Ian Mortimer The Guardian, Friday 10 October 2014

Think things are bad? Think again. Here are 10 years from history when Britons really had something to complain about

Protestant forces battle royalist troops during the English civil war. Photograph: The Art Archive/Alamy

1066

From the complacent armchairs of the modern world, the Norman conquest looks like a positive thing – a battle that defines us. But 1066 saw the country face invasion not once but twice: first in the north, where King Harold defeated a Norwegian and Flemish army led by his brother Tostig and Harald Hardrada; and then at Hastings. If you were English, this was bad enough, but what followed was worse. The native ruling class was almost entirely eliminated. All property passed to the new foreign king, who distributed it among his henchmen. Imagine that happening today – all the land in the country being taken by a foreign warlord and shared out among his followers, who do not speak English and who rule us all with violence and impunity from their defensive castles. It makes the terrorism we face today seem like an inconsequential thing.

1208

 

King John. Photograph: Getty Images

King John was not a good man – we remember that much. His petulant refusal to accept Stephen Langton as archbishop of Canterbury caused a rift with Pope Innocent III. Innocent was not a pope to mess with; in March 1208 he placed the whole of England under an interdict. The result was that no church services could be held. No one could get married or have their children baptised. No one could have a funeral service. That might mean little in these secular times but, in the highly religious 13th century, it was deeply troubling. People believed that, because of John's tantrum, the necessary rites would not be carried out and they or their loved ones would be damned to hell for eternity.

1316

The early 14th century saw quite a few bad-news years, mostly to do with poor harvests. 1316 saw a second consecutive harvest failure: an exponentially bad situation as it left farmers without seed for the following year. Thousands died. In some cases, people turned to cannibalism. Politically, it was a nightmare too, with a rising in south Wales, led by Llywelyn Bren; a rebellion in Bristol, which had to be put down by force of arms; and the continued destruction of Ireland by the Scots, including the defeat of an English army at the battle of Kells.

1348

 

Praying for relief from the bubonic plague. Photograph: Getty

The worst news year in British history was surely the year that the Black Death reached these shores. The previous year it had struck in Italy, where it killed 40% of some cities' populations in a matter of weeks. Gradually it spread through France, and by September, it had reached the south coast of England. When it was over, according to modern reckoning, more than half the population had been killed. People's confidence in God's providence was another casualty. Cults of mortification and philosophies of human wretchedness began to emerge. Nothing in the last 1,000 years of human experience comes close to the fear and shock of the disease.

1485

 

Richard III at the battle of Bosworth. Photograph: Bettmann/Corbis

Richard III's short reign ended in fear, chaos and death. Over the course of just two years, he personally alienated many of his supporters – through the deposition of his nephew Edward V (not to mention his possible murder of the boy and his brother), the summary execution of Lord Hastings, and his employment of a coven of close enforcers. Nevertheless, people looked on Henry Tudor's invasion in 1485 with trepidation. If you were loyally standing by Richard III, and Henry defeated the king, what penalties and loss of titles and estates would you face? Conversely, if you joined the invader, and the king defeated him, you could expect to die for your treachery as well as lose your wealth. So everyone had to gamble – and had every reason to be fearful. But what really made this year deadly was that the first epidemic of the sweating sickness fell on England, killing tens of thousands of men and women.

1596

Today we look back at the 1590s as a golden age – when our explorers were traversing the globe, natural philosophers were making significant advances in science and a certain William Shakespeare was attracting attention with his plays. However, at the same time, tens of thousands of their compatriots were starving. Consecutive harvest failures had left many people desperate. About a quarter of the population of Shakespeare's home town of Stratford was sleeping rough and begging or stealing food. It was estimated that there were about 30,000 homeless people in London – perhaps as many as one in seven people in the city was a vagabond. The equivalent in modern terms would be a million homeless people in the city. In real terms, the wages of a full-time English worker sank to just two-thirds of what they had been 150 years earlier.

1643

 

The First Battle of Newbury. Photograph: Alamy

Battles raged up and down the country in 1643 as parliament and royalists inflicted heavy casualties on each other at Adwalton Moor, Lichfield, Hopton Heath, Lansdowne, Bristol, Gainsborough, Gloucester and Newbury. But it was not just the sieges and pitched battles that caused distress. Farmers whose lands lay in the path of armies on the move saw their cattle and sheep killed for food, their horses requisitioned and their barns used for the troops' accommodation. They too were ruined. At the same time, parliament reintroduced legislation imposing censorship of the press. And the weather was foul – the 1640s saw some of the coldest, most drought-ridden years of the last millennium.

1848

It was just one of those years. Revolutions swept across Europe. The French monarchy fell, the Chartists held mass rallies and presented demands; anarchism became a watchword for many political agitators; but not much changed. In Ireland, the potato famine that had begun a couple of years earlier reached its height, killing hundreds of thousands of people and forcing as many again to emigrate.

1916

 

British ships in the Battle of Jutland. Photograph: Express/Getty Images

While 1914 was anything but encouraging, the list of calamities in 1916 marks it out as particularly depressing. It was the year that saw conscription introduced. It saw Zeppelin bombing raids and income tax rise to 25%. The battle of Jutland – the great naval conflict of the war – saw 14 ships sunk and more than 6,000 men killed. But even louder in our memories is the echo of the battle of the Somme, which started on 1 July: 20,000 British soldiers were killed and 40,000 injured on the first day alone.

1940

In January rationing started. By May, the German invasion of France had forced British troops back to Dunkirk. Auschwitz opened for its horrific business. Dozens of British warships were sunk by the German navy. The Channel Islands were occupied. And the Battle of Britain started: the Luftwaffe bombed London, Sheffield, Coventry, Plymouth and other cities in southern England. London was hit every night for 57 consecutive nights, and on 29 December more than 100,000 incendiary bombs struck the city.

Ten of the worst years in British history | Books | The Guardian

Ian Mortimer theguardian.com, Thursday 30 October 2014

In Europe, the last millennium has been shaped by successive waves of change, but which shifts, in which centuries, have really shaped the modern world? Historian Ian Mortimer identifies the 10 leading drivers of change

My castle is not your castle … the keep of Loches castle, shown here in a detail from Emmanuel Lansyer’s 1891 painting, was built in the 11th century. Photograph: World History Archive/Alamy

11th century: Castles

Most people think of castles as representative of conflict. However, they should be seen as bastions of peace as much as war. In 1000 there were very few castles in Europe – and none in England. This absence of local defences meant that lands were relatively easy to conquer – William the Conqueror’s invasion of England was greatly assisted by the lack of castles here. Over the 11th century, all across Europe, lords built defensive structures to defend them and their land. It thus became much harder for kings to simply conquer their neighbours. In this way, lords tightened their grip on their estates, and their masters started to think of themselves as kings of territories, not of tribes. Political leaders were thus bound to defend their borders – and govern everyone within those borders, not just their own people. That’s a pretty enormous change by anyone’s standards.

12th century: Law and order

 

Banged up ... detail from a 12th-century illustration of men in the stocks. Photograph: Culture Club/Getty

If you consider visiting a foreign country, one of the most important aspects you bear in mind is how safe you will be while you are there. Indeed, probably no other factor deters people from visiting a place as much as an absence of law and order. So it follows that the introduction of the systematic application of law and order marks quite a turning point in European history. This happened through the compilation of law books, the development of jurisprudence, and, in England, the development of “justices in eyre” – the forerunners of circuit judges – together with the establishment of trial by jury.

