Battle of Braddock Down

The Battle of Braddock Down was a battle of the south-western campaign of the First English Civil War. It was fought on open ground in Cornwall, on 19 January 1643. An apparently easy victory for the Royalists under Sir Ralph Hopton secured Cornwall for King Charles and confirmed Hopton’s reputation.

Prelude
On 17 January, three Parliamentarian ships had sought refuge from a storm at Falmouth and been captured, enabling the Royalists to replenish their stores.
Sir Ralph Hopton’s Royalist forces had been camped the night before at Boconnoc. On breaking camp, their dragoon vanguard encountered enemy cavalry to the east, and discovered the Parliamentarian army deployed on Braddock Down. The Parliamentarian commander, Colonel Ruthven, had been unwilling to wait for reinforcements under the Earl of Stamford to arrive and had marched to face the Royalists.

The battle
Ruthven had more cavalry, but Hopton had more infantry and also two light cannon. These he kept concealed during the first two hours of the battle, which was largely a long-range musketry duel. After deciding to attack, Hopton ordered his Cornish foot under Sir Bevil Grenville to charge. The defending Parliamentarians fired just one volley at the Cornish, causing two casualties, then turned and fled. The defeated Parliamentarians reached Liskeard, where the townsfolk turned on them.

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Saint Nicholas

Saint Nicholas

(Greek: Ἅγιος Νικόλαος, Hagios ["Saint", literally "Holy", Latin: Sanctus] Nicolaos ["victory of the people"]) (270 – 6 December 343), also called Nikolaos of Myra, was a historic 4th-century saint and GreekBishop of Myra (Demre, part of modern-day Turkey) in Lycia. Because of the many miracles attributed to his intercession, he is also known as Nikolaos the Wonderworker (Νικόλαος ὁ Θαυματουργός, Nikolaos ho Thaumaturgos). He had a reputation for secret gift-giving, such as putting coins in the shoes of those who left them out for him, and thus became the model for Santa Claus, whose modern name comes from the Dutch Sinterklaas, itself from a series of elisions and corruptions of the transliteration of “Saint Nikolaos”. His reputation evolved among the faithful, as was common for early Christian saints. In 1087, his relics were furtively translated to Bari, in southeastern Italy; for this reason, he is also known as Nikolaos of Bari. His feast day is 6 December.

The historical Saint Nicholas is remembered and revered among Catholic and Orthodox Christians. He is also honored by various Anglican and Lutheran churches. Saint Nicholas is the patron saint of sailors, merchants, archers, thieves, children, and students in various countries in the Balkans and Eastern Europe (Albania, Bulgaria,Croatia, Czech Republic, Georgia, Greece, Republic of Macedonia, Montenegro, Romania, Russia, Serbia,Slovakia), as well as in parts of Western Europe (Belgium, France, Netherlands, Portugal). He is also the patron saint of Aberdeen, Amsterdam, Barranquilla, Bari, Beit Jala, Fribourg, Huguenots, Kozani, Liverpool, Paternopoli, Sassari, Siggiewi and Lorraine. He was also a patron of the Varangian Guard of the Byzantine emperors, who protected his relics in Bari.

Translation of the relics

On 26 August 1071 Romanus IV, Emperor of the Byzantine Empire (reigned 1068–1071), faced Sultan Alp Arslan of the Seljuk Turks (reigned 1059–1072) in the Battle of Manzikert. The battle ended in humiliating defeat and capture for Romanus. As a result the Empire temporarily lost control over most of Asia Minor to the invading Seljuk Turks. The Byzantines would regain its control over Asia Minor during the reign of Alexius I Comnenus (reigned 1081–1118). But early in his reign Myra was overtaken by the Islamic invaders. Taking advantage of the confusion, sailors from Bari in Apulia seized the remains of the saint from his burial church in Myra, over the objections of the Orthodox monks. Returning to Bari, they brought the remains with them and cared for them. The remains arrived on 9 May 1087. There are numerous variations of this account. In some versions those taking the relics are characterized as thieves or pirates, in others they are said to have taken them in response to a vision wherein Saint Nicholas himself appeared and commanded that his relics be moved in order to preserve them from the impending Muslim conquest. Currently at Bari, there are two churches at his shrine, one Roman Catholic and one Orthodox.

