By Ian Bradley | Published in History Today Volume: 33 Issue: 7 1983
'And who, Carruthers, was William Wilberforce?' 'He was the man who freed the slaves, sir.' Yet the answer to the schoolmaster's question could just as well be that he was the man who called his countrymen to repentance, the leading lay theologian of the Evangelical Revival, the politician who dedicated himself to reforming the nation's morals or, quite simply, as many of his contemporaries regarded him, the Saint, whose life, both public and private, provides one of the most shining and inspiring examples of practical Christianity.
It is, of course, Wilberforce the emancipator who is being remembered this month, the 150th anniversary of his death. This is hardly surprising when we are also celebrating the 150th anniversary of the abolition of slavery in the British Empire, the triumphant culmination of his life's work of which Wilberforce heard the news just three days before he died on July 29th, 1833. The impressive programme of activities which has been organised this summer in his home city of Hull, ranging from a performance of Handel's Israel in Egypt to a cricket match between Yorkshire and the West Indies, focuses almost entirely on Wilberforce's abolitionist activities. It would be a great pity, however, if his other claims to fame, and to the attention of historians, were to go unnoticed in this anniversary year.
Historians and biographers have, indeed, become progressively less interested over the last sixty years in Wilberforce the liberator of the slaves and much more interested in Wilberforce the politician, and Wilberforce the Evangelical. In Reginald Coupland's celebrated biography, published by Collins in 1923, the battle against the slave trade and then the institution of slavery itself is the central theme of the story. It was, indeed, significant that Wilberforce's first twentieth-century biographer should have been a professor of colonial history. The two main recent biographies, by contrast, by Robin Furneaux (Hamish Hamilton, 1974) and John Pollock (Constable, 1977) devote much less space to the abolitionist cause and much more to Wilberforce's other political campaigns, his religious ideas and practices and his behaviour and personality.
Wilberforce's historical reputation has undergone an interesting series of fluctuations in the twentieth century, reflecting the changing values and perceptions of succeeding generations. For Coupland and many of his contemporaries the man who freed the slaves was a straightforward hero to be treated in much the same way as Cromwell or Nelson. To a large extent this view prevailed, at least in school textbooks and books for the general reader, right up to the early 1960s. It is, for example, the view taken by Oliver Warner (significantly also the biographer of Nelson) in his biography published by Batsford in 1962.
This simple heroic view of Wilberforce had first been challenged by Fabian historians writing in the Edwardian period. In their works on British labour and social history, Beatrice and Sydney Webb and J.L. and Barbara Hammond echoed the criticisms of the Saint which had been made by his radical contemporaries like William Hazlitt and William Cobbett. In their eyes Wilberforce was not the courageous apostle of liberation for the negroes but rather the friend of repression and reaction, ever ready to support the illiberal measures taken by his friend William Pitt in the aftermath of the French Revolution and the notorious Six Acts with which Lord Liverpool gagged the press and prevented free speech and assembly in the years after the Napoleonic Wars.
However much they might condemn Wilberforce's record in the domestic field, it was difficult for these critics to detract from his reputation as the champion of the negro slaves. Indeed the picture which they drew, and which began to find its way into the more sophisticated textbooks, was one of the curious inconsistency of a man who championed the rights of men when they were black and lived far away across the sea but seemed to have scant regard for the rights of his own white countrymen.
It was not to be long, however, before even Wilberforce's reputation as the man who had freed the slaves came to be challenged. In his book Capitalism and Slavery , published by Andre Deutsch in 1944, Eric Williams, later to be Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago, argued that the slave trade had not collapsed because of the pressure of Wilberforce and the abolitionist movement but simply because it was no longer economically profitable or viable. The efforts of the Saints had been, at best, peripheral. The real cause of abolition, as of so many other movements and events in the world, was economic determinism, and specifically the profit motive.
Wilberforce's reputation, both as domestic politician and emancipator, almost certainly reached its lowest point in the iconoclastic and aggressively secular 1960s and early 1970s. Two books in particular sought to topple him from the pedestal which Coupland and others had erected and relegate him to the company of the 'baddies' of history. In his epic The Making of the English Working Class (Gollancz, 1963) E.P. Thompson accused Wilberforce and his fellow Evangelicals of leading the counterrevolution which warped the humanitarian tradition of the eighteenth century 'beyond recognition' and laid the foundations of Victorian complacency and repressive morality. The Yorkshire MP was portrayed not just as an enthusiastic supporter but also as a prime instigator of the Seditious Meetings Act and other measures passed in the 1790s to curb radicalism and popular liberty.
An even more devastating attack on Wilberforce appeared in 1973 in a book by Jack Gratus entitled The Great White Lie (Hutchinson). Gratus deliberately set out to remove the halo that had surrounded the leading Saint for so long. 'Hero-worship', he wrote, 'makes bad history. This is particularly true of the history of the abolition movement and William Wilberforce. His friends exaggerated his virtues and achievements during his lifetime; his sons sanctified him in their biography, and subsequent generations of writers continued the tradition'.
Far from being the liberator of the negroes, Gratus argued, Wilberforce actually caused them greater misery in the long run by propagating ideas of racial supremacy which justified colonialism and the permanent suppression of black people. The slave trade was not abolished through the efforts of the Saints but rather through the activities of a largely forgotten group of radicals who used much more direct action.
Meanwhile other less partisan historians were examining the religious and social context in which Wilberforce worked and seeking to describe the Evangelical world of which he was the leading inhabitant. Ernest Marshall Howse's Saints in Politics (Allen and Unwin, 1953) was a clear and perceptive account of the Clapham Sect, that remarkable group of Evangelicals, all active in public life, who lived around Clapham Common in the 1790s and 1800s, and who induded Henry Thornton, the banker, Lord Teignmouth, the former Governor-General of India, and, of course, Wilberforce himself. While accepting Wilberforce's conservative views on politics and morality, Howse essentially saw the Saints (as the small group of Evangelical MPs who formed themselves into a mini-party under Wilberforce's leadership were popularly known) as a force for liberalism and humanity. In another detailed study of the world of Evangelical pressure groups and societies, Fathers of the Victorians (Cambridge University Press, 1961) Ford K. Brown portrayed Wilberforce as directing a carefully planned and meticulously organised assault on the Church of England, the aristocracy and other commanding heights of the country to secure them for 'vital religion'. Brown also put forward the novel, if rather thinly documented, theory that the leading lay Evangelical of his generation had actually moved to High Churchmanship in the last years of his life.
Robin Furneaux's biography, published in 1974, used the Wilberforce family papers to produce a much fuller and more balanced account of the Saint's life than any previous biographer had achieved. Furneaux was particularly interested in the complex psychology of his subject and produced the revelation, scarcely less extraordinary than Brown's thesis about his move to Anglo-Catholicism, that for much of his life Wilberforce had been an opium addict.
In my own book The Call to Seriousness , published by Jonathan Cape in 1976, I attempted to rescue Wilberforce and his fellow Saints from some of the accumulated opprobium that had attached to them during the twentieth century. I tried to show that in their attitude to the key political questions of their time, such as parliamentary reform, the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts, Catholic Emancipation, and the controversy over the corn laws, they were, in fact, firmly on the liberal side. I also argued, as I will later in this article, that Wilberforce can be seen as a pivotal figure in the transformation of British politics and society which took place between the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
It is interesting that with the two most recently published biographies of Wilberforce, the wheel has come full circle and the Saint is once more restored to his heroic status. John Pollock's William Wilberforce (Constable, 1977) and Garth Lean's God's Politician (Darton, Longman and Todd, 1980) are both works of near hagiography. Written quite unashamedly from the Evangelical perspective, they restore the old view of Wilberforce as a man who battled courageously against evil and who deserves a prominent place in the list of 'good men' in history.
How, then, should we assess William Wilberforce 150 years after his death? Perhaps by eschewing both the cult of the hero and the anti-hero and by concentrating rather on his influence and significance in history. The central question of how far Wilberforce himself was responsible for bringing about the end of the slave trade and later of slavery in the British Empire is, of course, impossible to answer. It is clear that economic factors played an important part, but so also did the abolition movement and the very least that can be said is that the activities of the Saints and their supporters certainly hastened the day when the slaves were emancipated.
What is much more certain is the long-term influence which the crusade against the slave trade had on British life and politics. It was the first successful campaign of mass agitation in Britain, the prototype of the thousands of pressure groups which have been a dominant feature of our national life ever since. Wilberforce and his supporters, seeking to mobilise public opinion not just behind the abolitionist banner but also in favour of such causes as strict observance of the Sabbath, the ending of cruelty to animals and the admission of missionaries into the Indian subcontinent, are the progenitors of such diverse groups as the Greenham Common peace women, the 'animal liberation' protestors and the bring-back-the-birch-brigade.
In the great campaigns of the Evangelical Revival, and particularly in the struggle against the slave trade, Wilberforce pioneered the techniques which have been used by nearly every pressure group and campaigning movement since. It was he who first brought together in a highly organised and systematic way the various means of influencing public opinion and impressing opinion formers: pamphlets, public meetings, selective lobbying of key politicians, careful use of the press and mass petitioning of Parliament. He also introduced another important and distinctive feature into the anti-slavery campaign which was equally vital to its success. He infused it with a strongly religious and moral character which appealed greatly to the growing body of 'serious' opinion which the Evangelical Revival, Benthamite Utilitarianism and other ideologies of industrial society had created in Britain.
Later campaigners were not slow to apply the lesson which Wilberforce had taught by his successful prosecution of the campaign against the slave trade as a righteous crusade against the powers of darkness. When Richard Cobden was deciding how best to organise his agitation for the abolition of the corn laws in 1840, it was the strategy employed by the Saints that he decided to follow. 'It appears to me', he wrote to a friend, 'that a moral and even a religious spirit may be infused into the topic, and if agitated in the same manner that the question of slavery has been, it will be irresistible'. Many of the great political and social campaigns of the nineteenth century were pursued as though they were religious crusades. This trend, of course, reached its climax in W.E. Gladstone's great appeal to the conscience of the nation on the issue of the Bulgarian atrocities in his Midlothian campaign of 1879, but it characterised the approach of many other lesser Victorian politicians. The reason why they cloaked their secular aims in the language of righteousness and morality was simple: they appreciated just how many votes there were to be won from a respectable and serious-minded electorate by appearing as Christian statesmen, possessed of a burning zeal to abjure evil and fight for right.