13th century: Markets

 

Market value ... a 13th-century gold coin. Photograph: Heritage Image/Alamy

As is well known, money has existed for thousands of years. However, that doesn’t mean it has always served the same function as it does today. At the start of the 13th century not many people used money in England. The vast majority lived in the country and bartered for the things that they could not make for themselves. Lords commanded the time of their peasants and allowed them to farm a few acres in return. The only people who regularly handled silver pennies were the inhabitants of market towns – and there were only 300 of those (and some had fewer than 500 people). However, over the course of the 13th century another 1,400 markets were founded in England. European countries saw a similar quadrupling of the number of towns. Not all of these new foundations succeeded but many did. The whole of Christendom shifted to a more mercantile economy as you simply cannot operate a barter system efficiently in a marketplace. By 1300, several countries had begun minting large-denomination coins in gold, and credit was available from Italian banking companies, which had branches across the continent.

14th century: Plague

The greatest disaster to befall mankind ... a contemporary illustration of death strangling a victim of the plague. Photograph: Heritage Image/Alamy

The greatest disaster to befall mankind and the most important event in the history of the western world had absolutely nothing to do with technology. With roughly half the population of the country dying in the space of seven months, the mortality impact was about 200 times as great as that of the first world war. The socio-economic consequences were profound. The old feudal system was dealt a heavy blow as the paucity of survivors meant workers could charge more for their labour, and peasants could acquire assets and even set themselves up as manorial lords. Questions were raised about God’s relationship with mankind and the nature of disease – how could a benevolent deity kill so many innocent children? At the same time, people began to regard death in a new light, and the religious started to abase themselves, adopting a stance of abject humility in the eyes of God. Thus the plague not only killed people, it changed the ways people lived, as well as their expectations of death.

 

15th century: Columbus

 

Expanding horizons ... detail from Emile Lassalle’s 1839 portrait of Christopher Columbus. Photograph: Famoso/Alamy

The most important relationship in human history is between mankind and the land. Basically, the more land you have, the more natural resources you have. Columbus thus stands as one of the most important figures in history. With a great fanfare of his own achievement, he showed Europeans the way to vast territories of which no one had previously dreamed. No new technology empowered him: the compass was already at least three centuries old by the time he discovered Hispaniola in 1492. It was rather socio-economic pressure that drove him – together with his own desire to become a wealthy landowner. The consequences go far further than Spanish being the second-most widely spoken language in the world today (after Chinese). Until 1492 most people had believed the ancient Roman and Greek writers had reached an epitome of knowledge. However, there is no reference to the American continents in Ptolemy or Strabo. People quickly realised that, if the ancient writers could have missed two whole continents, they might have misunderstood many other things too. The crossing of the Atlantic was thus one of the two or three biggest causes for the re-evaluation of received wisdom in the last thousand years.

16th century: The decline of personal violence

 

Greater certainty of finding the guilty party ... 16th-century illustration of a homeowner thwarting a burglary. Photograph: Leemage/Getty

The pre-industrial past was, by our standards, incredibly violent. In the middle ages, the murder rate in Oxford occasionally hit the same level as Dodge City at the height of the American gun-slinging wild west. But from 1500, the murder rates decreased rapidly, and not just in Oxford. In fact, across Europe, they more or less halved every 100 years, until they started to increase again in the late 20th century. The cause was better communication, through a massive increase in literacy and writing, allowing governments to act more regularly and with greater certainty of finding the guilty party. People started to think twice before drawing a knife in a brawl. Constables answering to the authorities pursued highwaymen and similar culprits far more rigorously than in previous centuries. As with many changes over past centuries, the development was so gradual that contemporaries did not comment on them; they also quickly took a safer society for granted. But that very thing – a safer society – is something not to be thrown away lightly.

17th century: The scientific revolution

 

Understanding the world ... the world’s first reflecting telescope, built by Isaac Newton in 1668. Photograph: Royal Society/PA

One thing that few people fully appreciate about the witchcraft craze that swept Europe in the late 16th and early 17th centuries is that it was not just a superstition. If someone you did not like died, and you were accused of their murder by witchcraft, it would have been of no use claiming that witchcraft does not exist, or that you did not believe in it. Witchcraft was recognised as existing in law – and to a greater or lesser extent, so were many superstitions. The 17th century saw many of these replaced by scientific theories. The old idea that the sun revolved around the Earth was finally disproved by Galileo. People facing life-threatening illnesses, who in 1600 had simply prayed to God for health, now chose to see a doctor. But the most important thing is that there was a widespread confidence in science. Only a handful of people could possibly have understood books such as Isaac Newton’s Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, when it was published in 1687. But by 1700 people had a confidence that the foremost scientists did understand the world, even if they themselves did not, and that it was unnecessary to resort to superstitions to explain seemingly mysterious things.

18th century: The French Revolution

 

Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité ... The Tennis Court Oath in Versailles by Jacques-Louis David. Photograph: De Agostini/Getty

There is no doubt that the French Revolution of 1789 was THE revolution for the western world. It was the first testing of the idea, nationally, that men should be equal in the eyes of the law. It forced thinkers all across Europe to reassess the ideas of human rights, political equality, and the rights of women. Although many governments were initially cautious of encouraging change, without the French Revolution, it is difficult to see how the great social reforms of the 19th century – the abolition of slavery, universal education, the rights of women to act as independent property owners, public health, and the diminution of capital punishment – would have proceeded as they did.

19th century: Communications

 

‘Europe and America are united by telegraphy’ ... the first transatlantic telegraph cable is laid in 1858. Photograph: © Bettmann / Corbis

We think of the 20th century as undergoing a communications revolution. And for many people it has done: most of our great-grandfathers did not have a private phone in 1900 but about 40% of us had a mobile phone by 2000. But the real communications revolution lay in the 19th century – in 1900 you could send a telegram. In 1805, news of the Battle of Trafalgar (21 October) was delivered to the admiralty on 6 November. Just riding from Falmouth to London took Lieutenant Lapenotière 37 hours and 21 changes of horse. After the intercontinental telegraph cable was laid in 1872 it became possible to send a message to Australia immediately. The railways, telegraph and telephone made messaging much faster – in some cases almost instantaneous. This was just as significant as the modern communications revolution, if not more so. Governments trying to control their own countries and those overseas could now require that all important decisions be referred back to the capital; previously they had had to place trusted men in positions of responsibility all over the world – and hope for the best.

20th century: Invention of the future

 

To infinity and beyond ... detail from Long Live the First Cosmonaut YA Gagarin! by Valentin Petrovich Viktorov (1961). Photograph: Heritage Images/Getty

There can be no doubt that technology hugely changed the ways in which we lived and died in the 20th century. However, it also masks changes that are arguably even more profound. In 1900 few people seriously considered the future. William Morris and a few socialists wrote utopian visions of the world they wanted to see, but there was little serious consideration of where we were going as a society. Today we predict almost everything: what the weather will be, what housing we will need, what our pensions will be worth, where we will dispose of our rubbish for the next 30 years and so on. The UN predicts world population levels up to the year 2300. Global warming reports are hot news. Novels about the future are 10 a penny. Newspapers and online newsfeeds are increasingly full of stories of what will happen, not what has happened. With limited resources on a limited planet, this is not a shift that is likely ever to change. In a thousand years or so, if society continues that long, the 20th century may well be viewed as the threshold when the modern world began – when humanity started to consider the future as well as the present and the past.

The 10 greatest changes of the past 1,000 years | Books | theguardian.com

By Theunis Bates | March 8, 2014

Ukraine has been part of Russia on and off for centuries. Why does Russia feel justified in interfering in its affairs?

Hey, neighbour. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

Why is Ukraine so important to Russia?

The two neighbouring countries have been intertwined for over 1,000 years of tumultuous history. Today, Ukraine is one of Russia's biggest markets for natural gas exports, a crucial transit route to the rest of Europe, and home to an estimated 7.5 million ethnic Russians — who mostly live in eastern Ukraine and the southern region of Crimea. (All told, about 25 per cent of Ukraine's 46 million people claim Russian as their mother tongue.) Russia lacks natural borders like rivers and mountains along its western frontier, so "its leaders have traditionally seen the maintenance of a sphere of influence over the countries around it as source of security," said David Clark, chairman of the Russia Foundation, a think tank. That's especially true of Ukraine, which Russia regards as its little brother. "Everybody knows that Ukrainians are Russians," said Kremlin adviser Sergei Markov. "Except for the Galicians" — a reference to the Ukrainian-speaking residents of western Ukraine.

