Salah al-Din Yusuf ibn Ayyub, Muslim Sultan of Egypt and Syria, known to the west as Saladin, is certainly one of the most durably famous historical figures from the period of the Crusades. His political and military skills won him the admiration of the Muslim world. Unifying the forces of Islam, he struck the heaviest blows against the Crusader kingdoms, shattering a massive Christian army at Hattin and wresting Jerusalem from their control in 1187.

But he is also remarkable as an historical rarity—a champion on one side of a bitter contest who was also admired by his opponents. His ferocity in battle and generosity to his enemies secured him a great reputation in Europe as a chivalrous knight, an esteem that has largely endured in the Western mind. 

Saladin was born in the city of Tikrit in 1137, emerging into a world rife with divisions, both political and religious. Part of Saladin’s durability in historical memory can be attributed to the similarities between his world and our own, for some of the same divisions still fester. The Muslim world is still divided by the fundamental Sunni-Shia schism and a multiplicity of sects quarreling about both theological and worldly matters. Pope Urban II had issued the call for the First Crusade some 40 years before Saladin was born, and the arrival of Christian armies created the fundamental division that would shape his world. The First Crusade (1096-1099) captured Jerusalem and saw the creation of Christian states along the coast of Palestine. As resilient as they were, they remained outposts requiring continual support from Europe to be maintained.

They also clearly benefitted from the disunity of Muslim rule and the lack of unified a military opposition. After their initial success, the task of the crusaders became defensive—to hold what they had won. Saladin was to be their greatest challenge.

The Making of A Leader

Little is known about Saladin’s early years other than the lingering reputation of a studious and thoughtful nature tending to greater zeal for religious than military training. He was well-placed for advancement. His father, Ayyub, was Governor of Damascus, and his uncle, Shirkuh, commanded the armies of Nur-al-Din, the ruler of Syria. Positioned for close observation, Saladin conceived a great admiration for Nur-al-Din’s piety and capable rule and, in later years, would draw inspiration from his ambition to unite the Muslim peoples between the Nile and the Euphrates to create a united front against the Crusaders. But Saladin was not yet a warrior. In the wake of the Second Crusade’s (1145-1149) attempt upon Damascus, Nur-al-Din sought to stir up martial fervor among his people and asked for volunteers in the Holy War. Saladin did not respond. 

Saladin’s formal career began when he joined the staff of his uncle, Shirkuh, accompanying him on an expedition to Egypt, which would lay the foundations of his future success. In 1163, Shawar, the deposed Vizier of Egypt, appeared in Damascus promising one-third of the revenues of Egypt for Nur-Al-Din’s aid in restoring him. Though in theory subject to the Caliph, a vizier of Egypt was virtually a king. The potential benefits of intervening on his behalf were too good to pass by. Shirkuh was dispatched with an army, and he took a reluctant Saladin with him.

In the background lay complex rivalries between Muslims and Christians, and among Muslims themselves. While Syria recognized the religious authority of the Abbasid caliph of Baghdad, Egypt walked a different path. The origins of the split lay early in the history of Islam. In 655, the succession to the religious and political authority of the caliphate was contested over a dispute as to whether the leader of Islam must be a direct descendant of the Prophet. This view was advocated by Ali, who had married Muhammad’s daughter Fatima. Ali and Fatima lost the contest, but their supporters maintained their allegiance to their various descendants, giving rise to a distinctive form of Islam called Shi’ism—in contrast with the majority of Muslims, the Sunnis. In the tenth century, the Shi’ites established the Fatimid dynasty of caliphs in Cairo. To the orthodox Nur-al-Din, the heretical Egyptians were almost as contemptible as the infidels. But this distaste was tempered by the realization if the Christian Franks were able to dominate Egypt, Syria would be ruined and Islam seriously imperiled.       

To Egypt

But by the time the expedition had reached Egypt, the Vizier had recovered his office and had no use for Shirkuh’s army. He refused to pay them. When Shirkuh showed no inclination to leave without his compensation, Shawar appealed to Amalric, King of Jerusalem for aid. A complex three-way struggle then ensued in which Saladin gained valuable military experience. When the dust had settled, the Christians had been expelled, Shawar was dead, Shirkuh was the Vizier of Egypt—and Saladin was his executive officer. How precisely Shirkuh would have navigated the politically and religiously awkward position he now inhabited is not clear. Three months later he was dead, and the Fatimid caliph appointed Saladin as his successor.

Saladin now inhabited a position of power, but it was beset with difficulties. He was bound to three masters and two versions of Islam. He owed allegiance to Nur-Al-Din in Damascus, and through him the Sunni caliph in Baghdad, as well as Egypt’s Shia Fatimid Caliph. In addition, the quick, successive shifts in power had left Egypt unstable. Unhappy with the new regime, various groups plotted against Saladin, and internal divisions invited challenges from the Byzantines and the Crusaders. Saladin navigated the difficulties with great skill, gaining firm administrative and military control of the country while strengthening his army and navy. But his very successes caused problems of his own, for the stronger he became, the more Nur-al-Din worried about the reach of his ambitions.

In 1171, at the risk of rebellion, Saladin deposed the Fatimid caliph in favor of the Abbasid caliph of Baghdad. Two days later Cairo’s caliph died, and Saladin was the master of Egypt. While Egypt’s return to orthodoxy pleased Nur-al-Din, Saladin’s increasingly successful empire building did not. Tensions between the two men continued to rise.

When Nur-al-Din died in 1174, Saladin was not only relieved of the burdens of a jealous superior, but the power vacuum in Syria also presented him with an opportunity for expansion. By this time Saladin was a determined holy warrior, but he knew he would first have to unite the Muslims as a foundation for war against the crusaders. Long years of struggle lay before him, but he captured Damascus, Aleppo, and Mosul from other Muslim rulers.

Facing the Crusaders

In May 1180, Saladin signed a treaty with Baldwin IV, who had become King of Jerusalem in 1174 at 13 years of age when his father, Amalric died. It made sense. After a period of draining and indecisive clashes, both sides were suffering from internal disorders that made a respite of peace agreeable. But the underlying conflict remained, as did the militant purposes of both sides, and provocations wore away at the agreement. One provocateur, Renaud de Châtillon, did more than any other to erode the peace.

The relentless raids he launched on Muslim caravans from his impregnable castle, Kerak of Moab, incited Saladin’s rage. He appealed to Baldwin, but the king, suffering from leprosy, did not have the strength to restrain the firebrand. Hostilities were renewed. Saladin took Aleppo in 1183 and besieged Kerak. The Kingdom of Jerusalem, weakened by a faltering king, internal quarrels, and a disputed succession felt the weight of Saladin’s growing power. 

By 1186, Saladin had united the Muslim territories of Syria, northern Mesopotamia, Palestine and Egypt under his rule. Saladin’s dedication to jihad and singleness of purpose were in sharp contrast to the dissensions and rivalry that had hampered Muslim resistance to the Crusaders in the past. Saladin had forged a powerful weapon, and he was ready to wield it. In that same year, Guy de Lusignan, a man unsuited by temperament or skill to clash with Saladin, became King of Jerusalem. As the Crusaders faced their greatest threat, they were led by an improvident adventurer whose only claim to power lay in his marriage to Baldwin’s sister. Plagued by divided counsels and self-seeking ambition, they would soon pay a terrible price.

Having gathered a massive army of 30,000 troops, Saladin invaded Galilee and besieged the city of Tiberias, baiting a snare he hoped would lure the enemy onto ground of his choosing. Guy mustered his own army around Saphorie, fielding around 20,000 infantry and 2,000 knights, half of whom were members of the famous religious orders, Knights Templar and Hospitallers. Count Raymond III of Tripoli, whose own wife and children were confined within the city, counseled Guy not to march.

The Horns of Hattin

Between their position and Tiberias stretched an arid plain, sizzling in the July heat, where they would find little or no water. In such conditions, Saladin’s lightly armed cavalry would have the advantage, and he prophesied the destruction of the army if they walked into Saladin’s trap. But Guy was swayed by others, Renaud and Gérard de Ridefort, Master of the Templars, whose violent aggression was impervious to prudence.  

Leaving at dawn, the army marched across the plain in the sweltering heat up into the hills on the western shores of the Sea of Galilee. With no water-carts, the leather bottles they carried were fast depleted. The hot sun fell upon them like a hammer upon an anvil, and the knights sweltered in their armor. The miseries of the march were compounded by harassment by the enemy, who loosed clouds of arrows upon them before racing away far too swiftly for the weary and parched crusaders to respond. These tactics combined with attacks on the rear guard, only prolonged the miseries of the hellish march.

Exhausted, the army camped just below an outcrop above the Sea of Galilee, known as the Horns of Hattin. It was bad ground, a dried-up lava flow from an extinct volcano strewn with black basalt rocks hidden beneath scrub grass, dangerous to horses. They would spend a miserable night tormented by thirst, an experience made worse by the glimmering fresh water of the lake beneath them. But the way was barred by the stretching encampment of Saladin’s army.

With the morning of July 4, 1187, the Christian army would try to carve its way to the lake. But Saladin had advanced his men during the night, and they now set fire to the dry grass, sending choking clouds of smoke into the crusader camp. Maddened by thirst, the foot soldiers rushed ahead blindly, only to be thrown back. The knights charged, wheeled, charged again, but they could not pierce the Muslim lines. All that day the battle raged, the crusaders finding reserves of strength that impressed even their enemy. But to no avail. Raymond III of Tripoli did finally succeed in breaking through with some of his heavily-armored knights and, escaping the battlefield, proceeded to Tripoli. His withdrawal had been approved by the king, lest none survive to fight future battles. The next day, the remaining crusaders made a last stand, but, with the remnants of the Christian army strewn about the hills, exhaustion compelled the handful of survivors to surrender. 

The concept of chivalry involves a combination of fierceness and gentleness that can be difficult to grasp in theory, much less to achieve and maintain in practice. Saladin was to have a chivalrous reputation in the Christian West, but there was little gentleness toward the Christians he defeated at Hattin. The surviving infantrymen were all sold into slavery. Saladin killed Renaud with his own hands, as he had sworn to do, and had his head impaled on a lance as an ornament to embellish his triumphant return to Damascus. The remaining knights were executed by the mullahs and religious teachers accompanying his army. He also sent an order to Damascus condemning all of the knights held captive there to immediate death.

On the other hand, he did show compassion when he did not have to, offering the countess of Tripoli safe-passage with all her people and possessions to rejoin her husband and paroling Balian of Ibelin to return to Jerusalem to look after his wife, a former queen of Jerusalem. He spared Guy along with a handful of others, imprisoning them in Damascus. The medieval mind was not overly troubled by such stark contrasts, and many a Christian knight was deemed chivalrous who did not do as well. 

Securing the Coast

Desirous that his great victory at Hattin be used to its greatest potential, Saladin moved to secure the coast of Palestine against future incursions and isolate the inland castles. He moved first upon Acre which, inadequately defended, surrendered. From there his forces marched along the coast, as well as through Galilee and Samaria. Christian strongholds rapidly tumbled into his hands through surrender or after brief sieges. After Hattin, they had no strength to resist. Saladin displayed much of his customary mercy and forbearance with the conquered. By September, only Jerusalem and Tyre remained in Christian hands.