Wilberforce himself had, of course, been instrumental in establishing the model of the Christian statesman to which so many Victorian politicians aspired. It was in many ways a very novel concept. Most politicians in the eighteenth century had been regarded with low esteem and had certainly not been seen as possessing those characteristics normally associated with Christianity. Indeed Christian virtues seemed singularly inappropriate for those involved in what was perforce a grubby and corrupt business which required the rather sordid horse-trading necessary to create and keep majorities and the promulgation of a limited amount of legislation to promote the narrow interests of the landed class.
The presence and the dominance of Wilberforce and his fellow Saints in the House of Commons changed both the public's conception of politicians and their notion of what Parliament should be about. There is no doubt that the member for Yorkshire played a crucial role in two of the most significant changes which took place in British politics in the first half of the nineteenth century: the transformation of Parliament from being a gentlemen's club primarily concerned with the private interests of its mernbers to a national assembly seen to be legislating for the public good, and the emergence of political leaders whose support was based on principles and policies rather than on ties of family connection or vested interest.
The Saints, and Wilberforce pre-eminently, were among the first MPs to introduce into the Commons the discussion of serious issues of principle and arguments based on wider considerations than those of the self-interest of the landed class. Into an assembly which had hitherto spent most of its time discussing game laws, enclosures and turnpike applications, Wilberforce launched debates on slavery, the condition of factory workers and prisoners and the moral health of the nation. It is not too much to say that he raised the tone of politics and the popular status of politicians by establishing public life as a serious profession and vocation for those with a mission to improve the lot of humanity. He exemplified a wholly new style of political leadership which was manifestly popular with the electorate. It is, indeed, no coincidence that his life spans that transitional period in British politics when the age of Fox gave way to the age of Peel.
If this public example of a man who could win success and fame in the world of politics by holding steadfastly to Biblical Christianity and treading the path of righteousness was one of Wilberforce's main legacies to succeeding generations, then another was surely the very private example which he gave in the conduct of his family life. The Evangelical Revival was in large part responsible for the cult of home and family which characterises the Victorian Age, and in this, as in so much else, Wilberforce was perhaps the outstanding exemplar. His long letters to his children, displaying a mixture of love and affection, exhortation and rebuke, and earnest concern for their spiritual state, show him to be the very model of the Victorian paterfamilias. He was also almost certainly more responsible than any other individual for the spread of the institution which summed up the earnest religiosity and the centrality of the family unit in the nineteenth century: family prayers. Widely publicised by Evangelical tract writers, his daily supplications performed before the whole household, servants included, were emulated in countless middle-class homes.
So how should we remember William Wilberforce today – as the liberator of the negro, as the Mary Whitehouse of his age, as the man who might have been Prime Minister if he had not turned to religion, as the model Christian statesman, the instigator of pressure group politics, the father of Victorian family life, or simply, as the great Nonconformist divine Hugh Price Hughes once described Mr Gladstone, as a man who said his prayers? The answer is surely all of these and more besides. For all the calumnies that have been heaped upon him in the twentieth century, it is still the saintliness of Wilberforce that shines out from that famous portrait, from the diaries and letters and from a life crammed with 101 different good causes, a life full of fun and gaiety and never over-pious or sanctimonious, while yet being but a pilgrimage through a transitory world. Opium addict and friend of repression he may have been, but there is still more than enough pure, unalloyed goodness in his character for us to sum up Wilberforce in the words which his friends and contemporaries used as 'the Saint'.
Ian Bradley is the author of several books including The Call to Seriousness: the Evangelical Impact on the Victorians (Cape, 1976).
Monday, 22 August 2011
From left, Breaker Morant and Peter Handcock were killed by firing squad; George Witton was given a life sentence
Harry "Breaker" Morant was a hard-drinking, charismatic Outback cowboy who wrote ballads about rural life and was famous for his horse-breaking skills. He was also, so history has it,a war criminal – one of three Australian soldiers sentenced to death for killing prisoners during the Boer War.
The story of their court-martial by the British was dramatised in the 1980 movie Breaker Morant, directed by Bruce Beresford and starring Edward Woodward. When Cathy Morant, a distant cousin of the soldier, saw it, it confirmed her belief that the men were victims of a century-old miscarriage of justice.
Now she and the descendants of the other two soldiers, Peter Handcock and George Witton, have joined forces to seek a judicial inquiry into the case and, they hope, posthumous pardons. They believe that the men were unjustly convicted – they claimed to be acting under orders from Lord Kitchener, the commander of British forces in South Africa, not to take prisoners – and that the legal process was flawed.
In one of the most controversial episodes in Australian military history, Morant and Handcock were executed by firing squad in Pretoria in 1902, while George Witton's sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. All three were volunteers, and had joined a mainly Australian regiment, the Bushveld Carbineers, raised to fight guerrilla commandos in the remote Spelonken region of Northern Transvaal.
Their defence for killing 12 Boers – that they were obeying shoot-to-kill orders from their superiors – was rejected at their trial. But James Unkles, an Australian military lawyer spearheading the campaign for a pardon, believes he has uncovered new evidence supporting their claim.
The documents, unearthed in British archives, include a legal opinion from that time, referring to "the idea that no prisoners were to be taken in the Spelonken", and the transcript of a British parliamentary debate where concerns were raised about military tactics in the war.
"This was well before the Nuremberg trials; these soldiers had every reason to believe that the orders they were given were in good faith, and they obeyed them in good faith," Mr Unkles said. "[They] were colonial volunteers ... not British officers educated in the finer points of the rules of engagement. Morant had been reprimanded [previously] for bringing in prisoners, and he finally got to the point where he obeyed the orders."
Morant volunteered to fight in an Imperial war far from home when Australia was still a collection of British colonies. An English migrant who became an Australian folk hero, he worked on Outback cattle stations before going out to South Africa. He gained the reputation of a womanising charmer, and his bush poetry was published in a national magazine, The Bulletin.
The killings of unarmed prisoners took place over four days, and followed the death of the men's commanding officer, Captain Frederick Hunt, during an assault on a Boer stronghold. Hunt was a close friend of Morant's, and the latter was reportedly enraged by accounts that his body had been mutilated. His last words, as he faced the firing squad, were: "Shoot straight, you bastards!"
Kept in solitary confinement for three months, the soldiers were not able to consult their lawyer until the night before the court-martial. All three were denied the opportunity to appeal. Their relatives, including Handcock's widow and three children, found out what had happened from the newspapers.
Last year Britain rejected a petition for pardons, so the men's descendants have now turned to the Australian government, which is considering whether to order a judicial review.
Peter Handcock, the great-grandson of the soldier, says he and his father want "some kind of resolution, even if it turns out that they were guilty after all". Handcock's execution greatly affected his son, Peter's grandfather, "a very troubled person" who lost contact with all his siblings, he said.
"My Dad tells me that it was the cause of great shame for the family, and that it was never spoken about. He didn't know about it himself until he signed up for World War II, 40-odd years later"
Mr Unkles says he has identified 10 legal grounds on which the soldiers – the only Australians ever executed for war crimes – were denied natural justice. He believes they were "scapegoated" for political motives: to cover up the orders allegedly issued by Kitchener, and to accelerate peace talks with the Boers. "For political reasons, three Australians were made to take the rap for senior officers."
Cathy Morant, who calls the court-martial "a sham", said: "I want it recorded in the annals that these accusations [of murder] were unfounded, and for future generations to regard them as the heroes that I think they were, not the villains that they're being portrayed as."
As well as the movie, the saga inspired a play and a string of books, including Scapegoats of the Empire, written by Witton, who had been released after three years following a petition by 80,000 Australians to King Edward VII.
The Australian Attorney-General, Robert McClelland, is expected to decide soon whether to grant a judicial inquiry. If the request is rejected, Mr Unkles plans to seek leave to appeal in the British High Court.
However, descendants of the Boer prisoners are opposed to a pardon, and historians such as Craig Wilcox, an Australian academic, dispute the existence of shoot-to-kill orders. Mr Wilcox wrote in the Sydney Morning Herald that "the secret orders they claimed to have followed ... are surely mythical, a fabrication by desperate men in the dock".
Was Breaker Morant the victim of a British cover-up? - Australasia, World - The Independent
Napoleon's Fall
Napoleon's final resting place:
Saint Helena Island. (Wikimedia Commons)
With Napoleon's failure against the Russians in 1812, fervent nationalism swept across Germany, Austria, Italy and other lands dominated by the French. The Spanish were still fighting to drive out the French. Already in May 1811 the French had been driven from Portugal. In February, 1813, Prussia and Russia formed an alliance against Napoleon, and in March they declared war. German princes in Napoleon's Confederation of the Rhine were advised to join them against France under pain of being removed from power. Hamburg was occupied by Russian Cossacks. German conscripts in France's armies were deserting en masse. In April, Austria broke relations with France. Napoleon had been raising a new army since his return from Moscow, taking whatever men and boys he could get but not finding the horses he needed for his cavalry. He was in Germany with 200,000 troops in mid-April. On May 1, he beat a Russian-Prussian force at Weissenfeld. The Russians and Prussians had made themselves vulnerable by underestimating Napoleon's strength, but, on May 2, at Lützen, they fought Napoleon again. Napoleon performed well, but he was let down by subordinates, his better generals having been lost in previous wars.
In Spain in June, at Vitoria, an Anglo-Spanish army of 80,000 defeated a French army of 66,000, and much of three of France's armies withdrew from Spain.
