Lord Nelson...and that time he lost his marbles

So for anyone who knows anything about British naval history....
they know who Horatio Nelson is.
He is an icon, a masterful leader and he won one of the most amazing battles in naval history, Trafalgar (well he died a few hours in, but it is what he is famous for).

Well...
After the Nile and before Copenhagen... Nelson had this, well.. let us just be honest... midlife crisis (really end of life crisis since he was going to get destroyed a few years later).

He abandoned his really sweet seeming wife Fanny and had a very open and very scandalous affair with this woman named Emma Hamilton who had an oblivious or just not caring older husband.
By the end of this...she had Nelson's kid... Horatia (I cannot make this up)

scannnndallllll

Some of the crazier things...

He left his wife and tried to cut her out of his will

An openly pregnant Hamilton would rhomp about drinking champagne and singing while not hiding the fact that she was having Nelson's love baby

He wrote letters to her about how she was his real wife and they would be together forever

and he got caught up in this really complicated political intrigue with Naples and the Queen (Marie Antionette's sister by the way)...and at one point got a letter from a commanding officer that kindly reminded him what country he worked for.

He did not start acting semi-alright until he got back on a ship and went to fight again.

Here is my issue.... he got a pretty nasty gash in the head from shrapnel during the Nile Battle....is that why he went nuts or was he just a crazy man.  He had an affair before with a woman, but it was never this over the top and this guy lived on boats most of his life so I can see him not having the understanding how to behave...if he was not known for his ability to get men to follow him due in part to his social skills with his fleet.

Something to think about...did the injury in the battle of the Nile really knock Nelson stupid for a while? 

That Napoleon...

Read this in N.A.M. Roger's Command of the Ocean and was like... wow Napoleon.... 

So he thought that Europe was too small for his awesome and decided to go try to take Egypt and to make a long story short, that did not work out or end up the way he wanted so he decided to leave and head back to France (where he took over the country)....

But... before leaving Egypt he massacred all of the prisoners he had amassed over the campaign oh...and he poisoned his own ill and wounded troops...leaving many of them stranded in Egypt to rot.

Nice dude....

Oh yea...looks all majestic here... the meanie 

A little extra for the day...

You know when I read something crazy I have to share...

I know we all have this perception of what it was like for sailors on ships in the 18th century, and a great deal of influence does come from movies like Pirates of the Caribbean that romanticize the lifestyle. Honestly, the drinking was pretty on par, it was not like one could safely drink water from casks on a ship...that just screamed disease and you do not want to do anything that might start an epidemic in a tight space.

In reality, it took a lot of food to keep the sailors fit enough to run a ship and so despite the ideas of hard tact and salt beef with weevils throughout being our idea of sea fare, they worked pretty hard to keep fresh ingredients on the ship...including livestock... ALIVE livestock.
When ships set out they would sometimes have dozens of cows on board.  Can you imagine?  
So you have hundreds of men, supplies, cargo, everything one would need to travel and maintain a ship on a journey... and some cows.
I just thought that was funny. 

Women did not just become activists recently....

Women have a long history of being politically active...not just your outliers like Mary Queen of Scots or Elizabeth I....Isabella... these were monarchs with a great deal of power, but women also have worked pretty diligently go get their points across to the wider public.

Women in America worked pretty hard to fight for suffrage beginning in the 19th century.
Additionally, you would be surprised at how many "founders" consulted their wives before making decisions...Abigail Adams and Dolly Madison could be pretty forceful and sharp tongued when you crossed them.
In France, the women could be effective and deadly, just ask Marat.

But.... this month many many years ago, women in Paris finally lost their tempers and marched on Versailles because they were pretty tired of high and unaffordable grain prices and a lack of food can make a woman pretty hangry.
In truth, starvation was a real thing in absolutist France, the economy was atrocious and a bad year for agriculture meant starvation across the countryside with a monarchy and government so detached from reality that they simply did not realize the state of affairs with their people...

Btw...that let them eat cake was taken wayyyyy out of context...but anyway.

In October 1789, the women got so angry and out of sorts that they mobbed the armory in Paris, marched to Versailles (I think about 16 miles away) and began demanding change in a we have weapons sort of way. 
They actually forced the King to return to Paris to get some work done and this was all temporary to some extent because we all know what happened to Louis.

