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February 26, 1564:  The Least Mysterious Thing About Christopher Marlowe

At least there is no debate as to when and where Christopher Marlowe was baptized.  It was in Conventry, England on this day in 1564, and the Anglican priest failed to observe the infant’s genius.  The date, nature, and cause of his death, however, are questions inciting civil wars in college English departments. 

Did he really die in a brawl in 1593?  Was he a Catholic spy?  Was he murdered by the Crown?  Did he fake his death and live on to become the ghostwriter for William Shakespeare, Jane Austen and Winston Churchill? 

According to the mere facts, the 29 year-old Marlowe got in a fight over a bar bill and rather imprudently tried deflecting a knife with his eye.  But that is too petty a death to be accepted!  (Occam’s razor was never meant to be a murder weapon.)  No, the Robert Mapplethorpe of Elizabethan Theater deserves some drama.  He had to be the victim of a conspiracy.  Here is a theory that combines creative jealousy with international intrigue:  Marlowe was murdered by Miguel Cervantes.  At the time, Cervantes was a middle-aged semi-invalid, but Marlowe wouldn’t have been that tough. 

Here is another theory:  the English Secret Service killed him.  Since Marlowe was gay and went to Cambridge, he must have been a spy.  The question is for whom?  The sentimental among us would like to think that the Cambridge kids were spying for Russia even back then.  Marlowe actually could have known Boris Gudunov.   But what secrets did 16th century England possess that Russia coveted?  Maybe long division.  It is unlikely that Her Majesty’s Secret Service was particularly worried about Russian spies.  Khristov Marlovsky would not have been worth killing. 

No, to be significant, Marlowe would need to be a spy for Spain or the Catholic Church.   So let’s start searching “Tamburlaine” or “Doctor Faustus” for any coded Papist messages.  “The face that launched a thousand ships” might really refer to Philip II and the Armada.  So, now he is incriminated.  But why would the Crown need to arrange his assassination. If the English government could publicly execute a Queen, Dukes, and Jesuits, what is the difficulty in hanging and drawing a flamboyant playwright?

But who is to say that Christopher Marlowe ever died?  Perhaps “Dr. Faustus” is actually the story of a writer and his literary agent.  (And I wish that I could get that deal.)

It is February 19, 1915 and you are invited on an all expense paid cruise of the Mediterranean. Tour the charming shores of the Dardanelles on our way to Constantinople! (Itinerary subject to change.)

Quite a change! How should I describe Gallipoli? Imagine if Gettysburg had lasted 11 months and every day was a disaster. Of the 500,000 men in the Allied expedition, half of them were killed or wounded. The casualty rates among the Australians and New Zealanders were nearly one hundred percent; entire ANZAC battalions were wiped out in the campaign. To this day, Gallipoli–the heroism, the horrors and the futility– is seared in the history and consciousness of Australia and New Zealand. They remember Gallipoli, and the British incompetence that caused it.

Ironically, the strategy behind the campaign was brilliant. With its complete mastery of the sea, the British navy would force its way up the Dardanelle Straits, seize Constantinople, knock Turkey out of the war, open the Black Sea and supply the beleaguered Russians on the Eastern Front. Yes, the idea was brilliant, but reality was not accommodating.

When the combined British and French fleets first undertook their expedition–on this day in 1915– they found the channel had been mined and the Turkish batteries were more accurate than expected. Faced with unanticipated losses and unnerved by further uncertainties, the fleets retreated. In fact, they had already encountered the worst and would have had a comparatively mild cruise to Constantinople. The Allies did not know that, however, and the Turks did not bother to correct them.

The Allies had an alternative plan. They would land an expeditionary force on the coast along the Dardanelles, and brushing aside the surprised and sparse Turkish forces, march to Constantinople. Of course, the aborted naval expedition had made the Turks and their German advisers aware of the Allies’ intentions; and so they prepared for a second attack. The Dardanelles were no longer lightly defended.

Furthermore, there was an obvious place for the Allies to begin such an invasion: a peninsula jutting from the straits. It was called Gallipoli. Six weeks after the failed naval attack, the Allied troops began landing on Gallipoli.
But nothing seemed to go right. The troops were not transported to the right locations. Instead of disembarking on wide, gently sloping beaches, the soldiers found themselves trying to scale cliffs. As for the light, sparse Turkish resistance, there were six divisions and they fought ferociously.

