from drinking alcohol. The cadets got their hands on some strong eggnog and ran wild, smashing windows and attacking officers. The aftermath of the Eggnog Riot saw 11 cadets expelled and five more withdraw from West Point.

As to its funny name? Historical debates rage as to where it might have come from. It has been claimed that “nog” either derives from a primordial English ale cup called a “noggins,” or from the slang term “grog” (also known to mean rum, or booze in general to those of us who are less picky). Even if its historical mysteries go unsolved, eggnog remains an indisputable part of the American winter holiday season.

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Steel plate armor is commonly associated with medieval times. However, studies reveal that the production of plate armor fully encasing the human body dates back to the early 15th century and reached its zenith a century later during the Renaissance. 

Although developed initially for military purposes, so-called “suits of armor” took on different roles in society. Indeed, armor became a staple of social life and came to be viewed as a status symbol. Armor in fact performed various functions, and each suit was designed to be ideal for a specific purpose—whether for combat, tournaments, festivals or merely grand public events. 

The Vienna Art History Museum (Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien) recently provided a highly detailed examination of the various forms, functions and types of armor in an exhibit entitled “Iron Men: Fashion in Steel” (Iron Men—Mode in Stahl) which ran from March through June, 2022 and showcased about 170 artifacts. The exhibit was Vienna’s first major exhibit about armor and sparked detailed studies of European steel plate armor by leading experts which provide useful insights to modern historians. Notably, the exhibit provided glimpses of rarely seen items from Vienna’s Imperial Armory, excellent examples of the flexibility of armor both as a military tool and as a statement ostentatiously declaring the wearer’s elevated social status. 

“While some of these pieces were actually used in the bloodiest conflicts of the Middle Ages and Renaissance, others were worn at ceremonies like coronations and parades,” wrote Ronald S. Lauder, Director of Vienna’s Imperial Armory, in a museum book containing scholarly articles focused on the exhibition. “However all of them had one thing in common: breathtaking artisanship is present in every detail.” 

The Origins of Steel Plate Armor

Suits of plated steel body armor were a European invention. Although commonly viewed as heavy and awkward by members of the general public today, they were in fact engineered to provide flexibility in combat as well as personal protection. Stefan Krause, curator of the Vienna Art History Museum, writes that a typical suit of steel armor weighed from between 40 to 60 pounds. He contends that wearing a suit of armor is comparable to firefighters, soldiers, or astronauts wearing protective equipment today—for example, the combat load (body armor, weapon, ammunition, water, supplies, etc.) carried by a typical Army or Marine infantryman in field operations today weighs 70 to 100 pounds or more! The Vienna museum’s suits of armor weigh substantially less than their modern counterpart gear, demonstrating that heavy gear can still be efficient, functional and offer mobility. 

Steel plate armor was designed to withstand bladed, impact and bow-launched weapons from the early 15th to early 17th centuries, including polearms, swords, war hammers, arrows, crossbows and eventually early, primitive firearms. However, the advent over time of more powerful firearms featuring more efficient and reliable gunpowder, along with the development of increasingly-advanced military technology eventually rendered steel plate body armor obsolete. 

Armor By Design

Armor production was overseen by master armorers, who honed their craft over many years and sold designs from workshops staffed by multiple employees. German and Austrian artisans in particular took armor production to a whole new level. With special focus on the intricacies of metal-working and engineering, they created workshops that were more like small factories where craftsmen worked in assembly lines and suits of armor were mass-produced—as well as custom made by special order. Notable armorers including members of the Seusenhofer family of Innsbruck, Austria and the Helmschmied family of Augsburg, southern Germany in addition to numerous armorers in Nuremberg, Germany, produced armor en masse and designed custom pieces for high-paying clients.

Master armorers were essentially the managers of these workshop “factories”—although responsible for the armor which carried their unique “brand,” they did not personally create every piece. They were however very involved in designing custom-made pieces by special commission. 

Plate armor was created from sheets of metal cut and shaped by tools including shears, hammers and chisels. It was formed using various different shapes of anvils. Armorers also used molds. Steel sheets were usually worked cold, although sometimes bulges in the metal were removed through heating, according to Fabian Brenker in the Vienna museum’s exhibition book. Each piece of plate armor was specially crafted to fit and move in unison with other pieces.

Master armorers took care to ensure that all pieces fit together with precision and did not get stuck, chafe or open up awkward gaps exposing areas of the body when moving. Each piece had to be carefully aligned, and in fact no piece went into the final stages of production alone. Each element of the entire suit proceeded into the final stages of creation in unison. A single suit of steel plate armor could consist of as many as 200 individual pieces.

Fast-Produced, Not Just Mass Produced

Mass-produced armor was typically made of cheaper material and made available for common soldiers. It was not usually polished. Custom designed suits, often commissioned by aristocrats, were embellished and at times polished to create mirror-like surfaces. Polishing techniques included the use of large water-powered whetstones as well as smoothing using files. Extra polishing could be done using leather straps and emery mineral powder. 

Despite the meticulous craftsmanship needed to make good steel plate armor, expert armorers could accomplish their work with remarkable speed. Records show that Austrian armorer Jörg Seusenhofer, son of armorer Hans Seusenhofer and nephew of the more eminent armorer Konrad Seusenhofer, could produce an output of 90 pieces of mass-produced steel armor a week at his workshop, with his employees hammering 30 breastplates and backplates simultaneously per day. His famous uncle Konrad wrote in 1514 that he could produce two full suits of armor for a member of Italy’s famous Medici family within a mere two months with some added time needed for gilding. Konrad employed six masters and journeymen for detail work plus six or seven additional craftsmen for intensive labor, as well as four grinders and polishers, and support staff consisting of two day-laborers and one blacksmith.

Historical records indicate that smithing workshops in Nuremberg also used women to assist with polishing armor pieces and some detail-oriented tasks. Armor workshops often became generational family businesses.

Armor By “Mail Order”

Master armorers faced a unique challenge in taking the measurements of their clients. The best plate armor fit like a glove, encasing its wearer like a hard but fluid exoskeleton. Measurement was thus essential to producing a truly fine—and perfectly functional—product. However, the highest-paying clients were often royals or nobles who commissioned special suits from across long geographical distances throughout Europe. England’s King Henry VIII, for example, contracted Konrad Seusenhofer to produce a suit of plate armor, which when finished had to be delivered from Austria to England. Master armorers did not usually travel but made exceptions for royalty and heads of state. 

Both armorers and their clients came up with creative ways to circumvent distance and get business done. Armorers sometimes sent paper templates for clients to try on, mark measurements on and return in a “mail-order” type of phenomenon. At other times clients sent pieces of their clothing to armorers. German armorer Konrad Richter, based in Augsburg, once used stuffing to fill clothes sent to him by a client to create a well-fitting steel suit. In one unique case, Emperor Charles V of Austria in 1526 created models of his legs using wax casts and molten lead and sent them to Augsburg to obtain custom-made greaves and cuisses from Kolman Helmschmied. 

Embellishing armor became an art form unto itself. Armor pieces designed for aristocratic clients could be decorated using filing techniques, engraving, gilding, or riveting with copper alloy, and also painted—historical evidence suggests that painted pieces of armor were more common than previously realized. 

The Many Uses And Variations of Armor

The appearance of a particular suit of steel plate armor largely depended on its intended use. Wealthy clients commissioned armor for public appearances at specific events such as festivals, ceremonies and tournaments. Some suits of armor served purely decorative functions, while others, such as tournament armor, were intended not only to be festive but functional in combat.

Armor also varied based on what type of combat it was intended for. For example, specific types of armor were made for jousting. Yet even jousting armor varied, Krause writes, depending on whether it would be used for high-impact jousting between individuals or jousting skirmishes between groups organized in “teams.” 

Although it might seem like a finished suit of armor’s appearance was permanently fixed, it could actually be modified later. Clever master armorers sometimes developed upgrades called garnitures, which were essentially interchangeable pieces a man could swap out from his suit of armor depending on what activity he was engaging in. For example, pieces in the garniture set could be interchanged for tournament activities such as jousting or hand-to-hand combat on the battlefield. Garnitures were fashioned according to a cohesive design so that they did not appear mismatched when modifying a suit of armor.

A Matter of Prestige

Garnitures however were not the answer to every problem, and armor was incapable of being modified past a certain point. Men could outgrow their armor—particularly in early adulthood and middle age. Although master armorers could adjust suits of armor that did not fit their clients, or which needed some tweaking for comfort, it was simply impossible for even the best armorer to adjust a suit for significant alterations in size or weight. Thus, older adolescents would have had to forsake a favorite suit of armor after experiencing late growth spurts. Middle-aged men with any notable expanse in waistline would have been incapable of surreptitiously squeezing back into a lean suit of armor from their agile youth. Most often, men were required to obtain multiple suits of armor throughout their lifetimes. Commissioning new suits was always expensive, but for soldiers, knights and men who held leadership positions or influence in society, it was necessary. 

Ceremonial armor could be shaped to imitate the fluid, curving intricacies of cloth, such as sleeves and skirts. Faux buttons and patterns could also be created, not to mention pictorial engravings that told stories in images across the wearer’s body. The creative possibilities were endless. South German Landsknecht mercenaries had a particular influence on fashion and also therefore steel armor. Seeking to distinguish themselves as an elite fighting force, they sported fancy clothing with dramatically puffed sleeves, bold colors and feathered hats. These mercenaries essentially sparked a bouffant fashion craze that spread throughout Renaissance Europe and quickly found its way into armorers’ workshops, and consequently into the portraits of nobles, military leaders and heads of state. Rulers and members of the aristocracy were quick to seize on the latest trends and show them off in the form of steel armor—it was a matter not only of style but prestige.

“Steel armor was a symbol of strength,” writes Krause. “Few other forms of representation symbolically brought out such an expression of the wearer’s prestige, his dignity, his political and military might—or at least his aspirations towards them.”

The Art of Helmets

In contrast to plate armor, metal helmets had already been decorated since practically time immemorial, and thus they were not as much of a novelty as steel plate armor. However, like plate armor, helmets adapted in form and function from the 12th century well into the Renaissance. With alternately ornamental or formidable appearances, steel helmets could appear as intimidating screens on the battlefield or whimsical headgear for festivals. Some common elements used to decorate helmets included plumes of feathers, horns, crowns, wings, or ancient family crests. Gold applique could also be used to create striking designs on helmets. The Landsknecht fashion trend during the Renaissance saw helmets made to appear like extravagant hats. 

Helmets worn with steel plate armor are often presumed to offer minimal visibility to knights on the battlefield. While it is true that helmet visors provided narrow and limited fields of vision, additional vision was created by breathing holes in the visor. Larger breathing holes were ideal not only for vision but also to allow for inhaling more oxygen. Fewer and smaller openings in helmet visors did not allow for heat and carbon dioxide from exhalation to exit the helmet quickly, and limited breathing of oxygen could result in exhaustion, especially if the wearer was involved in intense physical activity. Historical records show that improving visor design was an issue and knights resorted to opening their visors in some instances despite the risk of exposing their faces in battle. 

During the Renaissance, it also became fashionable to create costumes for festivals and tournaments harkening back to ancient times, or to faraway places. Noblemen sometimes cast themselves as heroes of ancient Rome or Greece, or even as mythological creatures, with classical or grotesque helmet designs. 

How Armor Influenced…Fashion?

