Simon B. Jones's Blog: Slings and arrows, page 2

Harun al Rashid Part Two - Fall of the Barmakids

In the stories of the Arabian Nights, which are providing my current bedtime reading, the Caliph Harun al Rashid has a mischievous streak. He delights in going out incognito into the streets of Baghdad to join in the revels of others before revealing himself as the Commander of the Faithful and delivering justice or generosity to his unsuspecting subjects. In these adventures he is invariably accompanied by his best friend and closest advisor, Jaffar the Barmacid. Jaffar had grown up with Harun in the city of Rayy. His father Yahya had been the caliph’s tutor. He was tutor in turn to Harun’s son Mamun. He had served as governor of Syria for Harun and been the keeper of his royal seal. Along with his father and brother Fadl, Jaffar had administered the affairs of the caliphate efficiently. He had amassed great personal wealth whilst doing so, much of it in the form of personal gifts from the caliph. He had spent many, many nights in Harun’s company, enjoying all the finest things in life; talking long into the night, eating, drinking and gaming, listening to music and poetry and watching dancing girls. He was a good, close and loyal friend to the caliph, who owed a great deal to Jaffar and his family. Perhaps too much. Towards the end their relationship cooled, but that end when it came was shocking in its sudden ruthlessness.
  Jaffar holding court
In Baghdad on a January night in 803, having parted from the caliph on good terms and returned to his home, Jaffar the Barmakid found himself summoned once more to the palace. Whilst he awaited Harun’s pleasure he was seized and his head was struck off. On Harun’s orders his body was then mutilated by being cut in two. The three parts of his body were ordered to be displayed on the bridges of Baghdad. They would rot there for the next two years until they were taken down and burned; a dire warning to all passers-by of the fickleness of absolute rulers and the dangers of flying too close to the sun. Following the execution of Jaffar, Yahya, his surviving sons and his brother were all thrown into prison. All of their vast wealth and property was confiscated.
What was their crime? No charges were ever made. Yahya and Fadl both died in prison. Fadl was possibly tortured to death in an attempt to make him reveal the location of hidden assets. The Barmakids had perhaps presumed too much for too long as they had wielded power in the caliph’s name, making decisions without asking his opinion. Old Yahya had perhaps been too familiar with the caliph, playing the father figure long after the son had grown up. Harun had not made a secret of his irritation. Yahya had seemed to be losing the caliph’s favour in recent times, having been repeatedly and pointedly insulted in the caliph’s presence by subtle means that were lost on no-one, whilst Fadl had seen his responsibilities given to men hostile to his family. The warning signs were there. They had enemies aplenty of course; jealous rivals, most notably the chamberlain Fadl ibn Rabi, son of Hadi’s murdered vizier, who capitalised on the Barmakid’s downfall to take their place. It is likely that he and others poured poison into the caliph’s ears against his former favourites.
  The Barmakids display their wealth - Akhbar i Barmakyan
There is enough there perhaps to understand the Barmakids’ downfall, but why was Jaffar, who Harun had loved best of all, so savagely treated? Two particular accusations are levelled at Jaffar. One is that he protected the Alid rebel ibn Abdullah and lied to the caliph about his whereabouts. Certainly the Barmakids were more conciliatory towards the Alids in general than the caliph wished them to be, for he suspected that they plotted against him, but a lot of time had passed in the interim and it seems a long time to bear a grudge. Another story told is that Jaffar had an illicit affair with the caliph’s sister and that a child was born of the affair and was smuggled away to Mecca. When Harun discovered the truth he had the child killed and his sister buried alive and then took his revenge on Jaffar. This perhaps is too fanciful to be true but of all the reasons given it is the only one which seems to come close to providing Harun with a strong enough motive for his actions against Jaffar.
The timing of their downfall suggests there may have been another factor in Harun’s decision to take down the Barmakids. Just a month before turning against the Barmakids, Harun had publically settled his plans for the succession in a solemn ceremony at Mecca during the Hajj. Harun had children by twenty different mothers and like his father before him he had marked out two of them to be groomed for the succession. His eldest son was Abd Allah, known by the honorific title Mamun. He was the son of a Persian slave girl who had died in childbirth but as the caliph’s first born he enjoyed his father’s affection and showed great promise, with Jaffar as his mentor. His second son was named Mohammad, known by the title Amin and was his son by his favourite wife Zubayda. His education had been entrusted to Fadl the Barmakid. Younger and less academically gifted than Mamun he may have been but his superior pedigree ensured that Amin was the heir apparent.
  A later medieval depiction of the Hajj
It seems odd given his own experiences with his elder brother Hadi, that Harun should seek to engineer precisely the same situation in the next generation that had led to bad blood and murder before his own accession. This however was what he did. Both sons had received the oaths of loyalty as boys but now Harun would have their oaths to each other. At Mecca he read out and had displayed on the walls of the Kabaa, the terms of the succession to which the two brothers swore before the assembled great men of the caliphate. Amin would succeed his father as caliph. He would have direct control over the western portion of Harun’s empire. His brother would be his heir and could not be supplanted by any sons born to Amin. Furthermore, Mamun would have complete control over Khurasan and the other eastern provinces of the caliphate; a vast and powerful territory. Mamun would appoint his own officials and have control over his own armies, which were substantial. Most critically he would not be required to send any tax revenues to his brother, to whom he would pledge his loyalty but little else. Harun had effectively divided the empire and set up an almost inevitable conflict between his two sons. He hoped that the public taking of oaths within the sacred enclosure of Mecca and their continuing display  upon the walls of the Kabaa would awe his sons into keeping the peace. In this assumption he would be proved hopelessly naive.
 Many ordinary folk, we are told in admittedly hindsight filled accounts, shook their heads and declared that a disaster had been stored up for the future and it didn’t take a prophet or a genius to see the likely outcome of Harun’s arrangement. Being as they were first rate political manoeuvrers, no doubt the Barmakids could see the writing on the wall and they surely cannot have thought Harun’s plans for the succession to be a good idea. Perhaps they gave voice to those doubts. Perhaps they decided that when the time came, they would make arrangements of their own and defy the caliph’s wishes. Perhaps the caliph knew of or suspected this. Perhaps Fadl ibn Rabi whispered in his ear that the Barmakids plotted to undermine his plan and when he returned to Baghdad he resolved at last to bring about their demise. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps...
The Kabaa in Mecca was the scene for the oath taking Scarcely had Jaffar’s gruesome remains been spitted on the bridges of Baghdad then the caliph left the city once more for Raqqa. Here he received a letter from the new Emperor of the Romans Nicephorus I which sent him into a towering rage. Nicephorus, a onetime treasury official,  having deposed the empress Irene, had set about reversing her ruinous policies, revoking the generous tax breaks she had given to the church and earning himself a truly diabolical write up from the monastic chroniclers of Byzantine history in the process. He also sought to reverse the flow of gold to the caliphate, ending the tribute payments that Irene had been making to the caliph since his campaign of 797. He had written to Harun to explain his position, framing his argument in an analogy through the common language of chess. Irene, Nicephorus explained, had behaved as if she were a mere pawn, paying out tribute to Harun, whom he described as a rook, when really Harun should have been paying tribute to her. The assertion was clear enough. If Harun was a mere rook then Nicephorus to whom he should be paying tribute was a king and Harun’s superior. The caliph contemptuously wrote his response on the back of Nicephorus’ letter.
To Nicephorus the Roman Dog, I have read your letter. Oh disloyal son. My answer will reach you sooner than you wish.
It was fighting talk and the caliph followed it up with an immediate invasion which Nicephorus was in no position to do anything about. The troops of the Anatolian themes were in revolt against him having declared their commander Bardanes Turcus as a rival emperor. Turcus himself claimed to be fighting on behalf of Irene and on news of her death he desisted in his revolt and voluntarily entered a monastery but a year later was blinded. Harun meanwhile had taken advantage of the chaos to pillage and burn his way through Cilicia. Nicephorus was left with little choice but to agree to a humiliating resumption of Irene’s tribute payments in order to secure a truce. Harun could have asked for nothing better. Hostilities were resumed the following year and resulted in a defeat for Nicephorus when he was ambushed and barely escaped with his life at the battle of Krasos thanks to the efforts of his officers.
  Chess - a perfect analogy for diplomacy?
Now however it was the caliph’s turn to be distracted by internal dissent at the far end of his empire. Complaints reached Harun concerning the conduct of his governor of Khurasan Ali ibn Isa, an incompetent extortionist he had appointed in place of Fadl the Barmakid predominantly because he was a rival of the family. Harun decided to visit the province in person to discover the truth and he agreed a truce with Nicephorus in exchange for more tribute. In 805 he set out for Rayy. Here he met with Ali and found himself persuaded by rich gifts and sweet words that all was well. He confirmed his governor in his post and then found himself hitting the roof once more when news arrived that Nicephorus had taken advantage of his absence to breach the peace and had sacked the city of Tarsus as well as besieging Melitene and invading neutral Cyprus.
The following summer Harun led a massive invasion force reputed to be some 130,000 strong, an exaggeration to be sure but clearly the largest force sent across the border in living memory. Elements of the army advanced north as far as Ancyra whilst Harun settled down to besiege the fortified town of Heraclea in Cilicia, which proved to be a tough nut to crack. After two weeks of bombardment the town’s fortifications were still holding strong. On the seventeenth day a champion was sent out from Heraclea to challenge the Muslims to single combat and was defeated by an undistinguished volunteer from the ranks. Harun now resolved to terrorise the town into submission and rained flaming missiles down on the buildings within the walls. On the thirtieth day the populace abandoned their burning houses, threw open the gates and surrendered. The populace of Heraclea were taken away to be resettled as subjects of the caliph whilst the town was plundered and burned. Nicephorus meanwhile did no more than skirmish with isolated elements of the caliph’s forces and was overawed by the size of the army that the caliph had at his disposal. With the threat of further trouble on his western frontier from the Bulgars, Nicephorus had no choice but to make peace. He sent a deputation of churchmen to negotiate with the caliph who agreed to withdraw on resumption of an annual tribute of thirty thousand gold pieces, a promise not to rebuild Heraclea and a personal payment of the jizya poll tax of four gold pieces from the emperor himself, symbolic of his personal submission to the authority of the caliph. Nicephorus paid up. It was checkmate to Harun al Rashid.
  Nicephorus found himself handing over plenty of these
Having humbled the Byzantines, Harun once more turned his attention to Khurasan where a full scale revolt had now broken out against his governor Ali ibn Isa. The trouble had started in Samarkand when a local aristocrat was imprisoned for perfectly legitimate reasons but escaped and then whipped up a revolt in order to evade justice. The rebellion spread like wildfire through Transoxania and an army sent to restore order was defeated and the governor’s son killed. Harun dispatched an army from Baghdad to restore order under his most trusted general Harthama with orders to seize and depose the governor. This was done but the rebels still refused to return to the fold.
On receiving this news Harun decided to once more set out for the east himself. He charged his younger son Qasim with keeping an eye on the Byzantines from Raqqa and left his son Amin in charge in Baghdad. He then set out accompanied by Fadl ibn Rabi and his son Mamun, who was to take charge of his province, along with a vast entourage, making his slow progress towards Merv. The caliph was suffering from terrible stomach pains and knew that his days were numbered. By the time he reached Rayy it seemed unlikely that he would complete the journey. Mamun was sent on to Merv where his inheritance awaited and where he would reimpose control. Harun reached the town of Tus in northern Iran in March 809 and could go no further. Here on 24th March he died, aged forty three. He left his empire primed for chaos and when that chaos subsided nothing would quite be the same. In the centuries to follow, men would look back on his reign as an era of comparative peace and stability that would take on a golden hue and his reputation would attain that of a ruler of greatness. Was he truly great though, Dear Reader? I, for one, remain unconvinced.

Harun al Rashid Part One - A Golden Age?

Illustration by Leon Carre from 1001 Arabian Nights This post follows on from the previous Abbasid themed post Under the Black Banner which charted the rise to power of the Abbasid dynasty and the reign of Mansur, the founder of Baghdad. Following Mansur's death whilst on pilgrimage, his son Mahdi was confirmed on the spot as the new caliph. 
Mahdi was a more chilled out character than his formidable father Mansur. He liked girls, poetry and the occasional glass of wine with meals. This did not make him dissolute, however. Rather he was perhaps more well rounded in his outlook and had been well prepared for rule by governing the east on his father’s behalf from the city of Rayy. Certainly his initial approach towards his subjects was conciliatory, having made the grisly discovery of the remains of dozens of members of the Alid family, men women and children, murdered by his father and hidden in a store room in Baghdad; each with a label attached to their ear identifying them. Mahdi had the remains buried in secret in a mass grave and the site promptly built over. He then reached out to the surviving Alids, pardoning some of those who had joined the rebellion of the Pure Soul and even appointed one of their sympathisers as his vizier. He then embarked on a programme of restoration of mosques throughout the caliphate, in the process stripping away much ostentation added in the pomp of the Umayyad dynasty and returning the interior of buildings to their original simplicity. In 777 he set out  on the pilgrimage to Mecca with the intention of winning hearts and minds in the old country, dispensing much largesse and restoring the Kaaba. Accompanying him on this important expedition and making his first appearance on the public stage was Mahdi’s son Harun, imagined below as a young man. Mahdi had many sons by wives and concubines but only two mattered and these were the sons of the former slave girl Khayzuran, who he had freed and married on his accession. She was a legendary beauty who had the caliph wrapped around her delicate finger. Harun and his elder brother Musa were groomed from the beginning to succeed their father in turn. Harun appears to have been especially favoured and there is no doubt that he was his mother’s golden boy. For whatever reason, Khayzuran and her older son Musa were never close and instead she used her considerable influence on behalf of Harun. As tutor to his second son Mahdi appointed his best friend Yahya the Barmakid who cultivated a network of support around his young pupil as factions began to develop in the Abbasid court.

In 780 Harun accompanied his father on a military expedition as Mahdi set out to show himself not just a pious leader of the Muslims but a warlike one as well, committed to the pursuit of jihad against the infidel. The Byzantine commander Michael Lachanodrakon had led a successful invasion of northern Syria two years before, capturing the settlement of Marash whilst the Arab response had achieved nothing of note. Leaving Musa in charge in Baghdad, Mahdi escorted Harun to the frontier and then sent him off  at the head of a small raiding force to win his spurs. The raid was a moderate success. A small fortified settlement was captured and plundered and the troops were back across the frontier before any serious opposition could be marshalled by the Byzantines. Meanwhile a larger force was sent further into imperial territory where it suffered a significant defeat at the hands of Lachanodrakon.
Two years later Mahdi launched a much larger expedition intended to reassert the dominance of the caliphate. His timing was good, the empress Irene, pictured below, was in the midst of purging her forces of iconoclasts and the Arab forces could hope to take advantage of the dearth of leadership amongst the Byzantines. Over ninety thousand men were sent across the border under the overall command of Harun, accompanied by his father’s trusted ministers Rabi ibn Yunus and Yahya the Barmakid. Rather than confining his activities to the border regions, Harun pushed westwards into the Byzantine heartland, whilst Yahya took a portion of the army northward and inflicted a defeat upon Lachanodrakon. Harun’s army won another victory near Nicaea and then he advanced all the way to the shores of the Bosporus, from where he could look across the straits to the capital of the infidel. That however was as far as he could go and without a fleet to carry him across to Constantinople, his advance to the sea was largely symbolic. After much plundering Harun turned for home but now found that Rabi, who had been left to guard his lines of supply had been defeated and driven back. The young Abbasid prince now found himself trapped between two Byzantine armies close to Nicaea. The most famous caliph of them all could have been reduced to an obscure footnote right then and there but his luck was in. The Armenian commander Tatzates had reason to fear that he would soon become another victim of Irene’s purges and so he took the opportunity to defect, taking many of his troops with him. The Byzantines now decided to negotiate and Irene’s chief minister Stauracios ventured into the enemy camp at the head of a delegation. Harun, having given no promise of safe conduct and advised by Tatzates of the empress’ reliance on the eunuch, took the envoys prisoner. Desperate to secure the release of her favourite, Irene agreed a humiliating three year truce with the caliphate, allowing Harun to withdraw triumphantly, having secured an annual tribute of seventy thousand gold pieces and ten thousand pieces of silk.

