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Nero was the last of the Caesars; kicking to death a pregnant wife is not good for a dynasty. His uncle Caligula had merely thought himself a God; Nero was less modest and insisted on a career in show business. The entire Empire was a captive audience to this aspiring Homer. In fact, he did put on a good–and free–show with lavish spectacles that the audience enjoyed. Nero may have terrorized the patrician class and some obscure Jewish sect, but the public generally liked him.

However, the Emperor was not an elective position, and the pudgy, melodramatic Nero did not command the respect or loyalty of the generals, each of whom fancied himself a more suitable emperor. Rebellion was inevitable, and Nero’s response was to kill himself. He was succeeded by Galba, a man everyone respected but no one really liked. The cheap and charmless bureaucrat quickly inspired a wave of nostalgia for Nero. A playboy patrician named Otho exploited this popularity as well as the Praetorian guards’ susceptibility to bribes. In less than a year, Galba was dead and Otho was emperor, a reign beginning on this day in A.D. 69.

Unfortunately, Otho was less impressive than Nero. People tended to remember Otho for his wig, so he was not likely to have a long reign. Within a few months, he was overthrown by a Roman general named Vitellius. People tended to remember Vitellius for his gluttony; he didn’t last long either. Within a few months, he was overthrown by a Roman named Vespasian. (The year A.D. 69 would have an exhausting time for whomever was supposed to update the emperor’s portrait on the coinage.) People tended to remember Vespasian for his ability; he lasted ten years and had the originality to die of natural causes.

Born of more modest origins than a Caesar and conscious of his blood-stained inauguration, Vespasian sought to ingratiate himself with the Roman populace. His gift to the city is still standing: the Colosseum.

January 8, 1815:  The Battle of New Orleans

On this day in 1815, Edward Pakenham’s watch must have been running fast. The British general evidently thought it was 1915 and that he had to slaughter his troops in as stupid a manner as possible. So, he ordered a full-frontal assault on the entrenched American positions at New Orleans. Andrew Jackson’s troops did not have machine guns but they certainly knew how to make the best use of their Kentucky long rifles . Men who can shoot a squirrel out of a tree are not likely to miss a prancing brigade in red coats.

Edward Pakenham was the brother-in-law of the Duke Wellington and actually had proved himself to be a brave and effective subordinate in the Peninsular Wars. In fact, Pakenham was leading the same troops who had performed so brilliantly in Spain, defeating larger French forces. At New Orleans, the British troops for once had the numerical advantage; they outnumbered the Americans by two-to-one. Perhaps that is why Pakenham did not bother with tactics.

The American forces did have an abysmal reputation.  In 1812, they had a forty-to-one numerical advantage over the 5000 British troops in Canada; and guess who was winning?  American attacks on Canada sometimes never got past the border.  Worse, those borders were shortening.  The territories of Maine, Wisconsin, Illinois and Michigan seemed more likely to become provinces than states.  America’s best hope was the military genius of its ally Napoleon, and 1812 proved poor timing for that alliance.  By 1814, Napoleon had retired to Elba, and now Britain could turn its full and vindictive attention to America.  The Duke of Wellington was offered the command the punitive expedition.  Perhaps Ontario was less alluring than Paris and Vienna; compared to Napoleon, James Madison was certainly anti-climactic.  Wellington declined the commission and even recommended a peace settlement.  Nonetheless, he did have a brother-in-law to spare.

The British had no real military objective; they simply wanted to make the Americans miserable.  Burning Washington certainly accomplished that.  Seizing the rich port city of New Orleans would be another humiliation.  The city seemed vulnerable, with only a meager slapdash force to defend it.  Pakenham assumed that his veterans would simply push the Americans aside. That was a mistake he did not live to regret; neither did a quarter of his command.