Tyre, with admirable defenses and under the command of the newly-arrived Conrad of Montferrat, a man of great ability and determination, held out against assault. Saladin left it unconquered. Strategically, this was a mistake, as it left his enemies a crucial foothold on the coast and a beachhead for another invasion. Even some contemporary Muslim commentators, while praising his many admirable qualities and achievements, reproached him for underestimating the danger. Nonetheless, leaving the prospect of months of grueling siege behind him, Saladin turned toward Jerusalem. The struggle for the Holy City was the source of the crusading movement and its possession the ultimate prize. Now, it lay within his grasp.

Balian of Ibelin took command of the Christian forces, such as they were, defending Jerusalem. As a prisoner on parole after Hattin, he wrote to Saladin, apologizing and asking him to spare the city. Saladin forgave Balian but would not give up Jerusalem. Balian had little to work with. While the city was strongly fortified, it was swollen with refugees, with one man to every 50 women and children, and had only 14 knights. Nonetheless, Balian girded for battle. He knighted every boy of noble descent and 30 common citizens. He seized all the treasure he could find, including silver from the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, hastily brought in provisions from the surrounding villages, shut the gates, and prepared to endure the storm.

Arriving on Sept. 20, Saladin’s siege engines bombarded the Tower of David and the surrounding walls for five days. Failing to make much of an impression on the fortifications, he then shifted northeast to the Mount of Olives, the location from which the Crusaders had launched their attack nearly a century before. While 40 mangonels battered the walls, torrents of arrows swept them clean of defenders, and sappers worked to undermine their foundations. After three days, the masonry crumbled, opening a breach. The city was doomed.

Officials from the city came to negotiate terms. But, remembering the bloodshed when the Christians took Jerusalem in 1099, Saladin would not negotiate. He had sworn he would take the city by the sword. On Sept. 30, Balian himself appeared in Saladin’s tent. He knew there was no chance of holding the city, but he presented Saladin with an apocalyptic vision: the Muslims would have the city, but it would be a city of ash. As a last resort he would set Jerusalem on fire, demolish all the holy places including the Dome of the Rock and the al-Aqsa Mosque, destroy all the treasure, and kill every living thing. He would reduce the Holy City to wreckage, scorched with flame and drowned in blood. His description must have been vivid, for Saladin relented, agreeing to accept ransom: 10 dinars for every man, 5 for every woman, and one for every child.

Richard the Lionheart

The capture of Jerusalem was not the end of Saladin’s struggles. His tremendous success caused the caliph to fear his ambition would reach to overturning the Abbasid dynasty. There were also those who doubted the wisdom of Saladin’s generosity toward the Christians. By allowing them to leave Acre, Ascalon, and Jerusalem, he only strengthened Tyre, fortifying a Christian outpost to be relieved by additional forces from Europe. Word of Jerusalem’s fall reached Europe quickly with appeals for aid. Pope Gregory VIII called for a new crusade. The response was enormous in volunteers and monetary contributions (not always voluntary), called in England the “Saladin Tithe.”

The Third Crusade (1189-1192) would be led by kings: Richard I of England, Philip II of France, and Emperor Frederick I (Barbarossa) of Germany. Great armies mobilized and headed for Palestine. The Christians already there made trouble of their own. Though hampered by division between King Guy, who Saladin had released from prison in 1188 and Conrad of Montferrat, who desired the crown of Jerusalem, the crusaders besieged Acre. A stalemated double siege lasted for two years, with the besiegers themselves hemmed in by Saladin’s army, which was not strong enough to drive them off or destroy them.

In June of 1191, King Richard I of England arrived in the Holy Land. Richard stands out from the pages of history as a glamorous figure: tall, good-looking, fearless, and immensely strong, he was known as Richard Coeur de Lion (the Lionheart). Richard assumed leadership of the crusade after Frederick perished en route and Philip departed for Europe. The strategic duel between the two champions, Richard and Saladin, captured the medieval European imagination and solidified Saladin’s lasting reputation. Though their battle was bitter, they saw each other as worthy opponents. 

Richard fell upon the Holy Land like a thunderstroke, but did not have the power to retake Jerusalem. Saladin parried him with both blade and diplomacy. They agreed upon a truce under which the Christians retained the coastal zone from Jaffa to Tyre and were permitted to make pilgrimages to Jerusalem. The Holy City itself remained in Saladin’s hand. Richard departed, disappointed, to deal with troubles at home.  

Saladin did not live much longer. He died in March 1193 at 54 years old. He was Islam’s greatest champion, master of the east, bringing an unparalleled unity and wielding a victorious sword, honored by Muslim and Crusader alike. The unity he had forged collapsed after his death. The fame he won lives on.

this article first appeared in military history quarterly

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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.   

Timing was everything for Christopher Columbus and the handful of Europeans who initially followed in his wake after the Italian explorer “sailed the ocean blue in 1492.” Had such bold men crossed the Atlantic a scant seven decades earlier, they would have encountered, instead of scattered, primitive tribes, a civilization more than capable of halting their European intrusion into the New World.

For more than a millennium the interconnected peoples of the Mississippian culture built cities, warred and traded across the trail systems and rivers lacing what today is the eastern half of the United States. The loose confederation comprised upward of 3 million people from some 60 different tribes speaking more than 30 languages and spanned from Virginia to the Rockies and the Gulf of Mexico to the Great Lakes. The civilization dominated the region from roughly 700 to 1420.

Mississippians initially settled along the major rivers in the Midwest and Southeast, where they developed fortified settlements with protective palisades, broad plazas and large earthen mounds. Though primarily farmers, they were also exceptional potters and metalworkers, primarily in copper. Warfare among the disparate tribes was continual, but they did share certain basic religious tenets, such as their concept of a sun god. They also indulged in high-stakes gaming and gambling. Their cities became the springboards for familial dynastic ambitions. 

The largest of these cities was Cahokia, with an estimated peak population approaching 20,000. Sprawling across 6 square miles on the east bank of the Mississippi River immediately opposite present-day St. Louis, Mo., the city encompassed some 120 earthen mounds. Today 2,200-acre Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site centers on the largest surviving Mississippian earthwork, Monks Mound, which stands 100 feet high and occupies 14 acres. Its size is all the more remarkable when one considers the millions of cubic feet of earth brought to the site basketful by basketful. It was atop such mounds residents held religious ceremonies, proffered offerings and human sacrifices and interred the bodies of deceased nobles. Farmers, tradesmen and commoners alike built their homes—simple thatched huts—adjacent to these ceremonial mounds, while secondary plazas on the fringes of each settlement served as farmers markets.

Cahokia manufactured ornaments and other trade objects crafted from stone, shell, bone and copper, as well as daggers, maces and other weapons renowned across the Mississippian world. Such were must-have items among the nobility of other cities, including Spiro and Natchez, for the Cahokians were trendsetters. Their goods spread across North America, speaking to a robust trade system that returned to these cities hoes of stone and bison bone from the Great Plains, copper from Lake Superior and shells from the Gulf of Mexico.

Yet, by the mid-14th century Cahokia had collapsed. There is no evidence of an attack at the site, let alone conquest by another people. Many researchers believe the city simply could not sustain itself at the size it had reached, so its people scattered. The broader Mississippian culture hung on another century or so.

From its 10th century origins Spiro, along the present-day Oklahoma-Arkansas border, evolved into an important religious and political center of the Mississippian culture. Primarily traders, the Spiroans established outposts along the great rivers at which they exchanged pipes and pottery for buffalo hides, meat and shoulder bones they used as plows. The Spiroans and surrounding peoples sustained themselves with harvests of corn, beans and squash from the rich soil of alluvial floodplains. One distinguishing characteristic of the Spiroans was the deliberate deformation of their skulls. Shortly after giving birth, mothers would tightly wrap animal skins around their babies’ heads, gradually transforming their skulls into conical, oblong shapes unmistakable by other tribes even at a distance. It is thought they did so to mark their status in society and familial or clan membership.

While Spiro’s population peaked at about 10,000 people, the winter and summer solstices drew thousands more for three days of religious ceremonies. In Spiro’s Temple Plaza anywhere from 10,000 to 30,000 men could be found paying homage to their sun god, who spoke through the priests, telling them when to plant their crops, how to conduct their ceremonies and other details of religious and everyday life. In preparation for such ceremonies, worshipers smoked sacred tobacco, drank a highly caffeinated purgative tea brewed from yaupon holly leaves they called the “black drink” and then promptly vomited up the contents. After three days without food, water or sleep, they would dance, sing and wait for planting instructions from the priests.

Around the turn of the 15th century crop yields began to decrease in Spiro and other cities across the Mississippian world. The Little Ice Age, which gripped Europe in cold, also took a toll in North America. At first Spiro traded for food with the cities in warmer climes to the Southeast, until those cities also began to feel the pinch from a changing climate. The alarmed priests ultimately had Spiro evacuated, remaining behind in order to perform religious rites in hopes of appeasing their god. Fleeing residents migrated west and south to settle in neighboring communities, much like modern-day exoduses from major cities to suburban enclaves.

Researchers believe that around 1420 the Spiroan priests, their efforts having failed to stem crop losses or stave off hunger, decided to make a final grand spiritual appeal to their sun god. After having everything deemed religious brought to Spiro and ceremonially buried in the sacred mounds, the priests resumed their religious rites for more than a year.

But there was no turning back to better times. Crop failures became endemic, and the consequent drop in food supply made it impossible to sustain large, concentrated populations. Out of options, the Spiroans and other city-dwelling Mississippians dispersed into the surrounding countryside, forming smaller groups and doing their best to survive. The collapse in many respects echoed the fall of the Roman empire.

For the first time in centuries the disparate peoples of North America returned to their tribal and seminomadic roots even as Spanish and French explorers began penetrating the continent. Much of our knowledge of Mississippian culture derives from observations of the Grand Village of the Natchez, in the lower Mississippi Valley, which survived well into the period of European colonization. While the people of Natchez resisted French incursion, by 1731 they had been defeated and dispersed, some seeking refuge and blending into such well known tribes as the Chickasaws, Cherokees and Muscogees (Creeks). Their bloodline survives, if not in name. 

this article first appeared in wild west magazine

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The cap badge is a special part of British army headdress intended to represent the emblems of unique regiments. Regimental insignia derives from military traditions in the Middle Ages, and thus cap badge designs are a type of heraldry. Cap badges were first worn in 1897 following a period of changes in army headdress. Cap badges are typically made of metal but during World War II the British produced them from plastic due to metal shortages.

Each badge is highly symbolic and reflects the history and achievements of the regiment it represents. More than just an identifying mark, cap badges connect soldiers with feats from past wars and the traditions of their regiments. Cap badges can include symbols or wording representing battle honors, ancient or heraldic imagery, mottoes, symbols related to the duties of particular regiments, and mythological figures or beasts. They can be worn on berets and slouch hats as well as peaked caps. The tradition continues in the British Army today.

Here’s a closer look at some famous cap badge symbols and the fascinating legends behind them.

When a Christian encounters the name “Judas,” he or she instinctively thinks of Judas Iskariot, the apostle who betrayed Jesus Christ to his persecutors in the new Testament. When a Jew encounters the name, he or she is just as likely to think of the hero behind the holiday of Hanukkah, Judas Maccabeus.

Judah the Hammer

As with Jesus, the heroic Judas’ most familiarly known moniker is based on Greek, the language of his Hellenistic adversaries. The third of five sons born to Mattathias of the Hasmonean family, priest (cohen) of Modein—the others being Eleazar, Simon, John and Jonathan—his Hebrew name was Yehuda HaMakab, or Judah the Hammer.