Although developed for military purposes, steel armor also revolutionized textile clothing. Men in Europe usually wore long tunics until about 1350, but a fundamental shift in men’s clothing style occurred during the middle of the 14th century as steel plate armor developed. The use of plated armor also required the use of close-fitting mail shirts. Soldiers and knights had already been wearing padded gambesons under mail or as an alternative to it in the 12th to 14th centuries. However, the development of more form-fitting steel armor pieces in the 14th century made tight padding beneath the steel too restrictive for movement. Quilted arming doublets with chainmail voiders or sleeves came into play, and from 1430 to 1470, padded material was restricted to protect the torso area. Tunics were thus no longer very practical and went out of style as shirts in general became shorter and tighter. 

Another practical reason for this tectonic shift in outerwear was the fact that steel does not breathe and is not conducive to air circulation, thus trapping body heat. Doublets and lighter garments beneath the breastplate functioned to drain heat and perspiration and prevented wearers from becoming easily overheated. 

Changes made not only to armor but everyday garments made the male silhouette more visible. While mail was initially worn to protect the lower body, detailed armor plates for the legs and lower body were engineered, including the codpiece. 

The Humble But Proud Codpiece

The codpiece, known in German as the “modesty plate” (Schamplatte), has a unique history. It appears prominently in suits of armor and representations of Renaissance men. In her detailed study of codpieces in the Vienna museum book, Marina Viallon writes that figures wearing mail breeches with codpieces are depicted in stone funerary effigies from Germany from the late 14th century. Without padded codpieces, common infantrymen had minimal protection for the groin area in battle. The Landsknechts, whose influence on fashion might have eclipsed their military achievements, began wearing exaggerated codpieces to broadcast virility. The practice spread throughout the aristocracy of 15th century Europe—perhaps since noblemen wished to avoid the awkwardness of outwardly appearing less “virile” than commoners under their command. 

Codpieces were adapted into steel armor pieces. Although worn during certain tournament activities, such as during single combat displays, they were never adapted for cavalry armor for practical reasons. Expensive to produce, they were sometimes decorated by gilding or engraving, and symbolized masculine power. “Worn like the prow of a ship, it was part of the body language of the ruling class, expressing confidence and authority,” writes Viallon. 

Not Clunky, But Haut Couture

Whatever its purpose, every suit of armor constructed for a knight or highborn man was intended to reflect nobility of character. Concepts of knighthood influenced members of the gentry, with the result that knights and aristocrats—perhaps alternatively called “gentlemen”—were generally expected to be well-mannered, educated, and display social graces. They were different from common soldiers in that they were expected not to engage in undisciplined behavior such as public drunkenness. Brawling and disrespect towards ladies were also frowned upon. Thus, bespoke suits of armor created for high-ranking military men and members of the aristocracy were intended not only to symbolize power but to reflect greatness of spirit.

Steel suits of armor have been underestimated in modern times—incorrectly portrayed in popular films as clunky or dysfunctional relics from a bygone era. However, taking a closer look at the art, function and form of steel plate armor reveals much about not only the ingenuity of European artisans and craftsmen who developed it but also the high spirit of idealism that expressed itself in these sleek, strong bodies of metal.

The date of Sept. 1 belongs almost exclusively to the memory of the start of the Second World War in Europe. Images of blitzkrieg, panzers, the desperate plight and subsequent fall of Poland consume the historical memory. 

While its exact origins are murkier in the historiography, other moments in time belonging to this date have been, understandably, eclipsed.  

Yet we here at HistoryNet want to take another look at those underrepresented moments that have been dwarfed by that day in the historical ledger. (That being said, if you simply do not care and are here for the start of World War II, we get that.) 

Ten dates in history that warrant a further look: 

Sept. 1, 1532: Anne Boleyn becomes marquess 

Love is in the air as Lady Anne Boleyn is made marquess of Pembroke by her fiancé, King Henry VIII. What’s a little nepotism among lovers? 

Sept. 1,1862: The Battle of Chantilly 

During the American Civil War, Confederate troops defeat a group of retreating Union Army troops during the Battle of Chantilly. It is also where Phil Kearny, a major general in the Union Army, was out conducting his own reconnaissance. In a driving thunderstorm on the evening of Sept. 1, 1862, he and his escort rode into a Rebel ambush during the Battle of Ox Hill (Chantilly), an abrupt encounter following the Confederate victory at the Second Battle of Bull Run. When Kearny cavalierly ignored an order to surrender and tried to ride away, a single bullet to the spine ended the life of a true fighting general, according to historian Gordon Berg.  

Sept. 1, 1864: Evacuation of Atlanta 

Once again during the American Civil War, but this time in 1864: Confederate Gen. John Bell Hood orders the evacuation of Atlanta, ending a four-month siege by Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman, who begins his infamous March to the Sea.  

Sept. 1, 1878: First Woman Telephone Operator 

Emma Nutt becomes the world’s first female telephone operator after being recruited by Alexander Graham Bell. 

Sept. 1, 1897: America’s First Subway 

The Tremont Street subway opens in Boston, making it the first underground transit system in North America. Take that, London Tube. 

Sept. 1, 1939: George Marshall Becomes Chief of Staff 

In perhaps one of the best decisions of the war, President Franklin D. Roosevelt appoints Gen. George C. Marshall chief of staff of the United States Army. Marshall: 1, Nazis: 0. 

Sept. 1, 1952: ‘The Old Man and the Sea’ Is Published 

Ernest Hemingway’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel “The Old Man and the Sea” is published. “But man is not made for defeat. A man can be destroyed but not defeated.”  

Sept. 1, 1961: TWA Flight 529 Crashes in Chicago 

Shortly after takeoff from Midway Airport in Chicago, TWA Flight 529 crashes, killing all 78 people on board. At the time, it was the deadliest commercial plane disaster in U.S. history. 

Sept. 1, 1985: The Titanic Is Found 

A joint American-French expedition locates the wreckage of the RMS Titanic. The shipwreck was henceforth preserved by UNESCO regulations, although now it is protected through a bilateral agreement between the U.S. and the U.K., which was signed in November 2019. The treaty, first presented in 2003 among the U.K., the U.S., Canada and France, languished for nearly two decades because at least two signatories were required. The U.K. signed quickly, but it was not until 2019 that the U.S. State Department announced that it had also entered into the agreement, making the agreement official. Our hearts can officially go on.  

Sept. 1, 2004: Beslan School Siege Begins 

In one of the worst terrorist attacks in Russian history, the Beslan school siege begins in the small North Ossetian town. According to Radio Free Europe, “Dozens of armed assailants stormed the school and captured more than 1,100 people — including more than 700 schoolchildren and relatives and friends who had come for a ceremony marking the first day of the new school year.” The standoff lasts for nearly three days with more than 385 people killed, including hostages, security personnel and terrorists.  

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My favorite three-letter word in the English language? P-I-E. But though it’s one of the first words you learn as a child — and one of the simplest and shortest words in English — the pie has been around since before the existence of either the United States of America or the country of England. Pies are even older than the English language.

The origins of pie date back to the early Egyptian culture. Their pie had a honey filling encased in a crusty cake made from barley, oats, rye or wheat. One Egyptian tablet created before 2000 B.C. provided a recipe for chicken pie. Both sound pretty delicious, and it shows the nation liked both sweet and savory pies. The ancient Greeks got in on the pie business around the fifth century B.C. The pie pastry is mentioned in the plays of Aristophanes, and heeven suggests there was a vocation of pastry chef, totally separate from a baker.  

ROMAN PIES 

It was the Roman Empire that expanded on the covering of pies. They made a pastry of flour, oil and water to cover up their meat of choice, but it initially was not meant to be consumed with the savory inside — it was strictly added to preserve the juices. “Apicius,” a Roman cookbook though to have been written anywhere from the first century A.D. to the fifth century A.D., has many recipes that include a pie casing. The clever Romans even developed a cheesecake called “placenta,” which had a pastry base. Because of their development of roadways, Roman concoctions traveled across Europe with a vibrant trade system. So the world of pies expanded across the continent.  

THE ENGLISH PERFECT PIE 

However, it was Great Britain that vaulted pies to a higher level. Definitions of pie from the 1300s clearly stated it was either meat or fish covered in a pastry. Like the Romans, these coverings were meant to contain the savory food inside instead of being eaten with it. The pastry topping also served to preserve the meat or fish inside on long voyages abroad and as a space saver for ships with limited storage. This eliminated the need to bring along a cook and the live animals it would take to create the pies.  

The only knock on British pies was the terminology associated with them. The word pie was spelled “pye,” which wasn’t so bad, but the pastry covering was called a “coffyn,” more frequently spelled today as “coffin.” Many pie coverings were actually a rectangular shape, thus justifying the moniker. Still, this was definitely a term you did not want to associate with such a delicious treat, but more on that later. One bad habit when serving fowl in a pastry was to leave the bird’s legs hanging outside of the covering to make it easier to pick up. This method was certainly a crude presentation not suitable for modern sensibilities.  

During the era of knights in armor and damsels in England, pies became a focus at opulent banquets. It became vogue to remove the covering to showcase the inner delicacies. (Except for cases like Arya Stark’s revenge pie in “Game of Thrones”). The elaborate pies included in this period were sometimes outlandish. Imagine a huge pie that contained musicians or jesters. There were few limits to the lengths these medieval people would explore. But if you think about it, today’s stunts involve sometimes putting a person inside a large cake for birthdays and other events — even British nursery rhymes mentioned “Four and 20 blackbirds baked in a pie.” Some thought this just a tall tale, but royalty and aristocracy really would attempt to impress their guests by creating pies with live animals inside.  

Geoffrey Chaucer branched out to pastries with fruit contained within. He published a recipe for apple pie long before it became synonymous with moms showcasing the wholesomeness of traditional American values. In addition to the apples, ingredients included figs, pears and raisins but did not contain any sugar. (Sounds like a healthy version of pie today, using the natural sweeteners within the fruits.)  

A letter exists from a baker to Jane Seymour, third wife of Henry VIII stating, “… hope this pasty reaches you in better condition to the last one …” showing royalty continued to indulge in the delicacies.  

THE FIRST CHERRY PIE 

In the middle of the 1500s, England created a new type of pie especially for Queen Elizabeth I. The very first documented cherry pie was made specifically for the queen. No mention of her reaction to the taste is recorded, but pastries continued to be a staple in England. When pie prices became too inflated for most commoners, King Richard II issued an ordinance limiting the ceiling on the cost within London’s city limits.   

Over the years, Great Britain continued to develop many types of pies. In Scotland, they have a Scotch pie (or mutton pie). As with pies with steak or kidney fillings, mutton pie is often seasoned with copious amounts of pepper. Sometimes the inside of the pie will also include potatoes, eggs, baked beans or gravy to complement the meat.  

Even the British miners developed their own version of pies that catered to their surroundings underground called Cornish pasties. These were filled with beef or venison, potatoes and rutabagas or sometimes just fruit. Like in earlier days, these pasties would last a whole week, being rolled up in a paste made of flour and lard. Once baked, the hardened crust created a seal for the food inside. They were also easily tucked into a miner’s pocket until needed. 

PIES IN THE US 

So when did pie first travel to what would become the original 13 colonies? It may sound cliché but the first pies arrived on the Mayflower with the Pilgrims at Cape Cod in 1620. (Remember the pies made for long ship voyages?) Unfortunately, the first Thanksgiving did not mention any pie being consumed.  

Tastier pies were on the horizon, as colonial America contained such sweeteners as maple syrup, cane syrup, molasses and honey collected from imported English bees. The very first American cookbook, dated 1796, contained a recipe for “Pompkin Pudding,” which was baked in a crust. Varieties of the principal ingredients included pumpkins, blueberries, pear, apple and quince. The popularity of pies along the East Coast grew, and as the country expanded west, pies went along for the ride. The fillings of the pies grew, as well, on the westward trek with cream, custard, lemons, coconuts, blackberries, strawberries and many more.  

