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By Stephanie Pappas and Jeanna Bryner, LiveScience

Mon, Feb 04 2013 at 10:10 AM

University of Leicester has said that the Richard III skeleton would be buried under Leicester Cathedral.

The remains of what may be King Richard III, showing a curved spine and signs of battle trauma. (Photo: University of Leicester)

The body of the lost and vilified English king Richard III has finally been found.

Archaeologists announced on Feb. 4 that bones excavated from underneath a parking lot in Leicester, "beyond reasonable doubt," belong to the medieval king. Archaeologists announced the discovery of the skeleton in September. They suspected then they might have Richard III on their hands because the skeleton showed signs of the spinal disorder scoliosis, which Richard III likely had, and because battle wounds on the bones matched accounts of Richard III's death in the War of the Roses.

The announcement comes a day after the archaeologists had released an image of the king's battle-scarred skull.

To confirm the hunch, however, researchers at the University of Leicester conducted a series of tests, including extracting DNA from the teeth and a bone for comparison with Michael Ibsen, a modern-day descendant of Richard III's sister Anne of York.

Indeed, the researchers found the genetics matched up between Ibsen and that from the skeleton. "The DNA remains points to these being the remains of Richard III," University of Leicester genetics expert Turi King said during a press briefing.

The history of Richard III

Richard III was born in 1452 and ruled England from 1483 to 1485, a reign cut short by his death at the Battle of Bosworth Field, the decisive battle in the English civil war known as the War of the Roses. [See Images of the Skull & Search for Richard III's Grave]

Richard III's historical reputation is a twisted one, rife with accusations that he had his two young nephews murdered to secure his spot on the throne. The Shakespeare play "Richard III" cemented the king's villainous reputation about 100 years after the monarch died.

But Richard III's true legacy is a source of controversy. According to the Richard III Society, which has been involved in the archaeological search for the king's remains, many of the crimes Shakespeare attributes to Richard III are on shaky grounds. Even the deaths of the young princes remain in dispute.

After the king's death in battle, he was brought to Leicester and reportedly interred at the church of the Grey Friars, a location long lost to history. Unsubstantiated rumors sprung up around the missing grave, such as that Richard III's bones had been dug up and thrown in a river, or that his coffin was used as a horse-trough.

Relying on historical records, University of Leicester archaeologists began excavating a city council parking lot in Leicester in August 2012 in search of the Grey Friars church. They soon found medieval window frames, glazed floor tiles and roof fragments, suggesting that they were on the right track.

Shortly thereafter, the team unearthed human remains, including both a female skeleton (possibly an early church founder) and a male skeleton with a spine curved by scoliosis. The male skeleton's skull was cleaved with a blade, and a barbed metal arrowhead was lodged among the vertebrae of the upper back.

New discoveries

An analysis of the skeleton, ongoing ever since, revealed many characteristics consistent with Richard III, including that the man died in his late 20s or 30s (Richard III supposedly died at age 32), and he had a slender, "almost female build," said Jo Appleby, the University of Leicester's osteology expert.

The man would've had so-called idiopathic adolescent-onset scoliosis, meaning the cause is unclear though the individual would have developed the disorder after age 10; the curvature would've put pressure on the man's heart and lungs and could've caused pain, Appleby said. However, unlike historical records would suggest, the skeleton of Richard III showed no signs of a withered arm.

Appleby and her colleagues found and examined 10 wounds on the skeleton, including eight on the skull. None of the wounds could have been inflicted after the body was buried, though some of the wounds are consistent with being post-mortem, possibly as a way to further humiliate the king in 1485, Appleby said.

What does the discovery mean for the king's villainous reputation?

"It will be a whole new era for Richard III," Lynda Pidgeon of the Richard III Society told the Associated Press. "It's certainly going to spark a lot more interest. Hopefully people will have a more open mind toward Richard."

Where will they be re-interred? The University of Leicester has jurisdiction over the remains, and said today the Richard III skeleton would be buried under Leicester Cathedral.

Other interested parties had voiced their own opinions: The Richard III Foundation and the Society of Friends of Richard III, based in York, England, argue the remains should be reburied in York, since the king was fond of that city. The Richard III Society has remained officially neutral. Meanwhile, some online petitions have argued the reburial should take place at Westminster Abbey or Windsor Castle.

Richard III: DNA confirms bones belong to English king | MNN - Mother Nature Network

By David Waller | Posted 31st January 2013, 11:53

 

The Victorian City: Everyday Life in Dickens’ London
Judith Flanders
Atlantic Books   560pp   £25
Victorian Bloomsbury
Rosemary Ashton
Yale University Press   320pp   £25

By 1800 London was already the largest city ever known, ‘double the size of Paris with one million inhabitants, living in 136,000 houses’. Fifty years of ceaseless construction later, nearly three million people lived in 306,000 houses, figures that doubled again by the end of the century.

Nineteenth-century London was thus overwhelming: huge, noisy, stinky and overcrowded. Teeming with life and death, visitors often said that the city was unknowable in its vast, inhuman scale. Only creative artists of the stature of Charles Dickens were able to comprehend its immensity.

If one suspected for a moment that Dickens exaggerated his portrayal of Victorian London, Judith Flanders’ latest work of Victorian social history will dispel that thought within a few pages. ‘Much of what we take today to be the marvellous imaginings of a visionary novelist turn out on inspection to be the reportage of a great observer,’ she writes in The Victorian City.

In 1862, for example, the Fleet Ditch, known as the Black River of North London as it was little more than a sewer, burst its banks and flooded the near complete workings of the underground tunnel alongside. The massive brick structure gave way and the foul water rushed across two and half miles of London from Farringdon Road to Paddington, carrying with it not merely the debris of the tunnel but also scores of corpses stored in a mausoleum. It took ten days for the water to be stemmed and the bodies recovered.

This ghoulish story could have come out of the pages of a Dickens novel, as could the account of a man who lit his cigar with a twist of paper he held to a gaslight outside a shop. He threw away the paper and it fell into a sewer, where it promptly ignited and blew up ten houses. What happened to the smoker is not recorded.

‘Within the single entity called London, many London's existed simultaneously,’ Flanders shows. The homes of the poor, the so-called rookeries in the vicinity of Paddington or St Giles, were cheek-by-jowl with the sumptuous residences of the rich. When labourers began their walk to work in the early hours of the morning, they overlapped with revellers and ‘fallen women’ returning home.
If Dickens liked to pace the streets in search of inspiration, Flanders calculates that by 1866, 750,000 people walked miles to work in the morning, creating long orderly lines as they made their way from the suburbs to the City or the Inns of Courts. This contrasted with the mayhem on the streets, where there were no traffic rules and progress was notoriously slow.

Flanders’ book ranges broad and deep, demonstrating the vitality of Dickensian London as well as the horror. Rosemary Ashton, also a distinguished social historian of the 19th century, focuses more narrowly on Victorian Bloomsbury, that area of west central London defined by Tottenham Court Road to the west, Euston Road in the north, Holborn and New Oxford Street to the south and Gray’s Inn Road in the east.

In 1904 Virginia Woolf (née Stephen) and her siblings moved there from Kensington and thus founded the ‘Bloomsbury Group’ of writers and artists. Ashton’s purpose is to ‘identify a more comprehensive, and ultimately more significant, influence in the activities of an earlier set of Bloomsbury-based pioneers’.

If the elegant squares of Bloomsbury were deemed socially far less exclusive than those of Mayfair, there was an extraordinary concentration of progressive intellectual and cultural activity. Ashton describes the foundation of the University of London in 1826, designed to end the anomaly that the great city did not have its own university. To this day the secular and enlightened spirit of its founders is memorialised in the form of Jeremy Bentham’s skeleton, displayed fully clothed with a wax head in the entrance to what is now University College.

Nineteenth-century Bloomsbury also saw the first medical school for women, the first teaching of modern languages, geography and architecture and the first kindergarten. Under the tutelage of novelist Mrs Humphry Ward the first organisation offering after-school care for the children of working parents was established there. The famous ‘new’ Round Reading Room of the British Museum was opened in 1857. Thackeray, Trollope, Disraeli, Gissing and Mrs Braddon all lived in and wrote about Victorian Bloomsbury, as did Charles Dickens himself, who lived in Gower Street as a child and chose Doughty Street for his first marital home.

Drawing on original sources, such as the largely unpublished writings of the diarist Henry Crabb Robinson, Ashton tells the story of the men and women who ‘fought against entrenched opinion and vested interests for universal education, from kindergarten to university, and for cultural opportunities for all’. Her account of the Victorian ‘march of mind’ is fascinating and original.

David Waller is the author of The Perfect Man: The Muscular Life and Times of Eugen Sandow, Victorian Strongman (Victorian Secrets, 2011).

The Victorian City | History Today

By George T. Beech | Published in History Today Volume: 63 Issue: 2 2013

 

George T. Beech investigates whether a King of Wessex adopted a new name for his country in 828, but failed to implement the change.

John Speed's 17th-century map, 'Britain as it was Dividied in the Tyme of the Englishe Saxons especially during their Heptarchy'.