Judah was originally a cohen in his own right and the circumstances that thrust him into the military limelight were tragically avoidable. After the death of King Alexander III (the Great) of Macedon in 323 BCE, his vast empire was partitioned into three regions, Macedonia under his direct successors, Egypt under the dynasty of his General Ptolemy and the Seleucid kingdom, based in what is now Syria, administering western Asia, including Judea.

For almost two centuries the Seleucids, like the Persians whose power they had displaced, were content to let the many cultures under their aegis practice their customs and religions without interference, just as long as they swore fealty to the Seleucid king. During that time, however, the art, science and philosophy of Hellenic civilization that Alexander’s heirs brought with them was embraced to differing degrees by subjects either genuinely attracted by them or hoping that doing so would be to their political or social advantage.

That included a good many Jews, who began to mix aspects of their traditional religion with that of their polytheistic rulers. Stricter advocates of the Ten Commandments, including Mattathias, found such theological compromises intolerable and made no secret of it.

Training An Army

Still, the Seleucids—including Antiochus IV Epiphanes (“God Manifest”) when he ascended to the throne on September 9, 175 BCE—continued a policy of laissez-faire, until a series of intrigues, bribery and corruption among the Judean governors and an unsuccessful coup attempt against him led Antiochus to impose Hellenism on all his subjects in 168 BCE, as a measure toward achieving cultural unity.

In regard to Judea, that included forcing the Jews to abandon their dietary laws, work on the Sabbath, and cease circumcising their sons. He also ordered the syncretic Jews to install graven images of Hellenic gods and goddesses in the Second Temple of Jerusalem and had a citadel for a garrison to enforce the new policy.

If Antiochus thought his assimilationist acts would eventually lead to greater homogeneity and thereby more loyalty among his subjects, he would soon learn how wrong he was. In 167 BCE, when a Jewish Hellenist arrived to replace Mattathias as priest of Modein, Mattathias killed him and the Greek soldier accompanying him, destroyed the Greek altar they had brought and then took to the nearby hills with his sons. There they began enlisting and training fellow pietists to form an army to oppose the Seleucid forces.

When they were in towns engaged in their clandestine efforts to gather forces in town, they devised a cover for their subversive activities by playing a game with a spinning top whenever a Greek or known Jewish Hellenist passed by. That top, or dreidel, has been a part of the Hanukkah tradition ever since.

As rebel forces grew, they began what the Seleucids undoubtedly would have labeled a terrorist campaign, striking out from town to town destroying Hellenistic altars, forcing Jewish boys to be circumcised and killing Hellenized Jews.

As Seleucid forces were dispatched to hunt down the rebels and resecure their control over Judea, Judas seems to have come to the fore as a military leader, organizing his followers into a small but growing and disciplined army. Sometime between the springs of 166 and 165 BCE Mattathius died, but his sons carried on for him with a series of dramatic events that raised the Hasmonean revolt to a higher level.

Hit And Run Tactics

At the Battle of the Ascent of Lebanon Judas led a night attack that scattered a column of Samaritan warriors marching to join a Syrian army and personally defeated and killed their commander, Apollonius. Soon afterward, at Beth Horon, Judas and his fighters ambushed the Syrian force in a pass, sending it and its commander, Seron, fleeing.

Then, in September 165, while another, larger Seleucid army commanded by Gorgias was scouring the region for the rebels, Judas and a large detachment slipped into the main camp at Emmaus, overwhelmed its defenders and helped themselves to enough much needed arms, armor and supplies to equip a viable army. By now Judas was being called Makebet (the Hammer), a sobriquet that was later applied to his brothers and ultimately to all of his military followers.

At this point the Hellenized Jews and Judas’ pietists made an attempt to restore peaceful coexistence, but negotiations broke down and Antiochus sent more troops, led by his regent, Lysias into Judea. At the same time, he led an expedition against another, greater threat to his kingdom, the Parthians.

As Lysias moved on Jerusalem he was intercepted by Judas’ still-smaller army at Beth Zur, north of Hebron. What little is known from the biblical accounts suggest that Judas reverted to hit and run tactics, striking at Seleucid units and disengaging before reinforcements could reach them.

The Hammer’s well-practiced skills at guerrilla fighting wore down his opponents while denying Lysias the chance at a decisive blow.

For their own part, the Jews chalked up the Battle of Beth Zur as the decisive victory that directly preceded their retaking of Jerusalem and the cleansing of the Temple, but it was only one of two coinciding factors behind the Maccabean triumph. The other was the arrival in the Seleucid camp that November news that Antiochus had died of disease while campaigning in Armenia, leaving a nine-year-old son, Antiochus V Eupator, as his successor. As regent to the kingdom, Lysias needed to disengage and march his troops back to the royal capital of Antioch to secure the succession. The Hasmonean revolt could—and would—have to wait.

The Hanukkah Miracle

So it was that on the 25th day in the Hebrew month of Kislev (approximately December) of 164 BCE, Judas Maccabeus led his makeshift army into Jerusalem, leaving the Seleucid-built fortified citadel known as the Akra and its garrison of Greeks and Hellenized Jews unmolested but isolated within the city. He focused instead on cleansing the Temple, removing the Hellenistic idols and relighting the candles.

It is here that the sole divine miracle of Hanukkah (“dedication”) appears in the story. With only enough oil to light the Temple for a single day, the Maccabees made do with what they had, but the flames burned through eight nights until more oil was found to keep it lit.

As important as the Temple’s rededication was, Judas’ labors were by no means ended. He faced the responsibilities of administering the lands under his control while anticipating an inevitable backlash from the Seleucids, starting with a long—and unsuccessful—siege of the Akra. Indeed, once Antiochus V was firmly on the throne, Lysias returned to Judea with an army estimated at numbering 50,000 infantry, 5,000 cavalry and 30 war elephants.

Political Troubles

After briefly besieging and taking Beth Zur, he met Judas in open battle at Beth Zechariah. The Jews had no more than 20,000 fighters at hand, but the fourth of Mattiathus’ sons, Eleazar Avaran, thought he recognized Lysias’ war elephant and, hoping he could win the battle by killing the enemy commander as brother Judas had done at the Ascent of Lebanon, he charged into the enemy line and mortally speared the elephant—only to perish when the beast toppled on him. Beth Zechariah ended in victory for Lysias and a personal tragedy for Judas, though he was able to recover from the defeat with most of his army intact.

Lysias next laid siege to Jerusalem, but 163 had been a fallow year and food was a limited commodity for both sides. In addition, political troubles were again brewing in Antioch. Therefore Lysias and Judas negotiated a deal: Lysias signed an agreement to lift Antiochus IV’s anti-Jewish laws, restoring freedom of worship to Judean Hellenist and pietist alike. The corrupt High Priest Menalaus was executed and a more acceptable successor sought out. The Jews in turn lifted their siege of the Akra but retained their arms as Lysias returned to Antioch.

What followed showed that Judea’s woes were not over. Soon after Lysias’ homecoming, the 11-year-old Antiochus V was overthrown and put to death, along with his regent, by his cousin, Demitrius I Soter. Among his first acts in a kingdom surrounded by enemies was to send another army, led by Bacchides, Governor of the Western Regions, to reinstate political control over Judea and install a new high priest, Alcimus, who appealed at least to the moderate pro-Seleucid Jews. Bacchides was then recalled and another commander, Nicanor, took charge as military governor of Judea.

Nicanor and Judas agreed to a truce, with Nicanor even offering Judas a deputy’s position in the government but it did not last long. Mobilizing their forces, the two leaders skirmished at Caphar-salama, a Jewish victory that killed 500 Seleucid troops and compelled Nicanor to withdraw behind the walls of Jerusalem.

While he was there, rumors broke out of Nicanor blaspheming in the Temple and threatened to burn it if Alcimus did not help him to find and arrest Judas. This only raised local rancor and enlistments in the Maccabees’ ranks.

Forging An Independent Kingdom

In late winter (probably March) of 161 BCE Nicanor took to the field again and engaged Judas at Adasa, near Beth-Horon. Once again the loss of a commander decided the battle, in this case the death of Nicanor early in the fighting, after which the Seleucid soldier broke and fled.

News of the disaster at Adasa was accompanied by reports that Judas, a skilled diplomat as well as warrior, had been feeling out the possibilities of alliance with a new power that had been appearing in the Middle East: the Roman Republic. In 160 BCE, while Demetrius led an army east against a rebellious satrap, Timarchus, tyrant of Miletus, he ordered Bacchides back to reassert Seleucid rule over Judea with 20,000 infantry and 2,000 cavalry.

As he marched toward Jerusalem, Bacchides rounded up and massacred pietist Jews in Galilee, probably to set an example for the rebels and as a means of committing Judas to defend his land and people by meeting him in open battle. If that was his stratagem, it worked. As he approached Jerusalem in Nisan (April) of 160 BCE, Bacchides found himself confronted on the flat but uneven terrain of a plateau between Elassa and Berea, near present-day Ramallah, by a comparable force of Maccabees.

Bacchides deployed his forces in classic Seleucid style, with a phalanx of spearmen flanked on both sides by cavalry and a skirmish line of archers and slingers up front. The governor-general himself commanded from the right-flank cavalry, a custom with which Judas was well aware.

The biblical accounts describe the Battle of Elasa as being fought from “morning until evening,” suggesting that both the commanders and their soldiers were evenly matched. At the later stage of the fighting, however, Judas sent all of his cavalry against the horse on the Seleucid right, in man attempt to settle the issue once more by slaying his counterpart.

Bacchides, however, seems to have anticipated such a move and was prepared to exploit it. As Judas’ smaller cavalry unit attacked, the Seleucids gave way in what seemed to be disorder. As the Jews plunged deeper into the Seleucid right, however, Bacchides’ horsemen wheeled about, regrouped and countercharged.

At that critical moment Judas’ cavalrymen found the cavalry from the Seleucid left cutting off their escape route, having galloped behind the infantry line to complete the trap. Although flanked and disintegrating, a great number of Maccabean warriors went down fighting—including their commander. Unlike Eleazar’s, Judas’ remains were somehow recovered and given a proper burial ending with a quotation from King David’s lament to King Saul: “How the mighty have fallen!”

Regrouping from this defeat, Jonathan withdrew across the Jordan River while Bacchides tried to consolidate Seleucid rule. The latter ventured after Jonathan, but their next clash, fought on a Sabbath day, cost him about a thousand casualties. He then set about fortifying the Akra, Jericho, Emmaus, Beth-horon, Beth-el, Thamnata, Parathon, Tephon, Beth-zur and Gazara, but the countryside around those cities and towns remained unsafe for any Greeks or Hellenists and when the general returned to Antioch he found himself being summoned a third time, this time by the Jewish Hellenists. After several further defeats at Simon’s hands Bacchides contacted Jonathan and the two worked out a renewed treaty, with pledges of enforcement, then withdrew for home for the last time.

The story was not quite over and both Jonathan and Simon would be killed in the process, leaving John the last Hasmonean brother standing, but between 160 and 142 BCE Judea was an autonomous element of the Seleucid kingdom and in 141 it became an independent kingdom that in 139 BCE forged an alliance with the Roman Republic…but the consequences of that fateful decision constitute another story.

Remembering a Great military leader

The last great military leader of native-born Jews until the resurrection of the state of Israel in 1947, Judas Maccabeus is credited with preserving traditional Jewish monotheism against both the seductive power of assimilation and the might of an empire…especially when Hanukah rolls around.