PIES AS WEAPONS IN THE CIVIL WAR 

When the American Civil War erupted in 1861, pies were consumed across both sides of the Mason-Dixon Line. And some citizens used people’s universal love of pie to wage the war.  

On Sept. 12, 1861, a “free colored woman” named Mrs. Welton was arrested for selling poisoned pies to Union soldiers on the streets of St. Louis, Missouri. Pittsburgh was a hotbed of poison pie incidents, as well. A resident, Mrs. Nevins, managed to dispatch her husband, a retuning soldier, via a poisoned pie. She joined another Pittsburgh woman named Grinder in garnering a sentence of death.  

Arsenic and strychnine were the principle culprits put into deadly pies. However, women in the South branched out with such death-dealing pie ingredients as ground glass and diamond dust gathered from a jeweler’s floor.  

Members of the 52^nd Massachusetts Infantry stationed in Louisiana were particular targets of female Southerners. After the reoccupation of Baton Rouge in late December 1862, this Yankee unit accidentally burned down the state capitol building. That, combined with the haughty attitudes of the Northerners, compelled the local ladies to gain a bit of revenge on the invaders. One Bay State soldier had earlier been writing home about how much he missed his mother’s custard pie. By February, 1863, he wrote home that his “captain had forbidden them to buy any pies from these Rebel women.” A comrade had “bought one yesterday but was dead today.”  

Even the elderly got in on the pie action. A grandmother in Plaquemine, Louisiana, across the Mississippi River from Baton Rouge, had come home to find her 12-year-old grandson murdered by the occupying Federals for making rifle cartridges at home. She set about to fight back the only way she knew how, which was to include some ground glass into pies she sold to soldiers on the streets in Baton Rouge. 

Not all deadly pies were intentional: Accidents caused some of the people to pass away from eating pies. On Dec. 1, 1864, a Minnesota newspaper lamented the poisoning of seven enlisted men from eating a cracker pie. Fortunately, no one died, and it was discovered “arsenic had been used by mistake for tartaric acid.” Saleratus, the precursor to baking powder, contained some dangerous properties and when not mixed right was fatal. 

THE BOSTON CREAM PIE QUESTION 

A less stomach-churning controversy over pies arose back in Boston in the mid-1800s. Today, there are not many people in the United States who have not heard of the famous Boston cream pie. But each time someone thinks they have proof of its true origin, another record is found to refute the actual year the popular pie was first made.  

Local legend has the pie being created in 1856. Claims have it being served for the grand opening of Boston’s Parker House. However, many cannot or will not explain the existence of the Dedham Cream Pie. Published recipes of the tasty Dedham, Massachusetts, pie come out around the same time, and one recipe for it was published in the city of Boston. The person documenting the Dedham dessert was a female physician and nurse.         

EMPANADAS AND CALZONES 

Eventually, the pie made its way to the Americas via different European cultures. For instance, the Spanish brought over their version of the pie, the empanada. The name literally translates into “enbreaded” or “wrapped in bread.” These treats were variously filled with meat, cheese, tomatoes or corn, among other foods. Once they crossed the sea to North and South America, many empanadas were baked but subject to being fried as well.  

Like a pastry, the dough is simply folded over the ingredients inside. The contents and shapes may vary dependent on where they are located, but the principle is the same. One city in Louisiana embraced these savory treats, dubbing them “Natchitoches meat pies.” They are served in restaurants or even at convenience stores right off the I-49 exit and come mild or spicy beef or filled with crawfish. Don’t despair if you live far away, as they are even frozen and sent across the United States boxed up.  

The Italians followed suit with a wonderful rendition of a savory pie called a calzone. It is almost like a pizza folded over, and is popular across the U.S. 

THE WAR AGAINST PIES 

In the early 1900s, pies went from being used in warfare to being the focus of a war against them. As the country embarked on a nationwide health movement, pie became the focus of a smear campaign. Ladies Home Journal published two articles condemning the popular dessert, with the author, Sarah Tyson Rorer, stating: “The inside of a pie is injurious [and] pies and cakes ae indigestible.”  

Since the 1950s, though, pie has returned to being the phenomenon it deserves to be treated as. The range of fillings has only increased over the years, including Key lime, potato chips and Oreos. So the next time you dig into a pie of any flavor, think about the long journey it took over centuries, oceans and continents to get to you.

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Gravy’s so easy to make — just mix meat drippings and a pinch of flour to thicken it and you are done. But the pan-scraping sauce, particularly creamy white gravy, has had a surprising sojourn throughout history. Along with its cousins gruel and chocolate gravy, it makes up part of a family of simple, filling foods that anyone can make and nearly everyone enjoys.

And though its legacy is wide, white gravy’s chief contribution to American military cuisine may be one that soldiers, sailors, Marines and airmen loudly profess to loathe — but that they actually seem to love.

But before we get to that, a brief history of white gravy and how it led to the military staple known as “SOS.”

WHITE GRAVY AND CHOCOLATE GRAVY

White gravy, the broadly Southern staple found blanketing chicken fried steak and biscuits, is a version of a fancier sauce. Actually François de la Varenne, chef de cuisine for Louis XIV’s diplomat Nicolas Chalon du Blé, gets credit for first concocting it. La Varenne authored the world’s first commercial cookbook, “Le Cuisinier François” (“The French Cook”), and the recipe for béchamel sauce accompanied early French explorers to Louisiana, where meatier variants soon followed.

One cousin of white gravy is the lesser-known chocolate option. In the early 1500s, one of the most prized spoils from the Spanish conquest of the Americas was the secret of the cacao tree, the seed of which forms the basis for chocolate. This discovery led to the eventual transport of the precious commodity of chocolate to the Spanish-held territories of Louisiana and Texas in later years.

At some point, very possibly along the frontier between Spanish Louisiana and the first-British, then-American-held Tennessee Valley, the chocolate was mixed with other ingredients to formulate a sweetened version of the gravy with the same purpose, poured over pancakes, biscuits, and the like, gradually spreading throughout the Upland South. Folks in the Ozark Mountains use this version of gravy nowadays more often than they do along the coastline.

GRUEL, WHITE GRAVY’S UNLOVED COUSIN

On the other hand, white gravy’s distant relative gruel suffers from a stigma. Gruel is typically associated with both the sick and downtrodden; the fact it rhymes with “cruel” does not help its standing. However, Ursuline nun Marie-Madeleine Hachard excitedly wrote her father in 1727 about the wonderful food in Louisiana. She seemed almost giddy, expounding, “We are getting remarkably used to the wild food of this country … rice cooked in milk [gruel] is very common and we eat it often ….”

In the mid-1700s, Native American tribes in Louisiana offered a resident Frenchman, Lt. Dumont, a similar type of mixture that he described as gruel made from husked maize, water and oil from bear fat. Dumont, receiving this repast in return for some gifts and trinkets, noted, “The French eat it on salads and also … for making soups.”

(White gravy on a salad is quite a concept!)

GRUEL AS MIRACLE CURE

A century later, gruel was reintroduced across the United States via an 1860 marketing surge driven by its supposed medicinal value. Newspapers were saturated with advertisements lauding its “invigorating” qualities. One particular brand of gruel claimed to be helpful to children as well as “highly useful and beneficent to Women in the state of Pregnancy.”

During the Civil War, Ransler Wilcox of the 49th Massachusetts Infantry was stationed in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and jotted this in his diary: “I do not feel well … have been to the doctor and got some medicine … gruel for dinner … tea and gruel for supper.”

Samuel Haskell of the 30th Maine Infantry on duty at Morganza, Louisiana wrote, “I have been sick [and] I dare not eat the rations we draw … [we can get] every thing but flour …. I have bought some to make some grewall.”

Modern postnatal care research papers have lauded its benefits in artificial infant feeding. Maybe there is something to this aspect of gruel being a cure for your ailments after all.

In the aftermath of the Battle of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, in July 1863, women from the surrounding area flocked to the battlefield to assist with the large number of wounded soldiers. Supplies being minimal, the makeshift hospitals resorted to whatever was at hand to ease the pain and hunger of the injured men.

Farina is mentioned in lots of reminiscences from nurses and ladies of the Sanitary Commission. The caretakers would add water or milk to the farina and heated it to a palatable gruel mixture. This allowed the comforting, warm food that would stretch to larger groups of troops. The concoction was also very nourishing and easy to eat and digest.

One Union soldier marching through the south recalled: “Many a soldier will remember how, when he fell out of the ranks during one of those severe marches, and the planter nearby scowled and glowered so that he could not enter the rich man’s door,” some sympathetic slave woman “helped him to her own cabin . made him tea and gruel, and nursed him as tenderly as his sister would have done.”

GRAVY ON THE GO

During the 1864 Red River Campaign, Lt. George G. Smith of the 1^st Louisiana (U.S.) Infantry put the two staples of rations together out of necessity. All he had available to eat was “a piece of boiled salt pork, a few pieces of hard tack and some coffee. Salt pork I could not, and hard tack I would not eat.”

Finally, Smith decided, “I will soak my hard tack in some hot water and soften it up a little, and fry some of the salt pork in my tin plate and then fry the soaked hard tack in the gravy. Very good!”

After creating the makeshift white gravy, Smith noticed comrades were watching the process. Within a week, instead of garnering the credit for the mixture, he noticed the entire camp was relishing the new dish made from items everyone had in their haversacks.  

Whether a remedy for sickness or not, anyone who has ever read the book or watched one of the numerous movie versions of Charles Dickens’ classic “Oliver Twist” surely recalls the protagonist uttering the plaintive line about gruel: “Please, sir, I want some more.” One can assume this is the juncture where being orphaned, poor and homeless became associated with the term “gruel.” The derogatory meaning associated with the word has even found its way into mainstream media thanks to a statewide sports column. Headlines of a postseason loss for Louisiana State University football a few years back opined, “LSU’s holiday bowl gruel typified a mushy season.”

S*** ON A SHINGLE

White gravy has ingratiated itself with the United States military; for example, add sausage and you have sawmill gravy. Chipped beef even found its way into the white gravy mixture with the future doughboys right before World War I.

Soldiers and sailors eventually dubbed it “SOS” (“Save Our Souls” or “Same Old Slop” being the PG-rated translations) when served on a piece of toast. The very first documented proof of the military making SOS was the 1910 “Manual of Army Cooks.” Field conditions caused some ingredients to change due to availability but for the most part the stuff used to make the concoction for the troops included … well, see for yourself.

Recipe #251. Beef, chipped: 15 pounds of chipped beef; 1 pound fat, butter preferred; 1½ pounds flour, browned in fat; 2 12-ounce cans of evaporated milk; bunch parsley; ¼ ounce of Pepper; 6 quarts of beef stock

Before you start cooking this up, please realize you have to invite 59 friends over to consume this massive portion with you, as it was measured out to feed 60 hungry soldiers.

One of the stories of the famous “Band of Brothers,” Easy Company of the 506^th Parachute Regiment of the 101^st Airborne Division, happened stateside, before they crossed the ocean to fight the Germans in World War II. They boarded a train bound for Sturgis, Kentucky. At the railroad depot, women from the Red Cross gave them doughnuts and coffee. The soldiers camped outside of the town and were treated to what seemed to be the Army’s meal of choice to offer troops in the field, creamed chipped beef on toast.

Gerry Stearns of the 89^th Infantry Division recalled his experiences with SOS in World War II.

