Those who study warfare will inevitably run into the so-called “great man theory” of history. Simply put, it denotes the study of individual leaders and their abilities. In earlier times, scholars adhered to this school of thought as explaining the entirety of military history to the myopic exclusion of all other factors.

Over time the “great man theory” became less in vogue, and in the present day is looked upon by many scholars as nonsense; they choose to interpret military history purely through the lenses of more abstract factors such as society, technology, gender or economy, for example.

Give the ‘Great Men’ A Chance

While it goes without saying that military leaders can neither exist nor function in a void of social, technological or economic factors, I feel it is worth pointing out that the “great men of history”—notable male leaders, that is—deserve a fairer hearing.

Today, historical focus on notable men tends to be regarded in a dismissive manner, like something old-fashioned or awkward. It seems to me that this is partly due to the fact that the leaders being studied are men, and mostly because many people have apparently lost belief in the potency of individual human achievement. New trends in scholarship suggest that there has been too much focus on men in war history altogether. That is a gross oversimplification. While it is true that the roles of women have been overlooked, that does not make the achievements of men in military history any less deserving of attention.

Importance of Leadership

What is manifest in the lives of the “great men” is a quality universal to all human beings: the power of the individual to change world events. Social factors and technology make for interesting studies but these arenas do not shape themselves. People need leaders, and leaders don’t simply materialize out of nowhere. They come from among us. It is worth looking at who they were, what they did and how, and above all, whether we consider them to have been effective or not. Only by doing so can we educate ourselves.

Why is such an education important? The world is suffering from an acute leadership crisis. I believe there is currently a dearth of good male role models for young people. This deficit is real and troubling. However, there is another critical factor producing this discord. There is a complete lack of focus and discussion in society on the qualities that make good leaders and on the true potential of individuals.

Political and popular culture today encourage us to think in terms of groups with rigidly codified principles of belonging that seem to predestine our behavior, instead of encouraging us to recognize our individual ability to choose our own destiny and change the world around us. 

Need For Future Leaders

This magazine contains a diverse array of military leaders. They were and remain controversial. Whether we decide to admire or dislike them, their actions are worth studying. We at Military History Quarterly (MHQ) invest time in evaluating leadership. In my book “Bernard Montgomery’s Art of War,” and series about Erwin Rommel, I analyze these two battlefield captains. My colleague Jerry Morelock has delivered a masterful study of military leadership in his excellent book, “Generals of the Bulge: Leadership in the U.S. Army’s Greatest Battle,” which tackles competent and incompetent leadership in one of the U.S. Army’s most complex battles. We believe these studies will be of use to future leaders.

It is a fallacy to think that the destinies of “great men” of military history, or leaders of any kind, are written in the stars and that we who read about them are mere mortals who have no hope of ever changing the world for the better. I close with an excerpt from the poem, “The Man From the Crowd,” by Sam Walter Foss. The poem is worth reading in whole; in it, Foss illustrates how people tend to fall into set patterns of behavior, while a leader will show willingness to break the mold and stand out to meet a challenge or fulfill a call to action.

He reminds us that the world needs great men. So let us not hesitate to continue to study and reflect on the lives, strengths, weaknesses and decisions of notable men in military history. 

                     
“Men seem as alike as the leaves on the trees,
As alike as the bees in a swarming of bees;
And we look at the millions that make up the state
All equally little and equally great,
And the pride of our courage is cowed.
Then Fate calls for a man who is larger than men—
There’s a surge in the crowd—there’s a movement—and then
There arises a man that is larger than men—
And the man comes up from the crowd.…

And where is the man who comes up from the throng
Who does the new deed and who sings the new song,
And makes the old world as a world that is new?
And who is the man? It is you! It is you!” 

this article first appeared in military history quarterly

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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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One of the most iconic paintings to depict the horrors of war is Francisco Goya’s The Third of May 1808, which depicts an incident during the Peninsular War against Napoleon in Spain.The nighttime scene of a group of Spanish civilians facing execution by a French firing squad was remarkable for its time, being utterly devoid of the patriotic glorification of war that characterized most contemporary war art. Goya based the painting on reprisals the French army carried out against citizens of Madrid in the wake of the Dos de Mayo Uprising against Napoleon’s occupation forces.

When French troops were attacked by supporters of the deposed Spanish royal family, the French commander Marshal Joachim Murat posted broadsides around the city proclaiming: “The population of Madrid, led astray, has given itself to revolt and murder. French blood has flowed. It demands vengeance. All those arrested in the uprising, arms in hand, will be shot.” Because “arms in hand” was interpreted to mean any person found with scissors, pocketknives, or shears, numerous innocent civilians were summarily shot without trial in the roundups that the French carried out in reprisal after the uprising. As many as 700 Spanish citizens were killed in the revolt and its aftermath.

Vengeance in War

Military reprisals against civilian populations have occurred throughout thousands of years of recorded history. Genghis Khan’s Mongols are said to have massacred the entire population of the Persian city of Nishapur in 1221 in reprisal for the killing of the Khan’s son-in-law during the siege. The death toll, according to contemporary chroniclers, may have been more than 1.5 million men, women, and children.

During the Peasants’ Revolt against Egyptian conscription policies in Palestine in 1834, Egyptian troops committed mass rapes and killed nearly 500 civilians when they captured the town of Hebron in their campaign to put down the uprising. When imperial Qing forces recaptured Guangdong province during the Taiping Rebellion in 1853, they massacred nearly 30,000 civilians a day. According to some histories, the total death toll from unrestrained reprisals in that province alone amounted to approximately a million people.

After the Prussian army invaded France during the Franco-Prussian War in 1871, territory under Prussian occupation quickly felt the harsh hand of military rule, and reprisals against the local population were part of the Germanic policy of military domination. When the regular formations of the French army went down in defeat, local citizen militias organized as francs-tireurs initiated a low-intensity guerrilla war against Prussian forces. In retaliation, the Prussians not only summarily executed any captured francs-tireurs, but also rounded up and executed numbers of civilians unfortunate enough to reside in the vicinity of those attacks.

20th Century Conflicts

With this experience in mind, at the onset of the First World War the German army was predisposed to harsh treatment of civilians in its area of operations. In 1914, German infantry burned the Belgian town of Leuven and shot 250 civilians of all ages in retaliation for attacks on German soldiers. Hundreds more Belgian citizens in the towns of Dinant, Tamines, Aarschot, and Andenne were killed in of the reprisals.

In military history of the 20th century, Nazi reprisal operations against civilians during the Second World War are frequently cited as extreme examples of reprisal as a war crime, to the point that the very word “reprisal” is almost inextricably linked to the German military in that conflict. However, it remains an undeniable fact that even nations usually regarded as being outspoken champions of lawful warfare have stubbornly resisted the idea of completely giving up the option of carrying out reprisals, even if they did not often resort to such action in practice.

Reprisal was long regarded as an indispensable weapon in the arsenal of a nation’s ability to wage and win wars; near universal condemnation of military reprisals as a legitimate tactic is a relatively recent development in international laws of war. Looking back at Nazi war crimes during the Second World War, it is important to distinguish between the types of war crimes. The Nazi effort to exterminate Europe’s Jewish population was perhaps the most horrific example of state-sponsored genocide. On the other hand, Nazi policies such as the Commissar Order of June 6, 1941, and the Commando Order issued a year later on Oct. 18, 1942, both ordered the summary execution of all enemy combatants of certain specific type and were criminal under international laws of war because they were illegal orders. When it came to reprisals, the German military took a longstanding concept of warfare accepted by most nations and transformed it into something that far transgressed the original idea of mutual restraint articulated in extant laws of war. The way in which German forces conducted military reprisals graphically illustrate the danger that faced any nation that clung to the idea that reprisal was a legitimate tactic of war.

Defining War Crimes

The reasons why reprisals continued to be defended in laws of war as long as they did, even if most nations were careful to describe them as a measure of last resort, was because they were believed to be necessary in two particular tactical situations: to respond to an enemy’s violation of the laws of war, a response in kind in order to force one’s foe back into lawful belligerency; and to retaliate against an elusive, irregular enemy who could not otherwise be engaged by conventional means of combat.       

These were exactly the arguments made in both American and British concepts of laws of war well into the 20th century. As the American Rules of Land Warfare on the eve of the Second World War stated “…commanding officers must assume responsibility for retaliative measures when an unscrupulous enemy leaves no other recourse against the repetition of barbarous outrages.” The British Manual of Military Law of the same era declared that reprisals “are by custom admissible as an indispensable means of securing legitimate warfare.”

What neither code stipulated, however, was any measure of proportionate response. As the German military demonstrated all too often between 1939 and 1945, any doctrine that allowed reprisal without explicitly linking its implementation to limited, proportionate response was a recipe for the worst kinds of atrocity. In 1948 the United Nations War Crimes Commission suggested that one reason why the Second World War saw such flagrant violations of previously existing laws of war was perhaps because “the institution of reprisals which, though designed to ensure the observance of rules of war, have systematically been used as a convenient cloak for disregarding the laws of war…” That accurately described the German use of reprisals during the Second World War. Almost immediately from the beginning of Nazi occupation of conquered territories during the war, it was clear that reasonable restraint and proportionate response would be completely ignored. In German reprisal operations, regardless of whether the action was carried out by the SS or Wehrmacht units, restraint was never in evidence.

When French Resistance operatives assassinated a German naval cadet in Paris in 1941, Nazi occupational authorities put up posters all over the city declaring an official policy stating that 10 French citizens would be executed for every German soldier killed. Even that arbitrary limit was meaningless, because when a senior German officer was killed a short time later, the Germans seized 50 French civilians at random and shot them all, warning that if the assassins were not identified another 50 Frenchmen would be executed. When the deadline passed, the Germans shot another 50 civilians. In that instance, regardless of the stated reprisal policy of ten to one, the ratio of lives destroyed was 100 to one, each an innocent civilian who had no connection to the act that precipitated the reprisal.

Reprisal on the notional scale of 10 to one occurred in other Third Reich reprisals. The same calculation was used after a partisan bomb in Rome on March 23, 1944 killed thirty-two people, most of them members of the SS Police Regiment Bozen. The local German commander, Luftwaffe Generalmajor Kurt Mälzer, ordered that 330 Italians were to be executed in reprisal for the attack, a number that represented 10 victims for every person killed in the bombing (even though five people killed in the incident were themselves Italian civilians). The day after the partisan attack, in an incident remembered as the Ardeatine Massacre, 335 Italian citizens were shot in groups of five by SS officers in the Ardeatine Caves outside Rome. The youngest victim was 15; the oldest was 74. The disparity between Mälzer’s chosen number and the additional five people murdered in the operation was because when five prisoners in excess of the expected count were mistakenly delivered to the massacre site, the Germans simply shot them along with the others.

The International Military Tribunal

In an earlier incident that underscored the degree to which the German military could disregard even notional concepts of proportionality, the Germans perpetrated a more savage act of reprisal at Kragujevac, Serbia, in October 1941. After a partisan attack killed 10 German soldiers and wounded 26 others, soldiers of the 717th Infantry Division summarily shot 300 random civilians. Over the following five days a district-wide retaliation resulted in the executions of another 1,755 people, including 19 women. This brutality was possibly prompted by the issuance of the “Communist Armed Resistance Movements in the Occupied Areas” decree, signed a month earlier by Generalfeldmarschall Wilhelm Keitel, head of the Supreme Command of the Armed Forces, who was later tried for war crimes by the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg. That order specified that on the Eastern Front, 100 hostages were to be shot for every German soldier killed and 50 were to be shot for every soldier wounded. The resulting Kragujevac massacre caused the deaths of nearly 2,800 Serbs, Macedonians, Slovenes, Romani, Jews, and Muslims. When the initial roundup of hostages did not turn up enough adult males, 144 high school students were seized and shot. German troops had carried out reprisals in earlier wars, but never occured on such a homicidal scale as under the Nazi regime. After 1914 the German word “Schrecklichkeit,” which can be understood as “terror,” entered the lexicon to describe these actions against civilians. The massacres of Lidice in Czechoslovakia, Oradour-sur-Glane and Maillé in France, Wola in Poland, and Sant’Anna di Stazzema in Italy, are only five on a long list of atrocities the Nazis carried out in the name of military reprisals.

The International Military Tribunal and other war crimes tribunals that took place following the Second World War represented a seismic shift in how reprisals were considered under international laws of war. Reprisal continued as an option in lawful warfare, but in much more carefully delineated form. As the Practical Guide to Humanitarian Law explains, “It is important to distinguish between reprisals, acts of revenge, and retaliation. Acts of revenge are never authorized under international law, while retaliation and reprisals are foreseen by humanitarian law.”

The essential distinction in that statement is that reprisals against civilians are now considered to be in the nature of revenge, and therefore never legal. “In times of conflict,” as current legal opinion holds, “reprisals are considered legal under certain conditions: they must be carried out in response to a previous attack, they must be proportionate to that attack, and they must be aimed only at combatants and military objectives.” Limited reprisals against soldiers, however, still remain in the realm of extreme possibility.

The U.S. Civil War

This is not a new idea. During the American Civil War, when the Confederate States threatened to not treat captured Union soldiers as legitimate combatants if they happened to be Black men, the United States issued the Retaliation Order of 1863. “The government of the United States will give the same protection to all its soldiers, and if the enemy shall sell or enslave anyone because of his color, the offense shall be punished by retaliation upon the enemy’s prisoners in our possession,” the Order stated. “It is therefore ordered that for every soldier of the United States killed in violation of the laws of war, a rebel soldier shall be executed; and for every one enslaved by the enemy or sold into slavery, a rebel soldier shall be placed at hard labor on the public works and continued at such labor until the other shall be released and receive the treatment due to a prisoner of war.” The fact that the Retaliation Order specifically provided for reprisals against enemy prisoners, rather than enemy soldiers on the field of combat, is the only part of that order that would violate modern restrictions on military-vs.-military reprisals.

The U.S. Civil War was also the conflict during which the German American jurist Franz Lieber transformed American military law with his revolutionary work General Order 100. As Article 27 of Lieber’s Code stated, “The law of war can no more wholly dispense with retaliation than can the law of nations, of which it is a branch. Yet civilized nations acknowledge retaliation as the sternest feature of war. A reckless enemy often leaves to his opponent no other means of securing himself against the repetition of barbarous outrage.” The point of Lieber’s position was that retaliation was sometimes necessary to prevent greater violations of lawful warfare, but also that careful restraint was indispensable. “Unnecessary or revengeful destruction of life is not lawful,” Article 68 stated, a declaration that 80 years later could have been applied to Nazi practices of military reprisals. In the interim, the U.S. Army used General Order 100 to justify reprisals on the Island of Samar during the Philippine-American War. Brig. Gen. Jacob Smith ordered his troops to “kill everyone over the age of ten [and make the island] a howling wilderness.”  

Civilians and International Laws

A detailed examination of military history shows that reprisals against civilians always exacerbates conflict and heightens resistance rather than eliminating it. The German military never managed to stamp out resistance to its occupation forces during WWII, no matter how savage the reprisals it unleashed against civilian populations. Reprisals also present the risk of an unending cycle of violence as each opposing side responds to the hostile acts. In the words of the U.S. Naval Handbook, “there is always a risk that [reprisal] will trigger retaliatory escalation (counter-reprisals) by the enemy. The United States has historically been reluctant to resort to reprisal for just this reason.”  

Of course, reluctance to engage in an act is not nearly the same thing as an outright policy prohibiting it. As the International Committee of the Red Cross observes, although “favour of a specific ban on the use of reprisals against all civilians is widespread and representative, it is not yet uniform.” Even today, with all of the advances in international conventions on lawful warfare, the United States and Great Britain still have not unreservedly committed themselves to a total ban on the use of reprisals in war.   

The United States “has indicated on several occasions that it does not accept such a total ban, even though it voted in favour of Article 51 of Additional Protocol I and ratified Protocol II to the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons without making a reservation to the prohibition on reprisals against civilians contained therein.” Great Britain, for its part, “made a reservation to Article 51 which reproduces a list of stringent conditions for resorting to reprisals against an adversary’s civilians.” Both nations have preferred to hedge their bets and retain the option of a military tactic they might use only in the extreme but are not willing to completely forego.

Current conventions on international laws of war have made great strides in restricting the use of reprisals in war but have never succeeded in eliminating it in practice. It is doubtful that the practice will ever completely disappear from the world’s battlefields, though it is to be hoped that such actions will increasingly be regarded as war crimes rather than legitimate combat.

this article first appeared in military history quarterly

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This Japanese kawari-kabuto, or individualized helmet, dating from the 17th century sports the shape of a crouching rabbit forged from a single piece of iron. The helmet’s ear guards are shaped like ocean waves.

Rabbits are commonly depicted with waves in Japanese art, particularly during the early Edo period in the 1600s. It is said that ocean whitecaps resembled white rabbits darting over the waters in the moonlight. A Noh play called Chikubushima which centers around a mystical island has a famous verse referring to a “moon rabbit” darting over the waters.

But why would a warrior want to go into battle wearing the image of a rabbit? Was it just about literature or culture?

Perhaps the symbol on this helmet is more directly related to battle. In another famous legend called “The Hare of Inaba,” a white rabbit outsmarts a group of predatory sea creatures by deceiving them and darting across them over the ocean, showing not only wisdom but strength and agility.

The warrior who chose this helmet may have wanted to express not only a sense of mystical power, but also cleverness and speed facing enemies. 

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One of the finest, most revealing and genuinely authentic accounts of the French Army of Napoleon Bonaparte (from May 18, 1804, Emperor Napoleon I) are the memoirs written by an officer who served in it as an infantry captain through numerous campaigns. Entering the French Army as a velite (elite infantryman named after those of ancient Rome) in Napoleon’s Imperial Guard, Blaze gained an officer’s commission and then served mainly as a line infantry captain. He participated in the French Emperor’s series of wars waged upon France by a succession of coalitions formed by Europe’s kings and princes who were determined to stamp out the forces of change and reform unleashed by the 1789 French Revolution and spread by Napoleon’s conquests that threatened their regimes. 