Historically, he has found comparison with rebels taking on the odds worldwide throughout the centuries that followed, from Christian Armenian Vardan Marmikonian to Scotland’s William Wallace and Wales’ Owain Glyndwr, to American general George Washington and Haitian revolutionary Toussaint l’Ouverture.

Centuries’ worth of literary, musical and visual artwork has been hammered out in memory of Judas and his brothers. That said, one of the greater metaphoric stretches when it came to drawing historical parallels was Thomas Morell’s libretto to George Frederick Handel’s oratorio, Judas Maccabeus, when it was first publicly performed on April 1, 1747. There, it is the Jacobite Scots Highlanders under Charles Edward Stuart, aka “Bonnie Prince Charlie,” who are cast as the villainous Seleucids and the metaphoric “Conqu’ring Hero” is William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland, whose victory at Culloden on April 16,1746 is praised for “saving” Hanoverian Britain…but whose draconian follow-up indelibly stamped him in Scottish memory as “the Butcher.”

Trust William Shakespeare, however, to catch the irony that others either failed to notice or chose to ignore. In Love’s Labour Lost, Judas is listed among the “Nine Worthies,” but still gets heckled just for having the same first name of that other Judas.

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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In keeping with the medieval tradition of warrior kings leading their armies into battle, King Edward I of England spent most of his long and turbulent reign (1272–1307) in almost constant campaigning, be it in Wales, Scotland, continental Europe or the Holy Land. In October 1297 he had just concluded a papal-brokered armistice with his archenemy, French King Philip IV, amid the Franco-Flemish War when he received shocking news: An English army had suffered a devastating defeat at the hands of Scottish pikemen at Stirling Bridge that September 11, and the victorious Scots had since mounted cross-border raids as far south as Durham. Returning to England in March 1298, Edward established his headquarters in York and set about raising ground and naval forces from every corner of his realm to subjugate the northern rebels.

Edward—dubbed “Longshanks” for his notable height of 6 feet 2 inches—had conquered Scotland in 1296 with customary brutality. The bloodbath that attended his order to sack the fortified Scottish burgh of Berwick-upon-Tweed was appalling even by medieval standards. His subsequent high-handed efforts to strip Scotland of its national identity and oversee it as an English guardianship had only provoked further unrest. By mid-1297 the violence erupted into a full-scale insurgency on either side of the River Forth, led by the highborn Sir Andrew Moray (or Murray) of Petty in the north and the lowborn William Wallace in the south.

To defray the costs of his forthcoming campaign, Edward resorted to the usual feudal methods. He issued military “writs of summons” to English and Scottish nobles, petitioned Parliament for new taxes to fund mercenaries, ordered levies of foot soldiers from Wales, pardoned criminals to help fill the ranks and ordered provisions delivered from Ireland, to which he’d inherited the lordship. It became apparent Longshanks would go to any length to raise funds. In 1290 he issued an edict expelling the entirety of England’s estimated 2,000-strong Jewish population. Under its terms he forfeited any property they left behind and transferred to his account any outstanding debts owed them. The cruel edict added considerably to his coffers.

The army Edward cobbled together at York was the largest invasion force assembled in the British Isles since Roman general Gnaeus Julius Agricola led the conquest of Britain in the 1st century. Longshanks’ army comprised 2,250 heavy cavalry and 12,900 infantry, more than half of whom were in paid service. Scarcely 2,000 of the foot soldiers were English. The rest were from interior Wales and the Welsh Marches (borderlands). Edward esteemed the Welsh in particular as the bravest, most experienced infantry under his command.

Mounted atop a magnificent black charger armored and accoutered from muzzle to hindquarters, Edward led his personal retinue across the Anglo-Scottish border, joined the assembled infantry and cavalry at Roxburgh in early July, and marched north for Edinburgh. There the king, an expert logistician, expected to meet his large convoy of supply ships en route from eastern English seaports. 

As his multinational army pushed north toward central Scotland, Edward found Wallace’s scorched-earth tactics had left little forage, and his troops and horses began to suffer from the scarcity of provisions. Meanwhile, Wallace, in sole command of the Scots after Moray’s death from wounds sustained at Stirling Bridge, also marched his army north, shadowing his foe while wisely avoiding pitched battle. Unaware of the Scottish army’s location, Edward resolutely pressed ahead through Lauderdale and Dalhousie to Kirkliston, just west of Edinburgh, where he halted. Bad weather and contrary winds had dispersed the fleet carrying the vital provisions, leaving Longshanks’ troops on the verge of starvation by the time they encamped.

Though Edward’s army was impressive in scope, the rank and file were undisciplined. The Welsh archers quarreled with Gascon crossbowmen, while a number of English knights threatened to desert and join Wallace. Hoping to regroup and replenish his demoralized troops, the king fell back on the outskirts of Edinburgh, but ongoing desertions and disputes among the English knights, Gascons and Welshmen took a further toll. At one point Welsh troops engaged in a drunken riot. Though quickly quelled by English men-at-arms, the fracas cost the lives of 80 Welsh and 18 English. Edward’s 1298 campaign had essentially stalled, and the Plantagenet monarch remained oblivious to his enemy’s whereabouts.

Weighing his options from the concealed Scottish camp in Callendar Wood south of Falkirk, Wallace realized a set-piece battle against Edward’s formidable host was unacceptable. On hearing of Longshanks’ troubles, he resolved to either launch a surprise night attack on the English camp or harass the rearguard and baggage train if the factious army withdrew. On July 21, however, two traitorous Scottish earls—jealous of Wallace and eager to gain the king’s good graces—warned Edward of Wallace’s intentions and betrayed the location of the Scottish camp near Falkirk, scarcely 15 miles west of the English camp. “Thanks be to God, who hitherto has extricated me from every danger!” the period chronicles have Edward exclaiming. “They shall not need to follow me, these Scots, since I shall go forth to meet them.”

That very afternoon Edward ordered an advance on Falkirk. Though his men remained hungry and low on supplies, they likely spoiled for a fight with the enemy instead of among themselves. Led by Longshanks’ armored cavalry, the English host marched 10 miles and encamped on Burgh Muir, just east of Linlithgow. Arriving late, the army spent the night under arms. “[They] lay down to rest on the ground,” English chronicler Walter of Guisborough recorded, “arranging their shields as pillows and their arms as coverlets. Their horses, too, tasted nothing save hard steel and were tethered each one hard by his lord.” Perhaps falling asleep on night watch, Edward’s page lost control of his lord’s charger, which trod on the sleeping king, breaking two of Longshanks’ ribs and causing a commotion that roused the entire army. Cries went up they were under attack. Though calm was quickly restored, the troops remained on high alert. Seizing on their renewed spirits, Edward pushed through his pain, climbed into the saddle and led a predawn advance on Falkirk. 

As sunrise approached on July 22, the English vanguard observed a body of spearmen on the heights of Redding Muir and assumed it was the main Scottish army. After rapidly forming into battle order, the English advanced upslope and crested the ridge. Finding no sign of the enemy, they halted to pitch a tent as a makeshift chapel on the banks of the Westquarter Burn. While Edward and Anthony Bek, the warrior Bishop of Durham, celebrated Mass, the morning mists cleared, and the English could clearly see the Scots massing on the crest of a ridge just south of Callendar Wood, a mile to the northwest.

Surprised by the sudden appearance of Longshanks’ army, Wallace resolved not to risk a disorderly retreat but to fight a defensive battle in the best possible position. Callendar Wood lay to the Scottish rear, and the hillside before them sloped several hundred yards to the valley floor. Unlike at Stirling Bridge, however, Wallace found no terrain, natural or man-made, that might buttress his defenses. Convinced the English would attack from all sides, he massed his 8,000 pikemen into four huge, roughly oval formations called schiltrons. “The schiltron was a hedgehog formation of grounded spears held together with ropes staked into the ground,” historian Peter Traquair notes. “Not very maneuverable, it was the only defense foot soldiers had against the bulldozer that was a medieval mounted charge. An unmissable target for the English bowmen, the schiltron required protection by mounted troops able to drive off enemy archers.”

“In these circles the [Scottish] spearmen were settled,” Guisborough recounted, “with their lances raised obliquely, linked each one with his neighbor, and their faces turned toward the circumference of the circle.” Some accounts claim the Scots implanted log palisades to their front, but it’s doubtful Wallace had time for any such preparations.

Wallace dispersed his 1,500 bowmen under Sir John Stewart in the gaps between the four schiltrons. Trained in the Selkirk and Ettrick forests, the archers carried longbows made from yew staves that were, contrary to some accounts, equal in every way to those carried by the Welsh and English. The Scots’ chronic weakness in missile weapons was largely due to an acute shortage of men to wield them. The Scottish cavalry, scarcely 500 lances commanded by Sir John’s brother Sir James, High Steward of Scotland, likewise suffered from a crippling shortage of numbers. Committed by the Comyns and other earls who supported the rebellion but were conspicuously absent from the field, the riders comprised lesser nobles and their retinues seemingly not under Wallace’s command. They assembled on the Scottish right, beside and to the rear of that flank’s schiltron, a flawed position that invited a cavalry attack.

Thus deployed on the ridge, the Scots waited stoically for the vaunted English host. Almost the entire flower of Anglo-Norman chivalry was on hand to support Edward. But Longshanks’ gallant knights were unaware that heavy rains had turned a swath of the valley floor into a waterlogged morass wholly unsuited to mounted warfare.

After Mass, Edward coolly suggested pausing to pitch tents and feed the men and horses, none of whom had eaten since setting off the previous afternoon. According to Guisborough, his field commanders cautioned the king against such a provoking display. “This is not safe, Sire, for between these two armies there is nothing but a very small stream.” It could be the overeager knights had simply run out of patience. Perhaps sensing their zeal for combat, Edward deferred to his subordinates. After invoking the Holy Trinity, he ordered the attack.

The English host comprised four battles, or divisions, of cavalry. Led by Roger Bigod, Earl Marshal of England, and the earls of Lincoln and Hereford, the 18 bannerets (knights leading their own troops) and 430 knights and troopers of the vanguard were the first into the fray. Descending Redding Muir, they crossed the upper reaches of Westquarter Burn and headed directly north toward the Scottish line. Shortly after Bigod’s riders crossed Glen Burn, near its confluence with Westquarter Burn, their horses went slipping and sliding across the swampy valley floor, abruptly halting the advance. After some confusion, the re-formed van skirted the western edge of the bog. Continuing uphill, the English knights soon gained the flank of the Scottish right, where Wallace’s cavalry bided their time. Meanwhile, John de Warenne, 6th Earl of Surrey and the loser at Stirling Bridge, led his battle of 15 bannerets and 410 knights and troopers in the wake of the van, wisely skirting the boggy loch to the enemy’s front before also gaining the Scottish right. 

Next to ride out was the battle commanded by Bek, the warrior bishop, numbering two dozen bannerets and 400 knights and troopers. Having also witnessed the van’s discomfiture, his cavalry kept Westquarter Burn to their left and veered eastward around the bog. They had scarcely cleared the obstacle when many of Bek’s leading riders, rash and eager to come to grips with the enemy, spurred their mounts and left their countrymen behind. Rather than attack in piecemeal fashion, Bek ordered the others to await the arrival of Edward’s battle, the largest of the four with 43 bannerets and 850 knights and troopers, shielded by 100 mounted Gascon crossbowmen. Bek’s supremely arrogant deputy, Sir Ralph Bassett, the former English governor of Edinburgh Castle, had no intention of waiting for the king and rudely chided the bishop for his caution. Heedless of Bek’s attempts to restrain them, Bassett and the other glory-seeking knights continued uphill toward the dense masses of Scottish pikemen.