Back in Baghdad the court poets praised Harun’s achievement to the skies, declaring that he had advanced to the walls of Constantinople itself and placed his spear against them before sparing the city in return for tribute. He was given the epithet of al Rashid – the right guided. Oaths were taken to him as the heir to his elder brother. The favoured son had done well but yet he was not the first in line. It may have been that Mahdi had decided to elevate his second son to first place when he set out along with Harun in 785 to visit his eldest son Musa at Gurgan beside the Caspian, where he was busy putting down a rebellion. On the way however, so one story goes, the caliph set out hunting and pursued a gazelle amongst some ruins. As his horse galloped below a lintel, the caliph, absorbed by the chase, forgot to duck and that was the end of Mahdi who was laid to rest beneath a nearby walnut tree. An alternative version has the caliph accidentally poisoned by one of his concubines who had sent a poisoned pear to a rival. Mahdi, taking a fancy to the fateful pear, intercepted it on its way and ate it. Take your pick, Dear Reader, either way the end result was the same.

At this point Harun played the part of the faithful brother, sending his father’s signet ring to Musa whilst returning to Baghdad to restore order. The troops in the city who had rioted at news of the caliph’s death were quieted with a large payment from the treasury and Harun took oaths of loyalty from the great and the good in his brother’s name. As always Rabi and Yahya were at the heart of events, pulling strings and greasing wheels.  Taking the name of Hadi, the new caliph marched back from the east in just twenty days to take control in Baghdad. Hadi was tough and aggressive, the darling of the military, whilst the more cultured Harun enjoyed the support of the court bureaucracy and he was of course his mother’s favourite. Khayzuran now wielded considerable power as the widow of Mahdi and the mother of Hadi and Harun. At her sumptuous palace on the east bank of the Tigris she received suppliants each day, begging for favours and appointments and soon it seemed that all the business of the state was in the hands of the former slave girl, much to the annoyance of the caliph. Finally Hadi issued a threat that anyone approaching his mother looking for advancement would lose his head instead. Anyone doubting his word had only to glance at the permanently drawn swords of his bodyguard to know that he meant business. Hadi, set out to further marginalise his mother and brother by seeking to alter the plan of succession in favour  of his own son Jaffar, who was the preferred choice of many of the army commanders, disinheriting Harun. Hadi was advised against this action by Yahya the Barmakid who pointed out that if the sacred oaths taken to Harun were disregarded, then no oath would ever have the same binding effect again. This argument gave the caliph pause for a time but then he lost his patience and decided to act. Having successfully poisoned the vizier Rabi, who was a key ally of Khayzuran, he then tried to do the same to his mother. Khayzuran took the precaution of feeding the dish of rice he sent her to her dog. Finally Hadi declared that Jaffar would succeed him and demanded oaths of  allegiance to be taken to his son. He then had Harun and Yahya the Barmakid arrested when they attempted to flee the court. At his moment of triumph however, the caliph fell foul of his mother who returned his compliment with greater subtlety, using her contacts amongst the caliph’s harem to have him poisoned and then suffocated with pillows as he lay ailing. He had reigned for just over a year. Khayzuran now used her own contacts in the military to secure Harun’s succession. Jaffar was dragged from his bed at sword point and forced to renounce his claim to the caliphate and Harun was duly installed as the new Commander of the Faithful without further opposition.
 
Yahya the Barmakid was a critical influence in Harun's succession There now dawned a golden age, so posterity would have us believe. Peace descended upon the Muslim world and Harun ruled wisely in sumptuous splendour and refinement, surrounded by poets and scholars. His reign is perceived, through the rose tinted distortion of later generations’ nostalgia, as the highpoint of Arab cultural and intellectual achievement. There is however a darker tale to be told which reveals Harun to be far from the Solomon-like right-guided ruler of legend. Strip away the romance of the Thousand and One Nights and we are left with an insecure, jealous, vicious and naive ruler.

The Abbasids had swept to power on a tide of popular support, stirred up by their man in Khurasan Abu Muslim. Restoration of the leadership of Islam to the family of the Prophet from the dissolute Umayyads had been their rallying call. The masses had looked to the revolution to bring about an improvement in their fortunes but Abbasid rule had in the end merely delivered more of what had gone before. Mansur had fulfilled some of the early promise of the dynasty, appearing before his people and hearing their complaints in person, although he had ruthlessly persecuted the Alids. Mahdi too had made some efforts at restoring the simplicity of the faith, although he had been more pleasure-loving than his austere father. Neither had done much to better the lot of the vast majority of their subjects however and both had faced rebellion, seemingly forgetful of the discontent that had brought them to power in the first place.
For the rural poor the burden of taxation was heavy and in most places a system of tax farming left tax collection up to private enterprise, whereby rapacious officials sought to wring as much personal profit out of the unfortunate tax payers as they could. The result was impoverishment of the peasant farmers, who often abandoned the land  or were deprived of their property when they could not repay the loans they were forced to take out in order to pay their taxes, for which the whole community was collectively responsible. The land was snapped up by the wealthy and vast estates became the personal property of the ruling family and their cronies. This was nothing new of course. The story is a familiar and recurring one. Across the frontier in the Byzantine Empire the same situation existed but the plight of these small farmers as the backbone of the military was periodically addressed and the trend reversed. In the caliphate the peasant farmer played no military role and the soldiers who had come west with the conquerors from Khurasan, known as theabna, were maintained by the state.   Illustration  by Leon Carre from 1001 Arabian Nights Far from being a period of peace, Harun’s reign saw the caliphate plagued by rebellion from end to end. As their discontent and disillusionment grew, the rural peasantry of the caliphate were attracted to new revolutionary movements, which sprang up like mushrooms, all of them promising to make the caliphate anew  and deliver a fairer future. In the east of the empire a succession of movements fused elements from the pre-Islamic Persian past with more recent history. The old ideals of Mazdakism; a Zoroastrian ideology akin to communism which had been ruthlessly repressed by the Sassanid rulers of Persia, were given an Islamic make-over by associating them with the memory of Abu Muslim, the man of the people slain by the ungrateful Abbasids. The first leader of these movements was the so-called veiled prophet, a former lieutenant of Abu Muslim from Merv, who claimed to be a reincarnation of his murdered commander. He had hidden his face behind a green silk veil either because, according to his adherents, his face was so radiant that it could not be seen by mere mortals or, according to his enemies, he was one-eyed, bald and ugly. Whatever the truth, through revolutionary rhetoric and cheap conjuror’s tricks he amassed a great following and some sixty cities in Khurasan and Transoxania joined his cause. The veiled prophet had been finally run to ground and had taken his own life in 779 but he spawned a succession of imitators whom the credulous peasantry were prepared to follow in the hope of a better lot in life. The cult of the Alids too was linked to ideals of social reform, for Ali had been the champion of the ordinary people and had stood for the equality of all Muslims. A rebellion raised in Medina in 786 by the Alid Yahya ibn Abdullah had garnered only lukewarm support following the good works of Mahdi and Khayzuran in the region. Evading capture, the rebel moved onto Daylam; the region south of the Caspian and here succeeded in sparking a widespread popular revolt. He was finally persuaded to give himself up in 792 whereupon he was promptly murdered.  In many places across the caliphate, those perennial malcontents the Kharijites were resurgent, rejecting the authority of the caliph and condemning the luxury of his court. A Kharijite led rebellion began in northern Iraq shortly after Harun’s accession and then the rebels marched north into Azerbaijan and overran the province for a period of two years before they were finally put down. In Egypt there were repeated uprisings beginning in 789 in protest at the increases in land taxes. The rebels were crushed by pouring troops into the region before the taxes were increased again, sparking further revolt. When Harun decided to cut the pay of the troops stationed in Egypt they joined in with the rebels and burned the city of Fustat to the ground.
In the administration of his empire Harun continued to rely primarily on the Barmakids. His old tutor Yahya would serve as Harun’s vizier whilst Yahya’s two sons Fadl and Jaffar, who was the caliph’s closest friend and favourite companion, held a succession of important offices of state and were trusted with the governorship of large territories. Fadl in particular would prove to be a capable administrator during his time as governor of Khurasan; quelling rebellion, ploughing funds into improving infrastructure, curbing the worst excesses of the tax collectors and winning hearts and minds, whilst keeping up the flow of funds to the treasury. The primary interest of the Barmakids however remained the feathering of their own nests and the strengthening of their own network of support.
 
Illustration  by Leon Carre from 1001 Arabian Nights  For many years Harun was content to let them get on with it. He kept up the conspicuous acts of piety expected of a caliph by dispatching the yearly raids, known as razias, across the frontier into Byzantine territory and undertaking the hajj on no less than eight occasions during his reign. Harun remained however, for the overwhelming majority of the time, in glorious isolation and devoted to pleasure. The caliph, his wives and concubines, his mother and relatives, his administrators and courtiers and hangers-on lived in a world of opulent palaces, exquisite gardens and massive excess. The quantities of wealth that were thrown around were obscene. Harun’s favourite wife Zubayda ate from golden plates, wore so many jewels that she could not walk unaided and had a staff of twenty simply to care for her pet monkey. She rewarded flatterers by filling their mouths with pearls. His mother Khayzuran had a reputation for pious works, financing shrines and way-stations along the pilgrimage route to Mecca. As such she was popular. Her personal wealth was immense however. As one of the greatest landowners in the caliphate she spent vast sums on land improvement and irrigation, although primarily for her own benefit and half of the land tax revenue of the caliphate is rumoured to have flowed straight into her coffers. When in a more frivolous mood, Khayzuran could spend up to fifty thousand dinars on a single piece of material and is said to have owned eighteen thousand dresses at the time of her death in 789. Such excess was not the preserve of the court women. Harun once rewarded an amusing poem by his feckless brother Ibrahim with a gift of a million dirhams from the treasury and showered his coterie of nadim; intelligent, cultured and witty drinking companions with palaces, wealth and status. Outside of the royal family the Barmakids enjoyed almost comparable wealth and practiced similar largesse.
Despite inhabiting a world of palaces and gardens, Harun nevertheless tired of Baghdad. He disliked the heat and the proximity of the bustling masses and in 796 he established a new capital at Raqqa to the north. Here he could withdraw, accompanied by his household and his favourites and spend his days playing polo, hunting and practicing archery and his evenings in the convivial companionship of his nadim, enjoying poetry, discussion and chess. Raqqa was also closer to the frontier and Harun was once more taking a serious interest in war against the Byzantines. In 797 he sought to reprise the glorious campaign of his youth and once more crossed the frontier in person. He had chosen his moment perfectly for the empire was in a state of unrest. The empress Irene had just blinded and killed her son Constantine and her grip on power was tenuous whilst the loyalty of her armies was uncertain. The Byzantine response to Harun’s invasion was muted in the extreme and the caliph’s forces once more spread out into enemy territory with one column penetrating as far as Ephesus on the Aegean coast. Panicked, Irene sued for peace once more, agreeing to similarly humiliating terms as she had in 782 and Harun’s triumphant forces marched home unmolested, laden down with plunder.

The embassy of Charlemagne to Harun al Rashid Back in Raqqa, Harun now received an embassy from Charles, king of the Franks. Charles had little to offer Harun, who as the richest and most powerful ruler in the world vastly outstripped him in wealth and territory. If Charles already harboured pretentions towards the imperial crown of the west however, then establishing good relations with the greatest enemy of the eastern Roman Empire was a sound strategic move in the event of hostilities with Byzantium. For his part Harun welcomed a potential ally who could harass his sworn foes but was too far away to pose any threat to himself. Having given certain assurances concerning the safety of pilgrims visiting the Christian holy places in his territory, the caliph sent the envoys on their way laden down with gifts and accompanied by an elephant. The elephant, named Abul Abbas, made his way through north Africa and Italy, accompanied by the only member of the delegation to survive the return journey, arriving in Charles’ capital Aachen in 802. He lived for another eight years as a major celebrity at the Frankish court.
Harun appeared to be a man in control. He had overcome numerous rebels and malcontents, he had humiliated the empress and vast amounts of wealth were pouring into his treasury. But was he really in charge? It was time to make some very big decisions and show everyone who was boss.

To be continued.

