King Louis XVI needed money. His financial crisis forced the French monarch to reluctantly convene the Estates General in order to levy a new land tax that would hopefully solve his monetary woes. It had been 175 years since the last meeting of this deliberative body that included representatives of three Estates: the First comprised of the clergy, the Second comprised of the nobility and the Third comprised of the middle and lower classes.
An allegorical depiction of the Revolution
The Estates began their meeting at Versailles on May 5, 1789 and quickly entered into a power struggle. The Third Estate soon declared itself a "National Assembly" that was representative of the people. This new National Assembly expressed its desire to include the other two Estates in its deliberations but also made it clear that it was determined to move forward without them. Louis attempted to shut down the National Assembly, but on June 20 its members declared that they would not disband until they had written a new constitution for France.
The tension increased, exacerbated by massive crop failures that led to a shortage of food. In Paris, mobs filled the city's streets. The fear spread that the king would retaliate with force. On July 14 the mob stormed the Bastille to obtain arms. The attack launched the nation down a pathway that would eventually lead to the destruction of the monarchy and the execution of Louis XVI.
". . . in that instant a discharge from the Bastille killed four people."
Thomas Jefferson was America's minister to France in 1789. As tensions grew and violence erupted, Jefferson traveled to Versailles and Paris to observe events first-hand. He reported his experience in a series of letters to America's Secretary of State, John Jay. We join Jefferson's story as tensions escalate to violence on July 12:
"July 12
In the afternoon a body of about 100 German cavalry were advanced and drawn up in the Place Louis XV. and about 300 Swiss posted at a little distance in their rear. This drew people to that spot, who naturally formed themselves in front of the troops, at first merely to look at them. But as their numbers increased their indignation arose: they retired a few steps, posted themselves on and behind large piles of loose stone collected in that Place for a bridge adjacent to it, and attacked the horse with stones. The horse charged, but the advantageous position of the people, and the showers of stones obliged them to retire, and even to quit the field altogether, leaving one of their number on the ground. The Swiss in their rear were observed never to stir. This was the signal for universal insurrection, and this body of cavalry, to avoid being massacred, retired towards Versailles.
The people now armed themselves with such weapons as they could find in Armourer's shops and private houses, and with bludgeons, and were roaming all night through all parts of the city without any decided and practicable object.
July 13
The next day the States press on the king to send away the troops, to permit the Bourgeoisie of Paris to arm for the preservation of order in the city, and offer to send a deputation from their body to tranquillize them. He refuses all their propositions. A Committee of magistrates and electors of the city are appointed, by their bodies, to take upon them it's government.
The mob, now openly joined by the French guards, force the prisons of St. Lazare, release all the prisoners, and take a great store of corn, which they carry to the corn market. Here they get some arms, and the French guards begin to form and train them. The City committee determines to raise 48,000 Bourgeois, or rather to restrain their numbers to 48,000.
July 14
The "Tennis Court Oath."
Forced to meet on a tennis court,
the National Assembly vows to
continue meeting until they write
a new constitution. June 20, 1789On the 14th, they send one of their members (Monsieur de Corny, whom we knew in America) to the Hotel des Invalides to ask arms for their Garde Bourgeoise. He was followed by, or he found there, a great mob. The Governor of the Invalids came out and represented the impossibility of his delivering arms without the orders of those from whom he received them.
De Corney advised the people then to retire, retired himself, and the people took possession of the arms. It was remarkable that not only the Invalids themselves made no opposition, but that a body of 5000 foreign troops, encamped within 400 yards, never stirred.
Monsieur de Corny and five others were then sent to ask arms of Monsieur de Launai, Governor of the Bastille. They found a great collection of people already before the place, and they immediately planted a flag of truce, which was answered by a like flag hoisted on the parapet. The deputation prevailed on the people to fall back a little, advanced themselves to make their demand of the Governor, and in that instant a discharge from the Bastille killed 4. people of those nearest to the deputies. The deputies retired, the people rushed against the place, and almost in an instant were in possession of a fortification, defended by 100 men, of infinite strength, which in other times had stood several regular sieges and had never been taken. How they got in, has as yet been impossible to discover. Those, who pretend to have been of the party tell so many different stories as to destroy the credit of them all.
They took all the arms, discharged the prisoners and such of the garrison as were not killed in the first moment of fury, carried the Governor and Lieutenant governor to the Greve (the place of public execution) cut off their heads, and set them through the city in triumph to the Palais royal.
About the same instant, a treacherous correspondence having been discovered in Monsieur de Flesselles prevot des marchands, they seize him in the hotel de ville, where he was in the exercise of his office, and cut off his head.
These events carried imperfectly to Versailles were the subject of two successive deputations from the States to the King, to both of which he gave dry and hard answers, for it has transpired that it had been proposed and agitated in Council to seize on the principal members of the States general, to march the whole army down upon Paris and to suppress it's tumults by the sword. But at night the Duke de Liancourt forced his way into the king's bedchamber, and obliged him to hear a full and animated detail of the disasters of the day in Paris. He went to bed deeply impressed.
The decapitation of de Launai worked powerfully thro' the night on the whole Aristocratical party, insomuch that in the morning those of the greatest influence on the Count d'Artois represented to him the absolute necessity that the king should give up every thing to the states. This according well enough with the dispositions of the king, he went about 11 oclock, accompanied only by his brothers, to the States general, and there read to them a speech, in which he asked their interposition to re-establish order. . . Tho this be couched in terms of some caution, yet the manner in which it was delivered made it evident that it was meant as a surrender at discretion.
The storming of the Bastille
. . . The demolition of the Bastille was now ordered, and begun. A body of the Swiss guards, of the regiment of Ventimille, and the city horse guards join the people. The alarm at Versailles increases instead of abating. They believed that the Aristocrats of Paris were under pillage and carnage, that 150,000 men were in arms coming to Versailles to massacre the Royal family, the court, the ministers and all connected with them, their practices and principles.
The Aristocrats of the Nobles and Clergy in the States general vied with each other in declaring how sincerely they were converted to the justice of voting by persons, and how determined to go with the nation all it's lengths.
The foreign troops were ordered off instantly.
July 16
Every minister resigned . . . and that night and the next morning the Count d'Artois and a Monsieur de Montesson (a deputy) connected with him, Madame de Polignac, Madame de Guiche and the Count de Vaudreuil favorites of the queen, the Abbe de Vermont her confessor, the Prince of Conde and Duke de Bourbon, all fled, we know not whither.
The king came to Paris, leaving the queen in consternation for his return . . .the king's carriage was in the center, on each side of it the States general, in two ranks, afoot, at their head the Marquis de la Fayette as commander in chief, on horseback, and Bourgeois guards before and behind.
About 60,000 citizens of all forms and colours, armed with the muskets of the Bastille and Invalids as far as they would go, the rest with pistols, swords, pikes, pruning hooks, scythes &c. lined all the streets thro' which the procession passed, and, with the crowds of people in the streets, doors and windows, saluted them every where with cries of 'vive la nation.' But not a single 'vive Ie roi' was heard.
The king landed at the Hotel de ville. There, Monsieur Bailly presented and put into his hat the popular cockade, and addressed him. The king being unprepared and unable to answer, Bailly went to him, gathered from him some scraps of sentences, and made out an answer, which he delivered to the Audience as from the king.
On their return, the popular cries were 'vive le roi et la nation.' He was conducted by a garde Bourgeoise to his palace at Versailles, and thus concluded such an Amende honorable as no sovereign ever made and no people ever received."
References:
Jefferson's account appears in: Boyd, Julian (ed.), The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, vol 15 (1958); Hibbert, Christopher, The Days of the French Revolution (1981).The Beginning of the French Revolution, 1789
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."
Paris
10 August, midnight, in session
The 4th year of liberty, 1792The 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.
Louis XVI in better times Louis XVI, king of France, arrived in the wrong historical place at the wrong time and soon found himself overwhelmed by events beyond his control. Ascending the throne in 1774, Louis inherited a realm driven nearly bankrupt through the opulence of his predecessors Louis XIV and XV. After donning the crown, things only got worse. The economy spiraled downward (unemployment in Paris in 1788 is estimated at 50%), crops failed, the price of bread and other food soared. The people were not happy. To top it off, Louis had the misfortune to marry a foreigner, the Austrian Marie Antoinette. The anger of the French people, fueled by xenophobia, targeted Marie as a prime source of their problems.