As Bek’s cavalry charged the waiting pikemen on the Scottish left, the ground trembling from the thundering hooves of more than 400 chargers, Bigod’s vanguard challenged the Scottish cavalry on the right. Though they matched the English horse in numbers, the inexperienced Scots were outmatched by Bigod’s heavily armored veteran knights and quickly driven from the field in an unseemly rout. Several contemporary narratives accused the high steward’s cavalry of withdrawing without striking a blow. But a handful of courageous knights did dismount and join the hollow schiltrons to fight afoot.

Having dispatched Wallace’s cavalry with alarming ease, Bigod’s van thundered into the schiltron on the enemy right while Bek’s riders attacked on the left. The tightly packed ranks of Scottish pikemen readily repulsed the ensuing armored onslaught, their bristling masses of iron-tipped 15-foot pikes presenting a seemingly impenetrable barrier. Unable to break through the dense walls of steel, both English cavalry forces fell back in good order, having suffered light losses in men and horses. Mustering another charge, they turned their attention to the vulnerable Scottish archers in the gaps between the static schiltrons. Guisborough described the resulting chaos as the overwhelmed archers fought desperately, clustered around the body of their leader, Sir John Stewart, “who fell by chance from his horse and was killed.” They stood no chance against the armored English riders and mounts. The few surviving Scottish bowmen sought refuge among the ranks of their fellow pikemen. Thus the immobile schiltrons were left isolated and alone, with no means to mitigate the seemingly impossible odds they faced.

Battlefield conditions had changed profoundly to the benefit of the English, and Edward had yet to commit any part of his massive infantry. Recalling his years fighting pikemen in northern Wales, Longshanks knew Wallace’s schiltrons were little more than sitting ducks. Throwing off any remaining caution, he brought his entire force to bear against the beleaguered Scots. After sending his regrouped and refreshed cavalry units against the enemy flanks, Edward advanced his 5,500 Welsh longbowmen and 400 Gascon crossbowmen into line opposite the Scottish front at extremely close range, about 100 yards. He then split his 7,000 spearmen, placing half on either side of the longbowmen. A fearsome sight, the English front numbered nearly 13,000 troops. Longshanks then ordered his missile troops to loose steady, sustained volleys of arrows, crossbow bolts and slingstones.

As they needed both hands to wield their long pikes, Wallace’s men were unable to bear shields in their defense. Most were clad in rough tunics of homespun cloth. Few had helmets or any form of armor to shield them from the unremitting torrent of murderous missiles that rained down on them. The Scots were particularly fearful of English longbow arrows, which were accurate to a range of 200 yards, generated enough force to pierce chain mail and plate armor, and could pin a knight to his horse. From astride their mounts at the center of the English line, Edward and Bek watched in satisfaction as their longbowmen, crossbowmen and slingers fired salvo after salvo into the Scottish ranks. The barrage soon began to tell on the exposed schiltrons. Gaps appeared in the Scottish line, enabling the English cavalry to break through and hack and slash the pikemen at close quarters.

Edward finally sent in his spearmen to fight hand to hand. According to the English scribes of the Lanercost Chronicle, the remaining Scots, though assailed from all sides, “stood their ground and fought manfully.” Inevitably, however, the four shattered schiltrons collapsed, and the survivors broke and ran, grimly pursued by Edward’s horsemen and Welsh spearmen, who killed with abandon. Urged by his lieutenants to flee, Wallace followed them north into Callendar Wood and escaped into the mountains, leaving behind at least 7,000 dead Scotsmen. Though the English lost just two knights, upward of 3,000 English foot soldiers lay dead on the field—a testament to the ferocity with which the Scots fought against insurmountable odds. 

this article first appeared in Military History magazine

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King Edward’s 1298 campaign involved considerable expense, and while it destroyed the power of Wallace, it yielded few other results and didn’t come close to ending the war. Stubbornly determined to force the Scots to acknowledge his lordship, Longshanks led a series of grueling campaigns from 1301 to 1304 that forced the submission of many leading nobles. By mid-1304 Scotland was firmly in his grasp. English troops garrisoned its castles, and order was restored. On having Wallace cruelly executed in 1305, Edward hoped he’d finally cowed the Scots into ceasing hostilities. That hope was shattered in March 1306 when Robert the Bruce, Earl of Carrick and 7th Earl of Annandale, claimed the throne of Scotland, thus resuming the First War of Scottish Independence.

“Edward’s military prowess was such that he might have secured a consensual union of the Celtic regions, had he not repressed them so brutally,” historian Simon Jenkins argues. “As it was, he found himself in the familiar trap of England’s medieval monarchs, encircled by resentful Celts and opportunist French.” Longshanks died of dysentery in 1307 while campaigning against Robert the Bruce, who after two more decades of bitter fighting finally secured Scottish independence.

John Walker is a California-based freelance writer and a Vietnam War veteran. For further reading he recommends Freedom’s Sword: Scotland’s Wars of Independence, by Peter Traquair; In the Footsteps of William Wallace, by Alan Young and Michael J. Stead; and Stirling Bridge and Falkirk, 1297–98, by Peter Armstrong.

The 1066 Battle of Hastings is the most famous engagement in British medieval history, as it raised the edifice of Norman England from the remains of the Anglo-Saxon state. The latter had been decisively defined, along with the subordinate status of Scotland and Wales, in the long lost to history 937 Battle of Brunanburh. 

Britain in the early 10th century was divided and ruled by many kings and lesser factions battling for power. Almost relegated to mythical status, Brunanburh is re-emerging through the groundbreaking research of American historian Michael Livingston, supported by the local Wirral Archaeology group, to verify the battle’s location at Bromborough, north of Chester, where volunteers have unearthed more than 4,000 objects dating from before 950. Referred to in the near contemporary Anglo-Saxon Chronicle as a “never greater slaughter” in the British Isles, this rediscovered battle offers many lessons for the 21st century world. 

WhY was there a battle?

In Britain’s far north the Celts were divided into the kingdoms of Alba (mainly in Scotland), led by Constantine II, and Strathclyde (southwest Scotland, Cumbria and parts of Wales), ruled by Owain ap Dyfnwal. Northern England was ruled by Viking earls, who also ruled much of Ireland under King Olaf Guthfrithson of Dublin. The Anglo-Saxons controlled most of central and southern England under King Athelstan of Wessex, with several subkingdoms, Mercia in particular, under his control but not yet formally united.

Since the late 8th century invading Vikings had encroached southward into Anglo-Saxon territory as the latter consolidated their lands in the south while pushing the Celts farther westward. The situation came to a head in 927 when Athelstan mounted a pre-emptive strike against Jorvik, the Scandinavian kingdom of York. Athelstan’s resulting victory caused great concern to Constantine, who feared the waxing power of the Anglo-Saxons would flood both Celtic and Viking territory. The aging king made frantic diplomatic overtures to his Norse neighbors. This may have included marrying off a daughter to Olaf of Dublin, thus allying with the Norse of both Ireland and Northumbria, as well as with the Celtic Owain of Strathclyde, in an attempt to strike down Athelstan. 

WhO Won the battle?

In 937 the three leaders assembled an army of about 10,000 men, some marching down the northwest coast of England, others arriving from Ireland and the western and northern Scottish isles. Athelstan gathered his own army, also of some 10,000 men, and the forces met for the battle that determined the development of England for the next millennium. 

The fight took place at Brunanburh, probably present-day Bromborough. The Celtic-Norse army likely built timber-fortified trenches, though Athelstan’s men quickly breached them. It remains debatable if it marked the first instance of a British army using cavalry in battle. The Anglo-Saxon victory secured the northern borders of England and contained the Celts to the west. Most important, Athelstan — known since as “the Glorious” — confirmed the unification of Wessex and Mercia, creating the unified kingdom of England that has remained dominant over its historically Celtic neighbors.

Lessons

Good intel is essential. Awareness of the coming attack by the Celtic-Norse alliance enabled Athelstan to adequately prepare his defenses at Brunanburh.

Hit the right target. By sailing around the south coast of England and directly assaulting Athelstan’s power base in Wessex, the Celts and Norse might well have convinced the Celts of south Wales and Cornwall to join the fight.

Consider all proposals. A wedding of Constantine’s daughter and Athelstan might have prevented bloodshed and allowed the unification of Britain as a joint Celtic and Anglo-Saxon state.

this article first appeared in Military History magazine

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Being an inspiration for wireless technology isn’t the kind of heroic achievement that most Viking rulers could claim credit for in their ancient sagas. Yet, centuries after his death, King Harald “Bluetooth” Gormsson has conquered the world — not through military conquest, but through Bluetooth technology named in his honor.   

Who Was Bluetooth?

Bluetooth, who lived somewhere between 910 A.D. and 987 A.D., is believed to have earned his dental epithet from having a dead tooth which was likely bluish or gray in color. As it was Viking custom to give people bynames sometimes based on physical appearances, the name stuck.

Bluetooth united the kingdoms of Norway and Denmark. He was proud enough of this achievement to mention it on a large rune stone, known today as one of the Jelling stones, which stands as both a memorial to his parents and a monument to his own legacy.

Yet Bluetooth was destined for further fame still. IT developers chose his unusual moniker to represent their trademark for technology enabling the short-range wireless connection of electronic devices.

Although his name is literally present everywhere around the globe today, the man himself — or what remains of him — is missing. Where is King Harald buried, and why is it such a mystery?

The Lost Tomb of Bluetooth  

The final resting place of Harald Bluetooth has eluded researchers for many years and has given rise to much debate, in part due to the Vikings’ propensity for travel.

After uniting Scandinavian territories and introducing Christianity to his realm, Bluetooth came to an ignominious end after he was overthrown by his son, Sweyn Forkbeard. German medieval chronicler Adam of Bremen alleged that Bluetooth was wounded in his final battle against his son and died in 986 after retreating to a location believed to be in present-day Poland.

Some historical sources allege that Bluetooth died in a Viking fortress called Jomsborg on the Baltic Sea, but no researchers have been able to firmly pinpoint where Jomsborg was located or whether the place even existed.

While Forkbeard went on to embroil himself in further conflicts and became the first Danish king of England, his ill-fated father fell into obscurity. Adam of Bremen asserts that Bluetooth’s loyal troops transported his body back to Denmark and buried him in Roskilde, where he had built a church and a settlement. While a majority of Danish kings are indeed buried in Roskilde, no one has proven conclusively that Bluetooth’s grave is located there.

Pagan or Christian Burial?

Complicating matters further, the manner of Bluetooth’s burial is also disputed. Although born a pagan, Bluetooth eventually embraced Christianity. Opinions differ on whether Bluetooth would have been buried according to Viking traditions – in a burial mound and surrounded by his possessions – or in a Christian manner, such as in a church vault or churchyard.  

Swedish archaeologist Sven Rosborn, former director of the Malmo City Museum, believes that Bluetooth is buried in Wiejkowo, Poland. In view of the king’s Christianity, Rosborn surmises that he would have been interred in a churchyard.

In spring 2022, Polish researcher Marek Kryda claimed to have discovered the possible location of Harald’s tomb in Wiejkowo using LIDAR (light detection and radar technology). His theory is that Bluetooth is buried in a pagan-style mound beneath a 19^th century Catholic church.

Both researchers have focused on Wiejkowo as the king’s likely burial site due to the discovery of a 10th century golden disc, known as the Curmsun disc, which bears an engraving of his name and was originally found in the church there.