In the October 2007 edition of History Today I proposed that people first began to call England by that name early in the 11th century. It was the foreign-born Cnut (r.1016-35) and his advisers who almost certainly promoted this move in an attempt to end the fighting between native English peoples and the Danes by creating a unified country under a single monarch. After having finished that project I was startled to come across the statement of an early 17th-century historian, John Speed, who in his History of Great Britain (1625) wrote:

King Egbert … who by his Edict dated at Winchester an. 819 commanded the same to be called Angle-lond according to the name of the place from whence his ancestors, the Anglo-Saxons, came, which was out of the continent part of Denmarke, lying betwixt Iuitland and Holsatia, where to this day the place retaineth the name Engloen.

Intrigued, I set about looking for this story’s origins. My search led me to an entry for the year 828 in an anonymous Latin chronicle called the Winchester Annals. After describing Egbert’s victory over the Mercians at the battle of Ellendun, the entry reads:

Returning to Winchester he ordered all the leaders of the kingdoms he had conquered to come together with him on a certain day in the city. The people and the clergy came there and with the consent of all groups Egbert was crowned king of all Britain. On that same day Egbert issued an edict that henceforth the island should be called England and that the people, whether Jutes or Saxons, should be called by the common name, English.

Finding out how Speed had learned of this story required uncovering its history from the time of the Winchester Annals down to the beginning of the 17th century. The findings were surprising. Not a single other author from the ninth to the early 14th century cites the story. Then it appears in a Welsh history, the Kings of the Saxons, and in Rannulf Higden’s Polychronicon, or Universal Chronicle (c. 1350). Similarities in wording suggest that both had taken it from the Winchester Annals. After the publication of an English translation of Higden’s work in 1482 a wide variety of authors took up the story, including Robert Fabyan, John Rastell, Polydore Vergil, Richard Grafton and Raphael Holinshed in his Chronicles. This trend continued in the 17th century with William Camden’s Britannia and works by John Clapham and, of course, Speed himself. In the 18th century historians began to question it; 19th-century English historians barely mentioned it; and the story disappeared completely in the 20th century.

Sharon Turner, in his 1799 History of the Anglo-Saxons, is the only previous historian to have investigated the Egbert story. The central questions are: first, where does the story come from, what are its sources? Second, is it factual, truthful, reliable?

The Winchester Annals is a short, anonymous, undated chronicle with entries from the sixth century to the time of the Norman Conquest. It survives today in just two manuscripts, the late 12th-century Corpus Christi College Cambridge 339 and the BL Cotton Ms. Domitian A XIII, the latter a copy of the former. It is now believed that Cambridge 339 is a compilation, the work of a late 12th-century monastic historian in Winchester. What were his sources of information for Egbert’s reign (802-839)?

Earlier writings that would have been available to him and which treat the reign of Egbert start with the ‘A’ manuscript of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. This section was begun in Winchester at the end of the ninth century and continued with the late tenth-century history of the Anglo-Saxons by a West Saxon nobleman, Aethelweard. The compiler would also be familiar with several histories written in the 12th-century by William of Malmesbury, Henry of Huntingdon, Symeon of Durham, John of Worcester and Geoffrei Gaimar.

A comparison of the Winchester Annals’ treatment of Egbert with that of these other historians reveals many similarities between them. All present successive episodes in his life and reign: his exile into the Carolingian kingdom as a youth, his accession in 802; his military campaigns, especially his victory over the Mercians at the battle of Ellendun in 825; then his death in 839. The compiler could well have taken much of his information on these subjects from one or other of those earlier writers, from the ‘A’ manuscript, and from William of Malmesbury, in particular. The general agreement between all of these histories on the main outlines of Egbert’s reign points to their overall reliability.

In two respects, however, the Winchester Annals differs noticeably from all the earlier histories. First, in introducing new scenes and developments not mentioned by any of them: Egbert’s enthusiasm for military discipline while in exile in France; his training of young Wessex soldiers after becoming king; its detailed account of Egbert’s battle with Beornwulf at Ellendun; the mocking manner of that Mercian king; the numerical inferiority of the Wessex army; the ghastly slaughter in battle; and Beornwulf’s flight afterwards. Above all there is Egbert’s organisation of his coronation at Winchester in the presence of the princes under his rule and his proclamation of the changing of the names of the people and the country to English and England. Finally it tells how, prior to his death, Egbert made gifts of lands to the church at Winchester. None of these stories, often told in considerable detail, are found in either the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle or the 12th-century historians.

A second distinctive trait is the absence in the Winchester Annals of a number of scenes and events described in the ‘A’ manuscript and copied from it by William of Malmesbury, Henry of Huntingdon and other 12th-century historians: for example, Egbert’s invasion of Wales in 813, his battles with the Danes at Carhampton in 833 and his victory over them at Hingston Downs in 835. The Winchester Annals likewise makes no reference to the ‘A’ manuscript’s comment identifying Egbert as the eighth Bretwalda, who ruled all of Britain south of the Humber, or as William of Malmesbury put it: ‘The sole ruler of almost the whole island, the master of the whole of Britain.’

These differences show that the author of the Winchester Annals used a different source, or sources, which both contained the unique incidents he adds to his account and lacked the ones found in the others. Unfortunately no such earlier history survives, yet modern scholars working from different perspectives have long been convinced that a now-lost work by the same author – often called the Annales Wintonenses deperditi – was an important source of information for a number of early annals such as the ‘A’ manuscript of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which are still in existence today. This could well have been the source of the unique elements in the Egbert story as presented in Cambridge 399, but it is impossible to verify this hypothesis.

Painted stone mural from Old Minster, Winchester, where Egbert was crowned

The inability to uncover the source for the England story does not, however, end all inquiry into its reliability. Another approach is to ask whether the story is consistent with contemporary conditions in Wessex during Egbert’s reign. Is there, for instance, evidence which casts doubts on the likelihood that such a naming change ever took place? To begin with, Sharon Turner noted that no other English historian from the ninth to the 14th centuries, starting with the ‘A’ manuscript, ever mentioned it. Could an event of that nature have passed without comment for so long a period of time? Second, if Egbert had had himself crowned king of England one would assume that he would have taken this title in his official documents. In fact his charters and coins always refer to him as King of the West Saxons, never of England. Turner’s arguments that the story is in effect a fabrication must be considered.

If the story is simply an invention the question arises: who could have invented it, when and for what reasons? I find it hard to believe that the compiler of Cambridge 339, writing three and a half centuries after the event, could have concocted such a story. What could have given him the idea of trying to persuade his readers that the king had made such changes? At best he could have had only a limited knowledge of Egbert’s reign, nothing more than the few lines that he could have read in the histories written about him in the ‘A’ manuscript and by the handful of other earlier historians such as William of Malmesbury. Yet he comes up with a story in striking detail about Egbert’s moves in the days after the victory at Ellendun; his return to Winchester; his calling of the assembly of princes he had conquered, as well as the people and clergy of the town; his having himself crowned; his changing of country names. With regard to the coronation, how could he have thought up the idea that Egbert, who had already been crowned King of Wessex at the time of his accession in 802, could then have had a second crowning as king of all of Britain? A similar question concerns Egbert’s supposed introduction of the names England and English after his coronation. I consider it much more plausible that the complier was simply copying, perhaps literally, a passage he had read in the source from which he was making his compilation, the Annales Wintonenses deperditi.

Another approach to the evaluation of the Egbert naming story is to ask whether there is any evidence favouring its authenticity. As stated earlier the naming story is but one of a number of events or scenes unique to the Winchester Annals and found in none of the other earlier sources such as the A manuscript. Yet directly after telling the naming story the Winchester Annals reports that Egbert made gifts in, or of, six towns and villages in the Winchester region and on the Isle of Wight. This incident occurs only in the Winchester Annals; none of the other earlier histories mentions it. Recently, the historian Heather Edwards pointed to five 12th-century charters extant today in the Winchester cartulary (a roll related to the foundation of institutions), which record precisely these donations by Egbert, leaving no doubt that the compiler had based this part of his history on these very documents. This does not, of course, prove that he also based his naming story on other historical documents, but it warns against assuming that the unique incidents in his account are fabrications.

Then there is a marginal entry in the Cambridge 339 manuscript to the left of the beginning of the Egbert naming story. The main text reads:

Returning to Winchester he [Egbert] ordered all the great people he had conquered to assemble on a given day in Winchester.

The marginal entry (the only one of its kind in the Westminster Annals’ account of Egbert’s reign) is in the same handwriting as that of the main text. It is thus an insertion by the compiler himself and reads as follows:

King Egbert, believing it to be more glorious to be the king of kings rather than of peasants, did not kill the conquered kings but, receiving their homage, made them his tributaries [subjects].

There can be no doubt that this statement is the compiler’s explanation of what has just happened in the story after Egbert’s victories and then his return to Winchester. He wants readers to know that, rather than disregarding – or killing – the princes he had conquered, Egbert preferred to have them present at his coronation so that his people in Winchester would see that these conquered rulers accepted his authority over their countries. Since this was the compiler’s own comment on the story he did not integrate it into the narrative but put it into the margin to the left. This strongly suggests that the Egbert naming story was not his invention, but was part of an account he was copying into his annals from another source. He would hardly have made a comment of this kind if he had himself fabricated the story.