Blaze participated in numerous campaigns, from those in Poland (1807) through Napoleon’s defeat in March 1814 in the War of the Sixth Coalition leading to the Emperor’s first exile (to Elba). Particularly revealing to Napoleonic War scholars are Blaze’s recollections in his memoir of the Peninsular War (1807-1814), the brutal struggle fought on the Iberian Peninsula that pitted the occupying power, France, against Spain, Portugal and Britain in fierce combat featuring both conventional and guerrilla warfare (the name itself of the unconventional warfare by which the latter is known originating in the Peninsular War). 

A keen observer with the literary skill to capture his observations in captivating prose, Blaze’s descriptions of bloody combat and its inevitably grim aftereffects seem generations ahead of his time. This excerpt from Blaze’s memoir pulls no punches. 

Marching With Napoleon

People, after having read history, generally think that a battle is like a review at the Champ de Mars, and that one hundred thousand men placed opposite one hundred thousand men amuse themselves in shooting down each other at their ease to the accompaniment of cannon to produce the effect of the double-bass in an orchestra. I am going to explain to them how a battle is fought.

Our army is on the march preceded by its advance guard, composed of light troops. The hussars go like very devils; they trot, they gallop, the enemy flees before them; but soon they stop, our hussars stop also. A village defended by a few hundred men is in front of us, it is ordered attacked by sharpshooters. At the moment that our men enter the gardens, a battalion of the enemy appears which makes them lose ground. We send a regiment to support them, the others send two; we order forward ten, the enemy shows us twenty; each side makes the artillery advance, the cannon growl, soon everyone takes part in the merry-making, fighting goes on, they slaughter one another; one cries for his leg, another for his nose, others cry for nothing, and there is food for the crows and for the makers of official reports.

The Science of A General

The science of a general-in-chief amounts to this: to have on a set day, at a given point, as many men as possible. Napoleon said it, and Napoleon was a judge. A general must know which point of the map will be most seriously disputed. It is there that the battle will be fought, it is consequently there that he must bring all his troops by twenty different roads. An order badly given, badly understood, often causes the failure of the finest strategic combinations, to-wit: [Marshal Emmanuel de] Grouchy’s corps which did not reach Waterloo [leading to Napoleon’s final defeat, June 18, 1815]. The First Consul, before leaving Paris, had marked with a pin on the map the plain of Marengo for the scene of a new triumph; the result justified his prevision.

The science of a general consists also in knowing the strength of the enemy at such a point, his weakness at such another. To succeed in this, the service of spies is indispensable. Good ones must be had and they must be well paid. Napoleon gave gold by the handfuls; it was a good investment. We have had generals put to rout because they haggled on the subject of secret funds.

When one approaches a battlefield where the fighting is on, nothing is so discouraging for the young soldiers as the remarks of the wounded who are going back. “Do not go so fast, do not hurry,” they say, to be killed, it is not necessary to run so quickly.’ “The enemy is ten times more numerous than we.”…In vain are they told to be silent; an arm in a sling, a gash across the face guarantee impunity, give the right of insolence, and the jeremiads continue so long as they find someone to listen to them.

Pleasure and Pain

One of these poor devils was passing before us with his head split open and his arm broken. Everyone was moved to pity at sight of him. “How sad!” the men said: “two wounds! what a long road to go to be bandaged!” “You are all fools,” exclaimed the wounded man: “you’ll have more than that presently: I know my fate, but you do not know yours.” You should have seen the faces of the recruits on hearing these remarks, and specially on seeing the first bodies they came across. They went twenty feet out of their way for fear of touching them, soon they came nearer, later they marched over them without ceremony.

Man becomes accustomed to everything, to pleasure and to pain. How often have you experienced that a great grief, a great joy, after two weeks becomes dull sensation, a very ordinary thing? Remember this at your next sorrow, and say: “This will pass as other sorrows have passed.” To prove the truth of my reasoning, I am going to tell you a little story. You know that after the siege of Toulon [August-December 1793], the Republic caused all those who at that time were opposed to it to be shot down. After the guns had thrown down entire lines, a voice called out: “Let all those who are not dead rise! The Republic pardons them!” A few wretched wounded, others whom the grape-shot had spared, deluded by this promise, raised their heads: at that moment, a squadron of butchers (history says a squadron of dragoons; history must be mistaken) rushes on them, sword in hand, completing what the guns had commenced; soon the sun set over this atrocious slaughter. 

On a beautiful night, one of these wretches awakes in the middle of this ocean of bodies; he is wounded in ten places, in the head, in the legs, in the arms, in the chest, everywhere. He rolls over, he drags himself along. “Who goes there?” cries the sentry…”Finish me, you will do me a service; you will perform an act of humanity.’

“I am not an executioner, I tell you.”

“Finish me, I beg of you, all my members are broken, my head is split open, it is impossible for me to recover; you will spare me horrible suffering, finish me.”

Fear and Honor

The sentry drew near, verified the condition of the wounded man; believing in the impossibility of a cure, compassion determined him; had he fired his gun, the post would have taken up arms, he thought it best to use his bayonet, which he thrust into the body of the wretched man. Would you believe it? This man did not die. The next day, while burying all these corpses, a grave-digger saw that he was still alive; he carried him to his home, nursed him, and life returned. All the wounds were cured. That man was M. de Launoy, a naval officer under Louis XVI; he might well have spared himself that last bayonet thrust…

It must not be believed that in the army everyone is brave; I have seen some who could never become accustomed to the sound of the cannon. At Wagram [1809], a soldier of my company had a violent attack of epilepsy which was ended by the whizzing of the first shot.

An officer of my regiment, with thirty years of service, had never been on the fighting line; the sight of a sword made him pale, and he confessed it frankly. “I should very much like to go on the battlefield, but it is not possible, I should fall back at the first gunshot, and it would be a very bad example.” He was usually left behind at the garrison where, however, he made himself very useful by drilling the recruits.  

If everyone was not brave in the army, there were some to be found whose courage was not to be compared to anything; and this in all ranks, in all degrees, from King [Joachim, King of Naples, French Marshal] Murat to the common fusilier, from General [Jean-Marie] Dorsenne to the drummer. I could write ten volumes simply on the truly fabulous acts of bravery of our warriors. I shall mention but one which the entire third army corps witnessed in Spain.

General [later Marshal, Louis-Gabriel] Suchet had just taken Mount Olivo [May 1811] in spite of the predictions of the Spaniards. “The trenches of Mount Olivo,” they said, “will bury all the troops of Suchet, and the trenches of Tarragona all the troops of Bonaparte.” He meets a wounded soldier whom his comrades were carrying to the ambulance: “Victory, victory, Mount Olivo is taken!”

“Are you gravely wounded?”

“No, general, but unfortunately wounded seriously enough to be obliged to leave the ranks.”                   “Well answered, friend. What do you wish as a reward for your services?”

“To be allowed to lead the attack when you take Tarragona.…You promise me this?”  

“Yes.”

On the 30th of June, 1811, that is to say one month after, the general-in-chief was about to storm the place. The troops were forming their columns of attack when a footsoldier in dress uniform, as resplendent as on a parade day, approached Suchet. “I came to remind you of your promise: I wish to lead the attack.”

“Ah! it’s you, my brave fellow, very good; but soldiers of your kind are too rare that I should be wasteful of their blood. Remain in your company; by imparting your noble courage to all, you will render greater service than by having yourself killed alone.”…

“General, I have your word, and I wish to be the first to attack.”

“So much the worse, my brave fellow, so much the worse for us, do as you please.”

The columns start and my foot soldier passes them by twenty paces; he rushes forward in the midst of the grape shot, he is the first to climb the breach, and there, falls riddled with bullets. Picked up by order of Suchet, this brave soldier was carried to the hospital: a breath of life permitted him to see on that same day the entire corps of officers, with the general at their head, who came to visit him. Suchet took off his cross to decorate the breast of the footsoldier who died admired by the whole army. That hero’s name was Bianchelli. [Politician, diplomat, historian François-René] Chateaubriand has said: “Glory must be something very real, since it causes the heart of the one who is only its witness to beat.”

this article first appeared in military history quarterly

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“Rommel, you magnificent bastard! I read your book!” shouts a triumphant U.S. Lt. Gen. George S. Patton, Jr. (as played by Best Actor Oscar winner, George C. Scott in 1970’s Best Picture, Patton) while watching the March-April 1943 Battle of El Guettar in Tunisia, North Africa. This “gotcha!” exclamation implies the American general gained the key to victory over the German-Italian Axis forces he mistakenly thought were then commanded by Rommel from reading Rommel’s own impressive account of his development as a daring, tactically-innovative troop commander fighting French, Romanian, Russian and Italian units in World War I.

An avid reader of all things military history—his extensive, personally-annotated military history library was donated to the West Point Library—the real Patton probably did read Infanterie greift an, published by then-Lt. Col. Erwin Rommel in Germany in 1937, two years before World War II began and four years before Rommel earned his nickname, “The Desert Fox”. But the first English language edition—heavily abridged and edited by (understandably) anti-German wartime military censors only initially appeared in 1943.

What is certain, however, is that Patton never read this excellent, insightful, and revealing new English translation—which is much truer and exceedingly more faithful to Rommel’s highly nuanced, original German account than the extremely poor, indifferently translated wartime 1943 and 1944 English editions. Comparing Zita Steele’s (pen name of award-winning writer-historian-editor, Zita Ballinger Fletcher) brilliant new translation of Rommel’s classic book is akin to comparing Shakespeare’s Hamlet to a fourth-grade “Dick and Jane” grammar book. Steele’s deft translation finally does justice to Rommel’s original German text.

Bringing the Original Text To Life

Rommel’s original text comes vividly alive through Steele’s superb German-to-English translation and his account of how he reacted to and developed his innovative small-unit tactics to consistently defeat the forces arrayed against his own unit is exceptionally well-revealed in her new book. Usually outnumbered and outgunned, German mountain ranger assault troops under the young Rommel, time and time again overcame their enemies’ superior numbers and greater firepower to achieve their often daunting objectives. Steele consistently, and much more correctly, translates “German alpine troops” as “mountain rangers,” thereby better capturing the true nature of these, in effect, early versions of what would eventually be known as “special operations forces”.

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Rommel describes how and why he developed the tactics he used to prevail in each engagement, revealing his constant development as an innovative troop leader. This excellent new translation traces the gradual but proceeding development during combat in France and in the mountains of the Eastern Front of the young Rommel whose later operational genius would suddenly burst forth upon the Belgian, French and North African battlefields of World War II. This translation demonstrates the roots of Rommel’s operational genius, showing “how Rommel became Rommel.” 

Rommel As A Person

Steele also reveals Erwin Rommel as a person, with the all-too-human flaws he possessed. Although the enduring image of Rommel was that of a homebody “family” man, a devoted, doting husband to his wife Lucie (they married in 1916), his relationship with another woman produced an illegitimate daughter, Gertrud, in 1913, whom he manfully acknowledged and for whom he provided financial support.

Additionally, Steele presents a convincing argument—based on Rommel’s admitted life-long insomnia and recurrent nightmares—that he suffered from PTSD, post traumatic stress disorder. Given his WWI wounds, the nightmarish combat he endured in that war, and the loss of many close friends, that diagnosis seems completely credible. Coincidentally, Patton’s best biographer, Carlo D’Este, concludes—very convincingly—that Patton also suffered from PTSD. This reviewer strongly concurs with both authors’ “diagnoses.”

Was Rommel A Nazi?

Steele also delves into THE question involving Rommel: Was he or was he not a “Nazi?” Although it is a historical fact that Erwin Rommel was never a member of the Nazi Party, his promotions by Adolf Hitler always beg the question of was Rommel a “secret” Nazi, whether an official member of the Party or not? Steele concludes—correctly in this reviewer’s opinion—that Rommel was definitely not a Nazi. Clearly, Rommel personally benefited from Hitler’s support and indulgences, but so did other non-Nazis if they served Hitler’s interests when that service was beneficial to the Nazi dictator. Rommel was enough of a non-Nazi that he paid the ultimate price—Hitler’s toadies forced the field marshal to commit suicide on Oct. 14, 1944 in the wake of the July 20, 1944 plot to assassinate Hitler of which Rommel knew but of which he was not an integral part.

Zita Steele’s new book which is based on her new, insightful, nuanced and authoritative English translation of Erwin Rommel’s classic of military history 1937 book, Infantry Attacks, is a hands’-down, “must-have” book in any military history enthusiast’s library. It not only makes earlier English translations of Rommel’s book obsolete, it’s a “classic” account of World War I combat. Above all, it’s an insightful preview of one of the most famous commanders of World War II—and how he learned his trade! Buy it! Read it! Enjoy it!

ERwin Rommel: First War

A New Look At Infantry Attacks
By Zita Steele

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When it comes to George A. Custer and the June 25, 1876 Battle of the Little Bighorn, everyone seems to be an “expert”. Even those who may never have read a single book on the battle seem convinced they know exactly why Custer lost the western frontier’s most infamous battle and, in the process, got his regiment needlessly wiped out.

Their narrative usually goes something like this: Foolishly declining a last-minute offer to take rapid-firing Gatling guns with him, Custer’s outsized ego, reckless bravery and overly ambitious quest for glory led to his egregiously bad tactical decisions—including dividing his regiment into four smaller “battalions” in the face of the enemy’s known superior numbers—and prompted him to disobey his commander’s written orders by prematurely launching his regiment a day earlier than planned in a doomed attack. They believe overwhelming numbers of enemy warriors annihilated his regiment to the last man in a brilliantly planned, expertly fought and shrewdly executed trap. Capt. Myles Keogh’s wounded horse, Comanche, they always point out, was the only living thing to survive the massacre. 

In short, “everybody knows” that Custer lost because he was a blustering egomaniac with presidential ambitions who was “out-generaled” by the superior tactical skill and battlefield command of Lakota leaders Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse. Those who think they know for certain that’s exactly what happened to Custer at the Little Bighorn battle should heed this sage advice from an eminent historian: “It’s not what we don’t know about history that leads us astray; it’s what we think we know—but isn’t true—that causes the mischief.”

The truth of what really caused Custer’s defeat in the most famous battle between Indians and the U.S. frontier army during the western Indian wars is best revealed by examining Custer’s critical tactical decisions that long, hot, dusty day in June 1876. His decisions must be evaluated within the context of what Custer actually knew at the time he made them—and, importantly, what he did not know. 

First, it’s important to quickly dismiss some of the Little Bighorn “red herrings” (on the surface seemingly plausible but misleading distractions). The battle’s most important ones include: 

The Myth of “Indian Commanders”

The oft-read claim that “the Lakota and Cheyenne fought under Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse,” implying there was an Indian chain-of-command controlling the warriors’ tactics and maneuvers, exposes egregious ignorance of how Native Americans fought. Indians fought as individuals, fighting if they felt their “medicine” was good, opting out if they judged otherwise. No Indian commanders issued orders and exercised command authority (although some warriors voluntarily followed war-proven successful leaders, like Crazy Horse and Gall, who led purely by example). The best description of how the Lakota and Cheyenne fought Custer at the Little Bighorn is to imagine a hornet’s nest suddenly disturbed—within moments, clouds of angry hornets pour out, swarming and stinging whatever disturbs them, their numbers increasing with each passing minute. Furious that Custer’s attack threatened their families, Lakota and Cheyenne warriors simply swarmed their village’s attackers as they confronted, defeated or annihilated each threat in turn.

Gatling Guns Fantasy

Those who claim rapid-firing Gatling guns could have saved Custer know less about those weapons and their limited capability than they do about Native American warfighting. Three main deficiencies would have prevented these early “machine guns” from having any positive impact on the battle: transportation, targets and crew vulnerability. The guns were mounted on heavy, awkward, large-wheeled artillery piece carriages and pulled by 4-horse teams of “condemned” cavalry mounts (horses deemed unfit for troopers’ mounts but capable of dragging heavy loads). On vehicles susceptible to frequent break-downs, the weapons could not possibly have kept pace with Custer’s regiment’s 30-plus-miles-per-day rapid reconnaissance to fulfill his primary mission: find the Indians’ main camp as quickly as possible and prevent the highly-mobile tribes from scattering into the vast landscape. Trying to drag the clumsy guns over rough terrain and still move fast enough to find the elusive tribes would have been impossible. The guns would have moved slower than Custer’s large pack train of cantankerous, stubborn mules which were so slow that they failed to arrive on the battlefield until after Custer was already dead. Even if the Gatlings had miraculously been present on Last Stand Hill, they needed targets to shoot at—moving around the battlefield on fast, agile Indian ponies, the Indians fought mainly on foot once in range of trooper’s weapons, concealing themselves in every fold, depression and gully the broken terrain offered while firing rifles, muskets and bows and arrows at Custer’s trapped troopers. Unlike the famed 1896 Anheuser-Busch lithograph, Custer’s Last Fight, which graced thousands of saloons across the US, the Indians did not foolishly attack in close-packed masses. Thus the Gatlings would have had no targets to “mow down” with rapid fire. Indeed, the “lack of targets” is supported by the low number of Indian casualties in the battle which may be as few as 31 killed plus a few dozen wounded of an estimated 1,500-2,000 Indians who fought! Finally, Gatling crews had to stand upright to fire the weapon, the crews presenting themselves as vulnerable targets to be quickly shot down by hidden Indian marksmen as the tribesmen closed in on the pinned-down troopers.