The Allies did establish their beachheads but in eleven months, they never got much further than where they had originally landed. Their brilliant strategy had resulted in a irretrievable military disaster. The Allies had no hope of success and no choice but to evacuate.

It was a Turkish victory and one general, who had been distinguished for his leadership, would in a few years become the founder and first president of the Turkish Republic. Mustafa Kemal remains a hero of Turkey.

It was a British catastrophe and the Lord Admiral of the Navy, who had conceived the brilliant strategy, resigned in disgrace. He was given the rank of colonel on the Western Front and he half-hoped to be killed in action. But he survived, a heavy-drinking eccentric, an entertaining but dismissed backbencher in Parliament.

He had skill as a writer and lecturer and was able to make a living with his theatrical talents. As he aged, he became increasingly outspoken and belligerent, an imperial anachronism in a mundane, accommodating world.   But he thought of himself, not as a has-been or a relic, but as a thundering Jeremiah who foretold the gathering storm.

And he made himself heard with an eloquence that defined history. The scapegoat of 1915 would become the Prime Minister of 1940.

February 15, 1898:  Hot Time in Havana

On this day in 1898, God did William Randolph Hearst a big favor and blew up the boiler of the battleship Maine. The battleship blew up with it (They just don’t make boilers like that, anymore). Of course, the Spanish looked guilty; that is the disadvantage of being brunet.

Now Hearst had an excuse–I mean “cause”–to incite a war against Spain. Or course, he would have found some pretext, perhaps depicting Miguel Cervantes and Francisco Goya torturing “The Katzenjammer Kids” on the comic pages. But the mysterious sinking of the USS Maine was very convenient. When Hearst blew up, so did the Congress. (They still do make Congresses like that!) So off to war we went.

Spain was no match for the United States. We quickly “liberated” Puerto Rico, Cuba, Guam and the Philippines. We could have taken Spain itself. This was–in words of our Secretary of State John Hay–”a splendid little war.”

Furthermore, we created a fashion. Everyone else wanted ‘a splendid little war’ too. In 1899, the British decided to annex the Boers’ Republics in Southern Africa–and any adjacent gold and diamond mines. However, “Marching to Pretoria” proved easier to sing than accomplish. The Boers resisted–and used their gold and diamonds to buy machine guns. That splendid little war took three years and 22,000 British lives.

In 1904, Russia was posturing in the Far East, threatening the “Monkey Men”, the Tsar’s somewhat insensitive term for the Japanese. It promised to be a splendid, little war–except that the Japanese won. The Monkey Men evidently were more highly evolved than the Russians.

And in 1914 Austria-Hungary decided to teach Serbia a lesson. That didn’t end up splendid or little, either.

Apparently, “splendid little wars” only occur with Spain or perhaps Grenada. Definitely not with Iraq or Afghanistan.

Yes, I am referring to Abraham Lincoln. In case you were wondering, my other favorite Republicans are Teddy Roosevelt, Jimmy Stewart and Adolphe Menjou. True, it is not a long list. I could include three personal friends, but these days–out of embarrassment–they claim to be Libertarians. And yes, I do like John Wayne, but I never can forgive him for being a draft dodger. Neither could a naval veteran named John Ford, who used to ridicule Wayne about “being a sissy”; in fact, he once even made John Wayne cry.

Of course, modern Republicans would not want to be associated with a pair of liberals like Lincoln and Teddy R. It is surprising that their heads are still on Mount Rushmore. (You can imagine Halliburton getting a no-bid contract for that project.) But, oh the irony, the Republicans were once the liberals of American politics. Granted that liberalism was confined to one issue, but it was the biggest issue of the day. The Republicans were opposed to slavery. Some advocated its outright abolition; however, most Republicans had the temperate approach that we expect from liberals. They just opposed the expansion of slavery into new states. You’d think that would be an inoffensive, sensible compromise. Iowa, Nebraska and the Dakotas really are not ideal for cotton. But the South would not recognize even economic practicality as a limit to their cherished “institution”. If the South was not free to have slaves (freedom is a relative concept), then the South would leave the Union. Of course, it was constricting itself to the same geographic confinement proposed by its Republican enemies, but the South’s gray matter evidently was limited to uniforms.