To add irony to the disaster, the battle was unnecessary. The War was over; however, the news of the Treaty of Ghent had yet to reach the opposing armies at New Orleans. Of course, the Battle of New Orleans might have taught the British military the disadvantages of a frontal assault. However, judging from the number of British War Memorials, commemorating 1914-18, that lesson was not in the syllabus at Sandhurst.

On this day in 1776, George Washington proved himself to be an immoral secular humanist by ruining a British Christmas party. While the Hessian garrison in Trenton, New Jersey was celebrating the birth of Jesus by compressing the 12 days of Christmas into one hangover, the irreverent Continental army crossed the Delaware River and attacked. We all know the painting of that Freemason Washington standing in a boat as his men rowed to battle. Of course, truly devout Americans would have walked upon the water.

Yes, the Americans won that day, but the Continental Congress should have disavowed such godless cheating. Why wasn’t George Washington court-martialed for his impiety? In fact, as an apology to Jesus, we should have called the Revolution off.

Vladimir Putin is feeling sentimental today. It is the 91st anniversary of the founding of the Cheka, the first Soviet secret police. In honor of this special day, 91 journalists will be assassinated. (To make that quota, the corpse pile will have to include four movie critics and seven cooking columnists; Russia is running out of journalists.)

We tend to think of Lenin as a misunderstood old dear, just a badly tailored Edmund Gwenn. Of course, that is only because we are comparing him to Stalin. In fact, Lenin wasn’t that old, a mere 47 at the time of the November Revolution. (Now, don’t you feel like an under-achiever.) Nor was he remotely lovable. Although he was not a Stalinoid monster, Lenin was a certifiable creep. He was an obsessed, remorseless tyrant who actually read calculus books for fun. Would you be any less dead if Lenin shot you for the sake of dialectic materialism than if Stalin shot you because it was his hobby?

So, it was not surprising that Lenin would establish a secret police just six weeks after the November Revolution. (So much for the honeymoon.) The first head of the Cheka was Felix Dzerzhinsky who was unique among the Bolshevik aristocracy in that he really was an aristocrat. Anyone who slighted him at a soiree or beat him at tennis probably did not live to regret it. Dzerzhinsky may have betrayed his class but not his tastes. In the midst of revolution and civil war, Dzerzhinsky requisitioned a Rolls-Royce for his personal use. It should be noted that his timing was as impeccable as his style. He died of heart attack in 1926, and so avoided a less natural cause of death from Stalin.

In organizing the Cheka, Lenin was just observiing a hallowed Russian tradition. Since Ivan the Terrible, the Tsars had relied on secret police as well. Indeed, Ivan set the standard. His death squads, the Oprichniki, had a very distinctive insignia: the severed head of a dog on their saddles. The dog’s head presumably would sniff out treason. Ivan distrusted his nobles, and the Oprichniki eliminated the causes of his anxiety. Of course, even the Oprichniki found that Ivan could be a little too whimsical. There is a story of a father-and-son team who had risen high in the Oprichniki hierarchy. While at a feast, Ivan thought of a test of loyalty for entertainment. The son was ordered to strangle the father. Before the guests, the son did as he was ordered. Then Ivan ordered the son to be executed; after all, how could Ivan trust anyone who would kill his father?

At least, subsequent Tsars and their secret police refrained from decapitating dogs for decor. (However, Faberge could have made some wonderful facsimiles.) In the last decades of the Russian Empire, the secret police was known as the Okhrana. Their chief concern was suppressing the growing radical movement. They proved so successful at infiltrating revolutionaries groups that Okhrana agents actually were managing many of the revolutionary plots. In 1911, Okhrana oversaw the assassination of the Russian Prime Minister, Pyotr Stolypin. A political moderate, at least by Russian standards, Stolypin’s attempts at reforms outraged the conservatives. So, Okhrana manipulated a thoroughly infiltrated radical group to kill him. The actual assassin was a genuine revolutionary but his supervisor and his supervisor’s supervisor were all on the Okhrana payroll. It was a perfect Okhrana coup: the reactionaries kill the moderate and frame the radicals.