Why do Russians see Ukraine as theirs?

It's partly because both nations trace their roots back to the first East Slavic state, Kievan Rus, which stretched from the Baltic to the Black Sea from the 9th century to the mid-13th century. This medieval empire was founded, oddly enough, by Vikings — "Rus" is the Slavic word given to the red-haired Scandinavians — who swept down from the north in the 9th century, conquered the local Slavic tribes, and established their capital at Kiev. The kingdom converted to Eastern Orthodox Christianity in 988, laying the foundation of the modern Russian church. A French bishop sent to Ukraine reported, "This land is more unified, happier, stronger, and more civilized than France herself." But in the 13th century Kiev was devastated by Mongol invaders, and power shifted north to a small Rus trading outpost called Moscow.

What happened to Ukraine after Kievan Rus fell?

Its territory was carved up by competing powers, who prized the fertile plains and rich, dark soil that later earned Ukraine the nickname "the breadbasket of Europe." Catholic Poland and Lithuania dominated the country for hundreds of years, but by the end of the 18th century Imperial Russia had grabbed most of Ukraine, except for Galicia, which was controlled by the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The czars referred to their dominion as "little Russia" and tried to crush surging Ukrainian nationalism in the 1840s, banning the use of the Ukrainian language in schools.

How did Ukraine break away?

The first independent Ukrainian state was declared in Kiev in 1917, following the collapse of the Russian and Austro-Hungarian empires at the end of World War I. That independence was short-lived. The new country was invaded by Poland, and fought over by forces loyal to the czar and Moscow's new Bolshevik government, which took power in Russia's 1918 revolution. By the time Ukraine was incorporated into the Soviet Union in 1922, its economy was in tatters and its populace starving. Worse was to come. When Ukrainian peasants refused to join collective farms in the 1930s, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin orchestrated mass executions and a famine that killed up to 10 million people. Afterward, Stalin imported millions of Russians and other Soviet citizens to help repopulate the coal- and iron-ore-rich east. This mass migration, said former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Steven Pifer, helps explain why "the sense of Ukrainian nationalism is not as deep in the east as it is in the west." World War II exacerbated this divide.

What happened during the war?

When the Nazis invaded Ukraine in 1941, many locals welcomed the Germans as liberators from the Soviets, and tens of thousands even fought alongside them, hoping Adolf Hitler would reward them with an independent state. Later, when the Nazis began using Ukrainians as slave labour, about 2.5 million fought for Stalin's Red Army. The country became one of World War II's bloodiest battlefields. At least 5.3 million Ukrainians died during the war — about one sixth of the population. About 2.25 million of those killed were Jews, targeted by both the Nazis and some Ukrainian collaborators. At the end of the war, Stalin deported tens of thousands of Ukrainians accused of cooperating with the Nazis to Siberian prison camps, and executed thousands more.

When did Ukraine become truly independent?

In 1991, more than 90 per cent of Ukrainians voted to declare independence from the crumbling Soviet Union. But Russia continued to meddle in the country's affairs. In Ukraine's 2004 presidential election, the Kremlin backed pro-Russian candidate Viktor Yanukovych. Massive fraud in that election sparked the Orange Revolution, which kept Yanukovych from power. The failure of subsequent leaders led to Yanukovych's making a comeback in 2010. But after he cancelled a trade deal with the European Union, he was driven from office again last month by pro-Western demonstrators. Despite the world's outrage, Russian President Vladimir Putin is unlikely to let Ukraine leave his country's orbit. "Russia without Ukraine is a country," explains Daniel Drezner, an international politics professor at Tufts University. "Russia with Ukraine is an empire."

Crimea: Khrushchev's mysterious gift

Crimea has become a flash point in the struggle between Kiev and Moscow, with Russian troops seizing control of the southern peninsula bordering on the Black Sea. But exactly why this region — which has a majority ethnic Russian population and is home to Russia's Black Sea fleet — ended up as part of Ukraine is something of a mystery. The peninsula had been ruled by Russia for centuries when Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev suddenly gifted it to Kiev in 1954. Many Russians think Khrushchev was drunk when he signed the Crimea away, while others believe he was trying make amends for the Ukrainian famine. The handover remains deeply unpopular with ordinary Russians, 56 per cent of whom view Crimea as Russian territory, far more than feel a claim on Chechnya. "Many see Putin as the one who returned some of Russia's strengths,'' said Denis Volkov, an independent Russian pollster. "I think he will use this idea of the loss of the Soviet Union to drum up support with Crimea."

Theunis Bates

Theunis Bates is a senior editor at The Week's print edition. He has previously worked for Time, Fast Company, AOL News and Playboy.

Ukraine's fraught relationship with Russia: A brief history - The Week

By Charles Emmerson | Posted 4th March 2014

Russia Ukraine

Protesters at Independence Square on the first day of the Orange Revolution, 2004

Not so long ago, looking for a short history of Ukraine in a central London bookstore, I was offered the following memorable advice: “Look under Russia”.

I did. And between shelves groaning with the glories of Russian history, from the love affairs of Catherine the Great to the crimes of Joseph Stalin, I found two thin volumes on Ukraine, a country of some forty six million people. One was decorated with an impressionistic painting of the 2004 Orange Revolution. I bought both. I doubt very much they were immediately replaced.

‘Looking under Russia’ is perhaps an appropriate metaphor for Ukrainian history.

Since the Pereiaslav / Pereyaslav treaty of 1654, Ukraine has only enjoyed statehood independent from Russia at moments of extreme geopolitical dislocation, such as in the final days of the First World War, in the wake of the Russian Revolution of 1917. Russian nationalists today appear to view Ukrainian independence as a similar aberration, the consequence of what President Vladimir Putin labelled the greatest geopolitical disaster of the twentieth century: the collapse of the Soviet Union – a.k.a. the Russian Empire – in 1991.

Old habits die hard. For many Russians, Ukraine is like a phantom limb still felt to be there long after its amputation. The idea that Ukraine is really a nation at all strikes some Russians as odd. To the extent that perceptions of history condition politics, understanding the Russian view of Ukrainian history – and the Ukrainian view of Ukrainian history – is essential.

Though wrong, the idea that Ukrainian history is really just an annex of the sumptuous many-roomed mansion of Russian history is common. To some degree it is understandable. Ukraine and Russia have shared triumph and tragedy from the birth of the Kyivan / Kievan Rus (the first proto-Russian state – though this of course begs the question of whether the Rus was Russian or Ukrainian at all) through the wars against the Poles in the seventeenth century to bloody struggle against fascism in the twentieth.

The historical links between the two countries, ancient and modern, are manifold and profound. The Orthodox churches of Ukraine and Russia share a patron saint – St. Vladmir or St. Volodmyr – whose statue (spelt the Ukrainian way) stands proudly on a street corner in west London. On the edge of Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, a huge concrete museum complex inaugurated in the early 1980s commemorates the Great Patriotic War (1941-1945). Outside, a silvery figure of a woman, two hundred feet tall, holds a sword aloft in one hand, and a shield with the emblem of the Soviet Union in the other. This is a memorial to shared sacrifice – eight million Ukrainians died in the war – and a shared victory. Seventy years after the end of the war, and nearly a quarter century after the collapse of the Soviet Union, such narratives are still powerful.