Born in the Purple Too

You never know what's coming next on Slings and Arrows, I've blogged about everything from dinosaurs to the space race. If it happened in the past it is fair game as far as I'm concerned but there is method in the madness. The general idea is that the blog is a roughly 50/50 split between continuing the Byzantine/Abbasid historical narrative from where my book The Battles are the Best Bits left off in 750 AD and completely random historical topics. This post follows on directly from the last Byzantine post Born in the Purple which charted the early part of the reign of Constantine VII. He had ruled in name only, dominated first by his mother and later by the usurper Romanus Lecapenus. Having finally got his hands on the reins of power at the age of 39 with the aid of the powerful, aristocratic Phocas clan, what sort of emperor would Constantine be after so many years on the sidelines?
Constantine Porphyrogenitus, depicted below, could never be described as a man of action. He is best known for a long and dull treatise on court ceremonial which is a treasure trove of information on the intricacies of the complex Byzantine socio-political hierarchy and for another on the administration of the empire, dedicated to his son Romanus. Preferring the pen to the sword, Constantine allowed the frontier to enjoy a period of peace rather than keeping up the momentum against the caliphate, which remained plagued by infighting between its regional warlords for control of the increasingly irrelevant caliph.   The empire's principle antagonist amongst these warlords remained Sayf al Dawla, 'the Sword of the Dynasty' now established as Emir of Aleppo. Sayf al Dawla was occupied in a struggle to wrest control of Syria from al Ikhshid, governor of Egypt, who ruled the country as a personal fiefdom. The fortunes of war ebbed and flowed between these two. Sayf al Dawla twice took Damascus from al Ikhshid and twice lost it, as well as losing and regaining his own capital, before at last a treaty of peace recognised that perhaps the status quo, with Syria divided between them, was the best solution for both of them.In 949 the offensive against the caliphate was resumed in earnest. Porphyrogenitusset his eye upon the perennial reconquest objective of Crete and assembled an invasion fleet. The force sent to the island however was woefully inadequate in terms of both manpower and leadership. It was an expedition launched on the cheap and the predictable consequence was its failure. Despite landing unopposed, the force of 4000 soldiers were attacked and overrun in their poorly defended camp. The bedraggled survivors returned to Constantinople in disgrace. Warfare on the frontier between Byzantium and the Caliphate, effectively represented by the Emir of Aleppo, had in recent decades been waged with limited objectives. Permanent seizure of major settlements and large tracts of territory was certainly not the aim of Sayf al Dawla since he lacked the resources to hold on to such gains. Instead the aims of his razias or border raids were essentially threefold. Firstly he sought to limit the ability of his Byzantine enemies to make war upon him in turn by looting and destroying border fortifications and settlements. Secondly he sought to enrich himself and his followers by plundering the lands and settlements of the enemy and thirdly he sought to fulfil the obligation of jihad by making war upon the infidel. The promise of rewards both heavenly and earthly drew many volunteers to his banners during the campaigning season, swelling his numbers with irregulars, fired up with religious zeal and eager for booty.
  The court of Sayf al Dawla - Skylitzes Chronicle The year 950 saw Sayf al Dawla assemble an unusually large force bolstered by jihadi volunteers, numbering some thirty thousand men, which he led across the border in a more ambitious raid than usual. He defeated a force under Bardas Phocas in eastern Armenia before turning for home, laden with plunder. It was now however that the Byzantine strategy for countering cross border invasions came into play. The defensive approach taken in this period and employed successfully on several occasions against Sayf al Dawla and his lieutenants was known as shadowing. With advance intelligence of enemy movements provided by a network of spies and look outs, the Byzantine commanders employed as much as possible a scorched earth policy in the face of the enemy advance. Civilians were evacuated, valuables and livestock removed and crops burned. The enemy was closely followed by small, mobile forces and his foragers and scouts harassed as he made his way through the valleys from settlement to settlement in search of loot. Generally, the Byzantines did not seek a major engagement at this time; allowing the razia to continue and merely attempting to limit the enemy's opportunities to plunder and forage. Sources of fresh water vital to the enemy were defended where possible by the shadowing forces. Meanwhile, the Byzantines gathered their full strength. The defenders were typically spread across numerous small garrisons throughout the frontier region but as the return route to be taken by the invader was discerned, these forces coalesced into an army which could be deployed in ambush at some suitably constricted point. So it was on this occasion that when Sayf al Dawla was making his way homeward, his forces heavily laden with booty, an ambush was sprung in a mountain pass between Lycandus and Germanicea by Leo Phocas, son of Bardas. Caught in a very bad position, Sayf al Dawla barely escaped with his life, losing 8000 men and  most of his ill-gotten gains in the process. It was remembered by Sayf and his followers as ‘the dreadful expedition’ although it did not discourage him from raiding again the following year.Byzantine offensive strategy was similarly limited in its scope. Raids were launched with the aim of securing modest territorial gains in the frontier region if possible but more importantly to reduce the enemy’s ability to launch raids by taking and destroying his settlements and fortifications, inflicting casualties and taking plunder. In the years following the dreadful expedition, Bardas Phocas proved himself inept at these tactics, repeatedly being defeated by Sayf al Dawla, who was seemingly unbeatable on his home ground. Meanwhile, Byzantine efforts to make gains in southern Italy met only with defeats and further loss of territory.
  Sayf al Dawla flees the field of battle -- Skylitzes Chronicle In 953, Sayf al Dawla avenged the dreadful expedition by turning the tables on the Byzantines. Having mounted a successful raid into Byzantine territory and on this occasion managing to avoid the ambush set for him by Constantine Phocas, the youngest son of Bardas, Sayf al Dawla managed to march safely back to his home territory by a circuitous route. He then turned the tables by intercepting a counter raid led by Bardas and Constantine which had penetrated deep into his territory and was now returning. At the battle of Marash, fought in northern Syria, the Emir of Aleppo, who is improbably credited with achieving the feat with just 600 men, inflicted a crushing defeat upon Bardas, from which he barely escaped with his life and with a severe wound to his face. His son Constantine was captured in the battle and paraded through the streets of Aleppo, where he later died in captivity.Following this defeat, the emperor had tired of Bardas’ bungling and replaced him as Domestic of the Scholae with his son Nicephorus. Citing his wound to maintain his honour, Bardas retired with dignity intact. The new domestic earned a brief reprieve whilst Sayf al Dawla had his hands full with a tribal revolt. By a mixture of diplomacy and ferocity, Sayf al Dawla pursued a policy of divide and conquer, driving some tribes into the desert to starve whilst winning others to his side with the promise of the lands and property of the vanquished. By 956 he was once more the master of his own territories but was now facing a renewed challenge from Nicephorus Phocas, who sent the promising young Armenian general John Tzimisces to seize the city of Amida. Sayf al Dawla launched a successful counter raid into Byzantine Mesopotamia, which saw the governor’s palace at Harput burned and large numbers of captives taken. Avoiding the principle ambushing force which had moved in behind him, Sayf al Dawla’s force then managed to fight their way through another pass, which the returning Tzimisces had occupied, routing the Byzantine forces with heavy losses and capturing their baggage. Whilst he had his hands full however, Leo Phocas had led another raid into his territory, defeating and capturing his cousin, who was paraded in Constantinople. The following year Nicephorus led a campaign to destroy the crucial border stronghold of Adata. Meanwhile he employed intrigue to undermine any counter-moves that the Emir might make. As he made his preparations, Sayf al Dawla discovered that a group of his followers had accepted a Byzantine bribe to capture him and hand him over to Nicephorus. Furious, he abandoned his campaign and returned to Aleppo to root out the conspiracy, killing or mutilating over 300 of his bodyguards in a brutal purge.  Sayf al Dawla's cousin is captured - Skylitzes Chronicle Emboldened, the Byzantines launched a major campaign into Sayf al Dawla’s territory in the spring of 958, with John Tzimisces successfully capturing and sacking the significant strongholds of Dara and Samosata. Reinforced by troops led by the eunuch chamberlain Basil Lecapenus, who by virtue of his mutilation retained the confidence of the emperor, Tzimisces inflicted a crushing defeat on Sayf al Dawla, who lost around half of his forces to slaughter or captivity.The brothers Nicephorus and Leo Phocas and John Tzimisces were presiding over a renaissance in Byzantine military prowess, marked by increased professionalism and new tactics. Their latest campaign showed greater ambition than the border raiding of recent years and they were growing in confidence as the armed forces and in particular the foot soldiers of the empire began to establish a formidable reputation such as they had not held for centuries. From the days of Justinian and Belisarius, the Byzantine army had been a cavalry army. The footsloggers had been there to make up the numbers, to hold fixed positions and to garrison fortresses. The real fighting had been done by men on horseback. Now, however, Byzantine infantry was beginning to play a role on the field of battle it had not done since the heyday of the legions of old Rome. Good quality foot soldiers, recruited predominantly from Armenia, well drilled and disciplined, would play an increasingly important role in Byzantine armies from here on in, making up around two thirds of their strength, in a complete reversal of what had gone before. In an innovation that would be familiar to British redcoats, a contemporary treatise describes how Byzantine infantry was to be deployed in a square formation in order to thwart the mounted attacks of the enemy. Detachments of soldiers would be armed with long, stout pikes for repulsing cavalry, whilst their fellows presented a hedge of spears, making their formation invulnerable to mounted troops. This was not intended simply as a defensive measure but rather infantry and cavalry were to operate offensively together, with the cavalry and light troops able to take refuge within the squares and sally out as required. The infantry served as a mobile fortress, moving inexorably against the enemy, able to deploy into line swiftly on command and surge forward against any enemy foot soldiers who stood against them. In another throwback to the days of war against the Savaran of Persia, Nicephorus and John reintroduced the magnificent spectacle of the super heavy cataphract, clad in lamellar armour, riding a similarly armoured horse. A force of perhaps five hundred such horsemen, arranged in a wedge formation of steel and horseflesh, armed with lances and maces, with mounted archers following on at the base of the wedge, would comprise an elite strike force to be unleashed in an irresistible charge. These troops could sweep aside more lightly armed mounted opposition, were relatively invulnerable to missile weapons and could crash straight through a line of infantry, no doubt already wavering at their thundering approach.
  [image error] When Constantine met Olga - Radziwill Chronicle Constantine VII may have been a stranger to the field of battle but he had been a good judge of character and had appointed capable generals and crucially had left them to get on with what they did best. He had also continued Romanus’ policy of enforcing the return of lands to peasant farmers, who were the backbone of the thematic military system. Now Phocas and Tzimisces were about to raise the military fortunes of the empire to a level of success that had not been seen since the advent of Islam. Constantine Porphyrogenitus would not live to see it however. In 959, aged fifty four, he died. Through  his quiet wisdom, he left the empire in a better state than it had been for many years. He had even sought to reduce the menace posed by the Rus by cultivating Olga, the widow of Prince Igor of Kiev, who was given a lavish baptism by the Patriarch in Hagia Sofia, with the emperor himself standing as her godfather. Sent on her way, Olga, now baptised as Helena, set out to Christianise her people and establish a Russian church. It was a major step towards bringing the Rus into the fold, although her son Svyatoslav would reject Christianity.

  Death of Constantine VII - Skylitzes Chronicle The succession of the twenty year old Romanus II was untroubled and the future of the ruling dynasty appeared secure. After the death of his first wife, Romanus had developed a passion for a barmaid, whom he had surprisingly been permitted to marry once she had been rechristened Theophano in memory of his grandfather’s first wife, who had retired to a nunnery and become a saint. This rebranded saintly barmaid had subsequently presented Romanus with two sons; Basil and Constantine, putting herself in an unassailable position. Once Romanus had taken the throne she had used her considerable influence over the emperor to see to it that his mother and sisters were all put away in convents and that any of the former emperor’s advisors who were not favourably inclined towards her were put out to grass. Romanus was an admirer of the new revitalised military and he wanted more of the same. Keeping faith with his father’s generals, Romanus divided the senior military position of Domestic of the Scholae into separate eastern and western commands for the Phocas brothers Nicephorus and Leo. The elite regiments of the Scholae and Exubitors had their numbers increased to accommodate the split. Nicephorus found himself sent against Crete once more, this time at the head of a fleet and army large enough to get the job done. Three hundred warships  escorted a huge fleet of transports to land some fifty thousand troops on the island, who swept all before them before laying siege to the capital Chandax, present day Heraklion. The siege dragged on through the winter of 960-1 with both sides suffering privation. Despite their desperate straits, the defenders held out until in March Nicephorus’ troops succeeded in storming the city at the third attempt. The inhabitants of Chandax received little mercy from the soldiers who had suffered through the long winter and those who were not slaughtered were enslaved. The Emir and his family were returned to be paraded in Constantinople. Vast stores of plunder were taken. Crete had been essentially a pirate state for over a century and all of the ill gotten gains now fell into Nicephorus’ hands. Being an exceptionally pious man, he gave over much of his personal share to his friend Athanasius, an ascetic hermit, who used the wealth to construct the first monastery on Mount Athos.
  Siege of Chandax - - Skylitzes Chronicle Returning to the capital, Nicephorus found himself underwhelmed by his reception. Whilst the population of Constantinople hailed him as the conquering hero, the official celebration of his victory was downgraded from the expected triumph to a rather understated ovation in the hippodrome. This was due almost certainly to the jealous machinations of Romanus’ chamberlain and chief adviser the eunuch Joseph Bringas. Unfazed, Nicephorus set out once more for the east, intent on winning further glory against his old foe Sayf al Dawla.
 The Sword of the Dynasty had in Nicephorus’ absence mounted an ambitious raid into imperial territory at the head of some thirty thousand troops and had once again fallen foul of classic Byzantine shadowing strategy, which on this occasion had been executed to perfection by Leo Phocas. At the Battle of Adrassos fought in late 960, whilst Nicephorus was besieging Chandax, the Emir had found himself ambushed in the narrow pass known as Calindros as he was returning to his own lands laden with plunder. Boulders had crashed down the slopes onto his startled troops and Byzantine soldiers had surged from cover to attack his column at both ends. The fighting had gone hard but the Arab force had been caught in an impossibly bad position by well prepared attackers. Sayf al Dawla had had one horse killed under him and had returned to the fray before abandoning his men to slaughter or captivity and fleeing with just three hundred horsemen. According to Byzantine sources the Emir had scattered gold coins behind him to distract his pursuers.Sayf al Dawla’s losses were disastrous and following Nicephorus’ return to the eastern front, a major campaign was launched early in 962. The two Phocas brothers led their combined forces across the frontier and swept all before them as they marched through Cilicia, capturing over fifty strongholds. Marching on into Syria they advanced almost unopposed on Sayf al Dawla’s capital of Aleppo. The Sword of the Dynasty once more fled in the face of overwhelming force and Nicephorus oversaw the systematic looting and total destruction of his palace before storming the weakly defended city and once more systematically looting and destroying it. Sayf al Dawla had maintained a lavish court in Aleppo. It had been a jewel, a haven for artists and poets. Now it was a smouldering ruin. He would continue to hold sway over northern Syria for another three years until his death but his power had been broken.
   Fall of Aleppo - Skylitzes Chronicle The Sword of the Dynasty may not even have lasted that long had word not arrived at the frontier early in 963 of the sudden and unexpected death of Romanus. The young emperor, whose reign had begun with such promise, had sickened and died with such rapidity that poison had been suspected although neither Bringas or the empress Theophano had much to gain from striking down Romanus. Nicephorus arrived in the capital where he celebrated a full and magnificent triumph for his victories in Crete and Syria. He was rapturously received by the empress, Patriarch and Senate, led by former chamberlain Basil Lecapenus, whilst the populace enthusiastically cheered the man now dubbed the White Death of the Saracens everywhere he went. Nicephorus  undertook to safeguard the rights of the two young princes Basil and Constantine before leaving to rejoin his army. Joseph Bringas, seeing his own position under threat, was most unhappy with this situation and rightly suspected Nicephorus of coveting the throne for himself. He attempted to derail Nicephorus’ preparations to lead his army in a march upon the city by writing to John Tzimisces and offering him the supreme command in return for betraying Nicephorus. Tzimisces knew however that he could have this prize from Nicephorus anyway if he stayed loyal to his commander and so revealed Bringas’ plan. Without further ado Nicephorus led his army towards the capital but Bringas had commandeered all the shipping on the Asian shore and left the White Death of the Saracens to stare helplessly across the Bosporus at his goal as the summer wore on.
  Nicephorus' triumphant entry into Constantinople - Skylitzes Chronicle When Bringas attempted to arrest his rival’s father Bardas Phocas however, the populace, stirred up by Basil Lecapenus, rose up in riot against Bringas, burning half the city in the process and forcing him to flee. Basil restored order and sent ships across the straits. Nicephorus entered the city in a triumphal procession to St Sophia where he was immediately crowned as co-emperor alongside Basil and Constantine. With Basil just six years old, until his coming of age the general was effectively master of the empire. When that day did come the devout Nicephorus, a widower with no children, had promised to enter the monastery he had funded on Mt Athos and live out his days in prayer. A month after his coronation, by mutual consent, he strengthened his position further by marrying Theophano. The empress was half his age and his god-daughter to boot but Nicephorus overcame the many objections of the Patriarch one by one. Bringas was exiled but otherwise unharmed whilst Basil Lecapenus reaped the rewards of having thrown his hand in with his family's former rivals and was once more installed as chamberlain and chief advisor to the young princes. Nicephorus could now once more turn his attention to matters of war. The empire, it seemed, was in very capable hands.