Yes, the Okhrana even infiltrated the Bolsheviks. One of their double agents was a young Georgian who called himself Stalin. We can surmise that Stalin only gave up the names of the people he didn’t like. Of course, that could have been enough to crowd Siberia.

Oprichniki, Okrana, Cheka, KGB…These are the happy memories that Vladimir Putin is enjoying today. And who says that you can’t bring back the good old days?

Do two wrongs make a right wing? Your standard high school history text will say that the Treaty of Versailles was an injustice to the German people. If you don’t dwell on the barbarian invasions, the Thirty Years War, Frederick the Great, Otto von Bismarck, and certain events of 1914, the Germans never showed a predilection for war. So the punitive and exploitive nature of the Treaty of Versailles was unjustified and unprecedented.

Except, if you are so petty to bring up the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. That was the punitive and exploitive treaty imposed by Imperial Germany on Russia in March, 1918. Germany, with a bit of help but mostly wishful thinking from Austria-Hungary, had won the Great War on the Eastern Front. It is a tribute to Russia’s stamina that her ill-led, untrained, occasionally armed troops withstood three years of slaughter by the very uncharitable Germans. By 1917, however, the Russians had adopted a decisive defensive tactic: killing their officers and deserting. Of course, this left the German army with no opposition to keep them out of Poland, the Ukraine and the Baltic States.

Furthermore, those sly Germans had subsidized the Bolshevik coup that had seized power in November, 1917. The Bolsheviks had pledged to withdraw Russia from the war and Imperial Germany certainly found that a worthwhile goal. The only problem was the details of the Treaty. In return for Lenin’s train fare from Switzerland, Germany demanded that Russia cede Poland, the Baltic States, the Ukraine, Belarus, and Finland. When confronted with those terms, Leon Trotsky walked out of the negotations. So the German army continued to walk into Poland, the Baltic States and the Ukraine. Trotsky walked back and signed away three centuries of Russian acquisitions in Europe. In the lands ceded by the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, Russia had lost half of her industries, nine-tenths of her coal mines and one third of her population.

Of course, that one third of the population did not mind losing Mother Russia but they were not exactly liberated either. While less tyrannical than Tsarist or Soviet Russia, Imperial Germany was no champion of liberal democracy. In the German scheme of things, Finland would be a monarchy; the Kaiser’s brother-in-law was available for that throne. Latvia and Estonia would be merged into a colony of Germany known as the United Baltic Duchy; of course, the Duke would be another German prince. Wilhelm of Wurtemberg was designated to be the King of Lithuania; in a gesture of ethnic sensitivity, however, Wilhelm offered to change his name to Mindaugas. As for Poland, don’t you mean East Prussia? The Ukraine and Belarus would be allowed nominal independence; but you can imagine that Krupp and Siemens would be operating the coal mines. Think of it as Heilaburton.

For all practical purposes, the Baltic Sea would have been a tributary of the Rhine. But the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk only lasted as long as the Imperial Army did. It collapsed before the onslaught of two million Doughboys and a medley of George Cohan songs. (In the wake of the German defeat, the Soviets regained the Ukraine and Belarus. The Finns and the Poles successfully defended themselves. The British guaranteed the independence of the Baltic States, moving in as the Germans left; the Soviets were fighting so many wars that they decided to forgo one over Estonia.)

Now, the peace terms were dictated to Germany. It had to admit responsiblity for the war and pay reparations. Germany found that outrageous; after all, it had only attacked Belgium in self-defense. Yet, as much as Germany protested, the Treaty of Versailles was not as onerous as the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. Otherwise, Bavaria would have been ceded to Italy in reparations for the Visigoths’ sack of Rome, and Bayreuth would have been restricted to performing Gilbert & Sullivan. (Yes, that actually would have been an improvement.)