Anyway... this whole anti-feminism tilt lately where women should be in the home...make babies...not vote stupidity.... maybe these guys should read about what happens when you make a collective group of women angry enough. 

These ladies were not kidding

How the Navy Even Sailed....

I will say this about any navy that accomplished even setting sail in the eighteenth century...miracle.

I am not even being coy really, the fact that these ships made it to sea proves pretty miraculous, especially when they are able to sail and defeat another force.

Was the British navy pretty hardcore in the 1700s...yes, but they also almost always operated with too little men, with huge numbers of sick and inexperienced sailors, and the weather... the weather out there!

I came across one instance when the British were preparing to sail and one ship doctor found fifty FIFTY sailors on ONE SHIP with venereal disease and that does not account for problems with typhus and scurvy...

Ships were in disrepair, the officers were all eligible for the senior citizen discount at Ye Olde Golden Coralle, everyone was sick and you probably were short at least a few dozen men.

Now to be fair... in France it was ten times worse and the Revolution and Terror pretty much slapped the French Navy in the face and kicked it in the mud.

But still... The fact that they were able to sail at all sometimes seems like a miracle.

This just seems more likely than the amazingly triumphant landscapes I usually see...

Now just imagine all the guys on shore had venereal disease...

When Revolutions Go Wrong

After a fun little talk about the French Revolution on my facebook page... there are a few things I noticed about the French one...
People say you have to break a few eggs.... or tens of thousands of eggs in a horrifically tyrannical and violent fashion.
wow...
The French.  

How did this...

Become this....

By the time the Committee for Public Safety was in control of France, the Revolution had jumped the shark and any idea of liberty was out of fashion.

I read in a book tonight (The Glorious First of June) that when one man attempted to use the Rights of Man in his defense (which he was lucky because they thought trails for criminals and dissenters were a waste of time).... the Judge basically said that saying such was proof of sedition. 

This was like President John Adams levels of paranoia....granted he didn't execute thousands of people, he just thought anyone who dared criticize him was the "debil" lol.

The CPS sent troops throughout France to squash "Counter Revolutionary ideas" or what we would call...logical people having a problem with bloodthirsty loons running the country.

They massacred thousands of people and threw them in mass graves.

Oh man... good times right?  Thankfully that period did not last long, but still...the damage done in the short time it did. 

Alternate Histories

Truth:
Historians (at least those I have encountered) have major annoyance issues with people who write those awfully flawed and illogical alternate history novels... you know when technology is mixed and soldiers in the 19th century have 21st century weapons and such...
We do not like it....
It is not that we do not have any creativity.
It is not that we do not enjoy a good historical novel...some of us really do...
Here are some of the ones I like...
Wolf Hall
A Triple Knot
Cold Mountain
All Quiet on the Western Front
Memoirs of A Geisha
Pillars of the Earth

Annoyance over.

Thanks!

Side Notes from Reading...

I am currently reading Bergen's Manhunt which follows the ten year attempt to take down Osama Bin Laden.  I own the documentary based off of the book and I will fully admit that I have watched it at least a dozen times, I am fascinated by the analysts that worked for the CIA in Alec Station and so I finally got the book.  I did not get far in last night before falling asleep...to be fair, I spent most of the day and evening reading about the French Navy and chasing around a hyper toddler so I was a bit tired.

My early observation that really does not have much to do with the story as a whole is this...

If you are an architect in Abottabad, Pakistan (oh btw... Abottabad was actually named after a British dude named Abbot...crazy!) and you get a call to build a very expensive and specific compound...would you not get suspicious about who on earth you were building for???  Maybe the guy knew and was just like...I wont ask questions and I will take the money, but despite its very sparse appearance...that place was expensive to build and had pretty specific designs. I am sure the guy knew there was something clandestine going on, but I did find it odd.

To Pouf or not to Pouf

Would you believe me if I said one of the early conflicts in France during the time or Revolution involved arguments over fashion?
No... I have not had any Guinness today.

So this is a French Revolutionary dude...