According to a local legend, some of his remains were brought by three pilgrims to a church in what is now Nikolausberg in the vicinity of the city of Göttingen, Germany, giving the church and village its name.

There is also a Venetian legend (preserved in the Morosini Chronicle) that most of the relics were actually taken to Venice (where a great church to St. Nicholas, the patron of sailors, was built on the Lido), only an arm being left at Bari. This tradition was overturned in the 1950s when a scientific investigation of the relics in Bari revealed a largely intact skeleton.

It is said that in Myra the relics of Saint Nicholas each year exuded a clear watery liquid which smells like rose water, called manna (or myrrh), which is believed by the faithful to possess miraculous powers. After the relics were brought to Bari, they continued to do so, much to the joy of the new owners. Vials of myrrh from his relics have been taken all over the world for centuries, and can still be obtained from his church in Bari. Even up to the present day, a flask of manna is extracted from the tomb of Saint Nicholas every year on 6 December (the Saint’s feast day) by the clergy of the basilica. The myrrh is collected from a sarcophagus which is located in the basilica vault and could obtain in the shop nearby.

On 28 December 2009, the Turkish Government announced that it would be formally requesting the return of St Nicholas’s bones to Turkey from the Italian government. Turkish authorities have cited the fact that St Nicolas himself wanted to be and actually got buried at his Episcopal town. They also state that his remains were illegally removed from his homeland.

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The Life of Thomas Birch

He was the son of Joseph Birch, a coffee-mill maker, and was born at Clerkenwell.

He preferred study to business but, as his parents were Quakers, he did not go to the university. Notwithstanding this circumstance, he was ordained deacon in the Church of England in 1730 and priest in 1731. As a strong supporter of the Whigs, he gained the favor of Philip Yorke, afterwards lord chancellor and first earl of Hardwicke, and his subsequent preferment’s were largely due to this friendship. He held successively a number of benefices in different counties, and finally in London.

In 1735 he became a member of the Society of Antiquaries, and was elected a fellow of the Royal Society, of which he was secretary from 1752 to 1765. In 1728 he had married Hannah Cox, who died in the following year.

Birch was killed on 9 January 1766 by a fall from his horse, and was buried in the church of St Margaret Pattens, London, of which he was then rector. He died, according to his will, “in a full confidence in the Mercy and Goodness of almighty God and with a firm persuasion of a blessed Immortality discoverable by the Light of Nature and confirmed for us Christians by that of Revelation”, leaving his books and manuscripts to the British Museum, and a sum of about £500 to increase the salaries of the three assistant librarians.

Writings

Birch had an enormous capacity for work and was engaged in a large number of literary undertakings. In spite of their dullness many of his works are of considerable value, although Horace Walpole questioned his “parts, taste and judgment.” He carried on an extensive correspondence with some of the leading men of his time, and many of his letters appear in Literary Anecdotes of the 18th Century (London, 1812–1815) and Illustrations of the Literary History of the 18th Century (London, 1817–1858) by J. Nichols, in the Bibliotheca Topographica Britannica, vol. iii. (London, 1780–1790), and in James Boswell’s Life of Johnson.

Samuel Johnson wrote: “Tom Birch is as brisk as a bee in conversation; but no sooner does he take a pen in his hand, than it becomes a torpedo to him, and benumbs all his faculties”.
Birch wrote most of the English lives in the General Dictionary, Historical and Critical, 10 vols. (London, 1734–1741), assisted in the composition of the Athenian Letters (London, 1810), edited the State Papers of John Thurloe (London, 1742) and the State Papers of W. Murdin (London, 1759). He also wrote a Life of the Right Honourable Robert Boyle (London, 1744); Inquiry into the share which King Charles I had in the transactions of the Earl of Glamorgan for bringing over a body of Irish rebels (London, 1756); Historical view of Negotiations between the Courts of England, France and Brussels 1592-1617 (London, 1749); Life of Archbishop Tillotson (London, 1753); History of the Royal Society of London (London, 1756–1757); Life of Henry, Prince of Wales (London, 1760), and many other works. Among the papers left at his death were some which were published in 1848 as the Court and Times of James I and the Court and Times of Charles I.