“Sometimes the GI’s names for staples could have been off-putting,” he wrote. “The Mess Sergeant’s menu listed ‘cream chipped beef on toast.’ What we called it was ‘Something on a Shingle,’ or usually ‘S.O.S.’ I was uneasy about trying that until about three or four o’clock one morning I was checking the buildings of the reception center where I was a limited service MP. There was an interesting smell of frying meat as I approached the mess hall. I am pretty sure my General Orders required me to investigate. What I found were mounds of hamburger being cooked in big pans, a milk and flour sauce being prepared and hundreds of bread slices being toasted. I became an instant fan and a regular participant in this and many subsequent S. O. S. Breakfasts.” 

SOS TAKES OFF

SOS grew in popularity during both world wars and in Korea and Vietnam. Near the end of World War II, the Army published the recipe in “TM 10-412” in August 1944 but made a few changes in the previously standard ingredients. The parsley and beef stock had been removed in an effort to make a creamier chipped beef serving. It was a success, but cooks still had to be reminded to soak the chipped beef beforehand to remove the preservative salt. The U. S. Air Force joined in serving SOS in World War II and through the next few wars.

Dennis Peterson of the 309^th Tactical Fighter Squadron fondly recalled many SOS meals during the Vietnam War.

“Good eating,” Peterson wrote. “It [SOS] was always available on the food tray. Eggs and bacon were my preference, but SOS was delicious, too.”

Becoming a professional truck driver after the war, Peterson would often sample similar food on his travels across the Southern United States roadways.

The U. S. Navy had their own varied ingredients, which included tomatoes, fresh ground beef and nutmeg. One sailor commented that his ship got upset when they were given the SOS with chipped beef Army variant instead of the minced beef style they had been served for so long. They eventually convinced the cooks to restrict the chipped beef version to once a year.

Interestingly enough, if you look through any Navy cookbook from 1927 until 1952, you will find that there is no recipe for making creamed beef. Hands down, they preferred minced beef, something unique to their branch of service. The only other group to eat it were U. S. Marines being transported on Navy vessels. A Navy cook was taught to thicken the tomato sauce for the minced beef with cornstarch. Their nautical SOS was served for an entire week and then alternated the next week with corned beef hash and hard-boiled eggs and so on throughout the year.

“Probably because space is such a premium aboard ship, we did not have chipped beef, just good old hamburger meat, minced with plenty of black pepper and salt, “ said U. S. Navy Cook Striker (apprentice) Jon Lord, aboard the U.S.S. California from 1974 to 1975. “It was more of what today we would call sausage gravy. We fed 450 men, three times a day at sea. Breakfast was the favorite meal. As I recall, there would be one or two meats on the line every morning: bacon, sausage, ham, or SOS. SOS was always a crew favorite.” 

SOS TODAY

More recently, some branches of service have decided to go with a healthier SOS, using very lean ground beef (less than 10% fat) or implementing ground turkey to provide the meat in the meal. Regardless of the mixture, the popularity of this dish has persevered in the military over the years.

In the aftermath of the disastrous Hurricane Katrina along the Gulf coast in 2005, the makeshift kitchens at Camp Beauregard in Pineville, Louisiana, were full of continuous large containers of the white gold, this version mixed with ground beef. This was used to fill the many hungry stomachs of the various units from across the United States sent down on rescue missions throughout the state and nostalgically housed in the old World War II-era barracks on post. Considering the disaster areas they were confronting on a daily basis and the shortage of generators on post, the warm, tasty SOS made a lasting culinary experience akin to the earlier days of the military camp.

In garrison situations, the Army SOS would be served over toast. In field-based scenarios, the SOS would be put atop baking powder biscuits.

“Since the cooks started to cook breakfast before sunrise, they had to work under blackout conditions,” one cook said later. “The walls of the mess tent were drawn, and the cooks had to work with flashlights. This was important because you could see a cigarette for miles.”

But whether you can see it or not as you eat, SOS or chipped beef, or whatever you prefer to call it, has seemingly made itself a permanent home in America’s military mess halls.  

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The admiral stood victorious, his battered vessel rocking gently with the changing of tide that had served him so well. With his sword stained crimson and his face blackened with soot, he observed with elation the seascape of carnage laid out before him. He’d performed a miracle this day, and the exhausted yet heartened crews of his tiny fleet knew it. More importantly, the enemy knew it.

In 1545 Yi Sun-sin (Yee Soon-shin) was born into a family which had served as military officers for generations. Yi passed the military service examination in 1576, though he had to take it twice, having fallen from his horse in a freak accident during his first attempt. Yet this inauspicious beginning launched an incredible career.

Assigned to a succession of low-level positions in both the army and navy, he first gained the court’s attention for actions facing the Jurchen in 1583. Through guile and solid military tactics, Yi proved remarkable amongst his peers. Chief State Councilor Yu Song-nyong, a childhood friend, emerged as a strong advocate near the throne, ensuring future assignments would increasingly recognize Yi’s potential. Their friendship would also save the kingdom.

Assigned as commander of the Left Jeolla Navy, based at Yeosu on the southern coast, Yi arrived in 1591 to find a small fleet of 24 pannokson and 15 hyeupson at anchor in the bay.

Studious and diligent, Yi set to work learning all he could about naval command and warfare. Pouring through the archives he discovered the 1413 A.D. plans for a simple turtle ship and, after consultations with a local shipbuilder, ordered construction to begin.

Both Yi and Councilor Yu were convinced that war with Japan was coming. Yi strengthened his fleet, trained the men, and made logistical arrangements to support wartime operations.

The Japanese Prepare For War

Japan’s invasions of Korea spanned 1592-1598 A.D. and reflected the ambition and desire of one man, Japan’s Toyotomi Hideyoshi. Unable to claim the title of shogun due to his lowly birth, he nonetheless ruled Japan as first Kampaku (Regent) and then as Taiko (Retired Regent). Regardless of title, his rule was absolute. The conclusion of his campaign in 1590 brought Japan under his control, ending – or at least putting on hold –123 years of civil war.

Yet Hideyoshi had a problem. Japan had been fighting itself for so long that it teemed with an excess of warriors and warlike men. The samurai class was restless in a suddenly peaceful Japan. Local uprisings and internecine feuds plagued the empire. Hideyoshi needed an outlet for this military energy – especially for the troublesome clans from Kyushu, who proved his most combative subjects.

Across the sea to the West lay the Chinese Ming Empire. Haughty in its dealings with Japan, the Ming routinely treated Japanese emissaries with disdain, looking down on a culture that seemed to worship combat to the detriment of more filial pursuits. The long-standing Chinese prerequisite to kowtow before the emperor in order to conduct trade did not sit well with Japan’s martial leaders.

Trade was thus limited and piracy was rampant. Japanese marauders haunted the coasts of China and Korea, sometimes raiding deep inland in search of food and booty.

Between China and Japan lay Joseon Korea, at the time ruled by King Sonjo. A deeply Confucian state, Korea’s ties to Ming China were strong after the two joined forces to end Mongol domination of the region two centuries prior. This cooperation led to the longest period of Sino-Korean peace in their 2,000 years of shared history. The Joseon court had long realized the value of trade and played the part of China’s little brother to secure necessary economic benefits.

In preparation for the assault upon China, Hideyoshi demanded safe passage for his armies through Korea. This was something quite impossible for Sonjo. The king refused and immediately dispatched word to the Ming Emperor at Nanjing. The Japanese were coming.

The Invasion Begins

The division of 18,700 Japanese men that landed at Busan on May 23, 1592, was a veteran force, hardened by a lifetime of incessant warfare and bored by two years of peace. The samurai were deadly in close combat and also armed with Portuguese-derived arquebuses of superior quality to any firearms carried on the Asian Continent. Japan’s initial landing would be followed by 131,000 troops in seven divisions.

Joseon’s Army, in steady decline since the defeat of the Mongols, was almost the polar opposite of its opponent. Officers gained position by passing national examinations. Their soldiers were conscripts, raised only when needed and with a modicum of training and experience. What few professional warriors Korea maintained were mostly cavalry and deployed in the northeast facing the troublesome Jurchen.

An undercurrent of factionalism at odds with any rational attempt to accomplish military objectives undercut both sides in the conflict. On the Korean side, the court was split into “Easterners” and “Westerners” struggling for favor and position throughout the course of the war, sometimes with deleterious effects upon the actual fighting. For the Japanese, long-standing rivalries between many senior commanders complicated battlefield coordination. High-ranking samurai almost came to physical blows at least once.

Strengths and Weaknesses

It was only 694 kilometers from Busan to the Chinese border. Yet the problem with invading Korea was the peninsula’s difficult terrain. Steep mountains and fast-moving rivers constituted a defender’s paradise, defeating invaders even without help from a population stubbornly unwilling to live under foreign control.

Any invasion of Korea thus demanded more of the logistician than the tactician. Any incursion into China, presumably launched from a secure base in Korea, required supplies to be transported north across endless mountains or by sea around the southern and western coasts.

Realizing the difficulty in maintaining long lines of land communication, Hideyoshi favored the sea, and assembled 700 transports and 300 warships to make it work.

All was now in place for Asia’s first real naval war. Yet for all the apparent advantages the Japanese armies had over their Korean foes, the exact opposite was true when it came to their respective navies.

Hideyoshi had no full-time navy and the ships he ordered into service were owned by subordinates with fiefs on the coast, many of whom had been pirates.

In contrast, Korea, in response to constant piracy along its coasts, had long maintained a professional navy. Ships were designed from the keel up to operate in the shallow, rocky littorals which gird the Korean peninsula.

Japanese sea-going warships at this time were light and v-hulled, built for speed. Japan’s preferred tactic was to board enemy vessels and fight hand-to-hand. Narrow abeam, and top-heavy, the largest of their ships could only mount three to four cannons facing forward. Most of the samurai fleet, however, consisted of unarmed transports relying upon massed arquebus fire as the primary means of ranged weaponry.

Korea’s pannokson were flat-bottomed with a wide beam and expansive fighting deck. Each battleship mounted 20 or more cannons capable of delivering devastating, large caliber broadsides out to a thousand paces.

The centerpiece of every Korean fleet, pannokson were the capital ships of the navy, supported by smaller vessels called hyeupson, and fishing boats pressed into use as scouts.

Admiral Yi also commissioned the construction of kobukson, the famous “Turtle Ships” that stunned his foes. Riding low in the water, the covered fighting deck of a “turtle ship” was sealed from inside and studded with iron spikes to discourage boarding.

Designed to ram the more fragile Japanese ships, these ships also carried an impressive complement of cannon. Yi’s first turtle ship was completed just in time for the war — a stroke of luck for the soon-to-be famous commander.

Yi Takes Action

Reports of the Japanese landing at Busan, and the fall of Dongnae Fortress to the north, reached the admiral within a few days. More disturbing news included the scuttling of both Left and Right fleets of the nearby Kyongsang Navy.

This represented an incredible lost opportunity as the vanguard Japanese commander, Konishi Yukinaga, tired of waiting for his warship escort, had rashly sailed to Busan with only unarmed transports. This Japanese force could easily have been slaughtered by the Kyongsang Navy’s combined 150 pannokson. Instead the two Korean admirals, Pak Hong, and Won Kyun, fearful of the enormous fleet filling the horizon, burned their vessels and deserted their posts. Won Kyun seemingly had a change of heart mid-way through the act and four of his pannokson escaped destruction.

In the rapidly evolving situation, Yi acted deliberately. He gathered maps, intelligence, and supplies, and received the court’s permission to sail beyond his assigned area of operations off Jeolla Province.

