The Senate is the upper chamber of the United States Congress. The first, or lower is called the House of Representatives; both represent all States of the Union. Senators first met officially in 1789, by coincidence at the beginning of the French Revolution. The powers and composition of the Senate are to be found in Article I of the US Constitution. (more…)
This King of England was also King of Scotland. He had a French wife, seven children, a mother who was beheaded, a father murdered, a son executed and several favourites, all male and famous for one reason or other.
James’s mother was Mary, Queen of Scots, who came from France to Scotland, then famously escaped from Scotland to England seeking protection and friendship with Queen Elizabeth I. Sadly, she was a natural plotter, and much used by other plotters of lesser rank. One of the things no Tudor could allow was plotting. James was young when they cut off his mother’s head. (more…)
A ‘Baron’ indicates the lowest rank in the British peerage*, though the title itself is one of the oldest. A Barony meant land that went with the title. Barons were originally the military tenants-in-chief of the Crown. The name is French, and came with the Norman Conquest that began (and triumphed under William, Duke of Normandy) in 1066.
The word means ‘vassal of the Lord’. If it had any limitation – that limitation was confined to those who held (or were awarded) land directly from the King in return for military allegiance and service. (more…)
Cavalier (left) and roundhead / talonsanthony.edublogs.org
The history of Britain includes only one genuine civil war. The Wars of the Roses (q.v.) do not come into this category because they were a private struggle between families, including dethroning of kings, usurpation of the throne, terrible violence, vengeance, and settling of accounts. Warlords sought to put their favourite in the Number One Spot, and thousands died as a result, but they were not necessarily civilians. In fact usually they were foreign mercenaries hired by the barons. The people of Britain watched with horror as the flower of the aristocracy tore into each other like wolves. (more…)
Joaquim von Ribbentrop, architect of the Nazi/Soviet Pact / guardian.co.uk
Contrary to all expectations, and especially remembering the previously signed Nazi-Soviet Pact of 1939 achieved by von Ribbentrop, Hitler’s armies invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, using the codename ‘Barbarossa’. Hitler had hinted in 1940 that his future plans would include such an invasion, in a top secret directive issued to the High Command in December of that year. (more…)
I am becoming all fired up with enthusiasm for the Pandora’s Box of separatism. In Cataluña, Catalunya and Catalonia, Mr Arthur More y More says Cataluña etc. is a Nation, speaking its own language, and must therefore be free of Spanish shackles. In the Basque Country terrorists have been murdering people for years because someone told them assassination was the best way to achieve secession. In Scotland, Mr Alexander Scottish-Salmon is all for independence because of the 1997 devolution referendum, and because the bloody Sassenachs have bullied the Scots since the Romans, though the latter were not actually Sassenachs. (more…)
My inspiration to write more on this spiny subject came from one of the published Comments on this site. The Comment can easily be found under the subject heading Jewish History. One of my previous posts dealt with statistics connected with The Holocaust. The commentarist restricted himself to using American terminology inviting and requiring intimate oral relations. One assumes that the expression used – “Suck my dick” – indicates a certain disinclination to accept the usual 6-million-dead holocaust statistics. They were I admit wrong, because I had inadvertently left out figures of murdered Jews in Poland and many Soviet satellites, leaving a final figure that lacks substance and does not add up to 6 million. (more…)
Stuart James VI of Scotland (and Ist of England) / luminarium.org
Genealogy: The Stuart dynasty was important in the shaping of Britain and brought little luck to the family; they started as Stewards of Dol in Brittany around the end of the 11th century. Two of them became Stewards-Guardian of Scotland in the 13th century. Roberts I & II and David II were kings. James I of Scotland married Joan Beaufort, a granddaughter of John of Gaunt: their son James became IInd of Scotland. The English connection thus began, because John of Gaunt was a younger son of an English King (Edward III), and father to another English King (Henry IV). (more…)
Painting of cardsharpers by Caravaggio / fotos.org
This difficult word represents something more than merely being a favourite in the fevered mind of a history examiner. Without the Renaissance the world would now be a different place –not necessarily better or worse – but different.
What we know as the Renaissance flowered intellectually and artistically in Italy in the fourteenth century, and was in glorious full bloom in the sixteenth. The rest of Europe was profoundly influenced by it. The word is French, of course, and means ‘rebirth’. It indicates a revival of those values of the classical world that appeared lost in the rough and tumble of the ‘Dark Ages’. (more…)
Regicide is the killing of a ruling king by his subjects. In a multitude of events throughout history the regicide has been perpetrated by members of the ruler’s family. This was especially the case in Roman history. In some South American Indian cultures the king was deliberately sacrificed in order to please Gods. In Europe, where our four subjects were killed by the people in one guise or other, kings have been removed because their politics were unsound, or because their politicians felt there was no other way.
Feminists will complain because a woman does not appear in our list. Many important queens have indeed been eliminated by their own subjects, Mary Queen of Scots springs to mind, though it was an English queen and cousin who ‘took her out’, very much persuaded by her councillors. General-history.com will examine prominent examples of female regicide soon. (more…)