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Order of the Bath

The Most Honorable Order of the Bath (formerly The Most Honorable Military Order of the Bath) is a British order of chivalry founded by George I on 18 May 1725.The name derives from the elaborate medieval ceremony for creating a knight, which involved bathing (as a symbol of purification) as one of its elements. The knights so created were known as Knights of the Bath. George I “erected the Knights of the Bath into a regular Military Order”. He did not (as is often stated) revive the Order of the Bath, since it had never previously existed as an Order, in the sense of a body of knights who were governed by a set of statutes and whose numbers were replenished when vacancies occurred.

The Order consists of the Sovereign (currently Elizabeth II), the Great Master (currently HRH the Prince of Wales), and three Classes of members:

Knight Grand Cross or Dame Grand Cross
Knight Commander or Dame Commander
Companion

Members belong to either the Civil or the Military Division. Prior to 1815, the order had only a single class, Knights Companion (KB), which no longer exists. Recipients of the Order are now usually senior military officers or senior civil servants. Commonwealth citizens not subjects of the Queen and foreigners may be made Honorary Members.

The Order of the Bath is the fourth-most senior of the British Orders of Chivalry, after The Most Noble Order of the Garter, The Most Ancient and Most Noble Order of the Thistle, and The Most Illustrious Order of St Patrick. The last of the aforementioned Orders, which relates to Ireland, still exists but has been in disuse since the formation of the Irish Free State.

Knights of the Bath

In the middle Ages, knighthood was often conferred with elaborate ceremonies. These usually involved the knight-to-be taking a bath (possibly symbolic of spiritual purification) during which he was instructed in the duties of knighthood by more senior knights. He was then put to bed to dry. Clothed in a special robe, he was led with music to the chapel where he spent the night in a vigil. At dawn he made confession and attended Mass, then retired to his bed to sleep until it was fully daylight. He was then brought before the King, who after instructing two senior knights to buckle the spurs to the knight-elect’s heels, fastened a belt around his waist, then struck him on the neck (with either a hand or a sword), thus making him a knight. It was this “accolade” which was the essential act in creating a knight, and a simpler ceremony developed, conferring knighthood merely by striking or touching the knight-to-be on the shoulder with a sword, or “dubbing” him, as is still done today. In the early medieval period the difference seems to have been that the full ceremonies were used for men from more prominent families.

From the coronation of Henry IV in 1399 the full ceremonies were restricted to major royal occasions such as coronations, investitures of the Prince of Wales or royal Dukes, and royal weddings,and the knights so created became known as Knights of the Bath. Knights Bachelor continued to be created with the simpler form of ceremony. The last occasion on which Knights of the Bath were created was the coronation of Charles II in 1661.

From at least 1625, and possibly from the reign of James I, Knights of the Bath were using the motto Tria iuncta in uno (Latin for “Three joined in one”), and wearing as a badge three crowns within a plain gold oval. These were both subsequently adopted by the Order of the Bath; a similar design of badge is still worn by members of the Civil Division. Their symbolism however is not entirely clear. The ‘three joined in one’ may be a reference to the kingdoms of England, Scotland and either France or Ireland, which were held (or claimed in the case of France) by British monarchs. This would correspond to the three crowns in the badge. Another explanation of the motto is that it refers to the Holy Trinity. Nicolas quotes a source (although he is skeptical of it) who claims that prior to James I the motto was Tria numina iuncta in uno, (three powers/gods joined in one), but from the reign of James I the word numina was dropped and the motto understood to mean Tria [regna] iuncta in uno (three kingdoms joined in one).

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Louis, Grand Condé

Louis de Bourbon, Prince of Condé (8 September 1621 – 11 December 1686) was a French general and the most famous representative of the Condé branch of the House of Bourbon. Prior to his father’s death in 1646, he was styled the Duc d’Enghien. For his military prowess he was renowned as le Grand Condé.

Biography

Louis was born in Paris, the son of Henri de Bourbon, Prince de Condé and Charlotte Marguerite de Montmorency. His father was a first cousin-once-removed of Henry IV, the King of France, and his mother was an heiress of one of France’s leading ducal families.