During the summer an armistice was agreed to. Napoleon met with Austria's foreign minister, Count Clemens von Metternich, and the discussions did not go well. Napoleon told Metternich that he would give him nothing because Austria had not defeated him and that he would beat Austria again. Metternich described Napoleon's troops as boys and old men and told Napoleon that he was lost. In a rage, Napoleon told Metternich that he knew of nothing of what goes on in a soldier's mind, that he, Napoleon, grew up on the battlefield and cared little for the lives of a million men. Metternich replied that he wished all of Europe could hear what he had just said. Metternich accused him of having sacrificed French soldiers for his own ambitions. Napoleon boasted of having spared French soldiers by sacrificing Poles and Germans, which outraged Metternich -- a German.
Napoleon's diplomacy not having gone well, in October he faced four powers in what was to be known as the Battle of the Nations: Russia, Prussia, Austria and Sweden. It was a three-day war in which Napoleon was outnumbered and suffered heavily from his enemy's 1,400 artillery pieces. Napoleon's army had 38,000 casualties and lost 30,000 as prisoners. Napoleon's total losses for the year were around 400,000. It sent Napoleon retreating back toward France, Napoleon crossing westward over the Rhine River on November 2, 1813.
The Allied forces began penetrating France, with 85,000 French soldiers facing 350,000 invaders. By March 31, Russian and Prussian armies were entering Paris. Royalists welcomed them waving the white flag of the Bourbon monarchy. The French senate decreed the end of Napoleon's authority and instituted a provisional government. Napoleon signed his abdication on April 6. The Count of Provence, a younger brother of Louis XVI, returned to Paris as Louis XVIII. He did not want absolute power and accepted that he was to be a constitutional monarch.
Rather than hanging Napoleon for all his aggressions and bloodletting, the Allied powers followed the preference of Tsar Alexander of Russia. Napoleon was sent into exile to the island of Elba, between Corsica and Italy. He was to be the island's ruler, to maintain his title of emperor and to have a benefit of a yearly income of two million francs paid for by the government of France.
Napoleon stayed on his island, Elba, less than eleven months. He had tired of being lord and emperor over a mere little island, and he had not received any of the stipend promised him. Napoleon had been brooding about where he had gone wrong, and had decided that he had judged human nature too highly. He gave little weight to resistance by the Allied nations to his return to France. On February 26, 1815, with about 1026 men, 40 horses and two cannon, aboard a hired frigate, he landed in the south of France, between Cannes and Nice.
A couple of hundred kilometers inland he encountered a battalion of soldiers sent against him. Napoleon stepped forward and said "Let him that has the heart, kill his Emperor!" Soldiers and veterans in France saw Napoleon and his wars as a source of prestige, and Napoleon was able to rally them to his side. Louis XVIII fled Paris. Napoleon took up residence there once again. He put France on war-footing again, and in June he sent troops into Belgium. The Allies responded, and at the Battle of Waterloo the French met a coalition of British, Dutch, Belgian and Prussian forces, 234,000 men, the majority Prussian. Napoleon had 128,000, and he lost the battle. The Allies took Napoleon prisoner and sent him to an island more remote than Elba. The island was St. Helena, 15 kilometers (about 10 miles) wide and well guarded by the British, more than 15 degrees below the equator and 1,950 kilometers west of the African continent. There Napoleon was to write his memoirs, giving the world a distorted account of his deeds. And there he was to die, at age the age of fifty-two, in 1821.
Napoleon Makes Mistakes
Napoleon's Empire in 1811. Satillite states are colored light blue. (From Wikipedia)
Napoleon's Retreat from Moscow
(painted by Adolphe Northen)
Napoleon was confident and believed that he was more powerful than ever before, while in France he had created a police state. He had spies everywhere looking for subversion, and he tried to control as much as he could. He had violated the freedom of the press expressed in Article 11 of the Declaration of the Rights of Man, reducing the number of newspapers in Paris to a few sycophants.
What Napoleon should have feared most was his own mistakes, and one of his big mistakes -- self-admitted in hindsight in his last years -- was in the making. In March, 1808, Napoleon intervened in a quarrel between Spain's king, Charles IV, and the son of Charles, Ferdinand. He took over Spain, making Charles and Ferdinand prisoners in a comfortable setting, but prisoners nevertheless, and in June he moved his brother Joseph from the Kingdom of Naples to the throne in Spain. Spaniards resented the presence of French troops and Napoleon's interventions. An unusually barbarous war began within Spain -- with Napoleon as usual caring little about hearts and minds. French troops were living off the land and taking by force what they needed, as Napoleon expected them to. According to reports they were looting and raping with gusto, and profaning churches, and by firing squads and hangings the French executed hundreds of Spaniards thought to be resisting French power.
Napoleon's moves in Spain had repercussions in Latin America. With Charles IV and his son Ferdinand held by the French, the prestige of Spanish authority there declined. Armed uprisings occurred from Mexico to Argentina. And without Spain in control there, the British would be able to do more business in Latin America, helping Britain against Napoleon's economic blockade.
In August, 1808, resistance to the French spread from Spain to Portugal, and in August the British landed a force of 13,000 there, soon reinforced by an equal number of Portuguese. They defeated a French force sent against them, and in October, British troops entered Spain. The French were unable to control Spain's coastline, and the British could make surprise raids against the French and to give added support to Spain's guerrilla forces.
With Napoleon's Grand Army bogged down in Spain, Austria was encouraged to try again to make war against Napoleon. Austria's military and others hoping for war were eager to retaliate at the first opportunity -- despite Austria's recent treaty with the French (Pressburg, December 1805). The same was true of the Prussians. Both Prussia and Austria were meeting secretly with the British, but for now it was the Austrians who would try again on the field of battle.
In early April, 1809, an Austrian army pushed into Bavaria, and Napoleon arrived with a counter force. It was less than the force that had defeated the Austrians at Austerlitz. Napoleon was now fighting a two front war, and half of his force against the Austrians were non-French and more like the mercenary dregs of society that had fought for kings before the French Revolution. In May, the Austrians defeated Napoleon, in the Battle of Aspern-Essling. Napoleon pulled back, sat and was vulnerable to being overrun. Napoleon had lost his reputation for invincibility, but the Austrians failed to follow up on their victory. Napoleon was resilient and in July was able to organize an attack and the defeat the Austrians, at the Battle of Wagram. In October, the Austrians signed yet another treaty, promising peace and amity forever. The Austrians ceded the portion of Poland that it had been ruling to the independent Duchy of Poland. They gave up territory to Bavaria and gave control of the eastern shoreline of the Adriatic Sea to France.
Sitzkrieg, Failed Blockade, and Failed Offensive to Moscow
In 1810, Napoleon had a new eighteen-year-old wife, Marie-Louise, having annulled his marriage to Josephine, age forty-six, who had failed to give him children. Marie Louise was of the same royal Austrian family as the late Marie-Antoinette, and it appeared to some in France as an abandonment of the French Revolution.
Frank McLynn, Napoleon: a Biography, Arcade Publishing, 1997, p. 486
The war continued without battles. The British were trying to cut France's maritime trade and Napoleon was still trying to block British trade from the continent -- called the Continental System. But Britain's exports had reached an all-time high in 1809: 50.3 million British pounds compared to 9 million in 1802. [note] Britain's merchant fleet had grown to more than 17,000 ships. Tsar Alexander of Russia had denied Napoleon request to have French soldiers monitor Russia's port cities to prevent smuggling. And elsewhere along the continent's shores smuggling was taking place. Smugglers could get a good price for goods from Britain -- prices made high by the illegality. Smuggling was one of the few ways that someone could get rich. Thousands of officials were deployed to check the illegal flow of British goods into the continent, but to no avail. And even Napoleon allowed some trading with Britain, to offset damage that the boycott was doing to France's economy. But he cracked down as hard as he could on other nationalities caught trading with the British.
This crackdown included annexations. Napoleon annexed the United Netherlands and the cities of Hamburg and Bremen. He annexed the Republic of Valais, and, in January 1811, he annexed the Kingdom of Westphalia, the Grand Duchy of Berg and the Duchy of Oldenburg, adding to his annexations prior to 1810, including papal states and Triest. These annexations won for Napoleon more enemies. And the annexation of Oldenburg annoyed Tsar Alexander, whose brother-in-law had been an heir to the throne there.
The suspension of trade with Britain was hurting Russian exports and economy, and Tsar Alexander issued a decree taking Russia out of the Napoleon's Continental System. Alexander was annoyed not only by Napoleon's annexation of Oldenburg; he was annoyed by Napoleon's reluctance to approve of his expansion against the Ottomans to Constantinople -- Napoleon fearing that this would make Russia too great of a Mediterranean power. Alexander was annoyed also by Napoleon's policy toward the Grand Duchy of Warsaw and his friendship with Polish nationalists. Alexander was unhappy about one of Napoleon's former generals, Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte, having become King of Sweden, Alexander fearing an extension of French power there. And Alexander was surrounded by many who intensely disliked Napoleon.
In early 1811, Napoleon was warned that the tsar was planning a pre-emptive strike against him. At the end of February, he wrote a letter warning the tsar against a rapprochement with the British. Some around Napoleon spoke of the mistake that Charles XII of Sweden had made in the early 1700s by fighting the Russians on their soil. But Napoleon was intent on destroying British hopes of an alliance with Russia. Napoleon worried that if Russia were allowed to flout his boycott of Britain, others would follow its example. By defeating Russia, Napoleon reasoned, he could create an enlarged Poland friendly to France that would be a shield for Western Europe against the East. Napoleon, moreover, was a gambler, and like bad gamblers he was ready to assume that luck would be on his side, or assume that he was an exception, rather than weigh the details of actual probabilities. Like a bad gambler, Napoleon wanted action above all else. He preferred action and drama to home-life comforts and addressing domestic issues. He said he cared little if his home at Tuileries burned down. And Napoleon was a dreamer. He was thinking that if Russia were defeated, from there he and his allies could go as far as the Ganges Valley, a farther reach than that of Alexander the Great.