So, the next time you hear the historical bromides about “the follies of Versailles”, mention Brest-Litovsk and venture what terms the Germans would have imposed on the West. Ireland, Algeria and India would have become independent earlier. After all, the Kaiser had several sons.

It is so gratifying when two rotten people find each other, a true meeting of the heartless. Otherwise, they might be afflicting the lives of more innocuous souls. In the case of Edward Albert Christian George Andrew Patrick David Windsor (nee Edward Albert Christian George Andrew Patrick David Saxe-Coburg-Gotha) he would have been ruining an entire nation.

If the British throne were reserved for the greatest upper class twit of the day, Edward VIII was indeed the rightful king. He had impeccable taste in clothing and complete distaste for democracy, tolerance, and any other manifestation of intelligence. In fact, he could not even master the well-mannered hypocrisy to mask his royal snits. As the Prince of Wales, he travelled throughout the Empire and generously conferred his racist opinions of the very people he was visiting. When a guest at a home, he expected the hostess to offer to sleep with him. However, he looked so good in his clothing that the infatuated Press and public never cared to delve beneath that dapper surface.

Since women were always throwing themselves at him, it is remarkable that a homely American social-climber made so great an impression on his self-satisfied mind. Bessie Wallis Warfield, so she was born and in equally pedestrian circumstances, wanted to rise in the world and had the predatory talent to do it. The impoverished Baltimore girl won scholarships to the best schools, but her aim was not the education but the social contacts. That acquired cachet and its admission into better circles afforded her marriage into the minor gentry; from there, she progressed to a second marriage into the nouveau riche. (Mr. Simpson’s family name was originally Samuels; at least he and his wife had social-climbing in common.) But Wallis Simpson aspired to old money, and the heir to the British throne certainly had that.

They met in 1934, and she quickly established herself as his mistress. No one then or now can explain how a homely, married American could have so completely enthralled the Prince of Wales. His mother, the Queen, conjectured that Mrs. Simpson was a sexual contortionist. (Of course, to Queen Mary, that could describe anything beyond the missionary position.) Others have speculated that Wallis Simpson bullied him and gratified some masochistic quirks. They did share a vicious, selfish nature with a soft spot for pug dogs. We can only speculate. Love is blind, probably from a veneral disease.

After the death of his father in 1936, the prince, now Edward VIII, let it be known that he intended to marry Mrs. Simpson and have her reign as Queen. The British government opposed it. Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin could ignore Hitler but not this affront to good taste. Everything was wrong about the twice-married, American social climber, including the fact that she had yet to divorce Mr. Simpson. If the King persisted, then Baldwin threatened to resign. Nor was the King finding any support from the royal family; on the contrary, the Windsors now could empathize with Richard III. And the Press too had finally noticed the King’s behavior. His tantrums didn’t wear as well as his clothing.

So, since he could not rule “with the woman I love”, Edward abdicated the throne and left Britain. Wallis finally got a divorce but not a king; she had to settle for a Duke. Nonetheless, the newly-wed Duke and Duchess of Windsor did have friends. American tabloids were touched by such a love story. There also was that nice little Herr Hitler; in fact, he even expressed a hope to put Edward back on Britain’s throne. The Duke and Duchess would frequently express their appreciation of that thoughtful Herr Hitler. (So Winston Churchill put them unofficially under house arrest in the Bahamas.)

But the Duke and the Duchess lived happily–well-dressed, selfish and vacuous–ever after.

This is the anniversary of his abdication. (And history remembers it as the only decent thing that he ever did.)

This day would have been the 67th wedding of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz. Unless you are a blind Amish, you have seen episodes of their 1950’s television series. Even today, with our post-Eisenhower sophistication, the show is still quite funny. However, a modern perspective does offer two remarkable revelations. First, oh my God, Lucille Ball was really attractive. Second, yuck, Desi Arnaz was really unbearable.