In 1788, Louis was forced to reinstate France's National Assembly (the Estates-General) which quickly curtailed the king's powers. In July of the following year, the mobs of Paris stormed the hated prison at the Bastille. Feeling that power was shifting to their side, the mob forced the imprisonment of Louis and his family. Louis attempted escape in 1791 but was captured and returned to Paris. In 1792, the newly elected National Convention declared France a republic and brought Louis to trial for crimes against the people.
Procession to eternity
On January 20, 1793, the National Convention condemned Louis XVI to death, his execution scheduled for the next day. Louis spent that evening saying goodbye to his wife and children. The following day dawned cold and wet. Louis arose at five. At eight o'clock a guard of 1,200 horsemen arrived to escort the former king on a two-hour carriage ride to his place of execution. Accompanying Louis, at his invitation, was a priest, Henry Essex Edgeworth, an Englishman living in France. Edgeworth recorded the event and we join his narrative as he and the fated King enter the carriage to begin their journey:
"The King, finding himself seated in the carriage, where he could neither speak to me nor be spoken to without witness, kept a profound silence. I presented him with my breviary, the only book I had with me, and he seemed to accept it with pleasure: he appeared anxious that I should point out to him the psalms that were most suited to his situation, and he recited them attentively with me. The gendarmes, without speaking, seemed astonished and confounded at the tranquil piety of their monarch, to whom they doubtless never had before approached so near.
The procession lasted almost two hours; the streets were lined with citizens, all armed, some with pikes and some with guns, and the carriage was surrounded by a body of troops, formed of the most desperate people of Paris. As another precaution, they had placed before the horses a number of drums, intended to drown any noise or murmur in favour of the King; but how could they be heard? Nobody appeared either at the doors or windows, and in the street nothing was to be seen, but armed citizens - citizens, all rushing towards the commission of a crime, which perhaps they detested in their hearts.
The carriage proceeded thus in silence to the Place de Louis XV, and stopped in the middle of a large space that had been left round the scaffold: this space was surrounded with cannon, and beyond, an armed multitude extended as far as the eye could reach. As soon as the King perceived that the carriage stopped, he turned and whispered to me, 'We are arrived, if I mistake not.' My silence answered that we were. One of the guards came to open the carriage door, and the gendarmes would have jumped out, but the King stopped them, and leaning his arm on my knee, 'Gentlemen,' said he, with the tone of majesty, 'I recommend to you this good man; take care that after my death no insult be offered to him - I charge you to prevent it.'… As soon as the King had left the carriage, three guards surrounded him, and would have taken off his clothes, but he repulsed them with haughtiness- he undressed himself, untied his neckcloth, opened his shirt, and arranged it himself. The guards, whom the determined countenance of
"We are arrived,
if I mistake not."
Marie Antoinette, wife of
Louis and Queen of Francethe King had for a moment disconcerted, seemed to recover their audacity. They surrounded him again, and would have seized his hands. 'What are you attempting?' said the King, drawing back his hands. 'To bind you,' answered the wretches. 'To bind me,' said the King, with an indignant air. 'No! I shall never consent to that: do what you have been ordered, but you shall never bind me. . .'
The path leading to the scaffold was extremely rough and difficult to pass; the King was obliged to lean on my arm, and from the slowness with which he proceeded, I feared for a moment that his courage might fail; but what was my astonishment, when arrived at the last step, I felt that he suddenly let go my arm, and I saw him cross with a firm foot the breadth of the whole scaffold; silence, by his look alone, fifteen or twenty drums that were placed opposite to me; and in a voice so loud, that it must have been heard it the Pont Tournant, I heard him pronounce distinctly these memorable words: 'I die innocent of all the crimes laid to my charge; I Pardon those who have occasioned my death; and I pray to God that the blood you are going to shed may never be visited on France.'
Louis' head is shown to the crowd,
from a contemporary illustrationHe was proceeding, when a man on horseback, in the national uniform, and with a ferocious cry, ordered the drums to beat. Many voices were at the same time heard encouraging the executioners. They seemed reanimated themselves, in seizing with violence the most virtuous of Kings, they dragged him under the axe of the guillotine, which with one stroke severed his head from his body. All this passed in a moment. The youngest of the guards, who seemed about eighteen, immediately seized the head, and showed it to the people as he walked round the scaffold; he accompanied this monstrous ceremony with the most atrocious and indecent gestures. At first an awful silence prevailed; at length some cries of 'Vive la Republique!' were heard. By degrees the voices multiplied and in less than ten minutes this cry, a thousand times repeated became the universal shout of the multitude, and every hat was in the air."
References:
Cronin, Vincent, Louis and Antoinete (1975); Edgeworth, Henry in Thompson, J.M., English Witnesses of the French Revolution (1938, Memoirs originally published 1815).
By Jeremy Black | Published in History Today Volume: 62 Issue: 11 2012
Jeremy Black considers Hanoverian precedents for the wayward behaviour of royal younger brothers.
Duke of Cumberland seated on a bank with the Savoyard girl, his arm about her neck. The Duke's rival mistresses stand behind, and are vehemently jealous.
By historical standards the media verdict on the recent naked antics of Prince Harry was quite tame. There was no attempt to make political weather out of his behaviour nor any serious dent to royal reputation. The Hanoverians certainly put the Harry episode into perspective. The problems George I, George II and George III faced with their heirs were numerous and notorious, but their younger brothers were almost as bad.
George I had five brothers (and only one sister), but of these only two were still alive when he came to the throne in 1702. However, both Friedrich (1661-90) and Maximilian (1666-1726) turned against their father and elder brother by seeking foreign support in their effort to thwart the primogeniture that Ernst August, 1st Elector of Hanover, enforced for the benefit of his eldest son. With his conversion to Catholicism and siring of an illegitimate daughter, Maximilian would have offered the British press plenty of column inches but he lazily spent his time in foreign service. The youngest brother, Ernst August (1674-1728), lived in Germany as Prince-Bishop of Osnabrück, a position that gave him a revenue, although he was created Duke of York in 1716. He got some money from Britain but avoided scandal.
Due to his parents’ bad relations and eventual divorce, George II (r.1727-60) had fewer problems as he only had a sister, while his close marriage led to eight children, of whom five were girls and one a boy, who died as a baby. As a second son, William, Duke of Cumberland did his family military duty until defeated by the French at Hastenbeck in 1757. Outnumbered and outmanoeuvred, he subsequently signed the Convention of Klosterzeven, disbanding his army and leaving the French in control of Hanover. A livid George humiliated his son when he returned to London, leading the latter to resign all his military posts. The king changed his will, taking away a large legacy. He told the Duke of Newcastle ‘a scoundrel in England one day may be thought a good man in another. In Germany it is otherwise. I think like a German’.
George III (r. 1760-1820) had four brothers. Frederick (1750-65) died young but the other three, Edward, Duke of York (1739-67), William, Duke of Gloucester (1743-1805) and Henry, Duke of Cumberland (1745-90) all caused problems and, from the king’s perspective, displayed neither princely responsibility nor the necessary family solidarity. Thus Edward shared neither his brother’s religious beliefs (he was a Latitudinarian) nor his moral conduct. Freed from the burden but not the privileges of royal status, York was able to follow his own desires. Visiting Italy as a tourist, he enjoyed the company of attractive women and caused comment by appearing hand in hand with the artist Angela Serra at a reception in Genoa. George was closer to William, although the latter also visited Italy three times, largely in pursuit of female company. On his last visit he was accompanied by his family and his mistress, the beautiful Lady Almeria Carpenter, who was officially his wife’s lady-in-waiting.
Gloucester’s royal status made him a field marshal, but the king refused to let him or his brother Henry, an admiral, serve during the War of American Independence. George’s brothers, like his father, Frederick, Prince of Wales, and his eldest son, later George IV, suffered from the lack of a meaningful role.
Henry’s personal life received much public attention as the result of an affair with Harriet, Lady Grosvenor. Found guilty in 1770 of adultery, he was ordered to pay damages of £10,000, which obliged him to borrow from a reluctant George. Henry’s clandestine marriage in 1771 to a commoner (Anne Luttrell, daughter of the 1st Earl of Carhampton and a widow) further infuriated George, partly because, under German law, any children from such a union would be unable to inherit Hanover. The king was also concerned that such a step might threaten civil war, claiming that the Wars of the Roses owed much to the intermarriage of crown and nobility.
As Henry resisted his brother’s pressure to disavow the marriage, the king barred him from his presence. George also sponsored the Royal Marriages Act of 1772, under which descendants of George II (with the exception of the descendants of princesses who married abroad) could only marry before the age of 25 with royal permission. Thereafter they had to give a year’s notice to the Privy Council. This led William to reveal that he had married Maria, the widow of the 2nd Earl Waldegrave. He was banned from court. Neither brother was received again until 1780, when the offer of help during the Gordon Riots changed the king’s attitude. Their wives, however, were never received.