In late December, 1811, Napoleon began organizing his invasion of Russia. In June, 1812, his army was gathered along the Vistula River -- while he still had 224,000 men in Spain and troops occupying areas elsewhere in Europe. His invasion force reached 600,000, an army of twelve languages and many nationalities, about one-third French. It included Austrian and Prussian units that were unenthusiastic participants, Austria and Prussia having given them to Napoleon under duress. His army had a supply of rations that was to last fifty days, with horses pulling carts of supplies and artillery, accompanied by herds of cattle. Napoleon allowed officers to bring along luxuries and servants -- more to carry and more mouths to feed. And, taking a cue from their officers, common soldiers brought along friends otherwise known as camp followers.
After the march toward Moscow began, Napoleon's troops found the roads were bad. Supply wagons failed to keep up. After the last of the cattle were slaughtered there was nothing around them to feed upon. The Russians were leaving behind them little but scorched earth. Hunger, dysentery, diphtheria and typhus killed 60,000 of Napoleon's troops before a shot was fired against the Russians. Horses with nothing substantial to graze upon died by the thousands. Napoleon was losing from 5,000 to 6,000 men a day through sickness or desertion.
On July 29, Napoleon and his army staggered into Vitebsk, after only a minor skirmish between his troops and a Russian rear guard. Vitebsk was a ghost town. Napoleon was advised that he would soon have no cavalry left. He held a war council, and his three top-ranking subordinates urged a halt to the campaign. Napoleon agreed, saying that they were not going to repeat the folly of Charles XII of Sweden. By the following day he changed his mind. He did not want to admit folly or show weakness. He accused his top subordinates of being too soft and pampered. He was eager to meet the Russians and Tsar Alexander in battle, and he believed that such battle would come either at Smolensk or at Moscow -- places he believed that Alexander would not be willing to abandon.
Napoleon and his army reached Smolensk in mid-August. After three-days of hard fighting, his troops entered the city, finding smoking ruin and corpses. The Russian army had pulled back again, retreating north and east. Napoleon reminded an unhappy subordinate of the words of a Roman emperor who said that the corpse of an enemy always smelled good.
Napoleon believed that if the tsar had not fought for Smolensk he would surely fight to hold Moscow. On September 5 he and his army reached the Moscow river, about 120 miles short of Moscow. There, at Borodino, his army faced 640 Russian cannons, against Napoleon's 587. By now, Napoleon was down to 130,000 men -- less than a third of those who had crossed the Niemen River with him back on June 23. Napoleon chose a frontal assault against the Russians -- a tactic he had always been reluctant to employ -- and the worst day of fighting yet known to humankind commenced. It was a one-day battle in which the Russians lost 44,000 dead and wounded and Napoleon lost 35,000. Napoleon's army might have been better trained in marksmanship, but they had been fought to a standstill, and on the night of September 7 the Russian army slipped away, undefeated despite its heavy losses.
Seven days of marching brought Napoleon to the city of Moscow. Fire erupted the day after he entered the city, and it went unchecked for three days. His troops went on a spree of looting -- rescuing goods from the fire. Napoleon took up residence in the Kremlin. He waited for Alexander to send a message begging for peace negotiations. Days passed and no such message arrived. Staying in Moscow was winning Napoleon nothing. His supply and communications lines were beginning to be attacked by peasant guerrillas fighting for loot and revenge.
Demoralization was setting in among troops along his supply line, knowing that capture meant a terrible death. Napoleon tried passing the time reading novels but he could not concentrate on them. He ordered the manufacture of winter gear, but his order was not feasible.
After a month of dallying in Moscow -- from mid-September to mid-October and thirty days closer to winter -- Napoleon ordered a return to the Niemen river. He looked forward to rejoining 37,000 men and supplies that he believe he had in Smolensk.
Napoleon's retreat was burdened from his allowing his troops to carry their loot with them from Moscow -- proofs, he said, of their victory. They had horse fodder for less than a week. Rather than take south-western route, which was clear and unopposed, they went over devastated terrain, back across the stinking battlefield at Borodino, where vultures and wolves were still feeding on the thousands of corpses that lay about. His men were abandoning their booty and under increasing attack. Their morale was gone. Men were eating flesh cut from some who had fallen and died. Napoleon reached Smolensk on November 9 and found stocks of food there to be lower than expected. Napoleon was concerned about a coup against him in Paris, and he feared a Russian encirclement. He and a vanguard left Smolensk ahead of a fifty-mile column of starving soldiers and camp followers. Winter had set in. Horses were perishing and being eaten, and people dying from the cold. But the winter was saving him from the Russians.
On December 5, at Smorgoni (around 200 kilometers west of Smolensk and 120 kilometers short of the Niemen River in what is now Poland), Napoleon and some of his top subordinates left the rest of the army and in a coach raced toward Paris.
It is said that only 30,000 of Napoleon's retreating army returned to their homes.
Napoleon's Gains in 1806-07
In February, 1806, the French drove the Bourbon king of Naples, Ferdinand IV, and his queen, Caroline (sister of Marie Antoinette) from southern Italy once again. The royal couple fled to Sicily, where they were protected by the British navy, and Napoleon made his elder brother, Joseph, King of Naples.
The British were disappointed by the 1805 failures of Russia and Austria against Napoleon, and, in 1806, Napoleon might have been able to negotiate a settlement with Britain. But talks with the British, in February and March, went nowhere. Napoleon put fifteen of the small German states into a "Confederation of the Rhine" and named himself its protector. The Holy Roman Empire was now abolished, and, in August, Francis of Austria renounced his title of Holy Roman Emperor, becoming merely "Emperor of Austria."
There was the question whether Napoleon's new hold in Germany could be sustained with a popular base. But popularity outside of France did not concern Napoleon much. Military might was his focus. His taking what wealth he could from occupied territories had not made his rule popular in the Netherlands or in Italy. His added power in Germany annoyed the Prussians. The Prussians were proud of the military might that had been created by Frederick the Great. And their new king, Frederick William III, with his 200,000-man army, was unafraid and sent Napoleon an ultimatum, demanding the withdrawal of all French troops from east of the Rhine. Napoleon instead sent his army of 122,000 against Prussia's army combined with an army of its ally, Saxony, a total of 114,000 men. -- at Jena and at Auerstädt. Napoleon was victorious again. His troops entered Berlin. Frederick William III united what was left of his troops with the Russians, and with Russia's tsar, Alexander, he swore eternal brotherhood.
Napoleon met the combined Prussian and Russian force in the cold of February, 1807, at Eylau, where 45,000 men died. The two sides continued their war, the port city of Danzig surrendering to the French in May. In June, the French and Russians fought at Friedland, with Alexander annoyed over Britain having failed to start a second front in Italy or in Holland to distract the French. The French won and occupied Königsberg.
Tsar Alexander, still annoyed with the British, met with Napoleon on June 25, in full view of their troops. Alexander delighted Napoleon by telling him (it is reported) that he hated the English as much as Napoleon did. Napoleon took a liking to Alexander. In July, Alexander, Frederick William and Napoleon signed the Treaty of Tilsit. Prussia lost almost half its territory. It lost Danzig and it agreed to close its ports to trade with Britain. And a French force was to be stationed in Prussia, where French domination was also to be unpopular.
In the Treaty of Tilsit, Alexander recognized Napoleon's augmented Confederation of the Rhine. He agreed to leave most of Europe to France in exchange for a free hand against Finland, Sweden and the Ottoman Empire. Napoleon created the Grand Duchy of Warsaw from that part of Poland that had been ruled by Prussia. Alexander agreed to join in the boycott against British trade, and he agreed that if Denmark, Sweden or Portugal left their ports open to British shipping that he would join France against them.
Napoleon demanded that Portugal join the trade boycott against the British declare war on Britain. Portugal hesitated, because war with that great naval power would mean cutting itself off from trade with its colonies. Napoleon's ally, Spain, allowed French troops to pass through its territory to Portugal, and the French captured Lisbon on December 1, as Portugal's royal family was fleeing to Brazil.
Afraid of Napoleon, Denmark had allied itself with Napoleon. The British feared the addition of Denmark's navy to Napoleon's side and it bombarded Copenhagen, captured the Danish fleet and took 22 Danish ships to England. Napoleon responded by calling the British treacherous and unscrupulous.
Meanwhile, Napoleon was seen by some as extending revolutionary idea across continental Europe. But a more lasting revolution, according to historian Joyce Appleby, was taking place in Britain, where indstrialization was "gathering steam."
Emperor Napoleon and War in 1804 and 1805
Napoleon crowned as emperor, December 2, 1804
A few months into his war with Britain, Napoleon's police discovered in France a British spy network connected with a plot involving émigrés living in Britain. It was a hare-brained plot to replace Napoleon with one of the brothers of Louis XVI, the Count of Artois (not to be confused with his older brother, the future Louis XVIII, the Count of Provence). In the wartime atmosphere and as a defense against French royalty, the Senate, on May 18, 1804, voted in favor of the First Consul becoming Napoleon I, "Emperor of the French." Napoleon's coronation was held on December 2, at the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris. Pope Pius VII had arrived for the coronation, and it was expected that, in keeping with tradition, he would crown Napoleon. But Napoleon did not wish to recognize papal superiority, and at the last moment he took the crown from the Pope and crowned himself.
In 1804, Napoleon won Spain as an ally against the British, the British that year losing patience with Spain for its association with and help for France. Britain ordered a naval squadron to go on the offensive against Spain, and the British seized three Spanish ships carrying treasure from the Americas back to Spain. In December, Spain joined the war against Britain, and Napoleon looked forward to Spain's naval forces helping the French navy.
In May 1805, in Milan, Napoleon was crowned King of Italy, and, in June, France annexed what had been the Republic of Genoa. That year, Russia, concerned about its own imperial ambitions in Europe, allied itself with Britain, and Austria joined the alliance in July, followed by Sweden. And the German states of Bavaria, Wurttemberg, and Baden formally declared themselves with France.
Still looking towards an invasion of England, Napoleon visited the channel coast opposite England, and he said that if he could conquer the channel he could conquer the world. In July he ordered the French fleet to sail up the Atlantic coast to the entrance of the English Channel and to bring with it as many Spanish ships as possible. On August 18 the French fleet reached Spain's Atlantic port of Cadiz. A British fleet, which had been stalking the French fleet, was waiting off Cape Trafalgar. Napoleon ordered the French and Spanish ships and 90,000 men out of Cadiz to do battle with the British. Smashing the British navy would help in his plans to invade England, and the battle, he said, was to end "six centuries of shame and insult."