For more Byzantine history on Slings and Arrows check out
http://slingsandarrowsblog.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Byzantium?updated-max=2012-10-16T01:42:00-07:00&max-results=20&start=19&by-date=false

 

Trouble in Paradise - a history of St Lucia continued

I'm not going to tell you what an awesome time I had in St Lucia. I'll just carry on with the history of the island, picking up a few years after the previous post left off and not mention at all how awesome it was.

Slaves cutting sugar cane The French, you may recall, had laid claim to the island as a crown colony in 1674 after the British settlement established following the victory of the ill fated 'Carib' Warner had been virtually wiped out by disease. The British were not content to allow the French to sit pretty in St Lucia however. The Caribbean islands had become extremely valuable to the colonial powers, primarily due to the rising European demand for sugar. By the middle of the 17th Century sugar was outstripping tobacco as the principle crop grown for export on many of the colonised islands in the Caribbean. National rivalries and the demand for good sugar growing land as existing plantations were farmed to exhaustion drove fierce competition between the two countries and the British had cried foul in 1719 when the French had sent more colonists to St Lucia.

In 1722 the decision was taken to seize control of the island. John the second Duke of Montegu, pictured right, was appointed as its governor by George I, although he did not set out for the island himself. Instead a flotilla of seven ships under the command of Montegu's deputy governor Nathanial Uring set out for St Lucia carrying four hundred colonists. Uring established a fortified settlement at Petit Carantage on the western coast of the island but 1400 French troops were poured in from Martinique and laid siege to the British position. Two nearby British warships were asked to assist but were too busy chasing pirates and so Uring was left with little option but to surrender and was permitted to withdraw with his followers to Antigua. Following this unfortunate breakdown in the Caribbean entente cordiale, Britain and France agreed that St Lucia should be a neutral territory and that neither nation should seek to send more colonists to the island, but that those already there of either nationality could remain unmolested.

The four hundred colonists carried by Uring's expedition had been indentured white servants, who would be granted land at the end of an agreed period of service. This practice had already died out on the more densely colonised islands in the Caribbean however, as reserves of land with which to reward migrant workers ran out and their numbers fell short of those needed to work the plantations. Instead the plantation owners had turned to slave labour. The Royal African Company had been established by royal charter in 1672 under the patronage of the future James II. The company rose from the ashes of a previous endeavour; the jolly sounding Royal  Company of Adventurers, who had run up massive debts whilst monopolising British trade with West Africa. The new company were able to extend their activities to the slave trade and maintained troops and forts on African soil. From its establishment until the loss of its monopoly in 1689 the company transported perhaps as many as 100,000 souls across the Atlantic. Many thousands did not survive the appalling conditions of the voyage. The French naturally established an equivalent company which operated on a similar scale.

Slaves processing sugar cane
Following the Glorious Revolution the transportation of slaves was opened up to private enterprise but the Royal African Company still received a ten percent levy on all cargoes. Under the treaty of Utrecht, which ended the War of the Spanish succession in 1713, British slavers were permitted to trade slaves in the Spanish territories of the New World; a permission known as the asiento. British merchants abused the asiento to engage in other illicit trade, resulting in British ships being boarded and searched by Spanish warships. It was such an incident that led to the outbreak of the War of Jenkins Ear in 1739. When Captain Robert Jenkins of the barque Rebecca was allegedly shorn of an ear by an overzealous Spanish naval officer, to the outrage of parliament, British forces were unleashed in a campaign against Spanish possessions in the Caribbean. Attacks were made on Spanish colonies in Panama and Columbia with varying success. When France entered the War of Jenkins' Ear against the British in 1744, as the Anglo Spanish conflict was engulfed in the wider European War of the Austrian Succession, they once more annexed St Lucia. In the Treaty of Aix le Chappel that ended hostilities in 1748 the island was once more restored to a neutral territory.

The capture of St Lucia 1762 With the outbreak of the global conflict of the Seven Years War, the French once more seized control of the island in 1756. The British soon began to mop up French colonies in the Caribbean however. Guadeloupe, Dominica and Martinique; the jewels in the French West Indian colonial crown, all fell to British amphibious invasions by 1762. Following the capture of Martinique, Captain Augustus Hervey led his squadron against St Lucia. Sailing into the port of Castries, Hervey disguised himself as a midshipman to go ashore to parley so that he might assess the enemy's strength. In the end the island's garrison surrendered without a shot being fired when faced with the might of the British warships. The island would only remain in British hands for a year before the war's end, at which point it was restored to French control by the treaty of Paris.

French intervention in the American War of Independence brought a fresh effort from both nations to capture each others possessions in the Caribbean. A French fleet under the Compte D'Estaing sailed from Boston on the same day that a British squadron commanded by Commodore William Hotham sailed from New York accompanied by a fleet of transports carrying 5000 soldiers under the command of Major General James Grant. Upon reaching Barbados, Hotham's force came under the command of Admiral Samuel Barrington, who resolved upon using Grant's troops to capture the lightly defended island of St Lucia. The British force, with Barrington in overall command aboard the 74 gun Prince of Wales, arrived off Grand Cul de Sac, St Lucia in December 1778. The French fleet had been driven off course, allowing the British to disembark their forces unmolested. Grant's troops then advanced on the fort at Morne Fortune; the key strongpoint on the island. The French garrison swiftly surrendered.

The Battle of St Lucia 1778 Two days later the more powerful French fleet under the Compte D'Estaing arrived and bottled the British up in the bay. Barrington's little fleet was heavily outgunned. He had seven ships of the line, of which the Prince of Wales was the most powerful, and three frigates. The French fleet comprised a dozen ships of the line and four frigates led by the eighty gun Languedoc. Barrington anchored his fleet in line of battle across the mouth of the bay, with his transports taking shelter behind him and two shore batteries at either end of the line able to fire in support. The French fleet made two attacks upon the British with ten and then all twelve ships of the line and on both occasions were repulsed, in what was described by Barrington with typical British understatement as a 'very warm exchange'.

Meanwhile 9000 French troops had landed on the Vigie peninsula to the north and advanced upon the British, under Brigadier General William Meadows, who had occupied a hill at the neck of the peninsula and dug in. Three assaults were made upon the 1400 British troops by the French who suffered very heavy casualties as they advanced uphill in line against the entrenched British. Nevertheless the French had the numbers and as he anticipated yet another assault, Meadows urged his men to defend the colours as long as they had bayonets. The heart had gone out of the French however and they retired. The remaining French forces on the island surrendered ten days later and St Lucia was British.

Admiral Rodney later established a base on Pigeon Island, following in the footsteps of Jambe de Bois Le Clerc. From Signal Hill on the island he could observe the French base on Martinique. Five years later however, St Lucia was once more returned to the French under the terms of the treaty of Versailles.

Victor Hugues ends slavery on Guadeloupe 1794 The French revolution brought a massive change to the region when its ideals of libertie, egalitie and fraternite were extended to the vast number of enslaved Africans, who by this point represented some 80% of the population of the sugar producing colonies. In August 1793, with France and Britain already at war, the governor of St Domingue declared the freedom of all slaves in the colony. His decision was ratified by the National Convention in Paris six months later, who extended it to all French colonies. By this time many slaves in the French Caribbean had already downed tools in the spirit of revolution. Plantation owners meanwhile looked to the British to restore slavery to the sugar islands and preserve their prosperity. Initially the British enjoyed great success. St Lucia was successfully recaptured in 1794 along with several other French held islands.

The arrival on the beleaguered island of Guadeloupe of one Victor Hugues, bringing with him the National Assembly's declaration of emancipation, galvanised resistance to the British. The British invaders were run out of Guadeloupe and Hugues appealed to slaves and the native Caribs on other islands to rise up against the British. So began the so-called Brigands' War. Hugues had landed in Guadeloupe with just over a thousand men but was able to recruit thousands more from the freed slaves. He set up a guillotine to deal with the planters and royalists who opposed him and sided with the British. Hugues even threatened to execute British prisoners if the British executed revolutionaries on the islands that they held. He also empowered numerous privateers to attack British and neutral shipping, including that of the United States, whose government supported the cause of the British and the planters, which Hugues saw as a great betrayal. Meanwhile in St Lucia, St Vincent and Granada, local forces of French settlers, Caribs and former slaves assisted by French officers similarly ran the British forces off the islands. In truth, the emancipation that Hugues offered, made little material difference to the lot in life of the former slaves. With only limited rights, they were obliged to support the French war effort by either serving in the army or continuing to work the fields.

The Inniskillings capture Morne Fortune 1796
The British response arrived in the form of General Sir Ralph Abercromby, who was appointed commander in chief in the Caribbean in 1795. Abercromby's professional soldiers on the face of it should have had little difficulty in overcoming Hugues' revolutionaries but the difficulties of terrain made the reconquest of the islands a tough prospect. Granada was swiftly overcome but in St Vincent the Carib in particular provided fierce resistance. In St Lucia the key battle was once again fought over the strategic fort of Morne Fortune. The hilltop was defended by 2000 native troops with 100 French officers and 35 guns. The British were forced to fight their way up steep ravines, through dense vegetation. The hilltop was carried by a bold charge by the Inniskillings, who drove the French defenders into the fort. With their position surrounded, the defenders surrendered in the evening.

St Lucia was restored to British control. Slavery was formally reintroduced in 1803 although many former slaves had melted away into the interior to form maroon communities. Not until 1834 was slavery once more abolished on the island although, as before with Hugues, former slaves remained tied to the land and were forced to provide free labour under the terms of 'apprenticeships'. This practice was finally done away with in 1838 at which point the promise of freedom, first made by Hugues over forty years earlier, finally began to mean something.

More on Caribbean slavery
http://enciclopediapr.org/ing/article.cfm?ref=12013003

More on Victor Hugues
http://www.open.uwi.edu/sites/default/files/bnccde/stlucia/conference/papers/jacobs.html

You may also enjoy - Dreadnought - from the Armada to the Cold War
http://slingsandarrowsblog.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/dreadnought-from-armada-to-cold-war.html

The Original Treasure Island

Avast ye blog readers and prepare for a ripping yarn! Next week the wife and I are off to St Lucia and believe me we deserve it. Whilst it is something of a no-brainer of a resort for a bit of R&R, I did wonder if I would struggle to find much of historic interest in this particular destination. It did not take long however, to ascertain that St Lucia has a very interesting history indeed. Known as the Helen of the Caribbean, the island changed hands fourteen times during the interminable series of wars between Britain and France; more times than any other Caribbean island. Looking into the early history of its exploration for the first part of this double bill post meanwhile, has thrown up a cast of characters straight out of a Robert Louis Stevenson classic.

St Lucia was most probably but not certainly discovered by Juan de la Cosa, who had captained the Santa Maria on Columbus' 1492 expedition and in 1499 had explored the waters off the northern coast of South America on the expedition led by Alonso de Ojeda. In the following year de la Cosa returned to Europe and produced a detailed Mappa Mundi, which showed all of the discoveries so far made in the New World.

The mappa mundi of Juan de la Cosa
The first European known to have set foot on St Lucia was a one legged pirate by the name of Francois le Clerc. Known as Jambe de Bois 'Wooden leg' Le Clerc had lost his leg during an assault on the island of Guernsey during King Henri II of France's campaign to drive the English from Bordeaux in 1549. In 1552 war broke out between France and Spain and the following year Le Clerc found himself as a licenced privateer in command of a seven ship flotilla sent to wreak havoc amongst Spanish shipping. Accompanied by Huguenot pirate Jacques de Sores, known as L'Ange Exterminateur, for his murderous conduct against Spanish Catholics, Le Clerc led his little fleet against the Canary Islands and Madeira before sailing for the Caribbean. The pirates fell upon the lightly defended settlements on Cuba and Hispaniola with ferocity. In 1554 le Clerc and de Sores attacked Santiago de Cuba and swiftly overcame its defenders, occupying the town for a month before burning it to the ground and sailing away with 80,000 pesos in loot. The following year de Sores attacked and occupied Havana. Finding little in the way of loot he took out his frustrations on the hated Catholic church, destroying religious imagery and even staging a play which mocked the Pope before burning the city to the ground.

De Sores' raid on Havana
Le Clerc next set up base on Pigeon Island, a small outcrop in St Lucia's Gros Inlet. Here he was able to defend against any attacks by the aggressive native Caribs and set out to terrorise Spanish treasure ships. He and his motley crew remained in the Caribbean for several years before sailing once more for European waters to fight for the English against his countrymen, joining in an attack on Le Havre in 1563. Finally Le Clerc sailed for the Azores and here his luck ran out and he was killed by the Spanish. Francois 'Jambe de Bois' Le Clerc, imagined below, is not the only pirate associated with St Lucia. The Black Bay area in the south of the island is so named due to the legend that some hidden treasure stashed by Blackbeard is buried there. I suspect almost every island in the Caribbean has a similar legend however.

By the early 1600's the English, French and Dutch were taking an interest in establishing colonies in South America and the Caribbean as opposed to simply plundering the Spanish. In 1605 a ship named the Olive Blossom set sail from England carrying colonists for the fledgling English outpost in Guyana. It was a difficult voyage. Blown off course and running desperately short of supplies the Olive Blossom finally made landfall on the southern tip of St Lucia. The ship was immediately surrounded by the native Caribs in their canoes, seemingly peaceful and eager to trade fruit, vegetables, meat, sugar cane and tobacco in exchange for any metal objects that the colonists could spare. Encouraged by this reception, the leader of the colonists Capt. Nicholas St John decided to remain behind and make a go of establishing a colony. Sixty seven colonists elected to remain with him and the Olive Blossom sailed away, leaving them to establish a fortified settlement around some huts sold to them by the natives. Amongst their number was one John Nicholl, whose account of their adventures has survived.

According to Nicholl, at first everything went well. The settlers befriended a Carib leader whose name has been Anglicised as Anthony and later his brother Augraumart. Happy to trade with them, Anthony and Augraumart visited the settlement regularly, bringing food and tobacco for trade. Along with fruit and vegetables, the settlers were brought turtles, land crabs and iguanas to eat by the natives and soon began to catch these creatures themselves. It became apparent that there was rivalry between the brothers and both of them warned the English settlers against the murderous intentions of the other. Things began to turn sour when Anthony was given a sword as a gift by one of the settlers but Capt. St John feared that this was dangerous and so set out and stole it back. This alienated Anthony and the visits stopped. Shortly after, Augraumart invited a party of settlers, including John Nicholl, to visit his village. On the way they were ambushed. Arrows flew from the undergrowth and the English returned fire with their firearms. When they drew their swords however, the Carib warriors closed in for the kill. Nicholl relates how two of his comrades were chased into the surf and killed whilst others were felled by arrows. Amongst the attackers he recognised Anthony and so the two brothers had clearly united against the English. Running for his life, Nicholl jumped into a lake and swam across to safety despite two arrows in his back.