Henry also introduced the future George IV to gambling and encouraged him in drinking and womanising; but the antics of George’s sons are another story altogether.
Jeremy Black is the author of George III (Yale, 2006)
By John Lynch | Published in Volume: 33 Issue: 7 1983
What role did Simon Bolivar play in the history of Venezuela's declaration of independence from Spain? Here John Lynch argues that the history of Spanish American independence is incomprehensible without him.
Simon Bolivar Simon Bolivar lived a short but comprehensive life. History records his extraordinary versatility. He was a revolutionary who freed six countries, an intellectual who argued the problems of national liberation, a general who fought a war of unremitting violence. He inspired extremes of devotion and detestation. Many Spanish Americans wanted him to be their dictator, their king; but some denounced him as a traitor, and others tried to assassinate him. Subsequent generations completed the apotheosis, and continued the controversy. He has a country, a city, and a currency named after him; he is honoured throughout the Americas in hundreds of statues and streets; his life is the subject of endless writings. To liberal historians he was a fighter against tyranny. Marxists interpret him as the leader of a bourgeois revolution. Modern revolutionaries see him as a reformist who secured political change but left the colonial heritage of his continent virtually intact. There are others who question the very importance of his career and reject the cult of the hero. For them the meaning of liberation is to be found in the study of economic structures, social groups, and the international conjuncture, not in heroic deeds or the lives of liberators. Yet the history of Spanish American independence is incomprehensible without Bolivar. So universal was his career that he intervened at every level of the revolution, in most of its phases, and in many parts of the continent. He was moreover an exceptionally complex man, this liberator who scorned liberalism, soldier who disparaged militarism, republican who admired monarchy. To study Bolivar is to study a rare and original character, whose mind and will were no less factors in historical change than were the economic and social structures of the time.
Bolivar was born, on July 24th, 1783, to wealth and privilege, the son of an old creole (Spanish American) family of Venezuela, owners of plantations, mines, houses in Caracas, and numerous slaves. It was the colonial élite for whom he spoke when he denounced the tyranny of Spain, the servitude of Spanish Americans, their role as primary producers and consumers of Spanish goods. 'Do you know what our future was?' he asked in the Jamaica Letter . 'We were mere consumers, confined to the cultivation of indigo, grain, coffee, sugar, cacao and cotton raising cattle on the empty plains; hunting wild game in the wilderness; mining in the earth to produce gold for the insatiable greed of Spain'. But there was wealth for some, and it could be measured by the sequestrations suffered by the creole insurgents after 1810. Bolivar's losses amounted to 80,000 pesos, the largest single confiscation made by the royalists. His total wealth probably amounted to at least 200,000 pesos, though at the end of his life he had little more than the unrealised assets of the Aroa copper mines.
Bolivar stood apart from his class in ideas, values and vision. Who else would be found in the midst of a campaign swinging in a hammock, reading the French philosophers? His liberal education, wide reading, and travels in Europe had broadened his horizons and opened his mind to the political thinkers of France and Britain. He read deeply in the works of Hobbes and Spinoza, Holbach and Hume; and the thought of Montesquieu and Rousseau left its imprint firmly on him and gave him a life-long devotion to reason, freedom and progress. But he was not a slave of the Enlightenment. British political virtues also attracted him. In his Angostura Address (1819) he recommended the British constitution as 'the most worthy to serve as a model for those who desire to enjoy the rights of man and all political happiness compatible with our fragile nature'. But he also affirmed his conviction that American constitutions must conform to American traditions, beliefs and conditions.
His basic aim was liberty, which he described as "the only object worth the sacrifice of man's life'. For Bolivar liberty did not simply mean freedom from the absolutist state of the eighteenth century, as it did for the Enlightenment, but freedom from a colonial power, to be followed by true independence under a liberal constitution. And with liberty he wanted equality – that is, legal equality – for all men, whatever their class, creed or colour. In principle he was a democrat and he believed that governments should be responsible to the people. 'Only the majority is sovereign', he wrote; 'he who takes the place of the people is a tyrant and his power is usurpation'. But Bolivar was not so idealistic as to imagine that South America was ready for pure democracy, or that the law could annul the inequalities imposed by nature and society. He spent his whole political life developing and modifying his principles, seeking the elusive mean between democracy and authority. In Bolivar the realist and idealist dwelt in uneasy rivalry.
Bolivar was a talented soldier, though his talents differed from those of his more professional contemporaries, Napoleon and Wellington. This was one of the cruellest of colonial wars, and Bolivar the most ruthless of all the liberators. In his view the enemy was fighting an undeclared war of extermination, killing prisoners whose only crime was that they fought for freedom. He believed that the patriots were at a disadvantage and could no longer wage a civilised war against the Spaniards. After the collapse of the First Republic he resolved upon a new policy – war to the death. On June 15th, 1813, at Trujillo, he issued his celebrated decree: 'Spaniards and Canarians, depend upon it, you will die even if you are simply neutral, unless you actively espouse the liberation of America. Americans, you will be spared, even when you are guilty'. The exception was significant. This was a civil war, in which Americans predominated on both sides. And Bolivar could not bring himself to wage war to the death against his own people, even though they might be royalists. The Trujillo decree ruthlessly distinguished between Spaniards and Americans; it sought to cut through categories like royalism and republicanism and to make this a war between nations, between Spain and America.
As a soldier Bolivar displayed not only great implacability but also immense powers of endurance; he was there at the beginning of the war of independence, and fifteen years later, in 1824, when the last Spanish viceroy surrendered, he was still in command. His aide and chronicler, General Daniel F. O'Leary, was struck by the contrast between his slight physique and his great stamina: 'After a day's march, enough to exhaust the most robust man, I have seen him work five or six hours, or dance as long'. But Bolivar was distinguished above all by the magic of his leadership. This was never more true than in 1817, a dark year for the revolution. The First Republic had capitulated in 1812; the Second had been destroyed by royalist caudillos; a Spanish expedition under General Pablo Morillo, a veteran of the Peninsular War, completed the triumph of the counter-revolution. After two years exile it was with the greatest difficulty that Bolivar managed to regain a foothold on the mainland. He led his men south into Guayana in a new and visionary strategy, to base the revolution deep in the hinterland, among the great plains of the Orinoco, a barrier against defeat, a springboard for attack, and a source of wealth in their reserves of livestock.
But now Bolivar had to fight against the enemy within as well as the royalists without. The wars of independence in northern South America were fought with two armies, regular forces and local guerrillas, movements which were part allies, part rivals. A soldier had to be a politician, and Bolivar was no exception: he sought power as well as freedom, he wanted to rule as well as to liberate. He had to fight to impose unity on the revolution and to broaden its social base, two aims which from our vantage point we can see were to become permanent challenges to Latin American leaders. The caudillos, or regional chieftains, of the revolution, Santiago Marino, Francisco Bermudez and Manuel Piar, were reluctant to recognise the command of Bolivar, whose grandiose plans had collapsed while they kept resistance alive in the east. General Piar posed the greatest threat, partly because of his military ability, and partly because, a pardo (mulatto) himself, he sought to mobilise the coloured population and to make it his power base. He was hunted down, brought to trial and shot, 'for proclaiming the odious principles of race war, for inciting civil war, and for encouraging anarchy'. Bolivar calculated carefully in executing Piar. As O'Leary observed, 'General Marino certainly deserved the same treatment as Piar, but he was less dangerous, and one example was sufficient'. The danger lay in black power.
The republic could no longer ignore race problems or suppress popular forces. Bolivar himself, the most daring and idealistic of the creoles, had long seen the need to fuse the creole, pardo and slave rebellions into one great movement. He considered himself free of race prejudice and fought for liberty and equality. The revolution would correct the imbalance imposed by nature and colonialism: previously 'the whites, by virtue of talent, merit and fortune, monopolised everything. The pardos, degraded to the most humiliating condition, had nothing. But the revolution has granted them every privilege, every right, every advantage'. So Bolivar denounced Piar for inciting race war at a time when equality was already being granted to the coloured people. From 1815-16 growing numbers of pardos were incorporated into the army of liberation: they were needed to fill the gaps in the patriot ranks left by creole casualties and desertions, and they themselves were imbued with greater expectations from wartime social mobility. After this the traditional structure of the republican army was transformed, and while the creoles retained military and political control, the pardos (who in Venezuela were the mass of the population) had greater opportunities for advance to higher ranks and offices. To this extent Bolivar was right: the people had more to gain from the republican cause. But what had the slaves to gain?