The captains on the Spanish ships resented being under a French admiral. Their ships were manned mostly by soldiers or beggars that had been gathered from the slums of Cadiz, and those who were to man cannon had never fired a gun from a rolling ship. By the time the ships reached the British navy, many of the crew were sick. And morale was low -- on the French ships as well. French ships had been in poor repair, poorly provisioned, and the crews short of men and poorly trained. There were 18 French warships and 15 Spanish -- a total of 33 for Napoleon -- and 27 British warships. But Britain's crews were experienced, and the British fleet was led by a skillful and imaginative admiral, Horatio Viscount Nelson -- feared by sea captains in Napoleon's navy. Nelson's fleet all but annihilated Napoleon's fleet. Not one of Nelson's 27 ships was sunk or captured. Twenty-three of the French-Spanish fleet of 33 sailed away from the battle, damaged and defeated. The British lost 449 killed, including Nelson, and 1,241 wounded. How many of the French and Spanish died is unknown, but the French described the battle as a victory, describing their loss as "trifling" and glorying in Nelson's death.
Despite French propaganda, France's stock market was shaken by the news of the Trafalgar battle, and Napoleon decided that the invasion of England would be postponed. In England, on the other hand, the Battle of Trafalgar brought people into the streets. Without a strong land army, the British saw their navy as their major line of defense. The Day of Nelson's victory at Trafalgar, October 21, became Trafalgar Day, with the singing of Britannia Rules the Waves (first introduced in 1740). Wartime fears were uniting Britain, and much of the support for the French Revolution was evaporating.
Napoleon, meanwhile, was having real successes on land. In November, Napoleon's cavalry entered Vienna (the capital of Austria) unopposed, while his other forces were pursuing retreating Austrian and Russian armies in Moravia. In early December, Napoleon met Britain's allies, the Austrians and Russians, at Austerlitz. Russia's emperor, Alexander, was there. So too was the Austrian emperor, Francis II. Napoleon had 68,000 and the combined Russian and Austrian force had 85,000. Tricking the enemy into thinking he was weaker than he actually was and at a propitious moment calling reserves unknown to his enemy, Napoleon again won a battle by his wits. In the twelve hours of battle the Russian-Austrian force lost around 12,000 killed and wounded and 15,000 had been taken by the French as prisoners. The French lost 6,000 men. The Russian emperor fled with his troops back toward Russia.
Austerlitz set the stage for nearly a decade of French domination on the European continent. It was unlike the 1700s, when no major European capital was held by an enemy army. France and Austria signed a truce on 4 December, and on December 26, Francis signed the Treaty of Pressburg, which gave to France more territory in northern Italy and gave to Napoleon's ally, Bavaria, territory that had belonged to Austria. And the Treaty of Pressburg took Austria out of the war.
To celebrate his victory at Austerlitz, Napoleon launched construction of a monument to be called the Arc de Triomphe, modeled after the Arc de Constantine in Rome -- a project not to be completed until 1836
"From the sublime to the ridiculous there is but one step."
Napoleon Bonaparte
An unglorified version of Napoleon leading his reserve army through the Alps in 1800, by Paul Delaroche in 1848, a painting now in the Louve. He was on his way to battle the Austrians in northern Italy. For the romantic version click here.
Napoleon, First Consul
According to paintings of Napoleon Bonaparte, his hair was cut short around the time that he became First Consul, adding to the discarding of long hair that was developing in men's hairstyles. In France, the style of women's clothing was changing too, to lighter dresses that revealed more of the shape of the body -- part of what some of the more conservative and religious of people saw as the decadence of the time.
In 1800, in his first year as First Consul, Napoleon led his army over the Alps. And, in June of that year, with light field artillery that could easily be moved about, and the high morale of his troops, and his on-the-spot innovations, he crushed the Austrians at Marengo (125 kilometers east of Milan), which put France back in charge of the Po River valley.
Austria withdrew from its war against France in 1801. And, that year, Napoleon signed a concordant with the Papacy, mending the rift that had begun between the French Revolution and the Catholic Church in 1790. Catholics in France were to be free to practice their religion as they pleased, while the French government was to nominate bishops and pay the clergy.
In 1802, the war-weary British signed a treaty with France -- the Treaty of Amiens -- which returned to France Trinidad and other Caribbean islands. France remained in control of the Dutch and Belgian Netherlands and most of the Italian peninsula. The Treaty of Amiens left Europe with a balance of power of sorts, which Britain's leaders wished to maintain.
In early 1803, Napoleon still had troops in St. Domingue (Haiti), and he had Louisiana from Spain and was moving to acquire Florida. France also had ties with the Jefferson administration in the United States that were preferential over the British. The British, who still held Canada, felt their position in the New World endangered. And they saw indications that Napoleon was planning to dominate the Mediterranean Sea and the Middle East and feared for their trade routes in these parts of the world. They disliked signs that France was extending its power into western Germany. And rather than assure the British that they had nothing to fear, Napoleon enhanced British fears by moving to exclude Britain from the continent. Napoleon was also building up his military, adding troops from Piedmont to his war making capability and with Spain building his naval forces. Napoleon was not content with a balance of power, nor did he like the status quo. He did not love war, but he did like the glories of victory -- the source of admiration for him from the French people. Napoleon regarded another war with Britain as inevitable, and he was working toward fulfilling that expectation.
The British were not evacuating the island of Malta, as required by the Treaty of Amiens. They wanted to keep Malta and wanted France to withdraw from the United Netherlands and from Switzerland in exchange for Britain's recognition of France's annexation of the Italian island of Elba and its other gains in Italy. France did not agree and, on April 11, 1803, broke relations with Britain. Facing war with Britain, Britain's domination of the Atlantic and having lost hope concerning St. Domingue, France sold Louisiana territory to the United States. And on May 18, Britain declared war on France -- the two powers returning to their war of 1792-82, the British expecting it to be a war of attrition that would last many more years.
Code Napoleón
Napoleon, meanwhile, was streamlining the organization of France. He presided over thirty-six of the eighty-four sessions that produced what was called Code Napoleón. Marriages and divorces were to be civil -- in other words, outside the purview of the Church. There was to be government restructuring geared to honest administration, protection of property and wealth, and the Rights of Man and Citizen declared in 1789 was to be upheld, including equality before the law and freedom of the press. France was to have both private and public schools, with some of the early years of education in clerical schools, but all schooling was to be controlled by the state.
Under Code Napoleón the tradition of women as dependents was to continue. They could not make contracts or have bank accounts in their own name. Education was important to Napoleon. Women were to be educated mainly in that which was seen as making them good wives: in domestic skills and religious devotion.
Concerned about keeping his armies fed, Napoleon had offered a cash prize to anyone who developed reliable food preservation, and a food canning industry began in France.
By Matthew Loving (Translator) | MHQ Departments | Published: August 03, 2011 at 12:03 pm
In his memoir, Gaston Tissandier described flying over the Prussians and hearing bullets "hiss and whirl" below his basket (Gaston Tissandier, Souvenirs et récits d'un aérostier militaire de l'armée de la Loire, 1870-1871, Paris: M. Dreyfous, 1891/Colorized by Vertis).
In September 1870, at the height of the short Franco-Prussian War, more than 200,000 Prussian troops and cavalry opened what would become a five-month siege of Paris. Most of the troops of Napoleon III were captured or bottled up elsewhere, but before their inevitable surrender, Parisians led by such notables as Victor Hugo raised a spirited defense. The Louvre was emptied of its treasures and converted to an armory, and city leaders cleverly found military uses for civilian businesses and pastimes. Among their innovations: using balloons to carry mail and military dispatches over enemy lines.
Not yet a century old, balloon travel was a French specialty, with Paris home to the vaunted Vaugirard balloon factory. Gaston Tissandier—a chemist, adventurer, and ballooning pioneer—quickly volunteered for the hazardous messenger duty. The cargo on his first trip included more than 175 pounds of letters, as well as a few carrier pigeons to deliver return mail to the city. Tissandier recorded this flight in his memoirs, In a Balloon! During the Siege of Paris: Memories of an Aeronaut, translated into English for the first time here. The excerpt has been edited for space and readability.
On September 30, at 5 in the morning, I left home with my two brothers. When we arrived at the Vaugirard factory floor, my balloon lay there on the ground like an old lump of rags. It was the Céleste, a small balloon of 900 cubic yards that had been generously donated by its owner in support of the military cause. I bent down to make a closer inspection.
Damn it all! What a deplorable state of disrepair! There had been a deep freeze the night before and the cold had set in to the balloon's fabric, making it hard and in places cracked. Great God! And what did I spy adjacent to the intake valve? Holes large enough to run your fingers through. Farther up, the envelope was riddled with a constellation of punctures. This wasn't a balloon; it was a soup strainer.
It was only a matter of seconds before I heard somewhere below the basket the hiss and whirl of bullets and the discharge of even more shots
Just the same, the flight crew soon arrived to inflate and ready the airship. Working with these men was a skilled tailor from the city who, armed with his needle, began dutifully repairing the damage. One of my brothers brought out a pot of glue and a pencil and began applying paper bandages to the small holes that presented themselves to his meticulous investigation.
What did it really matter? I was only moderately mollified by these ambitious efforts. The truth was, I was to leave very shortly in this cruel contraption, crumbling with age and misuse.
My thoughts were suddenly shattered by the crack of cannons at the city gates; my mind envisioned the Prussian guns that awaited my airship, ready to spit out rivers of bullets in my direction.
By 9 a.m. the balloon had been filled and the basket attached. I fastened on the extra ballast and loaded three batches of mail. A cage containing three pigeons made its way to my balloon.
"Look here," said Roosebeke, the man charged with their care. "Take care of my birds; upon landing offer them both water and wheat seed."
As I climbed aboard my balloon, the cannons exploded once more at the city gates. I embraced my brothers and friends and thought of the soldiers fighting and dying only steps away. My soul filled with the cry of the country in need; my destiny now was to deliver what had been entrusted to me. This was my solemn moment, and no other thought could delay me.