Conde’s father saw to it that his son received a thorough education – Louis studied history, law, and mathematics during six years at the Jesuits’ school at Bourges. After that he entered the Royal Academy at Paris. At seventeen, in the absence of his father, he governed Burgundy.
His father betrothed him to Claire-Clémence de Maillé-Brézé, niece of the powerful Cardinal Richelieu, chief minister of the king, before he joined the army in 1640. Despite being barely twenty years of age and in love with Mlle du Vigean (Marthe Poussard, calledmademoiselle du Vigean, daughter of the king’s gentleman of the bedchamber François Poussard, marquis de Fors and baron du Vigean, by his wife Anne de Neubourg, daughter of Roland, sieur de Sercelles), he was compelled by his father to marry his fiancée, a child of thirteen. Although she bore her husband three children, Enghien later claimed she committed adultery with different men in order to justify locking her away at Châteauroux, but the charge was widely disbelieved: Saint-Simon, while admitting that she was homely and dull, praised her virtue, piety and gentleness in the face of relentless abuse.

Enghien took part with distinction in the siege of Arras. He also won Richelieu’s favor when he was present with the Cardinal during the plot of Cinq Mars, and afterwards fought in the siege of Perpignan (1642).

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Battle of Dupplin Moor

Background

The death of Robert I in 1329 left Scotland with a four-year-old king, David II (1329–1371). His right to the throne was far from absolute, and in the early 1330s was challenged by Edward Balliol, son of John Balliol. The rebels were known as ‘The Disinherited’, since they lost their land as a consequence of the Battle of Bannockburn.

In the winter of 1331, in response to the urgings of Henry Beaumont, chief among the disinherited, Balliol left his home in France and came to England, where he settled in Standal Manor in Yorkshire. Beaumont then visited Edward III, the young English king.

By the summer of 1332 all of the preparations for the expedition were complete. The size of the force assembled by Balliol and Beaumont cannot be established with any real accuracy, but the sources all agree that it was fairly modest: the Bridlington Chronicle suggests a figure of 500 men-at-arms and 1000 foot; Henry Knighton, prone on occasions to wild exaggeration, puts forward a figure of 300 men-at-arms and 3000 foot; while the Lanercost Chronicle, probably the most reliable, suggests a total force in the region of 1500 to 2800. All agree that by far the largest proportion of the footmen were archers, armed with the longbow. By mid July Balliol’s little armada of some 88 ships waited for the right moment to sail. It came with the news that Thomas Randolph, 1st Earl of Moray, the guardian of the infant David, had died suddenly on 20 July.

Battle

The rebels and their English allies sailed on 31 July from several Yorkshire ports to Kinghorn in Fife to get round the terms of the Treaty of Northampton that did not permit English forces to cross the Tweed. From Kinghorn they marched to Dunfermline and then on towards Perth. On 10 August they camped at Forteviot, just south of the River Earn, a few miles short of their objective. To the north of the river Donald, Earl of Mar, the new regent, had taken up position with a much stronger force on the heights of Dupplin Moor. The disinherited now faced one Scottish army to their front with another commanded by

Patrick Earl of Dunbar fast approaching from the rear.
In view of their predicament it comes as no surprise that morale in Balliol’s camp began to sink. According to Thomas Gray, the disinherited lords were so dismayed by the size of Mar’s army that they accused Henry Beaumont of having betrayed them with false promises of Scottish support for Balliol. But Beaumont, the most experienced soldier on either side, reacted to this dangerous situation with coolness and precision. It was obvious that they could not wait for Dunbar to link up with Mar. He decided to risk crossing the Earn at night, and launching a surprise attack on the enemy.

On the opposite bank of the river the Scots had a clear view of Balliol’s small army. Mar was so confident of his strength and the superiority of his position that he did not even bother to set a watch, and his army settled down on the night of 10 August, relaxed enough to spend much of the time drinking, convinced of an easy victory the following day. At midnight, unobserved by the carousing Scots, Sir Alexander Mowbray led a picked force across a nearby ford shown to him by the sole traitor from the Scottish camp, one Murray of Tullibardine.