For a long time, Russians saw Ukrainians as being little more than country bumpkin relatives. Theories of Slavic ethno genesis described the two peoples as siblings born of the same Slavic womb: the “Great Russians” (i.e. Russians) on one hand and the “Little Russians” (i.e. Ukrainians) on the other. Ukrainian literature, which began to emerge in the nineteenth century, was patronisingly viewed as the picturesque product of a peasant society, essentially subordinate to Russia’s own literary canon, even when it produced such great poets as Taras Shevchenko. The fact that the flowering of Ukrainian national culture was strongest in western Ukraine, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, made some Russians dismiss the whole thing as an anti-Russian ruse sponsored by external forces, a familiar refrain to those heard today.

In the Soviet period the idea of Ukrainian nationhood was viewed with similar suspicion, now additionally freighted with suggestions it was intrinsically counter-revolutionary. In April 1918, as Russia imploded in revolution, a conservative German-backed regime was set up in Kyiv. Its leader Pavlo Skoropadsky revived the title of Hetman, an ancient Cossack military title, last held by a man who had died aged 112 in 1803, in a remote Russian monastery which the Soviets would subsequently turn into a gulag. Later, in the Great Patriotic War, some Ukrainians signed up with the Germans to fight the Soviets – some even joined the SS. Nationalist anti-Soviet actions continued into the 1950s – providing the basis in historical memory for the contemporary lumping together of even moderate Ukrainian nationalists with right-wing extremists as “fascists” and “bandits”.

In the Soviet era Ukrainian national identity was never completely subsumed into Russian or Soviet identity. Sometimes, indeed, it could be useful to the Soviet state. In 1939, when Galicia, Volhynia, and Bukovyna were annexed to Soviet Ukraine as a result of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact and Stalin’s co-invasion of Poland, the Ukrainian Supreme Soviet sent this message to Stalin: “Having been divided, having been separated for centuries by artificial borders, the great Ukrainian people are reunited forever in a single Ukrainian republic”. In 1945, professions that Ukraine was not a Soviet vassal but in fact an independent Communist state allowed Ukraine to join the United Nations as a founder member alongside the USSR, thus giving Moscow an extra vote in UN proceedings.

The process through which the borders of modern Ukraine were defined, both in the west and on the Black Sea, was part and parcel of Russia’s own headlong expansion through three centuries of Eurasian history. In the 1700s and 1800s, as the Russian geopolitical imagination became obsessed with the idea of turning the Black Sea into a Russian lake – perhaps even going so far as to seize control of Constantinople/Istanbul – the Ottoman Empire was bloodily and repeatedly pushed back from its redoubts on the northern side of the Black Sea. The Ukrainian provinces were the territorial beneficiaries. The country became ever more tightly integrated into the economics and politics of the growing Russian empire, serving as its breadbasket, and as its route to the sea.

At the end of the eighteenth century, German-born Catherine the Great founded the port of Odessa – and its hinterland of New Russia – with the help of a Spanish-Irish Neapolitan and, later, a French aristocrat. The city filled with Greeks, Bulgarians and Jews. Pushkin was sent there as punishment, and promptly started an affair with the wife of the city’s Russian governor. Amongst countless others, Odessa would ultimately produce Trotsky and Akhmatova, two titans of Russian politics and culture, before becoming the site of some of the cruellest massacres of the Holocaust.

Further east, through war, colonisation and the ethnic cleansing of its Muslim population, Crimea, the last remnant of the Mongol Golden Horde, was turned into the finest jewel in the Russian Empire. As proverbial pleasure garden for late imperial flings (as recounted by Anton Chekhov), then fantasy holiday camp for Soviet factory managers and key to Russia’s southern flank (as base of the Black Sea fleet) Crimea became firmly embedded in Russians’ psychological geography as their own private playground. Less than a century after the Tsars had conquered it, Stalin chose Crimea as the place to redraw the map of Europe once more in 1945.

Nine years later, when former Ukrainian party boss Khrushchev transferred Crimea to the Ukrainian SSR in celebration of the three hundredth anniversary of the Pereiaslav / Pereyslav treaty, there was no thought that the internal borders of the Soviet Union would ever become international borders. It was only in 1991, as a result of an attempted coup (which took place, ironically enough, while Mikhail Gorbachev was on holiday in Crimea) that the peninsula spun out of the ultimate control of Moscow, with the Soviet superstructure itself being legislated out of existence.

The idea that Crimea became part of an independent Ukraine essentially by accident is gospel truth amongst Russian politicians. It is but a short step to view Ukrainian possession of Crimea as historically illegitimate. And therein lies the beginnings of a dangerous game. What happens next? Perhaps Ukrainian independence itself, or that of the Baltic states, is equally seen as the consequence of a set of historical circumstances which some might now like to reverse.

Where does a concern for history shade into revanchism? And how far does one’s historical perspective extend back into the past? Visions of the Crimea as eternally Russian wilfully forget the Muslim population which Russian and then Soviet power displaced and deported – sometimes violently, always tragically, and with little historical recognition. As late as the turn of the last century, before the cataclysms of the twentieth, the Crimean Tatars represented nearly half the people of Crimea. Khrushchev recognised the deportation of the Tatars as one of Stalin’s crimes in his famous 1956 speech to the Twentieth Party Congress. It was not until the 1990s that many were able to come back.

Russia’s version of Ukrainian history, wrapped up in its own narrative of imperial rise and fall, from the Romanovs to the Soviets, helps explain Moscow’s attitude towards its southern neighbour – not in terms of objective interests, though these are real enough, but in terms of emotion, in terms of who is right and who is wrong. What makes things truly bad, from the Russian perspective, is that Ukrainians by and large no longer share the Russian interpretation of their history. The past looks different these days from Kyiv (still more, from Lviv). Instead of Ukrainians cherishing their supporting role in Russia’s geopolitical greatness – which essentially means the power and prestige of the state – Ukrainians have come to cherish alternative narratives of their history, based around freedom and resistance. Rediscovering their past has been a critical part of asserting Ukrainian independence. Accepting the possibility of multiple histories, not just one, is a hallmark of democracy, now vital.

Episodes once viewed as the historical glue of the Russo-Ukrainian relationship have become contested. While Russians tend to see the Pereislav / Pereyaslav treaty of 1654 as a moment of reunification for the Russian and Ukrainian peoples, many Ukrainians see the same treaty as a temporary alliance between military leaders which the Russians subsequently interpreted to their advantage. In 2009, on the three hundredth anniversary of the Battle of Poltava – perhaps the most important battle in Russian eighteenth century history – then-President of Ukraine Viktor Yushchenko was blasted by Russia for suggesting that the Ukrainians who fought with the Swedes against the victorious forces of Russian Tsar Peter the Great were true patriots.

Similarly, while the famines of the early twentieth century used to be viewed as a common experience of Soviet suffering, even as part of the forging of the Soviet industrial miracle, some now argue that the famines were, in effect, a Moscow-led assault on Ukrainians in particular. Some go so far as to suggest genocide intent. The incorporation of western Ukraine into the Soviet Union in 1939 can still be seen in its traditional light: as the re-unification of the Ukraine under Soviet leadership. But for the old aged pensioners of Lviv – and increasingly for their grandchildren – it may be remembered as the beginning of a fifty-year Russian occupation. And while Ukrainian nationalists in the Great Patriotic War used to be roundly condemned as nothing more than opportunistic, anti-Semitic and fascist lowlifes – which some of them no doubt were – more savoury elements may now be rehabilitated, as in the modern Baltic states, as patriots caught in a vice between the equivalent totalitarianisms of Nazism and Communism. Some Ukrainians make what is, for many Russians, a sacrilegious parallel: Putin as Hitler.

For both Russians and Ukrainians, the interpretation of Ukrainian history is personal. As in all borderlands, the contradictions and complexities of the tangled past are reproduced over and over in the stories of families and in the identities of individuals. For the governments in Moscow and in Kyiv, history is political too. Narratives of the past can be spun to justify, oppose or defend different courses of action in the present. History can be a tool of influence – a tool of long-term psychological warfare even – used to manipulate the here-and-now, to give added emotional resonance to geopolitical imperatives or to claims of political legitimacy.