The most basic reason for doubting the authenticity of the naming story is its apparent inconsistency with what is known about Egbert’s reign as a whole. How could a ruler of Egbert’s stature have conceived a project to call himself king of all of Britain and then rename it as England? To be sure, Egbert’s recent conquest of Mercia, Wales, Kent and East Anglia had made him ‘the ruler of everything south of the Humber, and he was the eighth king who was Bretwalda’ (overlord). Yet the chronicler of the ‘A’ manuscript, who wrote this in his anal for 829, said nothing about Egbert changing the name of his kingdom to England. Where could such an idea have come from? One possible answer is the influence of one of the most famous coronations and political moves in the history of early medieval Europe. On Christmas Day 800 in the Basilica of St Peter’s in Rome, two years before the beginning of Egbert’s reign, Charlemagne had himself crowned Holy Roman Emperor in his attempt to revive the Roman Empire of antiquity in his kingdom in western Europe. In certain respects the story of Egbert’s coronation and renaming his people and country resemble Charlemagne’s actions. In both cases a reigning king had himself recrowned and changed his title: Egbert, previously King of Wessex, now became King of Britain and changed its name to England.

No explicit evidence of such mimicking survives, yet a number of factors suggest this possibility. Charlemagne had contact with several English monarchs, some of whom visited him at his court in Aachen. As a youth, Egbert, heir apparent to the throne of Wessex, was forced into exile for several years in Charlemagne’s kingdom and may well have stayed at the Carolingian court. If so, he may have witnessed Charlemagne’s coronation in 800. During that exile he was so impressed by ‘the art of government … (of) … the Franks’ (from William of Malmesbury), that he adopted Frankish military customs and discipline for himself, then later, after becoming King of Wessex in 802, he trained his own soldiers in this way. Charlemagne, whom Egbert may have known personally, could have had a role in Egbert’s return to England and in his accession to power as king in 802. In 839 Egbert may have sent a legation to the court of Louis the Pious, Charlemagne’s son and successor and in 856 Aethelwulf, Egbert’s son and successor, married the daughter of Charles the Bald, Charlemagne’s grandson and Carolingian emperor at the time. Nothing proves that Egbert modelled his behaviour of 828 on that of Charlemagne in 800, yet relations must have existed between the two royal courts and the possibility that Egbert might have been influenced in this way casts his reign and the naming story in a new light.

The most compelling reason for rejecting the Egbert naming story is certainly the fact that, as Sharon Turner pointed out in 1799, no English historians or documentary sources from the ninth to the early 14th-centuries ever mention it. If Egbert had indeed changed the name in a public ceremony, how could it be that no one other than the Winchester Annals reports it? The only possible explanation is that the change lasted only briefly and never took permanent effect and there are reasons for believing that this is what may have happened. In the 830s, shortly after the coronation and name change according to the Winchester Annals, a resurgence of Mercian power under King Wiglaf (d.839) ended Egbert’s control of that kingdom and at the same time his rule over Essex and Wales also came to an end. In 835 Viking raids threatened the west coast of Wessex. In 830 Louis the Pious may have withdrawn his support due to internal troubles in his kingdom and that may have further weakened Egbert’s cause. These developments would have put an end to Egbert’s hope to be the ruler over the entire country. Consequently the name change, which had been in effect for only three or four years, may have been abandoned and later forgotten. Forgotten, that is, by all save the author of the naming story as we know it today. This man, possibly a contemporary observer in Winchester, could have written it down and it could subsequently have been incorporated into the now lost chronicles from which the late 12th-century compiler brought it into the Winchester Annals as it survives today in the Cambridge 339. That the story survived in only two manuscripts, both probably kept in monastic archives of limited access, may explain why no English historians for five centuries knew of it or referred to it.

I am inclined to believe that this name-changing incident as recounted in the Winchester Annals in fact occurred in Winchester in the late 820s when Egbert, inspired by Charlemagne’s creation of the Holy Roman Empire, sought to create a new monarchy of England on this model, but that unanticipated defeats cut short his project. Thus the name change never took hold and subsequently all memory of it was lost until the 14th century. What I am proposing lacks proof, yet this theory explains why the country’s name did not change from Britain to England, despite Egbert’s order.

This had no effect on the story’s spectacular rise to prominence among the English people from the 15th to the 17th centuries. After Higden discovered and promoted it in the 14th century, it became the standard account for the origins of the name England among educated people. Then in the 18th and 19th centuries it was rejected and fell into oblivion. There are doubtless other stories connected with the English/British past that similarly came to prominence and then were cast aside, but do any of them match the trajectory of the Egbert story?

If my analysis has solved the problem of the Egbert naming story, this finding modifies only slightly our knowledge of the origins of the naming of England. It is not Cnut in the early 11th century, but Egbert of Wessex two centuries earlier who will have been the first person to attempt to introduce the name. Egbert’s failure to enforce this renaming means that my earlier argument about this having been brought about by Cnut between c.1014-20 remains valid. Of greater interest is what this story reveals about Egbert’s conception of the royal office in the early ninth century: that he saw himself as the ruler of a single English people of a unified nation at a significantly earlier time than was previously thought.

George T. Beech is Professor Emeritus of Medieval History at Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo.

King Egbert and the Naming of England | History Today

By Richard Canning | Posted 25th January 2013, 13:40

Fanny and Stella: The Young Men who Shocked Victorian England
Neil McKenna Faber & Faber   416pp   £16.99

The trial of two young, theatrical female impersonators, Frederick Park and Ernest Boulton, for attempted sodomy in London in May 1871 has long been seen as a watershed moment in the emergence in England of notions of gay identity and gay male subculture. Neil McKenna himself drew substantially upon elements of their story in The Secret Life of Oscar Wilde (2003) and it has featured frequently in the many recent accounts of 19th-century homosexuality.

Until now, however, much of what has been understood about Boulton and Park, familiarly known as Mrs Fanny Graham and Miss Stella Boulton, has reached us from sources either evidently unreliable, or else encumbered by the default ‘slant’ of populist sensationalism. ‘Jack Saul’ told of their soliciting men from their box in the Strand Theatre and claimed to have slept with them both. Whether  ‘Saul’ was the ‘renter’ insider he claimed to be or not, many other details in his extraordinary and recently republished 1881 memoir, The Sins of the Cities of the Plain (Valancourt Books), were fabricated.

McKenna provides what is certainly the definitive account of the Boulton/Park story, drawn not only from contemporary journalism but also from the full legal transcript, a miraculous survivor housed in Kew’s National Archives. It is a miserable tale, if leavened both by McKenna’s dramatic verve and, during the show trial held in Westminster Hall, by Fanny and Stella’s black humour. The establishment account – that the pair’s persistent cross-dressing importuning was a scandal to public morals that must be stopped – soon breaks down. McKenna shows clearly how the men were effectively set up and, to some degree, even entrapped.

Police confidence in pressing the serious charge of ‘conspiracy to solicit, induce, procure and endeavour to persuade persons unknown to commit buggery’ (as opposed to the minor offence of outraging public decency) was nonetheless misplaced. Buggery had until lately incurred the death penalty and still carried a lifelong penal sentence. No such charge had been brought for 240 years. The problem which attended the endless, farcical medical examinations of Boulton and Park reflected sodomy’s millennial history as the nameless or invisible crime. Few Victorian doctors could claim to have seen evidence of the extreme anal dilation which purportedly occurred after the ‘insertion of a foreign body’. Of the half dozen who inspected the pair – both inveterate sodomites, as McKenna concedes – only one remained certain that the corporeal evidence supported conviction. They were acquitted and the notion that ‘the impurities of Continental cities’ had reached London was rooted in legal terms for a quarter-century – if paradoxically seeming somehow to be affirmed.

McKenna lays bare a fascinating tapestry of interrelated personal histories, only partially capable of reconstruction. Frederick’s elder brother Harry, already twice disgraced, was hiding in Scotland under an assumed name. Their father, a judge, was urgently shipped off to South Africa during the trial of his younger son. Impressively, Frederick’s mother – amusingly a literal ‘Mary Ann’ – took to the stand to defend his moral character. So successful was she that the identification of Frederick/’Fanny’ as a theatrical mother’s boy exonerated him entirely from the imputation of vice.

Ernest/’Stella’, the more attractive defendant, had less direct claims to a reputation. ‘She’ had long been pursued by Lord Arthur Pelham-Clinton, a penniless spendthrift. The pair took lodgings (with a spare room for ‘Fanny’), co-habiting successfully as a married couple for a while. As the trial approached Pelham-Clinton absconded, to be pronounced dead of scarlet fever. Rumours proliferated that he had fled abroad. The US consul in Edinburgh, another amour, did not take flight and was charged alongside Boulton and Park. The public at the trial resembled closely the audiences in the theatres the defendants had frequented. ‘Theatricals’, leading comic actors and outright queens attended to lend support. Nothing like this had been seen before – and it seems not to have been repeated at Wilde’s trial in 1895.

Period observations fascinate: the new concept of mail order enabled cross-dressers to procure make-up. Boiled sheep’s lungs substituted for breasts. And a succession of details indicates Wilde’s familiarity with the Boulton/Park story. He may even have personally encountered the renamed ‘Ernest Blair,’ who bravely rebuilt his singing career in the US and then Britain. ‘Cecil Graham’, the false identity that Boulton gave on arrest, became a character in Lady Windermere’s Fan (1892). Similarly, the excuse with which Lord Arthur entertained Boulton at his metropolitan digs – that he was hosting a country cousin named Ernest – points blatantly to an equally ridiculous plot: that of Wilde’s last, finest dramatic work.