Terry’s “Coordinated” Tactical Attack Plan

Those who try to force a modern-warfare template onto the 1876 Great Sioux War campaign typically claim that Brig. Gen. Alfred H. Terry’s three-column advance (Terry-Custer column moving west from Ft. Lincoln in Bismarck, ND; Colonel John Gibbon’s column moving east from Ft. Ellis, MT; and Brig. Gen. George Crook’s column—the campaign’s strongest force—moving northwest from Ft. Fetterman, WY) through central Montana where the main village of “hostile” Lakota and Cheyenne was presumed to be, was intended to be a tactical attack plan for a coordinated military assault on the Indians by all three forces. Yet it’s clear from Terry’s orders to Custer (see “Terry’s Orders to Custer” sidebar) that they are instructions regarding how to find Indians, not a tactical plan on how to fight them once found. It verifies that Terry’s wide 3-column approach was solely intended as a sweep through the vast area to locate the main body of Lakota and Cheyenne and prevent their escape, not a plan of tactical maneuver for a simultaneous, triple-pronged attack. In fact, Terry hoped there would be no fighting and that the Indians—once found, surrounded and prevented from escape—could be peacefully escorted to Dakota reservations. Terry’s hope that Gibbon’s column would arrive north of the Little Bighorn valley on June 26 as Custer arrived from the southeast that day was meant for Gibbon to be a stand-off “blocking force”—not a tactical participant in a coordinated two-pronged assault with Custer’s regiment to attack and destroy the Indians—hemming in the Indians so they could be corralled and escorted to reservations. In the event, the Gibbon column (by then accompanied by Terry) did not even arrive until June 27, further making the “coordinated attack” claim irrelevant. Also Crook’s third column had already turned back, fought to a standstill in the June 17 Battle of the Rosebud by most of the same Indian warriors who—heavily reinforced by hundreds of new arrivals who’d “jumped” their Dakota reservations—defeated Custer on June 25.

7th Cavalry “Wiped Out”

Although certainly most legitimate Indian Wars historians know better, too many historically ignorant “Custer experts” keep repeating the mistaken claim that Custer’s 7th Cavalry Regiment was “wiped out to a man” in the battle. They mistake the fact that the five companies under Custer’s immediate command (companies C, E, F, I and L), the “battalion” he personally led after reorganizing his regiment into four battalions (see “Custer’s Reorganization for Combat” sidebar) were wiped out (13 officers, 193 troopers and 4 civilians—210 total killed) for his entire 600-strong regiment (31 officers and 566 troopers) being annihilated. Actually, the 7th Cavalry Regiment that day suffered 52-percent casualties: 16 officers and 242 troopers KIA or died of wounds; 1 officer and 51 troopers wounded—horrendous losses, but far from the regiment being “wiped out to a man” in the battle.

Other egregious “red herrings” include the idiotic idea that somehow Custer’s “foolish attack” was because he craved a dramatic victory since he wanted to run for U.S. president—as if any serving officer removed from command because he’d so enraged the Grant administration by his (valid) claims to Congress of the administration’s corruption could ever hope in his wildest dreams to be a valid presidential candidate. Custer not only had to beg for reinstatement to regimental service on the eve of the 1876 Sioux Campaign, but also had to convince his mentor, Maj. Gen. Phil Sheridan, to intercede for him with Grant—a request only granted shortly before the campaign began.

Other improbable “red herring” reasons for the defeat include those Custer-contemporary bigots looking for a convenient scapegoat to excuse the disastrous defeat of the cream of the frontier army by so-called “primitive savages” by egregiously inflating the impact of the cavalry’s M1873 carbine’s weak expended-shell casing extractor that caused weapons to jam. The problem was real, but well-known and documented as affecting only as few as about 1-in-300 carbines. That it was not a major problem during the battle is supported by archaeological evidence from Dr. Doug Scott’s extensive 1991 Little Bighorn battlefield excavations which found very few carbine shell casings that evidenced any tell-tale scratches indicating manual extractions. 

When the easily dismissed “red herrings” are wisely ignored, “human error” comes to the fore as the culprit in the 7th’s defeat—the series of command decisions made by Custer himself that determined the 7th Cavalry’s fate. Although he’s pilloried for his decisions based on the battle’s disastrous outcome, an examination of those decisions—assessed within the context of what he actually knew and didn’t know at the time he made them—reveals that most were consistent with what any combat-experienced frontier army officer would have made, and none were irredeemably disastrous…except for the final and ultimately fatal, decision he made at about 3:30 p.m. on June 25, 1876. 

Sunday, June 25, 1876, was a long, hot, dusty day full of crucial decisions Custer faced at critical points during his—and half of the troopers in his 7th Cavalry Regiment’s—final day of life. The day began early. Custer had the regiment begin a night march following a wide, recent Indian trail at midnight—but by 5 p.m. that afternoon, Custer, his brothers Capt. Tom and Boston, his nephew Autie Reed, his brother-in-law Lt. James Calhoun (L Company) and half the troopers in the 7th’s 12 cavalry companies were dead on a bleak Montana hillside or soon to die about four miles southeast behind hastily dug entrenchments on Reno Hill. Hindsight is 20-20, but if the critics knew only what Custer knew—and didn’t know—that day, would their judgments be as harsh? 

Here’s what Custer actually knew. His primary mission was to find the main Indian village and prevent Indians from escaping and “vanishing” into the vast landscape. Plains Indian warfare experience taught that the most difficult problem for frontier army commanders was finding Indians, not fighting them. At the start of the campaign, each of the three Army columns sent against the Indians in 1876 (Custer’s cavalry regiment, Col. John Gibbon’s column of infantry and cavalry, and Gen. George Crook’s cavalry and mule-mounted infantry) on their own was considered sufficient to defeat any Indian force expected to be encountered. The three widely-separated Army columns were intended to locate the Indians, not combine and fight them in a coordinated battle. Only after the full scope of the disaster was realized did Custer’s commander, Gen. Terry, later create the fiction that Custer and Gibbon were to attack simultaneously on June 26. Moreover, when Terry tumbled to the fact that the army would demand a scapegoat for the worst disaster in the western Indian Wars did he then create the self-serving narrative that “glory-hunting Custer rashly attacked prematurely, disobeying his orders.” 

Custer was told he would face, at most, 500 to 800 Indian warriors. The present for duty strength of the 7th that day was about 600 soldiers—31 officers and 566 troopers—plus Indian Scouts, quartermaster employees e.g., mule skinners, and several civilians, including newspaper reporter, Mark Kellogg. Custer had written discretion to move against the Indians as he saw fit. His orders from Terry gave him full latitude in making tactical decisions (see “Terry’s Orders to Custer” sidebar).

Finally, perhaps Custer’s most fatal “knowledge” was that he had successfully attacked a Cheyenne village under Chief Black Kettle on the Washita River (November 1868)—a small part of a much larger combined Indian encampment that may have rivaled in size the June 1876 Little Bighorn village—and he had prevailed against heavy odds by dividing the 7th into several battalions, striking the surprised village from multiple directions and preventing probably overwhelming Indian retaliation during his withdrawal by using captured Cheyenne women and children as hostages.

However, the bloody result of Custer’s command decisions on June 25 was clearly affected by information he did not, or could not, know. Crook’s column, which at over 1,200 Soldiers and hundreds of Crow Indian allies was the most powerful of Terry’s three converging columns, was fought to a standstill by possibly 1,000 warriors at the day-long Battle of the Rosebud, about 30 miles from the Little Bighorn River, the week before on June 17, 1876. Crook retreated without informing the other columns that the Indians were in strength and fighting, not fleeing. 

The number of Indian warriors opposing Custer at Little Bighorn was likely between 1,500 to 2,000 (two to three times more than what he had been told). Their ranks were swollen by new arrivals streaming in from Dakota reservations. Indian reservation agents purposely concealed the number of their “missing” Indians since that knowledge reduced their reservation “head count,” prompting drastic cuts in rations and supplies. The Little Bighorn village—probably, at its peak, about 1,000 lodges—was likely the largest-ever concentration of Plains Indians—a unique congregation lasting only a few days since game, grass for the huge pony herd and local resources would force the village to move after those had been exhausted. This historical accident—a congregation of, perhaps 7,000-8,000 Indians (up to 2,000 warriors) in 1,000 lodges (tipis) is the overriding factor leading to Custer’s defeat.

Terry’s Orders to Custer 

On the morning of June 22, 1876, during their final meeting before sending Custer and his 7th Cavalry Regiment off on a “reconnaissance in force” mission to locate the main village of Lakota and Cheyenne, Brig. Gen. Alfred Terry, overall campaign commander whose mission was to find the Indians and force them to reservations in Dakota territory, issued written orders to Custer: 

The Brigadier General commanding directs that, as soon as your regiment can be made ready for the march, you will proceed up the Rosebud [i.e., travel south in this region where rivers and creeks run north] in pursuit of the Indians whose trail was discovered by Major Reno [Custer’s second-in-command] a few days since. It is, of course, impossible to give you any definite instructions in regard to this movement, and were it not impossible to do so the Department Commander places too much confidence in your zeal, energy, and ability to wish to impose on you precise orders which might hamper your action when nearly in contact with the enemy.[emphasis added] He will, however, indicate to you his own views of what your action should be, and he desires that you should conform to them unless you shall see sufficient reasons for departing from them. He thinks that you should proceed up [south] the Rosebud until you ascertain definitely the direction in which the trail above spoken of leads. Should it be found (as it appears almost certain that it will be found) to then turn toward the Little Horn, he thinks that you should still proceed southward, perhaps as far as the headwater of the Tongue, and then turn toward the Little Horn, feeling constantly, however, for your left, so as to preclude the possibility of the escape of the Indians to the south or southeast by passing your left flank. The column of Colonel Gibbon is now in motion for the mouth of the Big Horn. As soon as it reaches that point it will cross the Yellowstone and move up at least as far as the forks of the Big and Little Horns. Of course, its future movements must be controlled by circumstances as they arise, but it is hoped that the Indians, if upon the Little Horn, may be so nearly inclosed by the two columns that their escape will be impossible.

The Department Commander desires that on your way up the Rosebud you should thoroughly examine the upper part of the Tullock’s creek, and that you should endeavor to send a scout through to Colonel Gibbon’s column, with information of the results of your examination. The lower part of this creek will be examined by a detachment from Colonel Gibbon’s command. The supply steamer [Far West under captain Grant Marsh] will be pushed up the Big Horn as far as the forks of the river if found to be navigable for that distance, and the Department Commander, who will accompany the column of Colonel Gibbon, desires you to report to him there not later than the expiration of the time for which your troops are rationed, unless in the meantime you receive further orders.

Custer’s Reorganization for Combat

After he was informed that the 7th had been seen by several small Indian parties and therefore assuming the main Indian camp would be warned, Custer abandoned his plan to hide the regiment all that day for a June 26 attack and instead move immediately against the Indian village before it could flee. Therefore, about noon on June 25, at the base of the “Crow’s Nest” peak in the Wolf Mountains from which the 7th’s Indian scouts had seen the main Lakota-Cheyenne village on the Little Bighorn 15 miles away, Custer reorganized the regiment for combat by dividing it into four battalions plus 35 Indian Scouts.                    

Custer’s Decisions
re: John Gray’s Centennial Campaign calculated timeline 

9:00 p.m., June 24, final bivouac (near today’s Busby, Mont.)

Scouts report finding a fresh Indian trail, making it all but certain the main village is in the Little Bighorn valley.

Custer decision

Launch the 7th along that trail just past midnight, June 25.

Assessment

The decision is totally consistent with Custer’s primary mission to find the hostile Indians’ village as quickly as possible. 

9:00 a.m., June 25, Crow’s Nest vantage point (15 miles from Little Bighorn village)

Accepting his scouts’ word that they can see the village’s huge pony herd (although neither he nor his chief of scouts, Lt. Charles Varnum, could make it out), Custer now knows the camp’s location.

Custer decision

Hide the regiment all day in the Wolf Mountains, concealed by the rough terrain, then move at night to strike at dawn, June 26 (the day he was told by Terry that Gibbon’s column should reach a blocking position north of the Indian village). 

Assessment

Hiding the regiment for a dawn surprise attack on the unsuspecting village the next morning was prudent, consistent with Terry’s orders and confirming Custer’s plan conceived the night before. (Gibbon’s blocking force was intended to intercept fleeing Indians after Custer’s attack, not to participate in the 7th’s assault as an element in a coordinated attack as often erroneously assumed and as Terry falsely claimed afterwards—revealingly, when Terry wrote his orders, he of course had no idea Custer would decide to attack the village on June 25. Terry wanted the Indians found and kept from escaping.)

10:30 a.m., base of the Crow’s Nest

Custer learns that three separate small Indian groups had recently spotted elements of the regiment.    

Custer decision

Do not risk waiting, make an immediate attack on the village before it can be alerted and escape the approaching army columns. 

Assessment

Since experience taught that Indians invariably scattered and disappeared into the landscape if warned of an enemy’s approach, any experienced frontier army officer likely would have made this same decision. Custer could not have known that the Indians that spotted him were on their way to other distant locations and therefore none had alerted the village.

12:00 p.m., one mile north of Crow’s Nest

The approach to the village prompts reorganizing the 7th regiment’s companies for combat.                  

Custer decision

Divide the regiment into 4 battalions (see “Custer’s Reorganization for Combat” sidebar). 

Assessment

Sub-dividing a cavalry regiment into battalion-sized maneuver elements was a common Plains warfare army tactic. Custer successfully fought this way at the Washita (1868) and Crook used similar tactics at the Rosebud (June 17). Notably, Col. Ranald MacKenzie, who usually fought his regiment as a single unit, used such “battalion” tactics in his most famous victory—Palo Duro Canyon, Texas vs. Comanches and Kiowas (1874), where MacKenzie’s stunning victory ended Comanche power forever and forced the tribes onto reservations.

2:30 p.m., 4 miles east of Little Bighorn River 

While Capt. Frederick Benteen’s battalion continues to scout for any Indians who might be south of the Little Bighorn valley, Custer’s and Maj. Marcus Reno’s battalions surprise a few Indians who immediately flee in panic toward the still-unseen main village. Scout/interpreter Fred Gerard shouts to Custer, “Here are your Indians! Running like devils!”  

Custer decision

Assuming these Indians certainly will alert the village, Custer immediately launches Reno’s 3-company battalion to directly attack it from the south while flanking the village by leading his own 5-company battalion to the high bluffs towering over the east bank of the river. Via messenger, Custer orders Benteen’s 3-company battalion to quickly rejoin the command. 

Assessment

Taking immediate action now that the village is certain to be warned likely would have been any frontier army commander’s decision. Still unaware of the village’s unprecedented size, attacking it unexpectedly from two directions (while summoning reinforcements—Benteen’s battalion) seemed tactically-feasible given what Custer—who had not yet seen the huge size of the village—then knew regarding Indian numbers. 

3:30 p.m., atop bluffs east of the river 

Seeing Reno’s attack begin to bog down and becoming hotly engaged by warriors in the valley and with Benteen’s battalion still missing, Custer faces his most crucial decision—ride directly to Reno’s aid—which likely would have ended with Custer, Reno and eventually Benteen and the Pack Train, in effect the entire regiment, besieged on Reno Hill—wait for Benteen, or continue his attack from another direction.

Custer decision

Maneuver against the village from another, unexpected direction by leading his battalion farther north where the Indian women and children were fleeing, with the possibility of—like at the Washita battle—capturing them as hostages to dissuade Indian attacks. 

Assessment

None of Custer’s command decisions—up to this point—had put the 7th on an irreversible course to disaster. Options that would have led to his gathering the entire regiment on defensible high ground still remained possible. However, his decision at about 3:30 p.m. to continue north finally sealed his and his regiment’s fate. Recent scholarship suggests Custer had still not seen the huge size of the entire village when he made this decision (he had likely viewed the valley from further east—probably Sharpshooter Ridge—and not from the better (higher) vantage point known as Weir Point). Lacking this vital intelligence, still thinking the opposing Indian force was only one-half to one-third its actual size and denied critical knowledge about the Indians not fleeing but standing and fighting from Crook’s Rosebud battle, Custer made his last—fatal—decision.

this article first appeared in military history quarterly

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In 1942, British authorities in Cairo arrested an Egyptian dance superstar for espionage. Her name was Hekmet Fahmi. Allegedly a nationalist with connections to Anwar el-Sadat, Gamal Abdel Nasser, and members of the Egyptian revolutionary Free Officers Movement, Fahmi had gained access to top secret intelligence from a well-informed British lover who worked at GCHQ and had passed this information to a pair of German spies who had managed to infiltrate Cairo.

At least, that was what Fahmi stood accused of. The espionage threat was credible enough for British authorities to put Egypt’s most famous dancer behind bars for more than two years. Her career would never recover. Yet Fahmi’s story remains a captivating part of World War II history, not only because of her alleged espionage but because of the talent that likely worked to her advantage as a spy: Egyptian cabaret belly dancing. 

An Elusive Art

Egyptian belly dance, known as raqs sharqi, has a history stretching back thousands of years. Ancient Egyptian temple reliefs from the days of the pharaohs contain strikingly similar imagery to modern Egyptian belly dancing, such as women dancing wearing hip scarves to the accompaniment of clarinets and drums. While belly dancing expressed itself in different forms over time, including group dancing and male dancing, female belly dancing proved the most enduring and popular incarnation of raqs sharqi. Historically seen as a desirable trait for wives, brides-to-be were taught the art of belly dancing so that they could dance for their husbands. Some women became professional dancers to entertain primarily male audiences. 

Belly dance is a highly disciplined dance style comparative to a sport. It is a full body exercise that requires dancers to move different muscle groups independently. Essential to Egyptian-style belly dance, a scarf worn around the hips accentuates isolated hip and waist movements and adds flair to performances. Aside from complex hip, waist and chest movements, the dance also incorporates fluid arm and finger movements. To gain the amount of flexibility, precision and rhythmic grace to belly dance successfully takes rigorous practice. Once the essential basic movements are mastered, a dancer may weave together endless combinations and improvisations to form complex choreography. The dance can be performed to any type of music and also be highly dramatized if desired. Special types of belly dance performances can include candle dances, sword dances, floor dancing (performed on one’s knees and sometimes bending backwards), and the ever-popular veil dances, all of which require finesse.

Appeal to Foreigners

Foreigners who visited Egypt were captivated by belly dance performances they witnessed. Although Western paintings and illustrations from the 19th century often portrayed “oriental dancers” with colorful garb and bare stomachs, religious convictions saw female belly dancers in Egypt cover up more over time. The essential hip scarves were still worn but bare waists became less common and dance movements became more restricted as time passed. 

Belly dance experienced a Renaissance in the 1920s thanks to the creative genius of Badia Masabni, popularly known as Madame Badia. Originally from Syria, Badia spoke five languages and traveled in many countries throughout the world. Drawing inspiration from French cabaret performances, Badia realized how to create an elegant and exciting new dance style fusing the best of Egyptian belly dance traditions with Western flair.