Even in the 1950s, there was no secret that Desi was talentless and charmless. You had to conclude that Ethel Mertz(Vivian Vance) had better taste in men. Now, however, Desi seems more than just a drag on the show. He is an offensive, abusive pig. We might coin the term “cockpecking.” He is always badgering and bullying that poor lovely woman. “Lucy, where my dinner?” and of course, the immortal “Lucy, you got a lot of ‘splaining to do.” Granted, Lucy Ricardo’s mind isn’t as bright as her hair. Didn’t he notice before the wedding that she could earn him a Green Card but not a membership in Mensa?

Now, if a kindly(?) Jewish liberal has this visceral reaction to such tyrannical Latino machismo, imagine how your typical Republican would respond. We’d have another Spanish-American War. Those old video clips of Ricky Ricardo could well incite one. Most of us really do not care if Juan Carlos or Mario Vargas Llosa are sneaking across the border just to mow our lawns. But we wouldn’t want our sisters or daughters subjugated to these cockpecking Hispanic louts!

So, to protect our borders and women, “I Love Lucy” episodes should be required viewing. (The Justice Department can tell whether or not you are watching.) And, if the series seems a little dated, we can always remake it with Alberto Gonzales and Anne Coulter.

Today is Independence Day in Albania. Let’s celebrate its 96 years of sovereign obscurity.

Albania, like Bulgaria, is generally regarded as a fictional country because no one ever seems to be from there. This anonymity is actually encouraged by the Albanians to avoid conquest. Unfortunately for the Albanians, it is only the second worst place in the Balkans, so invaders do show up–even if it is never worth the effort.

(By the way, Montenegro has the distinction of being the worst. The Turks never bothered to invade.)

Among Albania’s conquerors were the Romans, the Byzantines, the Slavs, the Byzantines again, the French (after the 4th Crusade pillage extravaganza) the Serbs (Slavs with Byzantine culture), and the Ottomans. In a gesture of sycophany that surpasses even the French, the Albanians converted to Islam. It spared the Albanians the infidel tax, but the Turks weren’t particularly impressed. Albania would remain the Mississippi of the Ottoman Empire.

Defeated in the Balkan War of 1912, the Turks were forced to cede Northern Greece, Macedonia and (as if they cared) Albania, Now independent, it took Albania almost a decade to form a government; that is say, find a willing and reasonably competent dictator. The resultant leader was that great trivia question: King Zog.

Zog’s glorious reign ended in 1939, when Fascist Italy invaded Albania. Yes, that was Albania’s ultimate humiliation. Being conquered by Mussolini’s “Iron Legions” is like punched out by a Quaker.

After World War II, Albanian Communists seized the country. (No one else probably cared.) It must have been considerable solace to Stalin that, even if he lost Yugoslavia, he still had Albania. It was isolated from the rest of the Soviet bloc, however. Indeed, the British and CIA attempted covert operations to overthrow the Albanian communists. Unfortunately, the British Secret Service was also the Cambridge branch of the KGB, so those covert operations always failed. With Stalin’s death and the Kremlin’s subsequent denunciation of him, Albania felt even more isolated. The Soviet Union was now too liberal for Albania. So, Albania offered to be Communist China’s ally in Europe. In a rare demonstration of Chinese humor, Mao agreed. So, for over three decades, an impoverished, Slavic/Moslem enclave would broadcast (where there was electricity) the quotations of Mao. During this period, Albania lived in xenophobic isolation from the rest of Europe. It is probable that Europe never noticed.

Today, however, Albania is an impoverished Slavic/Moslem enclave that welcomes tourists. Gypsies flee there to avoid extradition to Italy.

In 1700, Peter the Great, along with the kings of Denmark and Saxony, expected to take candy from a baby. But the baby almost killed them. The candy was actually Sweden and the baby was its teenage king. Today’s Sweden is the kind of country that would make a perfect suburb: placid but sophisticated. (Many of us fondly remember that Swedish films had nudity when Hollywood still apparently believed in storks.) But three centuries ago, Sweden was the bully of the Baltic. With the best army and navy in the North, the overachieving Swedes had won control of Norway, Finland, the Baltic States, and most of the area that would have been Poland’s and Germany’s coasts.