The Young Men Who Shocked Victorian England | History Today

RICHARD III, King of England, youngest son of Richard, Duke of York, by Cicely Neville, was born at Fotheringhay on the 2nd of October 1452. After the Second Battle of St. Albans in February 1461, his mother sent him with his brother George for safety to Utrecht. They returned in April, and at the coronation of Edward IV, Richard was created Duke of Gloucester. As a mere child he had no importance till 1469-1470, when he supported his brother against Warwick, shared his exile and took part in his triumphant return.
He distinguished himself at Barnet and Tewkesbury; according to the Lancastrian story, after the latter battle he murdered the young Edward of Wales in cold blood; this is discredited by the authority of Warkworth (Chronicle, p. 18); but Richard may have had a share in Edward's death during the fighting. He cannot be so fully cleared of complicity in the murder of Henry VI, which probably took place at the Tower on the night of the 21-22 of May, when Richard was certainly present there. Richard shared to the full in his brother's prosperity. He had large grants of lands and office, and by marrying Anne (1456-1485), the younger daughter of Warwick, secured a share in the Neville inheritance. This was distasteful to George, Duke of Clarence, who was already married to the elder sister, Isabel.
The rivalry of the two brothers caused a quarrel which was never appeased. Richard does not, however, seem to have been directly responsible for the death of Clarence in 1478; Sir Thomas More, who is a hostile witness, says that he resisted it openly "howbeit somewhat (as men deemed) more faintly than he that were heartily minded to his wealth." Richard's share of the Neville inheritance was chiefly in the north, and he resided usually at Middleham in Yorkshire. In May 1480 he was made the king's lieutenant-general in the north, and in 1482 commanded a successful invasion of Scotland. His administration was good, and brought him well-deserved popularity. On Edward's death he was kept informed of events in London by William, Lord Hastings, who shared his dislike of the Woodville influence.
On the 29th of April 1483, supported by the Duke of Buckingham, he intercepted his nephew [Edward V] at Stony Stratford and arrested Lord Rivers and Richard Grey, the little king's half-brother. It was in Richard's charge that Edward was brought to London on the 4th of May. Richard was recognized as protector, the Woodville faction was overthrown, and Queen Elizabeth Woodville with her younger children took sanctuary at Westminster. For the time the government was carried on in Edward's name, and the 22nd of June was appointed for his coronation. Richard was nevertheless gathering forces and concerting with his friends. In the council there was a party, of whom Hastings and Bishop Morton were the chief, which was loyal to the boy-king. On the 13th of June came the famous scene when Richard appeared suddenly in the council baring his withered arm and accusing Jane Shore and the Queen of sorcery; Hastings, Morton and Stanley were arrested and the first-named at once beheaded. A few days later, probably on the 25th of June, Rivers and Grey were executed at Pontefract. On the 22nd of June Dr Shaw was put up to preach at Paul's Cross against the legitimacy of the children of Edward IV. On the 25th a sort of parliament was convened at which Edward's marriage was declared invalid on the ground of his pre-contract with Eleanor Talbot, and Richard rightful king. Richard, who was not present, accepted the crown with feigned reluctance, and from the following day began his formal reign.
On the 6th of July Richard was crowned at Westminster, and immediately afterwards made a royal progress through the Midlands, on which he was well received. But in spite of its apparent success the usurpation was not popular. Richard's position could not be secure whilst his nephews lived. There seems to be no reasonable doubt that early in August Edward V and his brother Richard (whom Elizabeth Woodville had been forced to surrender) were murdered by their uncle's orders in the Tower. Attempts have been made to clear Richard's memory. But the report of the princes' death was believed in England at the time, "for which cause king Richard lost the hearts of the people" (Chronicles of London, 191), and it was referred to as a definite fact before the French states-general in January 1484. The general, if vague, dissatisfaction found its expression in Buckingham's rebellion. Richard, however, was fortunate, and the movement collapsed. He met his only parliament in January 1484 with some show of triumph, and deserves credit for the wise intent of its legislation. He could not, however, stay the undercurrent of disaffection, and his ministers, Lovell and Catesby, were unpopular.

His position was weakened by the death of his only legitimate son in April 1484. His queen died also a year later (March 16, 1485), and public opinion was scandalized by the rumour that Richard intended to marry his own niece, Elizabeth of York. Thus the feeling in favour of his rival Henry Tudor strengthened. Henry landed at Milford Haven on the 7th of August 1485, and it was with dark forebodings that Richard met him at Bosworth on the 22nd. The defection of the Stanleys decided the day [cf. Lord Stanley]. Richard was killed fighting, courageous at all events. After the battle his body was carried to Leicester, trussed across a horse's back, and buried without honour in the church of the Greyfriars.
Richard was not the villain that his enemies depicted. He had good qualities, both as a man and a ruler, and showed a sound judgment of political needs. Still it is impossible to acquit him of the crime, the popular belief in which was the chief cause of his ruin. He was not a monster; but a typical man in an age of strange contradictions of character, of culture combined with cruelty, and of an emotional temper that was capable of high ends, though unscrupulous of means. Tradition represents Richard as deformed. It seems clear that he had some physical defect, though not so great as has been alleged. John Stow told Buck that old men who remembered Richard described him as in bodily form comely enough. Extant portraits show an intellectual face characteristic of the early Renaissance, but do not indicate any deformity.

---

      Excerpted from:
      Encyclopedia Britannica, 11th Ed. Vol XXIII.
      Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1910. 299.

Richard III, King of England (1452-1485) [Wars of the Roses]

by Eleonore Villarrubia December 29, 2008

Imagine yourself a contestant on Jeopardy. The answer is… “The world’s longest-standing, but smallest, army in the world’s smallest independent state.”

And what is the question? The only possible question is, “What is the Swiss Guard”? Officially, the name of the pope’s personal army is the Pontificia Helvetiorum Cohors. In 2006, the Guard celebrated the five hundredth anniversary of its founding by Pope Julius II, the “warrior pope.”

The year 1506 was a momentous one for the Western Church. Not only was it the height of the Renaissance in Europe, it also marked the beginning of the construction of the new St. Peter’s Basilica. It would be built on Vatican hill, on the site of the thousand-year-old church, then crumbling, which had occupied the place where St. Peter was crucified — upside down. The newly elected pope (1503) succeeded the weak Pius III, whose one-month pontificate followed the less-than-holy, but very politically powerful Borgia pope, Alexander VI. Papal politics at the time were dominated by complicated family and partisan concerns. Suffice it to say for the moment that the Italian peninsula was the battleground between France and Spain in the contest of who would become the dominant power of continental Europe. The new pope, a real insider — his uncle, Pope Sixtus IV, had made him a cardinal at a young age — determined to restore the strength of the Church in relation to the political powers of Europe. It was a time of growing nationalism among the varying sections of the continent, when the nation-states, as we know them today, were just beginning to take shape.

Pope Julius had a dynamic personality. He was imperious, shrewd, and courageous — yes, as in battle. He was determined to restore the independence of the Papal States, which occupied a wide swath in the center of the Italian Peninsula. By putting the states under his own command, he would effectively separate the Spanish-held lands to the south and the French-held lands to the north.

Julius could also be called the “builder pope.” He took advantage — sometimes very literally — of the presence of the great painters, sculptors, and architects of the Italian Renaissance in his efforts to beautify Rome and present the seat of the Catholic Church in a big, bold, and beautiful way, thus signifying its importance and power. Bramante, Michelangelo, Raphael, and other great figures of the day were commissioned by him to employ their talent and create lasting and priceless buildings and works of art. Julius, however, was one of those whom one wag termed “the Papal Princes,” a succession of Renaissance popes who were not particularly holy or concerned with spiritual things, but who certainly enriched the Church and made the papacy an earthly power to be reckoned with.

So, What’s so Special about the Swiss?

It should be noted that the Swiss Guards are mercenaries — paid fighters from one country in the employ of another country. This practice was very common in the sixteenth century, and still exists to some degree today. The Swiss had developed a stellar reputation as fierce fighting men. Using a distinctive method of fighting whereby infantrymen, carrying long pikes and halberds, formed very tight phalanxes, which would advance like a solid wall. (Halberds are long handled battle-axes. The Papal Swiss Guard still carry them today.) The Swiss were the only foot soldiers able to defeat cavalry since the time of the armies of ancient Rome. The high mountains, deep valleys, isolated towns and farms of Switzerland did not lend themselves to cavalry warfare. This unusual technique, coupled with their fierce love of independence, earned them a reputation as the best defensive fighting forces in Europe at the time.

Switzerland began to emerge as a united nation around 1291 when several cantons formed a confederation for mutual defense. For ease of maneuvering, their heavily armed soldiers wore little or no armor. A major offensive weapon for them was the crossbow, a quintessentially Swiss hunting weapon that proved mightily effective from a distance. (One thinks of the legend of William Tell.) These facts, coupled with the poverty of the average Swiss farmer and their willingness to “hire out,” made Swiss fighting men the most sought-after mercenaries in all of Europe. Another reason for hiring the Swiss was that they were not specifically allied by politics or marriage to the squabbling royal houses. Even then, the famous Swiss neutrality was advantageous.