Cairo’s Favorite Casino

With innovation and entrepreneurial skills, Badia set up a nightclub in Cairo called the Casino Opera, also known as the Casino Badia: an exclusive venue that also functioned as a training school to teach her new style of dance to adventurous young local women. Egyptian cabaret style belly dance was born.

Badia revolutionized belly dance. She introduced sweeping changes to dance costume, modeling her dancers’ costumes on two-piece French cabaret outfits with decorative brassieres, short hip scarves, and plenty of sequins. The dancers performed in high heels and sometimes barefoot. Badia developed new signature moves in the dance; she also allowed the dancers a wider field of movement and mixed signature Egyptian techniques with Latin dance styles and ballet. Badia also upended music, blending Western orchestral instruments like violins, cello and accordion with Egyptian traditional instruments such as clarinets and tabla drums to create powerful and enchanting background music for performances. The results were fantastic. Badia’s new cabaret dance style became all the rage in Cairo and influenced other schools of dance. 

Cabarets offering belly dance performances became magnets for British troops garrisoned in Cairo both before and during World War II. Badia’s Casino Opera was one of the most popular hotspots. Egypt’s King Farouk was a patron as was Randolph Churchill and many other famous personages. Many British soldiers in Cairo were eager to enjoy the company of attractive Egyptian females in nightclubs as well as to drink and socialize. Cabarets like Badia’s Casino Opera in Cairo were great places to mix—and to spy.

During World War II, many Egyptians were sympathetic to the Germans due to a general dislike at living under a de facto British occupation. We will probably never know how many Egyptian women who gained access to influential military and government officials through nightclub entertainment passed information they learned to German intelligence operatives, spurred by a desire to further the cause of Egyptian independence.

Accused spy Hekmet Fahmi herself was trained at the Casino Opera and was one of Madame Badia’s star pupils. Badia herself was rumored to have engaged in espionage, although for whom she may have been spying remains a mystery.

What is clear is that the special dance style that Badia and her proteges wielded to enchant their audiences has had staying power. The Casino Opera debuted many famous Egyptian belly dancers and movie stars, such as Samia Gamal and Taheyya Kariokka,  icons of 1950s Egyptian cinema. These talented and graceful women remain an inspiration for practitioners of Egyptian cabaret belly dance, a style which spread from Cairo all over the world and remains popular today.

this article first appeared in military history quarterly

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This elaborate sword was presented to Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant during the Civil War on April 23, 1864 by the U.S. Sanitary Commission Metropolitan Fair. The fair was a fundraiser for the Union Army and supported hospitals for wounded soldiers. Grant “won” the sword in a voting contest against competitor Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan.

The sword is rich in symbolism. The silver grip displays the head of a Greek soldier and military trophies; the gilt knuckle guard bears the head of Medusa, and the counterguard shows Hercules slaying the Nemean lion. The pommel is the head of Athena, goddess of warcraft, and set with rubies, diamonds and a sapphire.

Grant’s name is engraved on the sheath, along with the words, “Upon your sword sit laurel victory.” This phrase is taken from William Shakespeare’s play Antony and Cleopatra, Act I, Scene III: “Upon your sword sit laurel victory! And smooth success be strew’d before your feet.”

Grant would go on to take the Confederate Army’s surrender at Appomattox and become U.S. President in 1869.

this article first appeared in military history quarterly

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A long with Anthony McAuliffe’s defiant exclamation at Bastogne, “Nuts!” and Douglas MacArthur’s promise, “I shall return,” one of the most famous phrases uttered by a soldier is Calvin Pearl Titus’ “I’ll try, Sir!” when he volunteered to scale the high wall surrounding the Chinese imperial city of Peking (today Beijing) on Aug. 14, 1900. The words epitomize the “can-do” attitude expected of American soldiers. The story behind it—which resulted in Titus being awarded the Medal of Honor by President Theodore Roosevelt—is worth telling, for it proves that the proverb “fortune favors the bold” can be very true.

In June 1900, Titus and his fellow 14th Infantry Regiment soldiers were in China because the secret “Society of Righteous and Harmonious Fists” had attacked foreigners and foreign property with the goal of eradicating all foreign influences in China. Since many of the secret society members were skilled in martial arts or “Chinese boxing,” English-speakers began calling them “Boxers.”

The Boxers were convinced that economic hardship, recent floods, and droughts had been caused by foreigners in their midst. They detested the arrogance and aggression of foreigners, as well as their dismantling of China: the British had taken north Burma and Kowloon; the Japanese had seized Korea and Formosa (Taiwan); and the French had occupied Indochina’s Tonkin and Annan. The Germans had mining rights and the French had railroad concessions. While the United States denounced imperialism, America’s so-called “Open Door” policy was really more of the same—more foreign businesses and businessmen. The Boxers resented Christian missionaries and privileges they enjoyed; they also hated Chinese converts.

The Boxer Rebellion

Starting in 1899, the Boxers and their sympathizers began attacking foreigners in China, slaughtering scores of missionaries and Chinese Christians. They tore up railroad tracks, cut telegraph lines and murdered foreign engineers. The Qing dynasty government made half-hearted attempts to stop the Boxers but secretly many in the government were pleased by these attacks. Soon all foreigners were in grave danger, especially those living in Beijing. In June 1900, after convincing themselves that their martial arts rituals made them invulnerable to bullets, the Boxers arrived in Beijing and began attacking the Western businessmen and diplomats, and their families living there. 

The United States, joined by Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and Russia, sent troops to protect their citizens. On June 10, 1900, a multinational relief force of some 2,100 commanded by British Royal Navy Vice-Admiral Edward Seymour tried to reach Beijing from Tianjin, 70 miles away but was forced to retreat when Chinese imperial troops joined the Boxers in attacking his troops.

Things got worse on June 20 when Qing dynasty ruler Empress Dowager Cixi ordered all foreigners to leave Beijing for Tianjin. When the German minister went to discuss this order with Cixi, he was murdered. About 3,500 foreigners and Chinese Christians, afraid that they also would be killed, sought safety in that area of Beijing by international forces called the Legation Quarter. While about 400 soldiers of various nationalities set up a defensive perimeter, they were outnumbered by thousands of Boxers. When Empress Cixi learned that the foreigners in Beijing were refusing to obey her order, she decided to back the Boxers in their rebellion and declared war on all foreign powers on June 21. Fortunately for those in the Legation Quarter, the siege by the Boxers and imperial troops was disorganized, half-hearted and poorly led. 

The United States deployed the 9th Infantry Regiment and a Marine battalion to Taku on July 7. Two battalions of the 9th took part in the assault on Tianjin, which surrendered on July 13. On Aug. 4, an allied expedition of about 19,000 men left Tianjin for Beijing. The U.S. force, under the command of Army Maj. Gen. Adna R. Chafee (future US Army Chief of Staff), consisted of the 9th and 14th Infantry Regiments, elements of the 6th Cavalry, the 5th Artillery and a Marine battalion. Since the siege of the Legation Quarter continued, the United States—along with Great Britain, France, Japan and Russia—organized a Relief Expedition of 55,000 men. On Aug. 14, 1900, the Americans were in Beijing. Facing them was a very tall wall which blocked entry into the “Forbidden City”—so called because common people, including foreigners, were prohibited from entering it. The Forbidden City had been the home of the Chinese emperors and their families for nearly 500 years.

A Musician To The Rescue

Musician (Pvt.) Calvin P. Titus, a bugler with Company E, 14th Infantry, was in the very small first group of Americans to reach the Tung-Pien Gate in Beijing’s eastern outer wall. It was 7:00 a.m. The soldiers included Col. Aaron S. Daggett, a tough and experienced soldier who had fought in the Civil War; First Lt. Joe Gohn, a company commander, Second Lt. Hanson, and Titus himself. The Americans immediately came under fire from the top of the ancient 30-foot wall and adjacent Fox Tower.

Recognizing that scaling the wall would be the best way to lay down suppressive fire and counter the enemy’s fire, Daggett mused out loud: “I wonder if we can get up there.” Titus remembered what happened next: “Well, I was just standing there. The bugler was always up front with his company commander.” Daggett knew Titus because he had been his bugler and orderly on more than one occasion at Daggett’s headquarters in Manila. Titus said to Daggett, “I’ll try, sir, and see if we can get up, if you want me to.”

Titus later remembered: “The Old Man [Daggett] just stood there, and sized me up from head to foot, and said ‘All right, if you think you can do it.’ I was a good climber, so up I went.” Titus took off his canteen, pistol belt, hat, and haversack. The wall was “made of brick…mortar had fallen out in places making it possible for me to get fingers and toeholds in the cracks.” About halfway up, a bush growing from the bricks gave Titus something better to hold on to. 

Climbing Into the Forbidden City

Titus managed to reach the top of the wall and looked through the firing ports on the top of the wall. No one was there. He slid over the top of the wall and dropped down to the floor behind it. Following the trail just blazed by Titus, more soldiers followed him to the top—climbing unarmed as he had done. The men then hoisted their weapons and ammunition to the top of the wall by tying their rifle slings together in a rope. 

Daggett later described watching Titus make the treacherous climb. “With what interest did the officers and men watch every step as he placed his feet carefully in the cavities and clung with his fingers to the projecting bricks! The first 15 feet were passed over without serious difficulty, but there was a space of 15 feet above him. Slowly he reaches the 20-foot point. Still more carefully does he try his hold on those bricks to see if they are firm. His feet are now 25 feet from the ground. His head is near the bottom of the embrasure. All below is breathless silence. The strain is intense. Will that embrasure blaze with fire as he attempts to enter it? Or will the butts of rifles crush his skull? Cautiously, he looks through and sees and hears nothing. He enters, and as good fortune would have it, no Chinese are there.” 

Titus’s willingness to climb the wall—unarmed and without knowing what might face him at the top—inspired those around him. The American flag was soon flying atop the wall for all to see. This opened the way for British troops to relieve the Legation Quarter. The following day, 5th U.S. Artillery pounded the gates of the Inner City. Empress Cixi fled the city. Following negotiations, the Boxer Protocol was signed Sept. 7, 1901, ending hostilities and mandating reparations to all Allied powers. The Qing dynasty, now very much in decline, lasted another 10 years before it was overthrown in 1912.

Medal of Honor

Titus’s fearlessness earned him an “at large” appointment to the U.S. Military Academy in 1901, where as a “Plebe” (first-year cadet), he was presented the Medal of Honor by President Theodore Roosevelt during West Point’s centennial celebration in spring 1902. It was a unique event; no cadet had been awarded America’s highest military award, and no other has to this day. The cadets were drawn up in front of the President’s flag. Roosevelt, accompanied by Lt. Gen. Nelson A. Miles (also a Medal of Honor recipient), walked on both sides of the line to inspect the Corps. The adjutant ordered Titus to step to the front, then read his citation, which was, as typical in that era, quite simple. It said only that he was being awarded the medal “for gallant and daring conduct in the presence of his colonel and other officers and enlisted men of his regiment; was first to scale the wall of the city.”

According to an article in the Army and Navy Journal, Roosevelt then advanced, bearing the medal. He then pinned it on Titus’ coat and shook his hand with great cordiality. “Now, don’t let this give you the big head!” Roosevelt reportedly said to Titus. After the ceremony, a third-year cadet named Douglas MacArthur approached Titus, looked at his medal and commented, “Mister, that’s something!” MacArthur had seen the decoration previously, since his father Lt. Gen. Arthur MacArthur Jr. had been awarded the Medal of Honor for his heroism as a lieutenant during the 1863 Civil War Battle of Missionary Ridge. MacArthur would receive his Medal of Honor some 40 years in the future.

Graduating in 1905, Titus returned to the 14th Infantry in the Philippines as a second lieutenant. From August 1916 to February 1917, then Capt. Titus served with the 24th Infantry Regiment in Gen. John J. Pershing’s Punitive Expedition into Mexico. He subsequently was on the Mexican Border Patrol with his unit in New Mexico.

World Wars I and II

During World War I, Maj. Titus commanded a battalion in the 24th Infantry in Columbus, New Mexico until he attended the Army War College in Washington, D.C. He then deployed to Germany where he commanded the 16th Infantry in the Army of Occupation. Lt. Col. Titus also taught Reserve Officer Training Corps cadets at Coe College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. He retired from active duty in 1930. 

On Dec. 13, 1941, days after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Titus asked he be recalled to active duty. In a letter to the commanding general at the Presidio of San Francisco, he asked if there was “some staff or desk job that I could hold down! It is true,” he wrote, “that I have been completely away from Army stuff for years but I . . . can still think straight and make decisions.”

The Army declined his request, but his letter showed that his “can do” spirit still was a part of his character. Sometime after scaling the wall on Aug. 14, 1900, Calvin Titus had been wounded in the neck by a shell fragment. It was not a serious injury but it was not forgotten: the Army awarded then retired Lt. Col. Titus the Purple Heart in 1956—more than a half century after he was wounded in combat.

Titus died at a Veterans Hospital in Sylmar, Ca. on May 27, 1966 at 86. The Army commissioned an H. Charles McBarron painting of the scene at the Chinese wall, which featured in the popular “The U.S. Army In Action” series of posters. Titus’s famous “I’ll Try, Sir!” is the official motto of the 5th U.S. Infantry Regiment. In 1995, the Military Sealift Command renamed a Logistics Prepositioning Ship (AK-5089) Lieutenant Colonel Calvin P. Titus. While no longer afloat, it was used to carry cargo to U.S. military units around the globe.

this article first appeared in military history quarterly

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In late October 1917, a detachment of German mountain troopers weary from hard Alpine fighting on the Isonzo front were crossing the river Torre with a group of Italian prisoners. The ordinarily calm waters of the river had swollen into a raging flood after constant heavy rain. Suddenly an Italian prisoner was dragged away by the current. Screaming and flailing, he whirled downstream, sinking under the weight of the large pack he was carrying. An unexpected rescuer came to his aid. The battle-hardened German officer who had defeated the Italian’s comrades and overseen his capture went galloping after him. Driving his horse straight into the torrent, the German risked getting washed away as he drew the helpless prisoner, hanging onto one of his stirrups, to safety.

The German officer was young Oberleutnant Erwin Rommel, and this act of compassion was typical of him. It would be a cornerstone of his career during two world wars in which contempt of one’s enemies and xenophobia were idealized by authorities in power in Germany. Surprisingly, Rommel chose to write about this rescue and other similar anecdotes of humanity in his 1937 World War I memoir, Infantry Attacks! Then a military instructor, Rommel intended to use the book as teaching material for future soldiers training to fight in the Wehrmacht—during a dark era when popular culture in Germany was at its most unmerciful. His original German text offers valuable insights about his outlook and approach to war that censorship and mistranslation had hidden from history.

A Controversial Character

Erwin Rommel is one of the most controversial figures in World War II and German history. Awarded Imperial Germany’s highest decoration for valor, the Pour le Mérite, for his impressive actions as a junior officer during World War I, Rommel reached the pinnacle of his fame during World War II as a brilliant Panzer leader in the 1940 conquest of France and as the daring “Desert Fox” who fought—and ultimately lost to—British and Allied troops in North Africa from 1941 to ’43. Rommel would go on to direct the fortifications of the Normandy coast in preparation for the Allied invasion of France, and command Germany’s Army Group B during the D-Day landings in 1944.

Rommel never joined the Nazi Party nor did he receive any Party decorations, despite the fact that joining would have boosted his career—as it did conversely for Ferdinand Schörner, also a professional soldier, World War I veteran and Pour le Mérite recipient who opted to become a Nazi Party member.

Despite the best efforts of Nazi propaganda to cast Rommel as a hardline ex-SA storm trooper, which he was not, and Allied efforts to depict him as a coldblooded fascist thug, Rommel confounded the expectations of both sides with his unpredictable and humanistic behavior during the war. He disobeyed Adolf Hitler’s infamous Commando Order of 1942 demanding that all Allied “irregular” troops captured were to be delivered to Heinrich Himmler’s security services for immediate execution. Numerous Allied POWs attested to Rommel’s humane treatment of them.

Among them was Capt. Roy Wooldridge of the British Army’s Royal Corps of Engineers, who credited Rommel with saving his life. Wooldridge was captured by a German U-Boat crew while on a secret 1944 mission to scout obstacles around the Normandy coast.

Although Wooldridge was told by interrogators that he would be shot, Rommel unexpectedly summoned Wooldridge, sparing him from a firing squad and sending him off to France after giving him a beer and a pack of cigarettes. “When I got to the prisoner of war camp, a German guard who spoke English said, ‘You’re a very lucky man. If you hadn’t been to see Rommel you would have been shot as a saboteur,’” Wooldridge told the BBC in 2014.

Plotting Against Hitler?

Disillusioned with Hitler’s leadership as early as 1942, Rommel became part of a group of German Army officers conspiring to remove Hitler from power. Contrary to common perceptions, there was not an absence of German Resistance nor did such resistance only come into existence when the war appeared to be closing in around Germany in 1944; pockets of dissent had existed within Germany’s military from much earlier and became more active over time.

Having burned many of his personal papers, particularly from early 1944, to protect himself and others, Rommel’s activities against Hitler—particularly his knowledge or lack thereof regarding Claus von Stauffenberg’s failed July 20 assassination attempt—remain debated.

What is indisputable is that Hitler and other leading Nazis perceived Rommel to be a threat and acted quickly to get rid of him. Severely wounded by a plane that strafed his staff car in Normandy on July 17 and left him with a fractured skull, Rommel was executed on Hitler’s orders on Oct. 14, 1944. Representatives of Hitler came to Rommel’s home and threatened to harm his family unless he agreed to commit suicide—immediately. With the house surrounded by Gestapo and SS men, Rommel complied, and took cyanide he was given on an isolated roadside less than 15 minutes from his driveway. Nazi officials concealed the cause of Rommel’s death, initially claiming he had succumbed to wounds from a “car accident” without mentioning a plane strafing.