However, Sweden’s resentful neighbors saw their chance for vengeance and territory when a fifteen year-old ascended the throne in Stockholm in 1697. His youth was not the only perceived handicap of Charles XII; the young man was very strange. Some thought him “backward”; we might diagnose him as autistic. He never mastered the charm or the etiquette of the Court; he had no interest in the pleasures and vices that were his royal privilege. All Charles ever wanted to do was to play soldier; but, as it turned out, he was very good at it.

When, in February 1700, Russia, Denmark and Saxony declared war on Sweden and its callow king, the allies must have based their strategy on an accountant’s assessment. Their amassed armies far outnumbered Sweden’s forces; the Swedes would inevitably be overwhelmed. However, Charles did not wait for the inevitable. He attacked. Denmark’s proximity was its misfortune; by the summer of 1700 an overrun, devastated Denmark was suing for peace and ceding more territory to Sweden. In fact, Denmark was lucky that Charles acceded to a peace treaty. He didn’t like treaties because they required him to stop fighting. At least, Charles found solace in that he still had a war with Russia and Saxony.

A Russian army threatened to wrest Estonia and Latvia from Sweden. Peter the Great commanded an impressive number–40,000 men–but the invasion had accomplished little more than trespassing. Cannons and muskets require aiming, but no one had provided the Russian horde with adequate training. Furthermore, many of the Russian soldiers did not even have muskets; they were armed with clubs, axes and halberds, weapons only fairly effective in the 15th century. (But Peter’s officers had the latest fashions in uniforms.) Charles felt that 10,000 of his highly trained soldiers could handle the Russian horde, and he proved it this day–November 30– at the battle of Narva in 1700.

With half of his force dead or captured and the rest scattered, his country at the mercy of an unscathed Swedish army, Peter was prepared for any demand and every humiliation; but he still was amazed by Charles. The Swedish king simply marched away to begin an invasion of Saxony. This was not an act of mercy or generosity but contempt. Charles thought so little of Russia that he snubbed it; he wanted his enemies to have some fight in them. So Russia could recuperate before Charles would demolish it again.

Peter certainly had underestimated the young Swedish king; but now Charles underestimated the Tsar. Having seen–and barely surviving–a highly trained army, Peter proved an apt student. Over the next few years, while Charles was rampaging through central Europe, Peter rebuilt the Russian army along the model of its Swedish nemesis. If Ikea had a military catalog, Peter would have bought out the store. By 1703, the Russian army was ready for a rematch, and this time it successfully invaded the Baltic States. On newly acquired territory along the gulf of Finland, the Tsar ordered the construction of a fortress-with room for expansion–named St. Petersburg.

Yet Charles ignored the reviving Russian menace. He was preoccupied with a relatively unimportant but endless campaign in Saxony and Poland. Did it really matter who would be the next figurehead king of a powerless Poland? Inexplicably, it did to Charles. By 1708, however, he finally turned his attention to Russia; and this time he was going to oust Peter. To do so, Charles would lead his army into the heartland of Russia, through the Ukraine and on to Moscow. At least, that was the plan. His over-extended, precarious supply lines might have seemed an obstacle, but Charles expected to be feted, supplied, and reinforced by the Ukrainians and Cossacks. They were known to hate the Russians, so wouldn’t they regard Charles as their liberator? If so, their gratitude did not extend to fighting along side the Swedes.

Of course, Charles stayed on the attack. What did it matter if the Russian army at Poltava was three times the size of his force? Vell–as they might say in Swedish, eight years of training did make a substantial difference in the Tsar’s army. Most of Charles’ army was either killed or captured. Now, if Charles wouldn’t end a war when he was winning, imagine how he felt when he was losing. Riding south, he avoided capture and managed to get to the Ottoman Empire. There, the celebrity refugee convinced the Turks to declare war on Russia.