Coordinating with the commander of the Right Jeolla Navy, his intent was to combine their fleets, link up with Won, and commence combat operations against the invaders.

Won’s hysterical pleas to the court for assistance — hypocritically accusing Yi of cowardice in the face of the enemy — forced Yi’s hand. He was ordered to set sail before the Jeolla Navy was able to consolidate. After linking up with Won’s skulking remnant near Koje Island, Yi learned of a Japanese naval force raiding a local village.

When he sailed into Okp’o Harbor on June 16, 1592, Yi Sun-sin stepped into the spotlight of military history.

The First Korean Victory

Catching the enemy in the act of pillage, the Korean fleet formed a line of battle as the Japanese rushed to their ships or fled into the hills beyond the burning village.

Yi rallied his inexperienced crews and set to work destroying as many enemy vessels as possible with cannon fire. He reported to the court the destruction of 26 ships — the first Korean victory of the war and news that lifted the spirits of King Sonjo.

Over the next 24 hours, Yi attacked two more isolated Japanese forces and sunk an additional 20 vessels. The Koreans had thus far lost no ships and suffered only three casualties.

As the fleet rested from three battles in two days, terrible news arrived that Seoul had fallen to advancing Japanese armies. The king had escaped to the north.

Both admirals wept at the news. They agreed to withdraw to their bases, file official reports, and plan their next engagement. Another reason for Yi’s decision to return to Yeosu became clear when he launched sorties three weeks later. His turtle ship was ready for action.

Rampage Through the Japanese Fleet

Yi’s rampage through the Japanese fleet—including a daring raid on Busan itself, destroying 128 enemy vessels—continued through 1594 when a ceasefire was arranged by Korea’s Ming ally. Armies of samurai had reached Pyongyang and Korea’s northeastern border, but were forced to retreat south through attrition and the allied Ming-Joseon army.

By the time of the truce, Japan controlled only a string of fortifications along Korea’s southern coast. Most of these fortresses were isolated. Admiral Yi controlled the sea lanes and guerrillas roaming the hills, rendering logistical sustainability difficult.

Yi refused to stand idly by, however, while the invaders remained on Korean soil. In defiance of Ming envoys and Joseon officials, he maintained pressure on the “robbers” right up until large-scale military operations resumed in 1597.

However, when the samurai were again let off the leash, Yi was no longer at the head of the triumphant Korean navy – a stunning development with serious consequences.

The Admiral Is Betrayed

By 1597 Yi had been responsible for the destruction of over 352 Japanese ships. Japanese leadership realized something had to be done if success were to be achieved in a second invasion attempt.

Yukinaga set a trap. He passed word that Kato Kiyomasu, whom he hated, would soon return from Japan, and urged Yi to intercept the force as it transited. Yi, however, saw through the false report and refused to take the bait.

Scheming Korean court members seeking to undermine the Easterner Faction cited Yi’s “failure” to act and accused him of “disloyalty and disobedience.” These charges were presented them to King Sonjo who, incredibly, issued a warrant to arrest Korea’s savior.

Yi obediently left the combined fleet — by this time over 200 vessels including at least three turtle ships — in the incompetent hands of Won Kyun.

The hero was led in chains back to Seoul. There he was tried, found guilty, tortured, and demoted to the rank of private soldier. Sentenced to serve in General Kwon Yul’s army, Yi’s new commander felt sorry for all that had befallen the man. Kwon allowed him to fulfill his duties at home in Ansan, where he mourned the recent passing of his mother.

Disaster struck in Yi’s absence. Won led the fleet into another Japanese trap at Chilcheollyang. Everything about this battle indicates that Won had learned nothing while serving at the right hand of Yi. Despite his clear advantage in firepower, Won impetuously rushed to engage the enemy in “glorious” close combat. As a result, the Korean fleet was shattered. Only 12 pannokson and 120 soldiers escaped the slaughter.

Yi was still living in disgrace when a royal messenger arrived. The kingdom needed his help. Yi was officially reinstated him as commander of the combined fleet.

Victor of 18 battles during the first invasion, Yi took command of a demoralized force and less than half the ships that had been at his disposal than when the war began.

With his customary energy, he went to work, already receiving reports that the enemy intended to capitalize upon the presumed destruction of the Joseon Navy. All odds were in favor of the samurai, and it must have appeared to the Japanese that Hideyoshi’s plan would succeed.

Using Nature as an ally

The stage was now set for the most impressive of Yi’s battles, which transformed him from a hero into an unparalleled legend in the pantheon of Korean historical figures.

Yi laid a trap of his own at the volatile Myongyang Strait. He hoped that by using local knowledge of the environment and a personal display of courage that he could rebuild the confidence of the battered remnants of his once-strong navy.

A Japanese force of over 300 vessels, including at least 130 warships, sailed west toward the Jeolla coast. This armada would, by necessity, pass through Myongyang — a narrow strait where the tidal surge reaches 10 to 12 knots and, remarkably, changes direction every three hours. Yi possessed this information. Clearly his enemy did not. Buoyed by their recent victory, the Japanese rushed headlong to attack on sight.

Becoming trapped in the narrows, the invaders were unable to bring overwhelming force to bear against the small Korean force.

Understanding the timing of Myongyang’s tidal currents allowed Yi to control and pace the battle. He took advantage of the natural phenomenon to magnify cannon and ramming attacks upon his astonished foes.

By the end of a hard day’s fight, Yi had sunk 31 enemy vessels, once again without losing a single ship. The remainder of the Japanese force fled all the way to Busan, never again to challenge Yi’s control of Jeolla’s coastline.

Yi’s incredible victory at Myongyang single-handedly derailed the second invasion, forcing the immediate abandonment of the Japanese thrust toward Seoul and a return to their isolated coastal fortifications.

Yi’s Death in Combat

A large Chinese fleet reinforced Yi in July 1598 and the reinvigorated Korean Navy prowled the littoral, hunting any vessel bold enough to make the perilous run to the fortresses at Suncheon and Sacheon.

Yi would continue to harass Japanese supply lines, even participating in a coordinated sea-land attack on Suncheon Castle on October 19. Later the same month, however, word arrived that Toyotomi Hideyoshi had died. The war was over, and the invaders hastily negotiated a ceasefire to facilitate their withdrawal.

Unwilling to allow his enemy to depart unscathed, Yi instituted a naval blockade of Suncheon, preventing Yukinaga’s 15,000 men from making their escape. With Ming and Joseon forces controlling all land and sea approaches, the samurai were in a bind, yet rolled the dice once more, testing their luck against Yi’s tactical brilliance for the last time.

The Battle of Noryang on December 16, 1598, culminated in the sinking of over 200 Japanese vessels. However, it created enough of a diversion for Yukinaga and his men to escape. More importantly for Koreans, it also resulted in the death of Admiral Yi.

Yi fell in combat, while securing a tremendous military victory, quite literally chasing the enemy from his beloved homeland. The admiral’s death in his final battle kept him far from the postwar factional politics of the kind that had nearly ruined him — and the country — just one year prior.

An Enduring Legacy

Throughout his six-year naval command, Yi fought and won 23 battles, destroying over 780 Japanese ships without losing a single vessel of his own, an incredible military record by any account. His actions during the first invasion prevented Japanese seaborne supply, forcing an impossible overland route, and causing the vanguard samurai armies to wither on the vine. This frustrated not only the attempt to pacify the Korean countryside but left the invaders logistically incapable of invading China.

His timely passing neatly protected Yi Sun-sin’s legendary status — one he maintains to this day in memorials etched onto statues around modern Korea including one at Gwanghamun Plaza in Seoul, and another overlooking Busan Harbor.

Yi’s reputation for diligence, self-discipline, and unwavering devotion to duty — despite his government’s unjust persecution of him — have placed him above all others in the litany of Korean historical figures worthy of emulation.

For Yi, perhaps the greatest honor of all would be the reverence he instilled in the descendants of his enemies. When Adm. Togo was celebrated for his incredible victory over the Russians at Tsushima in 1905, an admirer compared him to admirals Horatio Nelson and Yi.

A naval hero himself, and descendant of Kyushu samurai, Togo responded, “It may be proper to compare me with Nelson, but not with Korea’s Yi Sun-sin, for he has no equal.”

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On entering the state of Tlaxcala in what today is central Mexico, Spanish conquistadors under Hernán Cortés soon found themselves surrounded by tens of thousands of hostile warriors and fighting desperately for survival. Of all the peoples they had encountered since their arrival in Mexico nearly five months ago, none had offered such fierce and determined resistance. The Tlaxcalans showed little fear of either Spanish horses or riders, even grasping the lances of the cavaliers and seeking to overthrow their mounts.

One horseman, unable to wrench his lance from the tenacious grasp of an enemy and robbed of his forward momentum, was immediately beset by a throng of warriors who struck at his charger with terrible obsidian-edged broadswords, nearly beheading the animal. Struggling out from beneath his lifeless horse, the rider shielded himself from his assailants’ blows with upraised arm and rodela (a small steel shield, or buckler). He surely would have died on the spot had his fellows not rushed to the rescue. A sharp battle raged, as fierce as any waged over a Homeric hero, before the Spaniards withdrew with the rider and his saddle. The Tlaxcalans, after hacking further at the remains of the horse, carried off severed chunks for display to fellow countrymen, to prove the vulnerability of the beasts. The rider later succumbed to his wounds.

When Hernán Cortés landed on Mexico’s Gulf Coast in April 1519, he had only vague notions of what lay ahead. He knew the local people were subjects of a great empire governed by a mighty prince named Montezuma, who lived in a magnificent city in the interior. He also knew the Aztecs possessed wealth almost beyond the dreams of avarice, and he immediately began contemplating ways to make the most of the opportunities fortune had laid before him.

The force with which Cortés searched out his fame initially comprised 11 ships, 100 mariners, 508 soldiers—including 32 crossbowmen and 13 harquebusiers—16 horses, 10 heavy brass guns and four falconets—slender resources indeed with which to penetrate an empire whose territory held a population of many millions and whose influence stretched from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Whatever other faults have been attributed to Cortés, an inability to make simple numerical calculations is not among them. It was crucial for him to win allies, and he ultimately had tremendous success in doing so. Tens of thousands of natives would aid the Spaniards as warriors, porters and laborers and by supplying food throughout the conquest of Mexico. Allies not only assisted Cortés in material terms but also boosted his authority in his dealings with Montezuma. Of his allies, the most remarkable—both because of their character and the efforts necessary to secure their friendship—were the Tlaxcalans.

Cortés greatly desired to secure an alliance with the Tlaxcalans, reported to be an independent, hardy and warlike people, undying in their hatred for Montezuma and unyielding in resistance to his rule. Yet long years of encirclement by their foes and frequent raids and invasions of their lands by vassals of the empire had honed the mistrust of the Tlaxcalans to a fine edge. They had gotten advance word of these strange visitors who had come in great ships, of the fantastic beasts on which they rode, and of their thunder and smoke that killed. They also knew the men from the sea traveled to see Montezuma and marched in the company of his vassals. Thus they naturally assumed the foreigners were servants of their mortal foe, come to destroy them.

As Cortés neared the Tlaxcalan frontier, he sent ahead two Cempoalan chiefs as envoys. After waiting two days with no word, the column resumed its march and soon encountered the terrified envoys. Having arrived in the midst of war preparations, they had been seized as suspected spies. The Tlaxcalans, they said, positively burned with the fervor of determined resistance. None would listen to the Spanish overtures of goodwill. The only reply to Cortés’ offer of friendship was a resolve, often repeated in the captives’ presence, that whether the intruders were supernatural beings or mortal men, the Tlaxcalans would tear out their hearts and gnaw the flesh from their bones. Threatened with the same, the envoys had managed to slip away from their inattentive guards. Undaunted, Cortés unfurled his banner and marched forward.