Once the Civil War was won and slavery was abolished (replaced by mere serfdom), the Republicans had lost their reason for being. However, they so enjoyed power that decided to improvise a new platform. The now defunct Whig party had an incestuous affection for business, although its war hero candidates usually could camouflage the financial self-interests. That philosophy and strategy suited the intellectually-bereft Republicans. And they happened to have a new generation of war heroes, starting with Ulysses Grant himself, to front for the robber barons and their pet politicians.

Aside from Teddy Roosevelt, an aristocrat who took his noblesse oblige quite seriously, the Republican Party is essentially the same kleptocratic, stagnant-quo of the Grant adminstration. It is occasionally stirred by a social awareness but always confuses self-righteousness with morality. That is how we got Prohibition, McCarthyism and the Patriot Act.

I imagine that Abraham Lincoln would have been on Richard Nixon’s and Dick Cheney’s enemies list. And he would have been flattered.

p.s.  Of course, Southerners claim that history misunderstands “the Glorious Cause.”  Their War had nothing to do with slavery.   Yet, they can’t seem to offer any other reason why the South attempted to secede from the Union.  A faulty memory might be caused by a tight hood. 

If only to atone for the inconvenience of the truth, I can proffer this excuse to the South:

The South simply wanted to avoid Mary Lincoln.  (That is very plausible except that all of the other states would have seceded too.)

February 3, 1867:  Mutsuhito Begins His Nameless Reign

Happy 143rd anniversary to Japan’s Emperor Mutsuhito. He actually was the Mikado when Gilbert and Sullivan wrote the operetta. Aside from not ordering ninjas to assassinate the D’Oyly Carte Company, Mutsuhito should be remembered for two remarkable achievements.

First, during his reign (1867-1912), Japan transformed itself from a feudal backwater into a world power. It mastered four centuries of industrial developments and military advances in just four decades. In 1853, during his father’s reign, Japan had capitulated to a squadron of gunboats from a third-rate power known as the United States. By 1905, after humiliating China and Russia in a series of wars, Japan was the master of East Asia. And in 1941…well, that may have been overreaching.

Second, even more remarkably, Mutsuhito never married into Queen Victoria’s family. How many royal lines can say that!

So, why haven’t you heard of Mutsuhito? Because no one calls him that. It was his name but the Japanese have a strange custom. When an Emperor dies, his reign is given an official title and the Emperor is then known only by that name. Upon his death, he and his reign were named Meiji. It means “Enlightened Rule.” And historians refer to him as that.

Remember his grandson Hirohito? Well, you shouldn’t. He now is officially known as Showa, “Enlightened Peace.”

Imagine if we applied that custom to our presidents, renaming them for their era. So our last eight presidents would be officially designated as Watergate, Pardon, Hostages, Glasnost, Kuwait, Monica, Catastrophe and Hope Cleanup.

January 23, 1719:  The Fun of Being a Hapsburg

Anticipating the need for a Jeopardy category, Emperor Charles VI created the principality of Liechtenstein on this day in 1719. Even if the Holy Roman Empire was–in the words of Voltaire–neither Holy, nor Roman nor an Empire, its Emperor still had an important and unique prerogative. He alone could create titles.

In case you were wondering or were nurturing megalomaniacal ambitions, you can’t just declare yourself a King or a Grand Duke. The title has to be officially established. So, who can you charm or bribe? Well, no one now. Even the Pope does not have that authority, although he certainly could add some prestige to your coronation. While the Holy Roman Empire existed, the Emperor alone had the power to create a title.

For example, the de Medicis had more money than God and proved it by buying a Papal election. Yet, they couldn’t get themselves declared Dog Catchers of Tuscany without the consent of the reigning Hapsburg. In fact, when Medici were opposing Emperor Charles V, their social standing was stuck at “upper-middle class.” Once, however, they learned to grovel, the Emperor rewarded their kneeling by elevating them to Grand Dukes of Tuscany.

At the onset of the War of the Spanish Succession, Emperor Leopold I wanted the assistance of the Prussian army. He secured that aid in 1701 by elevating the rank of the Prussian ruler from elector to King. The newly crowned Frederick I proved that one could social-climb and goosestep at the same time.  (The crown did come with a catch;  Frederick was “King in Prussia” and he could only be royal sovereign of those territories not formally part of the Holy Roman Empire.  Within the Empire, Frederick was still a glorified Drill Sergeant.)