Peter welcomed this additional war as a chance to advance Russia’s southern frontiers to the Black Sea. He was so eager that he repeated the same mistakes that Charles had made at Poltava. Now, it was a Russian army deep in enemy territory, with its supplies cut off, and badly outnumbered. There was one difference, however, in Peter’s disastrous loss at Pruth in 1711. He, along with his entire army, was captured. The Turks were in a position to exact any terms that they wanted; and their ally Charles was insisting on the restoration on everything he had lost. However, after two years of Charles, the Turks realized that they did not like him, either. All they asked of the captured Tsar was that he return any territory that the Russians had previously won from the Turks…and that Charles must be allowed safe passage through Russia back to Sweden. Yes, the Turks were that eager to get rid of him. In fact, they placed him under house arrest until he got the message.

When back in Sweden, Charles simply scrounged whatever he could to continue the war. He was oblivious to the fact that the war was irretrievably lost, and that his strickened country had neither the manpower nor the resources left to accommodate his bloody hobby. Of course, Charles would not be content until he was killed in battle; in 1718, in a pointless siege of a Norwegian town, someone finally obliged him. The marksman is unknown; it might even have been an exhausted Swede.

History has had a number of great yet self-destructive generals. Charles XII is unique among them in that he is so colorless. Perhaps that is the consequence of being Swedish. He also could have been an idiot savant whose savoir happened to be war. History remembers him as “The Lion of the North.” He may have had the courage of a lion but he had the common sense of a lemming.

November 16, 1491:  Libel Epoque

Waterboarding works. Without its stimulating edification, Benito Garcia might never have realized that he was the leader of a Jewish conspiracy to murder Christian children and seize control of Spain. Until June 1490 Senor Garcia may have been under the impression that he was only an itinerant woolcomber. His education began with a robbery by some laudably pious thieves. As they ransacked the wayfarer’s possessions, they found a morsel of bread resembling a sacramental wafer. Had Garcia stolen it from a church in order to perform some evil Jewish ritual on the sanctified carbohydrate? The thieves decided to turn Garcia over to the authorities; and the authorities saw only the heresy rather than the irony. Furthermore, if this was heresy, then it was a matter for the Inquisition.

Initially, Garcia seemed unaware of his obvious guilt. Flogging failed to enlighten him. Then the rack also proved uninstructive. However, the water torture convinced Garcia of his guilt. Of course, Garcia’s crime required accomplices; he was persuaded to come up with four names. These people, once they had their tutorials, also had some remarkable self-realizations. More culprits were named and more crimes were confessed. After an edifying soaking, and in hopes of avoiding another, a Yuce Franco admitted to killing a Christian child near La Guardia, Castille as part of a magic spell that would make Spain’s Christians disappear.

Franco’s sensational admission required everyone to be interrogated again. They were persuaded to confess the murder, but no one could agree on the details. They did not concur on the name or description of the child, the site of the crime, or where the body was placed. Even the Spanish civil authorities were uncooperative; they failed to find any reports of a missing child in or near La Guardia. However, the Inquisition decided that those details were irrelevant. The confessions sufficed and could be taken as gospel.

On this day in 1491 Benito Garcia, Yuce Franco, and three others were burned at the stake. So were three corpses of men who had failed to survive until their execution. The trial and auto da fe occurred in La Guardia, but the accusations were known throughout Spain, spread and incited by the Inquisition. Expounding this “conspiracy” as proof of the Jews’ danger and enmity, Grand Inquisitor Tomas de Torquemada demanded the Jews’ expulsion from Spain. Isabella was gullible enough to agree. Ferdinand was craven enough to concur.

So, as Torquemada would have told you, waterboarding works.