Bolivar was an abolitionist. He regarded it as 'madness that a revolution for liberty should try to maintain slavery', and in one of his frankest speeches he called upon the Congress of Angostura in 1819 to remove from Venezuela 'the dark mantle of barbarous and profane slavery'. But Bolivar was also a military leader who needed recruits, and during the war he tied emancipation to conscription, offering slaves manumission in return for military service. The response was negative. The Venezuelan aristocracy did not embrace the republican cause in order to divest themselves of property, while the slaves were not interested in fighting the creole's war. Nevertheless the policy of Bolivar helped to neutralise the slaves; they no longer actively fought the republic, as they had done in 1812-14, and they gradually disappeared from the war as an autonomous movement. Meanwhile, Bolivar wanted the support not only of the pardos and slaves but also of a third group, the llaneros , the plainsmen of south-west Venezuela.
There, in the Apure valley, José Antonio Paez, the most powerful of all the caudillos, had his own base and his own army. Paez was the complete antithesis of Bolivar; uneducated, illiterate, yet possessed of natural gifts of leadership, he had risen through the ranks to become absolute lord of the plains and a future contender for power. His llanero followers were ferocious horsemen, primitive and predatory, who responded to no ideology, only to plunder and the promise of land. Paez fashioned them into a savage yet disciplined lancer force, and accepting that only Bolivar could integrate the disparate regional forces into one movement, he recognised the sovereignty of Bolivar and in February 1818 contributed a thousand cavalry to a joint force of over four thousand. By now, therefore, Bolivar had achieved unity of command amidst diversity of forces. There was one further requirement, foreign aid.
In 1817 the Venezuelan representative in London, Luis Lopez Mendez, was asked by Bolivar to recruit a British expeditionary force to join the patriot army. Over 6,000 volunteers left British ports for South America during the next two years, together with ships, sailors and great quantities of arms and munitions. These men formed the nucleus of the British Legion and were regarded by Bolivar as vital reinforcements, while the rifles, artillery and other military equipment, provided on credit by British merchants, were no less urgent. Bolivar was later to describe these volunteers as 'the saviours' of his country, and with equal generosity to say that the true Liberator had been Lopez Mendez, 7 because without the arms and men sent from England the campaign of 1819 could not have been won. The truth is that without the strategic sense of Bolivar the campaign would not have been conceived.
He decided to take the revolution westwards and to liberate New Granada. In Venezuela the republic had reached an impasse and found it impossible to crush the royalists. To switch the theatre of war from one country to another would have a dazzling effect and constitute in itself a rare moral victory. Bolivar could lure Morillo from Venezuela and, if the operation were successful, return to his homeland from a position of strength and with greater striking power. So he invaded New Granada. In an agonising march, when a quarter of his army and many of the British volunteers perished, he led his forces during the rainy season through, the vast waterlogged plains of Casanare, across the Andes at great altitude, and into the heart of enemy territory, where he defeated the astonished Spaniards at the battle of Boyaca.
Other victories followed, first in Venezuela itself, where at the battle of Carabobo (1821) he brought all the caudillo forces together into one grand army and where the British Legion won his special praise. He then moved south to take the revolution to Ecuador and Peru, and to link up with the movement emanating from the southern cone. By now he had assembled a truly American army drawn from many parts of the continent, its incomparable cavalry led by the llaneros of Venezuela, its infantry recruited in Colombia and Peru and reinforced still by the depleted British units. The leadership of Bolivar and the planning of his favourite commander, General Sucre, met in happy collaboration for their last decisive campaign high in the Peruvian sierra. 'They destroyed the remnants of Spanish power first at Ayacucho (1824), and finally in Upper Peru. Together Bolivar and Sucre entered Potosi, where they climbed the legendary silver mountain and drank to the American revolution.
Bolivar gave his name to the new state of Bolivia and he drafted its constitution. In the later years of his life he was haunted by the spectre of anarchy in America. The failure of the First Republic he attributed to federalism and weak government. The collapse of the Second Republic he blamed on disunity and inexperience. He then worked with the caudillos and their lawless followers to revive the revolution. After 1819 he denounced lawyers, legislators and liberals. In 1826 he identified 'two monstrous enemies' in the speech presenting his draft constitution to the Bolivian Congress. 'Tyranny and anarchy constitute an immense sea of oppression encircling a tiny island of freedom.' Spanish Americans, he lamented, were "seduced by freedom', each person wanting absolute power for himself and refusing any subordination. This led to civilian factions, military risings, and provincial rebellions. It was in this frame of mind that he drafted the Bolivian constitution.
His lifelong search for a political mean now veered towards strong government. The president, in this constitution, was appointed by the legislature for life and had the right to appoint his successor; this Bolivar regarded as 'the most sublime inspiration of republican ideas', the president being 'the sun which, fixed in its orbit, imparts life to the universe'. Thus 'elections would be avoided, which are the greatest scourge of republics and produce only anarchy'. The rest of the constitution was not devoid of liberal details. It provided for civil rights – liberty, equality, security and property – and for a strong, independent judicial power. It abolished social privileges, and it declared the slaves free. Some observers were genuinely impressed. The British consul in Lima believed that it was 'founded apparently on the basis of the British constitution', allowing 'useful liberty' but 'obviating any rnischievous excess of popular power'. But this constitution was branded by its executive power, by the life president with right to choose his successor. It was this which outraged many Americans, conservatives as well as liberals. The political career of Bolivar himself, moreover, took a similar path in Colombia, as he moved from president to dictator. This was his tragedy. In spite of his preference for a political over a military solution, in spite of his long search for constitutional forms, he fell back in the end on personal authority, ruling through a dictatorship and co-opting the caudillos into a system which appealed to their own instincts on government. In 1828-30 Bolivar ruled alone in Colombia, the only stable thing in a world in turmoil. Yet he never deserted his original .ideals of liberty and equality. Rather he put strong government at the service of reform a synthesis incomprehensible to the liberals of his time but more understood in our own day, when powerful presidential government and one-party states are regarded as appropriate, or at least inevitable, constitutional forms for new and developing nations.
Bolivar entered world history as one of the first modern leaders of a national liberation movement. Yet he himself was not aggressively nationalist, either towards neighbouring American countries or towards outside powers. His ambition was to unite rather than divide the Spanish American peoples. He created the great state of Colombia, comprising Venezuela, New Granada and Ecuador. He then sought to unite this with Peru and Bolivia in a Federation of the Andes. And he dreamed of the 'great day of America' when its peoples would come together in a league of nations. These ideas, of course, operated at different levels of planning and possibility. His ideal of a greater Colombia, which existed for about a decade, was not a denial of national identity but an affirmation of it. He was trying to establish the appropriate size of a viable nation, seeking unity as a means to national strength and economic sufficiency. Unity would ensure peace and well-being as opposed to the anarchy of local caudillo rule, what he called 'minigovernments'. And unity would earn greater respect from other nations, from Britain and the United States. In Bolivar's view foreign indifference towards Latin American independence was a consequence of the proliferation of tiny sovereignties, squabbling among themselves.
It was a losing battle. Bolivar came to realise that the creation of a greater Colombia had been premature, and as the heroic age of Americanism passed, he became one of the many victims of national awareness and national rivalries, denounced as a traitor in Venezuela and a foreigner in New Granada. He could no longer ignore the forces of separatism; the immense distances, the scanty population, the poor record of the central government, the survival of powerful local caudillos, such as Paez in Venezuela, who could express their ambition on a regional scale if not at the centre, all these were factors of division and dissension. And these were his thoughts when he left Peru for Colombia in September 1826, to come to the rescue of his own creation: 'I have too many problems in my native land, which I have long neglected for other countries in America . I intend to do all the good I can for Venezuela without attempting anything further'. But it was too late and Venezuela was already seceding from the union.
While Bolivar abandoned his Pan Americanism and reverted to a more nationalist position, there was little sign in his thought of economic nationalism or of that resentment against foreign penetration which later generations felt. While he rejected the Spanish colonial monopoly, he welcomed foreigners who subscribed to open trade and who brought much needed manufactured goods and entrepreneurial skills. He was always friendly towards Britain. 'Politically', he wrote, 'alliance with Great Britain would be a greater victory than Ayacucho, and if we procure it you may be certain that our future happiness is assured. The advantages that will result for Colombia if we ally ourselves with that mistress of the universe are incalculable'. The policy was one of self-interest rather than dependence; it expressed the anxiety of a young and weak state to acquire a protector – and a liberal protector – against the power of Spain and the Holy Alliance. Britain provided one of Bolivar's basic requirements, namely diplomatic, and in the ultimate analysis naval, protection against counter-revolution from Europe. 'America will never forget', he said, 'that Mr. Canning caused her rights to be respected'.
