FinermanWorks

If embezzlers and MBAs had a Hall of Fame, Nicolas Fouquet would be shamelessly prominent. As the Minister of Finance during the early reign of Louis XIV, Fouquet maintained a bookkeeping system modeled after the Gordian Knot. It could be said that he would collect all the revenues but was willing to share some with the government, or at least the officials he liked.

Fouquet had the finest home in France. It seems unlikely that he afforded it just by brownbagging his lunches. The thought certainly occurred to Louis XIV, who evidently resented being the social inferior of his minister. The King ordered Fouquet arrested for embezzlement. There was a public trial, and the verdict could hardly be in doubt, but the judges proved unusally sympathetic to the accused. (Had they been past recipients of Fouquet’s generosity?) They sentenced him to banishment; you might well suspect that Fouquet planned a comfortable exile. The King, however, overruled that lenient sentence and condemned Fouquet to life imprisonment. The disgraced minister spent the last fifteen years of his life in a less than luxurious cell. He died this day in 1680.

His second career began in the 1930s. Someone in Hollywood had been reading Alexandre Dumas. The 19th century French novelist apparently had screenplays in mind. “The Three Musketeers” and “The Count of Monte Cristo” had been box office hits, and the studios wanted more. While Dumas himself was no longer available, he had been prolific and his works included a sequel to The Three Musketeers. Based on a legend about a prisoner in the Bastille, the story was known as “The Man in the Iron Mask.”

Dumas had imagined that the title character was Philippe the twin brother of Louis XIV, hidden from birth but now the center of a plot to substitute him on the throne. In the novel, the younger brother was the unknowing pawn of ambitious men. Their attempted coup fails, however, due to the heroism of D’Artagnan and the shrewdness of a government minister named Fouquet. The real king is saved (even if France isn’t) and Philippe is condemned to the Bastille where his royal features are covered by an iron mask.

It seemed like another swashbuckler perfect for Hollywood…except for one problem: the villains. In Dumas’ novel the conspirators were the Jesuits, led by the renegade musketeer Aramis. Hollywood was not prepared to vilify the Catholic Church (although the Church never has been shy about vilifying Hollywood). So, a new villain had to be created.

Poor Fouquet already had a criminal record. Since he was an embezzler, why not make him a traitor, too? So, from helping to foil the plot, Fouquet became the mastermind of it.

But then Hollywood came up with yet another improvement on the plot. Instead of making poor Philippe a malleable cipher, portray him as a noble alternative to his wicked older brother Louis–and have the plot succeed. Good Philippe would secretly replaced Louis, who then would become The Man in the Iron Mask. Of course, Fouquet would still have to be a villain, but he would prove his intrinsic evil by being loyal to the legitimate King.

The logic of the plot was very similar to Fouquet’s Gordian bookkeeping. Dumas would have been dismayed; he actually seemed to like the wily minister. In fact, Dumas even gives Fouquet one of the novel’s few jokes.

Fouquet has heard rumors of the twin prince. He asks a trusted henchman, “Do you recall some mystery surrounding the birth of Louis XIV?”

The aide replies, “Do you mean that Louis XIII was not the father?”

Fouquet corrects him, “I said a mystery.”

Imagine yourself a tourist in ancient Rome and you wanted to buy 15 postcards (the ones using mosaics were impressive but the postage was exorbitant). Of course, you would tell the shopkeeper, I’d like Ides, please. If he were obliging, he would lift his tunic. Otherwise, he would think you a babbling idiot.

You see, Ides does not mean 15. It rather refers to the full moon by which the old Roman calendar divided the month. The similarity between month and moon is not a coincidence.

Ancient Rome was built on seven hills and an absurd lunar calendar. The Roman year had ten months as well another sixty days in winter that didn’t count. Be fair: if you were stuck using Roman numerals, you’d resort to any short cut, too. Such a slovenly, lackadaisical calendar might suit a small Tiber village or modern Italy, but not a growing empire. The government decided to organize the dead time into two new months: Ianuarius and Februarius.