Still An Unsolved Mystery

Despite the recent buzz in news headlines about Wiejkowo as Bluetooth’s final resting place, it is one of many theories that remains unproven, according to Peter Pentz, Viking expert and curator at the National Museum of Denmark.

Pentz described Kryda’s theory as “difficult to assess,” noting there is no evidence as yet to suggest that the mound in Wiejkowo “is a burial mound and, if so, whether it could contain a buried Viking and in this case, King Harald.”

Given the king’s conversion to Christianity — which historical evidence shows had a profound influence on his reign — Pentz is inclined to believe that Bluetooth’s burial was conducted in a Christian manner rather than in accord with Viking traditions.

“Personally, I would probably expect that, in light of the significant Christian marking of the Jelling Stone’s inscription, he was given a Christian burial in a church — perhaps in Roskilde, Zealand, as one of the written sources claims,” said Pentz, adding that it is only a theory. “There are many possibilities.”

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English speakers usually associate the Normans with their 1066 conquest of England, the replacement of Saxon rule with the Plantagenet dynasty and the subsequent effect of Norman rule on English culture, government and language. However, as author and Cambridge scholar Levi Roach explains, there was a great deal more to Norman influence over Europe.

The Normans were originally Vikings who ravaged the lower Seine valley in the early 10th century—that is, until the king of France offered them the land now known as Normandy in exchange for their conversion to Christianity and defense of his realm from other invaders. Over the next three centuries the Normans’ power expanded until they ruled England and Scotland as well as much of France, Italy and the Middle East. By the end of the Middle Ages, however, Norman power was a thing of the past, and Normandy reduced to little more than a French province. The Normans assimilated into whatever realm and culture they happened to rule until, eventually, as in Britain, they were no longer a separate people.

As Empires of the Normans reveals, their impact on Western civilization was profound. They redrew the map of Europe, established new attitudes of law and justice, and their influence did a great deal toward integrating the regions of Europe. This book recounts a story that has received far less attention than it deserves.

Empires of the Normans

Conquerors of Europe
By Levi Roach

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For centuries historians have debated just exactly where the Black Death — the world’s deadliest plague — originated.  

Now, thanks to 14th-century tombstones near Issyk-Kul, a lake in a mountainous area in what is now Kyrgyzstan, scientists claim that they’ve discovered the genesis of the plague that, in the span of eight years, killed 60% of the population in Eurasia.  

Led by Wolfgang Haak and Johannes Krause of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Germany, as well as Philip Slavin of the University of Stirling in Scotland, the scientists described their findings Wednesday in the science journal Nature. 

TRACKING AN ANCIENT KILLER

While some historians believe the origins of the Black Death began in China, near the Caspian Sea or possibly India, it was Slavin who suggested the team search for clues in a Christian cemetery in Kyrgyzstan. 

“I was aware of two Christian cemeteries in Kyrgyzstan and started delving,” he told The New York Times, adding that it was one of his dreams to solve the riddle of the Black Death’s origins 

To Slavin’s surprise — and delight — the presence of Yersinia pestis, the bacteria that causes the Black Death, was found in the teeth pulp found in the exhumed remains of three who had died of “pestilence.”  

The dates inscribed on the tombstones indicated that the Black Death infected a small settlement of traders in 1338 or 1339.

“That brought it to my attention because it wasn’t just any year,” Slavin said. It was 1338, “just seven or eight years before the Black Death came to Europe.” 

Death Comes Unexpectedly

From Europe, North Africa and the Middle East, the Black Death stalked its victims relentlessly.

“The bacteria could be present in people’s homes for between 16 and 23 days before the first symptoms of illness emerged. Death came three to five days later. It was perhaps another week before a community became fully aware of the danger, and by that time it was too late,” wrote the National Geographic UK. “The nodules of a patient’s lymphatic system became infected, showing as swellings in the groin and armpit. These were accompanied by vomiting, headaches, and a very high fever that caused sufferers to shiver violently, double up with cramps, and become delirious.”

Between 1347 and 1351 Europe’s population plummeted from approximately 75 million to just 50 million — roughly 1 in 3 died.

Science Leading the Way

But such discoveries would not have been possible until just over a decade ago.  

Unlike other diseases, the Black Death killed people so quickly that it does not leave any traces on bone.  

It wasn’t until 2011 that the same group that led the latest study stunned archaeologists by being the first to sequence the genome of the plague bacterium. 

Using plague victims from London that had been preserved in the Museum of London, the group of researchers found plague bacteria DNA in the teeth of skeletons.  

The situation was ideal because not only were these victims from a plague graveyard, but the date of their death was known, according to The New York Times. From there, the researchers were able to begin building a macabre DNA family tree of the plague bacteria variants — discovering four different Y. pestis strains. 

They called the sequencing of the genes “the Big Bang” and sought to find where and when it occurred.  

For now, all signs point to Kyrgyzstan and the pulp of teeth for answers.  

On March 26, 1351, in the Duchy of Brittany in western France, two teams of knights, squires and men-at-arms faced off across a field midway between Josselin and Ploërmel castles. Though it was springtime and far from the dog days of summer, sweat streamed down the faces of those assembled. From either side men clad in 30 pounds of armor took the measure of their opposition in anticipation of the coming engagement.

Jean de Beaumanoir, the French governor of Josselin Castle and champion of the House of Blois claim to Brittany, strode out to midfield to formally challenge his rival, Sir Robert Bemborough, the English captain of Ploërmel castle and champion of the House of Montfort claim to the duchy. Each had mustered 30 men on this predetermined day to give battle in what would become known as the Combat of the Thirty. Its outcome would not settle the ongoing War of the Breton Succession but was a question of chivalric honor.

The War of the Breton Succession

The War of the Breton Succession erupted in 1341 after John III, Duke of Brittany, died that April 30 without an heir, but after having named rival successors to his ducal title. One was his niece, Jeanne de Penthièvre, wife of Charles of Blois, the latter a nephew of French King Philip VI. The other was his formerly estranged younger half brother, John de Montfort. With a mercenary army to back him, Montfort gained the support, or at least submission, of the principal Breton towns, as well as control of the ducal treasury. While an assembly of townspeople and minor nobles recognized him as duke that May, he enjoyed only marginal acceptance among the upper nobility.

Courting the military might of the French crown in their effort to wrest Brittany from Montfort, Charles and Jeanne appealed to Uncle Philip for assistance. At the same time Montfort negotiated with English King Edward III for support. France and England had recently signed a truce in the broader Hundred Years’ War (1337–1453), which centered on competing claims over the Duchy of Aquitaine and the French throne itself after the 1328 death of Charles IV without a male heir. The succession crisis in Brittany provided Edward an excuse to resume hostilities and open another front against Philip, further sapping French resources and possibly providing the English a foothold in western France.

this article first appeared in Military History magazine

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Word of Montfort’s negotiations with the English reached Philip, who formally recognized Charles and Jeanne’s ducal claim and furnished them with troops. In early October the king’s nephew led an army of 5,000 French soldiers, 2,000 Genoese mercenaries and a contingent of Bretons against John’s strongholds. Though Montfort had secured Edward’s promise of military aid, it arrived too late. After back-to-back defeats at Champtoceaux on October 26 and Nantes on November 2, John was captured and imprisoned in Paris.

The period following Montfort’s imprisonment has been dubbed the War of the Two Jeannes, as it pitted Bloisists loyal to Jeanne de Penthièvre against Montfortists led in John’s absence by Jeanne de Flandre, his French wife. In the wake of John’s capture the Montfortists lost support and fared poorly, by fall 1342 forfeiting all but the garrisoned port of Brest. The subsequent arrival of promised English forces would expand the internal War of the Breton Succession into a proxy war between England and France. It proved troublesome for both.

In early August 1342 William de Bohun, Earl of Northampton, sailed from Portsmouth with some 1,350 English soldiers in 260 coastal transports, followed days later by 800 men under disaffected Breton noble Robert of Artois. Panicked by the English fleet’s arrival off Brest, Charles broke his siege and fled.

Securing Breton reinforcements that expanded his force to some 2,500 men, Northhampton moved inland to besiege the Bloisist fortress of Morlaix. Though the size of either army remains in debate, Charles and a far larger French army moved to break the siege. The outcome of the September 30 clash proved inconclusive, the English pulling back into the woods, secure from enemy cavalry, and the French largely withdrawing after having suffered steep losses, including 50 knights killed.

A flurry of diplomatic and military activity followed. In January 1343 Pope Clement VI played mediator, securing the Truce of Malestroit in hopes France and England could work out their differences before the pact’s September 1346 expiration. It proved a vain hope, due largely to nonstop partisan fighting between Bloisist and Montfortist factions. Philip’s execution of prominent Montfortist captives in 1344 didn’t help matters. But not even the death of an ailing Montfort in 1345 or the capture of Blois at the Battle of La Roche-Derrien on June 20, 1347, could stop the bloody grind. Though Charles would spend the better part of a decade in English custody, his followers continued the struggle in his stead, as did those of the late Montfort.

The Challenge

Thus it was in the spring of 1351, after years of retaliatory raids against one another—and perhaps out of sheer boredom at the monotonous nature of the conflict—Jean de Beaumanoir issued his challenge to Sir Robert Bemborough, as imagined in “The Combat of the Thirty,” English novelist William Harrison Ainsworth’s 1859 translation of a 14th century Breton ballad:

’Twere best, methinks, adjust our difference in this way
By mortal combat in the field on some appointed day.
Thirty ’gainst Thirty, an you list, together we will fight,
Armed at all points, and on our steeds—and Heaven
defend the right!

Bemborough eagerly accepted the challenge. The rivals settled on a field of contest between Josselin and Ploërmel (roughly 7 miles apart) marked by a solitary tree known as the Chêne de Mi-Voie (Midway Oak). Combatants would adhere to chivalric ideals. All involved were to conduct themselves without deceit or trickery, there would be no reinforcements, and the fight would continue until there emerged a clear victor.

The concept of pre-arranged combat was neither unique to medieval Europe nor unprecedented. Stemming from ancient duels between the champions of opposing armies (think David and Goliath of biblical fame or Achilles and Hector of Trojan War legend), structured combat allowed warring rivals to put their martial mettle on display, either as a prelude or an alternative to full-scale battle. The Combat of the Thirty would epitomize this on a scale larger than that of any known prior contest.

Having agreed on the particulars, Beaumanoir and Bemborough returned to their respective citadels to select men for the tournament. The former’s squad was wholly Breton, comprising 10 knights and 20 squires, while Bemborough chose seven knights and 20 squires and men-at-arms of diverse backgrounds, including 20 Englishmen, six Germans and four Bretons. The combatants armed themselves with a range of fearsome weapons, including falchions (single-edged, singled-handed sabers), lances, battle-axes, mauls and daggers. According to Ainsworth’s translation of the Breton ballad, brawny English knight Sir Thomas Bélifort brought to the fight a “rude mawle [sic]” weighing 25 pounds.

A Spectator Sport?

Word of the forthcoming contest spread throughout neighboring towns and villages, drawing spectators from across the region and lending a festival-like atmosphere to the death match by the oak tree. The Bretons under Beaumanoir were the local favorite to win.

Several period narratives relate the conduct of the contest. Presenting a clean-cut account of chivalric behavior is Jean Froissart’s Chronicles. Froissart (c. 1337–1405) was a French-speaking heroic poet and court historian who interviewed countless witnesses to the signal events of his era, making him the preeminent chronicler of the first half of the Hundred Years’ War. “And when they all had come face to face,” he wrote of the outset of the Combat of the Thirty, “they spoke a little, all 60 of them, and then stepped back a pace, each party to its own side.”