This stamp from 1905 celebrates the 300th anniversary of the Olive Blossom's ill fated voyage
Returning to the camp he raised the alarm and the rest of the settlers prepared to defend themselves against the attack of the Caribs. They had a cannon which they loaded with stones and used to great effect against their attackers, felling many of them and driving off their assaults which went on for a week. Burning arrows were fired into the encampment, burning down the huts and the settlers were assailed from both land and sea. Finally, exhausted, running low on supplies and ammunition, the nineteen survivors agreed terms with their attackers. They agreed to leave the island and traded all their remaining goods in exchange for a boat, which they loaded with supplies and set sail southward, hoping to reach mainland South America and the Spanish colonies of New Granada. The little boat was wrecked on small rocky island off the coast of Venezuela. Fifteen days later, starving, they were rescued by a Spanish ship but Nicholl's trials were not over. Suspected of being a spy, he found himself imprisoned by the Spanish authorities but finally managed to convince them that he was merely an unfortunate colonist. Nicholl returned to England in 1607 and published an account of his adventures. He died in 1637.

The early history of British colonisation in the southern Caribbean is predominantly the story of one family; the Warners. Sir Thomas Warner was an English country gentleman and soldier with a taste for adventure. Having previously served as captain of James I's bodyguard, Warner set out in 1619 upon the expedition led by Walter Raleigh's former lieutenant Roger North to establish a colony at Oyapoc in Guyana. The colony was abandoned within a year but Warner returned with the idea of instead establishing a colony on one of the islands of the Lesser Antilles. In 1624, having claimed Barbados for the crown but rejected it as a suitable colony for lack of fresh water, he landed in St Kitts accompanied by 13 colonists. Further colonists arrived in the following year led by Warner's fellow Suffolk landowner Samuel Jefferson; an ancestor of future US president Thomas Jefferson. The colonists planted tobacco and established friendly relations with the local chief Tegramund. The colony flourished and by 1626 there were over 100 colonists. The French had also established a rival colony on the island.

Thomas Warner had a degree of respect for the native inhabitants. Indeed, although he had brought his wife and children with him, he also took a Carib mistress who bore him a son. The boy was named William but his native blood would be resented by his family and he would be known all his life as Carib Warner. Despite his regard for the natives, Warner's relations with them soon soured as increasing numbers of colonists demanded more land for cultivation. Tipped off by an Indian woman, perhaps the mother of his son, that an attack was being planned by the Carib against the settlers, Warner colluded with his French counterpart Pierre Belain d'Esnambuc and the colonists fell upon the natives in a pre-emptive nocturnal attack. Over a hundred of the Carib were killed and the remainder taken as slaves or driven from the island. An invasion by thousands of Caribs from neighbouring islands was beaten back by a desperate joint defence. Following this confrontation, remembered by the locals as the battle of the Bloody River, the French and English decided to divide the island between themselves.

Depiction of a battle between settlers and Carib natives In 1639 Warner sent a colonising expedition to St Lucia, having already established colonies successfully on Antigua and Montserrat. These colonists were not so fortunate however and found the natives just as hostile as the unfortunate colonists from the Olive Blossom. Within two years the Carib had wiped out the settlement. The French were the next to try settling St Lucia and met with greater success. D'Esnambuc had established a colony on Martinique in 1635 and installed his nephew Jacques Dyel du Parquet as governor. In 1651 du Parquet dispatched an expedition under the command of a man named de Rousselan to St Lucia. De Rousselan succeeded where previous colonists had failed in establishing permanently friendly relations with the natives and he married a Carib woman.

The English however were not content to leave St Lucia to the French. The growing importance of the sugar trade fuelled the natural rivalry between England and France to dominate the islands of the Caribbean. In 1660 William 'Carib' Warner had been appointed governor of Dominica. With his native blood, he also established himself as a chief amongst the natives and they were willing to follow him into war against the French. With a force of 600 men in 17 pirogues; thirty foot war canoes which carried a single square rigged sail, Warner landed in St Lucia and succeeded in overrunning the French settlements and claiming the island for Britain. A thousand settlers followed but within two years they had been all but wiped out by disease and just 89 of them survived. At this point the island was once more claimed by the French West India company. It became a French colony ten years later although it would change hands many more times over the next century and a half.

The Carib pirogue allowed the natives to project their power between the islands As for Carib Warner, he came to a sticky end. Having negotiated a treaty between the Carib of Dominica and the British, which left them free of western interference, Warner was angered by repeated violations of the treaty and ultimately led his Carib followers against the British on Antigua, where his own half brother Philip was governor. Philip, who had always held his half native brother in disdain, set out at the head of a naval expedition to bring his brother to justice, but justice was in short supply. Invited aboard Philip's ship for a parley, William and his followers were murdered in cold blood. Philip's forces then rowed ashore and set about massacring the Carib. The village where the killing took place still goes by the name of Massacre. Such ungentlemanly conduct saw Philip stripped of his governorship but in the Seventeenth Century Caribbean, such ruthless conduct was unfortunately par for the course.

More on John Nicholl
http://www.jakoproductions.com/main.asp?sID=15&page=OlipheBlossome

More on the Warners
http://irclay.hubpages.com/hub/Dominica-Carib-People

You may also enjoy - Mr and Mrs Jones and the Temple of Doom
http://slingsandarrowsblog.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/mr-and-mrs-jones-and-temple-of-doom.html

Yeah Baby, She's got it - Observing Venus

Apologies for the corny title but that was the song stuck in my head as I was writing this post.
Venus at the moment is the brightest object in the evening sky, unmistakable in its dazzling luminosity, so it seems an appropriate subject for another astronomically themed post.

Soviet Artist's impression - Venera 7 approaches Venus
As you might expect, Venus has played a hugely important role in man's understanding of the universe and our place within it. If it dazzles today, how much brighter must the planet have seemed in the inky Persian night skies over Isfahan in the 11th Century? From a convenient rooftop, the great polymath Ibn Sina, imagined below, known in the West as Avicenna and best known for his medical treatises, considered the works of Ptolemy and pondered the heavens anew, no doubt stroking his luxuriant beard as he did so. It was in the light of day however, that Avicenna made his most important discovery when in 1032 he is believed to have observed a transit of Venus across the disc of the sun. He correctly concluded that the planet must lay in between the Earth and the sun, albeit within a framework that still had the Earth at the centre of the universe.


It would take the invention of the telescope for observation of Venus to cast further light on our understanding of the universe. During his remarkable year of observations in 1610, Galileo viewed Venus and noted that at different times it exhibited different phases just like the moon, appearing sometimes full and round, sometimes gibbous and sometimes as a crescent. He concluded that for this phenomenon to be observed,Venus must circle the sun. Galileo asserted as much in a series of letters mostly concerned with sun spots written in 1613 to the Austrian banker Marc Welser; the wealthy patron of his rival Apelles, declaring that the observed phases of Venus provided proof of Copernicus' theory that the planets circle the sun.
 In 1627 Galileo's great contemporary Johannes Kepler had concluded his monumental work the Rudolphine Tables; a catalogue of the stars and predicted movements of the planets, named in honour of Holy Roman Emperor Rudolph II. The tables' calculations incorporated Kepler's key discovery that the planets moved in elliptical orbits, and this ensured that they were far more accurate than anything that had gone before. The Rudolphine Tables correctly predicted a transit of Venus in 1631, though Kepler did not live to see it.

Galileo's sketch of the phases of Venus
Throughout the 1630's the Rudolphine tables were carefully studied and painstakingly improved upon by two English astronomers; William Crabtree and Jeremiah Horrocks, who corresponded regularly on their observations and findings. Theirs was a remarkable collaboration, though it is not believed that they ever met. Manchester merchant Crabtree's meticulous observations allowed watchmaker's apprentice and Cambridge drop-out Horrocks to predict that another transit of Venus would occur in 1639. It was Horrocks who established that transits of Venus occurred eight years apart in a 243 year repeating cycle. On 24th November 1639 (by the Julian calendar) Crabtree and Horrocks independently observed the transit, projecting an image of the sun through their telescopes onto paper and making sketches which allowed Horrocks to make estimates as to the size of Venus and its distance from the earth and by extrapolation the distance from the earth to the sun. Horrocks died two years later aged just 22. Many of his papers were subsequently lost, but over twenty years after his death his treatise on the transit of Venus was obtained and published by German astronomer and corresponding fellow of the Royal society Johannes Hevelius. It was a sensation.

Jeremiah Horrocks observes the 1639 transit
 In 1716 Edmund Halley wrote a passionate appeal for future scientists to build upon Horrocks' work when the next transits came around in 1761 and 1769, calling for an international effort to observe the transit from various points on the globe and thereby obtain a more accurate estimate of Earth-Venus and Earth - Sun distances using parallax and trigonometry. A good explanation of how this is done is available here. So the scene was set for far-flung expeditions by European astronomers to all corners of the earth to gather as much data from the two transits as possible.

Unfortunately when the time came for the 1761 transit, war was raging across the globe between England and France, making these expeditions even more difficult and challenging. French astronomer Guillaume le Gentil was thwarted from making his observations from dry land when his intended landfall of Pondicherry fell to the British and was forced to try to observe from the pitching deck of the ship. Undeterred, he determined to wait for the next transit in eight years’ time. He spent the intervening years fruitfully, travelling the Indian Ocean on mapmaking expeditions, carrying out astronomical observations and recording details of flora and fauna. When the time came around for the next transit, Le Gentil returned to Pondicherry only to be thwarted once more by storm clouds. When at last he returned to France he found that he had been given up for dead and his relatives were squabbling over his estate. He has gone down as the unluckiest man in the history of astronomy.

Chappe d'Auteroche terrifies the locals
Another French expedition led by Jean Baptiste Chappe d'Auteroche trekked across the vastness of Russia to observe the transit from Tobolsk in Siberia, where he received a rough reception from the superstitious peasants who were terrified by his equipment and bizarre electrical experiments. He was suspected of interfering with the weather and causing flooding and had to be protected by a hired band of mercenary Cossacks. Despite the challenges he managed to obtain excellent observations. For the 1769 transit, Chappe d'Auteroche led an expedition to Baja California, where the entire expedition was struck down with fever and Chappe d'Auteroche himself perished whilst caring for the sick. Only one member of the expedition survived to bring the observations back to France.

Equally eventful were the adventures of Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon who are best known for establishing the boundary between the colonies of Pennsylvania and Maryland from 1765 to 1768, drawing the cultural dividing line that bears their name. In 1761 astronomer Mason and surveyor Dixon set out aboard HMS Seahorse, a frigate of 24 guns, bound for Sumatra. Their mission was to observe the transit of Venus. On the way however, Seahorse encountered French frigate Le Grand and the two ships fought a close action, leaving 11 dead and 38 wounded aboard the Seahorse including the captain. The appearance of a second frigate HMS Unicorn saw the French ship turn tail. Seahorse was too badly damaged to continue and returned to port to refit. By the time she set out again, there was insufficient time to make it to Sumatra in time to observe the transit and so Mason and Dixon were put ashore in Cape Town, from where they successfully observed the transit.
Their partnership ended after the completion of the Mason-Dixon line survey as they were sent to different destinations to observe the 1769 transit, Mason to Ireland, Dixon to Norway.

Mikail Lomonosov

Future Astronomer Royal Neville Maskelyne had a less eventful journey to St Helena to observe the 1761 transit, using the voyage to also put the latest theories on the calculation of longitude to the test. Meanwhile in St Petersburg, Mikail Lomonosov detected a ring of refracted light around the planet as it made first contact, concluding that Venus must possess an atmosphere. Despite the University of St Petersburg distributing 200 copies of his paper around Europe, it took 200 years for his discovery to be credited.

Most famously of all James Cook sailed to Tahiti aboard the Endeavour to observe the 1769 transit, accompanied by botanist Joseph Banks and astronomer Charles Green. Despite the generally friendly reception from the native population, a fortification known as Fort Venus had to be constructed in order to protect the observation equipment from looting. Nevertheless, as Cook recorded in his diary all their efforts were in vain as an enterprising thief still managed to steal their prized astronomical quadrant, which had to be tracked down. Nevertheless as Banks noted, the natives were fascinated by the proceedings and some joined the Europeans to watch the transit. Despite perfect conditions, efforts were hampered by the 'black drop effect' which made it difficult to discern the precise moments of first and second contact and the associated timings which were crucial to the whole enterprise. The gentlemen of the Royal Society were most displeased. Nevertheless when all the observations were combined the figure established for the earth-sun distance or 1 astronomical unit (AU) was within 0.8% of  the modern figure.
Joseph Banks in Tahiti
As they stared at a tiny black dot moving across the projected surface of the sun, none of these intrepid observers can surely have conceived of the possibility of a spacecraft being sent from Earth to explore Venus itself, yet within 200 years of their grand enterprise, that was precisely what occurred.

Both the United States and Soviet Union began missions to Venus in the 1960's and it would be the Soviet programme that would enjoy the greatest success. In March 1960 the US launched Pioneer 5; the first spacecraft to carry a digital telemetry system into interplanetary space. Pioneer 5 had originally been intended to reach Venus but the mission had been scaled back to an interplanetary fact finding expedition; investigating radiation and magnetic fields in deep space. The probe maintained contact until it was 36 million km from Earth before falling into a heliocentric orbit.
The following February the Soviet Union launched Venera 1. This too had been scaled down from a Venus landing to a fly by mission. In the end failure of the communication and stabilisation systems prevented this but the probe got to within 100,000 km of Venus before falling into a heliocentric orbit. It also sent back data on radiation and interplanetary magnetic fields.

Mariner 2 1962 saw a reversal of fortunes with all 3 Soviet attempts failing to escape Earth orbit whilst the US Mariner 2 made it to within 35,000 km of Venus and took measurements of the planet's magnetic field and estimated surface temperatures. Further Soviet efforts throughout 1964 met with little success although the probe known as Zond 1 came within 100,000 km of Venus before losing contact. Finally in November 1965 Venera 2 and 3 were launched. Venera 2 was a fly-by mission which passed within 24,000 km of Venus but was unable to transmit its measurements back to earth. Venera 3 successfully deployed its landing module but again communications were lost although it became the first man-made object to make it to the surface of another planet. 1967 saw both nations achieve their greatest successes thus far in the exploration of Venus. In June the Soviets launched Venera 4; a major redesign conducted by the Lavochkin aircraft company. One key improvement was in the cooling of the instrumentation, using the antennae as a thermal radiator. This allowed the craft to keep transmitting all the way to Venus. Venera 4 would release a landing module 1m across - the round section on the bottom of the probe shown below. Venera 4 successfully transmitted as it descended through the Venusian atmosphere, allowing Soviet scientists to discover that it comprised 95% carbon dioxide. The probe registered a temperature of 271 degrees centigrade and a pressure of 18 atmospheres until transmissions stopped shortly before it hit the surface. Later that same year the US Mariner 5 carried out a 4000km fly by of the planet, measuring the radio refractivity of its atmosphere.
Venera 4
The following year, despite Cold War tensions, US and Soviet Scientists held a conference to compare notes, both acknowledging that they had yet to detect conditions on the planet's surface. The Soviets kept plugging away, launching Venera 5 & 6 in 1969 with both successfully deploying their landing modules but both modules being destroyed before reaching the surface. Casings were cracked open by the extreme pressure and parachutes incinerated by the high temperatures. Nevertheless, more atmospheric data was collected before contact was lost 18km above the surface.