After crossing the ford Mowbray climbed up the rising ground towards Gask, where he immediately attacked the slumbering Scottish camp followers, in the mistaken belief that he had encountered Mar’s host. He learned his mistake by daybreak on 11 August; but by that time the rest of the army had safely crossed the Earn and taken up a strong defensive position on some high ground at the head of a narrow valley. Mar had been outflanked. Learning of the rapid approach of the main Scots force, Balliol’s army was ordered to form a line, with the archers projecting outwards on both flanks and the men-at-arms in the centre, the whole formation resembling a quarter moon. All were dismounted, save for a small group of Germans to the rear. Beaumont now made ready to employ tactics that had been demonstrated in outline at Boroughbridge ten years before, which in their fully evolved form were to allow the English to dominate the battlefields of Britain and western Europe for the next hundred years.

The Scots were angry that their enemy had been allowed to carry out so simple a maneuver under their noses. Lord Robert Bruce, the illegitimate son of the late king, made no secret of his conviction that Mar’s incompetence was evidence of treachery. Mar denied this, and like the Earl of Gloucester at Bannockburn, resolved to be the first into battle. Lord Robert claimed this honour for himself and both charged off to destruction, followed by their disorganized schiltrons, all semblance of generalship gone. Bruce and Mar’s wild charge was met by great clouds of arrows, which fell in rapid succession on the Scottish flanks. Each bowman was so skilled, and could fire at such speed, that he had several arrows in the air at one time. The badly armored Scots with their unarmored helmets had no protection against the repeated volleys. Bruce’s battalion, pushing through the storm of missiles, was the first to make contact with the enemy centre, forcing Beaumont and the men-at-arms to yield some ground. But the arrow fire was so unrelenting and fierce that his flanks converged towards the middle, as if seeking shelter from a storm. The front units were pushed forward on to Beaumont’s spears. Retreat or redeployment was made impossible by the arrival of Mar’s schiltron, charging down the narrow glen, and straight into the rear of Lord Robert’s men. The crush was so great that many fell never to rise again. The chronicler and historian John Capgrave describes the carnage at Dupplin thus;
In this battle…more were slain by the Scots themselves than by the English. For rushing forward on each other, each crushed his neighbor, and for every one fallen there fell a second, and then a third fell, and those who were behind pressing forward and hastening to the fight, the whole army became a heap of the slain.

The bodies of the Scots were piled so high above each other that it is said they reached the height of a spear. The English surrounded the bloody heap, thrusting in their swords and spears, so that no one could be taken out alive. Scots losses were heavy: Mar and Bruce were both killed, as was Thomas Randolph, 2nd Earl of Moray, Murdoch III, Earl of Menteith and Alexander Fraser, the High Chamberlain. Ironically, Sir Robert Keith, who scattered Edward II’s archers at Bannockburn, was also among the slain. The exact number of the dead is unknown, but estimates range from a low of 2000 to a high of 13000. English losses were light, amounting to no more than thirty-three knights and men-at-arms. The Earl of Fife tried to lead the survivors of Mar’s shattered army on an orderly retreat; but this turned into a rout after Beaumont and others took to horse, charging off in pursuit. Many who escaped the carnage inflicted by the archers were cut down by the cavalry.

A stone cross, now in St. Serf’s Church in Dunning, once marked the traditional site of the battle, although there is no strong reason to locate the battle there.

Outcome

The Battle of Dupplin Moor was the worst Scottish defeat since the Battle of Falkirk, 34 years before, far exceeding the setback at Methven. The losses were heavy, but they could be made good, and Dunbar’s army, probably as strong as Mar’s, was still in the field. However, the worst casualty of all was the national confidence that had grown from the successive victories of King Robert Bruce, which had produced an illusory sense of invulnerability. Once again the nation had tasted serious defeat, and the effect it had on morale surely explains Dunbar’s reluctance to engage Balliol’s tired little army in battle. In his classic study, The History of War in the Middle Ages, Sir Charles Oman says of Dupplin: “The Battle of Dupplin forms a turning point in the history of Scottish wars. For the future the English always adopted the order of battle which Balliol and Beaumont had discovered. It was the first in a long series of battles won by a combination of archers and dismounted men-at-arms”.

Aftermath

A few weeks after the battle Edward Balliol was crowned King at Scone. But dangerously isolated in a hostile country he moved his forces south to the old Balliol patrimony in Galloway, the only part of Scotland that showed any kind of support for the new king. In December at Annan he was surprised by a party of Bruce loyalists and chased half-dressed across the English border. Any future attempt to recover his throne would have to be with the open support of the English king.