Bluntly put, history can be a kind of territory. In Ukraine, it is not just the country’s land which is being tussled over. It is the country’s past as well. If Russia and Ukraine are to live as respectful neighbours side by side, they will have to find a way to live with each other’s history too.

Charles Emmerson is the author of 1913: The World before the Great War. Or visit his website

Ukraine and Russia’s History Wars | History Today

Frenchmen, you will no doubt recognize in my conduct the zeal of a soldier of liberty and of a devoted citizen of the Republic. Liberal, beneficent, and traditional ideas have returned to their rightful place through the dispersal of the odious and despicable factions which sought to overawe the Councils.

Napoleon Bonaparte, "Proclamation to the French Nation" (November 10, 1799)

There is no denying the fact that the French Revolution created NAPOLEON BONAPARTE (1769-1821). It was this man who, in 1799, combined a passion for power with his genius for leadership. Although much of what Napoleon accomplished over fifteen years seemed to undermine the principles of 1789, the end result was that many of the achievements of the Revolution were made French realities. Indeed, these realities were also made manifest across Europe.

Napoleon was born August 15, 1769, on the island of Corsica, the son of a petty or low noble. He trained at a military school and so the wars of the French Revolution gave him the opportunity to test his skills. In 1793, when he was only 24 years old, Napoleon's artillery pushed the British out of Toulon. In 1795, he saved the Convention from a Royalist insurrection. In 1796, he was given command of the French Army of Italy. It was during his ITALIAN CAMPAIGNS against the Austrians that Napoleon's talent for military strategy was first demonstrated. He tasted glory -- he could never do without it. He knew he was headed for greatness. He was aware, that he was a "world-historical figure," a "great man," "a hero in history." He later confided that

In Italy I realized I was a superior being and conceived the ambition of performing great things, which hitherto had filled my thoughts only as a fantastic dream.

In November 1797, Napoleon was ordered to plan an invasion of England. Aware that France had a weak navy compared to that of England, Napoleon decided to strike the British by attacking British commerce in Egypt and India (which supplied cotton for British mills). He left France with 35,000 men and took Cairo. Napoleon's meagre fleet, however, was destroyed at the Battle of the Nile by Nelson's navy. Meanwhile, Napoleon sent glowing reports back to France.

While all this was going on, things were not that peaceful back in France. Political unrest, financial disaster, and war with Europe compelled Napoleon to return. France needed a saviour and Napoleon recognized himself as that saviour. In October 1799, and without informing his troops in Egypt, Napoleon landed in France. A conspiracy was already underway against the lame five-man Directory. Some politicians realized the need to seize power and establish a strong executive. Perhaps a tyrant was needed.

On November 10, 1799 -- the 18th BRUMAIRE of the Year VIII -- the Directory was overthrown by a coup d'etat and Napoleon became a military dictator. The French Revolution had entered yet another stage of its history. The French people welcomed Napoleon -- the bourgeoisie, in particular, expected Napoleon to protect the wealth and influence they had gained as a result of 1789.

A new constitution was drawn up which specified that three Consuls would share power as a sort of triumvirate. Napoleon, of course, was one of these Consuls. His ambition, however, forced him to aspire to much more. In 1802, Napoleon was made first Consul for life with the right to choose his successor. On December 2, 1804, Napoleon crowned himself Emperor of the French. So, by 1804, the fate of both France and Europe depended upon this one man. Well, what sort of a man was he?

Like most men of stature and power, Napoleon's was a complex personality. We naturally think of Alexander, Augustus, Charlemagne, Peter the Great, Hitler and Stalin. His intellectual ability was clearly impressive. He had grandiose ideas. He had a philosophic mind. He could work 18 to 20 hours at a stretch without so much as a break in concentration. He was, as one French historian put it, "a typical man of the 18th century, a rationalist, a philosophe who placed his trust in reason, in knowledge and in methodical effort." But Napoleon was no disembodied brain -- his personality was not pure intellect. He also had a love of action and a boundless ambition. "I live only for posterity," he said, "death is nothing . . . but to live defeated and without glory is to die every day." He was an artist, a poet of action, for whom France, Europe and a mankind were but instruments. He had charisma, he could move men to obedience, to loyalty and to heroic acts. He was also quite arrogant -- he manipulated people at will. "A man like me," he once said, "troubles himself little about the lives of a million men."

Living in a revolutionary age, Napoleon observed firsthand the precariousness of power. He knew what happened to Louis XVI. He knew that the Girondins had been executed and that Robespierre had fallen victim to the Reign of Terror. Napoleon assumed that he would not make the same mistakes. He knew that he must become both a statesman and a tyrant. He had to consolidate the Revolution and bind together the different social classes of the French nation.

His domestic policy then, is crucial to our overall understanding of Napoleonic France. Here, he was clearly influenced by the Revolution. He was also affected by the ideas of the philosophes. He considered himself "enlightened." There are five areas of domestic policy worth our attention: government, religion, law, education and the economy.

Government

Napoleon provided France with a strong centralized government -- a government he would himself dominate, as an emperor, a Caesar. Previous French monarchs could not overcome political barriers (the remnants of feudalism, an obstinate nobility, local traditions and legal problems). But, when the Revolution basically swept away these remnants, administrative unity could become a reality. This left an opening for a man like Napoleon. So Napoleon created an army of officials -- civil servants and bureaucrats -- an army which reached into every village, town and city. The entire nation was linked together under rational administration. The result was that Napoleon concentrated power and this provided him with taxes and soldiers.

Napoleon also had to shape public opinion -- this was accomplished by crude forms of propaganda, but more importantly by the use of secret agents, arbitrary arrests, and executions. Like all dictators -- we think of Mussolini, Hitler and Stalin -- Napoleon relied on public opinion to prevent hostile criticism. In other words, dissent was nearly impossible. Printers and booksellers swore oaths of allegiance and all newspapers fell under state control. So, by repressing liberty, subverting republicanism and restoring absolutism, Napoleon reversed some of the liberal gains of the Revolution. He favoured equality before the law and careers open to talent BUT he believed that political liberty threatened the efficiency of the state with anarchy. He would govern in the interests of the people as an enlightened but absolute ruler. He was Plato's philosopher-king made reality.

Religion

In terms of religion, Napoleon bordered between deism and atheism. I suppose you could say that Catholicism as a religion of salvation had little meaning to him. But, like Machiavelli, Rousseau, and Marx, Napoleon believed that religion was little more than the cement which held society together. Again, we are reminded of Marx when he remarked that "religion is the opiate of the people." According to Napoleon, religion promoted national unity and prevented class war -- it kept the people meek and mild instead of strong and independent. He made every effort to close the divide between the State and the Church, a divide created by the Revolution. The Temples of Reason (i.e., the churches) and the Cult of the Supreme Being, erected in the early 1790s, were too abstract for Napoleon. How could he expect the French common people to have understood them? So, his desire was to reconcile Church and State. Such a reconciliation would gain for Napoleon even greater approval of his people.

Shrewd, calculating and intelligent, Napoleon knew exactly what he was doing. It was for these reasons that he negotiated an agreement with the Pope. The Concordat of 1801 recognized Catholicism as the favoured religion of France -- not the state religion. The clergy would be selected and paid by the State, but consecrated by the Church. So, in terms of religion, Napoleon basically guaranteed one of the rights mentioned in the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen -- religious freedom. However, the Church did not regain land confiscated during the Revolution, nor did they have the right to collect the tithe and the French clergy, though consecrated at Rome, remained under state control. Napoleon had achieved another of his aims -- Jews, Protestants and Catholics could freely practice their religion. But the Church was under state control. Although the people seemed to get what they wanted, so too did Napoleon.