(thanks wikipedia)

dapper fellow

See that thing on his hat, its called a cockade...and the red white and blue ones were a fashionable way to say...hey I support the revolution.  There were also poufs that members of the National Guard (revolutionary dudes too) wore to show their enlistment in local militias... kind of like an "in your face" gesture towards men enlisted in the French Military who took their orders from the King. Well, I am reading a book titled... Revolution & Political Conflict in the French Navy by Cormack and he discusses this crisis in the Naval base town of Toulon where the Commandant of the Navy would not allow the base dockworkers to wear the poufs of the National Guard...for obvious reasons... and he even let them wear the cockades if they wanted, but wearing a pouf of a pretty much offensive armed force might have caused some instability in an already tense situation.

This caused a hailstorm of bad... and contributed to Revolutionary tensions....

Never think accessories are not dangerous!

Scottish and Freedom?

I think everyone I know the past few weeks has asked about my opinion in regards to the Scottish independence movement and if I thought if they should be independent. It is safe to say that I've seen a few people look pretty shocked when I say... no, I think Scotland is good where it is, but I'm not subjugating a people or forgetting their struggles with their once occupying neighbor to the South... it is more of a current economic climate and logic decision and I honestly think that the few economic boosts Scotland has going for it would not be sufficient to support the country's population economically and thus Scotland would decline and its people would suffer... and let us be fair, Scotland being a part of the UK has nothing in common now as it did when it struggled for independence a few times in the past... NOTHING in common... I do not even think Scotland has anything in common with Northern Ireland...who I think SHOULD be a part of Ireland and not the UK by the way...

Did you like my intro into discussing Scottish history today?

So I will admit, I watch Outlander the Starz television show based on the quasi-romance novel of the same name by Diana Gabaldon. I actually caught up on the show today...and what an episode it was...whew!

Anyway...
The show and the novel has caused me to look back at the Battle of Culloden...

It is so hard to root against the Redcoats sometimes... look how cool they look....

The Battle of Culloden took place on 16 April 1746. The eighteenth century was a rough period for the British in a way... the seventeenth was a time of chaos, war, and blood... and the English...after this period, often had a grudge against the Stuart family. Sure, James I was tolerable, but a hard sale after Elizabeth I's age, even if her administrative methods left the country a bit cash poor. James Stuart was also James VI, King of Scotland, the son of a beheaded Mary Queen of Scots (who he sold out by the way and totally promised his cousin Elizabeth that he would not retaliate for his mother's beheading as long as he was the heir... nice kid right!). He had this odd reign where he and parliament argued over legislative power and control...and that continued when Charles I took the throne in 1625 and he also fought bitterly with parliament over control...and because I am not discussing that at the moment...let us just jump to the whole beheading, crazy violent time in England...Charles II... more problems...William of Orange...more problems...Anne...Hanovers take over and lots of Georges follow...Scotland does not like the King, Scotland wants rights and FREEDOM! (I cannot help it)

Back to Culloden...

By the way, while I am in no way a France hater...at all, I like France... the 18th century was totally not a time to try to work with the French to perhaps get someone on the English throne.  The British and the French were basically at war with each other every other day...and France's administrative and economic methods were what I am going to simply call...questionable. 

Scotland went to France because it would make sense that they did so, Jacobite rebellions were fostered by the French, especially when the British had such a problem with Catholics and the British were the annoyed rivals of the French. Just think about the crazy Alabama fan who poisoned the Auburn trees...it is that kind of hate. 

Tensions, tensions...violence...unrest... leads eventually to rebellion in a swords/guns/fighting sort of way, not some glorious revolution where people hug it out and say Let us change our government (it really did not happen that way then either, but yea...another story). 

The Duke of Cumberland, the guy who was at the head of the English forces...was decent militarily and it helped that he had quite a few men behind him, more men than the Scots who oppose them and unlike many movies and fictional portrayals of outnumbered forces...they usually lose, no matter how much heart they have.

Duke William was a Prince, highly educated, and honestly...just had more men and better equipment to handle an already disorganized and not wonderfully led group of Scots. I do not place the blame on Lord John Murray, he did what he could at the location chosen for him... but, these guys had swords and the British had guns and cannons... we all know what will happen when you get on a boggy field with some swords and shields against more modern weaponry...you get owned in the face...and the Scottish did. 

Around four thousand people died overall in the battle... and I will say the Scots took out quite a few dudes.

Interesting tidbits, the sides were not as stark as some of your romantic tales may portray them... scots fought for the British as well in that battle, not everyone was enamoured with Bonnie Prince Charlie (I would not be...he was kind of a loser). 