Pope Julius called on a trusted Swiss advisor, one Father Peter von Hertenstein, a real insider at the Vatican, and told him his intentions of gathering about his person a small group of well-trained Swiss protectors. In turn, von Hertenstein recommended Kaspar von Silenen, a man with a reputation as a competent military leader. Von Silenen accepted the post and became the first commandant of the Papal Swiss Guard. In the dead of winter he and one hundred fifty fighting men set off to cross the Alps on foot through the dangerous Gotthard Pass. When they arrived in Rome, just six months after von Hertenstein received the Papal request, they marched through Rome in their smart, colorful uniforms and settled in at their quarters in the Vatican. So began the long service of the Swiss Guard.

Complications

When one reads the history of Europe during this time, one can imagine a very complex plot unfolding in a tragic Italian opera. You have family alliances between royals sealed by political marriages, warring cities, Catholic-against-Catholic intrigues, and conscienceless Lutheran mercenaries, in the employ of Catholic Emperor Charles I, thirsting for the blood of priests and lusting for women and booty. A scenario so dark, with the proliferation of Luther’s dissolute doctrine thrown in for additional dissonance — the most twisted librettist could not possibly have matched the actual goings-on of this period!

To simplify the complexities of the situation to some degree, the fortunes of the Swiss Guard were always intimately tied up with the fortunes of the particular pope of the moment. When Pope Julius died in 1513, except for the brief reign of the Dutchman Adrian VI, the papacy was dominated by the powerful Medici family of Florence, who were politically allied to the French. Leo X and Clement VII, though of different personalities and ruling styles, used their family’s influence to achieve political gains to consolidate the Papal States. Leo was a flamboyant ruler who wasted the coffers of the Church on lavish parades and celebrations, loved by the Romans for his joie de vive, but not giving a thought to their spiritual and physical welfare. Clement was just his opposite, but he inherited an empty treasury and could do little to secure the Papal States.

An opposing powerful faction in the Curia was the Colonna family, personified by Cardinal Pompeio Colonna, who was allied with Spain. The selection of Charles V of Spain as emperor of the Holy Roman Empire effectively split the Curia into two camps, one supporting France to the north and the other supporting Spain to the south. Theoretically, of course, the spiritual head of the Holy Roman Empire was the Holy Father while the secular head was the emperor. In practice, as we can see, it certainly did not work that way.

And More Complications

To further complicate matters, the Turks were once again on the march toward Europe. To the emperor, this was the dominant concern. Next in Charles’ mind was the French threat to take over the whole of the Italian Peninsula. Finally, Charles was resentful of Pope Clement’s lack of action to stem the growing threat of Martin Luther’s fast-moving creed in Germany, where it threatened the order of the empire by severing souls from the true religion. Clement’s inaction on these three fronts logically led Charles to conclude that the only way to control this three-pronged threat was to conquer Italy and control the papacy himself, thereby consolidating the spiritual and secular aspects of the empire.

In the meantime, our small contingent of Swiss guarding the pope received a new commandant. As in the rest of Europe, politics in Switzerland were becoming more complicated. First, the Swiss were anxious about sending their best soldiers abroad given the Turkish threat to Europe. The Swiss Army had suffered its first real defeat in 1515 at the Battle of Marignano when more than 12,000 men perished. The defeat was at the hands of the French, who were only victorious because Venice sent them reinforcements at the last-minute. A new invention, the arquebus, a type of portable firearm using gunpowder, gave the French a distinct advantage and, in reality, changed military dynamics forever. Second, the Protestant Revolt hit Switzerland hard, effectively splitting the country into Catholic cantons and Protestant cantons. Zurich was hesitant to remain the home of the Catholic Swiss Guard, as the “Reformer” Ulrich Zwingli was influential there. So the headquarters moved to the Catholic city of Lucerne. Eventually, the very able Kaspar Roist was appointed the new Commander of the Guard in 1518. By hard work and shrewd military leadership, Roist had the Guard in tiptop form. They would be called upon soon to demonstrate not only their fighting ability, but their absolute loyalty to the person of the Holy Father.

Dress Rehearsal for Disaster

Pope Clement, as we have indicated, inherited an unstable situation when he assumed the Papacy. With the Curia’s loyalties divided and Charles V further encouraging such dissent, the leading cardinal backing the Roman cause, Cardinal Pompeio Colonna, boldly marched through the streets of Rome with five thousand foot soldiers and six hundred mounted knights in a show of raw power expecting to intimidate Clement into surrendering the Imperial City to the empire. In a prelude to the events of the following year, Clement had to escape to the Castel Sant’Angelo, a nearby fortress, while Colonna’s troops sacked the papal apartments and generally committed mayhem within the Vatican.

A truce — unsatisfactory to both sides — was agreed upon some months later; however the situation continued to smolder, eventually erupting in the hideous and tragic events of the following May, 1527.

The First Big Test

As we have seen, Europe at this time was enmeshed in war after war, battle after battle. It was a time of rising nationalism and religious factionalism. Looking back from the vantage point of five hundred years, one would think that the Christian peoples would have united to defeat the growing and continuing threat of the Ottoman horde from the East. Sadly, such Christian unity was not to be. Because of continuing warfare, princes, kings and, yes, even popes were at a loss as to how to pay their troops. One of the promises a military leader often made was the old adage “to the victor belongs the spoils.” And spoil they did. It was common to promise one’s troops that, on the invasion of a wealthy city, they could loot, kill, burn, rape, plunder and devastate to their hearts’ content. In their march toward Rome, the troops of Charles, under the command of the Duke of Bourbon, were hungry for booty since they had not been paid for some time. Worse, many of the soldiers were fanatical Lutheran recruits from Germany who had been promised the blood of priests, bishops and nuns to spur them on to the Holy City. It is hard for us today to understand the intensity of hate that Luther’s malicious railings against the Church engendered in the hearts of rebels accustomed to vice. The greater the lies, the more anxious they were to believe them.

The Rome of 1527 was indeed wealthy. Pope Julius had attracted thousands of artists, sculptors, scholars, poets, scientists, and humanists to the city. It was the high Renaissance, and the city was loaded with gold, jewels, paintings, luxurious homes, and rich nobility. It was a ripe plum ready to be picked by the hungry mob of an army. The danger, of course, in allowing an army to sack a city, is the inevitable breakdown of any kind of discipline. The commander often lost control of his men and utter destruction was the result.

Sadly, this was the result of the Duke of Bourbon’s siege. While his intention in advancing his troops into Rome on May 6, 1527 was to capture the pope and force him to pay his army a large sum of money, he did not want to sack the city. The troops ignored that latter intention after the duke was killed in the initial advance over the city wall. Defending the city were only the Roman Militia and the Swiss Guard. They were vastly outnumbered by the invaders. The valiant Commander Roist, suffering the same fate as his enemy counterpart, fell gravely wounded. His men carried him to his home and gently placed him on his bed to die, only to have the Imperial forces break in and hack him to pieces in front of his wife who lost several fingers while she tried to shield his body from the rabble. Every single Swiss Guard defending the main point of entry, 147 of them, was slaughtered in the attack. In turn, they left 900 of the enemy dead.

His Holiness, Pope Clement VII, was at Mass during the assault and he had to be evacuated at the last minute protected by the surviving Swiss Guard. Clement personally was a very holy man, a good priest, not a seasoned political schemer. Although he had tried to quell the invasion by the formation of the Italian League, his efforts were too little, too late. His physical condition was so weak that he had to be literally carried out via a secret passage from the Vatican to the Castel Sant’Angelo, a massive Roman Empire era fortress that was nearly impregnable. About a thousand Romans, including the few remaining Swiss Guards, sought safety in the castle. One old cardinal who had missed the drawbridge was airlifted in a basket onto the ramparts of the castle. From their vantage point high over the action, they could observe the slaughter below.

Forty thousand Imperial troops, hungry for money, booty, and blood hacked away at the Roman populace. There was no discrimination between rich and poor, saint and sinner. The holy Cardinal Cajetan was captured and tortured; nuns were treated like prostitutes; and women and children were slaughtered before the eyes of those safe in the castle. The atmosphere in the castle refuge was somber and prayerful, but thick with fear. One eyewitness described the terrible scene below as comparable only to the destruction of Jerusalem in the first century after Our Lord. The estimate of the dead is between ten and twenty thousand, with thousands more dying of plague as bodies lay rotting in the hot Roman sun. Those who were able had fled the city beforehand. Rome was left desolate, the dead outnumbering the living. Clement was reduced to being held prisoner in the Castel Sant’Angelo until such time as he could pay a huge ransom including giving up several great cities of the Papal States. He was never able to come up with the full amount.

Charles V, too, paid a great price for the mayhem caused by his troops. He was a loyal and devout Catholic who suffered much damage to his reputation as well as personal remorse. Even Spaniards considered him the jailer of the Pope, and why not? At length, Charles issued an apology for the actions of his troops and stated that he would have preferred not to have won the battle in so terrible a manner.

