The young Emperor Mitsuhito / nndb.com
Meiji means enlightened rule, and this was shown throughout the reign of the Japanese Emperor Mitsuhito, ruling from 1868 to 1912. After the fall of the Tokugawa Shogunate, a powerful group of Samurai decided (in January 1868) that the shogunate (‘federal’ rule by warlords) must be abolished as old-fashioned and unprogressive, and that power must be returned to the Emperor. (more…)
General Hoche, mostly responsible for putting down the White Terror /nndb.com
In my fifty years in education I have found little evidence of this historical peculiarity being taught in schools and universities. Teachers have even put on a blank expression when I mention The White Terror, or worse, demand to know if I am inventing things. That ordinary French people should feel the need for revenge after years of ill treatment and worse from the French Revolutionaries and especially the Jacobins has proved too much for many educators. They spend hours and days explaining every detail about the first serious socialist revolution in History, but are not interested in an inevitable reaction, perhaps because it has nothing to do with Socialism but a great deal to do with Realism. (more…)
William II, Emperor of Germany (the Kaiser) came on a visit to England in 1908, and stayed for a while with Colonel Stuart-Wortley. After one of their conversations the latter wrote a letter/ article for the Daily Telegraph newspaper revealing what the Kaiser had said to him, no doubt after a fulfilling luncheon. (more…)
Count Camilo Cavour / nndb.com
Camilo Benso Cavour was born in 1810, a Piedmontese aristocrat whose name and mother language were French. It is interesting to note that both Cavour and Garibaldi (q.v.) spoke incorrect Italian. Trained in journalism, Cavour was editor of the newspaper Il Risorgimento by the time he was thirty-seven. (more…)
This is a pinkish Spanish glossy magazine published with great success throughout Spain. It mostly deals with ‘celebrities’ whatever they are; it is not in my list of great reads. In April of this year that sheet chose to congratulate the Queen of England on her eighty-seventh birthday, running seven colour photographs of Elizabeth II taken at various ages. There was a bit of text too, and in its single paragraph Lecturas managed to place its foot firmly in its own gob as per usual. (more…)
What Grand Fleets used to look like / en.wikipedia.org
Why ‘curious’? Because the first was agreed between Britain and Germany only fourteen years before the outbreak of a world war, the first of its kind. And the second was signed only four years before the next one. (more…)
/ datavizblog.com
Perhaps one of the least documented pitched battles of the Napoleonic Wars was fought on 7th September 1812. It was called Borodino and took place in Russia, some 70 miles west of Moscow.
The Russian general involved was Kutusov, commanding 120,000 troops in defensive positions on high ground near the village of that name – Borodino. The town was important because it stood directly on the Moscow – Smolensk highway. Napoleon took no notice of the advice of his Marshal Davout, who had suggested a southerly outflanking movement. The Emperor said he had not enough soldiers for a manoeuvre of that kind. Typically, he chose a frontal assault. (more…)
A scene from the withdrawal / litestraboen.blogspot.com
Not everybody realises that in the First World War Italy fought on the Allied side. In the second ‘war to end all wars’ Italians were persuaded by Mussolini to side with Adolf Hitler, and this decision cost them dear. The battle of Caporetto also cost them dear, for they were fighting against Austro-German forces for nearly a month in the last months of 1917. (more…)
Lord Randolph / brooklyneagle.com
Lord Randolph H.S. Churchill was born in 1849, the third son of the then Duke of Marlborough. In character more similar to his grandson Randolph than his son Winston, he got into the House of Commons for the family borough (and almost fief) of Woodstock in 1874. I say ‘fief’ because near Woodstock stands Blenheim Palace, presented to John Churchill Ist Duke of Marlborough by a grateful Queen and Nation after his military successes. The building was designed by a retired playwright called John Vanbrugh, and the massive park was designed by Vanbrugh himself aided by Queen Anne’s gardener Henry Wise, with later additions by ‘Capability’ Brown. (more…)
/ mundodescargas.com
Georges-Jacques Danton was another of those middle-class Frenchmen, trained as a lawyer like Robespierre, who flourished in what we are supposed to believe was a rising of the masses against regal and parliamentary authority at the end of the eighteenth century. It wasn’t of course: a small group of educated, in some cases moneyed radicals used the masses to promulgate and expand their radical ideas. More members of the rural and urban under-classes died during the Revolution than any other social group. (more…)