A force of some 3,000 screaming Tlaxcalans sprang from ambush, unleashing a hail of arrows and fire-hardened darts

The Spanish column had not traveled far when scouts reported some 30 Tlaxcalans ahead, equipped for battle and observing the column. Cortés ordered a detachment to capture one or more of them. But when the Spaniards beckoned with their hands and made signs of peace, the warriors mounted a furious attack. As the vanguard met their charge, killing five of the enemy, a force of some 3,000 screaming Tlaxcalans sprang from ambush, unleashing a hail of arrows and fire-hardened darts.

Cortés immediately ordered the rest of the column forward. Soldiers brought their harquebuses and crossbows to bear, and once rolled into position, the artillery barked out death on the massed attackers. The Tlaxcalans were well accustomed to the sounds of battle as they knew it—drums, horns, the thud of weapons striking flesh, the cries of men—but they entered a new realm of sensation as the report of firearms thundered in their ears, and terrible echoes rolled back from the surrounding hills. Death descended on thunderous wings. Yet while the warriors gradually gave way under this novel destruction, they did not flee. They retreated in an orderly fashion, maintaining their ranks. Encamping by a stream, the Spaniards spent an uneasy night sleeping in their armor with weapons ready. The horses remained saddled and bridled, and sentries and patrols kept vigilant watch.

The next morning they resumed the march, only to find their path blocked by an army of 6,000 warriors who made their deadly intentions clear through hostile demonstrations. Cortés once again tried diplomacy, sending forth three captives of the previous day’s fight bearing a message of peace. The message was ill-received. No sooner had the captives blended into the ranks of their fellows than the entire multitude began to howl with rage, their weapons and colorful plumage swaying like a forest whipped by storm winds. Battle was joined.

The Tlaxcalan fighters were no unruly mob, but an organized army with strict military discipline. Many were slain in the initial assault, and the survivors fell back. But their purpose was not swift victory; rather, by a gradual and controlled retreat they sought to lure their enemy forward into difficult terrain where many thousands of their fellows waited in ambush. When those warriors did spring the trap, the Spanish were in a fix, unable to adequately defend themselves on broken ground where their cavalry was of little use. Fighting their way through a shower of missiles past several ravines, they drew up on level ground and dressed their lines. Cortés realized that cohesion of their formation was the key to survival. As they were surrounded, any advance of the infantry would necessarily open gaps through which warriors might pour. The only mobile arm of the Spanish force was the cavalry, led by Cortés himself, which for the better part of an hour wheeled and charged endlessly within the shrinking sphere of open ground. Only after eight of their captains fell slain did the Tlaxcalans finally withdraw, concluding what the Spaniards would call the Battle of Tehuacingo, fought on Sept. 2, 1519.

The dawn of September 3 brought no fresh assault, so the Spaniards spent the day resting, repairing equipment and replenishing their stock of crossbow bolts. Cortés used the time for reflection. The courage and tenacity displayed by the Tlaxcalans in battle made them even more desirable as allies, yet they had met every attempt at amicable communication with threats or immediate attack. How, Cortés wondered, could he overcome the mistrust and hatred the Spaniards’ presence seemed to engender and establish diplomatic discourse?

Among the 15 captives taken on the second day of battle were two chiefs, and Cortés had them brought before him for questioning. To their surprise they had been well-treated and were thus willing to talk. From them Cortés learned much about the land and people of Tlaxcala. Each locality had its own lord, maintained and supported through a system of feudal dependency not unlike the structure that had long prevailed in Europe. Assembled in council, such lords represented the government of Tlaxcala, and each contributed forces for their mutual defense.

The chiefs informed Cortés their supreme commander was Xicotencatl, a most fierce and resolute man. It was he who adamantly maintained the Spaniards were spies of Montezuma and insisted on their annihilation. His was the banner spotted waving over the warriors who had fought with such ferocity, and his colors adorned their faces. Cortés emerged from council with the chiefs strengthened in his conviction the Spaniards must press on—continuing to extend diplomatic overtures, yes, but destroying all who rose against them. The next morning he led out a force to seek provisions in nearby towns and take prisoners, lest his foe infer from inaction the Spaniards had been weakened or discouraged by the resistance they had encountered.

Released from captivity, the pair of tlaxcalan chiefs later returned to Cortés with a message that peace would come only when the gods had been appeased with an offering of Spanish hearts and blood

Cortés returned to camp that afternoon with some 20 additional captives, who doubtless anticipated a horrible fate. Instead, they were fed, presented with beads and entreated by interpreters to lay down their anger and become brothers with the Spaniards. Cortés then set them free. He also released the two chiefs, directing them to bear another message of peace to the capital. Intercepted by sentries and taken before Xicotencatl, the pair returned to Cortés with a message that peace would come only when the gods had been appeased with an offering of Spanish hearts and blood. Adding to this bleak pronouncement, the chiefs reported that the combined forces of Tlaxcala had gathered to destroy them. Spanish padres kept busy all night hearing confessions.

The sun rose on men prepared for death. Thinking it better for morale to keep the men active than to wait in uncertainty, Cortés assembled the army. His remarks were practical rather than inspirational. All were to remain calm and methodical. Artillerymen were to direct their fire into dense groups of the enemy. Some crossbowmen and harquebusiers were to load while others fired, thus maintaining as continuous a stream of fire as possible without wasting ammunition. Swordsmen were to employ their points, thrusting into the bowels of their adversaries. Horsemen were to charge at half speed, restrain their mounts and aim their lances at the face and eyes of the enemy. None were to break ranks. To fail to maintain cohesive lines or succumb to exhaustion was to die. With those words of grim advice ringing in their ears, the men marched forth. Even the wounded, with the aid of their comrades, donned armor, grabbed weapons and kept pace as best they could, for all knew no man could be spared from this crucial contest.

They had not gone far when the Spaniards beheld the largest army they had yet seen in the New World. Sun glinting from spear points of copper and obsidian formed undulating waves of light above the throng of warriors. All shouted defiance and raised a fearsome war cry to accompany the thunder of drums. From what he had learned of native heraldry, Cortés could identify the banners of principal captains, as well as Xicotencatl’s personal armorial device—a white heron atop a rock. Beside it flew a banner emblazoned with a golden eagle on outstretched wings—the standard of the Tlaxcalan state. Spanish chroniclers estimated enemy numbers at anywhere from 50,000 to 150,000 men. Even at the low estimate, the position of the 400-odd Spaniards and their handful of Indian allies would have been akin to a sandcastle trying to hold back the sea.

No embassies were exchanged. When the Spaniards came into range, warriors released a spattering of missiles, which quickly became a torrent. Cortés and his men suffered their stings until reaching a distance more favorable for their guns and artillery. The volleys they fired into the densely packed enemy ranks inflicted dreadful carnage. The Tlaxcalans could not carry the dead and wounded from the field as quickly as they were struck down.

No longer able to endure this punishment, Xicotencatl’s warriors surged forward like a crashing tide. Spears and clubs hammered against the rodelas of the swordsmen as the latter strove to maintain the line. Their arms burned with fatigue as they repeatedly thrust into the bodies of a seemingly unending stream of attackers. Though crossbowmen and harquebusiers desperately poured fire into the enemy horde, the weight of numbers began to tell, and breaches opened in the Spanish line. Cortés bellowed orders but could not make himself heard above the din. For a moment it looked as though the Spaniards and their allies would be swept away.

Yet even as their victory seemed at hand, the Tlaxcalans were no longer able to sustain the attack. The price had been too high. The ground was littered with their dead and wounded, maimed and torn in ways they had neither experienced nor imagined. Their energy was spent, and the tide receded. The battle had lasted some four hours.

The Spaniards, nearly all wounded in one way or another, were utterly exhausted. As they staggered back to camp, the soldiers raised prayers of gratitude to God for their survival.

On the heels of his almost miraculous victory Cortés again sent envoys to the Tlaxcalan capital, seeking peace and safe passage. Angered rather than chastened by their army’s defeat, the lords rejected the overture and ordered Xicotencatl to mount a nighttime assault. Though he attacked with 10,000 of his best warriors, the Tlaxcalan commander fared no better, as the Spaniards were constantly on the alert.

On the heels of this latest failure the next day’s embassy received a more favorable reception. Among the elder lords, held in great respect, was the namesake father of Xicotencatl. He advised making peace with the Spaniards. Like Cortés, he thought the valiant soldiers from across the sea would make invaluable allies. Cempoalan envoys who had accompanied the Spaniards from the coast reported to the lords that Cortés had ordered Totonac settlements in the high sierra to cease paying tribute to Montezuma. The news allayed Tlaxcalan fears these visitors were servants of their great enemy and gave weight to Spanish declarations of goodwill. Heeding the elder Xicotencatl’s counsel, the lords ordered their army to cease attacking the Spaniards.

But the younger Xicotencatl, his blood up, was loath to lay down his arms and reaffirmed his intention to annihilate the Spaniards. Negotiations ground to a halt as the four chiefs chosen as ambassadors would not proceed for fear of the obstinate commander. The lords then got word to the army’s captains not to obey Xicotencatl unless he made peace with Cortés.

At last the commander agreed to send an embassy of 40 gift-bearing Tlaxcalans to the Spanish camp. His emissaries remained there overnight, making detailed observations. The alert Cempoalans suspected these men to be spies and warned Cortés that Xicotencatl had encamped nearby with the likely intention of mounting another nighttime assault. Convinced of the same after interrogating two of the emissaries, Cortés sent an uncompromising message. Taking 17 spies captive, he cut off the hands of some, the thumbs of others, and had these grisly trophies sent to their commander. The message the returning emissaries bore was unequivocal: Xicotencatl was to present himself in two days to accept the Spanish offer of peace, or Cortés would seek him out and destroy him.

The results of his gambit were immediate. The four ambassadors, no longer blocked by the army, approached camp that very day. Appearing before Cortés, they made deep obeisance and begged his pardon for having attacked him. The Tlaxcalans, they explained, had believed the Spaniards to be agents of Montezuma, who had never ceased in his attempts by force or fraud to invade their country. The ambassadors asked forgiveness for their error and accepted Cortés’ offer of friendship.

The Spaniards entered the capital of Tlaxcala on Sept. 23, 1519. Taking the lords aside, Cortés questioned them closely concerning interior Mexico and the Aztec empire. He heard again of the great power and wealth of Montezuma and was given a detailed description of the Aztecan capital of Tenochtitlán—the causeways by which it was approached, its fortifications, its infrastructure and its public buildings. The Tlaxcalan elders even brought pictures painted on henequen cloth depicting their battles with the Aztecs, from which Cortés learned much concerning Montezuma’s command structure and tactics.

The Spanish alliance with Tlaxcala continued to yield much of value throughout the conquest of Mexico. The Tlaxcalans provided supplies, fought alongside the conquistadors against the hostile vassals of Montezuma, gave the Spaniards safe haven after their initial expulsion from the Valley of Mexico, contributed warriors to the siege of Tenochtitlán and participated wholeheartedly in the final destruction of the hostile and oppressive Aztec empire. Cortés’ olive branch had fostered that successful military alliance. MH

Justin D. Lyons is an associate professor of history and government at Ohio’s Cedarville University. For further reading he recommends A True History of the Conquest of New Spain, by Bernal Díaz del Castillo; Conquest: Cortés, Montezuma and the Fall of Old Mexico, by Hugh Thomas; and History of the Conquest of Mexico, by William H. Prescott.

this article first appeared in Military History magazine

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When people think of Switzerland, they tend to think neutrality (and cool pocket knives and stylish watches, I guess). But there was a point when the country was caught up in a religious civil war that their armies tried to resolve with soup, according to lore.