One of the results of these complex occurrences was the disbanding of the Papal Swiss Guards, another of the conditions imposed on the pope by the emperor. The situation in Switzerland was changing as well, with much of the country capitulating to the new religion; so the national government was not eager to commit its citizens to the papal service.

An odd sidelight to all of this tragedy is Clement’s escape from his prison in the castle. After seven months under guard there, one night he secretly stole out of the castle disguised as a peasant carrying a basket and an empty sack. He fled to Orvieto, a city north of Rome. Waiting for him there was an emissary of Henry VIII with instructions from his boss to procure from Clement his divorce from Catherine of Aragon so that he could marry Ann Boelyn. It was not until the following February, 1528, that Clement could return to Rome to witness the destruction first hand. Already in poor health, Clement adopted a posture of mourning over the death of the city that was once the jewel of Renaissance Europe, growing a long beard as a sign of his sorrow. It was not until 1548, under the reign of his successor, Paul III, that the Swiss Guard returned.

A New Beginning

The new pope was a transitional figure. When he assumed the office in 1534, Christendom was being torn asunder by the Protestant revolt. The Church was about to institute the Catholic Counter-Reformation, purging itself of the corruption of the Renaissance era. So Paul was effectively a man between two eras during an age of serious conflict, both in the Church and in the world. Rome was in mourning over its own devastation, and Switzerland over the loss of its finest soldiers. Both had to overcome their sorrow and turmoil over these incredible losses before healing could begin. After the destruction resulting from the sack of the city in 1527, Pope Clement VII invited the great Michelangelo to return to the Vatican to decorate the wall above the altar of the Sistine Chapel. The work was agreed upon, but only begun after Clement died. On the vigil of All Saints’ Day in 1541, the cataclysmic piece was unveiled, revealing, in some of the scenes of the figures of the tormented and damned, something of the agonies of the Holy City during the sack. While many objected to the portrayal of naked figures on both the wall and the ceiling, thinking them more appropriate for the wall of a tavern than for the personal chapel of the Supreme Pontiff, for many others, including the new pope, Paul III, the work produced a kind of catharsis.

By the mid 1540′s the climate seemed right to re-institute the Guard in the Vatican. Who would be their new leader? He had to be a man of great ability, respected by both the Swiss government and the Vatican. Better that he should be educated and widely traveled, a man of the world who could deal with the politics of the Curia and with the inner workings of higher echelon politics of all of Europe as well. In addition, he would have to be a man of some military prowess and one of iron will who would whip his troops into shape and keep them there. Such a man was found in the person of Jost von Meggen, nephew of Nikolaus von Meggen, mayor of Lucerne, who was well known and respected by authorities in Rome, including the Holy Father.

It seemed that Heaven had indeed found the perfect candidate, for when recruitment letters were sent out to the various Swiss cantons, even some Protestants were interested! By the time of Paul III’s death in 1549, the Swiss Guard under von Meggen was fully entrenched in the Vatican and had resumed its old authority. It was now time for the Church to look inward toward reforming itself.

Much-Needed Reform Begins

Although the Catholic Counter-reform began under Paul III, the new Pope, Julius III, really plunged into his papacy with the intention of seriously reforming the abuses rampant under the Renaissance popes. As Cardinal, Giovanni Maria del Monte had served as the presiding legate at the Council of Trent, catalyst for the Counter-reformation, which was about to stem the loss of souls to Protestantism and do away with such internal problems as corruption and immorality from the top down. There would be no more warrior, treasury-breaking, or immoral popes. Unfortunately, one of the “cuts” proposed by the new pope was to reduce the forces of the Guard, a proposal that did not at all sit well with von Meggen. After some haggling, the Holy Father agreed that he would only cut forces if empty coffers demanded it.

The successor to Julius III was Paul IV, a true reformer. Paul is credited with returning the papacy to the priesthood as it was meant to be lived. The Vatican assumed the air of a monastery under Paul and the popes began to live the life of prayer and maintain a certain religious decorum. All traces of the humanistic worldliness of the Renaissance popes were dispelled from the highest office in Christendom, at last. Paul was monkish, but politically astute, and knew that von Meggen and Swiss neutrality in the politics of Europe could be useful to him in his struggles with the Holy Roman emperor, France, England, and the ever-threatening Turks.

In his later years as commandant of the Guard, Jost von Meggen served more as a diplomat than as a military leader, both for the Swiss government and the Vatican. His vast experience and knowledge of European affairs were valuable to both governments. By the time of his death in 1559, von Meggen had served under four popes. His energies began to wane, and, on a winter journey from Rome to Lucerne, he died, exhausted from his many years of service in a difficult position. Although his plan was to be buried in Rome, he was buried in the city of his death, Lucerne, the first Swiss Guard commandant NOT to die in battle! Paul IV followed him in death just a few months later. With their passing, the Church and papacy entered a new era.

A New Leader Helps Europe Confront the Turks

A new pope, the sainted Pius V, and a new heroic commandant, Jost Segesser assumed their positions at about the same time. Segesser was both a diplomat and a seasoned politician in Switzerland and the perfect choice for the post of commandant. He was well well-respected and loved by the Guards. On its eastern front, Christendom was again being threatened by the Ottoman Turks, who had been turned back a hundred years before, in 1456, at the Battle of Belgrade. Still smarting from their final expulsion from Catholic Spain in 1492, the Moslem obsession for a conquest of Christian Europe continued to simmer. The Holy Father did his best to urge all the Christians of Europe to unite in prayer, and for healthy men to join in battle to stop militant Islam from trying again to overrun Europe.

Although the decisive Battle of Lepanto, October 7, 1571, is famous in western history for stopping the Turkish Muslim advance into Europe, it is little known that the Swiss Guards actually took part in that victorious battle. For his part, Pius V succeeded in convincing many of the European forces to join in a Holy League as he rallied the faithful to public prayer for the success of the Christian armies and navies.

One of the Swiss Guards captured two Turkish standards and sent them to the Swiss government in Lucerne, for which he was given a cash reward and recognition as a hero of the battle by Commandant Segesser.

Two Hundred Years of Quiet

The next two hundred years were ones of relative quiet for the Guard. Jost Segesser’s son, Stephan-Alexander, succeeded him as commandant, serving in that position for thirty-seven years. The Fleckenstein family served similarly for the succeeding two dozen years. One of the primary reasons for the lack of military activity of the Guards was the political change occurring in Europe in the late 1500′s and into the 1600′s. The Protestant Revolt had brought a huge upheaval to Europe. The great hope of the Council of Trent — that all Christians would return to Roman unity, did not come to pass. Although the Counter-Reformation did succeed in bring much-needed reform in the Church, it failed to bring back into the fold the fallen away.

Religious divisions in Germany led to the Thirty-Years’ War with Catholic and Lutheran Germans killing each other, and, effectively, splitting the country in half. The tragic Peace of Westphalia, ending the War, in actuality did split Europe into Protestant and Catholic countries with the state religion being that of the ruler. It is a signal of the de-christianization of European politics that the reigning pope, Innocent X, was totally exempted from deliberations determining the terms of the treaty. He protested, but his voice was “as one crying in the wilderness.” Countries now began to ally for political reasons rather than religious ones.

Another great weakness of the Church and the papacy of the time was the practice of the king or prince of a country or kingdom appointing his own bishops. Often the choice of the local bishop was made by the king’s mistress. This unfortunate practice led to the rise of powerful bishops and cardinals whose loyalties lay, not with the Church and to the Holy Father, but to the monarch and his retinue. A case in point is that of the powerful French Cardinals Richelieu and Mazarin joining forces with the Protestant princes of Germany, Sweden, and Holland in order to overthrow the power of the Catholic Hapsburgs in Germany. To these nationalistic Francophiles it was better to overthrow a Catholic dynasty in Germany, and thus assure the political ascendancy of France, than to remain loyal to the Church that one serves. Even in the Catholic countries, the monarch considered himself the head of the Church — “a pope in his own lands,” as one contemporary put it. This attitude taken to its extreme led to the heresy of Gallicanism in France.

What did all this political and religious upheaval have to do with the Guard? With the temporal power of the papacy vastly weakened, their role shifted from a military one to a more ceremonial one. This eventually led to the decision to reduce their ranks to one hundred and twenty in number, further leading to a loss of morale and discipline among the remaining troops. Pay was as low as morale; many of the Guards complained that they could not live on their salaries. Some kind of reform was needed to accommodate the developing situation in the Church.

A Three Hundred Year Dynasty

Throughout its history, as we have seen, God saw fit to bless the Swiss Guards with brilliant, effective leadership. In the second half of the seventeenth century, 1652 to be exact, members of the Pfyffer von Altishofen family began to be appointed to the position of commandant. With short interruptions, their leadership continued until the late twentieth century. Needed reforms were instituted, pay increased, and discipline invigorated.

Minor skirmishes were the main problems for the Guard. An amusing example was the appearance of a Scottish Presbyterian gentleman who traveled to Rome to harangue Pope Clement XIV in St. Peter’s Basilica with the usual accusations against the Church. The earnest, if deluded, fellow was unceremoniously carried from the church by the Guards who discovered that he had come to Rome to convert the pope to Presbyterianism.

Clement, being a mild-mannered and kind man, praised the man for his sincerity and paid his passage back to Scotland.