"Lâchez tout! Let her go!"
At 10 minutes to 10, I floated at an altitude of 3,000 feet, my eyes never letting go of the countryside below, where I observed a most disturbing sight that I will never manage to get out of my head as long as I live. There, where once existed the happy and animated outskirts of Paris, where boats passed slowly by and rowers waved their oars, a deserted expanse spread outward, stripped of all life and color. Not a man or a car to be found on the streets, no trains making their way over tracks. The ruins of bridges stood like vestiges of lost civilizations, not a single boat upon the steady Seine, who stayed true to her course, rippling across the now razed and bleak landscape. Not a soldier, not a sentinel, nothing, nothing, and as quiet as the grave! Like a stranger stumbling upon some forgotten city of old, it took some work to imagine again the two million souls trapped not far away behind the city's walls.
By 10 a.m., the sun's warming rays steadily increased my altitude; the gases within the Céleste, expanding in the heat of the new day, now began to seep out from valves just above my head, their strong, intermittent odors stunning me at times.
I then heard a slight rustling from the sides of the gondola and remembered my passengers, the pigeons, just now beginning to jostle their cages. They looked at me anxiously, perhaps fearing the worst.
The full sun with no cloud to obscure it shone upon the balloon, and the heat became stifling. I took off my overcoat and wished for a drink of water to quench my thirst. Managing to sit down on a pallet of mail, I rested my elbows on the edges of the gondola and contemplated in silence the great panorama that spread itself before me.
While a thousand thoughts raced through my mind, my compass reminded me the wind was continuing to pull me westward. After Saint-Cloud appeared Versailles, slowly revealing the wonders of its monuments and gardens. Up to that moment I had passed over only deserted ruins, but now the scene changed to a verdant park. Below I could make out Prussian camps. I was at 5,200 feet and well beyond the range of rifles. I armed myself with a spyglass and peered over the sides of the gondola for a closer look at the Lilliputian armies below.
Soon enough I spotted officers coming out from Trianon Palace. They watched me for quite some time until I noticed sudden movements in all directions. The agitated soldiers running back and forth appeared like ants on an upset mound, crisscrossing the same lawn where Louis XIV once strode. They were pointing up at the Céleste, and I relished the moment, knowing that in their anger and haste they were utterly powerless to stop the delivery of the parcels beneath me.
At that same moment I remembered the 10,000 proclamations printed in German that needed delivering. Grabbing a handful of these missives, I threw them overboard, where they spread out like leaves in flight and floated slowly down to earth. I bombarded the officers and soldiers below with hundreds upon hundreds of the tracts, saving the rest for the other enemy troops I was likely to encounter.
What did the salutation say? Simple words to the German armies that the French people were no longer burdened by emperors or kings and that if they were to show the same common sense and join us, we would no longer need to kill one another aimlessly like wild beasts. Strong words that fluttered lightly in the morning breeze.
Under an ardent sun, the Céleste maintained an altitude of 5,200 feet without my having to release an ounce of ballast; yet there was little doubt that the balloon was leaking, and without the exceptional atmospheric warmth of the day the poor craft would not remain long in the air and would soon enough fall quickly back to earth, perhaps in the middle of the Prussian hordes.
Tissandier and his brother, Albert, were renowned scientists and aviation pioneers (Henri Thiriat/Library of Congress).
Leaving Versailles I floated over a small forest. In the middle of the wood a distinct clearing had been cut, the ground tamped flat and a double row of tents erected on either side of the perfect parallelogram. I had only just passed over this camp when I suddenly noticed soldiers below making a formation; I could see clearly from that height the gleam and flash of bayonet tips as rifles were raised and all at once cracked out shots in a plume of smoke.
It was only a matter of seconds before I heard somewhere below the basket the hiss and whirl of bullets and the discharge of even more shots. Sure enough, after surviving the first hail of bullets I was soon greeted by a second and then another, and still yet another, one following the next in steady succession until the wind at last carried me away from that inhospitable place. For every round I had been subjected to, I had replied with a veritable deluge of leaflets rained down upon my attackers.
I did not care to hang around long enough to waste any more of the Prussians' gunpowder; other horizons awaited me. I was soon swiftly advancing toward a distant forest. I cannot say I was not somewhat concerned to notice that the Céleste was losing altitude; I began to jettison ballast bit by bit, with precious little to work with. Unfortunately at that moment I had not made it far at all from the outskirts of Paris. The warm welcome I had just received from the region's newest inhabitants did not bode well for a forced landing.
I have always noticed, and not without surprise, that the aeronaut even at considerable heights remains subject to the landscape over which he is flying. If he is hovering over the chalky hills of Champagne, he feels the intense warmth of the sun as reflected from the ground, like the passerby warmed by the sun that radiates from a whitewashed wall. Conversely, if he is sailing over the treetops of a forest floor, the air traveler finds himself surrounded in the cool humidity of the living things below, as if he were suddenly entering the coolness of a cave during the height of summer. This was precisely what I experienced at 10:45 that morning as I passed 4,700 feet above the treetops, which I soon recognized as the forest of Houdan. My compass and map left no room for guesswork. The sudden chill that I had felt after basking in the sun most of the morning was also felt by my balloon, which cooled and contracted, sinking toward the trees below as if the branches called out to it. Was the Céleste now like the bird in flight seeking a branch to alight upon?
I quickly emptied a ballast sack overboard but the barometer continued its descent; the cold now chilled me to the bone. The balloon descended to 3,300 feet, then to 2,600, then to 2,000. I emptied three of my ballast bags, only to level out at 1,600 feet above the treetops, with the balloon still refusing to gain altitude.
At that moment I found myself floating over the intersection of two roads. I could make out below a group of men who had assembled in the road. Grand Dieu! They were Prussians. And then farther along, more of them; and then uhlans [lancers] who were moving along the roads.
I had only one sack of ballast remaining. I threw into the void my last packet of proclamations. But the balloon had lost much of its gas; I was now floating a mere 1,400 feet above the ground, well within range of rifle shot. I kept a close watch beneath me. If a soldier raised his rifle in my direction, I was resigned to heave down a packet of letters on his head. Lightening my load in this way would have certainly helped my balloon find its wings again. No matter my desire to complete my mission in full; I would not trade my life for a pack of letters.
Lucky for me the wind was swift and I shot like an arrow over the treetops; the uhlans peered up at me, so astonished by my passing overhead that not a shot was fired. I continued on my way over verdant prairies hemmed in by aubepine hedges.
By noon I was barely passing a few hundred feet above the ground. The spectators who gathered beneath me now were clearly the French people of the countryside, as indicated by their blouses and sabots. They raised their arms as I passed overhead as if to call me to them; but being still close to the forest's edge, I preferred to sail on for as long I could maintain altitude. I contented myself by throwing out several stacks of Parisian newspapers to these good people.
Soon enough a small town rose upon the horizon. It was Dreux, with its tall, square tower. The Céleste descended quickly now, and this time I did not object. A cloud of townspeople soon ran after the still-hovering airship. I shouted down to them with all my might: "Are there any Prussians around here?"
A thousand voices responded in chorus: "Non, non, descendez! No! No! Come down!"
I was now no more than 160 feet above the ground, and my guide rope scraped over the tops of fields. But seized by a sudden wind, the balloon was abruptly caught up and sent on a collision course with a high adjacent hillside. The balloon briefly grazed the ground of the hilltop, causing a brutal shock that flipped the gondola completely upside down. I managed to take a good knock on the head that left me in some pain afterward. I could now see that the balloon was descending far too quickly for a landing, so at last I cut away the remaining ballast sack; yet I managed, in trying to do more than one thing at a time during a solo flight, to lose hold of the knife, the same knife I needed to release the balloon's anchor. I had no time to mourn this botched effort, as the Céleste had now leaped 200 feet into the air, only to immediately come crashing back to the earth; this time however, I succeeded in freeing the anchor and opening the main release valve. The balloon at last came to rest, and the people of Dreux, running out to see the commotion, surrounded me on every side. I had managed to foul my arm and earn a bruising bump on the head, but at last, I had also come to a full stop in friendly territory.
Ah! How happy I was to clasp the hands of all those who now surrounded me. They pressed me with questions of every sort. What has become of Paris? What do they think in Paris? Is Paris still resisting? To the best of my ability, I attempted to respond to the thousands of inquiries that came from every direction. I then gave a speech to mark the occasion.
"Yes, Paris is still holding its head up before her enemy. There is no sense in searching that valiant population for weakness or discouragement, for all one may remark in that great city is an unbroken tenacity and an enduring fortitude. If Provence would follow Paris, then France shall yet be saved!"
Then with haste I deflated the Céleste, while local guardsmen arrived to push back the gathering crowd. A carriage soon arrived for me and was loaded with my bags of mail dispatches and cages of pigeons. The poor birds had been shaken by the landing and were not yet back to their senses.
Making my way to the carriage I received no less than 50 invitations to lunch. I ate happily and with a good appetite and afterward asked to be driven to the post office with my sacks of Parisian mail.
I laid them upon the ground and could not help but feel a certain emotion. There beneath my eyes were 30,000 letters from Paris. Thirty thousand families would think of the balloon that carried over the clouds news of their besieged loved ones.
Written by Sam Blumenfeld Wednesday, 13 July 2011 08:59
America’s new belligerent engagement in Libya, along with its NATO allies, has led me to think of our old engagement in Libya, which inspired the U.S. Marine anthem, “From the Halls of Montezuma to the Shores of Tripoli.” Not only have most Americans never heard of that war fought during Thomas Jefferson’s administration, but today’s schools don’t even bother to teach it.
About a year ago, I visited a prestigious private school in Oregon and was joined at lunch by a group of the school's best students of high-school age. I assumed that they were well versed in American history. But to find out if I was right, I asked if they could tell me what was the first war the United States was engaged in after we had established an independent government under the new constitution.