That improved the bookkeeping but not the accuracy of the calendar. The Roman year was 355 days. As Rome expanded, it was coming into contact with more sophisticated systems. The Greeks had realized that a sun-based calendar was more accurate. Yet, out of self-reverence, for six centuries Rome adhered to its ridiculous calendar.

But that outdated calendar was just one tradition that Julius Caesar intended to end. While in Alexandria, Caesar was seduced by more than just Cleopatra. The city was the think tank of the ancient world. Greek science and Babylonian mathematics had produced a calendar of unequaled precision. Caesar was so impressed that he decided to impose it on the Roman world. And for some reason, people called it the Julian calendar.

(Alexandria’s scientific community also successfully promoted a chronological concept called the “week.” The seven-day period once had been dismissed as just another Jewish idiosyncrasy. But when Alexandria adopted the idea, everyone loved it.)

The Julian calendar went into effect on January 1, 45 B.C. If the Roman traditionalists had any objections, they certainly expressed them on March 15, 44 B.C.

The Alamo might have been the first celebrity reality show…Tune in to see Davy Crockett, Jim Bowie and their 187 roommates cope with the annoyances and stresses of living together under siege, bombardment and assault.

Unfortunately, the show would have had only 13 episodes and there were no possibilities for a second season.

On this day in 1836, the Alamo fell to the Mexican army. The ruined mission became the shrine of Texas’ Independence. But why exactly were the Texans fighting?

In 1835, the Mexican government adopted a new constitution, one that replaced a federation of states with a centralized government. Under the previous constitution, the province of Tejas and its immigrant population had enjoyed considerable autonomy.

For example, under the Mexican statutes for naturalization, the Americano migrants in Tejas were supposed to become Catholic. However, the loose federal system never imposed that theological requirement. But the new constitution was not interested in that either; in fact, it was Anti-Clerical and was more likely to prosecute anyone for being too Catholic.

No, the real manifestation of Mexican tyranny was the enforced abolition of a certain property right that obviously was cherished by the citizens of Tejas. Now what sacred cause would incite rebellion by Stephen Austin (from Virginia), Jim Bowie (from Louisiana), Sam Houston (from Tennessee), and Davey Crockett (from Tennessee)?

In Texas, independence was a relative term.

But, in triumphing over Mexico, the Texans got to keep their “property”, at least until 1865.

So, Remember the Alamo…just not the details.

We know that the White House ignores all the evidence of evolution, global warning and gravity. When the truth is inconvenient, and the facts are incriminating, one can find great solace in ignorance. There are times and societies where stupidity is a dogma. For example, in 16th century Spain the Inquisition regarded the practice of reading on a Saturday as suspiciously Jewish. And you know how the Inquisition dealt with suspicions. People can be as flammable as books.

And in our time, General Pinochet had similar suspicions for similar reasons. During his tyranny, Chile’s colleges were discouraged from teaching the Theory of Relativity. Albert Einstein apparently was not a practicing Catholic. (However, Pinochet was quite enthusiastic about the economic ideas of Milton Friedman, but then those people are so good at usury.)

Now lest I be picketed by the Knights of Columbus, I must mention an example of willful ignorance by Protestant liberals. In 1582, the Catholic Church presented an updated and far more accurate version of the calendar. However, Protestant England refused to acknowledge the improvement, as if there were a Jesuit lurking behind every page of the calendar. Of course, naming the calendar for Pope Gregory was not exactly ecumenical either. Rather than give a Catholic credit for anything, England adhered to the old Julian calendar. (Apparently, an inaccurate pagan was preferable to an accurate Catholic.)

Finally, in 1752 Britain begrudgingly adopted the Gregorian Calendar. At least, the American Colonies did not revolt over that; but it was a confusing transistion. For example, George Washington had to adjust the celebration of his birthday. The twenty-year-old thought he had been born on February 11th. According to the new calendar, however, he should have been celebrating on February 22nd.