The Liberator was also a reformer, and as he sought to establish the political framework of the revolution, so he struggled to broaden its social base. He stood for equality as well as liberty, and he insisted on ending racial discrimination, at least before the law. The slave trade was abolished in Venezuela in 1811, but slavery endured. Bolivar set an example. He liberated his own slaves, first on condition of military service in 1814, when about fifteen accepted, and then unconditionally in 1821 after the liberation of Venezuela, when over a hundred profited. And he repeatedly pressed congress to decree abolition. He argued that the creole rulers and property-owners must accept the implications of independence, that the example of freedom was 'insistent and compelling', and that the republicans 'must triumph by the road of revolution and no other'. The post-war Congress of Cucuta passed a complex law of manumission, but it lacked teeth and also the funds to pay compensation. All over Spanish America the chronology of abolition tended to be determined not by principles but by the role of slavery in any given economy. Where slavery was significant or constituted an important property right, so it survived (in Venezuela to 1854), and Bolivar fought a lone battle.
Land and labour remained under the control of the great proprietors. Bolivar was aware of the agrarian structure, and he wanted to distribute land confiscated from the royalists to the republican soldiers, whom he regarded as the people in arms. On October 10th, 1817, he issued the 'law on the distribution of national property among the soldiers', the first of a number of such decrees. The scheme was confined to those who fought in the hardest years, 1816-19, and the intention, as Bolivar put it, was 'to make of each soldier a property-owning citizen'. Strictly speaking it was not a bonus but a basic payment to men who had not received a regular wage; and it was graded according to rank. But Bolivar's plans were frustrated by the combined action of legislators and officers. Congress decreed that the soldiers be paid not in actual land but in bonos , vouchers entitling the holder to receive national land at a vague post-war date. Ignorant and impoverished soldiers were easy prey: the bonos were bought up by officers and civilian speculators at ridiculous prices, and in this way most of the soldiers, including thellaneros , were defrauded of their right to land. The injustice outraged the Liberator and he protested to congress, but in vain. Yet this was not his last word on agrarian problems.
Bolivar also sought to give land to the Peruvian Indians in individual ownership. 'The poor Indians', he declared, 'are truly in a state of lamentable depression. I intend to help them all I can, first as a matter of humanity, second because it is their right'. But good intentions were not enough. In breaking up the Indian communities and re-distributing their lands, liberal reforms of this kind exposed the Indians to pressure from estate owners, who took their land and demanded their labour. Bolivar decreed a further measure of land reform, in Bolivia in 1825; the aim was to distribute state land, preferably among 'the natives and those who have offered and suffered much in the cause of independence'. But the reform was sabotaged by the Bolivian ruling class, who regarded a free and landed peasantry as a threat to their dependent labour supply.
'To understand revolutions and their participants', wrote Bolivar, 'we must observe them at close range and judge them at great distance'. History may judge that the Liberator was to some degree a prisoner of his environment. He could not push the creole élite too far along the path of reform for fear of a backlash, in which independence itself might be jeopardised. Where he differed from his contemporaries was in his awareness of the true limitations of independence, and in his acute perception of the socio-racial tensions of the time 'A great volcano lies at our feet. Who shall restrain the oppressed classes!' Slavery will break its yoke, each racial group will seek mastery'. In 1828, in a mood of deep pessimism, he described the enduring polarisation of Spanish American society between the privileged few and the deprived many:
In Colombia there is an aristocracy of rank, office and wealth, equivalent by its influence, its pretensions and its pressure on the people, to the most despotic aristocracy of titles and birth in Europe. Included in the ranks of this aristocracy are the clergy, professional groups, lawyers, the military and the rich. In spite of all their liberalism, they prefer to regard the lower classes as their perpetual serfs.
Two years later, as anarchy and violence swept over the new states, he declared his bitter disappointment at the achievements of the revolution: 'Independence is the only benefit we have gained, at the cost of everything else'. Convinced that America was ungovernable, and mortally ill from tuberculosis, he left Bogota to make his way to the coast and exile. He died near Santa Marta on December 17th, 1830, in his forty-seventh year, ‘his last moments', recorded O'Leary, 'the last embers of an expiring volcano, the dust of the Andes still on his garments'.
John Lynch is Director of the Institute of Latin American Studies and Professor of Latin American History at the University of London.
Further reading:
- Vicente Lecuna and Harold A. Bierck (eds) Selected Writings of Bolivar (2 vols, New York, 1951)
- Bolivar and the War of Independence. Memorias del General Daniel Florencio O'Leary ed. Robert F. McNerney (Austin, 1970)
- Gerhard Masur, Simon Bolivar (Alburquerque, 1948)
- J.J. Salcedo-Bastardo, Bolivar. A Continent and its Destiny (Richmond, 1978)
- John Lynch, The Spanish American Revolutions 1808-1826 (London, 1973)
- For recent appraisals, see the collection of articles in Hispanic American Historical Review 63:1 (Feb 1983)
In intelligence history, the "Great Game" described a complex rivalry—characterized by wars, assassinations, and espionage conspiracies—between Britain and Russia for control of Central Asia and the Near East.
In many critical facets, the mentality of the Great Game foreshadowed that of the Cold War and remains an important factor in world geopolitics at the dawn of the twenty-first century. The Soviet Union's incursion into Afghanistan in 1979 prompted the United States to support the Mujahedin throughout the 1980s. Ultimately, during the coursings of shifting political priorities, the United States formed and then broke ties with a number of factions—including Mujahedin elements that eventually found their way into the Taliban regime (deposed by the United States in 2002) and the al-Qaeda terrorist organization.
The deep suspicion and resentment that many of the Islamic peoples of Iran, Chechnya, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and neighboring regions now harbor against Russia, Britain, and more recently the United States, may in part be explained by the region's experience with—and resistance to—the imperialism of the Great Game.
The "Tournament of Shadows." The main friction points were the Black Sea, the Baltic regions, Persia, Afghanistan, Kashmir, the Punjab, and the steppes and deserts between the Caspian Sea and China. The Russians called this extended intrigue the "Tournament of Shadows," a term coined by Count Karl Robert Nesselrode (1780–1862), but in the West it was known as the "Great Game," apparently the coinage of Arthur Conolly (1807–1842), a British military diplomat and spy against Russia in Persia, the Caucasus, and the Himalayas from 1829 until Nasrullah Khan, emir of Bokhara (reigned 18261–1860), beheaded him in 1842.
In the mid-nineteenth century the two greatest world powers were Britain under Queen Victoria (1819–1901) and Russia under Czars Nicholas I (1796–1855), Alexander II (1818–1881), and Alexander III (1845–1894). This was true despite the acknowledged naval superiority of France over Russia. Russia was jealous of Britain's conquest of India and ascendancy over France since the end of the Napoleonic Wars. Russia was especially worried that British expansion along the northwest frontier of India would eventually threaten its own borders and thwart its longstanding quest for the warm-water port it needed to enhance both its navy and its merchant fleet.
From 1804 to 1864 the czars gained territory between the Black and Caspian Seas and from 1824 to 1895 they vigorously expanded west of the Caspian Sea into Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan, threatening China as well as the Ottoman Empire, Persia, Afghanistan, and India. This rapid and steady expansion of the Russian Empire into Central Asia alarmed the British, but there was little they could do about it. They soon began sending spies among native populations to learn of Russian intentions and to forge alliances against possible Russian incursions.
The earliest sortie of the Great Game was the expedition of Henry Eldred Pottinger (1789–1856) and Charles Christie (d. 1812) from Bombay through Baluchistan to Herat in 1810. Their mission was to spy out possible overland routes by which Russia might invade India. Meanwhile John Malcolm (1769–1833) was negotiating with Persia to prevent any such attack. John Macdonald Kinneir (1782–1830) analyzed these routes and published his results in A Geographical Memoir of the Persian Empire (1813). Similar probes by both the Russians and British, such as the journey of Nikolai Nikolaevich Muraviev (1794?–1866) to Khiva in 1819 and that of William Moorcroft (1767–1825) to Bokhara in 1820, soon became common.
The exploits of General Alexis Yermolov (1772–1861), the Russo-Persian War (1827–1828), and the Russo-Turkish War (1828–1829) all further aroused British suspicion that Russia might have designs on India via Persia. Colonel George de Lacy Evans (1787–1870) galvanized these nascent fears with two pamphlets, On the Designs of Russia (1828) and On the Practicability of an Invasion of India (1829). British spies and military advisers actively helped Persian Prince Abbas Mirza (1783–1833) against Russia in the 1820s.