The Venera 7 mission of 1970 was designed to make it all the way to the surface and survive. Soviet scientists by now expected pressures of up to 100 atmospheres and temperatures in excess of 500 degrees Celsius and the titanium hulled Venera 7 descent module was built to withstand pressures and temperatures well in excess of these. The parachute was reduced in size and made from glass nitron fibre capable of withstanding the 700km/h winds in the middle atmosphere of Venus and the 500 degrees Celsius temperatures as it approached the surface. The parachute could be reefed to allow a quicker descent through the Venusian atmosphere in the initial stages before being fully deployed at a lower altitude. If the descent was too long then the 100 hour battery life could be exhausted before the lander reached the surface.

Venera 7 lander On December 15th 1970 Venera 7 successfully landed on Venus with communications still intact.  It was the first spacecraft to send a signal back from the surface of another planet. Its parachute had been torn during the descent and it hit the ground at 38mph, coming to rest on its side with its antenna not facing towards Earth. With only 3% of its transmitting power available, the lander still managed to transmit for 23 minutes, its signal barely discernible from the background static. The probe returned temperature readings of 474 degrees Celsius and pressure readings of 90 atmospheres.

The Venera missions continued until 1984, each carrying more sophisticated equipment and returning more details of the Venusian atmosphere and surface. In 1975 Venera 9 sent back the first photograph of the surface of Venus. The US Space programme had focused more on Mars and of course the enormous effort of manned missions to the moon. Their Pioneer Venus 2 mission succeeded in landing a small probe on the surface in 1978 which survived for 50 minutes. Of course, for all the successful missions, just getting there and surviving at all was a tremendous accomplishment.

Galileo on Venus
http://www3.nd.edu/~kbrading/Classes/Phil%2030389/Galileo%20Copernican%20system%20reading%20materials.pdfObserving the transits in 1639, 1761, 1769
http://www.atramsey.freeserve.co.uk/transitofvenus/phys_ed_1.pdf The Venera missions
http://mentallandscape.com/V_Venus.htm More Slings and Arrows posts on astronomy and space
http://slingsandarrowsblog.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/astronomy



 

Under the black banner - the Abbasid Revolution

There has been much talk of Caliphates of late. Whilst those plaguing the long suffering people of Iraq and Syria with thuggery and vandalism may be claiming to be seeking the restoration of such an institution, it seems unlikely that many of them have much appreciation of the historical reality. The Abbasid caliphate, the glory days of which ISIS like to hark back to, ruled over much of the Islamic world in the 8th to 10th Centuries and endured in Baghdad until the 13th. Whatever fantasies are projected backward onto it, the Abbasid Caliphate was neither an egalitarian utopia nor was it a fundamentalist, totalitarian state. It was far more interesting than that.

Statue of Baghdad founder  Caliph Al-Mansur, blown up by persons unknown in 2005 The heyday of the Abbasids, of which I have been reading much of late, saw the caliphs and their courtiers enjoying opulence and luxury on an unfathomable scale, sustained by wringing every last dirham from their groaning tax-payers. The caliphs dispensed vast wealth on a whim and a penniless poet could become a rich man with just one verse if he found the Commander of the Faithful in an appreciative mood. Catastrophic falls from grace were equally just a whim away. Away from the gardens and dancing girls of the caliphal court, the wisdom of the world was examined anew and augmented as texts from India and the classical world were avidly collected and studied under the patronage of the caliphs and their viziers. The Abbasid caliphs practiced tolerance in moderation and decadence in excess. Knowledge and beauty were celebrated. Books were cherished not burned.

In a previous post Anatomy of an Empire I described how the Umayyad caliph Abd al Malik inherited a chaotic and fragmented caliphate and transformed it into an effectively governed empire stretching from Andalucía to Afghanistan. Despite some military reverses during the reign of his son Hisham, the fourth son of Abd al Malik to hold the caliphate, the heartland of this empire remained intact and stable at his death in 743. Under a series of short-lived successors however, the cracks rapidly began to appear.

Hisham  was succeeded by his nephew Al Walid II, who was regarded by many as unfit to rule, being as he was a playboy, a drunk and a layabout. Worse still, he immediately attempted to gain acknowledgement of his young children as his designated successors. This was bitterly opposed by other members of the Umayyad family and the playboy now turned tyrant; arresting, torturing and banishing those who opposed him, including his own cousins. It did not take long for opposition to build and within a year Al Walid had been murdered in favour of his cousin Yazid. The new caliph was a far more promising prospect but within months he had died from natural causes, leaving his far less effective brother Ibrahim to face the challenge of their more distant cousin Marwan.
Marwan was the governor of Armenia and he had at his back an army of veterans toughened from years of fighting against the Khazars. He marched on Damascus and soon overthrew the regime of Ibrahim. He faced widespread opposition however from the Yamani tribal faction in Syria and from those perennial troublemakers the Kharijites and Alids in Iraq, all of whom formed an unlikely alliance against him. By 748 his forces had bludgeoned these various adversaries into grudging submission but the fatal challenge to Marwan II and the rule of the Umayyad family had already begun and would come from further afield.
It was not a new idea that the Caliphate should be held only by a member of the family of the Prophet. To date all uprisings against Umayyad rule aimed at achieving this had been centred on Iraq and had been proclaimed specifically in the cause of the direct descendants of the Prophet's son-in-law Ali. Now however a new movement was gaining momentum, calling for the overthrow of the corrupt Umayyads and their replacement  by an unspecified member of the Prophet’s family, with a promise of equality for all Muslims. The people behind this movement were the Abbasids; descendants of Mohammed’s uncle Al-Abbas, whose claim was perhaps not as legitimate as that of the Alids but was certainly strong enough to challenge the position of the Umayyads. To begin with however, the leading Abbasids kept a low profile. Later those who adhered to the view that only descendants in the direct bloodline of Ali had the right to rule would condemn the Abbasids as usurpers no different from the Umayyads.
The remains of the massive ramparts of Merv- cradle of the Abbasid revolution The Abbasid revolution began not in Iraq but in distant Khurasan and was led by one Abu Muslim; a loyal freedman and client of the family who had been sent eastwards to look after their interests and coordinate their supporters. Abu Muslim had taken advantage of tribal divisions within the army and anti-Umayyad sentiment which had already led to a rebellion against the governor in Merv in today's Turkmenistan. When the rebel cause ran out of steam, he had reignited the conflict by commencing a well-planned popular uprising. The Yamani faction within the army, many of whom were of Iraqi origin and therefore had no love for the Umayyad Caliph Marwan II or his Qaysi supporters, willingly threw in their lot with the Abbasid cause. Having added a large and experienced body of fighting men to his ranks, Abu Muslim led his followers against Merv, expelling the governor. His army then marched westward to challenge the forces of the caliph.  The genius of the Abbasid revolution lay in the fact that it was declared in the name of the family of the Prophet but without naming a specific candidate for the Caliphate. This had the effect of broadening the appeal of Abbasids’ cause and their base of support without alienating any of their potential supporters who favoured a particular claimant. The Abbasid forces marched beneath black banners in mourning for those members of the Prophet’s family who had been martyred by the usurping Umayyads. The veterans of Khurasan overwhelmingly defeated two Umayyad armies that had been sent to intercept their march westwards. They then forced their way across the Euphrates and captured Kufa in 749.
The Umayyads had attempted to end the rebellion by cutting off the head of the serpent; intercepting and murdering the head of the Abbasid clan Ibrahim as he made a high profile pilgrimage to Mecca, dispensing enormous sums in alms along the way. In Kufa the Abbasid supporters moved quickly to declare his brother Abu’l Abbas as caliph Al-Saffah. Marwan II now led his forces in person against Kufa and the two armies met on the River Zab, a tributary of the Euphrates. The Syrian forces charged the Abbasid army with the full force of their cavalry whilst Abu Muslim’s men dismounted and repelled their enemies with a bristling a wall of spears. This tactic, mastered against the wild charges of the Turks on the north-eastern frontier, was exercised with discipline and the rebels won the day. The Umayyad forces were routed with heavy losses and Marwan II fled to Egypt. Here he was soon hunted down and was run to ground and killed near Fustat, resisting to the last with sword in hand. So ended the Umayyad Caliphate.
The victors were taking no chances and resolved upon a complete purge of the old ruling house. Having occupied Damascus and desecrated the tombs of all the Umayyad rulers with the exception of Umar II, the Abbasid conquerors declared an amnesty and invited all of the male Umayyad family members to a banquet in order to bury the hatchet. Seventy two leading members of the clan were foolish enough to accept the invitation and were massacred. The only notable escapee was Abd Al-Rahman, who was the grandson of the caliph Hisham. Fleeing Damascus, the fugitive Abd al Rahman made his way to Ifriqiyawhere he found safety amongst the family of his Berber mother. Eventually he reached Al Andalus where he found widespread support for his cause and was able to establish himself as the ruler of the breakaway territory. Naturally he did not recognise the sovereignty of the Abbasids and their leading supporters in Al Andalus were swiftly eliminated. Their severed and pickled heads were sent to Kairouan, the westernmost outpost of caliphal authority, as a grim warning not to interfere in the affairs of Al Andalus.
 

The great mosque of Kufa - pictured in 1915 
Meanwhile, back in Iraq, the Abbasids had too many potential rivals closer to home to concern themselves overmuch with the last surviving Umayyad. In pure military terms they held all the aces. The cities of Iraq had not fielded an army worthy of the name for a century and the army of Syria which had been the foundation of Umayyad power had been crushed by the army of Khurasan. The winning of battles now gave way to the winning of hearts and minds. Kufa, perennial trouble spot under the Umayyads, now served as capital for the new dynasty. With Al Saffah installed as caliph, the Abbasid rabbit was finally out of the hat. The revolution launched in the name of sweeping away the corrupt Umayyads and instead placing a true descendant of the Prophet on the caliphal throne, had delivered power into the hands of an obscure descendant of the Prophet’s uncle. Would this truly satisfy the malcontents of Iraq?
The Abbasid approach was a classic iron fist in a velvet glove. Members of the Alid family were summoned to the capital, received with honour and showered with gifts in return for their pledges of allegiance. Meanwhile the leader of the Kufan resistance to the Umayyads, whose loyalty to the new regime was suspect despite having delivered the city up to the Abbasids, was set upon in the street and murdered. Officially the deed was blamed on the extremist Kharijites.
Al Saffah died in Kufa in 754 and his death precipitated a brief struggle for the caliphate between his brother Abu Ja’far and their uncle Abd Allah. In a standoff outside Mosul between the army of Khurasan commanded by Abu Muslim and Abd Allah’s supporters gathered from the remnants of the army of Syria, Abd Allah’s army disintegrated in mass defection and desertion and his challenge fizzled out. Abu Ja’far now claimed the caliphate and took the name Al Mansur; the victorious.
Under the rule of Al Mansur, the foundations of Abbasid rule would be sunk deep into the shifting soil of Iraq. In contrast to his descendants, whose love of luxury and ostentation would become legendary, Al Mansur was a caliph of the old school. Austere, miserly, pious and utterly ruthless, he set out to stamp his authority on the caliphate and would brook no rival. First to be eliminated was the very man who had just saved his throne.
Abu Muslim had built the army that had swept the Abbasids to power. He had led it from victory to victory over the armies of the Umayyads. He was loved by the Khurasani soldiers who had followed him. Now he was preparing to return to Khurasan to govern it in the name of the Abbasids. Al Mansur however was not prepared to tolerate so popular a leader in possession of such a power base. Abu Muslim was summoned to Kufa where the caliph received him in the austere surroundings of his tent. At a signal from Mansur his bodyguards set upon Abu Muslim and cut him down. His body was wrapped in a carpet and then dumped into the Tigris at night. Faced with the fait accompli of their leader’s execution, the majority of the Khurasani army accepted the situation with barely a grumble. His die hard supporters were swiftly eliminated.
Gold dinar issued by Al-Mansur Al Mansur’s next challenge came from within the family of the Prophet. Not every descendant of Ali and Fatima had been bought off and the acknowledged leader of the Alid cause, Mohammed, known as the Pure Soul, had gone into hiding along with his brother Ibrahim when Al Saffah had taken power. Mohammed was entitled to a degree of righteous indignation, since Al Mansur himself had given the oath of allegiance to him some twenty years earlier when rebellion against the Umayyads in the name of the family of the Prophet was in its first stirrings and the Abbasids were courting Alid support. The brothers went underground and moved from place to place fomenting support for an uprising against the usurping Abbasids.
Mansur had conducted a manhunt for the Pure Soul but the would-be rebel successfully evaded capture. As his frustration mounted, Mansur’s regime became increasingly repressive and members of the Alid family in Kufa and further afield were arrested and interrogated and many were ‘disappeared’. After Mansur's death, his successor Mahdi discovered a store room filled with the corpses of members of the Alid family; men, women and children. Each had a label attached to their ear identifying them. The bodies were buried in secret in a mass grave.

By 762 Mohammed could stand no more and although his plans for a coordinated uprising were not fully complete, he had himself proclaimed caliph in the main mosque in Medina, orchestrating a bloodless coup against the Abbasid governor. The struggle would not remain bloodless for long. Medina was an unwise choice of city to launch a rebellion, chosen more for symbolic than strategic reasons. Al Mansur moved quickly to cut off supply routes from Egypt and Syria before sending an army under the command of his cousin Isa. For the defence of Medina, Mohammed looked to his namesake the Prophet for inspiration and dug a defensive trench as had been done in the earliest days of Islam to protect the city from attack by the unbelievers of Mecca. The tactic on this occasion was unsuccessful and the defences were swiftly breached. All but a few hundred of his followers deserted him and Mohammed fell fighting bravely so we are told, wielding the sword of the Prophet himself. His head was cut off and taken to Al Mansur, who had it displayed on a silver platter. Ibrahim’s revolt in Basra, which should have been coordinated with Mohammed’s rising in Medina, followed two months after, when Medina was already hopelessly surrounded. Once Mohammed had been despatched, Isa turned his attention to Ibramhim, who had now been proclaimed caliph in turn. Ibrahim’s supporters were hopelessly divided and he was plagued by infighting, indecision and desertion. Finally he marched on Kufa but prevaricated again and Isa came upon him encamped in open country. In the battle that followed the Alid forces were routed and Ibrahim was fatally wounded.  A reconstruction of Abbasid Baghdad
With his rivals vanquished, al Mansur looked to the future and the establishment of a new capital for his dynasty which would provide both security and control away from the seething masses of Kufa. The caliph selected a site one hundred miles to the north of Kufa, close to the ruins of the old Persian capital of Ctesiphon and even more ancient Babylon. It was, as the presence of these earlier imperial cities showed, a natural hub with good communication by ancient river and road networks to all four corners of the caliphate.
  The village of Baghdad on the west bank of the Tigris was chosen for the site of al Mansur’s new capital in consultation with Persian astrologers who advised the date of 1st August 762 as being most auspicious for its founding, with construction beginning under the sign of Leo. Al Mansur may also have looked to Persia for inspiration in the design of his city, which he called Medina al Salaam; the city of peace. The Sassanid Persian rulers were gone but their cities still stood. Based perhaps on the model of some Persian royal cities, Mansur’s Baghdad was planned as a circular city with a diameter of some 1.7 miles. Two major thoroughfares passing through its double circuit wall at four domed gates situated at the cardinal points and met in the centre, where a mosque and palace were constructed. Others see the influence of Greek learning and the writings of Euclid in Baghdad’s pleasing geometry. Whether Mansur was a fan of Greek knowledge or Persian architecture is unknown but he was a pragmatic man. Baghdad was designed in a logical fashion which met the caliph’s needs for good communications and strong defences. An encircling moat fed by the Tigris protected the approach to the outer wall. Within the city walls were the residences of al Mansur’s civil and military administrators and the bureaucratic apparatus of the state. The city police force and Mansur’s palace guard were housed at the centre beside the royal palace, which was surmounted by a large green dome. The palace featured a great iwan, another Persian architectural innovation; a huge archway opening into an audience chamber where the caliph would hear the complaints of his subjects. Unlike those who followed him, Mansur did not cut himself off from the ordinary populace in glorious isolation but made himself available to any who sought his judgement or intercession and preached in the great mosque of his capital on Fridays.