And most of us will honor him today. The White House may still think that it is February 11th.

February 21

They were an incongruous pair.  One was handsome, debonair and affable.  The other was homely, abrasive and overbearing; some regarded him as a genius but most thought him obnoxious.  I could be describing Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis.  However, I was thinking of Freddie Engels and Charlie Marx.

On this day in 1848, the boys published “The Communist Manifesto“.  The pamphlet was not the immediate hit that they had hoped.  It did not incite proletariat uprisings and Verdi did not option the script for an opera.  Marx and Engels had to keep their day jobs.  Engels’ was owning factories and Marx’s was borrowing money from Engels.

Yes, Engels suffered from an embarrassment of riches, and Marx knew how to make the guilt pay off. The textile heir became communism’s first victim and possibly its only willing one. Engel’s fortune subsidized Marx’s ventures into the stock market.

No matter what he told Frau Marx, Karl wasn’t spending all his time at the British Museum. The founder of communism liked to hang around the London Stock Exchange. He was not trying to emancipate the clerks; nor was he simply the disinterested observer of bourgeois financial machinations. In reality, Marx loved to play the market. Unfortunately, he had a dismal investment record; it was bad enough to justify the invention of communism. Yet, Marx never lost a penny in his fiscal fiascoes. Engels did.

In the Marxist system of finance, Engels incurred all expenses and losses, while Marx got any profits. This arrangement, a prototype of today’s mutual funds, can be expressed as, “From leeched, according to his debility; to leech, according to his greed.”

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, 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.

“A lack of empathy, little ability to form friendships, one-sided conversation, intense absorption in a special interest, and clumsy movements.”

This is the description of Asperger’s Syndrome. It also is the college application for the University of Chicago.

Today we observe the birth of Dr. Hans Asperger who discovered a clinical reason for being obnoxious. We don’t know if the doctor himself had the syndrome. The birth certificate from 1906 does not indicate that the infant was unusually overbearing, belittling the aesthetics of his mother’s birth canal or the inferior education of the midwife. However, his high school yearbook did declare him “Man Most Likely To Be Wedgied.”

Fortunately, because of Dr. Asperger, we now have a better understanding of the chronically unbearable. When you find yourself confronted by an aggressively obnoxious individual–and you are not at a car dealership–you should respond by knocking out the buffoon. Then search his or her pockets to diagnose the nature of psychosis. If you find the unconscious has a Nobel Prize in Economics or a large collection of used dental floss, then the diagnosis is Asperger’s Syndrome. Try to be sympathetic. If, however, the unconscious has a copy of an Ayn Rand novel, a regimen of sympathy is not recommended or even possible. In fact, feel free to hit him again.

If only Saint Valentine practiced what he preached…Roman Emperors have feelings, too. The Emperor Claudius II (268-270) was feeling unappreciated. Coping with barbarian invasions and rebellious governors, the poor fellow didn’t even have time to pick an original name for himself. (Everyone was confusing him with the stammering, limping hero of PBS.) And when Claudius II did manage to defeat the Goths and the Alamanni–delaying for 150 years the Dark Ages and Richard Wagner–did anyone bother to thank him?

No. The pagans were preoccupied with bread, circuses and orgies, and that new monotheist cult refused to make just a few sacrifices in his honor. Even the old monotheist cult was more amenable than that; of course, it took three lost wars, the destruction of Jerusalem and expulsion from Judea to remind the Jews to include a few perfunctory prayers for the Emperor. However, the new cult was dogmatic in its refusal, preferring persecution to courtesy.

That really seemed unfair to Claudius and the Empire. Christianity was an ingrate. Roman roads made it easy for missionaries, and the fresh water from aqueducts ensured that baptisms didn’t cause cholera.

Would it have been too much for Saint Valentine to send the Emperor a thank you note?

And a Happy 167th Wedding Anniversary to Queen Victoria and Prince Albert!