Evidence is strong, but proof remains absent, that Russian spies fomented unrest among the various native populations of the Indian subcontinent and surrounding lands so that they would arise against the British. Chief among these conflicts were the two Anglo-Afghan Wars (1839–1842 and 1878–1880), the two Anglo-Sikh Wars (1845–1846 and 1848–1849), and the Indian Mutiny (1857–1858).
The Royal Geographical Society was founded in 1830 and the Imperial Russian Geographical Society in 1845. By mid-century both were fronts for spying expeditions in Asia. Among the earliest of these missions were the journeys of Alexander Burnes (1805–1841) to the Punjab in 1831 and to Bokhara in 1832. John McNeill (1795–1883), a British diplomat in Tehran, published anonymously in 1836 The Progress and Present Position of Russia in the East , which bolstered British rationale for keeping a sizeable network of spies in Central Asia.
In the 1830s Conolly was one of the busiest of these "explorers." He was a religious zealot who believed it was Britain's duty to civilize Islamic Central Asia by converting its natives to Christianity. As such, he was a typical hero of Victorian imperialism and "muscular Christianity." The emir of Bokhara would have none of that, and tortured him and Charles Stoddart (1806–1842) in a pit for several months before executing them. The more successful British operatives, such as Burnes, had greater respect for native culture.
On the northwest frontier of India, the British had a staunch ally in Sikh ruler Ranjit Singh (1780–1839), against whom Dost Mohammed (1791–1863), emir of Afghanistan, sought help from Russia. Afghanistan in the 1830s became a diplomatic nightmare for Britain, as the colonial government in Calcutta sought to widen the buffer between India and Russia in this crucial region. Soldiers of fortune complicated the mix, such as the Italian adventurer Paolo di Avitabile (1791–1850), who ruled Peshawar for the British from 1835 to 1843. In 1837 Henry Rawlinson (1810–1895), en route from Tehran to Herat, happened upon a Russian delegation led by Yan Vitkevitch (d. 1838), headed toward Kabul. The rivals uneasily backed off from each other. Subsequently Vitkevitch was partially successful in sowing anti-British feelings among Dost Mohammed and several other Afghan leaders.
Burnes became the British envoy to Afghanistan in 1836, headquartered in Kabul. Eldred Pottinger (1811–1843) helped the Afghans defend Herat against Russia and Persia in 1837. These two skilled operatives might have been more successful if Burnes had not been placed under the command of Conolly's cousin, William Macnaghten (1793–1841), whose critics described him as "ignorant and tactless." Increasingly distrustful of Dost Mohammed, the British plotted to install Shah Shujah (1780–1842) as puppet ruler of Afghanistan. Macnaghten's bungling prompted the Afghans to rise up and murder Burnes. Macnaghten himself, perhaps the victim of an elaborate plot of entrapment, was murdered by Mohammed Akbar Khan (1818–1847), son of Dost Mohammed, as summary justice for being caught in the act of double dealing with Afghan tribal leaders. The incompetent General William Elphinstone (1782–1842) allowed nearly his entire command to be massacred while retreating from Kabul to Jalalabad.
Besides Kabul, Bokhara, and Herat, several other cities attracted both Russian and British interest, notably Khiva, Khokand, Kashgar, Merv, and Kandahar. James Abbott (1807–1896) journeyed from Herat to Khiva in 1839 and 1840. In 1840 Richmond Campbell Shakespear (1812–1861) persuaded Allah Quli (d. 1842), Khan of Khiva, to free his Russian slaves, probably as much to incite insurrection and destablize the region as to make a diplomatic or humanitarian gesture.
Count Nikolai Pavlovich Ignatiev (1832–1908) was the leading Russian spymaster in the Great Game. After a series of successful diplomatic missions to China, he served as ambassador to the Ottoman Empire from 1864 to 1877. Utterly ruthless and with keen intuitions about military strategy, he sparked clandestine anti-British operations in India before the mutiny and throughout Central Asia for most of the rest of his career.
In the 1850s France and Britain were both anxious to bolster the sagging Ottoman Empire and thus prevent Russia from gaining unrestricted access to the Mediterranean Sea through the Dardanelles, the Sea of Marmara, and the Bosporus. Britain knew that Russia's main objective was Constantinople, not Calcutta, but conducted its foreign policy as if Russia desired both. Thus the Crimean War could be seen as part of the Great Game, because it served to divert Russia's attention from India for a while.
Meanwhile the British worked hard, especially in the wake of the Indian Mutiny, to rebuild alliances with native Asian leaders. These efforts were mostly successful, even though the native rank and file scarcely trusted the British again. Because Persia was allied with Russia, Britain applauded when Dost Mohammed recaptured Herat from the Persians in 1863. Sher Ali (1825–1879), another son of Dost Mohammed, was emir of Afghanistan from 1863 until his death. At first he favored the British, but his gradual shift toward Russia prompted the Second Anglo-Afghan War. The British replaced him with his nephew, Abdur Rahman (1844–1901).
By 1865, Yakub Beg (1820–1877) in Kashgar was the main potentate between China and Russia. Robert Barkley Shaw (1839–1879) and George J. W. Hayward (1840?–1870) made separate trips to Kashgar in 1868, ostensibly to "survey," but really to try to create a British alliance with Yakub Beg. The Russians made similar overtures, but also sent troops to the region under Konstantin Kaufman (1818–1882). Francis Younghusband (1863–1942) led several expeditions through western China, finally entering Lhasa, Tibet, in 1904, ahead of the Russians.
The British grew bolder. Frederick Gustavus Burnaby (1842–1885) dared to travel from St. Petersburg itself to Khiva in 1876. James Thomas Walker (1826–1896), surveyor general of India, ordered more spying expeditions, as did the Russians. By the late 1880s, Britain clearly had the diplomatic advantage in the regions of Central Asia that Russia had not already annexed.
Russian power declined under Czar Nicholas II (1868–1918) in the first decade of the twentieth century. In August, 1907, the Anglo-Russian Convention in St. Petersburg formally ended the Great Game, although the posturing and espionage continued.
█ FURTHER READING:
BOOKS:
Edwardes, Michael. Playing the Great Game: A Victorian Cold War. London: Hamish Hamilton, 1975.
Hopkirk, Peter. The Great Game: The Struggle for Empire in Central Asia. New York: Kodansha International, 1994.
Ingram, Edward. The Beginning of the Great Game in Asia: 1828–1834. Oxford: Clarendon, 1979.
James, Lawrence. Raj: The Making and Unmaking of British India. New York: St. Martin's Griffin, 1997.
Khan, Munawwar. Anglo-Afghan Relations, 1798–1878: A Chapter in the Great Game in Central Asia. Khyber Bazar-Peshawar: University Book Agency, 1963.
Meyer, Karl Ernest, and Shareen Blair Brysac. Tournament of Shadows: The Great Game and the Race for Empire in Central Asia. Washington, D.C.: Counterpoint, 1999.
Story and Photos By Dana Huntley
Published Online: November 18, 2011
Rev. Samuel Wesley was rector of St. Andrews Church for almost 40 years. After his death in 1735, Wesley was buried in a tomb near the south porch.
Sometimes the tides of history swell from quiet waters
Often it feels as if history is the monopoly of politicians, monarchs and military men. Understandably enough, they do seem to get the headlines. In truth, we know that the larger tides that change social and intellectual history sometimes swell from quieter waters. One of those tides swept through 18th-century England and around the world, and began in the small Lincolnshire market town of Epworth with two brothers, John and Charles Wesley. Today, visitors from across the globe make their way to Epworth to follow the Wesley Trail about the quiet town.
The brothers' father, Rev. Samuel Wesley, came to Epworth in 1695 as the Rector of St. Andrews Church with his wife Susanna and the first four of their 19 children (only 10 of whom survived infancy). Both children of prominent Dissenting families, Samuel and Susanna had each made their choice to live and minister in the established Church of England. Samuel was to remain at St. Andrews until his death in 1735; he was buried in a table tomb near the south door of the church.
Despite his High Church principles, Samuel was a controversial activist in his own way. Following the religious turmoil that had gripped England from the time of Henry VIII until the restoration of the monarchy in the 1660s, the English church was very content to be a nominal presence in society and in the lives of its formal adherents. Samuel Wesley and his wife, however, were a bit too fervent in their faith and in their devotion to personal piety for the taste of their times.