Law

We mentioned that one of the causes of the Revolution was that 18th century France was plagued with numerous and sometimes conflicting codes of law. These codes obstructed national unity and administrative efficiency. Although the National Assembly had made the attempt to rectify the situation, they always had other things on their mind. Napoleon pressed for the completion of the project. So, he instituted the CODE NAPOLEON which incorporated the great principles of 1789: equality before the law, careers open to talent, freedom of religion, protection of private property, abolition of serfdom, and the secularization of the state. The Code, however, also had its less-liberal side. Workers were denied collective bargaining, trade unions were outlawed, and a system of labour passports was instituted. Women were declared to be inferior to men by law, and children had no rights at all. Of women, Napoleon once remarked,

the husband must possess the absolute power and right to say to his wife: Madame, you shall not go out, you shall not go to the theatre, you shall not visit such and such a person: for the children you bear, they shall be mine.

Education

Like some of the philosophes and the majority of active revolutionaries, Napoleon favoured a state system of public education. The curriculum would be secular and schools would be managed under the direction of the state and not the Church. For Napoleon, education would serve a dual role. State funded education would provide him with capable officials necessary to administer his laws and trained officers to man his army. The young would also be indoctrinated to obedience and authority. Napoleon established the University of France -- a giant board of education that placed education under state control. To this day, little has changed -- education is strictly centralized with curriculum and academic standards set for the entire nation. Women, of course, were excluded. "Marriage is their whole destination," Napoleon once wrote. Women did not need education, all they needed was religion.

Economics

Napoleon's economic policies were designed to strengthen France and increase his popularity. To stimulate the economy and serve the interests of the bourgeoisie, Napoleon aided industry through tariffs and loans. He built or repaired roads, bridges and canals. He established the Bank of France. He kept careers open to men of talent and provided bread at low prices. He stimulated the employment of artisans and did not restore ancient feudal rights.

Napoleon was not a democrat -- nor was he a republican. He was, he liked to think, an enlightened despot, the sort of man Voltaire might have found appealing. He preserved numerous social gains of the Revolution while suppressing political liberty. He admired efficiency and strength and hated feudalism, religious intolerance, and civil inequality. Enlightened despotism meant political stability. He knew his Roman history well -- after 500 years of republicanism, Rome became an empire under Augustus Caesar.

Napoleon's domestic policies gained the popular support he demanded. But it was his military victories that mesmerized the French people. Napoleon realized the grand dream of Louis XIV -- the mastery of Europe. Between 1805 and 1807, Napoleon defeated Austria, Prussia and Russia becoming the virtual ruler of the Continent. He embraced his own "art of war" that stressed rapid offensive attack over defensive positions (similar to the German Blitzkrieg). Surprise and speed were essential ingredients. So too were efforts to confuse his opponents: he supplied newspapers with incorrect information, he launched secondary offenses and he sent dense screens of cavalry ahead of his marching columns. He wanted to both surprise and demoralize the enemy. His troops were amazing. They marched fifty miles in 36 hours during one campaign in Italy in 1796. They accomplished 275 miles in 23 days during the Austrian campaign in 1805.

While he made every effort to humiliate and demoralize his enemy, Napoleon also understood the necessity of maintaining the morale of his own troops. So, he shared the dangers of war with his own men. He did not wait on a hill -- rather, he led the charge. An army based on honour, vanity and personal loyalty is difficult to overcome. Alexander, Augustus Caesar and Charlemagne were all aware of this. By 1810, Napoleon dominated nearly all of Europe. Belgium, vast territories of Germany, Holland, Italy, Westphalia and Spain had all been annexed. Napoleon's "Grand Empire" also included Austria, Prussia, Russia, Sweden and Denmark.

While Napoleon and his armies were busy securing their military domination of Europe, Napoleon also set about to extend his reforms within France to other lands. His officials instituted the Code Napoleon, organized a corps of civil servants, opened careers to talent, and equalized taxes. Serfdom was abolished as were manorial dues and the courts of nobility. Freedom of religion was permitted, guilds were abolished, uniform systems of weights and measures were established, roads and canals were built, and secular education was promoted.

Why did Napoleon bother? Well, his desire was efficient administration and the support of the conquered peoples (like the ancient Romans, Napoleon gave the people offers they could not refuse). In fact, most people of the conquered nations considered Napoleon to be their "great liberator." But there is another side to the story. Those lands which Napoleon conquered became satellite states which were exploited for the benefit, not of the Grand Empire, but for France. So, Napoleon had a difficult task on his hands -- how to control such a vast territory of land? However, the real threat came not from the Continent, but from England, France's perpetual enemy. Between 1803 and 1805, Napoleon tried to invade the English but it was not to be. Instead, he instituted the CONTINENTAL SYSTEM which barred all countries under French control to trade with England. However, thanks to smuggling, piracy, and trade with the New World, England was able to thwart Napoleon's plan. Meanwhile, Napoleon had problems with Spain; Germany fought her own wars of liberation; and Napoleon's Russian campaign of 1812 came to be the beginning of the end.

The Napoleonic wars came to an end in March 1814. Napoleon was removed as Emperor to the island of Elba and a Bourbon monarch returned to the French throne. Napoleon made one last ditch effort in 1815 -- his last 100 days, and then he was exiled to St. Helena, a small island hundreds of miles off the west coast of Africa. Napoleon died in 1821.

Napoleon was a real man as well as a legend. It was Napoleon himself who helped to create this legend. He wrote his memoirs while exiled on St. Helena between 1815 and 1821. He tells us his aim was to defend the Revolution and consolidate its gains. He emerges as a champion of equality, a supporter of popular sovereignty, a destroyer of privilege and a lover of peace. According to Napoleon, his vision was to create a United States of Europe. He wanted to free Europe from tyranny, oppression and despotism. As we know full well, this never happened. However, he did help to consolidate many gains of the Revolution. But, such a view ignores the downside of Napoleon -- his repression of liberty, the general subversion of republicanism, and the oppression of conquered peoples.

Historians would agree on two things about Napoleon. First, he was an extraordinary man, a self-made man. His drive, will, military genius and charisma made him a great man, a world historical figure, a man who made history. Machiavelli would have found Napoleon to be his perfect prince. Second, by spreading revolutionary ideals and institutions, Napoleon made it impossible for the restoration of the ancien regime. After Napoleon there was no turning back: feudalism was dead, society was secularized, the modern nation state replaced the dynastic state, and the bourgeoisie became the new class of privilege and status.

Lecture 15: Europe and the Superior Being: Napoleon

By Matthew D. Zarzeczny, student at Baldwin-Wallace College in Berea, Ohio

 

"I wished to found a European system, a European Code of Laws, a European judiciary: there would be but one people in Europe," declared Napoleon nearly 200 years before Europe finally unifies under the new currency of the European Union.  The dream of a strong Europe in which the French, Spanish, Italians, and Germans coexist peacefully as a single united body is being realized today, but it is a dream that was held by Napoleon, based on his vast knowledge of history, and hoped for by many great men after him. Finally at the end of this century this dream is beginning to become a reality.

The Grand Empire of Napoleon replaced the ailing Holy Roman Empire which was basically a continuation of the ancient Roman Empire.  Napoleon had crowned himself emperor of the French in 1804 and in 1806, he ended the Holy Roman Empire once and for all by replacing it with the Confederation of the Rhine, a French protectorate.  An admirer of Alexander the Great, Napoleon created a new system in Europe that in some ways mimicked the ancient Macedonian Empire.  Just as Alexander was king of Macedon, hegemon of the Corinthian League, great king of Persia, and pharaoh of Egypt, Napoleon was emperor of France, king of Italy, mediator of the Swiss Confederation, and protector of the Confederation of the Rhine.  It is also possible, had he succeeded in Russia, that he would have been protector of a Northern Confederation composed of the Grand Duchy of Warsaw (a possible precursor to a new Polish kingdom), Sweden, and Denmark.