Doctors who examined Rommel’s body were threatened to falsify his cause of death. Authorities transformed Rommel’s funeral into a propaganda spectacle to rally public support for Hitler. Witnessing Rommel’s executioners use his funeral as political theater was a lifelong source of pain and anger for Rommel’s then 15-year-old son Manfred, aware of the true cause of his father’s death. News of Rommel’s demise was initially celebrated in the Allied press. The darker story emerged after the war was over.

Since then, Rommel has been the focus of endless debate—celebrated, reviled, doubted and admired. Was he a hero? A hopeless fence-sitter? A would-be assassin? A military genius or a blunderer? Although this author is prepared to venture well-researched opinions on these matters, that is not the purpose of this article. Instead, readers of this story are invited to cast an eye back to the start of Rommel’s career and the experiences he recorded in the original German text of his 1937 book, Infantry Attacks! (Infanterie Greift An), which provides valuable clues about Rommel’s philosophy and ethos.

Censoring Rommel

The book is inextricably bound up with the story of Rommel’s life and had a propelling effect on his career. It launched him to the heights of military command, unlocked barriers to armored warfare, and paved his road to Africa and Normandy—and, most fatefully, brought him into contact with Hitler, the man who sealed his doom. It was also poorly translated into English. The U.S. Army produced translations of the book in 1943 and 1944, which were heavily redacted and contained errors. Phrases and entire passages were removed. All color and emotion were drained from the original language. This changed not only the content but the tone of the writing.

With Rommel’s personality scrubbed out of the book, readers were left only with a bare skeleton of his work. That bare skeleton has shaped perceptions of Rommel among English readers. It might appear to anyone picking up the U.S. Army’s rendition of Rommel’s writing that he was a bland technocrat who produced one of the most convoluted and tedious war memoirs written by any officer who ever dared to pick up a pen. The contrast between the common 1944 English translation, which is about as exciting as reading an encyclopedia, and the otherwise dashing figure of Rommel is enough to leave a person baffled.

Although Rommel was a meticulous teacher of troops and intended his experiences to be used as a textbook—a blend of memoir with “lessons learned”—the original German book has much more historical value than the tactical teachings it contains, which so far have been the only thing that most English readers have been able to appreciate about it.

Nothing in the material that was censored contained gory, obscene or political language, but ordinary passages for any soldier’s wartime memoir. Many removed passages were ones in which Rommel came across as more relatable or sympathetic on a human level, such as his anecdote of finding a wounded Frenchman by a mountain hut who is subsequently tended by Rommel’s troops, his care for his horse, and friends’ funerals.

Working to produce English translations in the middle of World War II, the U.S. Army also removed passages that they may have worried would intimidate Allied soldiers or civilians, such as some passages describing soldiers’ deaths, violence, or grim scenes. Some praise for German troops was removed, as well as a reference in which Rommel clearly states that he has no fear of Russians. The Russians—allies in World War II, of course—in that sentence were conveniently changed to “Romanians.”

Clues About Rommel From His Writing

Rommel’s use of the German language makes for interesting study. His writing is distinctly straightforward with a colloquial South German twist. Patterns of expression emerge. As an author, Rommel showed a tendency to remove direct references to himself from his own narrative. While this is not unusual in the German language, the lengths that Rommel went through to avoid focus on himself is unique—especially when it comes to describing the hardships of battle or frontline conditions.

Although he didn’t hesitate to describe himself in decision-making, he tended to make difficult or uncomfortable situations into “we” and “us” experiences, or simply speak of the tribulations of war in a more abstract sense. It is clear that Rommel did not wish to complain nor describe his own sense of suffering, but referred to himself as part of a group—and above all, focused on the sacrifices of his comrades. This attitude can often be found in the memoirs and statements of war veterans who wish for others to focus on the deeds of their friends around them rather than on themselves.

A sense of deep affection for his comrades is manifest in Rommel’s writing. He referred to his troops in endearing terms, in many cases as “mein Häuflein”—meaning “my little flock,” as if they were a flock of sheep who need to be tended or a small handful of something to be looked after. He stressed his feelings of responsibility towards his men, particularly in situations where they were in danger and he felt compelled to protect them; in one instance, Rommel risked his entire force to save a group of their comrades who were stranded amid enemy forces, taking a “one for all, all for one” type of attitude.

Rommel wrote tributes to fallen comrades, recording their achievements, deaths and funerals. He later revisited former battlefields and photographed his friends’ graves. Additionally, Rommel devoted what sometimes seems like an inordinate amount of energy into building fortifications to protect his men from harm, spending much time analyzing and improving shelters and dugouts. The amount of effort he put into improving structures for defense suggests that Rommel was actually more cautious and circumspect on the front than he is commonly perceived to have been.

‘Homeland’ not ‘Fatherland’

Thought-provoking word choices pop up frequently in Rommel’s writings. While it has been assumed that Rommel had no taste for music or literature, his narrative contains several references to songs and culture, including an ironic reference to a scene from a Richard Wagner opera.

It’s also worth noting that Rommel never used the word “Vaterland” (“Fatherland”) to describe Germany, instead preferring to use “Heimat”—a folksy term meaning “homeland” which wasn’t quite German nationalists’ cup of tea. While the term “Vaterland” was often used by the Nazis to stress the concept of Germany as a strong unified country under Hitler’s rule, “Heimat” is an old-fashioned term that can refer to one’s native region and is non-political. Since the book was published within the Third Reich, when Nazism and support for Hitler were encouraged on every level of society, Rommel had no reason not to appeal to mainstream Nazi political sentiments in his book; indeed, it might have made his work more popular. Yet the book contains no mentions of a Führer nor a “new Fatherland”. 

Rommel was a native of the Swabian Alps, and after serving as an infantryman on the Western Front early in World War I, was selected to become part of the Württemberg Mountain Battalion, an elite unit of Gebirgsjäger troops—German army mountain rangers. These rangers are highly mobile, extremely resilient and adaptable, and trained to maneuver and fight in all manner of harsh mountain environments. They were and continue to be among the most elite units in German-speaking nations. Entitled to great cultural esteem due to their abilities and affinity with the mountains, they are entitled to wear the symbol of the Edelweiss flower.

Training troops For the Wilderness

The Edelweiss, whose name means “noble white,” is a legendary bloom known for growing in the most austere mountain environments and being difficult to reach. It is a symbol not only of beauty but of hardiness and resilience. Still worn by Gebirgsjäger troops today, the Edelweiss patch was also a hard-earned symbol that Rommel was entitled to wear. It is visible on his cap in several of his World War I photos.

Rommel’s writings reveal his strong sense of identity as a mountain ranger, which arguably has never been properly appreciated by historians. Although he built strong bonds with his men in the trenches of the Argonne, one of the singular events in World War I that truly had a transformative effect on Rommel and his future leadership was his becoming a mountain ranger. Within this close-knit group, Rommel quickly developed a strong sense of pride, along with confidence in harsh training and an attitude of fearlessness. Camaraderie and the tests of combat convinced Rommel that, together, he and his men could accomplish nearly anything.

The Rommel that emerged as a skilled commander of mountain rangers was the same Rommel who would become the “Desert Fox” in North Africa—a man who excelled in the wilderness and at molding soldiers into masters of mobile combat, who could all withstand not only battle but the very elements of nature. An intense spirit of individuality, pride and elite group identity, as well as feelings of a close personal bond with Rommel as their commander, remained with many Afrika Korps veterans for their whole lives. The seeds of this future success are clear to be seen in Rommel’s proud and emotional writings about his love for the mountain troops.

Themes and Slang

Nature forms a major theme in Rommel’s narrative. He had a special flair for describing natural environments such as forests, trees, mountains, and geographic features, as well as elemental forces like thunder, lightning, clouds and different types of storms. Even in the midst of grim battles, Rommel somehow appreciated his natural surroundings and found a way to draw attention to it in writing. His writings on nature are poetic, highly descriptive and sometimes romanticized. In one instance, for example, Rommel compared meadows to the Elysian Fields of Roman mythology.

Despite Rommel’s sense of poetry about nature, his writings  abound with slang common to soldiers’ memoirs. Rommel wrote with an understated and ironic sense of humor, and—with a sly attitude similar to the Civil War’s “Gray Ghost,” Col. John Singleton Mosby—clearly enjoyed taking enemies by surprise and chasing fleeing foes. Rommel’s writings on action are far from clinical. Gunfire “rips through” things, men are “gunned down,” and planned actions will be a “piece of cake”—or even “fun”. Rommel’s mix of slang, irony and hard-edged soldierly humor is characteristic of the memoirs of many military professionals.

Humane Treatment of Enemies

Another factor that stands out throughout Rommel’s book is his humane treatment of enemies. The amount of times that Rommel gave his enemies opportunities to surrender rather than shoot them is surprising—in fact, there are several cases when, as Rommel gained opportunities to surprise formidable enemy forces, readers might fairly wonder if opening fire might have been a more practical battlefield measure than yelling at foes to give themselves up.

Rommel however made a constant habit of requesting surrenders even when it seemed clearly inconvenient or downright dangerous to do so. He frequently spoke with prisoners afterwards and gives them cigarettes. In a mirrorlike foreshadowing of events at St. Valery during World War II in 1940, Rommel invited captured officers to have a meal with him. As in 1940, the captured officers were understandably too upset by their situation to appreciate this gesture. But it’s worth noting that this naïve attempt at magnanimity was one that Rommel would repeat in World War II.

Young Rommel also helped enemy wounded, and in one instance intervened to stop his own men from harming POWs. It’s worth mentioning that Rommel, in describing these anecdotes and choosing to include them in his military textbook, risked coming across as “weich,” or “soft,” in Nazi Germany. His anecdotes of showing kindness to enemies did not correspond to the general sense of bloodthirsty nationalism whipped up by Kaiser Wilhelm II during the First World War nor the iron-hearted cruelty advertised as being “strong” in Hitler’s Germany. Rommel could arguably have gotten farther by describing himself being merciless rather than being empathetic.

If anything, the passages attest not only to Rommel’s inner principles but his independence. As a military instructor during the Third Reich, Rommel must have been aware of the values that the regime wanted to instill in future soldiers, but instead chose to set an example of humanity for his students even if it did not match popular ideology. His behavior also forms a continuum with what Allied POWs witnessed during World War II—that Rommel’s compassionate treatment of POWs was not part of any postwar mythologizing, but was rather a real part of his character that was evident when he was a young man.

World War I had a profound impact on Rommel. Haunted by his experiences, Rommel would return to his former battlegrounds, form a veterans’ group, write about, teach about and dwell on his battlefield experiences for the rest of his life. He also wore his Pour le Mérite medal, earned among his beloved mountain troops, constantly until it chipped and faded. There are many more insights to be gained about Rommel’s early transformation into an effective war leader from his memoir—too many to describe in one article. However, what truly stands out is that, contrary to the commonly read, clinical English translations produced during World War II, Rommel was a gifted writer who expressed more about ethics in war than has been previously realized.

Zita Ballinger Fletcher is Editor of MHQ and the author of Erwin Rommel: First War, A New Look at Infantry Attacks, published in 2023.

this article first appeared in military history quarterly

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Shields have existed for as long as warfare has. The function of a shield is to protect its wielder from bodily harm, such as from blunt weapons, edged weapons, polearms, projectiles and other dangers introduced in combat. Like warfare itself, shields evolved over time. Their shape and construction varied according to cultures, geography, the fighting style of their intended wielder, and the materials available for manufacture.

One common thread weaving the diverse history of shields together is that of symbolism. Archaeological evidence suggests that decorative designs have been applied to shields since prehistoric times. The Aztec created symbolic designs on shields, as did Aboriginal Australians and Zulu peoples.

Many times, decorative designs served a practical purpose: set color schemes, marks, or unit symbols served to identify warriors on the battlefield. However, shield symbolism often went beyond mere functionality to speak to an individual warrior’s ethos or to send a message to the enemy. 

Shields and Spiritual Beliefs

Spiritual motifs are common elements of shield symbolism. These were used to invoke protection or power, broadcast strength or ability, or both. For example, the shields of ancient Greek hoplites depicted monsters to frighten enemies, or entities who could bestow power, such as mythological creatures, deities or emblems of their gods.

Ancient Roman shields were red, the color of war and military might, and often bore lightning bolts to signify Jupiter, the king of the Roman gods and symbol of Roman supremacy. Roman shields sometimes displayed wreaths of laurel leaves to signify victory as well as symbols of importance to particular legions or units. In medieval times, shields of Christian knights bore religious symbols, such as the cross or fleur de lis. Symbols used on shields took on such importance in Western Europe and Great Britain that the shield can be credited with inspiring the art of heraldry.

A Unique Art Form

The simple, ancient tool of the shield is thus a wellspring of human expression. Decoding the the images on shields, and even their shapes and colors, can reveal interesting things about the fighters of ages past—what powers commanded their loyalties, what they valued, what they believed in, and what they were trying to communicate to others, whether on ceremonial occasions or in the thick of violence on the battlefield.

this article first appeared in military history quarterly

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Colt-Paterson Model 1836 Revolver

Patented on Feb. 25, 1836, Samuel Colt’s five-shooter—the world’s first commercially practical revolver—took its name from the factory where it was mass produced, the Patent Arms Co. in Paterson, New Jersey. It met with a lukewarm reception until 1839, when Colt added an integral loading lever and capping window that made reloading far easier and faster.

The U.S. Army purchased a limited number of Colt’s revolving pistols, rifles and shotguns for field testing in Florida during the 1835–42 Second Seminole War, but rejected them as too fragile and prone to malfunction. Colt improved the breed. By 1843 the Republic of Texas Navy had bought 180 rifles and shotguns and a roughly equal number of revolvers. When the Texas Army and Navy were disbanded that year, the republic’s remaining armed force, the 40 men of the Texas Ranger Company, bought up the surplus revolvers.

Ranger Capt. John Coffee Hays heaped praise on the weapons for their relative ease in loading from virtually any position and their effectiveness against larger numbers of Indians. By 1861 Colt’s continually improving revolvers had won their way back into the U.S. military, whose officers would soon be trading shots with each other.

Minié Bullet

In 1847 French armorer Claude-Étienne Minié developed a conical bullet with cannelures around the sides that would expand upon firing. This feature allowed a line infantryman to quickly secure the round within a musket barrel—even one with rifling—after which the hot gasses of the powder explosion caused the bullet to expand as it spun out the rifled barrel. This gave the bullet or “Minié ball” greater speed, range and accuracy than the older musket ball yet could be loaded/reloaded just as fast.

A further refinement was introduced by Capt. James H. Burton of the Harpers Ferry Armory in western Virginia, in the form of a conical concavity at the rear, aiding the bullet’s expansion. Britain’s army first took full advantage of the Minié bullet with its Pattern 1853 Enfield rifle, which entered service during the Crimean War. The American variant was incorporated into the Model 1855, whose Maynard tape primer was replaced by a copper cap in the Model 1861 Springfield, so named because most (but by no means all) were produced in that Massachusetts town. The rifled Minié bullets were devastating in both wars. Their users still clung to Napoleonic Era century doctrine, facing off in lines and at distances for which casualties to more efficient rifles increased exponentially.

Dévastation Class Ironclad Floating Batteries

The ironclad warship harkens back to the Korean “turtle ships” that helped defeat the Japanese navy during the latter’s invasion attempt of 1592 to 1598. The concept was revived when France deployed three floating batteries of the Dévastation class to the Crimean War. With their 4.3-inch-thick iron sides, 16 50-pounder smoothbore and two 12-pounder guns, the vessels weighed more than 1,600 tons each and although powered by a 150-hp Le Creuzot steam engine each or the wind against three auxiliary sails, the best speed they could produce was 4 knots. Consequently, in practice the vessels had to be towed to their targets by sidewheeler steam frigates: L’Albatros for Dévastation, Darien for Tonnante and Magellan towing Lave. The trio had their combat debut against the Russian fortress of Kinburn on the Black Sea on Oct. 17, 1855, performing well as Dévastation hurled 1,265 projectiles on the fort (82 of them shells) in four hours, sustaining 72 hits, 31 of which struck its armor and suffering the only fatalities of the three: two crewmen—plus 12 wounded. All three batteries saw further service against the Austrians in the Adriatic Sea in 1859.

That year the French commissioned Gloire, the first seagoing ironclad, ushering in a new era in warship design, which would next see practice in earnest when the Confederate ironclad ram Manassas defended New Orleans on Oct. 12, 1861 and—vainly—on April 24, 1862.

USS George Washington Parke Custis

In August 1861 Col. Thaddeus Sobieski Constantine Lowe, self-styled master of balloons, purchased a coal barge which he, in collaboration with John A. Dahlgren, commander of the Washington Navy Yard and chief of the Bureau of Ordnance, modified with a flat deck, 120 feet long and 14 feet, 6 inches in beam, capable of accommodating an observation balloon, hydrogen-generating apparatus, related equipment and tools and crewmen drawn from the Army. Although previous ships had carried balloons, Lowe’s vessel, christened USS George Washington Parke Custis, was the first designed from the hull up to maintain and launch them.

The one thing it lacked was its own means of propulsion. After trials on the Potomac River, on Dec. 10 the balloon carrier was towed downriver by the steamer Coeur de Lion, accompanied by Dahlgren and a detachment of troops led by Brig. Gen. Daniel E. Sickles, anchoring at Mattawomen Creek. The next day Lowe ascended to observe Confederate activity in Virginia, three miles away, reporting on enemy batteries at Freestone Point and counting their campfires. George Washington Parke Custis accompanied the Army of the Potomac up the York and James rivers in spring 1862. Modest though its achievements were—limited by dependance on external propulsion—it was the first aircraft carrier.

Gatling Gun

The American Civil War coincided with the development of several automatic weapon designs, of which that of Dr. Richard Gatling, involving six rotating barrels cranked by hand, proved to be the most effective. Although patented on Nov. 4, 1862, the Gatling gun was not officially adopted by the U.S. Army until 1866…which is not to say it saw no action until then. On July 17, 1863 city authorities purchased some Gatlings to intimidate anti-draft rioters in New York. During the siege of Petersburg (June 1864-April 1865) Union officers bought 12 Gatling guns with their own money to install in the trenches facing the Confederate defenses, while another eight were mounted aboard gunboats.