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Bastille Day

Bastille Day is the French National Day which is celebrated on 14 July of each year. In France, it is formally called La Fête Nationale (The National Celebration) and commonly le quatorze juillet (the fourteenth of July). It commemorates the 1790 Fête de la Fédération, held on the first anniversary of the storming of the Bastille on 14 July 1789; the anniversary of the storming of the Bastille fortress-prison was seen as a symbol of the uprising of the modern nation, and of the reconciliation of all the French inside the constitutional monarchy which preceded the First Republic, during the French Revolution. Festivities and official ceremonies are held all over France. The oldest and largest regular military parade in Europe is held on the morning of 14 July, on the Champs-Élysées avenue in Paris in front of the President of the Republic, French officials and foreign guests.

The storming of the Bastille

On 17 May 1789, Louis XVI convened the Estates-General to hear their grievances. The deputies of the Third Estate representing the common people (the two others were the Catholic Church and nobility) decided to break away and form a National Assembly. On 20 June the deputies of the Third Estate took the Tennis Court Oath, swearing not to separate until a constitution had been established. They were gradually joined by delegates of the other estates; Louis XVI started to recognize their validity on 27 June. The assembly re-named itself the National Constituent Assembly on 9 July, and began to function as a legislature and to draft a constitution.

In the wake of the 11 July dismissal of Jacques Necker, the people of Paris, fearful that they and their representatives would be attacked by the royal military, and seeking to gain ammunition and gunpowder for the general populace, stormed the Bastille, a fortress-prison in Paris which had often held people jailed on the basis of lettres de cachet, arbitrary royal indictments that could not be appealed. Besides holding a large cache of ammunition and gunpowder, the Bastille had been known for holding political prisoners whose writings had displeased the royal government, and was thus a symbol of the absolutism of the monarchy. As it happened, at the time of the siege in July 1789 there were only seven inmates, none of great political significance.

When the crowd—eventually reinforced by mutinous gardes françaises—proved a fair match for the fort’s defenders, Governor de Launay, the commander of the Bastille, capitulated and opened the gates to avoid a mutual massacre. However, possibly because of a misunderstanding, fighting resumed. Ninety-eight attackers and just one defender died in the actual fighting, but in the aftermath, de Launay and seven other defenders were killed, as was the ‘prévôt des marchands’ (roughly, mayor) Jacques de Flesselles.

The storming of the Bastille was more important as a rallying point and symbolic act of rebellion than a practical act of defiance.
Shortly after the storming of the Bastille, on 4 August feudalism was abolished and on 26 August, the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen proclaimed.

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Joséphine de Beauharnais

Joséphine de Beauharnais]; 23 June 1763 – 29 May 1814) was the first wife of Napoléon Bonaparte, and thus the first Empress of the French. Her first husband Alexandre de Beauharnais had been guillotined during the Reign of Terror, and she had been imprisoned in the Carmes prison until her release five days after Alexandre’s execution.

Through her daughter, Hortense, she was the maternal grandmother of Napoléon III. Through her son, Eugène, she was the great-grandmother of later Swedish and Danish kings and queens, as well as the last Queen of Greece. The current reigning houses of Belgium, Norway and Luxembourg also descend from her.

Hortense’s son became Napoléon III, Emperor of the French. Eugène’s daughter Joséphine, married King Oscar I of Sweden, the son of Napoléon’s one-time fiancée, Désirée Clary. Through her, Joséphine is a direct ancestor of the present heads of the royal houses of Belgium, Denmark, Greece, Luxembourg, Norway and Sweden. Another of Eugène’s daughters, Amélie de Beauharnais von Leuchtenberg, married Emperor Pedro I of Brazil (also former king Pedro IV of Portugal) in Rio de Janeiro, and became Empress of Brazil, but they did not have issue.
She did not bear Napoleon any children; as a result, he divorced her in 1810 to marry Marie Louise of Austria. After the divorce, Joséphine lived at the Château de Malmaison, near Paris. She remained on good terms with Napoléon, who once said that the only thing to come between them was her debts.