Alexander was not the only historical figure Napoleon emulated.  Just like the Bourbons and Habsburgs before him, Napoleon placed his family and marshals on the thrones of other conquered European nations and he himself married an Austrian princess named Marie-Louise in 1810.  His brother Joseph was king of Naples and then king of Spain; his sister Caroline and his marshal Murat were king of Naples; another brother, Louis, was king of Holland; and still another, Jerome, was king of Westphalia.  One of Napoleon's marshals, Bernadotte, became king of Sweden, but he was an opponent of Napoleon facing him on the battlefield at Leipzig in 1813.  All this territory was bound to Napoleon by personal and familial rule cemented by the strength of his Grand Army.  With crushing victories like Mantua (1796-7), Austerlitz (1805), and Wagram (1809), Napoleon became a god of war, the Caesar of his time, and also like Caesar he dreamed of great projects that would carry on his memory for many years to come.  He tried to make Paris the capital of the world and created beautiful monuments and buildings like the Arc de Triomphe and La Madeleine church.  He planned others like the Bastille Elephant Fountain, a palace in Paris for his son, and another palace in what was to become the second city of the French Empire, Rome.

Like the Eastern Roman Emperor Justinian the Great, Napoleon wished to give to his empire a unified code of law which is known as the Napoleonic Code, something which has influenced European law and even the law in Quebec and Louisiana to this day.  To reward his subjects he created the Legion of Honour and like Charlemagne before him Napoleon was mindful to the importance of education and so he created the University of France and the baccalaureate exam.  All of this was to create the memory of greatness that Napoleon wanted for his vast European empire.

Napoleon had wanted to conquer Europe (if not the world) and said, "Europe thus divided into nationalities freely formed and free internally, peace between States would have become easier: the United States of Europe would become a possibility." This idea of "the United States of Europe" was one later picked up by Victor Hugo, Aristide Briand, and Winston Churchill.  After suffering two World Wars which devastated Europe in the early half of this century, the people of Europe and their leaders finally realized the horrors of modern warfare and the absolute necessity to end disputes with the pen and not the sword.  Further while the United States and the Soviet Union gained in importance during the Cold War, the once great European empires crumbled as their colonies gained independence.  It became evident that the only way for the nations of Europe to play a prominent role in world affairs was to unify.  By itself, Germany is an industrial powerhouse and by themselves the United Kingdom and France are militarily capable nations as nuclear powers and politically powerful as members of the United Nations' Security Council. But by themselves they cannot compete with the economic, military, and political dominance of the United States.  With the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the only possible counterbalance to the United States is a unified Europe. As many European nations are allies to the United States and are members of N.A.T.O., having the two most powerful forces in the world as friends could lead to more peaceful resolutions of the world's problems.  For Europe, its role in world affairs will once again be prominent and many of the old hatreds and rivalries amongst the great European states may finally begin to die.  While Napoleon sought to create such a union through military victories like the Romans before him, perhaps by creating this union through peaceful diplomacy, it will not be swept away by the guns of war.  Although each state of Europe may keep its language and culture, through a common coinage and common interests, there may at last truly be "but one people in Europe."

Bibliography

Durant, Will & Ariel, The Story of Civilization: The Age of Napoleon New York : Simon & Schuster; 1975.

Gallo, Max, Napoléon Le Chant du départ Paris : Pocket; 1997.

Haythornthwaite, Philip J., The Napoleonic Sourcebook London : Arms and Armour Press; 1990,

Lentz, Thierry, Napoléon "Mon Ambition Était Grande" Découvertes Gallimard, Italie; 1998.

Markham, Felix, Napoleon New York : Penguin Books; 1963.

Napoleon and the Unification of Europe

In 1799, after the French Revolution had quieted into the Thermidorean Reaction, a brilliant general named Napoleon Bonaparte overthrew the Directory and came into power as leader of the Consulate, beginning in 1799. Under Napoleon, France became a nationalist power, expanding its territory into Italy and exerting its influence over other powers. Napoleon consolidated his rule by suppressing rebellions in France, normalizing relations with the Church in the Concordat of 1801, and streamlining the French law system in the Napoleonic Code. By 1804, Napoleon was so powerful that he declared himself Emperor.

Defeating the various military coalitions the other powers of Europe threw against him, Napoleon won battle after battle: Marengo (1800), Austerlitz (1805), Jena-Auerstadt, and Friedland (1807). He built a vast empire of dependant states, forced Czar Alexander I to ally with him in the 1807 Treaty of Tilsit, and controlled the majority of Europe. Everywhere he went he spread the reforms and influence of the French Revolution to a remarkable extent. Just about the only blemish on his record during the first decade of the 19th century was a stunning naval loss to Britain at the Battle of Trafalgar

Seeking to undermine Britain's sea power, Napoleon issued the Berlin Decree in 1806, imposing the Continental System on Europe, which was meant to stop European countries from trading with Britain. Instead of hurting Britain, the Continental System hurt Napoleon. Upset by Napoleonic rule, Germanic nationalism got its start, and the Germans began to move towards Romanticism as an intellectual rebellion against French Enlightenment ideas. In Spain, the attempt to impose the Continental System led to the Peninsular War, a protracted guerrilla war that diverted French forces from the rest of Europe.

In 1810, Napoleon replaced his wife, Josephine, who had borne him no heir, with a younger wife, Marie Louise of Austria. They produced an heir, referred to as The King of Rome. Napoleon's happiness did not last, however, because at the end of 1810, Alexander I withdrew Russia from the Continental System. In 1812, Napoleon moved his Grand Army into Russia. Though Napoleons army pushed the Russians into constant retreat, the terrible Russian winter decimated Napoleon's Grand Army. Napoleon rushed home to raise a new army, but was defeated in October 1813 by an international coalition of armies at the Battle of Leipzig.

In 1814, Napoleon was exiled to the island of Elba and Louis XVIII took the throne of France, returning a Bourbon to the throne that had been lost by Louis XVI just twenty years earlier. As the powers were just starting to negotiate a settlement, Napoleon escaped from Elba and returned to France, raising an army during the period known as the Hundred Days. Napoleon's army was defeated by Wellington (Britain) and Blucher (Prussia) at Waterloo in June 1815. He was then exiled to Saint Helena in the South Atlantic, where he eventually died.

The chaotic Europe left behind by roughly two decades of war was reorganized by the Congress of Vienna (1814-1815). The major powers sent their top negotiators: Metternich (Austria), Castlereagh (Britain), Alexander I (Russia), Hardenberg (Prussia), and Talleyrand (France). The complex and delicate negotiations in Vienna created a stable Europe wherein no one power could dominate the others, as Napoleon's France had, for quite some time. Not until a century later, when World War I started in 1914, would another Europe-wide military conflict break out.

Napoleonic Europe (1799-1815): Summary

The History of The Patriarchs of Alexandria

And in those days Heraclius saw a dream in which it was said to him: "Verily there shall come against you a circumcised nation, and they shall vanquish you and take possession of the land." So Heraclius thought that they would be the Jews, and accordingly gave orders that all the Jews and Samaritans should be baptized in all the provinces which were under his dominion. But after a few days there appeared a man of the Arabs, from the southern districts, that is to say, from Mecca or its neighbourhood, whose name was Muhammad; and he brought back the worshippers of idols to the knowledge of the One God, and bade them declare that Muhammad was his apostle; and his nation were circumcised in the Hesh, not by the law, and prayed towards the South, turning towards a place which they called the Kaabah. And he took possession of Damascus and Syria, and crossed the Jordan, and dammed it up. And the Lord abandoned the army of the Romans before him, as a punishment for their corrupt faith, and because of the anathemas uttered against them, on account of the council of Chalcedon, by the ancient fathers.