Although large and heavy, Gatlings made a growing post-Civil War presence in Japan’s Boshin War of 1877, the 1879 Anglo-Zulu War and the American charge up San Juan Hill in 1898. Eclipsed by gas-operated machine guns like the Maxim by the end of the century, the Gatling gun’s principle was revived in the late 20th century in electrically operated weapons such as the Vulcan minigun.

Spencer Repeating Rifle

In 1860 Christopher Miner Spencer patented the world’s first bullet contained in a metallic .56-56 rimfire cartridge. Using a lever action and a falling breechblock, it could quickly fire off seven rounds from a tubular magazine within the buttstock. The Union Army was hesitant to adopt the Spencer because of the logistic headaches entailed in supplying weapons that virtually invited rapid, potentially wasteful firing, but eventually Spencer persuaded President Abraham Lincoln that the advantages outweighed the problems. Its earliest appearance was with Col. John T. Wilder’s “Lightning Brigade” of mounted infantry, whose privately-purchased Spencer rifles were a factor in the Army of the Cumberland’s victory at Hoover’s Gap on June 26-28, 1863.

Back East, Brig. Gen. George A. Custer equipped half of his Michigan Brigade with Spencer rifles in time for the battles of Hanover on June 30 and Gettysburg’s East Cavalry Field on July 3. The first of the shorter, handier Spencer carbines appeared in August and made an immediate hit among the cavalrymen. If logistics constituted a problem for the Union troops, it was worse among the Confederates whenever they obtained stocks of what they called “that damn Yankee gun that could be loaded on Sunday and fired all week.” Their shortages of copper and overall industrial capacity for reverse engineering rendered the captured Spencers a limited asset at best. A total of 200,000 Spencer rifles and carbines were produced before the state of the rifleman’s art advanced ahead.

Submarine H.L. Hunley

On Sept. 7, 1776 a curious little vessel called “Turtle,” designed by David Bushnell and manned by Continental Army Sergeant Ezra Lee, made history’s first submarine attack on the British 64-gun Eagle. The attempt failed and the next submarine attack on a warship had to wait until 1864. Under siege by land and by sea, Confederate-ruled Charleston, South Carolina used all manner of ingenious inventions to counter the overwhelming numbers of U.S. Navy blockaders, including the ironclad casemate rams Chicora and Palmetto State, small semisubmersible torpedo boats called Davids and a fully submersible vessel designed by Horace Lawson Hunley.

Propelled by a screw propeller turned by an eight-man crew and armed with a spar torpedo (explosive mine mounted at the end of a wooden pole), the latter was built in Mobile, Al. and shipped by rail to Charleston on Aug. 12, 1863. During testing on Aug. 29, the vessel, named H.L. Hunley for its inventor, swamped, drowning five of the crew. Raised and tested further, it sank again on Oct. 15, killing all eight crewmen including Hunley himself. Raised again, H.L. Hunley set out on its first operational sortie on Feb. 17, 1864 and detonated its spar torpedo against the side of the 1,260-ton screw sloop of war USS Housatonic, which sank. H.L. Hunley did not return, but in 1995 its remains were found and in 2000 it was raised, revealing it had ventured closer to its target than intended and swamped for the last time.

Although it took a heavier toll on its crews than on the enemy—a total of 21 killed compared to two officers and three crewmen slain aboard Housatonic—the precedent had been set by the world’s first successful submarine attack. The ill-starred H.L. Hunley is on display at the Warren Lasch Conservation Center on the Cooper River.

Dreyse Needle Gun

Developed by Johann Nikolaus von Dreyse and patented in 1840, the first breech-loading bolt-action rifle used a needle-like firing pin to pierce through a paper cartridge to strike a percussion cap at the base of the bullet. British testers were impressed by its accuracy at 800 to 1,200 yards, but dismissed it as “too complicated and delicate” to stand up to battle use—and in fact many Prussian infantrymen carried extra “needles” in case they broke. Despite the critics, King Friedrich Wilhelm IV ordered 60,000 for his army.

The Dreyse needle gun proved its mettle in the German wars of reunification, while evolving from paper to metal cartridges in 1862. The rifle was first used against fellow Prussians in the May uprising in Dresden during the Revolution of 1848, but truly proved itself against Danish muzzle-loaders in the Second Schleswig-Holstein War of 1864. The Prussians had 270,000 Dreyses for the Seven Weeks’ War of 1866, where the average Prussian infantryman could get five shots off lying prone in the time it took an Austrian standing to reload his Lorenz rifle musket. The Dreyse met its match in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71 against the superior French Chassepot, but with 1,150,000 needle guns, the better-led Prussian forces prevailed.

Whitehead Locomotive Torpedo

In the Austrian port of Trieste in 1860, naval engineer Robert Whitehead, was inspired by Fiume-based engineer Giovanni Luppis’ “coast savior,” a small self-propelled vessel run on compressed air. He designed a compressed air-powered “Minenschiff” also called a “locomotive torpedo,” patented on Dec. 21, 1866. Unlike previous stationary torpedoes, Whitehead’s was not only self-propelled, but had a self-regulating depth device and a gyroscopic stabilizer. Equally important, Whitehead devised a launching barrel, making his invention not a merely a weapon, but a weapons system. After being test mounted on the gunboat Gemse, Whitehead’s torpedo was purchased or licensed by 16 naval powers, undergoing constant refinement.

Its essential nature in one role was expressed by Adm. Henry John May in 1904 when he declared, “but for Whitehead the submarine would remain an interesting toy and little more.” The first wartime torpedo attack allegedly occurred during the Russo-Turkish War on Jan. 16, 1878 when torpedo boats from the Russian tender Velikiy Knyaz Konstantin captained by Stepan Osipovich Makarov sank the Ottoman steamer Intibah. After all the improvements the original underwent, its last combat use came in Drobak Sound, Norway on April 9, 1940 when two Whitehead torpedoes from a Norwegian coastal battery struck the shell-damaged German heavy cruiser Blücher and sank it.

Maxim Machine Gun

Prolific polymath inventor Sir Hiram Stevens Maxim is best remembered for a three-year project begun in 1882 that led to a machine gun with a recoil-operated firing system that fired 250 .303-inch rounds at a rate the Gatling could not match, plus a water-cooling system to allow sustained fire. Its durability and murderous efficiency led to its use by 29 countries between 1886 and 1959. It also earned American-born Maxim a British knighthood. The Maxims’ effect on history first manifested itself in Africa, where the British used them in their 1887 expedition against rebellious Yoni in Sierra Leone and the Germans used them against the Abushiri of their East African colony in 1888.

Its first major battle was during the First Matabele War in what is now Zimbabwe. At Shangani on Oct. 25, 1893, 700 British and South African troops, backed by Maxims, took a fearsome toll on 5,000 Matabele enemies. In 1898 the weapon’s role in European and American imperialism was archly summed up by Hilaire Belloc in The Modern Traveler: “Whatever happens, we have got, the Maxim gun, and they have not.” The European powers would be forced to revise their view in 1914, however, when they had to face the consequences of using Maxim’s invention against one another.

this article first appeared in military history quarterly

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

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

Enter Shakespeare

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

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

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

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

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

The Real ‘Falstaff’

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

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

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

To Battle

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

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

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

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

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

The Battle of the Herrings

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

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

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

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

Joan of Arc

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

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

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

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

Fastolf’s Retreat

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

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

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

Cowardice?

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

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

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

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

Where Fact Meets Fiction

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

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

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

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

this article first appeared in military history quarterly

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Frederika Charlotte Louise, Baroness Riedesel zu Eisenbach—better known as Baroness von Riedesel—was the wife of Baron Friedrich Adolf Riedesel, a German mercenary commander who served with the British during the American Revolutionary War. Frederika insisted on traveling with her husband and his army, and kept a diary.

Frederika fell in love with Friedrich, a seasoned Hessian officer, when he was recovering from his wounds at her family’s estate during the Seven Years’ War (1756-1763); she was 16 years old when they married. The couple enjoyed a close relationship, so much that Friedrich consented to allow his wife to follow him when he went to war in North America.

A determined woman, Frederika was not put off from the journey although she had three very young children and angered her mother by going. “I am very sorry to be obliged, for the first time in my life, willingly to disobey you,” she wrote to her mother.

She began her journey on May 14, 1776, taking her three small daughters; one age 4, another age 2 and the youngest 10 weeks old. The baroness braved many dangers, traveling through areas infested by highwaymen, “yet I would have purchased at any price the privilege thus granted to me of seeing daily my husband,” she wrote. 

Frederika accompanied her husband on campaign. “They are naturally soldiers, and excellent marksmen,” she wrote of the Americans, “and the idea of fighting for their country and their liberty increased their innate courage.” Frederika saved her husband’s regimental colors when they were taken prisoner by the Americans by hiding the colors in her mattress. She and her husband survived the war and returned to Germany, having had four additional children in North America.

Her diary remains an important firsthand source describing the events of the war. Frederika is one of many German women who made noteworthy contributions to history while supporting their husbands. It is interesting to compare her as a German officer’s wife to the wives of leaders of Nazi Germany, who had a chauvinistic vision for the role of German women. In this passage, Frederika describes the Battle of Saratoga which ended in Patriot victory on Oct. 17, 1777. 

Marching with The troops

We finally reached Saratoga about dark, which was only a half hour march from the place where we had spent the whole day. I was totally soaking wet due to ceaseless rain and had to stay that way all night because I had no place to change my clothes. So I sat next to a good fire, undressed my children and then we all laid down together on straw.

I asked [Major General William] Phillips who approached me why we did not start our retreat while there was still time, because my husband had undertaken responsibility to cover the retreat and see the army through it. “Poor woman!” he answered me. “You amaze me! Although you’re soaking wet you still have the courage to wish to go on in this weather. If only you were our commanding general! He believes himself to be too exhausted and wants to stay here for the night, and give us some supper.”

In fact General [John] Burgoyne was very keen to do so; he spent half the night singing and drinking, and amused himself with the wife of a commissary, who was his mistress and loved champagne like he did. 

Then I rose at 7 a.m. the next morning with some tea to wake me up, and we hoped now that things would change in an instant for us to finally continue marching away. To cover our retreat, General Burgoyne ordered for the beautiful houses and mills in Saratoga that belonged to [Major] General [Philip] Schuyler to be set on fire…

Aiding the Neglected Troops

Wretchedness of the greatest magnitude and the most extreme disorder reigned in the army. The commissaries forgot to distribute rations among the troops. There were enough cattle but none were slaughtered. More than 30 officers came to me who could not hold out much longer due to hunger. I ordered coffee and tea to be made for them…

Ultimately my provisions were depleted, and in the exasperation of not being able to help anymore, I called the General Adjutant [John] Patterson over because he happened to pass by and I told him, forcefully, the following words because these matters were weighing much on my heart:  “Come here, and see these officers, who have been wounded for the common cause, and who are now deprived of everything because nobody gives them what they are owed. It is your duty to bring this to the attention of the general.” 

He was deeply moved by this and the result was that General Burgoyne himself came to me within a quarter of an hour later, and thanked me very pathetically that I had reminded him of his duties…I replied to him that I asked for his pardon for interfering in things that I knew very well were not a woman’s business, but that I found it impossible to remain silent because I had seen so many brave people in want of everything and had nothing more to give them myself. He thanked me afterwards once again (although I still believe that in his heart he never forgave me for this blow)…

Dodging GunFire

At about 2 o’clock in the afternoon the sounds of cannon fire and small arms fire were heard again, and everything transformed into alarm and movement. My husband sent instructions to me that I should immediately go to a house which was not far from there.

I got into my calash [carriage] with my children, and we had hardly started going towards the house when I saw, on the opposite bank of the Hudson River, five or six men with rifles aiming right at us. Almost unconsciously I threw the children into the rear of the carriage and threw myself over them.

In the same moment the bastards fired, and completely tore up the arm of a poor English soldier behind me, who was already injured and also wanted to retreat to the house. 

Just after our arrival, a frightful cannon barrage began, which was for the most part directed at the house where we were seeking shelter. The enemy probably believed that the generals were there because they saw so many people streaming toward there…We were ultimately forced to flee into the cellar, where I kept in a corner not far from the door. My children lay on the ground with their heads on my lap. We stayed that way the whole night….

Cannonballs in the House

Eleven cannonballs went right through the house and we could clearly hear them rolling right over our heads. One poor soldier, who was supposed to get his leg amputated and had been laid out on the table for this, had his other leg taken off by a cannonball in the meantime…

I was more dead than alive, but not so much over our own danger as that which my husband was facing. However he often sent men to ask how things were going for us and to let me know that he was all right…

Often my husband was of a mind to get me out of danger by sending me over to the Americans, but I protested that it would be more abominable than anything I was now enduring if I had to see and be courteous to people who at the same time were possibly killing my husband. Therefore he promised me that I would continue to follow the army…

I attempted to distract myself by busying myself a lot with our wounded… Once I undertook the care of a Major Plumpfield, adjutant to General Phillips; a rifle bullet had passed through both of his cheeks and smashed his teeth to pieces, and grazed his tongue. He could hold absolutely nothing in his mouth; any food nearly choked him and he was in no condition to take any other nourishment but a bit of beef soup, or some other liquid.

We had Rhine wine. I gave him a flask of it in the hope that the acidity of the wine would clean his mouth. He constantly took some of it in his mouth and that alone had such a salutary effect that he became healed, and thus I again made another friend. And thus I had, amid my hours of sorrow and worry, joyful moments of happiness that made me very glad.

this article first appeared in military history quarterly

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The war hammer, as crude as it seems, was a practical solution to a late-medieval arms race between offense and defense. From the 14th century, steel plate armor spread amongst the warrior classes. The angled and hardened surfaces of plate armor were highly resistant to thin-edged blows from swords and axes. The war hammer was one solution to defeat this protection.

War hammers relied on concussion rather than penetration to fell armor-clad opponents. Although there are ancient examples of war hammers across cultures, the weapon became commonplace in Europe from the second half of the 14th century.

Design

The basic war hammer design consisted of a long haft (one-handed or two-handed versions were developed) terminating in a metal hammer head. Swung with force, the hammer would deliver a crushing blow to the head, limbs or body of an armored opponent, inflicting enough blunt force trauma to stun, disable or kill.

Between the 14th and 15th centuries, war hammer design was improved for both functionality and lethality. In addition to the hammer head, the weapon acquired various designs of sharpened picks on the opposite side, these designed to penetrate armor or to act as hooks for pulling warriors off horses, or to grab reins or shield rims. Some war hammers also acquired a thin top spike for stabbing attacks; warriors soon learned to stun the opponent with the hammer, then finish him off with the pick or spike.

Developments

The Swiss refined the hammer head into a three- or four-pronged affair, which with a long spike and pick plus a 6 1/2-foot haft created the terrifying ‘Lucerne’ war hammer. Hafts were often strengthened with all-metal langets. War hammers were mainly used by cavalry, although they did find widespread service amongst infantry ranks.

In Western Europe, they continued in use into the 16th century until the introduction of firearms rendered plate armor obsolete, but in Eastern Europe they were wielded by Polish hussars through the 17th century and into the early 18th century.

Hammer

The hammer head had a cross-section of only about 2 inches square, to concentrate the impact of the blow into a small area, increasing the concussive effect.

Pick

Spiked heads could be straight, hooked, thick, thin, short or long. If the weapon was swung with full force, the pick was capable of puncturing plate armor.

Haft

The haft of a war hammer varied anywhere between 2 feet to 6 1/2 feet in length, the short variants used for close-quarters combat, the longer variants for deep swinging attacks from the back of a horse. 

Langets

Metal reinforcement strips running up the side of the haft prevented the weapon from being shattered by enemy sword blows.

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America is a nation built on distinct individualism as well as common values. This sense of diversity in unity is something reflected in a very physical sense in the war cemeteries and monuments maintained by the American Battle Monuments Commission (ABMC), which in 2023 marked its 100^th year anniversary.

The commission maintains 26 cemeteries and 32 battlefield memorials across 17 countries around the globe. No two sites are the same. In fact, they are non-standard by design. In an aesthetic contrast with the war cemeteries maintained by other nations, ABMC cemeteries are designed to appear unique in every aspect of their architecture, layout and memorial artwork, yet uniting the fallen with common headstone styles.

“I think what our nation does is a statement about our people and what it means to be an American,” Charles K. Djou, ABMC Secretary, told Military History Quarterly in an interview. “Every single site has something amazing and beautiful.”

Despite its tradition of individualism, the ABMC has several important factors common to every memorial site. “Where people are buried is not distinguished by race, rank, color or creed. This is something we take pride in,” said Djou. “Black and white soldiers are buried side by side. Generals are buried side by side with privates. There will always be a flagpole flying the American flag and that will be the highest point in all of our cemeteries.”

One Hundred Years of History  

The ABMC originated in the wake of the First World War. It owes its name to the shared efforts of U.S. authorities to find fitting and respectful ways to preserve American war graves and battle monuments, which were then scattered across Europe and needed to be consolidated and maintained in a respectful manner.  

“During the course of the war, temporary burials were marked in a number of different ways. If people had time, sometimes they would construct a wooden cross or sometimes stick a rifle in the ground with a helmet on it,” explained Michael Knapp, ABMC’s Chief of Historical Services. “People who made it back to rear areas and hospitals were buried in temporary gravesites that were more established and those generally had wooden crosses or some sort of grave marker.”

As these cemeteries were consolidated, graves were temporarily marked with white wooden crosses, with the exception of Jewish soldiers whose graves were instead marked with a white wooden Star of David by request of the Jewish community. Although many people argued for headstones similar to those in Arlington National Cemetery today to serve as the permanent grave markers, the ABMC’s first chairman, Gen. John J. Pershing, insisted that the white crosses be preserved.

“Pershing was adamant that we keep the look similar to the look of the temporary headstones with white crosses row on row – almost taken verbatim from the words of John McCrae’s poem ‘In Flanders Fields,’” said Knapp.

Therefore all war dead, apart from those of Jewish faith, are buried with crosses regardless of their religious beliefs.  “The Latin Cross in the ABMC cemetery usage is considered symbolic rather than religious,” explained Knapp. “Although predominantly it’s a Christian symbol, it was not chosen specifically as such.”