Joséphine died of pneumonia in Rueil-Malmaison, four days after catching cold during a walk with Tsar Alexander in the gardens of Malmaison. She was buried in the nearby church of Saint Pierre-Saint Paul in Rueil. Her daughter Hortense is interred near her.
Napoléon claimed to a friend, while in exile on Saint Helena, that “I truly loved my Joséphine, but I did not respect her.”Despite his numerous affairs, eventual divorce, and remarriage, the Emperor’s last words on his death bed at St. Helena were: “France, the Army, the Head of the Army, Joséphine.”

Joséphine was the recipient of numerous love letters written by Napoleon, many of which still exist. Her chateau of Malmaison was noted for its magnificent rose garden, over which she supervised closely, due to her passionate interest in roses that she collected from all over the world.

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John Cheke

Sir John Cheke (16 June 1514 – 13 September 1557) was an English classical scholar and statesman, notable as the first Regius Professor of Greek at Cambridge University.

The son of Peter Cheke, esquire-bedell of Cambridge University, he was educated at St John’s College, Cambridge, where he became a fellow in 1529. While there he adopted the principles of the Reformation. His learning gained him an exhibition from the king, and in 1540, on Henry VIII’s foundation of the regius professorships, he was elected to the chair of Greek. Amongst his pupils at St John’s were William Cecil, later Lord Burghley, who married Cheke’s sister Mary, and Roger Ascham, who in The Scholemaster gives Cheke the highest praise for scholarship and character. Together with Sir Thomas Smith, he introduced a new method of Greek pronunciation very similar to that commonly used in England in the 19th century. It was strenuously opposed in the University, where the continental method prevailed, and Bishop Gardiner, as chancellor, issued a decree against it (June 1542); but Cheke ultimately triumphed.

On 10 July 1544 he was confirmed as tutor to the future King Edward VI of England, to teach him “of toungues, of the scripture, of philosophie and all liberal sciences” (BL, Cotton MS Nero C.x, fol. 11r). After his pupil’s accession to the throne he continued in this role.

About 1547 Cheke married Mary, daughter of Richard Hill, sergeant of the wine-cellar to Henry VIII, and by her he had three sons. The descendants of one of these, Henry, known only for his translation of an Italian morality play Freewyl (Tragedio del Libero Arbitrio) by Nigri de Bassano, settled at Pyrgo in Essex.

Cheke was active in public life; he sat, as member for Bletchingley, for the parliaments of 1547 and 1552-1553; he was made provost of King’s College, Cambridge (1 April 1548), was one of the commissioners for visiting that university as well as the University of Oxford and Eton College, and was appointed with seven divines to draw up a body of laws for the governance of the church. On 11 October 1551 he was knighted; in June 1553 he was made one of the secretaries of state, and joined the Privy Council.

His Protestantism led him to follow the Duke of Northumberland, and he filled the office of secretary of state for Lady Jane Grey during her nine days’ reign. In consequence, Queen Mary threw him into the Tower of London (27 July 1553), and confiscated his property. He was, however, released on 3 September 1554, and granted permission to travel abroad. He went first to Basel, and then visited Italy, giving lectures in Greek at Padua, where he entertained Sir Philip Hoby. He finally settled at Strasbourg, teaching Greek for his living.

In the spring of 1556 he visited Brussels to see his wife; on his way back, between Brussels and Antwerp, he and Sir Peter Carew were seized (15 May) by order of Philip II of Spain, taken to England, and imprisoned in the Tower. Cheke was visited by two priests and by Dr John Feckenham, dean of St Paul’s, whom he had formerly tried to convert to Protestantism, and, terrified by the prospect of being burned at the stake, he agreed to be received into the Church of Rome by Cardinal Pole. Overcome with shame, he did not long survive, but died in London, carrying, as Thomas Fuller says (Church History), “God’s pardon and all good men’s pity along with him.”
Thomas Wilson, in the epistle prefixed to his translation of the Olynthiacs of Demosthenes (1570), has a long and most interesting eulogy of Cheke; and Thomas Nash, in To the Gentlemen Students, prefixed to Robert Greene’s Menaphon (1589), and calls him “the Exchequer of eloquence, Sir John Cheke, a man of men, supernaturally traded in all tongues.” Many of Cheke’s works are still in manuscript, some have been altogether lost. One of the most interesting from a historical point of view is the Hurt of Sedition how greneous it is to a Communeweith (1549), written on the occasion of Ket’s rebellion, republished in 1569, 1576 and 1641, on the last occasion with a life of the author by Gerard Langbaine. Others are D. Joannis Chrysostomi homiliae duae (1543, the first entire Greek book known to have been printed in England), D. Joannis Chrysostomi de providentia Dei (1545), The Gospel according to St Matthew translated (c. 1550; ed. James Goodwin, 1843), De obitu Martini Buceri (1551), (Pope Leo VI’s) de Apparatu bellico (Basel, 1554; but dedicated to Henry VIII, 1544), Carmen Heroicum, aut epithium in Antonium Dencium (1551), De pronuntiatione Graecae … linguae (Basel, 1555). He also translated several Greek works, and lectured admirably upon Demosthenes.

