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!