The city would soon spill out beyond the limits of the original circular layout. Land on the east bank of the Tigris was parcelled out for development and Mansur’s leading courtiers snapped up prime locations and made fortunes from selling on land at many times its original value as they supervised the building of a whole new city, which featured a separate palace for Mansur’s son and heir Mahdi, commenced in 768. Foremost among those who had risen to power under Mansur were the chamberlain Rabi ibn Yunus; a former slave from Medina and Khalid ibn Barmak, a noble from Balkh in what is now Afghanistan, who had converted to Islam and come west with the conquerors. He became Mansur’s vizier in 770. Three generations of the Barmakid family would serve the Abbasid caliphs in the highest offices of state and they would become the wealthiest and most powerful family in the caliphate until their dramatic fall from grace. They would dictate through their patronage who would rise and who would fall in the court of Mansur and his successors and would play a key role in ensuring the smooth transition of power from one generation of Abbasids to the next. It was the Barmakids, rather than the caliphs whom they served who lit the touch paper of the great quest for knowledge for which early Abbasid Baghdad is remembered as a powerhouse of learning; commissioning translations of the works of Greek and Indian scholars. Khalid the Barmakid is also credited with saving the ruins of the Sassanid palace at Ctesiphon, dissuading Mansur, who tolerated no rival even where architecture was concerned, to leave it standing as a symbol of Islam’s victory over Persia.
  The Sassanid palace at Ctesiphon may have inspired the design of Mansur's palace Mansur died on pilgrimage to Mecca in 775. He had set out in the knowledge that he was unlikely to return, since his health was failing and he wished to make the act of pilgrimage one last time. He had not reached Mecca before he became too ill to continue. The caliph died peacefully and his death was kept secret by Rabi ibn Yunus until he had gathered all the great and the good from amongst those present on the expedition and extracted from them an oath of loyalty to Mansur’s son Mahdi, reading from a document which he claimed was the caliph’s last testament. With his path to the succession smoothed, Mahdi took up the reins of power and naturally entrusted much of the running of the state to the men he trusted; Rabi to whom he owed his uncontested accession to the caliphate, and Yahya the son of Khalid the Barmakid, who was his closest friend. Baghdad’s golden age lay ahead, but that's a post for another time.

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Vroom - The Rise of Honda

As has become tradition on Slings and Arrows, here's a Formula One themed post ahead of the new season. This year sees the return of Honda to F1 as an engine supplier so I thought I'd do a piece on their first foray into the sport back in 1964.

The Honda RA271 raced in 3 GPs in 1964 Honda's founder Soichiro Honda started his company making engine parts in 1937, supplying Toyota. The company was absorbed into the Japanese war effort in 1941 and switched to manufacturing aircraft parts. By 1945 Honda's factories had been destroyed by American bombs and an earthquake but he salvaged sufficient capital from the sale of the company's remaining assets to Toyota to start over.

The Honda Technical Research Institute started out in a wooden shack in 1946, making motorised bicycles known colloquially as bata bata for the noise they made. Honda made their first motorcycle in 1949 and within a decade had become one of the most successful motorcycle manufacturers in the world. They had also enjoyed success on the track, with Mike Hailwood taking their machinery to victory in the 1961 Isle of Man TT and 250cc World Championship. When in 1963 they produced their first road car, it seemed a natural progression to also venture into racing on four wheels and they decided to start right at the top.

Ronnie Bucknum makes his and Honda's debut at the Nurburgring 1964 Honda had an engine developed by Tadashi Kume but lacked a chassis and so chief engineer Yoshio Nakamura set out to study the leading technology of the day; shipping a Cooper-Climax over to Japan. Formula 1 at the time was very much a V8 formula but Honda had favoured more cylinders in the interests of greater power.  It swiftly became apparent that Kume's radical V12 engine would not fit into the Cooper chassis and so Honda committed to producing both car and engine. They ended up with a unique package in the form of the Honda RA271. In their chassis design they looked to incorporate the ground breaking innovations of Colin Chapman, whose aluminium monocoque Lotus 25 was dominating the '63 season in the hands of Jim Clark. The Honda RA271 was a semi monocoque design with a tubular rear sub-frame for ease of maintenance. Its V12 engine was unusually mounted transversely.

Honda entered just three Grands Prix in 1964 with a single car driven by American Ronnie Bucknum. Both Honda and Bucknum made their debuts in the German Grand Prix at the Nurburgring; the most daunting baptism imaginable. Having qualified last, a minute off the pole time of John Surtees' Ferrari, Bucknum suffered steering failure and crashed on lap 11 of 15 but was classified in 13th place. Honda also contested the Italian and US Grands Prix of 1964, racing well but ultimately retiring from both.

Ginther lines up alongside Graham Hill and Jim Clark at the 1965 Dutch GP
In 1965 Honda pursued a more extensive race programme, entering two cars for Bucknum and fellow American Richie Ginther, who had joined from BRM, with the two drivers contesting 6 and 9 rounds of the championship respectively.
The car first appeared in the second round at the Monaco Grand Prix but failed to get off the grid. At the next race in Belgium however, Ginther qualified fourth and finished sixth to claim Honda's first points. Retirements followed in the French and British Grands Prix but at the Dutch Grand Prix, Ginther once more finished sixth having qualified third. Honda sat out the German Grand Prix and struggled in Italy with both cars retiring with ignition problems. Ginther again qualified third for the penultimate round at the US Grand Prix but dropped back after a collision with Jackie Stewart's BRM to finish 7th.

Honda's performances in only its second season had been impressive. Its V12 engine was the most powerful on the grid although it was also the heaviest. Yet it was also on-the-whole reliable and a commitment to extensive testing ensured that in the final race of the season, in the heat and high altitude of Mexico City, the Honda triumphed. Ginther qualified third alongside Jim Clark and Graham Hill, whose rivalry had defined the season. The two British drivers both suffered engine failure however, leaving Ginther to cruise to Honda's first Grand Prix victory. It would be the only win of his career. Bucknum finished 5th for his only points finish of the season, having suffered poor reliability throughout. The British stranglehold on the 1965 season had been broken at the last and in only their 12th race, Honda were a winning constructor.

Ginther on his way to victory in Mexico City 1965
A change of engine regulations from 1.5 to 3 litre engines saw Honda sit out most of the 1966 season whilst they developed their new 3L V12. They finally made an appearance at the Italian Grand Prix with the RA273, essentially a development of their previous chassis. The car was a heavy, unwieldy beast and the only success of the season came once more in Mexico where the two Hondas finished 4th and 8th.

Honda continued into the 1967 season with the RA273 whilst outsourcing development of a new chassis to Lola. The team elected to run only a single car for 1964 champion John Surtees, who managed to finish on the podium in his first race for the team in South Africa. Three retirements followed before points finishes in Britain and Germany. The new Lola designed chassis, adapted from an Indycar design and dubbed the Hondola, was ready for the Italian Grand Prix. Surtees was running second behind Jim Clark when Clark developed a fuel pump issue with two laps to go and dropped back. Surtees then battled with Jack Brabham for the lead before taking the last victory of his career. This was to be the last victory for Honda as a manufacturer in their own right until Jenson Button's win in the rain in Hungary in 2006.

John Surtees beats Jack Brabham to victory in the 1967 Italian GP For the 1968 season Honda had big plans. They were developing an all new car and engine in-house. The RA302 featured a light weight magnesium monocoque and an air cooled V8 engine. This was not ready at the beginning of the season however and so Surtees continued with the V12 powered RA301 introduced at the Spanish GP. He endured a miserable string of retirements leading up to the French Grand Prix, at which the debut of the RA302 was eagerly anticipated. Surtees however, having driven the new car and found it an unstable handful, was also dubious about the wisdom of constructing the monocoque from highly flammable magnesium. He branded the RA302 a potential death trap and refused to drive it.

Honda did not press the issue but neither did they heed Surtees' concerns. Instead they decided to enter the RA302 as a separate Honda France entry and hired experienced sports car driver Jo Schlesser to drive it. Soichiro Honda attended the race with hopes high but tragedy ensued just as Surtees had feared. On the second lap of the race, with a full race-distance's load of fuel on board, Schlesser lost control and the car slammed into an earth bank and immediately burst into flames. The magnesium body burned so fiercely that there was no possibility of freeing Schlesser from the car and he was killed.

John Surtees in the RA301 at the 1968 Italian GP This tragedy combined with Surtees' continuing refusal to drive the RA302, even with modifications, prompted Honda to withdraw from racing in Formula One at the end of the 1968 season. Reliability for the RA301 remained dismal and a podium finish at the US Grand Prix was the only result of note in the remainder of the season. It was a sad end to a promising and innovative venture although Honda would return to the sport as an engine supplier in the 1980's and enjoy enormous success with Williams and McLaren. Whether they can repeat such feats remains to be seen.

You may also enjoy: Attack of the Yellow Teapot

http://slingsandarrowsblog.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/attack-of-yellow-teapot.html

Images used are public domain to the best of my knowledge

Phworrr - a brief history of pin up

I thought I would do something a bit lighter on Slings and Arrows this month after all that ice and snow and misery. As it is Valentine's Day this week and 'tis the season to be saucy, here's a post on the history of the all American pin up girl. As someone once said, 'I don't know much about art but I know what I like.' I like lots of art although I don't have much time for anything from the latter half of the 20th Century onwards. I do have a soft spot for pin up though. Though serious art lovers will doubtless dismiss it as kitsch, I like the charm of the golden age of pin up, from the mid Thirties to the mid Fifties, when something was still left to the imagination. Of course, a lot of the cheeky cover girls come from publications that contained more explicit images between their pages. The appeal of the cover artwork is timeless however and has been endlessly replicated and imitated. Yet never bettered.

A cheeky Ziegfield Follies songsheet cover by Vargas Our story begins, as you might expect, in the Roaring Twenties. Arriving in the soon-to-be hotbed of jazz and licentiousness that was New York City, a young Peruvian artist by the name of Alberto Vargas, who had studied in France before emigrating to the US in 1916, was immediately struck by the crowds of smartly dressed, sassy and sophisticated young ladies who abounded in its streets. He decided to paint them.
Vargas first obtained work as a fashion illustrator for the Adelson Hat Company and further commissions followed. A most fortuitous encounter took place in 1919. As Vargas was working on a painting in a shop window, his work was spotted by a representative of the ringmaster of the hottest show in town; Florenz Ziegfield. Impressed by Vargas' work, Ziegfield commissioned him to produce portraits of his famous Follies, who were holding court at the New Amsterdam Theatre. Vargas worked with and painted the stars of the Follies throughout the 1920's, in the process making many other showbiz contacts. In 1934 he and his showgirl wife Anna Mae moved to Hollywood, where he worked producing art for most of the major studios and painted portraits of many of the legendary screen beauties of the day. By the close of the decade however, Vargas' participation in union strikes had seen him lose favour with the studios and work in Hollywood dried up.
  Petty's TWA stewardess first took to the skies in 1942 Whilst Vargas enjoyed Hollywood, under the auspices of Esquire Magazine in Chicago, the first true incarnation of the all American pin up girl was gathering pace. The Petty Girl was the creation of Esquire's chief artist in residence George Petty. She was a long legged, slender-waisted yet amply endowed young lady, who came in blonde, brunette or redhead but always with the same cheeky smile. The original model for the Petty Girl was George's wife and later his daughter. Petty accentuated the features of his models, elongating the legs and making the head proportionally smaller. Making her debut in the inaugural issue of Esquire in 1933, the Petty Girl went on to feature in every issue for the rest of the decade and graced thousands of calendars and numerous advertising campaigns. Petty left Esquire in 1940 after disagreements over his salary, making way for the arrival of Alberto Vargas as his replacement. His success continued throughout the '40s and his art found great popularity with the troops as the Second World War got underway.  Advertisements featuring swim-suited Petty Girls were torn from magazines to brighten the drab and warlike surroundings that the enlisted men found themselves in and were copied as mascots on the noses of bombers, including the famous Memphis Belle. She remained an iconic image well into the 1950's, including as the personification of the TWA stewardess. As for Petty, his noted eye for the female form later saw him become a judge of the Miss America contest for over a decade. He died in 1975.

The Esquire Varga girl joins the Navy
Petty's replacement at Esquire, Alberto Varga, had dropped the 's' from his name at his new employer's request and hence it was the Varga Girl who took over from the Petty Girl on the front cover of the magazine. The Varga Girl was somewhat curvier than the Petty Girl though still impossibly long legged and was an instant hit with the GI's. Such was the demand for Varga's pin ups that over the course of the war over nine million copies of Esquire were printed without advertisements for free of charge distribution to the troops.

Esquire wasn't the only magazine finding its way into the hands of American troops during the war. Another favourite was Beauty Parade, a magazine filled with photographs of the famous women of the day and scantily-clad, young, wannabe starlets. It was the creation of Robert Harrison, who had begun his career as a reporter for the New York Evening Graphic, dubbed the 'Pornographic' for its smutty and sensational copy. Harrison's first assignment had been to cover the risqué Midnight Frolic. This was a show put on in 1919 by former Ziegfield Follie Olive Thomas, in which girls appeared clad only in balloons, which patrons were permitted to attempt to burst with their cigars. By the mid-thirties Harrison was working for the Motion Picture Herald, which gave him access to a large stash of photographs submitted by aspiring young models. Working at night without permission, Harrison used the pictures and the Herald's facilities to put together his own magazine. He was fired in 1941 when he was found out but obtained loans from his family to set up on his own.

Whisper magazine later morphed into the outrageous Confidential
Beauty Parade ran from 1941 to 1956. Its covers featured the art of Peter Driben, my personal favourite pin up artist of the golden age. Driben's girls are more normally and realistically proportioned but retain the cheeky smile and knowing glint in the eye of the Varga Girl. Harrison created a whole range of men's magazines; Eyeful, Whisper, Titter, Wink and Flirt, the contents of which became increasingly explicit and pornographic, eventually moving into the world of fetish and bondage as Harrison pushed the boundaries ever further. The infamous Miss Betty Page, already well known on the 'camera club' circuit, as New York's underground pornography scene was known, did her first professional photo shoots for Eyeful.