There was a moment of silence while they wracked their brains for the correct answer. "The War of 1812," they responded confidently. "No," I said. "That was not the first war we were engaged in." They seemed puzzled and disappointed. After all, they were the best students in the school. How could they be wrong? But they were. America's first conflict is known as the Barbary Wars, fought in 1801-05 and 1815 against the Islamic powers of North Africa.
The Muslims of North Africa had begun attacking and capturing the ships of Christian nations after their expulsion from Spain and France in the 15th century. By the 17th century there were as many as 20,000 Christian captives in Algiers. Ransom payments were the sole means of freeing some of the captives. Others were condemned to slavery by the Muslims.
Incapable of conquering the North African coast, the European nations were able to gain a modicum of immunity from Barbary piracy by paying an annual tribute to the governments there. Prior to independence, American shipping was protected by payments made by the British government. However, after independence, American ships were on their own. They were seized in the Mediterranean and their crews held as hostages subject to ramson or enslaved. In response to these depredations, the Congress voted in 1794 to build a navy. However, in 1795 and 1797, under Presidents Washington and Adams, the United States signed extortion treaties with the Muslim Barbary states of Morocco, Algiers, Tripoli and Tunis, in order to protect hundreds of American merchant vessels from harassment in the Mediterranean.
However, in 1801 the Pasha of Tripoli, Yusuf Karamanli, declared war on the United States and seized several Americans and their vessels. In 1803, Commodore Edward Preble was sent to the Mediterranean with the Constitution, Philadelphia, and several brigs and schooners. Making a naval demonstration before Tangiers, which brought the Emperor of Morocco to make amends for treaty violations, Preble set up a blockade of Tripoli itself. On October 31, 1803, the Philadelphia ran on a reef and was captured by the Tripolitans, who anchored her in their harbor. But on February 16, 1804, Lieutenant Stephen Decatur and eighty officers and men recaptured and burned her in a daring night attack.
During August and September of 1804, Preble harassed Tripolitan shipping and fortifications with frequent attacks. The massive fortifications had been built by Christian slaves. Preble's actions reached a climax when the fire-ship Intrepid, loaded with a cargo of gunpowder and explosive shells, was maneuvered into the harbor at night. But the ship exploded prematurely, doing little damage to Tripolitan shipping.
Meanwhile, William Eaton, the U.S. Consul at Tunis, got permission from Jefferson and Madison to attack Tripoli by land with the help of the Pasha's exiled older brother Hamet, whose throne had been usurped by Yusuf. With the help of seven United States Marines, Eaton was able to organize a small army made up of Greeks and discontented Arabs who marched from Alexandria to Derna, halfway to Tripoli, in 30 days. The small army, led by the seven Marines, stormed Derna, which fell after a two-hour battle.
The Pasha in Tripoli was so alarmed by the fall of Derna that he signed a peace treaty with the United States on June 4, 1805. It abolished all annual payments, but provided for $60,000 ransom money for the officers and crew of the Philadelphia.
But payments were continued to the other Barbary states until 1815, when Commodore Stephen Decatur was sent to the Mediterranean where he captured the Algerian flagship Mashuda in a fight off Cape de Gat. Appearing off Algiers, Decatur demanded and obtained a treaty humiliating to the once proud piratical state: no future payments, restoration of all American property, the emancipation of all Christian slaves, civilized treatment of all prisoners of war and $10,000 for a merchantman recently seized. And so, ended the Barbary Wars for the United States.
However, it wasn't until France invaded North Africa in 1830 and set up a permanent government there that the Barbary pirates were finally put out of business. France then encouraged over a million Europeans to settle in Algeria, making it a permanent part of the French Republic. The settlers created industries, farms, vineyards, and cultural institutions. Thus, Algeria became a productive part of France until the 1950s when the Soviet Union helped Algerian communists create a national liberation movement using terrorism to create fear among Muslims who were, on the whole, loyal to France.
French patriots brought Charles de Gaulle out of retirement to help win the war for France. But he did just the opposite in one of the most cynical betrayals in all of French history. He surrendered Algeria to the communists, which forced over a million Europeans and loyal Muslims to leave Algeria and settle in France.
Today France is overrun with Algerians who don’t want to live in their own liberated state where radical Islamists have killed thousands of Algerians. And so, we are now fighting barbaric Muslims all over again. Now they are called al Qaida and radical Jihadist Islamists who are preparing to become the dominant religious power in Europe.
Lesson to be learned? We are threatened today by the same kind of terrorism and barbarism we fought in our first foreign war. However, distinct differences exist, since U.S. ships have not been attacked by an Islamic state, nor have Americans been held for ransom. As for the attacks against our nation on 9-11, the al Qaeda terrorists responsible have actually been linked to the rebel opposition in Libya, posing a problem to America in determining who is “friend" and who is “foe” in the Libyan conflict. An article in Britain’s Telegraph for July 11 quoted the Libyan rebel leader, Abdel-Hakim al-Hasidi’s statement that “jihadists who fought against allied troops in Iraq are on the front lines of the battle against Muammar Gaddafi’s regime.” However, if an unmistakable enemy threatening American interests in northern Africa or the Middle East should be determined, a Congressional declaration of war would be in order, as our Constitution mandates.
Apparently, the Muslim world is reverting to its age-old barbaric practices, which forced the Europeans to fight back and subdue them in North Africa. Under the French, they were pacified and productive. Today, the Muslims have invaded France and believe they are in a position to conquer the Europeans. As the French say, “Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose." The more it changes, the more it remains the same. Or perhaps better put by George Santayana: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
Friedrich Wilhelm Voigt (13 February 1849 - 3 January 1922) was a German impostor who masqueraded as a Prussian military officer in 1906 and became famous as The Captain of Köpenick (Der Hauptmann von Köpenick ).
In Germany Voigt is not seen as a criminal, but rather as a folk hero and a victim of official prejudice, who was caught in the kafkaesque situation of not getting work without a residence permit, while not being able to have a residence permit without work. His story is taught to this day in German schools as an example of courageous resistance to unjust government. In modern Germany the laws frown upon treating a former convict any differently from the rest of the population after the convict has finished his or her prison sentence; in cases of rather clever and fairly minor crimes not involving violence, this feeling is shared by most of the general population.
Friedrich Wilhelm Voigt was born in Tilsit on February 13th, 1849. He attends the three class school there and later a few years the high school. Voigt becomes criminal the first time in the age of almost 14 years: the district court Tilsit sentences him 1863 because of theft to 14 days in prison.
Because of his previous conviction Voigt must leave the school. He learns the shoemaker trade from his father. In the years from 1864 to 1891 Voigt is further sentenced six times because of theft and falsification of documents. He altogether spends more than 29 years for it behind bars. Finally he is 15 years in the penitentiary because of serious theft.
On February 12th, 1906 he is free again. At first he goes to Wismar, is expelled, however, from the Grand Duchy of Mecklenburg-Schwerin. Over Marienburg, Graudenz and some other intermediate stops Voigt finally comes to Rixdorf at Berlin and can find accommodation in the Kopfstreet 27 with his sister.
He worked briefly as a court shoemaker until, on 24 August 1906, Voigt is identified by the chief of police of Rixdorf once more as "a person dangerous for the public safety and morality", police expelled him from Berlin as undesirable, based solely on the fact that he was a former prisoner.
On September 1st, 1906 he leaves Rixdorf officially in the direction of Hamburg , however, he actually lives in Berlin O17, Langestreet 22, as an unregistered resident.
Voigt carefully planned his next caper and on 16 October 1906 Voigt was ready for his coup.
He had used the previous week to buy at different dawdlers in Potsdam and Berlin the uniform of a Prussian captain of the "1st guard regiment on foot”.
In the early morning of this day he goes from his shelter at the Silesian station to the station Beusselstreet. He collects his uniform from the baggage storage and runs to the Jungfernheide park to change his clothes. He then goes to Stralau-Rummelsburg and from there by suburban train to Koepenick. He sounds the land out here, he particularly remembers the area around the city hall. Then he goes by north ring train to the station Putlitzstreet and shirks around on the Seestreet for some time.
Toward noon in the time of the changings of the guards he stops on the Sylter Street a bunch of guard soldiers which consists of four man and a sergeant. This troop comes from the army swim institution at the Plotzensee Lake and is on the way back to the barracks. The sergeant lets stand to attention and reports.
Under reference to highest cabinet order he puts his order in charge of the troop. He dismisses the sergeant so that he can inform his supervisors. Shortly after this he also commandeers the guard duty of a shooting range which is taken off and also dropping in. This troop consists of six man of the 4th guard regiment on foot.
With this quarrel power now being at his disposal he marches to the station Putlitzstreet and goes from there to Koepenick. After arrival at the city hall, he is having guards stationed at the portals and side entrances and orders the gates to close. The local rural police is instructed by Voigt to provide law and order during the action.
In the anteroom of the mayor he arrests the town secretary Rosenkranz, after this he arrests the mayor Dr. Georg Langerhans. He lets the cashier of Wiltberg make a cashing-up and he then confiscates the amount of 4000 Marks and 70 Pfennig against receipt. After this he is having Dr. Langerhans and of Wiltberg transported to the New Guard Duty to Berlin.
He gives his troop the order to retract the guard duties after half an hour, then to go by train back to Berlin and to report in the New Guard Duty. He himself leaves the city hall in the direction of the station Koepenick and disappears.
In the following days the German press speculated on what had really happened. At the same time the army ran its own investigation. The public seemed to be positively amused by the daring of the culprit.
Voigt is arrested on October 26th, 1906 and sentenced on December 1st, 1906 to an imprisonment of 4 years "because of unauthorizedly wearing of a uniform, offence against the public order, wrongful deprivation of personal liberty, deceit and heavy falsification of a document".
Due to a pardon by his majesty the emperor, Wilhelm Voigt is released from prison on August 16th, 1908. The message of his dismissal is taken by the surprised public as a great event. Voigt starts with his second life by trying to capitalize on it.
Voigt appears in the arcade waxworks Unter den Linden on August 20th, four days after his dismissal. He signs photos there and gives speeches to the audience. These appearances as well as every further appearance of Voigt in the public are forbidden still on the same day.