As Samuel and Susanna's young family grew, with (among others) the birth of John in 1703 and his brother Charles in 1707, several acts of vandalism and violence marked the displeasure of some in the St. Andrews' parish. In 1709, persons unknown or unnamed set fire to the thatched-roof Rectory. Famously, 5-year-old John was rescued at the last moment from an upper-story window. He never forgot the incident, and attributed his preservation to God' purpose for his life.
A new rectory, long known as The Old Rectory, was built—a lovely, brick Queen Anne manse, suitable for Rev. Wesley's growing family, and for his prominence in the community. The Old Rectory remained home to the rectors of Epworth until 1954, when, in a state of serious disrepair, it was purchased by the World Methodist Council. Following its complete restoration, the Old Rectory was opened to the public in 1957. Today, it makes an appropriate starting point for visitors following the Wesley Trail through the small town. Informed and enthusiastic guides tell the story of the Wesley household and the Rectory's collection of Wesleyan memorabilia (including Charles Wesley's music stand).
After a solid education at the hands of their mother Susanna (a woman renowned for her own learning and moral discipline), John and then Charles made their way to school in London and subsequently to Oxford. There, in the middle of the worldly and often profane university city, they gathered around themselves a group of friends to seriously practice the spiritual disciplines with which they had been imbued by their parents. So regular was this group in their study and devotion that they were given the mocking nickname "Methodists."
The rest, as they say, is history. No, of course, it's not that simple. Ultimately, however, John and Charles Wesley went on to lead the most influential religious and social movement of the English 1700s. Though both men took orders in the Church of England, neither followed their father as a church vicar. John Wesley famously declared more than once: "The world is my parish." He may not have covered the world, but he is said to have ridden some 250,000 miles on horseback and to have preached more than 40,000 sermons.
Wherever John Wesley went, crowds gathered, often walking great distances to hear him speak. Wesley became, if you will, the rock star of his day. More than 500 Anglican clergy, inspired by the man and his message of the evangelical gospel and holy living, became his followers in what were known as "Methodist Societies" within the church.
The stained-glass roundel at the front of the Wesley Memorial Church includes the image of the Wesley brothers from their memorial in Westminster Abbey. His brother, Charles, meanwhile, no mean preacher in his own right, turned his passion to the writing of hymns, sung at Methodist gatherings in fields, chapels and market squares. In fact, Charles Wesley wrote more than 3,000 hymns, becoming perhaps the most famous hymn lyricist of all time. To this day, Wesley's hymns are a part of every Protestant hymnal in the world, including the popular Christmas carol "Hark, the Herald Angels Sing," and anthems such as "O For a Thousand Tongues," "And Can It Be" and "Love Divine, All Loves Excelling."
It may be a truism, but activism is never popular with the Establishment. The Wesley brothers and their swelling following were controversial within the Church of England. Among Wesley's contentious practices, sidestepping the formal organization of the Church was certainly one. Wesley encouraged lay preachers, and (undoubtedly influenced by his own mother) advocated emancipation and education for women. He established chapels, commissioned and ordained pastors on his own authority, and used his influence championing what we would call today "social justice" and the improvement of human life.
Pulpits of the Anglican churches were often closed to the Wesley brothers. When John Wesley returned to Epworth in 1742, even the pulpit of St. Andrews Church was denied him. That Sunday evening, John stood on the table tomb of his father in the churchyard and preached to the huge crowd that gathered, many walking for miles to hear him. In fact, he put up at the Red Lion Inn on the Market Square and stayed a week. Every evening, the crowds gathered to listen to him preach at the base of the market cross outside the inn.
John Wesley returned to Epworth as often as his travels would allow, staying at the Red Lion, preaching and greeting his followers and fans. In 1784, when he was 81, he wrote, "I rode to Epworth, which I still love beyond most places in the world."
The Wesley brothers never intended to start their own church denomination. During their lifetime, the Methodist Societies remained a movement within the Established Church. John Wesley died in 1791, predeceased by his brother in 1788. Only after their deaths did a final break with the Anglican establishment create what went on to become the Methodist Church—the largest Protestant denomination in the English-speaking world.
For all that the Wesleys proved the proverbial thorn in the side of the Established Church, there are many Methodist chapels, across northern England's mining villages in particular, that were built for the workers and their families by mine and mill owners. Ironically, while those owners themselves worshipped at the more respectable Church of England, they were happy to encourage Methodism in the working class. After all, workers whose lives were governed by the principles of healthy, holy and temperate living of the Wesleyan faith were just better workers
Roughly a century after the passing of the brothers, the General Conference of the Methodist Church decreed that a church was to be built in Epworth in memory of John and Charles Wesley. The Wesley Memorial Church was completed in 1889. The stained-glass window at the front of the church depicts Christ commissioning his disciples to go into all the world with the gospel. The roundel above contains life-size portraits of John and Charles Wesley taken from their memorial in Westminster Abbey. Above their stained-glass portraits arches the inscription believed to be John Wesley's last words: "The best of all is, God is with us."
The Glorious Revolution
To modern eyes the complex web of religious and political loyalties which underpinned Jacobitism can seem alien and unsympathetic. The whole movement might be said to span the century from the deposition of James II in the Glorious Revolution of 1688 to the lonely alcohol-sodden death of Bonnie Prince Charlie in 1788.
A Catholic himself, James decided that by promoting edicts of religious tolerance, he would be able to surreptitiously re-establish Catholicism as the official faith of the British Isles. This notion produced near-hysteria in James's Protestant subjects - who had been taught to abhor this faith. When a son was born to the King and Queen, British Protestants were faced with the prospect of never waking up from their worst nightmare: a Catholic dynasty.
They turned to James's Protestant son-in-law William of Orange. In 1688 he led a successful invasion of England. James panicked and fled. As Scotland wavered, James wrote an utterly tactless letter to the Scottish National Convention in Edinburgh. They declared for William. James's most zealous Scottish supporter, Viscount Dundee, turned to a military solution. The first Jacobite rising broke out. But it was not very popular at all. Most Scottish nobles took the attitude of wait and see.
Dundee's forces destroyed William's with a devastating highland charge at the battle of Killiecrankie in 1689, but their leader died in his hour of glory. This left the movement headless. The wait and see-ers kept waiting, and the rising petered out.
So how did Jacobitism come back from the political grave in Scotland? In a few words: William and The Union.
So how did Jacobitism come back from the political grave in Scotland? In a few words: William and The Union. The new King's Scottish reign was characterised by government tactlessness and economic disasters. The most important of the latter was the Darien Scheme. William refused all English assistance to this Scottish venture to found a colony in Panama. When the scheme failed, leaving most of the would-be colonists dead, the King was widely blamed.
Thus to the die-hard believers in the hereditary right of James were added the dissatisfied. Jacobitism became a magnet for almost anyone with a grudge against the government. The Union of 1707 then produced what was for many Scots the grudge to end all grudges.
The ink was hardly dry on the treaty before it was being widely denounced, and Scotland was ripe for sedition. The French, who were at war with Britain, suddenly saw an advantage to be gained here. They would land the new Jacobite heir, James III 'The Old Pretender' in his ancestral kingdom and start a rebellion. It was an excellent opportunity to unite much of the nation, even many Presbyterians, on the Jacobite side against the Union.
The abortive 1708 rising was dogged with bad luck, however, and possible sabotage. The invasion fleet arrived tardily in the Firth of Forth to find the Royal Navy waiting for them. The French commander refused to put the furious James ashore. The invasion that might have united Scotland against the Union was a damp squib.
The '15 Rebellion
However Jacobitism was still very dangerous. The promised benefits of the Union had failed to arrive for many people. Instead, heavy excise duty and increased tax caused much ill feeling. Added to these were humiliations at the hands of the English-dominated Westminster parliament.
Contemporary newspaper account of the Battle of Glen Sheil in 1719 ©
Yet rebellion when it came, sprang from a most unexpected quarter. When George I of Hanover succeeded to the throne in 1715, he sacked one of Scotland's most influential politicians: John Erskine, Earl of Mar. Mar decided to retaliate by raising the standard for the house of Stuart. On one side of his banner he put the arms of Scotland and on the other 'No Union'. Thousands flocked to it. Soon almost the entire north of Scotland was in his hands. He did this without even bothering to warn the Jacobite court.
This was not a phenomenon of a backward rural people rising for archaic notions of loyalty to the king over the water. There was strong support for the Jacobite cause in the trading burghs of north-east Scotland, as well as in the Highlands.
Historian Bruce Lenman characterised the backbone of the rising as 'Patriotic Scots and Disgruntled Britons'. The government commander, the Duke of Argyll warned his own side that 'Beyond the Forth the rebels have a hundred to one at least against us'. The Union was in serious danger.