The Holy Roman Emperor did not have the power to abolish a title once conferred, but he could always change his mind about creating a title. Charles the Rash (1433-1477) was NOT content to be a mere duke. Ruling an area encompassing modern Belgium and Holland, Charles thought that he had the land, wealth and power worthy of a king. So, in a campaign combining pleas, bribes and military threats, the Duke sought to be elevated to a king. In 1473, Emperor Frederick III finally agreed and arranged to invest Charles at the town of Trier. Meeting the Duke on the eve of the ceremony, the Emperor found him unbearable. Rather than spending another moment with Charles–and making him a King, the Emperor slipped out of town that night. So Charles never got to be a King.

(Ironically, the only child of the Duke ended up marrying the oldest son of the Emperor. However, it was not an awkward wedding. Charles was already dead, having proved his rashness in one battle too many.)

Only one man did not respect the prerogative of the Holy Roman Emperor. Napoleon made himself an Emperor in 1804.

So, perhaps there is still hope for you megalomaniacs.

January 21st, around 304: Agnes Lives Up To Her Name

This is the feast day of St. Agnes, virgin and martyr.  (Yes, the two are often synonymous).  Agnes was a young Roman patrician…and so were Saints Agatha, Lucia, Cecilia, Catherine, etc.  Why must they always be young Roman virgin aristocrats?  Was the Early Church so snobbish that it would not let a shepherdess or fishmonger throw herself to the lions?  And the stories are always the same: rather than marry a pagan, the young lady chooses death.  Well, a Church that needs four Gospels to tell the same story is not blessed with originality; and the redundancy of these martyred debutantes might suggest why plagiarism is not a cardinal sin.

Ironically, the very triteness of these stories proves that they are reasonably true.  (We still might doubt that, when threaten with rape, Saint Agnes immediately grew billows of body hair that deterred even Latin men.)  All this incredulous repetition is the fault of the Romans.  The Empire was specifically persecuting Christian patricians.  Pagans are usually quite tolerant; what difference is one more God in the pantheon?  In fact, the imperial authorities were quite prepared to accept Christianity within certain constraints.

The evangelists were welcome to preach sufferance to peasants and slaves.  Sedating the lower classes did the Empire a favor.  (What a pity Jesus missed Spartacus by some 90 years.)  Furthermore, Christianity seemed a very nice religion for women.  Virtue, mercy and charity are delightful household precepts; but they are no way to run an empire.  The Christian principles might undermine the martial ardor that built and maintained Rome.  The religion could not be allowed among patrician males.

By the third century, many patrician families kept a theological balance.  The women were permitted to be Christian while the men were required to be pagans.  The women’s Christianity was not even a secret.  Consider the names Agnes, Agatha, Lucia and Catherine.  They were not traditional Roman monikers but reflected the Christian policy of naming a child for a virtue. Their names respectively mean chaste, good, light and pure.  (Cecilia must have had a domineering conservative father; her name adheres to Roman custom and identifies her as a member of the Caecilii family.) 

So long as Christianity remained a woman’s fad, there were no problems.  Unfortunately, some dogmatic maidens did not know their place.  Agnes, Agatha, Lucia and Catherine revolted against all propriety by refusing to marry eminently eligible pagans.  That was a scandal.  And Cecilia was worse; she actually tried converting patrician males.  That was a crime!  Since these young ladies demanded attention, they got the most fatal form of it.

Agnes died during the last major persecution of Christians. It was in the reign of the Emperor Diocletian, who incidentally had a Christian but discreet wife.  In 304 there was an up-and-coming Roman general named Constantine.  He, too, grew up in a theologically mixed household, with a pagan father and a Christian mother; in his case, however, Constantine turned out to be a a mama’s boy.  If only Agnes had shown a little patience and tact, she could have been persecuting pagans.