Revolutionary Years — Dealing With Napoleon

As we indicated previously, Europe was in the throes of revolution. The Masonic ideal, that went by the name: liberty, equality, and fraternity seem to have been divinized into a cultic mantra. Fortunately, after the Counter-Reformation, the Chair of Peter was occupied by holy and decent Popes. But the forces of revolution were too strong for them to deter. As these new anti- religious and anti-monarchical ideas boiled over into the violence of the French Revolution in the late eighteenth century, no earthly force seemed able to stop them. The representatives of the new French Revolutionary government were sent to other European capitals, including Rome, to foment those ideas.

The Romans disliked the boldness of the French representatives, flying their revolutionary flag and strutting their hatred for religion. An ugly incident in January of 1793 caused great furor in the city: A mob of Roman citizens had finally had enough and attacked a group of Frenchmen riding down the Corso, Rome’s main street for socializing. Stones were hurled and one of the Frenchmen was stabbed to death. Romans moved against French installations throughout the city and large demonstrations took place for the pope and the Church. French retaliation came three years later when a French military commander, named Napoleon Bonaparte, was commissioned to the Italian front.

Monument in Lucerne, Switzerland, to the Swiss Guards who fell in the French Revolution

Napoleon entered Rome with a two-fold mission: to steal as much from Rome and Romans as he could to enrich the French treasury, and, to depose or kill the Holy Father. He was only too happy to oblige his superiors with the first part of his mission, denuding much of Italy of priceless art and jewels. He craftily knew that to carry out the second part would work against his own plans to become the master of the Revolution. In the end, French troops marched into Rome, entered the Vatican, deposed — as a temporal ruler — Pope Pius VI, dismissed the Swiss Guard, and flew the French Republican flag atop the Castel Sant’Angelo. The aged pontiff was exiled to Valence accompanied by the Commandant of the Guard, Ludwig Pfyffer von Altishofen, where he died a prisoner of the revolution. With much fanfare the Roman Republic was declared, but it lasted less than two years.

The new pope, Pius VII, reached a concordat with Napoleon that allowed Catholics in France to worship in peace. However, in 1804, Napoleon had himself crowned emperor and made clear his intention to annex all of Italy to the French empire, declare Rome a “free imperial city” and become master over the pope and the Church. Once again, a pope went into exile and the Swiss Guard disbanded. Napoleon’s empire lasted only ten years, the Roman imperial city only two. In 1814, Napoleon abdicated his rule, the pope returned to Rome, Karl Pfyffer von Altishofen reconstituted the troops and the pope graciously granted asylum to Napoleon’s mother, two brothers, his sister and several of his officials. Napoleon himself went into exile on St. Helena, a desolate and lonely island in the South Atlantic, until his death.

The Italian peninsula remained the final conquest for the revolutionary Masonic forces in Europe. Beginning in the year 1848 and in the remaining years of the nineteenth and the opening ones of the twentieth, the temporal power of the Holy Father neared its end.

“A Prisoner in the Vatican”

Pius IX began his papacy in 1846 somewhat favorable to the new forces of “liberty” in Europe. Progressives cheered his election believing that the Church would change its attitude toward the revolution. It did not take long, however, for Pius to realize that any compromise with the anti-Catholic forces would mean complete capitulation to the enemy. Romans themselves were one day cheering the Holy Father, the next demanding his death. Needless to say, their loyalty could not be counted on. The aim of the revolutionary forces in the Italian peninsula was to unite the entire area under one secular government. Doing this would force the Church to give up the Papal States in the middle section of the peninsula. Although Italians spoke many different dialects of the language, some unintelligible to each other, and their loyalties were in actuality closer to their home city or province than to a united Italy, the revolutionary forces were stronger in both manpower and arms and had the backing of other anti-papal forces of Europe.

To simplify a complex time with complex happenings, what the situation boiled down to was that the Swiss Guard was the only military force that could be counted on to protect the person of the Holy Father. Once the Masonic forces reached Rome under General Garibaldi (whom, ironically, Pius IX, upon his election to the papacy, freed from prison) and the walls of the Vatican were breached, the likelihood was that the Pope and all of his retinue would be killed. Miraculously, Pius was able to escape to Gaeta, a fortified town just outside the Papal States. He sent Commandant Meyer north to assemble regiments of Catholic volunteers who had assembled there from countries worldwide to protect the pope and to regain the Papal States for him. It all came to naught, however. Pius returned to the Vatican after a bloody battle between the French General Oudinot and Garibaldi’s revolutionary army on the Janiculum, one of the hills of Rome. The Papal flag was once again raised over the Castel Sant’Angelo, the revolutionary forces were defeated within Rome itself, and the pope began his self-described confinement in the Vatican.

For his own part, Pio Nono remained inside the Vatican until his death in 1878. These were not unproductive years. He received visitors from all over the world. He composed the encyclical Quanta Cura, a condemnation of the revolutionary ideals and the anticlericalism rampant within them, with the attached Syllabus of Errors, in 1854 he defined the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception of Our Lady, and in 1869 he summoned the Vatican Council during which the doctrine of Papal Infallibility was proclaimed. Ironically, the same year that the doctrine of infallibility was proclaimed — 1870 — was the year that the Italian forces under King Victor Emmanuel and Garibaldi smashed through the remaining small area of the Papal States, the city of Rome itself, and ended papal temporal rule. Pius’ response was clear. He kept his dignity and rejected any offers made to him and he went on with his daily duties as though he still ruled temporally. It was not until the Lateran Treaty, signed by Pope Pius XI and Mussolini in 1929, that the “Roman Question” was settled, and the rule of the Holy Father over the city of Rome officially ended.

The Swiss Guards during all this time became more of a military force than they had been in many years. Commandant Meyer trained them openly in the piazzas of Vatican City. They carried firearms and rifles in addition to the more traditional swords and halberds; they became sharpshooters with a serious eye to the possibility that the enemy was “out for blood” — that blood being the pope’s and their own! One of the problems with being “prisoners in the Vatican” was the sagging morale among the Guardsmen. The new commandant, De Courten, countered the situation by starting a Guard band, giving them a library, and allowing parties and celebrations with food and wine. It was a touchy time for everyone who lived and worked in Vatican City, and until the situation was settled with the Lateran Treaty, all the popes of the time regarded themselves as “prisoners of the Vatican.”

The Twentieth Century: Years of War

World War I came and went during the years that the political status of the papal lands was unsettled. The Guard remained alert, but, inside the walls of Vatican City, affairs went on as usual. Although the situation was “settled” in 1929 with the signing of the Lateran Treaty (which also recognized Catholicism as the official religion of Italy), when Mussolini was arrested, Hitler knew that their pact would not be honored by the King (who was a Catholic). Nazi troops swiftly moved on Rome; King Victor Emmanuele fled, and by September 11, 1943 Nazi troops occupied Rome. The reigning Holy Father, Pius XII, knowing that the Guardsmen were no match for heavily armed soldiers, ordered the Guard not to put up resistance if the Nazi troops invaded the Vatican. In fact, the Nazis behaved themselves properly, if only to avoid the appearance of impropriety for propaganda reasons.

One of the big worries of Vatican authorities during the occupation was that the Roman populace would storm St. Peter’s seeking asylum, panic would result, and reprisals from the Germans would follow. Another problem was getting food into the city. Vatican vehicles, which were neutral, were allowed to go into the countryside, purchase food, and distribute it among residents of Rome and Vatican City. They fed fifteen thousand daily. Pius, scathingly (and unfairly) criticized for being cold to the “Jewish question,” walked a fine line in Rome, knowing that any encouragement to resist would result in brutal payback, for both Christians and Jews. As the Allies approached Rome, food became even scarcer and the halberdiers often shared their own rationed portion of bread with the street urchins who begged food. On a light note, wine was plentiful, and helped to fill the caloric needs of the young Guardsmen, while making their long wait for the Allies more pleasurable.

Hitler, in his madness, actually had a plan to kidnap the pope and bring him to Germany. The underlings whom he commanded to carry out this crazy plan pretended to go along with it, but knew it would be futile. Germany was losing the war, and kidnapping the pope would only make their situation worse. Pius for his part, commanded his guards not to resist if, in fact, the Nazis attempted to abduct him.

On June 5, 1944, General Mark Clark and the British and American armies liberated Rome. Although there had been some Allied bombing in Rome, even in Vatican City itself, the damage was minimal. Pius XII offered prayers of thanksgiving for the happy outcome.

A Post War Calm

The decade of the 1950′s was one of relative calm at the Vatican. The biggest problem for the Guard was the low pay. In post-war Italy, with its galloping inflation, it was difficult to make ends meet. Otherwise, their situation remained pretty much on an even keel. The early 1960′s saw much hustle and bustle in Rome and Vatican City with the convening of the Vatican II Council. There were much preparation and many ceremonial duties to attend to. Hundreds of bishops and their retinues from all over the Catholic world had traveled to Rome and so had thousands of journalists. All had to be accommodated.

The Rise of Modern Terrorism

Sadly, the calm of the fifties and early sixties gave way in the latter part of the sixties and the 1970′s to a new kind of threat — that of international terrorism. Modern popes became world travelers, an innovation in the history of the papacy beginning with Paul VI. This was in keeping with their new vision as “pastor to the world.” Two attempts were made on Paul’s life, one in Hong Kong and another in the Philippines. John Paul II made the job of the Swiss Guard immeasurably more complicated with his constant travels and his habit of breaking away from his protectors to walk into the pressing crowds. There were many thwarted attempts on the Polish pope’s life, the Swiss Guard during these times acting more like the American Secret Service agents who protect the person of the president.