Argyll seized the strategically vital ground around Stirling, but he was heavily outnumbered. Then at the battle of Sheriffmuir, when all seemed lost, Mar lost his nerve and suddenly withdrew. The belated landing of the Pretender couldn't retrieve things, and the leaders of the rising fled ingloriously to France.
The 1715 was like no other Jacobite rising since Killiecrankie. It was totally indigenous to Britain and not started from abroad. It was also the only occasion when a sizeable rebellion also broke out in England - in heavily Catholic and financially broke Lancashire.
This was not a phenomenon of a backward rural people rising for archaic notions of loyalty to the King over the water.
The moment had passed, however, and the exiled Stuarts now became no more than useful pawns in foreign hands. The next European power to play the Jacobite card was Spain in 1719.
Unluckily for the Spanish, their main invasion fleet was destroyed by a storm before it ever set sail for England. Only a tiny diversionary force made it to the north-west of Scotland. There they garrisoned the ancient fortress of Eilean Donan but were scattered by the energetic response of the local Hanoverian commander at the battle of Glen Shiel.
Lowland Scotland had settled down under a Hanoverian regime, which though sometimes unloved, did not move it to outright revolt. Faced with the Stuart association with foreign enemies, most Scots preferred to keep a hold of their Hanoverian nurse 'for fear of finding something worse'. But what George II and his ministers could not inspire was enthusiasm, and this was to prove near-calamitous when the Jacobite card was played again.
The '45 Rebellion
After major French invasion plans collapsed in 1744, Charles Edward Stuart put together his own tiny invasion force to land in Scotland. The Prince came without the men, money and guns that he had been expressly told that he needed. Instead, he brought himself and his unassailable self-belief.
Engraving of the Duke of Cumberland who defeated the Jacobites at the Battle of Culloden ©
Guaranteed by Charles that he would be compensated if the rising failed, the Chief of Clan Cameron committed his people to the cause. In this case, the support of a few key western clans was crucial to the rising. Without them, the Jacobite standard could never have been raised: with them, the '45 was begun.
The rebellion had remarkable initial success. Many Hanoverian troops had been withdrawn to fight the regime's wars abroad, and only a handful remained to defend Scotland. This, plus the general reluctance of the population to martyr themselves for George II, allowed Charles to occupy Edinburgh virtually unopposed.
In a move to whip up popular support, he decreed the Union to be abolished. Meanwhile, the government forces under General Cope appeared belatedly to take him on. They were surprised by the Jacobite army at the battle of Prestonpans and torn apart, according to one observer in the space of 'seven or eight minutes'.
Execution of the rebel lords at Tower Hill in 1746 ©
The Jacobite army now possessed Scotland. There was nothing to stop them marching into England - but was this a wise decision?
Charles Edward assured his commanders that his loyal English subjects would join them, and that massive French military aid would be forthcoming. It soon turned out that the Prince's promises were mostly empty.
The Jacobite army was in danger of being cut off from Scotland and massacred. At Derby, his military council forced a retreat. The decision sowed discord between the prince and his most gifted commander, Lord George Murray. Murray managed to carry off a successful retreat to Scotland, and then to win the battle of Falkirk against superior government forces. Little gratitude he got, however.
Finished cause
Battle of Culloden - a contemporary coloured print giving an artist's impression of the battle ©
At Culloden, the fruits of Charles's rancour with Murray appeared. After the failure of a surprise night-attack on the government forces, the Prince insisted on taking command.
He chose to give battle on the most unsuitable terrain possible for a Highland charge. Hanoverian artillery cut the Jacobite troops to pieces, and Culloden was a slaughter. The prince became the hunted fugitive in the heather, so well known to romantic legend.
Ironically, the savage government repression after Culloden was as unnecessary as it was brutal.
Ironically, the savage government repression after Culloden was as unnecessary as it was brutal. Many former Jacobites were only too willing to seek terms with the State.
Within a relatively short time a large number of them were to be found serving the Hanoverians in a military capacity abroad. Jacobitism had been exposed by the '45 as no longer militarily viable. With the exception of a few half-hearted plots, it continued withering away.
The Bonnie Prince died, a sad old drunkard, in Florence. His brother Cardinal Henry later effectively recognised the Hanoverians, although theoretically he maintained his own claim to the throne. Eventually admiration for Jacobitism was adopted, along with tartan, by the Hanoverians themselves as part of a general nostalgia for the good old days. There could be no more telling comment on the decease of Jacobitism as a political force.
About the author
Louise Yeoman is curator of early modern manuscripts at the National Library of Scotland. In 1996 she was curator of the Library's Jacobite exhibition A Nation Divided. She is co-director of A Survey of Scottish Witchcraft, 1563-1736 at Edinburgh University, and a frequent contributor to Scottish radio and television. She is also the author of Reportage Scotland: History in the Making (Luath Press and National Library of Scotland, 2000).
BBC - History - British History in depth: The Jacobite Cause
There is nothing new or exceptional about the recent English riots and they will have little long-term impact, argues Tim Stanley.
'The Mob destroying & Setting Fire to the Kings Bench Prison & House of Correction in St George's Fields': a print made during the Gordon Riots, 1780
Most of the British press treated the August riots as a historical aberration: something to be blamed on government policies, or even the weather. We associate mob violence more with the French than we do ourselves. But, in fact, sporadic civil disobedience has a long tradition in British history. We are a far more demonstrative and brutal a people than we would like to admit.
In 1778 the British government decided to mitigate its anti-Catholic policies by passing the Papists Act. The Protestant population of London, which was already suffering due to loss of trade resulting from the American War of Independence, was outraged. Lord George Gordon, the eccentric head of the nativist Protestant Association, argued that the Act was an attempted coup d’etat by Catholics and absolutist monarchists. One of its provisions eased the restrictions on Catholics serving in the army – a direct attempt, Gordon said, to arm the Irish and depose Parliament. He called for a march on Westminster.
On June 2nd, 1780 a crowd of around 50,000 stormed Parliament. The government had grossly underestimated the strength of feeling against it and failed to mobilise the army quickly enough. Members of the House of Lords were attacked and carriages ransacked. Once the mob was dispersed, the government presumed the worst was over. In fact, as in 2011, the rioters simply moved on. That night, they ransacked the embassies of Catholic nations like Sardinia and Bavaria. What began as a religious revolt turned into an act of class war. Rich people’s houses were looted and burnt, shops were emptied. The mob targeted Catholics, granted, but also vandalised the Bank of England. London’s prisons were broken into and hundreds of prisoners released, never to be caught again.
Police reports and diaries from the time make reading that is eerily similar to the reportage of 2011. The politician Horace Walpole (1717-97) wrote that one friend, ‘had seen the populace break open the toll-houses on Blackfriar’s Bridge, and carry off bushels of halfpence which fell about the streets ... Most of the rioters are apprentices and plunder and drink have been their chief objects, and both women and men are still lying dead drunk in the streets: brandy is preferable to public enthusiasm.’
The Gordon Riots were eventually quelled by military force. In their aftermath many people asked similar questions to those being posed today: why did people feel unable to express their views through their parliamentary representatives? Was this an insurrection driven by legitimate grievances or an excuse for criminality? Across Europe, Britain’s reputation as a stable democracy was shattered. Just ten years later, the French Revolution offered a radical alternative to government by sovereign parliament. In the wake of the Gordon Riots, many Britons prayed that it would work.
British history is littered with episodes such as this. In 1517 Londoners rioted against wealthy foreigners. They broke into shops and looted homes. During the Industrial Revolution poor weavers attacked new machinery and destroyed workshops in an effort to protect their livelihoods. In 1985 Afro-Caribbean youths in Brixton and Tottenham rioted in protest at police brutality.
Two themes stand out. One is the reclamation of private property by the mob: an unofficial act of redistribution. Perhaps this is rank opportunism; perhaps it is a nascent act of socialism. Either way, British civil disobedience almost invariably descends into an attack upon the rich. The second theme is the lack of long-term political organisation. French rebellions tend either to be motored by the activist Left or appropriated by it. British riots are comparatively short-lived and useless: they never change the landscape of mainstream politics. Usually they reinforce the legitimacy of the powers-that-be. The result of the Gordon Riots wasn’t social reform but the introduction of the modern police force.
In the aftermath of the 2011 riots, many have asked what is so broken about contemporary British society that it erupted so easily into violence. But that question overlooks the fact that it is social peace that is historically atypical, not social unrest.
Tim Stanley is Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at Royal Hollloway, University of London.