In the early 16th century, conflict arose between the Protestant forces from Zurich and Catholic forces from Zug — Switzerland’s Christian Reformation — but legend has it that on the field of Kappel am Albis, no blood was shed. Instead, the armies simply shared some good, hot soup.

There are no records that detail how the soup was made or where it came from, but the story of the milk soup, known as “Kappel Milchsuppe” has become an integral story in Swiss history.

Made primarily with bread and milk, there is no definitive recipe left from the 1500s. Today’s recipes, however, feature various takes with butters, milks, cheeses, onion and garlic.

Though few facts about the original 500-year-old soup can be verified, BBC reported that historians agree the “broth was created by accident in June 1529 when two hungry armies met on a battlefield on what is now known as the Milchsuppestein, or ‘milk soup pasture.’”

“The soldiers from both sides mingled and eventually dined together — supposedly the troops from Zug provided the milk, and those from Zürich the bread to make this soup,” wrote Swiss cook and blogger Andie Pilot.

This brought to a close the first Kappel War.

“Negotiations continued, but to the amazement of everyone, the infantry brokered their own truce over a cooking pot while on the battlefield,” former Kappel Abbey pastor and historian Susanne Wey-Korthals told BBC. “Naturally, they were hungry after the long march, and Zürich had plenty of bread and salt, while Zug had a surplus of milk from its farms. From that the legend was born.”

Unfortunately the bisque was not enough to stop the fighting indefinitely.

The second Kappel War was fought in 1531. Ironically, a food embargo imposed on the Catholics brought the two armies back to war, bringing about a resolution in Switzerland’s Protestant Reformation. Ultimately, the Roman Catholics would go on to win when Zürich’s Protestant leader Huldrych Zwingli was killed.

Still, the lands of Milchsuppestein and the legendary soup enjoyed by the two warring factions became enduring symbols of Swiss peace. A stone monument to the original bloodless battlefield meeting remains there to this day.

“These fields have played witness to some of the most important moments in Swiss history,” Wey-Korthals said. “Switzerland found a way to compromise here. To concentrate on what we had in common rather than focus on our differences. It sounds remarkable, but we did it over a bowl of soup.”

Originally published on Military Times, our sister publication.

In 1615 Japanese warlord Tokugawa Ieyasu surveyed his last battlefield, the blood-soaked ground of Tennoji near Osaka. He’d seen much conflict across the width and breadth of the empire, but at age 72 his work was done. All
of Japan had been brought under consolidated military rule—his rule, a fact made clear to all when the emperor named him shogun, meaning roughly “barbarian-quelling generalissimo.”

Yet Ieyasu hadn’t reached this peak by himself. The foundation for a unified Japan had been laid by his peers Oda Nobunaga and Toyotomi Hideyoshi. That Ieyasu not only knew but also fought both against and alongside his predecessors makes the story of Japan’s bloody unification unique in the annals of military history.

Nobunaga The Conqueror

Nobunaga was a minor daimyo (feudal lord) when he embarked on his own path to greatness. Born within the precincts of Nagoya in 1534, he wrested leadership of the Oda clan when his father died in 1551. Through a series of campaigns concluding in 1559 he established control of Owari Province, the heavily fortified, rice-rich base of operations for all that followed.

Gauging the Oda clan weakened by the effort, the neighboring Imagawa clan struck, capturing castles at Washizu and Marune on the periphery of Nobunaga’s territory. With the visionary goal of seizing the imperial seat of power at Kyoto and declaring himself shogun, Imagawa Yoshimoto marched at the head of 25,000 men. While the Imagawa army rested in a distant gorge, Nobunaga force marched 3,000 Oda warriors into position and ambushed the far larger enemy force in a legendary victory that boosted his and his clan’s prestige.

Samurai (Japan’s hereditary military nobility) flocked to his banner. Among them was an ambitious peasant named Kinoshita Tokichiro, who was destined for things far greater than his humble birth suggested. Generations of Japanese would come to know him as Toyotomi Hideyoshi.

Nobunaga’s victory at the 1560 Battle of Okehazama sent the Imagawa into steep decline, weakening the clan’s hold over lesser daimyo and allowing them to be poached by Nobunaga. Among the spoils were Matsudaira Moto-
yasu, his lands and his small but capable army. Motoyasu would become known to history as Tokugawa Ieyasu. Thus by 1561 all three warlords who would forge a unified Japan had surfaced in the historical record.

That same year, with the death of a key rival, Nobunaga moved on Mino Province, due north of his base in Owari. Capping off that campaign in 1567, he seized Inabayama Castle, an imposing fortification more than 1,000 feet above the valley floor with clear lines of sight in all directions. Renaming it Gifu Castle, Nobunaga made it his headquarters, while a network of lower castles barracked his growing army. As his power grew, Nobunaga adorned the fortified complex with increasingly luxurious palace grounds at the foot of the mountain. It remained his primary residence until the completion of Azuchi Castle in 1579.

With Mino secured and his forces ensconced around Gifu, Nobunaga marched on Omi Province, the gateway to Kyoto. His ostensible intentions were to install Ashikaga Yoshiaki as shogun to resolve a succession dispute within the latter’s failing shogunate.

This was Nobunaga’s moment, and he clearly recognized it as such. His troops effortlessly rolled across Omi and entered Kyoto in 1568, bringing him instant fame for the rapidity and decisiveness with which he’d struck.

Securing the support of the new shogun—who, after all, owed his succession to the Oda clan—Nobunaga headed north into Echizen Province in 1570 to take on the allied Asakura and Azai clans. Though he faced an initial setback from a growing anti-Oda alliance, by 1573 he had crushed both the Asakura and Azai, seizing their respective Ichijodani and Odani castles and forcing their leaders to commit seppuku (ritual suicide).

Nobunaga then turned his wrath on the Ikko-ikki, a militant Buddhist sect that had joined the doomed opposition forces and fought him in the past. Pitting an army of religious zealots against Nobunaga’s seasoned samurai warriors, the resulting campaign featured prolonged sieges of Nagashima Castle and the fortified temple complexes of Mount Hiei and Ishiyama Hongan-ji, the main Ikko-ikki stronghold at Osaka. While the sect survived the onslaught, it lost all momentum and was eradicated as an effective armed force.

By 1573 the shogun, Yoshiaki, had tired of being a puppet and threw his support behind Nobunaga’s enemies. In response the mighty warlord deposed the thankless Yoshiaki. Having made himself the most powerful daimyo in all Japan, Nobunaga inevitably clashed with contemporary rivals. He proved equal to the task. Conflict with the potent Takeda clan, for example, all but ended after the Takeda rashly besieged Tokugawa-aligned Nagashino Castle in 1575, prompting a forced march by Oda and Tokugawa warriors to relieve its defenders. In the resulting battle Nobunaga’s and Ieyasu’s allied forces decimated Takeda’s vaunted cavalry corps with what was arguably history’s first recorded use of volley fire by massed firearms.

With these victories Nobunaga, with clear designs on further conquest, secured control of central Honshu. He had refused several official titles offered by the deposed shogun, leaving no doubt who was really in charge. But treachery waited in the wings.

In 1582 one of Nobunaga’s subordinate generals, Akechi Mitsuhide, directed his army to surround Honno-ji Temple, where the daimyo was enjoying a tea ceremony with only his bodyguard and servants in attendance. The subsequent skirmish was fierce, but Nobunaga was trapped and committed seppuku rather than suffer the shame of capture.

To keep his head from falling into the traitor’s hands, he ordered his page to set the temple ablaze around them.

Thus ended the life of Japan’s most auspicious military leader to date. It remains unclear what motivated Mitsuhide to rebel against his liege. What is clear is that the general sought to turn the murder into a coup, sending out letters entreating the Mori clan to join him.

Hideyoshi, out east pressing the Mori on Nobunaga’s behalf, promptly terminated his campaign and returned to Kyoto like an avenging angel. Defeating Mitsuhide days later at the Battle of Yamazaki, Hideyoshi then stepped into the shoes of his late patron as leader of the consolidated forces.

hideyoshi the Former Peasant

Born in Nakamura to peasants in 1536, Hideyoshi blazed the most remarkable path to success recorded in the Sengoku period. His father had served among the ashigaru—peasant foot soldiers who constituted the rank and file of the samurai armies. While many legends obscure Hideyoshi’s upbringing, he is thought to have been initially subordinate to the Imagawa before absconding with funds entrusted to him by that clan. By 1558, however, Hideyoshi was firmly in the employ of Nobunaga.

Nobunaga must have divined something special in the lowborn ashigaru, as he entrusted Hideyoshi with ever increasing responsibility, such as repairing fortifications and negotiating on his master’s behalf. The relatively easy 1561 seizure of Inabayama Castle is thought to have reflected Hideyoshi’s efforts, and by 1568 he was one of Nobunaga’s favorite generals. In 1573, following several successes, including a successful rearguard action that shielded his lord’s withdrawal from Echizen Province, Hideyoshi was made a daimyo in his own right, and the Oda clan granted him three districts in Omi.

His steady ascension of the ranks put Hideyoshi in precisely the right place after Nobunaga’s 1582 assassination. Having avenged his benefactor’s death, he assumed command of the largest Japanese army ever assembled. Perhaps more important, Hideyoshi shared Nobunaga’s vision for a unified Japan.

In a bold move Hideyoshi ordered the construction of a massive new fortress at Osaka. Built atop the very ashes of Hongan-ji Temple, in which Nobunaga had perished, the fortress represented an unambiguous statement of intent. Osaka Castle would remain the headquarters of the Toyotomi clan until its destruction in 1615. Having made all necessary logistical arrangements to see the project through, Hideyoshi put his army in order and drafted plans for continued conquest—though he first had to tie up a few loose ends.

Not everyone was happy a former peasant had assumed control of Oda’s armies. Among the disgruntled were Nobunaga’s surviving second son, Nobukatsu, who convinced the powerful Ieyasu of the legitimacy of his hereditary claim. The succession crisis precipitated inconclusive battles at Komaki and Nagakute. While the remarkable military leaders never directly faced one another in combat, Hideyoshi worked behind the scenes to inhibit Ieyasu’s allies, ultimately forcing the latter’s Tokugawa clan to come to terms. Ieyasu remained Hideyoshi’s ally, albeit a reluctant one, for the rest of the latter’s extraordinary life.

Ineligible to receive the title shogun due to his lowly birth, Hideyoshi arranged to have himself named kampaku, imperial regent, providing him necessary legitimacy. Under the auspices of that political mantle Hideyoshi then devoted his attentions to achieving Nobunaga’s goal. In 1585 he seized Kii Province, crushing the warrior monks of Negoro-ji (onetime allies of the extinct Ikko-ikki), burning neighboring Ota Castle to the ground and slaughtering anyone who escaped the conflagration.

Using Kii as a base, Hideyoshi sent a 113,000-man invasion force to Shikoku, the smallest of Japan’s main islands, where he crushed the ruling Chosokabe clan following a 26-day siege of Ichinomiya Castle. Expanding in multiple directions at once, he simultaneously attacked Etchu Province to the north with 100,000 men.

Having completed these conquests by 1586, Hideyoshi dispatched his half-brother to invade Kyushu, Japan’s third largest island. Meanwhile, Hideyoshi himself, with some 200,000 men, conquered all of western Honshu in a drive to link up with his brother. By year’s end the siblings met in Satsuma Province, at the southern tip of Kyushu, where they forced 30,000 warriors of the Shimazu clan to surrender.