Victoria and Albert could be considered the Lucy and Ricky of their time. She is earnest but not terribly bright; he is intellectual, puritanical and foreign. She adores him, and he lets her…and she does have her way. There are nine children. The oldest daughter, Vicky, is Miss Perfect; she is practically her father in drag. The oldest son, Bertie, is a classic goof and party-animal; he is the despair of his father. Of course, Vicky and Al also have some zany neighbors: Lou and Genie Bonaparte. (Lou is a rogue who always coming up with some get-rich-quick scheme, such as trying to setting up an empire in Mexico. He is the despair of his wife–who is dumb but gorgeous.)

Unfortunately, during the 22nd season of “I Love Vicky“, Albert does a John Ritter. There are a series of guest male leads to keep Victoria busy for the next 39 seasons. Among the guest stars are the charming, hilarious Ben Disraeli and the impossibly pompous William Gladstone. Of course, Bertie is still undermining the Victorian household; he now is a serial adulterer. And his oldest son may be Jack the Ripper. The oldest daughter, the perfect Vicky, has produced a perfect monster for a child: Willie to his grandmother, Kaiser Wilhelm to his subjects.

That is the basic outline. If we market it to cable, we’ll have to include nude scenes.

Obituary I

Thanks to Marco Polo’s gossip and Sam Coleridge’s opium dreams, we all know Kublai Khan. Ironically, the Arab World is more familiar with Kublai’s younger brother Hulagu. Hulagu may sound like a dance from the Sixties, but he would not rate highly on Arabic Bandstand. On the other hand, Hulagu was the man whom any American President would want to be. The Mongol commander had to contend with two challenges: terrorists and pacifying Baghdad.

The terrorists were the Assassins, a murderous cult named for its one of its fringe benefits. (The Medicare Drug Prescription program should be so efficient.) The Assassins scanned the social pages of the time to see who was worth extorting and killing. They would have known how to deal with Paris Hilton.

Hulagu scoffed at this boutique approach to terrorism. He found mass-murder more effective and gratifying. Since his big brother lent him an army, Hulagu decided to apply his managerial principles to the Middle East. He first demonstrated his entrepreneurial flair throughout Mesopotamia, massacring everyone who did not immediately surrender. His approach was so impressive that the Assassins decided to surrender. Hulagu killed them in any case, reasoning that they wouldn’t be missed.

Next on his itinerary was the glorious city of Baghdad, the cultural capital of the Moslem world. Hulagu and his army arrived in 1258. Unfortunately for the city, the reigning Caliph was a little slow in surrendering, and Hulagu was pathologically impatient. The city was destroyed. Most of its population was murdered. The city was stripped of everything that would appeal to a Mongol’s sensibilities. The rest was destroyed. The priceless scrolls of Baghdad’s fabled library, the last extant collection of the ancients’ writings, were dumped in the Tigris River. The city was uninhabitable for years.

But Baghdad was definitely pacified.

Hulagu had plans to visit Syria, Palestine and Egypt but Big Brother needed the army for a little family civil war. Baby Brother had to be content being only the Khan of Persia and Mesopotamia. The relative inactivity may have killed him; he died his day in 1265 at the age of 47.

But Baghdad still remembers him.

Obituary II

On this day in 1587, Mary Queen of Scots was subjected to an experiment in sensory deprivation. In one of the BBC’s first science series, “A Ration of Bacon”, host Francis Bacon answered a viewer’s question, “How long can a Stuart live without a head?”

The public was curious as to whether a decapitation would deprive Ms. Stuart of any vital organs. She did have difficulty leaving the scaffold; so her eyes had proved useful. She did not seem to miss her nose, however. Let’s face it: nothing was worth smelling in the 16th century. (From the fifth century until the late nineteenth, western civilization was in The Dank Ages). The absence of taste buds was actually considered an improvement when you are dealing with British food.

So Mary could have enjoyed a long and fairly unencumbered life without a head. Unfortunately, Elizabethan doctors treated decapitations by bleeding the patient. If the shock didn’t kill her, the doctors’ lack of hygiene did.