January 20, 1265:  The First Meeting of “Talking Place” (You know it might sound better in French)

Imagine if George Bush ran off with Paris Hilton. The equivalent happened in 1200 when England’s abysmal King John ran off with super-debutante Isabelle of Angouleme. You can imagine the tabloid headlines on the illuminated manuscripts. Yet these two vacuous, vicious people somehow produced an affable guy like Henry III. Unfortunately, competence would have been too much to hope for; some historians rate Henry III as a more inept king than his father.

Henry never quite noticed little problems like a nation-wide famine. His misrule finally incited a rebellion by the exasperated nobles, led by Simon de Montfort. Since Henry’s military ability was on a par with his other talents, he was soon captured. De Montfort, now the real ruler of England, realized that the Magna Carta had left a few loopholes and he thought of a way to create a less oblivious government.

With the King’s coerced approval, de Montfort summoned an assembly of elected representatives from England’s counties and towns. The first meeting of this assembly, called a Parliament, convened this day in 1265. Its representatives formed a permanent advisory council. Of course, the King could ignore the advice but not the Parliament’s greatest prerogative: no law could be enacted without its consent. Whenever his majesty wanted to wage war, raise revenues, or declare an annoying cousin a traitor, he had to submit the appropriate legislation to Parliament.

Unfortunately, England was not immediately transformed into a democracy. Despite its potential power, Parliament did not assert itself. For two centuries, the assembly acted like a notary public: approving and filing the royal decrees. Nor did Simon de Montfort lived happily ever after; in fact, he didn’t live.

In an unexpected development, Henry III had a capable son. Prince Edward raised an army to overthrow and slay de Montfort. Yet, even with its supremacy reestablished, the royal family did not disband Parliament. In fact, the assembly proved to be a bastion of royalists. If forced to choose between the great nobles and the king, the burghers and the small landowners preferred one tyrant to thirty.

So, even in the 13th century, the Chamber of Commerce and the Rotary Club had conservative leanings.

January 18, 1486: How the Tudors Got Their Good Looks (even if they couldn’t keep them)

We all have the image of Henry VIII as that bloated bully in the Holbein portrait. Either fat had a higher aesthetic value in the 16th century or those English courtiers assured the tempermental King that he looked wonderful. Fortunately, Henry was easily convinced of his good looks. When a middle-aged blob, he certainly was self-deluded but at least he had an excellent memory.

Henry VIII was not born looking like Charles Laughton. The young king actually was handsome, a gift from his mother Elizabeth of York. She was a beauty, the gift of her parents: Edward IV and Elizabeth Woodville. They were regarded as the best-looking people in England! Elizabeth Woodville had to be a beauty; to have her, Edward IV caused a civil war.

She was a widow, with children, and only from the minor nobility; worse, her late husband and her family had been supporters of the rival Lancastrian dynasty. The lusty Edward IV wanted her as a mistress; she refused his advances and insisted on marriage. At that very time, Edward had commissioned his chief supporter, the Earl of Warwick, to negotiate a marriage with the sister-in-law of the King of France. Warwick, the most powerful noble in England, had successfully negotiated that marital alliance when he learned that Edward had eloped with the Woodville widow. “The Kingmaker”, as Warwick was known, was humiliated and furious; he then switched his allegiance and considerable forces to the Lancasters. Warwick succeeded in ousting Edward and restored Henry VI to the throne in 1470. A year later, Edward returned. Warwick was killed in battle and Henry VI was imprisoned in the Tower of London. The deposed King apparently fell on several daggers while in chapel.

In any case, handsome Edward IV and beautiful Elizabeth Woodville produced seven children. (He also acquired a pack of greedy in-laws and two stepsons who could have been role models for Paris Hilton.) Edward died in 1483, thinking his young son Edward would succeed him. Unfortunately, the regent of England was Richard, Duke of Gloucester. Although the late King’s brother, he was also Warwick’s son-in-law and had always resented the Woodville queen and her upstart family. Uncle Richard had other plans.

And the war over Elizabeth Woodville so divided the Yorkist party that the illegitimate Welsh branch of the Lancastrian line would soon kill its way to the throne. When the illegitimate half-second cousin, once removed, Henry Tudor ascended to the throne, he required a legitimate princess for some resemblance to respectability. The eldest daughter of Edward IV sufficed quite nicely, and today is their wedding anniversary.

p.s.  And let’s not forget this birthday: http://finermanworks.com/your_rda_of_irony/2009/01/18/adjective-orgy/