When Pope John Paul II was shot in St. Peter’s Square on May 13, 1981, by Mehmet Ali Agca, a Turkish terrorist with a previous history of murder, the Swiss Guard were right there. Unfortunately, their presence did not deter his would-be assassin, but their advance planning with the Roman police who cleared the way to the hospital in the always-impossible Roman traffic, was an example of the way that those who protect the Holy Father must think of every possibility before it happens. Since that near-tragic occurrence, the Swiss Army now provides automatic rifles, modern hand arms, and other standard Swiss Army weapons and protective gear to the Guard for as long as they remain in service to the papacy. When the pope visits foreign territory, the host country provides heavy security, but the Swiss Guards are always on the front lines, ready to take the bullet for the Vicar of Christ.

A Tragic Event

On May 4, 1998, a new commandant, Alois Estermann, was appointed by John Paul II. As coincidence would have it, Estermann was alongside the Popemobile on that fateful day in 1981 and had long and distinguished service in the Guard. Around nine o’clock that same night, shots rang out in the Estermanns’ apartment. Sister Anna-Lina Meyer a Swiss nun whose order performed various chores in the barracks of the Guards, heard the shots and went to investigate. Her first glimpse of the scene that was to rock the Swiss Guard and the Vatican was the dead body of Estermann’s wife on the floor of the apartment. The good sister summoned one of the Guards who discovered the bodies of Estermann himself and Cedric Tornay, a lance corporal, all shot to death. Tornay’s pistol lay underneath his body, an apparent suicide. Nothing of the sort had ever happened in the entire history of the Swiss Guard. Needless to say, rumors flew — both in the Vatican and around the world. Some speculated that Tornay was Mrs. Estermann’s jilted lover; others hinted at another sort of affair, between Tornay and Estermann. Some kind of covert involvement with the German secret police, the Stasi, was tossed around as a motive. Others opined that there might have been shady goings on with Opus Dei and that the Estermanns were recruiters for the organization. The case was fodder for an anti-Catholic press everywhere.

The official investigation resulted in the conclusion that, because Estermann had denied Tornay — for disciplinary reasons — his benemerenti medal, an almost-automatic award after three years of service, at the last minute, Tornay simply snapped. It was revealed that there was tension in the Guard between German speakers and French speakers, of which Tornay was one. That same tension exists in Switzerland itself. Some, such as Tornay’s mother and sisters, will never believe the official version, and the whole truth may never be known. The incident was a terrible black eye for the Guard and the low point of its nearly half millenium of honorable service.

Today

While some may deplore the fact that the Swiss Guard no longer serves a military purpose, their function is still of great importance. The world is a much more dangerous place now that it was when Julius II formed his personal military force in 1506, and the Guard has had to change with the times. The pay is still low, but the prestige of the vocation of protecting the person of the leader of the world’s Christians is, in the opinion of the Guardsmen and their families — and their homeland of Switzerland — the highest calling a young Swiss Catholic can have.

Five Hundred Years of Loyalty: The Gallantry of the Pope’s Swiss Guard | Catholicism.org

In early August, the Legislative Assembly was deadlocked, unable to decide what to do about the King, the constitution, the ongoing war, and above all the political uprisings in Paris. On 4 August, the most radical Parisian section, "the section of the 300," issued an "ultimatum" to the Legislative Assembly, threatening an uprising if no action was taken by midnight 9 August. On the appointed evening, the tocsin sounded from the bell tower and a crowd gathered before the City Hall and headed toward the Tuileries Palace. As the King’s bodyguards prepared to defend him, Louis recognized that it would be more prudent to flee. He and his family escaped through a secret passage and placed themselves under the protection of the Legislative Assembly, which arrested him. A deputy, Michel Azema, describes in this letter the dramatic events that came to be referred to as the "second French Revolution."

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Paris
10 August, midnight, in session
The 4th year of liberty, 1792

The indignation was so general that it was breaking out with no fear or restraint; everyone was expecting a terrible explosion; day and night, brave and valorous knights filled the chateau, which bristled with bayonets and cannon. Yesterday the fears intensified; nevertheless, there was no real threat to justify all this excitement, so just after midnight we went to bed. . . .

Upon entering the Assembly hall, I was greatly surprised to find the King, the Queen, the Prince, the King's oldest sister, Madame Elisabeth, and others [of the royal entourage] all very carefully dressed, with heads lowered like wet hens; they had all taken refuge in the Legislative Assembly to seek there the safety which could no longer be found in the palace. The cannoneers, having been ordered to do their duty if the people were to force its way into the palace, had instead simply unloaded their cannon; knowing this, the King's closest advisers had advised him to flee the palace and come amongst the nation's representatives.

The Legislative Assembly was not deliberating; [under the Constitution] it could not do so in the King's presence, although it urgently needed to. The King and the royal family could not be sent out, because they were done for if they left their asylum. After great and tumultuous debate, the King moved from the president's rostrum and his family moved from inside the rail, taking up places in the little box behind the rostrum, ordinarily used by journalists.

Someone came to announce that the cannon filling the Place du Carrousel were aimed against the Tuileries Palace, which the people wanted to break down like the Bastille. After a short discussion, because time was pressing, the Assembly sent a deputation consisting of twenty of its members to speak to the people in the name of the law and to appease it by persuasion. . . . This deputation left at once, preceded by an usher and surrounded by a guard. I had the honour to be in it; although this was also nearly a misfortune, because we had barely reached the door of the Tuileries Palace when our eyes were dazzled by furious musket fire at the bottom of the stairway; at once, a second round; then a cannonade knocked down part of the façade. By God, we saw our death right before us! As we did not yet feel worthy to allow it to pass behind us, we stopped in our tracks and proposed a discussion, but a well-aimed cannon rejected our proposition. We then thought we had found a safe alternative of going to the other side of the Carrousel, preferring the cannon tails to the mouths; but scarcely had we emerged from the riding-school [in which the Assembly met] when a mass of sabres, pikes, and bayonets rushed from all sides, with indescribable rage, on our brave guards, who, angered by our obstinacy in advancing into the fire instead of retreating, finally grabbed us and swooped us back into the Legislative Assembly. . . .

[In the assembly hall,] brave sans-culottes had appeared at the rail and were promptly heard from. They explained to us that the sovereign people, making use of that sovereignty, had charged them to assure us of its respect, to affirm obedience to our decrees . . . and that we were the only constituted authority and there was no other in existence.

They concluded by asking us to "Swear in the Nation's name to maintain liberty and equality with all your power or to die at your post." Seeing this declaration to be our only means of our salvation, all the deputies shouted eagerly and in a single voice: "I so swear!" The roll was called at once, and on the rostrum each deputy in turn pronounced the words indicated by the sans-culottes and the proposal was considered to be adopted. Our co-deputies, who had fled the hall earlier fearing for their lives, were now reassured by a declaration so easily pronounced . . . they returned to join us in session and showed the utmost courage in taking this charming oath, which they uttered with the greatest firmness, without troubling over the difficulty and even the impossibility for them of carrying it out.

In the interim, a great brawl had broken out in the palace, in the Tuileries [gardens], and on the Champs Élysées. The Swiss guards, who had been deceived by the aristocratic instigators in the palace and had fired on the people . . . were now being hotly pursued and were defending themselves in the same way . . . so that corpses covered the ground.

The royal palace had been pillaged, although everything of value had been carried scrupulously to the Assembly, which had in turn sent it to the Commune [i.e., city hall]; the people themselves did justice to those who concealed or stole the smallest thing . . . all the jewels, money, and other valuables found on the dead Swiss guards were carefully gathered up and returned; for instance, a true sans-culotte faithfully deposited 173 gold louis [equivalent to 3,460 livres] that he had discovered on the body of an abbot in the basement of the palace. Our sovereign people, truly French, respected the ladies of honour, or non-honour, of the court; they inflicted not the least scratch on them, ugly as certain of them may be; but they showed no mercy to the obsequious nobles of the court. . . .

The King has been suspended from all his functions and powers; we have driven out his counterrevolutionary ministers and have named others worthy of public confidence. Louis, Antoinette, their children and hangers-on are still in their cell, the stenographer's box, from which they have not budged . . . and where their fare as this has consisted, deliberately, of scarcely more than bread, wine, and water. Good God, what a sight! It is really true that opinion is often all-important and that without opinion on their side the great, however great they may be, are nothing; these gods on earth, stripped and deprived of their masks . . . are now not even men, and in the end they have the same fate that false divinities have always had when the blindfolds of error fall away. Our assembly-hall commissioners are taking steps to prepare apartments for them in the former Capuchins' convent [next to the assembly-hall on the west]; for their majesties would run the risk of not being respected as they deserve if they were to go and stay in the Luxembourg Palace, which one of our decrees assigned to them today instead of the Tuileries Palace.

Source: Camille Bloch, ed., La Révolution Française, no. 27 (1894), 177–82.

The Attack on the Tuileries (10 August 1792)