That left only one major opposition clan: the Hojo of Honshu’s Kanto Region, centered on the fortified village of Edo (present-day Tokyo). Repositioning his forces, Hideyoshi launched the inevitable assault on the Hojo in 1590. In the final showdown at Odawara Castle his 220,000 troops faced some 82,000 Hojo defenders. By then Hideyoshi’s power was undisputed, and the end was never in doubt.

After a three-month siege Hideyoshi compelled the Hojo to surrender by means of an ingenious ruse. While investing Odawara, he ordered the construction of a new fortress, Ishigakiyama Ichiya, beyond a distant tree line. When its walls were complete—a feat accomplished in a mere 80 days—Hideyoshi had his men fell the intervening trees. Beholding what appeared to be an enemy fortress built overnight, the starving defenders lost their will to fight and surrendered. With that, all of Japan was under Hideyoshi’s dominion.

Yet unification created a new set of problems. The empire had been at war with itself for 123 years. Conflict was all Japan’s warrior class had known, thus the sudden arrival of peace generated tension.

Absent combat, how was an ambitious young samurai to achieve greatness? With internal warfare outlawed, how could one increase the lands of family and clan?

The samurai grew restless, nowhere more so than on Kyushu, where most warriors had surrendered rather than confront the massive invasion force. Just as threatening to Hideyoshi, who was a staunch Zen Buddhist, was the thoroughly foreign Christian religion practiced by large numbers of the Kyushu samurai.

The cunning kampaku soon devised a plan to rid himself of the most troublesome samurai while consolidating his rule back home. Hideyoshi fomented a foreign war, ostensibly affording an opportunity for the quarrelsome warriors to secure both lands and honor. In 1592, with the stated goal of conquering China and India, he launched back-to-back invasions of Joseon Korea.

Though the operations were poorly planned, Hideyoshi’s armies boasted significant tactical advantages over the Korean forces they encountered and thus pushed rapidly north, brushing aside all resistance. Ultimately, however, inadequate logistics, an ineffectual navy and intervention by the Ming Chinese undid the exertions of his soldiers. By the time Hideyoshi died in 1598, the Japanese had withdrawn to a string of fortifications along Korea’s southern coast, where they hunkered down, waiting for a chance to return home. Hideyoshi’s death, while a boon to the troops enduring privation on the continent, bred problems of its own. The kampaku left behind a single male heir, 5-year-old Hideyori. On realizing his life was ebbing, Hideyoshi had sought to ensure his toddler son’s rise to power by drawing chief allies and daimyos into a balanced regency of Hideyori.

Notwithstanding the regency or his oath to the dying kampaku, Ieyasu—the former vassal to Nobunaga and reluctant ally to Hideyoshi—wasn’t about to stand by and allow a child to rule Japan.

Ieyasu The Rebellious Vassal

Ieyasu was born in 1542 at Okazaki Castle, southeast of Nagoya. In 1548, amid the violent interclan politics of the time, the Oda abducted 6-year-old Ieyasu and held him hostage. Nobunaga’s father, Nobuhide, threatened to kill Ieyasu if the Tokugawa refused to sever all ties with the Imagawa. Though Ieyasu’s father refused, Nobuhide didn’t carry through with his threat. Had he done so, Japan’s history might have turned out very differently.

Ieyasu’s captivity, by first the Oda and then the Imagawa, lasted until he was 14, though as a potential future ally he was reportedly treated well. Once released to assume leadership of his clan, Ieyasu remained subordinate to the Imagawa and even led forces against the Oda for a time, by all accounts commanding well. The final defeat of the Imagawa in 1560 enabled him to assert a measure of independence, which he did by forming a lifelong alliance with Nobunaga.

Ieyasu was far more earnest in service to the Oda than to Hideyoshi, though why remains unclear. Perhaps he was disdainful of the latter’s humble origins, or maybe he foresaw he would have to contend with Hideyoshi for dominance.

Following Hideyoshi’s rise to power and the inconclusive power struggles that followed, Ieyasu negotiated an alliance with the former in 1585. Their combined victory at Odawara in 1590 left the whole of Hojo territory to be distributed as the kampaku saw fit.

Wisely uncomfortable with having Ieyasu so close to his base at Osaka, Hideyoshi offered him the eight provinces of the Kanto Region in exchange for lands near Nagoya. Ieyasu agreed, taking ownership of the rich plains east of Mt. Fuji. That in turn provided Ieyasu with the physical distance he would need to formulate his own plans for domination.

In the wake of Hideyoshi’s 1598 death Ieyasu led an army west to Fushimi Castle, near Kyoto, within a day’s march of Osaka Castle, where the appointed heir, Hideyori, was being raised. This alarmed the other regents, who formed an alliance to oppose the potential usurper. The aggressive moves prompted a nationwide split into a western faction, supporting young Hideyori’s regency, and an eastern faction, allied with the Tokugawa clan.

In 1600 Ieyasu marched his forces north in a preemptive strike on the Uesugi clan, steadfast allies of Hideyori. Before he could land the blow, however, he received word a western army was fast approaching and turned to meet the greater threat. In the subsequent Battle of Sekigahara his 89,000-man eastern army met the 82,000-man western army in a fog-shrouded, confused engagement.

Amid the fighting Ieyasu’s preeminence as a strategist became evident, and a sizeable portion of his opponent’s force defected, leading to a decisive defeat of the westerners.

Over the next few days the victors hunted down and killed all surviving opposition leaders, leaving Ieyasu the master of all Japan.

Showdown at Osaka Castle

Though Ieyasu was declared shogun in 1603, a final act remained in the saga of Tokugawa hegemony. In 1614 young Hideyori, still alive despite so much death on his behalf, rallied dispossessed ronin (masterless samurai) and his late father’s onetime supporters into a force with which he intended to recover his birthright. Refusing Ieyasu’s order to abandon Osaka Castle, Hideyori instead prepared for war. Emerging from official retirement, Ieyasu led a 164,000-man army against the 120,000 westerners holding out inside the vast bastion, surrounding the fortress in January 1615.

The resulting siege of Osaka Castle is noteworthy for the presence of artillery on both sides—a rare sight on medieval Japanese battlefields. The shogunate fielded more than 300 pieces, including light Japanese cannons and larger, long-range European guns. Having failed to breach the outer walls by direct assault over the course of six weeks, Ieyasu resorted to a continuous, heavy bombardment and within three days negotiated a cease-fire. Yet Hideyori continued his saber-rattling.

The impasse stretched into summer when Ieyasu returned and, in a signal victory south of Osaka at Tennoji, solidified his reign and that of his descendants. It was Ieyasu’s final battle, and with it he cemented the unified Japan we recognize today.

Contemporary Japanese acknowledge with reverence the work of their three great unifiers. Oda Nobunaga, Toyotomi Hideyoshi and Tokugawa Ieyasu took a continually warring mass of feudal domains and mercilessly hammered them into a nation.

In present-day Japan, the only country in the world with a pacifist constitution, there is no pining for a return to those bellicose times, when wars never ceased, and samurai held the power of life and death over everyone. Yet there remains a very real sense Japan would not be the nation it is today had it not passed through such a fiery crucible. Thus its people maintain tremendous pride in the accomplishments of these three men, uttering their names with all the respect and admiration they earned by conquest at the edge of the sword. MH

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While the katana sword tends to be associated with male samurai of Japan, a distinctive weapon called the naginata has been traditionally associated with women and female fighters known as onna-bugeisha. Why is the naginata so strongly associated with women—and is it true that the weapon was designed with women in mind?  

What is a Naginata?

The naginata is a curved sword mounted on a pole. It is recorded as having been used by warrior priests circa 750 A.D. It first rose to prevalence during the Kamakura period from 1192 to 1333, a feudal era that might well be considered a Renaissance period for Japan’s warrior class. The naginata had several tactical advantages which made it popular on the battlefield. As a polearm, it lent warriors a much longer reach. Its single-edged blade was narrow but heavy, which allowed wielders to manipulate gravity to launch hard and deadly strikes. It proved ideal for fighting on horseback. It also proved its worth masterfully against famed katana blades—a skilled practitioner of naginatajutsu, or the art of naginata wielding, could effectively dispatch multiple samurai swordsmen with a few well-placed sweeps of the arm.

Why Did Women Start Using the Naginata?

This deadly polearm was not designed specifically for women. Why then did it become known over time as a “woman’s weapon”? The naginata proved its worth as an ideal weapon for female self-defense during the Warring States period, also known as the Sengoku Jidai, according to an article published by Ellis Amdur in the Journal of Asian Martial Arts entitled, “The Role of Arms-Bearing Women in Japanese History.”

During a time when raiding and pillaging were common, noblewomen were often left in charge of guarding their households while men were away at war. The naginata—with its long reach and powerful blade that could so easily be spun into motion—enabled women to defend themselves at close quarters. According to Amdur: “A strong, lithe woman armed with a naginata could keep all but the best warriors at a distance, where all the advantages of strength, weight or sword counted for less.”

Due to its length and weight, the naginata did not require any excessive lunging, leaping or weight shifting to use effectively. A well-balanced weapon, it could be used to great effect with minimal and understated movements. It could thus be spun with deadly efficiency by a woman wearing a restrictive kimono. This made it a powerful but easy weapon for a woman at home to grab in self-defense—perhaps like a medieval melee equivalent of a shotgun.

famous Women Who Used the Naginata

Several stories passed into legend of the wives of Japanese noblemen wielding the naginata to fend off intruders. In one famous instance, an aristocratic woman, married to a certain Mimura Kotoku, is said to have drawn her naginata against an enemy general invading her husband’s castle. Although the intruder refused to duel with her and pejoratively called her a “demon” for her ferocity, she allegedly killed his bodyguards and forced him to withdraw. Women bearing the naginata were idealized on woodblock prints. While the traditional role of women in feudal Japanese society largely barred them from becoming full-fledged warriors, female fighters using the naginata were perceived to be acting with duty and loyalty in defense of their homes and honor.

Thus, over time, the naginata came to symbolize female virtue in Japan. It was displayed in samurai homes and was even given to brides as wedding presents. Seen as a worthy pursuit for women, naginatajutsu became a popular martial arts form for girls and all-female schools began to flourish.

“What the sword was to a man—a weapon embodying his soul—the halberd-like naginata was to a woman,” wrote Michael Hoffman in The Japan Times.

Arguably the most famous woman to use the naginata in battle was Nakano Takeko, who gathered a troop of female fighters to help defend her domain from imperial troops during the Battle of Aizu in 1868. Takeko’s all-female unit is said to have benefited from the element of surprise, since their enemies hesitated to attack once they realized they were facing women. Boldly leading her group, Takeko became famous for wielding her naginata with deadly precision against an overwhelming force of imperial troops. After killing several soldiers she was mortally wounded by a gunshot. With grim resolve as she lay dying, Takeko asked her sister to behead her so that her head would not be taken by the enemy as a trophy. Her sister complied with her wishes, and her head was taken to a local temple for burial.

Other women present during the siege shared Takeko’s steely spirit. A death poem written by one of the women who defended Aizu castle during the same battle reads: “Each time I die and am reborn into the world I wish to return as a stalwart warrior.” Takeko has been honored as a hero, with a memorial standing at the spot where she fell in battle. A statue of her poised ready to strike with her naginata stands in Fukushima, Japan.

While the naginata was not designed specifically for women, the weapon will forever remain most associated with women throughout history who bravely took advantage of its strong and graceful design.

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