Froissart’s account was clearly intended to capture the very best knightly virtue had to offer, whether French or English in origin, and to persuade readers such ideals were worthy of regard and emulation. In an era of near-constant warfare and rampant pillaging, life was cheap, thus it is plausible he also sought to extend a measure of hope in the codification and conduct of knighthood.

A more Francocentric take on the encounter appears in the poem “The Battle of the Thirty English and the Thirty Bretons,” credited to an unknown Breton. Unlike the idealistic exchange in Froissart’s Chronicles, the language here is more personal and verbally combative. “Where art though, Beaumanoir?” chides the proud Bemborough. “I have thee at default; hadst thou been here, full speedily discomfited thou’dst been.” Answering his rival, the humble Beaumanoir rises above the petty insults. “We hear you well, me and my company. If it please the King of Glory and St. Mary and the good St. Yves, in whom I have great faith, throw the dice, don’t hold back. The luck will fall on you, your life will be short.” Such banter seems more realistic of seasoned warriors who have killed for king and country. Though their true discourse is impossible to know, it likely fell somewhere between the two retellings.

Their medieval trash talking done, the combatants returned to their respective sides to await the signal to engage. Beaumanoir and Bemborough had agreed to the appointment of what amounted to referees. These appointees would commence the contest, call out breaks for food, wine or medical care and generally ensure the integrity of the engagement.

With the opponents primed, weapons in hand, the signal was given, and the rival hosts raced toward one another and collided. “Like bolts into the fray they rush[ed],” wrote Froissart, “the shock…fierce and dread.”

A “Halftime” Break

The field was soon obscured in a flurry of blood and sweat as participants stabbed and swung swords, daggers, lances, hammers and mauls in efforts to cripple or kill their opponents. Early in the engagement a Frenchman was killed, but his compatriots held to their chivalric code and stood their ground. The engagement continued unabated for several hours until thirst and exhaustion forced a break from the fighting. By that point the Bretons had suffered four dead, the English two. The anonymous Breton poet recounted their hospitable “halftime”:

Wearied at length with such great toil,
they on a truce agreed,
And for a while repose they took,
whereof all stood in need.
With good wine of Anjou full soon
their thirst they did allay,
And thus refreshed the deadly strife
they recommenced straightway.

Having drained their wineskins, bound their wounds and caught their breath, the bruised and bloodied knights resumed their savage contest to the delight of spectators. As the tempo of battle picked up, the situation looked grim for the Bretons, who lost two more killed and three captured, leaving scarcely two dozen on the field. Sensing victory at hand, Bemborough heaped insults on Beaumanoir, but his taunts had an unintended effect. Rising to his lord’s defense, Breton squire Alain de Keranrais lanced the haughty Bemborough right between the eyes, killing him on the spot. But as the French had earlier in the contest, the English closed ranks, showing no sign of retreat. It was at that decisive moment Breton squire Guillaume de Montauban leapt on his charger and rode straight into the English ranks. Attacking “with lightning speed,” he knocked down and trampled scores of enemy knights, squires and men-at-arms. Though his mounted charge may have represented a breach of etiquette, the outcome proved such a crushing blow that the English could not carry on and effectively capitulated.

With that the bloody tournament on the field of contest between Josselin and Ploërmel drew to a close. Beaumanoir emerged victorious at the cost of at least six dead, although there is confusion as to the exact number, while the English lost nine killed, including Bemborough. The surviving Englishmen did not flee but surrendered to the victors, and those who could still walk were marched into captivity at Josselin Castle.

The tournament had no effect on the War of the Breton Succession, nor was that the intention of its participants. For them it was a matter of honor, pure and simple. The war dragged on until Sept. 29, 1364, when Charles of Blois was killed at Auray in battle against a victorious John IV, son of John of Montfort. The subsequent Treaty of Guérande recognized the Montfort claim on the Duchy of Brittany, thus ending the long and grueling war.

The full motivations behind the Combat of the Thirty will likely never be known. Was it solely an exercise in chivalry? Or was the intent more mundane, perhaps to rally local Bretons around the French faction while demonizing the English? Whatever the reasoning, the idealized engagement between chivalric factions showcased men largely conducting themselves with honor and courtesy—even in the face of death.

Naming a part to stand in for the whole — that’s metonymy, as in “suit” for executive, or “Washington” for the United States government. The veneration of parts of saints, or relics, is a funerary version of metonymy. There’s a somewhat parallel phenomenon for military commanders. Meet five famous people from history remembered with a body part.

1. The arm of Stonewall Jackson

While Confederate general Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson was preparing his troops on the evening of May 2, 1863, near Chancellorsville, Virginia, he was struck by friendly fire that led to his left arm being amputated. The Rev. Beverley Tucker Lacy, who acted as chaplain, took the severed arm to Ellwood Manor, his brother’s nearby plantation, and buried it in the family cemetery — with a full Christian ceremony.

Eight days later, while waiting for a train to Richmond, 39-year-old Jackson died of pneumonia in nearby Woodford, in a small office building on the Fairfield Plantation. That site is now managed by the National Park Service as the Jackson Death Site.

As for his arm, Jackson’s wife refused an offer to reunite the arm with the general, and rumor has it that Union soldiers repeatedly dug up the general’s arm and reburied it. A granite marker today marks “Arm of Stonewall Jackson, May 3, 1863” at the approximate spot of its burial in the graveyard at Ellwood Manor, which is now owned and operated by Friends of Wilderness Battlefield.

2. The boot of Benedict Arnold

To honor the centennial of the American Revolution and promote reconciliation following the Civil War, the Saratoga Monument Association got busy erecting monuments marking the critical Patriot victory over the British at Saratoga. A mile from where British general John Burgoyne surrendered his troops on Oct. 17, 1777, a 155-foot-tall granite monolith now honors Continental Army generals Horatio Gates and Philip Schuyler, along with Col. Daniel Morgan in niches at three corners of its base.

But the niche in the fourth corner remains empty, a repudiation of Benedict Arnold, the talented American general who led a daring charge and turned back British forces at Saratoga, but later defected to the British.

More enigmatic is the so-called Boot Monument, depicting a boot, a two-star epaulet of a major general, and a laurel leaf atop a howitzer. It’s tellingly located where Arnold was shot in his left thigh during battle. The dedication reads: “In memory of the most brilliant soldier of the Continental Army who was desperately wounded on this spot, the sally port of Burgoyne’s great [western] redoubt 7th October 1777 winning for his countrymen the decisive battle of the American Revolution and for himself the rank of Major General.”

3. The leg of Antonio López de Santa Anna

The first time that Mexican general and former president Antonio López de Santa Anna lost a leg was in 1838 in Veracruz, during a brief conflict with France over the treatment of French citizens residing in the country. He honored the lost limb with a burial in Mexico City and was fitted with a cork prosthetic. In 1844, however, Mexican citizens angry at his rule dug up his lower left leg and dragged it up and down the streets.

Santa Anna lost his artificial leg — again, near Veracruz — in the Battle of Cerro Gordo on April 18, 1847. In one of his many stints as president of Mexico, he had stepped down to serve in the Mexican-American War. After he had to hastily flee a campsite without his leg as U.S. troops approached, soldiers from Illinois took the prosthetic, used it as a baseball bat, and displayed it in a peep show. It is now among the artifacts in the Illinois State Military Museum in Springfield, Illinois.

Mexico has asked for its return. Illinois has refused.

4. The Leg of Dan Sickles, the First Person to Use the Insanity Defense

A congressman from New York City and Union general, Sickles was crippled on the evening of the second day of battle at Gettysburg, July 2, 1863, when a cannonball shattered his lower right leg.

He didn’t get to keep it. A year earlier, U.S. Surgeon General William Hammond had ordered medical officers to send specimens, notes and artifacts of battlefield trauma to what would become the National Museum of Military Medicine, in Maryland. Sickles himself submitted his amputated leg in a metal box bearing a note: “With the compliments Major General D.E.S., United States Volunteers.”

Hammond’s people repaired Sickles’ limb to highlight the complex fractures, and the tibia-and-fibula specimen was put on display — Sickle was said to visit it, with guests, regularly.

Sickles’s greater claim to fame is that he was the first person in the United States to plead temporary insanity in defense against a murder charge. On Feb. 25, 1859, Sickles shot Philip Barton Key — Francis Scott Key’s son — who was having an affair with Sickles’s young wife, Teresa Bagioli Sickles. After a sensational trial, the jury delivered a verdict of  not guilty.

5. The Heart of Richard I “Lionheart”

The first of England’s three King Richards died, probably of sepsis, due to a poorly treated arrow wound suffered to his left shoulder while attacking a castle on March 26, 1199, in Châlus, France. He wasn’t wearing chainmail. As was then customary, his body, entrails and heart were separated for burial in different places. The heart of 41-year-old Richard the Lionheart, as he was known, was buried in Notre-Dame Cathedral at Rouen, 329 miles from Châlus and headquarters for the English occupation of Normandy.

 In 1838, a lead box containing his desiccated heart was found during cathedral renovations, bearing the Latin words “HIC IACET COR RICARDI REGIS ANGLORUM,” or “Here is the heart of Richard, King of England.”

In 2013, scientists analyzed the heart, which had by then turned to powder, and found that it had been wrapped in linen and buried with a variety of substances to preserve it, including myrtle, daisy, mint, creosote, mercury and frankincense. (And, no, the heart was not actually leonine.) Richard’s heart was then reinterred in the cathedral in Rouen.

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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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The cap badge is a special part of British Army headdress that took shape in the late 1800s and continues to be worn today. Each regiment of the British Army has a rich historical lineage filled with accomplishments and traditions reflected by these unique badges.

Cap badges have a long and complex history. The concept behind their creation dates back to the Middle Ages, when noblemen used various heraldic insignia, colors and symbols to identify themselves and rally troops under their command on chaotic medieval battlefields. In 1645, Oliver Cromwell’s New Model Army introduced red coats and silver uniform badges to Parliamentarian soldiers which created newfound unity among previously diverse local troops. In years following, regiments were privately raised and funded by colonels, who designed their own insignia. In 1751, King George II issued a Royal Warrant in an attempt to bring regimental symbols under royal control; however, this effort was not entirely successful. In 1806, regimental devices began to be regulated by an Inspector of Regimental Colours, an office controlled since then by the heraldic College of Arms. The ultimate approval of designs, mottoes and crests worn in the army has since rested under the authority of the British monarchy.

How british cap badges stay unique

Despite being overseen by royal authority, regiments were allowed to retain their individuality. Indeed, the British Army has shown an exceptional ability to preserve what might be called the “birthright” of individual regiments despite amalgamations and changes made over time.

Every cap badge is intended to embody the essence of its regiment. The anatomy of a cap badge can include:

• Symbols or wording representing battle honors
• Ancient or heraldic imagery
• A motto (often in Latin, but also in other languages such as English, German, or French)
• Symbols denoting the duty or expertise of a particular regiment
• Mythological figures or beasts

So how did regimental insignia come to be worn on caps? During the 1800s, the British Army underwent a military fashion crisis that pitted style against practicality. Average soldiers endured a changing series of conspicuous headpieces including shakos, spiked cloth helmets modeled after the uninviting German Pickelhaube and even an infamous, mushroom-shaped forage cap known as the Brodrick. The Brodrick was universally despised by wearers due to its unflattering appearance—so much so that a 1906 news report claimed that one British soldier committed suicide due to his humiliation at having to wear it. During this period of wardrobe upheaval, the army realized it was possible to display regimental crests on helmet plates. This was done and eventually crests came to be displayed on caps.