In contrast to the war burial arrangements of other nations, the U.S. government allowed American families to choose whether their loved one was brought back to the United States for burial or whether he would be buried overseas. This was the case in both world wars, Knapp said, and all expenses were paid by the U.S. government regardless of the family’s choice.

Works of Art  

What sets each war cemetery apart is the artwork and conceptual design unique to each space. The ABMC consulted prominent architects and artists to propose designs for each war cemetery.

“You see a lot of variation,” said Knapp. “It’s fascinating because no two are alike. There is no standard blueprint. Even the physical layout of all the cemeteries is different. Every aspect of ours is different. It’s very unique. I don’t believe any other country does it that way.”

The art is particularly evident in the non-sectarian chapel found in each cemetery. This offers family members and visitors a quiet place to reflect. The design, architecture, and art inside also reflect different themes and images to honor the dead. 

“The art tends to be symbolic and allegorical,” said Knapp. For example, the Brittany American Cemetery in France is arranged to resemble the flaming sword within a shield which was the emblem of Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF). The ceiling of the chapel in at the Sicily-Rome Cemetery reflects the constellations at the precise moment that Allied troops landed in Anzio.

The Need to Reflect and Respect

What stands out most of all to Djou, however, are the sheer number of war dead in each location. Standing amid the vast armies of white crosses is an overpowering experience. “It takes your breath away honestly,” he said.

Many of the cemeteries and war memorials, particularly in Europe, are within easy reach of major cities and popular tourist locations. However, Djou expressed the view that not enough Americans are coming to pay their respects to the fallen despite having opportunities to do so.

“So many Americans will go to Paris and see the Eiffel Tower. They will go to Rome and see the Colosseum,” he said. “They don’t realize that the reason that you can visit those places is because of all of those thousands of young American service members who fought to free all these places.”

Djou encourages all Americans traveling abroad to stop at a war memorial or cemetery even briefly, to visit those lost in battle who never had the chance to go home. “So many of these sites are just a few minutes away and so many Americans don’t realize how close they are.”

The lyrics to America’s most famous marching song of the Civil War were written when their author was half-asleep and first sold to a magazine for the whopping sum of five dollars. Julia Ward Howe had been visiting Washington, D.C. in November 1861 with her husband Samuel when she witnessed Union soldiers singing a boisterous tune known as “John Brown’s Body,” then popular among abolitionists. A poet and staunch abolitionist herself, Howe wished she could write new lyrics to this rather strange ditty that the soldiers were so fond of singing. Yet nothing immediately came to mind.    

As in most moments of creative genius, the spark of brilliance happened when she was least expecting it. A groggy Howe had woken up too early one morning and was lying in bed thinking about nothing in particular when suddenly “the wished-for lines were arranging themselves in my brain,” she later wrote. Jumping out of bed, “saying to myself, I shall lose this if I don’t write it down immediately,” Howe scribbled down her lyrics and then went back to sleep. She could hardly have expected when she sold the poem to the Atlantic Monthly in 1862 that it would quite literally spread like wildfire and become the hands-down favorite marching song of all men who took up arms to fight for the Union.

Howe, a committed pacifist, was an unlikely military lyricist. Yet the words she came up with that bleary-eyed morning lit a fire in the hearts of all soldiers who heard it and excelled at getting troops riled up, such as: 

I have seen Him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps; They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps:

I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps: His day is marching on. 

It is said that the song moved President Abraham Lincoln to tears, and it became known as the anthem of the Union cause. Howe’s fiery and moralistic lyrics proved enduringly popular, and consequently the song has been invoked by all types of movements and groups. Martin Luther King quoted one of its verses in his notable 1968 “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” speech. Following his assassination only one day later, the song became an anthem of King’s church and of the Civil Rights movement.

this article first appeared in military history quarterly

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Over the Christmas period in 1914, fraternization took place in No Man’s Land between British and German soldiers at St. Yvon in Belgium. Memorials in the Belgian villages of St. Yvon and Messines commemorate a football game played between the British and the Germans during the Truce. Whenever this author mentions that his grandfather Robert Hamilton, a captain in the 1st Battalion of the British Army’s Royal Warwickshire Regiment, was involved in the Christmas Truce at St. Yvon, he is invariably asked whether Hamilton played in a game of football against the Germans.

It is a fair question given that it is now widely accepted that there was an ‘international’ match there. However, evidence from accounts by those who took part in the Truce casts doubt over whether such a game took place at all and calls into question the justification for the installation of the three memorials, one on the edge of Ploegsteert Wood and two in Messines.

Where Did the Story Come From?

One of the most compelling accounts of the Christmas Truce and the warfare that preceded it, is to be found in Hamilton’s diary which he kept throughout his five months on the Western Front. It offers a graphic and harrowing account of mobile fighting before the onset of attritional trench warfare.

He vividly described the rain, mud, dangers and discomforts of life in the trenches and the daily fight for survival against shelling and sniping. His descriptions of life behind the lines, billets, estaminets and local hospitality are detailed and perceptive. His record of the humor and comradeship of his fellow soldiers is also heartwarming and entertaining.

At the war’s outbreak in 1914, Hamilton was 37 years old. He had been brought up in Tiddington, a village near Shakespeare’s Stratford-on-Avon in Warwickshire, England and was educated at Glenalmond College in Scotland, after which he became a regular in the British Army. He joined the Norfolk Regiment with whom he fought as a 2nd lieutenant in the Boer War 1899-1902.

By 1914 he had been transferred to the 1st Battalion of the Royal Warwickshire Regiment, whose men were commonly known as the Royal Warwicks. It is clear from his diary entries that he was a good friend of Bernard Law Montgomery, the future Field Marshal and architect of notable victories over Germany in World War II. On Aug. 8, 1914, Hamilton recorded when at Shorncliffe in Kent waiting to cross the Channel to France that, “Bernard and I walked down to get our valises, which they refused to let us fetch. This was the first major piece of red tape rot, which Bernard and I quite made up our minds must cease.”

Thirty-mile marches and ducking German shells exacted a toll on the Royal Warwicks. Hamilton complained on Sept. 12 that, “This is the hell,” and on Sept. 19 that, “I am sure I look fifty, I feel seventy.” Hamilton was promoted to the rank of captain after his superior, Charles Bentley, was court martialled for constant drunkenness, much to his and Montgomery’s relief.

On Oct. 13, 1914, in one of their first major actions of the war, the Royal Warwicks fought in the battle of Meteren, losing 42 men killed and 85 wounded. The battle ended Montgomery’s front line action when he was hit in the lung and knee. He was hospitalized in St. Omer and returned to Southampton, England via Boulogne on Oct. 18 to recover. 

Prior to the Christmas Truce, Hamilton and the Royal Warwicks were based in trenches on the edge of Ploegsteert Wood which on Nov. 22 were, he wrote, “in a shocking way. Dead bodies everywhere and the stink awful.” On Dec. 11, he wrote: “It rained all night and the whole of today. When I went round the sentries, I found them quite resigned to another flood. They were amused. One Private Carter said “it will lay the dust, sir, won’t it?” at which I laughed heartily and so did they. But poor fellows were on their last legs for this trench trip.” 

Christmas at St. Yvon

In November, Hamilton had been delighted that Bruce Bairnsfather, a family friend from prewar days in Stratford-on-Avon, had arrived at the front. Bairnsfather would become celebrated for his cartoons of life in the trenches published in The Bystander magazine, especially his British “Tommy” characters Alf, Bert and most famously “Old Bill.” Bairnsfather captured life in the trenches in an inimitable style—for example, a Tommy caught in the light of a German star shell having drunk a whole jar of rum, the meeting of a British and a German officer in No Man’s Land, and the spectacle of a Birmingham barber cutting the locks of a long-suffering private of the Royal Warwicks with the warning, “Keep yer ’ead still or I’ll have yer blinkin’ ear off.” 

At 6.30 p.m. on Christmas Eve 1914, Hamilton’s A Company of the 1st Battalion Royal Warwicks set off from their billets at La Crèche in France to relieve the Royal Dublin Fusiliers in the trenches at St. Yvon over the border in Belgium. Over 100 years later, if one follows in their footsteps from the magnificent Ploegsteert Memorial along Mud Lane to Prowse Point Military Cemetery, one will find the memorial unveiled in December 2014 by French football star and administrator Michel Platini, which has since been swamped by football shirts and scarves  and surrounded by footballs. Behind the original German front line at Messines the main football-inspired memorial is a replica of a memorial first unveiled in 2014 in Liverpool outside St. Luke’s Church.

A wealth of accounts of what happened over the Christmas period at St. Yvon shed a different light on what actually transpired there. These accounts include firsthand British reports by four officers including Hamilton, three NCOs, nine privates and an account by a German officer, Leutnant Kurt Zehmisch of the 134th Saxon Regiment.

Of the many truces that took place on the Western Front in 1914, this one is unquestionably the best documented. Using this material, it is possible to paint a comprehensive and detailed picture of what happened during the fraternisation in that sector of the Western Front—including about whether the legendary football match ever took place. 

Most of the British soldiers who had been at the Front since August 1914 were “regulars”—professional soldiers—rather than the thousands of volunteers who answered Horatio Herbert, 1st Earl Kitchener’s call to arms. Assured the war would be “over by Christmas” they found themselves tired and homesick after four months of tough combat.

Unsurprisingly they were, according to Hamilton’s diary, “a little sad at spending Christmas Day” in the trenches when they set off for them at 6.30 p.m. When the men approached their trenches, it was clear something was amiss. Hamilton recalled that, “Crossing the well worn danger zone to our consternation not a shot was fired at us.’ After much shouting to and fro across No Man’s Land, Private Gregory, was given permission by Hamilton to go and parley with the Saxons “at your own risk”. On his return, he informed his officer that, “they [the Germans] wanted me to meet their officer and after a great deal of shouting across I said I would meet him at dawn, unarmed.”

Meeting the Germans

For the Royal Warwicks who had suffered several weeks of wind, rain, flooded trenches, shelling and sniping, the interaction with the 134th Saxons on Christmas Eve was extraordinary and unexpected. Carols were sung by both sides. Leutnant Zehmisch ordered Christmas trees to be lit with candles along the trenches.

Lt. Cave recalled that “they had their Christmas trees blazing all night” and Pvt. Day wrote that on Christmas Day at “about 1 o’clock they struck up with a band of concertinas and a cornet; they played ‘Home Sweet Home’ first, then a lot of other tunes finishing up with “God save the King.” Pvt. Charlie Pratt was in awe that “the Germans sent up a star shell which lit up the place lovely and then for the first time we saw friend and foe.” Pvt. Walter Cooke considered that “the band sounded great, much better than hearing shells whistle overhead” while Pvt. Langton recalled that “we would sing a carol first and they would sing one. I tell you they can harmonize alright.” 

It was inevitable that fraternization would take place on Christmas morning. Hamilton wrote he “went out and found a Saxon officer of the 134th Saxon Corps, who was fully armed. I pointed to his revolver and pouch. He smiled and said, seeing I was unarmed, ‘Alright now.’ We shook hands, and said what we could in double Dutch, arranged a local armistice for 48 hours, and returned to our trenches. This was the signal for the respective soldiers to come out. As far as I can make out this effort of ours extended itself on either side for some considerable distance. The soldiers on both sides met in their hundreds and exchanged greetings and gifts. We buried many Germans, and they did the same to ours.”

In the evening a number of officers enjoyed a concert in ‘D’ Company’s dugout until midnight. It was, according to Hamilton, “a very merry Xmas and a most extraordinary one.” There was nonetheless a feeling that the enemy could not be trusted, so Hamilton “doubled the sentries after midnight.”

Exchanging gifts

Hundreds of soldiers swapped postcards, photos, pipes, mufflers, tobacco, cakes, buttons, tins of bully beef and cap badges. The most popular exchanges were, as Day noted “cigarettes for cigars, a gift from the Kaiser.” He also received “some of their postcards which they signed and addressed.” Pvt. Layton was impressed with the Germans’ language skills: “There were a good many amongst them who could speak broken English alright and they said ‘You make it no shoot, we make it no shoot.’” For William Tapp, it was “a strange sight, unbelievable that we were all mixed up together.”

The armistice meant that an important job could be carried out. The Brigade War Diary recorded that ‘men of the Somerset Light Infantry, 134th Saxons, Hampshires, a Prussian and an Uhlan were all buried. The Germans helped in the digging with the 1st Battalion of the Royal Warwicks supplied the “tools” since the Germans stated they had none. Burial of the dead was a convenient excuse for the Brigade commanders to play down the enormity of what had happened.

At the time when British soldiers were fraternizing with the enemy in No Man’s Land, their superiors, Generals John French, Douglas Haig and Horace Smith-Dorrien were lunching in St. Omer. They were furious to hear reports of what had taken place. On Boxing Day, Smith-Dorrien sought details of officers and units who had taken part in the Christmas Truce “with a view to disciplinary action.”

Fraternizing with the Enemy

He wrote in his memorandum of Dec. 27: “This is only illustrative of the apathetic state we are gradually sinking in to… to finish this war quickly we must keep up the fighting spirit and do all we can to discourage friendly intercourse.” For the author of the 1/ Royal Warwicks War Diary, Christmas Eve was “a quiet day. Relieved the Royal Dublin Fusiliers in the trenches in the evening.”

There was no mention of what had taken place. The Brigade War Diary also played down the event and observed a positive opportunity for intelligence gathering: “A quiet day. No firing. The Germans appear to think that an armistice exists for Christmas Day. An informal interchange of courtesies took place between troops in the fire trenches of both belligerents. Some valuable information was gleaned during the intercourse. The trenches seem fairly strongly held, the enemy cheerful and well fed.”

Fraternizing with the enemy during a war was unacceptable and unheard of, so concerns about potential sanctions were expressed. Hamilton was told that “the General and staff are furious but powerless to stop it.” William Tapp feared the worst: “I don’t know what our General would say if he knew about this.” Pvt. Harry Morgan wondered that “if all the troops along the line had refused to fight on both sides, would the War have ended there and then?” In the event no one was reprimanded.

Hamilton returned home on leave in early January, recording in his diary on Jan. 12 that “All’s well that ends well.” He had suffered throughout the campaign with troublesome ears and visited an Army doctor in London who spared him further active combat. His diary then chronicles the “battles” he fought with Conscientious Objectors’ and “red tape” as Commandant of the Hereford Military Detention Barracks, a role he detested but which was arguably a small price to pay for avoiding further involvement on the Western Front and the huge losses suffered by the Royal Warwicks in April 1915 during the 2nd Battle of Ypres when the Germans used poisonous chlorine gas for the first time. 

What About The Football?

So was a game of football played during this particular Christmas armistice? Although the many accounts contain numerous details about the truce, no evidence exists whatsoever to justify the creation of the three memorials to an “international” football match. Zehmisch wrote that “a couple of English brought a football out of their trench and a vigorous match began.” Pvt. Smith commented that the “Germans were interested spectators” of the kickabout. Zehmisch recorded that towards evening the English officers asked whether a big football match could be held on the following day, but he was unable to agree to a match as his company would be returning to their billets. Hamilton’s diary entry corroborates Zehmisch’s account: ‘’A’ Coy would have played the 134th Saxon Corps tomorrow only that the company was relieved.” Pvt. Walter Cooke was disappointed that “the Germans wanted to play at football but that fell through” and Tapp, a Birmingham City supporter, was upset that a game could not be arranged. 

There can be no doubt that if a game of football had taken place, Bairnsfather would have captured the event in a cartoon with his characters Alf, Bert and ‘Old Bill’ flooring their opponents with crunching tackles, no doubt breaking legs and sending Saxon pickelhaubes flying to all parts of No Man’s Land. Bairnsfather limited himself to describing the football as just “a kickabout amongst the Royal Warwicks” (not with the Germans) and later in 1929 concluded in The American Magazine that “there had not been an atom of hate shown by either side. It was a punctuation mark on all the combatants’ lives of cold and humid hate.” A contemporary photograph of No Man’s land at St. Yvon shows it pitted with shell holes and extremely uneven—conditions hardly conducive for a football match.

For those who participated in the Truce at St. Yvon, it was a truly memorable event that would have been beyond their wildest dreams. Words that appear frequently in their accounts are “astounding,” “extraordinary,” “strange,” “unbelievable,” and “unique.” Morgan was impressed that “there were no guns, no bullets, no voices.” Zehmisch felt it had been “marvelous and strange” and his opposing officer Hamilton, admittedly resorting to hyperbole, started his diary entry for Christmas Day 1914: “A Day Unique in the World’s History.” For Tapp, “it was like a clock that had stopped ticking… it was very different to the other Christmas days I had spent, especially the one in 1910 when I stood under the mistletoe with the girl I later married.” Tapp was later killed during the German gas attack on April 25, 1915 and his name is, along with nearly 500 other Royal Warwicks with no known grave, recorded on the Menin Gate Memorial in Ypres.

Flimsy Evidence of a Match

The Truce at St. Yvon was similar to many held along as much as two thirds of the British-held trenches along the Western Front. This Christmastide there will be the usual references to games of football in the media and social media…but how many actually took place?

In the most comprehensive work on the Christmas Truce, Malcolm Brown and Shirley Seaton are skeptical about the numbers, stressing that the ground in No Man’s Land was too pockmarked and uneven for there to have been many matches. They do however assert that “there are a sufficient number of references to games which allegedly took place for it to be difficult to believe that this is all smoke without fire.”

Yet in most cases the evidence is flimsy to say the least. The most likely game to have taken place may have been across the border at Frelinghien in France where Leutnant Johannes Niemann of the 133rd Saxon regiment recorded that a soldier in the Scottish 2nd Battalion of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders produced a football and “now there developed a proper game of football with caps put down as goalposts. Quite a happening on that frozen field.” He concludes that “the game ended 3-2 to Fritz.” The Germans were much amused that the Scots were not wearing underpants beneath their kilts: “This delighted us hugely …” Unfortunately, Niemann’s evidence is not confirmed by any British accounts. 