Regardless of the content, Driben's images graced the covers. Peter Driben had studied art at the Sorbonne in 1925 and perfected his talents sketching the performers of the Moulin Rouge. He was a successful pin up artist throughout the Thirties, providing cover girl images for pulp fiction and gossipy magazines. A close friend of Harrison, his association with the publisher ensured that he was one of the most prolific of the pin up greats. Harrison's magazines began to fall out of favour with the emergence in 1953 of Hugh Hefner's Playboy. With its celebrity content, (Marilyn Monroe famously posing as the first centre-fold) and willingness to push the boundaries with full nudity, Playboy spelled the end for Harrison's stable of saucy titles. Instead he turned to celebrity exposes with the launch of his scandal-rag Confidential. Things became rather mirky as the magazine blackmailed celebrities to keep their sex scandals out of its pages and outed suspected communists at the height of McCarthyism. Buried in litigation, the magazine went bust in 1956. As for Driben, he retired to Miami, where he died in 1968.

Alberto Vargas joined Playboy in 1960 The old master Vargas moved with the times and in 1960 joined Playboy and was the magazine's primary artist throughout the '60s and into the '70s. The Varga Girl was a regular fixture of the magazine, with her trademark features that had been left partially to the imagination in the '40s and '50s, now fully on display. Although the more relaxed moral standards of Playboy allowed him to depict full frontal nudity, Vargas kept to his own standards and although his girls were now nude, he still left something to the imagination with much draping of flimsy material. He retired from painting in 1974 when the death of his beloved Anna Mae left him broken hearted.  He died in Los Angeles in 1982.

Aside from men's magazines, the other great outlet for pin up art was the calendar market. King of the pin up calendar girl was Gil Elvgren, who is perhaps the best known of all the pin up artists of the golden age. Elvgren's girls are still everywhere today and their popularity remains huge. Elvgren's art, like Driben's, is more naturalistic than the perfect fantasy girls of Petty and Vargas and his subjects more down to earth. The Elvgren girl is the girl next door, captured in the midst of some task in a momentarily compromising situation as her skirt is caught by the wind or trapped in a door; a cheeky expression of mock alarm on her face.

An unexpected lift by Gil Elvgren  Art graduate Elvgren went to work for the advertising firm Stevens and Gross in Chicago aged 22 in 1933 where he became the protégé of the great commercial artist Haddon Sundblom. Sundblom, in his work for Coca Cola, is the man today credited today more than any other for introducing the popular image of Santa Claus. At Stevens and Gross in the 1930's a whole generation of successful pin up artists mastered their art under Sundblom's direction, but Elvgren was by far the most successful. Elvgren began producing works for the Brown and Bigelow calendar company in 1944 for an agreed rate of $1000 a painting, a rate which increased to $2,500 in 1951. He produced yearly collections for the company for 30 years, moving to Miami in 1956, where he found the light conducive to his art. He died in 1980. His work, and that of his contemporaries, lives on.

A final mention must go to another of Sundblom's protégés, Art Frahm, whose most reproduced work can be found in the cereal aisle of every supermarket, as he created the Quaker whose image still appears on Quaker Oats packages. His best known pin up works, created for Brown and Bigelow in the 1950's, feature young ladies whose panties have fallen around their ankles at an inopportune moment in a flutter of pink silk. Frahm's subjects were often depicted carrying shopping which, in a signature touch, invariably included some celery. This has led to some suggestions that celery can cause underwear failure, although this remains unproven.

The effects of celery on 1950's underwear are not fully understood

 For more on the world of pin up check out
 http://www.thepinupfiles.com/index.html

Normal Slings and Arrows service will be resumed next month.

Shackleton's Forgotten Men - The Ross Sea Party - Part Two

Happy New Year. Let us kick off 2015 by concluding the story of the Ross Sea party.

To recap: In December 1914 the SY Aurora set out from Hobart carrying 28 men on a journey to the Antarctic. Their task had been to lay in supply depots for the final leg of Ernest Shackleton's Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition, which planned to cross the Antarctic continent from the Weddell Sea to the Ross Sea. By the beginning of 1916 the expedition had turned into a disaster. Shackleton had abandoned the Endurance in the ice of the Weddell Sea and with it his hopes of crossing the continent. Instead he now focussed on getting the men under his command to safety. Meanwhile the Aurora, which had broken free of its moorings and been carried away in the drifting ice, taking with it much of the supplies required by the shore party as well as two of its members, remained trapped in the ice and in a precarious situation.

The wreck of the sinking Endurance Nov 1915 
Unaware of the fate of either Shackleton or the whereabouts of the Aurora, the ten men left behind on Ross Island had carried on with the task of laying the depots, trusting to the success of Shackleton and the eventual return of their ship. Having successfully moved almost 3000lbs of stores to a depot at Minna Bluff, at 79 degrees south, the shore party under the command of Aeneas Mackintosh now faced the task of establishing depots at 81, 82 and 83 degrees south.
The failure of two of the vital primus stoves forced a reduction in numbers on 8th January. Without sufficient means to melt snow, cook food and provide a little warmth, there was no choice but to send three men back to Cape Evans, there to join chief expedition scientist Alexander Stevens, who had remained behind to conduct meteorological observations and watch for the return of the ship.

This left six men to continue the work of moving the supplies south. With Joyce were 21 year old Australian science graduate Dick Richards and Victor Hayward, a 29 year old clerk with no taste for the nine to five and a thirst for adventure that had already seen him journey to Canada to work on a ranch.  With Mackintosh was Ernest Wild, younger brother of Shackleton's second in command Frank Wild. The last member of the party was Arnold Spencer Smith, a priest who had volunteered to join the expedition late on when another member had been called up for war service. There were also four remaining dogs, Oscar, Con, Gunner and Towser, who had not been used on the earlier trips.

The ten companions reached 81 degrees south on 12th January, establishing a depot for Shackleton and caching supplies for their own return journey. On they marched, through heavy snow fall that made visibility difficult. When the visibility was at its worst they were forced to stop to build snow cairns every two hundred yards in order to keep advancing in a straight line by keeping the last cairn in sight. Despite this and with the dogs pulling well, they reached 82 degrees south on 18th January, having made a respectable 10-12 miles per day. Here again they laid another depot. Once more they set out but after three more days Spencer Smith was at the point of collapse from exhaustion. He was left behind in a tent whilst the rest of the party pressed on to the final objective.

Mount Hope - 83 degrees south
As they moved closer to the Beardmore Glacier, the terrain became increasingly difficult to traverse, with pressure ridges and crevasses to be negotiated. The pace slowed and the landmark of Mount Hope at the foot of the glacier was not reached until 26th January. Here the last depot was laid, its position marked by a tall cairn of snow topped with poles and flags. The Ross Sea party had completed their mission and Shackleton's supplies, which he would never arrive to retrieve, were in place.

The men now set off on the return journey. They had 365 miles to travel to get back to Hut Point but conditions were deteriorating with frequent blizzards and the men's health was beginning to fail. Exhaustion and scurvy were setting in, attacking the joints and making walking increasingly difficult. Mackintosh in particular was struggling whilst Joyce was suffering from snow blindness. On 29th January they made it back to Spencer Smith, who they found to be a helpless invalid. Wrapped in his sleeping bag, Spencer Smith was loaded onto the sled and had to be pulled along by his companions. With a southerly wind at their backs, the men were able to rig a sail on the sledge to help them along and with the dogs and four men still in reasonable shape, they made good progress. They passed 82 degrees on 3rd February, 81 degrees on the 7th and 80 degrees on the 12th, picking up supplies along the way.

On the 18th February, just twelve miles away from the depot at Minna Bluff, a fierce blizzard struck. For five days it was impossible to head out whilst supplies dwindled and rations were cut. The rations were hardly appetising, comprising hard, salty biscuits and pemmican; a mixture of fat, dried meat and oats, which was heated to make a stew known as hoosh. By 22nd February the men were reduced to a quarter of the normal daily rations and food was almost exhausted. As luck would have it, the blizzard lifted on the 23rd but after going a short distance Mackintosh collapsed.
With two men down, Wild remained behind to care for Mackintosh and Spencer Smith whilst Joyce, Richards and Hayward pressed on with the dogs through deep snow drifts, at times sinking up to their waists, to the bluff depot in order to fetch back life-saving supplies. The blizzard returned with 80 mile per hour winds and progress slowed to a crawl. Tents and sleeping bags were torn and the men lay shivering in miserable, wet conditions. Joyce, by now effectively leading the expedition, resolved to press on regardless rather than share the fate of Captain Scott.

Joyce and Wild pull Mackintosh and Spencer Smith On 26th February the three exhausted men and four dogs made it to the depot at 79 degrees, where there were plentiful supplies and they were able to recover some of their strength. Conditions were little improved as they set out to rejoin their companions, pulling 600lbs of gear on two sledges. It took until 29th February for them to make it back to Wild, Mackintosh and Spencer Smith, who had been encamped for twelve days and were entirely out of food. Both the invalids remained in a bad way and Hayward by now was also suffering badly with scurvy and was of limited use. There remained a journey of some one hundred miles back to Hut Point with only three men able to pull. By 3rd March Hayward was frequently riding on the sledge. When the three men pulling stopped for rests, Mackintosh and Hayward went ahead on foot as far as they could to help out. Spencer Smith meanwhile was helpless though uncomplaining and was cared for by Wild.

By 7th March concern for Spencer Smith was growing and Mackintosh volunteered to remain behind in a tent in order to lighten the load to allow the other two invalids to be taken back to Hut Point more swiftly. All non essential gear was dumped and the three 'fit' men carried on, towing the two invalids on a single sledge. Efforts were in vain however for two days later, just a few miles from safety, Spencer Smith died. Joyce's diary records the sad event.

March 9, Thursday.—Had a very bad night, cold intense. Temperature down to —29° all night. At 4 a.m. Spencer-Smith called out that he was feeling queer. Wild spoke to him. Then at 5.45 Richards suddenly said, ‘I think he has gone.' Poor Smith, for forty days in pain he had been dragged on the sledge, but never grumbled or complained. He had a strenuous time in his wet bag, and the jolting of the sledge on a very weak heart was not too good for him. Sometimes when we lifted him on the sledge he would nearly faint, but during the whole time he never complained. Wild looked after him from the start. We buried him in his bag at 9 o'clock at the following position: Ereb. 184°—Obs. Hill 149°. We made a cross of bamboos, and built a mound and cairn, with particulars.

They reached Hut Point on 11th March and found seals in abundance in the sound. Having restored their strength by dining on seal meat, Joyce, Wild and Richards set out to bring in Mackintosh on 14th March and by 16th the five survivors were safe back in the hut. They would have to wait at least three months for the ice to be thick enough to make it back to the rest of the party at Cape Evans and so settled in for a dull vigil, despondent that there was no news of the return of the Aurora, which they grimly assumed had been lost in the ice.

The hut at Hut Point, with the modern McMurdo base in the background
The Aurora however was not lost. Held fast in an ice floe a mile square, which was buckled all around into pressure ridges twenty feet high, she continued to drift with the pack. By late January the ice was breaking up all around them and hopes rose as at last the Aurora's floe began to fracture. On 12th February 1916 the Aurora was finally released from the ice floe. This was a time of great danger as large chunks of pack ice, carried on the swell, battered the ship. The crew were forced to continually fend off the floes as the ship fought its way through the ice towards open water. She became trapped in the ice once more after three days and remained immobile for a further two weeks before resuming her progress. Finally on 16th March 1916 after a 1,600 mile drift which had lasted for 312 days, Aurora fought free of the ice. The ship was in a bad way. With limited supplies of coal and a jury rudder, she was in no shape to attempt an immediate return to Cape Evans and instead Stenhouse  elected to make for New Zealand, where the ship could refit before setting out to rescue the shore party.

Aurora arrived in Port Chalmers New Zealand on 3rd April. Two months later Shackleton reached South Georgia and the world learned of the loss of Endurance. Once he had rescued his own men from Elephant Island, Shackleton made his way to New Zealand in order to accompany the Aurora to rescue the Ross Sea party. In the meantime the New Zealand authorities had dismissed Stenhouse, who was unfairly blamed for the ship being swept out of McMurdo Sound and replaced him with John King Davis, another experienced polar man who had sailed with both Shackleton and Mawson.
The Aurora reached Cape Evans on 10th January 1917 to pick up the survivors of the shore party, who numbered just seven men due to a final, tragic turn of events.

The survivors aboard the Aurora
Impatient with the wait at Hut Point and eager to check on the men at Cape Evans and perhaps hear news of the ship, Mackintosh had decided to risk the journey over the ice far too early. Accompanied by Hayward he had set out on May 10th against Joyce's advice. Later in the day a blizzard blew up. Joyce did not consider it prudent to attempt the crossing until 15th July and upon reaching Cape Evans with Wild and Richards he discovered that Mackintosh and Hayward had never made it. Their tracks had ended abruptly at a point where the sea ice had fractured and a thinner layer of new ice had formed. It seemed that they had been swept out to sea on the ice. With no provisions or equipment they would not have lasted long. Their bodies were never found. After all the efforts to bring the party safe back to Hut Point, Joyce could be forgiven for cursing Mackintosh's recklessness. John King Davis recalled that Mackintosh had ventured out onto thin ice before and got away with it. This time his luck had run out.

Mackintosh and his men have not enjoyed the lasting fame of Shackleton's Endurance party but the man himself was in no doubt as to their accomplishments. In his account of the expedition he wrote:

In spite of extraordinary difficulties occasioned by the breaking out of the Aurora from her winter quarters before sufficient stores and equipment had been landed, Captain Æneas Mackintosh and the party under his command achieved the object of this side of the Expedition. For the depot that was the main object of the Expedition was laid in the spot that I had indicated, and if the transcontinental party had been fortunate enough to have crossed they would have found the assistance, in the shape of stores, that would have been vital to the success of their undertaking. Owing to the dearth of stores, clothing, and sledging equipment, the depot party was forced to travel more slowly and with greater difficulty than would have otherwise been the case. The result was that in making this journey the greatest qualities of endurance, self-sacrifice, and patience were called for, and the call was not in vain, as you reading the following pages will realize. It is more than regrettable that after having gone through those many months of hardship and toil, Mackintosh and Hayward should have been lost. Spencer-Smith during those long days, dragged by his comrades on the sledge, suffering but never complaining, became an example to all men. Mackintosh and Hayward owed their lives on that journey to the unremitting care and strenuous endeavours of Joyce, Wild, and Richards, who, also scurvy-stricken but fitter than their comrades, dragged them through the deep snow and blizzards on the sledges. I think that no more remarkable story of human endeavour has been revealed than the tale of that long march which I have collated from various diaries.

Shackleton had equal praise for Joseph Stenhouse, who was shabbily treated upon his return to New Zealand but subsequently received the OBE for his command of the Aurora in the ice. Stenhouse, like virtually every member of Shackleton's expeditions, enlisted to fight in the continuing war and was awarded the DSC for his actions in sinking a Uboat. He served again during the Second World War and was again decorated for bravery in saving the life of a fellow crew member. He was lost in action in 1941. Incidentally, he had married the widow of Aeneas Mackintosh in 1923.

As for the Aurora herself, she too was a victim of war, believed sunk by enemy action en route to South America in 1917. Her luck too, finally ran out.

All quotes from Ernest Shackleton's South, the full text of which is available here:

http://www.coolantarctica.com/Antarctica%20fact%20file/History/south/south_shackleton_chapter13.htm