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The Duke of Milan

Ludovico Sforza Duke of Milan (also known as Ludovico il Moro; 27 July 1452 – 27 May 1508), a member of the Sforza dynasty of Milan, Duchy of Milan, was the fourth son of Francesco Sforza. He was famed as a patron of Leonardo da Vinci and other artists, and presided over the final and most productive stage of the Milanese Renaissance. He is probably best known as the man who commissioned the The Last Supper (Leonardo da Vinci).

Ludovico Sforza was born on July 27, 1452, at Vigevano, in what is now Lombardy. He was the fourth son of Francesco I Sforza and Bianca Maria Visconti and, as such, was not expected to become ruler of Milan. Nevertheless his mother, Bianca, prudently saw to it that his education was not restricted to the classical languages. Under the tutelage of the humanist Francesco Filelfo, Ludovico received instruction in the beauties of painting, sculpture, and letters, but he was also taught the methods of government and warfare. He later helped Leonardo paint with pastels.

In 1494 the new king of Naples, Alfonso, allied himself with Pope Alexander VI, posing a threat to Milan. Ludovico decided to fend him off using France, then ruled by the powerful Charles VIII, as his ally. He permitted the French troops to pass through Milan so that they might attack Naples. However Charles’s ambition was not satisfied with Naples,and he subsequently laid claim to Milan itself. Bitterly regretting his decision, Ludovico then entered an alliance with Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor, by offering him in marriage his niece Bianca Sforza and receiving, in return, imperial investiture of the duchy and joining the league against France.

Gian Galeazzo, his nephew, died under suspicious conditions in 1495, and the throne of Milan fell to Ludovico, who hastened to assume the ducal title and received the ducal crown from the Milanese nobles on 22 October. But by then, his luck seemed to have run out. On 3 January 1497, as the result of a difficult child-birth, Beatrice, his wife, died. Ludovico was inconsolable, and the entire court was shrouded in gloom. Ludovico had also hoped that by involving France, and the Holy Roman Emperor, Maximilian I, in Italian politics, he could manipulate the two and reap the rewards himself, and was thus responsible for starting the Italian Wars. At first, Ludovico defeated the French at the Battle of Fornovo in 1495 (making weapons from 80 tons of bronze originally intended for Leonardo da Vinci’s equestrian statue of the duke). However, with the death of Charles, the French Throne was inherited by his cousin, Louis of Orléans, who became Louis XII of France. The new king had a hereditary claim to Milan, as his paternal grandmother was Valentina Visconti, daughter of Giangaleazzo Visconti, the first Duke of Milan. Hence in 1498, he descended upon Milan. As none of the other Italian states would help, the ruler who had invited the French into Italy four years earlier, Louis, was successful in driving out Ludovico from Milan. Ludovico managed to escape the French armies and, in 1499, sought help from Maximilian and meanwhile the French had entered Milan.

Ludovico returned with an army of mercenaries and reentered Milan in February 1500. Two months later, Louis XII laid siege to the city of Novara, where Ludovico was based. The armies of both sides included Swiss mercenaries. The Swiss did not want to fight each other and chose to leave Novara. Ludovico was handed over to the French in April 1500. Deprived of all the amenities of life, he spent his last years in the underground dungeon at Loches, where he died on 17 May 1508. The Swiss later executed a soldier from Uri, called Hans Turmann, who had, they claimed, betrayed Ludovico for money. The Swiss later restored the duchy of Milan to Ludovico’s son, Maximilian Sforza. His other son, Francesco II, also held the Duchy of Milan for a short period.

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