A Quick One...

I am in the middle of Knight's tome-sized biography of Lord Nelson titled The Pursuit of Victory...all 860 pages of it...
I had to talk about this because it is crazy. Maybe the age of things interests me or maybe because I did the earlier post on Jefferson and Madison being so young that I found my newest age fact something to talk about too....

First... to Jefferson and Madison for a moment...
One of the French officers that came over during the American Revolution (and who became a friend to Madison and Jefferson throughout their lives) was the Marquis De Lafayette.  He contributed heavily to the war effort and helped the Americans secure a win against Britain.  So.... he was born on 6 September 1757.  Now do the math... that means that at the Onset of the American Revolution, the Marquis was a teenager.  This guy was A TEENAGER and he was doing some crazy stuff...
I had to just say that because of the whole Jefferson and Madison thing, man. I feel very under-accomplished. 

Now...the other thing.
So Lord Nelson is a famous British naval figure and do you want to know when Lord Nelson began his career.  Let me ask you this...what were you doing when you were twelve?  Well, ol' Nelson here was joining the British navy accompanying his Uncle out to sea.  This was not uncommon, actually...it was a good idea to start out as early as possible so you could move up and make a career for yourself in the Navy.  TWELVE! Nelson had a crappy childhood near Norfolk, England no doubt and his dad Edmond was not exactly the nicest man on earth, but... still... twelve.
yea.
I think the most complex thing I did at twelve was complain about homework. 

Very Secretive Men

Sometimes it is the smallest tidbits about famous historical figures that are the most interesting. Of course these men with all their great deeds and noble undertakings were, in the end, human and thus susceptible to greed, jealousy, and paranoia. It is that paranoia that I want to touch on with my blog tonight...
So Madison and Jefferson, two Virginians, close friends, and Presidents of the United States corresponded with each other throughout their very long and close friendship. The letters talked about family matters, engagements, marriage, politics, Virginia (man did they love their state...their country), and politics. Perhaps it was the nature of letters during the period or perhaps it was because some of their subjects...if read by the wrong set of eyes, it would damage their reputations and because of some of their close associates, cause duels (just ask Alexander Hamilton how duels work out)...but these guys were extremely paranoid and secretive when it came to how they communicated.
For many years, since the time of the Revolution when they served as Virginia delegates, Congressmen in the Continental Congress, or Governor (Jefferson was the second Governor of Virginia, after Patrick Henry)...these guys corresponded in code, like a secret code...
When Jefferson arrived in Paris during the first half of the 1780s, he had 20 pages of encoded letters waiting for him (according to authors Andrew Burstein and Nancy Isenberg).

I can understand the worry that prying eyes would use my own words against me... look at the age we live in, but I found it fascinating that these two very close friends would write these long and expansive letters to each other in a complicated code so they could ensure that only the other could read a letter.