One thing we can be certain about is that a football match at St. Yvon is a myth and that the three memorials do no more than promote a legend. But at Christmas time why be Scrooge-like about this and let the truth get in the way of a marvelous story of peace and reconciliation—even if it was for only a day or two before the bitter war resumed in the New Year?

this article first appeared in military history quarterly

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A lone Zulu warrior suddenly sprang out of nowhere and fired off a shot at the red-coated British soldiers. The warrior then ran off in a desperate scramble to escape. A furious barrage of rifle fire followed him—yet somehow, he managed to evade the bullets. Lt. John Chard, the officer commanding, remarked in admiration of the Zulu that he was “glad to say the plucky fellow got off.” It was Jan. 23, 1879, and the epic defence of Rorke’s Drift had just ended. Although a minor action in a far-off colonial war, it is one of the most famous battles in British military history. 

The British and Zulu maintained friendly relations for almost 50 years before they came to blows in the Anglo-Zulu War of 1879. However, by the 1870s the fiercely independent Zulu, who possessed great military prowess, became viewed as a threat to expansionist British colonial ambitions in Southern Africa.

Greed for Diamonds

Diamonds were discovered at Kimberley in the 1860s, which became a major factor in the British desire to bring the disparate peoples of Southern Africa together under a British-led confederation. Such a confederation would allow British authorities at the Cape Colony to exert political control while also benefiting from the huge economic potential the region offered. 

In 1877, the British annexed the Boer South African Republic, an act which led to a contiguous border and therefore direct confrontation with the Zulu. The Boers had a long-running border dispute with neighboring Zululand. Sir Henry Bartle Frere, the British High Commissioner for Southern Africa, sought to use the dispute to force a confrontation with the Zulu and remove the threat they posed to British ambitions in the region. 

In late 1878 things came to a head following a series of border incidents. In July a wife of Sihayo kaXongo, a Zulu chief, had fled to Natal, the bordering British colony, but was pursued across the border by warriors. She was captured and returned to Zululand for execution. A week later a second wife fled and was likewise executed. In September, a colonial engineer and a trader were abducted on the border by a group of Zulus. Although later released, the incident caused outrage amongst the British.

Seizing on these incidents as his casus belli for war, Frere sent Cetshwayo kaMpande, the King of the Zulus, a series of blatantly unacceptable demands. On Jan. 10, 1879, the ultimatum expired with no reply from Cetshwayo. The following day, British forces crossed into Zululand, and the Anglo-Zulu War began. British forces invading Zululand were commanded by Maj. Gen. Frederic Thesiger, Lord Chelmsford. Three columns of troops were to cross into Zulu territory at different points before converging on Ulundi, the Zulu capital. The northern column advanced from the Transvaal, the southern from Natal, while the central column crossed into Zululand via Rorke’s Drift. The central column would be the main attacking force, accompanied by Chelmsford. The first action of the war came on Jan. 12, when Chelmsford attacked Sihayo’s kraal. Most of the warriors were away at Ulundi and the short fight ended in British victory. Due to heavy rain, which had swollen the Buffalo River border and turned tracks into mud, the advance of the center column was slow.

Disaster at Isandlwana

Nevertheless, the column arrived at a place called iSandlwana on Jan 20. The troops made camp, but since they did not expect to be there long, conducted little defensive work. On Jan. 21, Chelmsford sent out troops to reconnoiter to the south. This force encountered several hundred Zulus. A messenger was dispatched to report back to Chelmsford. The British commander acted fast, moving out of iSandlwana with half his men. Since he could not get the entire force moving quickly enough, he left the remaining half of his force behind at iSandlwana under the command of brevet Lt. Col. Henry Pulleine to guard the camp and the baggage.

While Chelmsford was away, 20,000 Zulus under the command of Ntshingwayo kaMahole attacked iSandlwana on Jan. 22. Using their traditional “horns of the bull” tactic, the Zulus overran the position. Only a handful of survivors managed to escape. The Battle of iSandlwana was a disaster for the British, who suffered over 1,300 killed. Worse still, the day’s fighting was far from over. A large party of Zulus, about 3,000-4,000, broke off and headed across the border to attack the small British depot at Rorke’s Drift. 

Meanwhile, life at Rorke’s Drift had been uneventful. The post was garrisoned by B Company, 2nd Battalion 24th Regiment of Foot, commanded by Lt. Gonville Bromhead, and a company of the 2nd Battalion, 3rd Regiment, Natal Native Contingent, under Capt. William Stevenson. Also present was a detachment of six sappers of No.5 Company, Royal Engineers under Lt. John Chard, who had been working the ponts on the river. Other officers included Assistant Commissary Walter Dunne, who was responsible for supplies, and Surgeon James Reynolds of the Army Medical Department. Overall command fell to Maj. Henry Spalding. 

On the morning of the disaster, Chard had been at iSandlwana. Following his arrival, he was told to go back to Rorke’s Drift but to leave his men behind. Just before he set off, Chard heard reports that Zulus had been detected near the camp. When he arrived back at Rorke’s Drift, he expressed concerns to Spalding about the potential for a “dash at the ponts.” Spalding was expecting another company of the 24th as reinforcements, but they were overdue. He decided to ride to Helpmekaar to find out where they were. Before he left, Spalding asked Chard, “Which of you is senior, you or Bromhead?” Chard did not know, so Spalding checked his Army Lists. It was Chard. Spalding then left with the immortal words: “Nothing will happen and I will be back again this evening.”

At noon, distant shots coming from iSandlwana were heard. Reynolds, Otto Witt (the missionary at the drift) and George Smith (the local padre) climbed the nearby Shiyane Hill to see if they could view anything of the distant battle. After a while, the men realised something was wrong. It became apparent that a large force of Zulus was advancing on Rorke’s Drift. They scrambled back down the hill to inform Chard.

Chard had already become aware of the defeat at iSandlwana when Lt. Gert Adendorff of the NNC arrived sometime after 3:00p.m. and told him the news. Other exhausted survivors rode past Rorke’s Drift heading for Helpmekaar, confirming the defeat. 

A Drastic Choice

With an attack on Rorke’s Drift seemingly certain, Chard and Bromhead were hit with a stark choice: retire back to Helpmekaar or stay and defend the depot. An issue complicating matters was the fact that there were 30 patients in the hospital at Rorke’s Drift, who would be difficult to move and thus slow to evacuate. As the two discussed their options, Acting Assistant Commissariat James Langley Dalton voiced his preference to stay, pointing out the Zulus would likely overtake them on the road to Helpmekaar. The fateful decision was made to stand and fight. 

Orders were given to utilize wagons, mealie bags, and biscuit boxes to fortify the post and link the buildings with barricades. Rorke’s Drift itself consisted of two thatched buildings, one used as a storeroom, the other as a makeshift hospital. Set back from the former was a well-built stone cattle kraal and set further back still was a larger rough stone kraal. There was also a stone cook house, but it was isolated some distance south of the hospital and was not incorporated into the defenses. 

Forming the backbone of the garrison, B Company mustered 95 men fit for duty, all armed with the .450 Martini-Henry Rifle. NNC troop numbers are uncertain, but most were armed with shields and spears, only a handful possessing firearms. Thirty sick were in the hospital, although many were able to bear arms. All told, around 400 men were available to build the defenses.

At 4:00 p.m., a group of mounted men of the Natal Native Horse arrived from iSandlwana. Chard deployed them as a screen beyond the Shiyane to slow the Zulu advance. A short while later, shots rang out and the horsemen streamed past the depot, riding away for their lives. As they did so, a civilian shouted a warning that the Zulus had arrived. This sudden flight unnerved Stevenson’s NNC company of native African soldiers, who suddenly threw down their weapons and ran. 

The garrison was now down to only 150 men. A lookout on the roof of the hospital shouted that he could see the Zulus. Rev. Witt now decided it was time for him to depart for Helpmekaar. (It should be noted that more recently it has been claimed Witt had in fact left Rorke’s drift some days earlier.) A soldier on one of the walls was then heard to shout, “Here they come, lads!” 

The senior Zulu commander during the battle was Prince Dabulamanzi kaMpande, brother of Cetshwayo. Noted for being headstrong, he made the decision to attack Rorke’s Drift. Other Zulu commanders included Prince Hamu kaNzibe, half-brother to Cetshwayo, and Mnyamana Buthelezi, a senior adviser to the king. In all, the Zulu force attacking Rorke’s Drift numbered an estimated 3,000 to 4,000 warriors. 

At 4:30 p.m., around 500 to 600 of the iNdluyengwe (Zulu regiment) made the first rush on the post. When within 500 yards, Chard gave the order to fire. As the heavy bullets of the Martini-Henrys hit their targets, Zulus could be seen springing backwards or into the air. One witness, Reynolds, later recalled that despite the losses, “the great host came steadily on.” The Zulus pressed their attack. 

Garrison under siege

When the Zulu attack became checked within 50 yards of the rear (south side) of the post. the iNdluyengwe then veered to their left, moving around the west end of the hospital to the front (north side) of the post. Again, they attacked, and fierce hand-to-hand combat took place. Bromhead, accompanied by Color-Sergeant Frank Bourne, the 24-year-old senior NCO of B Company, drove off the initial assault with a bayonet charge. No sooner had the initial attack been driven off, then the main Zulu assault began, including warriors of the uThulwana, iNdlondlo, and uDluko. Leading were two men on horseback. One was Dabulamanzi, the other, who remains unknown, was shot dead. The Zulus renewed their attack on the hospital’s veranda with much ferocity. However, they were met by devastating firepower. 

Meanwhile, Zulu warriors armed with rifles took up positions along the Shiyane terrace. Some of them were believed to be carrying Martini-Henrys most likely captured from their fallen foes at iSandlwana, but this is still debated. Positioned on the terrace, the Zulu force fired into the post from amongst the cover of broken rocks and boulders. The British sustained several casualties to Zulu fire, including Corporals John Lyons and William Allen. Another hit was Dalton. An hour into the battle, the defenders on the veranda were driven back to a hastily constructed dogleg shaped barricade. 

The Zulus then made a determined effort to overrun the barricades directly in front of the storehouse. Chard and Bromhead, with about half a dozen men, rushed forward to meet the assault and drove the attackers back. Nevertheless, Chard was greatly worried about the mounting British casualties. At 6:00 p.m., he gave the order to withdraw from the yard and fall back behind a barricade of biscuit boxes built from the front-left corner of the storehouse to the barricade at the front. This effectively cut the post in half and reduced the area required to be defended. 

Their strategic withdrawal left the hospital dangerously isolated. Much of what happened during the hospital fight is uncertain. The building was defended by six able-bodied soldiers and around 20 patients able to bear arms, firing through windows and loopholes. Sometime after 6:20 p.m., the Zulus forced their way into the hospital via a door on the western side. It was here that Pvt. Joseph Williams is said to have felled 14 Zulus before he was overwhelmed. The Zulus also gained entry via doors to the front of the building. The hospital’s thatched roof suddenly began to burn, either set alight by the Zulus or possibly from a paraffin lamp inside the building. The rooms quickly filled with thick dirty smoke. 

Escaping the Hospital

Pvt. Henry Hook, who described the British defenders in the hospital being “like rats in a trap,” had been in a room with a wounded man of the NNC. As the room became smoky, he was forced to move into an adjacent room, but was unable to take the patient with him, who was subsequently killed by the Zulus. Hook then found himself with two other patients desperately fending for their lives. Hook recalled: “The Zulus beat the door in, and tried to enter. I stood at the side and shot and bayoneted several … They threw assegais [short-handled spears, the traditional Zulu main weapon] continually, but only one touched me, and that afflicted a scalp wound … One Zulu seized my rifle and tried to drag it away. Whilst we were tussling I slipped a cartridge in and pulled the trigger—the muzzle was against his breast, and he fell dead.” Pvt. John Williams had been in another room when he dug a hole through the wall to emerge into the same room as Hook. 

The men then hacked a hole through another wall, and climbed through it into yet another room. Then they started hacking a hole through the next wall to escape. Hook and his fellow defenders eventually made their way to the eastern part of the hospital. The people trying to escape the hospital were faced with the perilous task of crossing the abandoned yard to reunite with their fellow British soldiers taking refuge behind the wall of biscuit boxes. 

Fortunately for the escapees, darkness had fallen. The defenders passed the patients out through a window, then dashed across the yard. Trooper Hunter of the Natal Mounted Police was unable to make it, being speared by a Zulu. Another killed was Sgt. Robert Maxfield, who was delirious on his hospital bed and struggled violently when his fellow soldiers tried to carry him to safety. Despite his comrades’ best efforts to save him, it proved impossible to rescue Maxfield and the Zulus killed the sergeant. Other defenders managed to get out and miraculously survived the night outside the perimeter. 

The Zulus also attacked the storehouse and the front barricade. The angle between the front barricade and the line of biscuit boxes proved a vulnerable point in the British defenses, as the area was particularly exposed to Zulu fire from the hill. The Zulus were also able to approach using a rocky ledge as cover. Bromhead was with six men in this area. The location proved so perilous that only he and one man escaped being wounded. Cpl. Ferdinand Schiess of the NNC (who was Swiss) was hit in the foot. Nevertheless, the NCO was later seen bayonetting several Zulus and shooting another. 

Of the repeated Zulu attacks, Chard wrote: “A rapid rattle of fire from our rifles, stabs with the bayonet, and in a few moments the Zulus were driven back … A brief interval and the attack would be again made, and repulsed in the same manner. Over and over again this happened, our men behaving with the greatest coolness and gallantry.” Pvt. Frederick Hitch suffered a bullet to his shoulder. As he fell backwards, a Zulu warrior moved to finish him off, but Bromhead promptly saved his soldier by using his revolver. Despite his wound, Hitch went back to defend the post using Bromhead’s revolver before handing out ammunition to his comrades. Hitch would eventually pass out unconscious due to loss of blood, only regaining awareness after the battle was over. 

Near Victory

The Zulus attempted but failed to set the roof of the storehouse alight. As the fighting continued, Dunne offered to build a high redoubt using mealie bags piled in front of the building. As bullets sailed around him, Dunne dragged the bags into place until the redoubt took shape. The defenders intended to place the wounded inside for safety, while a handful of marksmen would fire over the top and over the heads of their comrades below.

The Zulu warriors traditionally avoided fighting at night. However, with victory seemingly imminent, they continued their attacks after darkness fell. The fire engulfing the hospital illuminated much of the battlefield, allowing the British visibility to continue accurately aiming and firing their rifles. Suffering heavy casualties, the Zulus began withdrawing back to the relative safety of the darkness. 

However, the resourceful Zulu warriors refocused their attack on the well-built kraal, which was not well-illuminated. This skilful attack forced the British back from the kraal, and they eventually were compelled to abandon it. Nevertheless, this did little to aid the Zulu assault, since the British riflemen manning the redoubt were able to direct their fire down and onto the kraal. The fighting began to slacken. The final Zulu charge occurred between 9:00 p.m. and 10:00 p.m. and was repelled. The Zulus continued firing into the post until sometime after midnight, with the last shots ringing out around 4:00 a.m. 

At daybreak, the devastation became apparent. The hospital had fallen in and the horrific smell of burnt flesh hung over the post. The detritus of battle was strewn everywhere, including spent cartridge cases, spears, and shields. The worst sight was the Zulu corpses piled around the barricades. The garrison understood the Zulus had withdrawn but the men were put to work rebuilding barricades in readiness for their return. At 7:00 a.m., Zulus were spotted coming from behind the Shiyane. Chard readied his men for a renewed assault, but this did not occur. 

Colour-Sgt. Bourne authorised the issue of rum to the men. One soldier in line for a stiff drink was Hook—who until that point had been a well-known teetotaller. Nevertheless, he was heard to say, “I feel I want something after all that!” A bottle of beer was also found, which Chard and Bromhead shared. At 8:00 a.m. the vanguard of the long-awaited relief column led by Chelmsford arrived. British casualties stood at 15 dead and 10 wounded, two of which subsequently died of wounds. Zulu losses are uncertain, with estimates running from 400 to 600 killed and more wounded. Chard reported his men buried 351 Zulu corpses. Eleven Victoria Crosses were awarded for the battle, including Chard, Bromhead, Hitch, Hook, Reynolds, Dalton and Schiess, as well as four Distinguished Service Medals. 

Prelude to More Wars

The British victory at Rorke’s Drift, although justifiably inspiring, couldn’t erase the shock the Zulus had inflicted with the disastrous iSandlwana debacle—London promptly dispatched reinforcements and appointed Lt. Gen. Sir Garnet Wolseley to oversee Chelmsford. The latter’s second invasion of Zululand—bolstered by fresh troops, artillery and Gatling Guns—destroyed Cetshwayo’s army at the July 4, 1879 Battle of Ulundi, avenging Britain’s humiliating iSandlwana defeat and winning the Anglo-Zulu War.

With the Zulus’ defeat, Britain’s only remaining obstacle in exerting total control over all of the vast territory and rich resources of South Africa were the region’s original European colonists—the Boer republics. Conquering the stubbornly independent-minded Boers, however, mimicked Britain’s struggle to overcome Cetshwayo’s Zulus in that the doughty Boers defeated Britain in the First Boer War (1880-1881), but Boer resistance to Britain’s blatant land-grab was finally crushed by Britain winning the Second Boer War (1899-1902). 

The history of the 1879 Anglo-Zulu War has drawn more attention in recent years. In January 2023, thousands of Zulu men and British reenactors gathered to commemorate the Zulu victory at Isandlwana which preceded the Battle at Rorke’s Drift. This was followed by a public exhibition hosted by the Royal Philatelic Society of London in July 2023, at which more than 500 artifacts were shown to provide the context for the conflict between the British empire and the Zulu Kingdom, including artifacts from Rorke’s Drift and the shields of Zulu warriors. Referring to the British troops as “valiant soldiers,” Prince Mangosuthu Buthelezi, the Traditional Prime Minister to the Zulu Monarch and Nation, encouraged people to see the exhibition and described the conflict as “undeniably a monumental collision of empires, as the nation forged by King Shaka kaSenzangakhona proved far more formidable than anyone in British society or the military had ever anticipated.”

this article first appeared in military history quarterly

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