When Heraclius saw this, he assembled all his troops from Egypt as far as the frontiers of Aswan. And he continued for three years to pay to the Muslims the taxes which he had demanded for the purpose of applying them to himself and all his troops; and they used to call the tax the bakt, that is to say that it was a sum levied at so much a head. And this went on until Heraclius had paid to the Muslims the greater part of his money; and many people died through the troubles which they had endured.

So when ten years were over of the rule of Heraclius together with the Colchian, who sought for the patriarch Benjamin, while he was fleeing from him from place to place, hiding himself in the fortified churches, the prince of the Muslims sent an army to Egypt, under one of his trusty companions, named Amr ibn Al-Asi, in the year 357 of Diocletian, the slayer of the martyrs. And this army of Islam came down into Egypt in great force, on the twelfth day of Baunah, which is the sixth of June, according to the months of the Romans.

Now the commander Amr had destroyed the fort, and burnt the boats with fire, and defeated the Romans, and taken possession of part of the country. For he had first arrived by the desert; and the horsemen took the road through the mountains, until they arrived at a fortress built of stone, between Upper Egypt and the Delta, called Babylon. So they pitched their tents there, until they were prepared to fight the Romans, and make war against them; and afterwards they named that place, I mean the fortress, in their language, Bablun Al-Fustat; and that is its name to the present day.

After fighting three battles with the Romans, the Muslims conquered them. So when the chief men of the city saw these things, they went to Amr, and received a certificate of security for the city, that it might not be plundered. This kind of treaty which Muhammad, the chief of the Arabs, taught them, they called the Law; and he says with regard to it: "As for the province of Egypt and any city that agrees with its inhabitants to pay the land-tax to you and to submit to your authority, make a treaty with them, and do them no injury. But plunder and take as prisoners those that will not consent to this and resist you." For this reason the Muslims kept their hands off the province and its inhabitants, but destroyed the nation of the Romans, and their general who was named Marianus. And those of the Romans who escaped fled to Alexandria, and shut its gates upon the Arabs, and fortified themselves within the city.

And in the year 360 of Diocletian, in the month of December, three years after Amr had taken possession of Memphis, the Muslims captured the city of Alexandria, and destroyed its walls, and burnt many churches with fire. And they burnt the church of Saint Mark, which was built by the sea, where his body was laid; and this was the place to which the father and patriarch, Peter the Martyr, went before his martyrdom, and blessed Saint Mark, and committed to him his reasonable flock, as he had received it. So they burnt this place and the monasteries around it....

When Amr took full possession of the city of Alexandria, and settled its affairs, that infidel, the governor of Alexandria, feared, he being both prefect and patriarch of the city under the Romans, that Amr would kill him; therefore he sucked a poisoned ring, and died on the spot. But Sanutius, the believing dux, made known to Amr the circumstances of that militant father, the patriarch Benjamin, and how he was a fugitive from the Romans, through fear of them. Then Amr, son of Al-Asi, wrote to the provinces of Egypt a letter, in which he said: "There is protection and security for the place where Benjamin, the patriarch of the Coptic Christians is, and peace from God; therefore let him come forth secure and tranquil, and administer the affairs of his Church, and the government of his nation." Therefore when the holy Benjamin heard this, he returned to Alexandria with great joy, clothed with the crown of patience and sore conflict which had befallen the orthodox people through their persecution by the heretics, after having been absent during thirteen years, ten of which were years of Heraclius, the misbelieving Roman, with the three years before the Muslims conquered Alexandria. When Benjamin appeared, the people and the whole city rejoiced, and made his arrival known to Sanutius, the dux who believed in Christ, who had settled with the commander Amr that the patriarch should return, and had received a safe-conduct from Amr for him. Thereupon Sanutius went to the commander and announced that the patriarch had arrived, and Amr gave orders that Benjamin should be brought before him with honour and veneration and love. And Amr, when he saw the patriarch, received him with respect, and said to his companions and private friends: "Verily in all the lands of which we have taken possession hitherto I have never seen a man of God like this man." For the Father Benjamin was beautiful of countenance, excellent in speech, discoursing with calmness and dignity.

Then Amr turned to him, and said to him: "Resume the government of all your churches and of your people, and administer their affairs. And if you will pray for me, that I may go to the West and to Pentapolis, and take possession of them, as I have of Egypt, and return to you in safety and speedily, I will do for you all that you shall ask of me." Then the holy Benjamin prayed for Amr, and pronounced an eloquent discourse, which made Amr and those present with him marvel, and which contained words of exhortation and much profit for those that heard him; and he revealed certain matters to Amr, and departed from his presence honoured and revered. And all that the blessed father said to the commander Amr, son of Al-Asi, he found true, and not a letter of it was unfulfilled.

Al-Baladhuri: The Conquest of Alexandria

'Amr kept his way until he arrived in Alexandria whose inhabitants he found ready to resist him, but the Copts in it preferred peace. Al-Mukaukis communicated with 'Amr and asked him for peace and a truce for a time; but 'Amr refused. Al-Mukaukis then ordered that the women stand on the wall with their faces turned towards the city, and that the men stand armed, with their faces towards the Moslems, thus hoping to scare them. 'Amr sent word, saying, "We see what you have done. It was not by mere numbers that we conquered those we have conquered. We have met your king Heraclius, and there befell him what has befallen him." Hearing this, al-Mukaukis said to his followers, "These people are telling the truth. They have chased our king from his kingdom as far as Constantinople. It is much more preferable, therefore, that we submit." His followers, however, spoke harshly to him and insisted on fighting. The Moslems fought fiercely against them and invested them for three months. At last, 'Amr reduced the city by the sword and plundered all that was in it, sparing its inhabitants of whom none was killed or taken captive. He reduced them to the position of dhimmis like the people of Alyunah. He communicated the news of the victory to 'Umar through Mu'awiyah ibn-Hudaij al-Kindi (later as-Sakuni) and sent with him the fifth.

The Greeks wrote to Constantine, son of Heraclius, who was their king at that time, telling him how few the Moslems in Alexandria were, and how humiliating the Greeks' condition was, and how they had to pay poll-tax. Constantine sent one of his men, called Manuwil, with three hundred ships full of fighters. Manuwil entered Alexandria and killed all the guard that was in it, with the exception of a few who by the use of subtle means took to flight and escaped. This took place in the year 25. Hearing the news, 'Amr set out at the head of 15,000 men and found the Greek fighters doing mischief in the Egyptian villages next to Alexandria. The Moslems met them and for one hour were subjected to a shower of arrows, during which they were covered by their shields. They then advanced boldly and the battle raged with great ferocity until the polytheists were routed; and nothing could divert or stop them before they reached Alexandria. Here they fortified themselves and set mangonels. 'Amr made a heavy assault, set the ballistae, and destroyed the walls of the city. He pressed the fight so hard until he entered the city by assault, killed the fathers and carried away the children as captives. Some of its Greek inhabitants left to join the Greeks somewhere else; and Allah's enemy, Manuwil, was killed. 'Amr and the Moslems destroyed the wall of Alexandria in pursuance of a vow that 'Amr had made to that effect, in case he reduced the city....'Amr ibn-al-Asi conquered Alexandria, and some Moslems took up their abode in it as a cavalry guard.

---

Source.

From: Sawirus ibn al-Muqaffa, History of the Patriarchs of the Coptic Church of Alexandria, trans. Basil Evetts, (Paris: Firmin-Didot, 1904), pt. I, ch. 1, from Patrologia Orientalis, Vol. I, pp. 489-497, reprinted in Deno John Geanakoplos, Byzantium: Church, Society, and Civilization Seen Through Contemporary Eyes, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), pp. 336-338;

Philip Hitti, trans., The Origins of the Islamic State, (New York: Columbia University Press, 1916), Vol. I, pp. 346-349, reprinted in Deno John Geanakoplos, Byzantium: Church, Society, and Civilization Seen Through Contemporary Eyes, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), pp. 338-339.

Internet History Sourcebooks Project