Voigt plans operettas and appearances in the variety theatres in Vienna and Budapest which, however, fail. He appears in small theatres by the German fairs, hotels and restaurants and signs postcards which show him as a "Captain of Koepenick".
At first the attempt to enter the USA fails because of the immigration authorities. End of March 1910, he manages to come into the USA via Canada. He can celebrate great successes with his appearance there. Further journeys lead him to England, he is displayed in the waxworks of the madam Tussaut in London.
By his appearances and the sale of his memoirs "How I became a captain of Koepenick. My biography. By Wilhelm Voigt, called captain of Koepenick", which are published in a Leipzig publishing house in 1909 Voigt comes to money. He buys a house for himself in Luxembourg, Neyperger Street 5 and retires.
Because of war and inflation he becomes impoverished. Wilhelm Voigt dies in Luxembourg on January 3rd, 1922 and is buried at the expense of the relief fund on the cemetery Notre Dame.
The rent for the grave of Wilhelm Voigt went off in 1942, was prolonged, however, 1944 by an anonymous donator by deposit of 4000 frs for another 30 years. In 1961 the dilapidated grave place was arranged newly by the German circus [Sarrasani ... ] and provided with a marble plate, which, however, showed the wrong year of birth 1850. This was exchanged for a memorial stone later, again with the wrong year of birth.
In the year 1974 the grave place should be dissolved definitely due to Luxembourg laws. The international reaction being carried out after that motivated the city of Luxembourg to the now unlimited prolongation of the grave right.
The public
Special edition of the Niederbarnimer newspaper of October 16th, 1906:
"1 captain arrived towards 4 o'clock this afternoon in this town with 10 soldiers. They went to the city hall and got in touch with the mayor. They had to take charge of highest order to occupy the city hall, to receive the cash-box and to arrest the mayor Dr. Langerhans and the treasurer of Wildberg. The order was immediately executed. The cashier's office was immediately closed. (Difficult things surely must have happened because such a sensational arrest is unique. The ed.)."
Special edition of the Copenicker daily newspaper of October 17th, 1906:
"A rogue play, devised extremely impudently and cunningly and put daringly into scene, recognized therefore only much later as a such one, brought the feelings of the city of Copenick in excitement yesterday. The details of the whole event are so unpronounceably and so grotesquely, that if one hasn't looked at it himself, one must doubt the truth of the whole history. If one considers that a crafty confidence trickster who has dressed in an officer uniform has succeeded in stopping twelve soldiers from the guard duty on their way to the barracks in Berlin and directing these because of his mere order to Copenick, occupying the city hall there, arresting the mayor, the upper town secretary and the cashiers office administrator and then escaping unmolestedly with the 'confiscated' cash-box, one then cannot prevent a shake of the head."
Berliner Lokal-Anzeiger of October 17th, 1906:
"An occurrence, which is in the local criminal history without example, has taken place in the neighboring Koepenick in yesterday's evening. A rogue has there in the mask of a guard officer with the help of a department soldiers, whom he deceived by a forged cabinet order, arrested the mayor and the cashiers office administrator, had both transported under military guarding to Berlin and then the town cash-box, in which were a little more than 4000 marks in cash, robbed. Police and rural police are in feverish activity to get the rogue, who unchallengedly escaped with his robbery."
Berliner Morgenpost of October 17th, 1906:
"A robber story, so adventurous and romantic as we know it from novelistic stories, as it would have seemed to us till now possibly only in the Russian revolution chaos or in an Italian brigand idyll, has fulfilled our neighboring town Koepenick with a paralyzing horror for hours yesterday. There a - one may say brilliant - swindler in an officer uniform has managed to put the rural police, the mayor, the cashiers office administrator and a department of 10 soldiers into his service only so that he could get away with 4000 marks from the town treasury and to disappear unhinderedly with that. The swindler who wore a Prussian Captain uniform with cap intercepted a department of ten soldiers who marched from the shooting range to Berlin and moved to Koepenick with them in front of the city hall. He arrested the mayor and the cashiers office administrator and sent them under military escort to the Berlin main police station, he himself went by suburban train of it."
Newspaper for Mittenwalde and surroundings of October 18th, 1906:
"An outrageous rogue trick has been performed in Koepenick on Tuesday. On Tuesday afternoon a department of the 4th guard regiment arrived under leadership of a man dressed into the uniform of a captain in Koepenick, went to the city hall and arrested the mayor and the cashiers office administrator. After the alleged captain took over the cash-box 4000 marks contained, he assigned the order to bring the mayor and the cashiers office administrator under a military company to the new guard duty in Berlin, gave the teams the order to keep the city hall occupied for another half an hour and then he drove from it towards Berlin. The team, which was coming from the shooting range Tegel and stopped and led to Koepenick by the alleged captain showing a forged cabinet order, moved away to the barracks later. How we still learn the 'captain' maltreated the soldiers on the journey to Koepenick with beer at the station Rummelsburg as well on the arrival at the station in Koepenick where he still submitted a Mark to every soldier. Furthermore the rogue also would have succeeded in closing the post office in Koepenick for telephonic conversations to Berlin for an hour."
Rixdorfer daily newspaper of October 18th, 1906:
"A police communication over the person of the robber reads: The robber of the town treasury in the Koepenicker city hall who appeared as a 'captain' disguised is about 45 to 50 years old and has an approximate size of 1.75 meters. He is of a slim shape, has a gray down hanging strong mustache and chin shaved. The face is broad, hollow and pale, a cheekbone is prominently so that the face seems wry. The nose is pressed in, the legs have turned a little to the outside (so-called bandy legs). The posture is inclined strongly to the front, a shoulder stands out to behind so that the shape also seems a little crooked. He was dressed with an infantry uniform, cap, a greatcoat with the captain badges of the 1st guard regiment on foot, with long trousers, boots with plugged spurs, white gloves and a sash. He carried an officer rapier with guard star."
The Vorwaerts of October 19th, 1906:
"The heroic deed of the false captain is the talk of the town at present. One goes to a restaurant, goes by train or uses the tramway everywhere one hears talking about the heroic piece. And how talks one, not at all so, that one is outraged perhaps about the robbery of the town treasury in Koepenick, but in the mocking, sarcastic tone; a certain malicious joy sounds by about the Koepenicker stroke of genius everywhere. It isn't possible in view of this occurrence to remain serious at all either. The satirists are then very fast to judge the situation to the most different directions, too. Nimble-fingered rhymesters have taken the Koepenicker tragicomedy to poetic form. The stage also has already taken hold of the history. A number of soldiers who confined themselves to all orders of the Captain to nod marched up in the [Metropol Theatre ... ] yesterday. (...) For a long time, the love of mockery hasn't celebrated such triumphs like now. One is virtually filled with admiration for the brilliant captain everywhere; one is often even sorry that the pay has been too low for the farce. Others, however, express the opinion that the man still can be surpassed. One needs to get himself only the necessary energy and to put himself into a General uniform to finally get a whole regiment soldiers at the disposal."
Berliner Morgenpost
"That a whole community with all its public functions, yes that a department soldiers was shown up by one single person in a way which is so overwhelmingly funny and been successful completely, this has done in our country of the unlimited deep respect for uniforms a military garment with which an old, bow-legged individual had hung itself provisionally."
Chronological Table of Events
February 13th, 1849
Friedrich Wilhelm Voigt was born in Tilsit as a son of a shoemaker. He attends the three-class town school.
June 12th, 1863
Voigt is sentenced because of theft by the district court Tilsit to 14 days in prison.
September 9th, 1864
Repeated condemnation of Voigt by the district court Tilsit: he gets 3 months in prison because of theft.
September 1st, 1865
Voigt is sentenced for "theft in the repeated relapse" by the district court Tilsit to 9 months in prison and a year loss of honour.
April 13th, 1867
The jury Prenzlau sentences Voigt because of heavy falsification of documents to 10 years in prison and 1500 Taler fine.
July 5th, 1889
Voigt is condemned because of a serious theft by the district court Posen to a year in prison.
January 18th, 1890
Voigt is sentenced because of "intellectual falsification of documents" by the district court Posen to 1 month in prison.
February 12th, 1891
The district court Gnesen sentences Voigt because of serious theft to 15 years in prison and 10 years loss of honour and orders police supervision.
February 12th, 1906
Voigt is released from the detention centre Rawitsch. He works 3 months for the court shoemaker Hilbrecht in Wismar and is expelled after this. He gets stay ban for the Grand Duchy of Mecklenburg-Schwerin. Voigt goes to his sister to Berlin and works there in the felt shoe factory Albert Viereck, Breslauer street.
August 24th, 1906
Voigt is expelled from Berlin, doesn't leave the town, however, and works further.
October 6th, 1906
Voigt hands in his notice for the felt shoe factory Albert Viereck.
October 16th, 1906
As a Prussian captain disguised Voigt does his famous "march to Koepenick" and robbes the cash-box in the city hall there.
October 26th, 1906
Voigt is arrested.
December 1st, 1906
Condemnation to four years in prison by the district court II Berlin.
August 16th, 1908
Voigt is released from the detention centre Tegel.
August 20th, 1908
Voigt appears in Berlin in the arcade waxworks Friedrichstreet / corner Behrenstreet.
August 22nd, 1908
Appearance ban, tour to Dresden, Vienna, Budapest.
September 18th, 1908 -- March 4th, 1909
Appearances in varietes, restaurants, amusement parks. Voigt signs postcards which show him in captain uniform. Tours through Germany and Europe.
May 19th, 1909
On a journey to France Voigt purchases the right of residence in the city of Luxembourg.
March 5th, 1910
Tours in America, Canada and France.
April 30th, 1910
Return to Luxembourg.
May 1st, 1910
Voigt gets a Luxembourg identity card.
June 1910
Tours through Great Britain and Germany.
January 3rd, 1922
Voigt dies in Luxembourg and is buried on the cemetery Notre Dame.
A commemorative memorial plate for Wilhelm Voigt and the Captain of Köpenick at Köpenick city hall. The text explains the happenings in short form, including the exact date, and the later following fame of the case through the play of Carl Zuckmayer.
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