When did british soldiers First wear Cap badges?

The first cap badges were worn by British soldiers in 1897 and conformed to a general style in 1898. The advent of khaki service dress brought with it a variety of peaked khaki caps, which tended to be more practical, comfortable and pleasing to the eye. At last, the army had developed a viable solution to the hat crisis—and had also found a way to place an identifying regimental mark on soldiers’ headgear. This evolution resulted in the standard modern British Army cap badge.

During World Wars I and II, the majority of cap badges were made from copper-alloy metal, with many “bimetal” versions also made from brass and white metal. Due to metal shortages during World War II, the British resorted to producing cap badges from plastic. These are known as plastic economy badges.

Cap badges became a source of pride for soldiers. With elegant designs echoing medieval heraldry, the badges provide a visible connection to a soldier’s unique regiment, with all its glory, quirks, and traditions. The badge bridges the soldier’s own service with the heroism of predecessors in past wars. Regimental insignia on the cap badge has provided soldiers with a sense of belonging to a distinctive, yet shared, British tradition. Cap badge designs have also often been reproduced as “sweetheart badges” to be worn by loved ones.

MOnty’s cap badges

During World War II, Bernard Law Montgomery—the first British general to wear battledress—became famous for wearing the regimental cap badges of soldiers under his command as a way of identifying with his troops and showing pride in their achievements. Montgomery’s unorthodox manner of wearing cap badges did not conform to army dress regulations and was disapproved of by military officials, but he won his cap badge battle.

Montgomery’s example bears witness to the fact that cap badges are versatile and can be worn on not only on peaked caps, but a variety of other military headdress including berets and slouch hats. Cap badges are also worn on turbans by Sikh service members.

A distinctive sight during both world wars, cap badges continue to be worn by soldiers in the United Kingdom and Commonwealth nations today.

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There have been numerous times throughout history when battles have coincided with major holidays or simply steamrolled through days and nights that would otherwise have been festive. Although it would be an impossible task to chronicle all of them, Historynet has made a selection of some particularly memorable battles that occurred on holidays.

1. Cold christmas: washington crosses the delaware

On Dec. 25, 1776, Hessian forces celebrating Christmas in Trenton, New Jersey, were treated to an unforgettable holiday surprise when Continental Army Gen. George Washington and his forces crossed the Delaware River by night and attacked the next morning. The Hessians surrendered, and the inspiration for Emmanuel Leutze’s famous 1851 painting “Washington Crossing the Delaware” was born.

2. not that kind of easter egg hunt: marines land on okinawa

On April 1, 1945 — both Easter Sunday and April Fool’s Day that year — the first 60,000 U.S. Army and Marine troops stormed ashore on Okinawa, with 120,000 more troops and the Fifth Fleet backing them up.

3. july fourth fireworks: saladin defeats the second crusade

Admittedly, it was several centuries before Americans began celebrating their Independence Day with barbecues and fireworks, but on July 4, 1187, Saladin destroyed the Second Crusade at the Horns of Hattin, setting the stage for his retaking of Jerusalem in October.

4. no valentine’s day roses for spain: the british win twice

On Valentine’s Day, Feb. 14, 1780, British forces under Adm. Sir George Rodney defeated a Spanish squadron off Cape St. Vincent. On the same day — and at the same location — years later in 1797, the British under Adm. Sir John Jervis won a more remarkable victory over the Spanish, in which a certain Capt. Horatio Nelson got noticed.

5. bombs, not bunnies: north vietnam’s easter offensive

On March 30, 1972, North Vietnam launched the Spring-Summer Offensive (Chien dich Xuan he 1972), which became known to Americans as “the Easter Offensive.” Attacking in relentless waves, the communists aimed to overrun the entirety of South Vietnam in one sweep, but South Vietnamese troops supported by U.S. air power held them off. Additionally President Richard Nixon hit North Vietnam with a campaign called Operation Linebacker I.

6. nixon’s big bag of coal: the christmas bombings

In December 1972, Nixon, frustrated with lack of progress in negotiations with North Vietnam, unleashed Operation Linebacker II, also known as “the Christmas Bombings,” to exert pressure on communist leadership. The operation took a heavy toll in human lives and remains the subject of controversy.

7. unholy holy day: the yom kippur war

On Oct. 6, 1973, Egypt and Syria launched attacks on Israel on the Jewish holy day of Yom Kippur. The attacks marked the beginning of the Yom Kippur War, which saw a counteroffensive launched by Israel and an eventual ceasefire on Oct. 25. Given that the conflict also coincided with Ramadan, it has also been called “The Holy Day War.”

8. new year’s FRAY: the battle of galveston

On New Year’s Day in 1863, Confederates swept to victory at the Battle of Galveston, courtesy of Maj. Gen. John Bankhead Magruder. Magruder, nicknamed “Prince John,” was also known for his devious cunning in duping Union Gen. George McClellan into believing Confederate forces were stronger than they actually were during the 1862 Peninsula Campaign — although how easy it was to spook the infamously skittish Gen. George McClellan remains open to interpretation. At war’s end, Magruder distinguished himself by fleeing to Mexico.

9. boxing day broadsides: the british sink the scharnhorst

On Boxing Day, Dec. 26, 1943, capital ships traded broadsides for the second-to-last time as the British Royal Navy caught and sank the German battlecruiser Scharnhorst during the Arctic campaign at the Battle of the North Cape

10. independence day backfire: the battle of helena

On July 4, 1863, the Confederates tried and failed to divert Union forces from Vicksburg with the Battle of Helena in Arkansas, and instead brought about an epic failure. Vicksburg surrendered on the same day and the battle effectively backfired on the Confederates, opening the road to Little Rock to the Northerners.

11. new year’s eve irresolution: the battle of the barents sea

On New Year’s Eve on Dec. 31, 1942, the British inflicted an embarrassing thrashing on the Germans in the Battle of the Barents Sea. In the sublimely understated words of British Adm. John “Jack” Tovey: “That an enemy force of at least one pocket battleship, one heavy cruiser and six destroyers … should be held off for four hours by five destroyers, and driven from the area by two 6-inch cruisers is most creditable and satisfactory.”

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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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The 1325 War of the Bucket traces its origins to 1075, when a power struggle between the papacy and the Holy Roman empire degenerated into warfare. Although the initial war between the papal (Guelph) and imperial (Ghibelline) factions was settled in 1122, conflict persisted over the next four centuries among the city-states of northern Italy.

By the outset of the 14th century the Guelphs were dominant, but their power soon dissipated through factionalism as they subdivided into “Black” and “White” Guelphs. That in turn enabled a resurgence in Ghibelline power. Rancor grew between the longtime rival Ghibellines of Modena and Guelphs of Bologna—punctuated by cross-border raids and the random beheading. According to one oft-repeated legend, hostilities peaked one night in 1325 when an enterprising band of Modenese crept into Bologna and made off with the oaken bucket from the municipal well. Adding insult to injury, Modenese officials then put the pilfered pail on display in their palazzo comunale (city hall).

Such an affront to Bolognese pride and Guelph prestige could not go unanswered. Officials demanded the bucket’s return, and when Modena refused, the Bolognese declared war. They invaded with an army of some 30,000 infantry and 2,000 cavalry, including Guelph contingents from throughout northern Italy. Pope John XXII himself took a hand, declaring the chief magistrate of Modena a heretic. The pope is also said to have led one of the Guelph contingents against Modena—doubtless hoping to increase the Vatican’s coffers with a portion of the spoils.

Although able to assemble only 5,000 foot and 2,000 horse, the Modenese army largely comprised professional German troops, while their Bolognese opponents were untrained militia and assorted rabble. The latter’s incompetence factored large in the forthcoming clash.

this article first appeared in Military History magazine

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On November 13 the Modenese confronted the Bolognese outside the town of Zappolino. The battle lasted two hours, each side inflicting about 1,000 casualties on the other before the Bolognese lost their nerve and broke off combat. Their retreat degenerated into a rout. It was said that after chasing the Bolognese back within their city walls, the Ghibellines taunted the Guelphs by staging a palio—a pocket decathlon of sorts—in plain view. In a variation on the bucket myth, the Modenese stole the pail from a nearby well after the palio.

Among the largest battles fought in medieval Europe, Zappolino involved more troops than were present at the 1066 Battle of Hastings. But while it did much to restore Ghibelline fortunes in northern Italy, it failed to resolve the Guelph/Ghibelline dispute, which dragged on another two centuries.

The War of the Bucket petered out when the Modenese could not take Bologna, whose inhabitants remained safe, if humiliated, inside the city walls. In the end the rivals signed an armistice, but one item remained in limbo. To this day the bucket remains on display in Modena’s palazzo comunale, much to the chagrin of the Bolognese. 

• A handful of pros can prevail over many amateurs. The Ghibellines had German knights. Bologna’s dependence on a horde of local militia proved more liability than asset.
• It pays to contain the carnage. After routing the Bolognese, Modenese forces refrained from bloody reprisals, merely humiliating their foes. That paid off when the war ended and money changed hands.
• Fame and farce sometimes go hand in hand. In 1622 the War of the Bucket served as grist for a mock-Homeric poem by Alessandro Tassoni entitled “The Rape of the Bucket.” The comic epic in turn provided fodder for a 1772 opera, composed by no less a figure than maligned maestro Antonio Salieri.

1066: A Guide to the Battles and the Campaigns, by Michael Livingston and Kelly DeVries, Pen and Sword Military, Barnsley, U.K., $24.95

American military historians Michael Livingston and Kelly DeVries present a lavishly illustrated and authoritatively written guidebook detailing the battles and campaigns of the most decisive year in British history. Drawn from a series of Medieval Warfare magazine articles published in 2017, 1066 is supported by a compact bibliographic essay, a thorough index, six maps and 107 illustrations. These last include on-site photos taken by the authors as well as 32 images from the Bayeux Tapestry (really an embroidery), the 230-foot-long 11th century epic scroll that depicts the Norman conquest, culminating with the Battle of Hastings.

Following an introductory chapter on the history of Anglo-Saxon England, the five chapters relate the course of the 1066 campaign with narrative text and a related tour itinerary. The tours support the theme of each chapter, starting with Norman sites associated with William the Conqueror (including Falaise and Caen) and continuing to places tied to English traitor (and brother to King Harald Godwinson) Tostig, who led the Norwegian Vikings to their monumental defeat at Stamford Bridge outside York. Next follow the Norman landing site on the southern English coast at Pevensey, nearby Hastings battlefield and Battle Abbey, and, finally, William’s victorious march via Dover to London, culminating with his coronation on Christmas Day. Throughout text blocks address such period topics as “consanguinity” and “oath-breaking.”

The authors argue that prior to Hastings, the most famous battle in English history was the largely forgotten triumph of King Athelstan over the Vikings, Scots and Britons at Brunanburh in 937, noting that the latter was fought for the existential survival of England while the former was an act of political vengeance that ended it. They also examine the overshadowed victory at Stamford Bridge that September, where the combatant armies (numbering some 13,000 each) were twice the size of those at Hastings a month later. Despite minor errors, such as misdating the reign of Kings Alfred the Great and Ethelred the Unready, this well-designed book is a delightful addition to the body of literature on the Norman conquest.

—William John Shepherd

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