Secret code buddies

WTF History

There is something that exists in the South that I believe does not happen in other parts of the country. Actually, I have spoken with people living in the Northern and Western States who never experience those wrapped up in what we call the "lost cause." Thankfully, as an academic, I do not encounter many because once you get past a certain level of studying history, that mentality tends to weed out...that being said, there are scholars out there who perpetuate and support the fantastical and glorified myth of the Old South and that is truly frightening. 
Last night, I unfortunately...had an encounter with someone deeply immersed in the lost cause mentality...the idea that the South was indeed protecting its rights and honors to leave a tyrannical union if they so felt like it.   Now there have been those who have attempted to argue the right of secession through the Constitution and those of us who argue against that logic, but in truth...that part has little to do with the whole story.  That is beside the point though...regardless...the states rebelled, a war was fought and one side won.  People can cling to this mystical world of hooped skirts and chivalric honor all they want to, but the plain fact was that 19th century Southern prosperity was birthed on the backs of human beings deprived of every human right our natural laws afforded them as they were forced to labor, serve, and die at the whim of another person. The war, the glorious fight for Confederate freedom...was a war fought by very rich men and placed in the hands of a public that followed them... to maintain that economic lifestyle and that was it.  The states rights argument, sure...they were fighting for states rights, but I find it pretty annoying that when the states rights argument is brought up, they forget that the rights they were fighting for was the rights to keep an institution of human bondage. Just look up the Missouri Compromise or bleeding Kansas and read about what states rights were being haggled in the halls of congress prior to the outbreak of the war and how the election of a man who they knew was against the spread of slavery into the west subsequently ushered in that separation that they incorrectly felt they had the right to initiate. 
Back to last night...
I had a man tell me that the first domestic terrorist in our United States was Abraham Lincoln and that he didn't fight the damn war to free those (I will not type that word but it starts with an N).  He said it so angrily that it was arresting...especially since I did not solicit any information about his opinions on a war that started over 150 years ago. To be perfectly honest, I do not really enjoy discussing the Civil War simply because people get so emotionally invested in something they most of the time have no real concept of or want to understand beyond the myth they believe and its really uncomfortable for me... because I feel like, what is wrong with people?? So no, I do not delve into the world of "heritage not hate" or "we should be proud of those who fought"... I do not buy into it, I do not want to, and frankly I think it is a caustic and dangerous practice that further maintains a regional divide that truthfully hurts social relations in our country. 
Listen I know Lincoln sent troops into the border states in 1861 and I am sure that somehow you can justify calling him a "terrorist" for doing so in your own mind, but he was the president of the United States in a time when there was a huge and dangerous war looming on the horizon...and presidents can do some pretty powerful things like suspending the writ of habeas corpus when they feel there is a need for it...is that always the smartest move, I do not know.  I am of the mind that regardless of what Lincoln did in those last few days and weeks of tense buildup, the frenzy of fighting for the cause had already swept up those in power in states like South Carolina, that it mattered not what Lincoln did, they wanted a war. 
And yes, Lincoln did not set upon the goal of massive emancipation at the onset of the war, but that is not some well hidden Unionist secret...that was pretty obvious.  Lincoln cared about the Union first and fixing the disease of slavery second, he hated the institution, he spoke out against slavery...but he understood the complexities involved and truthfully felt a gradual demise of slavery would be more conducive for everyone...now did that change as the war progressed and as Lincoln and the rest of the North slowly evolved their abolitionist feelings? Yes. Does that diminish the fact that in the end the War ended a disgusting and depraved institution that should have never had the ability to thrive within the birthplace of the U.S. Constitution...No. 
So weird crazy man who used a horrible racist slur and called Lincoln a terrorist... I know you think I should... "move my butt up to New York City" if I disagree with your flawed and dangerously uninformed logic and I also am aware that you are increasingly agitated at a world that does not condone the belief and expression of the ideologies you hold so dear and you feel that we are violating your freedom of speech by looking with shock and concern at you when you say these disgusting and horrible things...but if you understood that constitution that you THINK you hold dear (when it is convenient)... you would understand that just because you have the right to say whatever you feel worthy of utterance, does not in any way mean there are not consequences that come along with it.

Some historians say that the Civil War is still being fought today and days like today... I believe it. 

Here goes...

I like to tell stories about the crazy things I read when studying and doing research. As a student of history, you are always finding new and interesting things that spark your interest or leave you looking up specific stories or people in more detail. I tend to share those stories with coworkers, friends, and family quite often and have been told I should do a podcast....
Well I do not like talking on a microphone.
So...
How about a blog?

This may not turn out to be interesting at all, but I will take the shot.

From today on this will be my history blog, on it you will find little facts I find interesting, sometimes annoyed observances about some of our "greatest" men (and women), and just crazy stories about history I think everyone should know.

Expect the first post soon.

Today I am reading a book titled Madison and Jefferson and already there have been a few things that I thought...how crazy.

I touched on this in my main blog but...
I found it pretty surprising that in 1776 Thomas Jefferson was only thirty-three years old and James Madison... a strapping twenty-five. Apart from the fact that at those young ages these men (along with many others) were able to fight a war and put together a functional system of government is amazing, I found it really strange that in any portrait from the period and any film that depicts the founding in existence...these men are portrayed much older. Was it because that at twenty-five and thirty-three during the 18th century, these men were well seasoned and aged men or is it because we as a society need to see age to confirm acceptable leadership and wisdom?
That is an interesting question and one I never considered.  
Is it factual to say that we age our founders to make them more respectable?  I don't know.
Does it even matter? lol!

These guys seem a lot older to me...