The Buddha (Lived between 6th-4th century BCE)
“Some do not understand
that we are perishing here.
Those who understand this
bring to rest their quarrels.”
Fyodor Dostoevsky (Russian author, 1821-1881)
“I assure you, gentlemen, that to be too acutely conscious is a disease, a real, honest-to-goodness disease.”
In December, 1956, Fidel Castro and more than eighty armed guerrilla fighters disembarked their ship, the Granma, and landed in a swampy area of Cuba near the Sierra Maestra Mountains. Despite their subtlety, Castro’s landing did not go unnoticed—military forces loyal to Cuba’s military dictator, Gen. Fulgencio Batista, were already there to intercept the guerrillas. In the intense firefight that followed, around fifty of Castro’s men were killed. The rest of the survivors fled to the mountains, where they regrouped, reorganized and began recruiting.
After the initial bloody skirmish, the Cuban military pumped out heaps of propaganda claiming that Fidel Castro and other revolutionary leader were all dead. One United States reporter, however, would soon disprove the military’s claims after an interview with Castro, face-to-face.
On February 24, 1957, The New York Times published the first of Herbert L. Matthews’ three articles about the situation in Cuba. The first article was given huge coverage—it was the headline on the newspaper’s front page. With modern hindsight, the observations and descriptions given by the reporter about Castro are endlessly ironic and even humorous.
Before describing his meeting with Castro, Matthews gave a brief description of Fidel Castro’s revolutionary 26th of July Movement. He described the rebels as a youthful socialist and nationalist group that, while not very warm to the United Sates, was also anti-communist. Their goal, he claimed, was to topple Gen. Batista and reinstitute a constitutional democracy. At the time of Matthews’ article, this was actually a fairly accurate description for portions of the movement. Many revolutionaries were solely focused on ousting Batista and restoring democracy—only after Fidel Castro was in power would the more democratic revolutionaries be arrested, made to mysteriously disappear, forced into exile, or simply massacred. Yet, that is a digression from this particular story.
Along with his wife, Matthews worked with the Cuban revolutionary network near the Sierra Maestra Mountains to gain an audience with Fidel Castro. The rebels advised Matthews to bring his wife along for the journey, so that the military roadblocks would find the reporter less suspicious. After they passed the checkpoints, Matthew’s wife was left at the home of a warm and hospitable Castro sympathizer. From there the reporter posed as an American sugarcane plantation owner, with a rebel acting as his interpreter. Together, they trudged through flooded fields until they reached the mountains, where they searched for Castro’s scouts. Matthew’s guide repeatedly signaled with two low whistles, until two responding notes were heard in the distance. The scouts then led Matthews to an outpost where the Castro brothers soon arrived for their interview.
In his article, the reporter lavished the rebels with an abundance of praise. He appreciated their generous hospitality. He enjoyed their simple, but delicious, food and drink. Even a blanket he was given by the rebels was praised as luxurious. To top it all off, Fidel Castro brought Cuban cigars to the interview. In these accommodations, Matthews and Castro sat down for a hopeful conversation about the future of Cuba. Unfortunately, many of Castro’s responses turned out to be misleading propaganda.
In his interview with Matthews, Castro commented that he had no ill will toward the United States or its people. His only verbal attack against the U.S. in the interview was criticism over United States weapon shipments to Gen. Batista, a practice that the U.S. ended in 1958. Castro and his men went on to claim that they always paid for any materials that they commandeered from the countryside. The rebels even reported to Matthews that their policy toward captured soldiers was to simply disarm and release them.
Matthews challenged very little, if any, of Castro’s claims in his article, and the United States people, at that time, had a fairly positive attitude toward Fidel Castro—he was seen by many at as a modern Robin Hood figure, a man who used disreputable tactics to achieve honorable goals. United States respect for Castro would eventually plummet, however, as the dictator allied himself closer and closer to the Soviet Union as the Cold War continued to rise in tension.
Written by C. Keith Hansley.
Sources:
Anna Komnene (1083-1153) was an extraordinary woman. She was an erudite scholar of multiple intellectual fields and a cunning political schemer who is believed to have attempted to climb to ultimate power in the Byzantine Empire. Yet, her greatest claim to fame resulted from her ambitious history, The Alexiad, which detailed the military and diplomatic accomplishments of her father, Emperor Alexios I Komnenos, the emperor of the Byzantine Empire from 1081-1118.
The Brilliant Princess
Anna Komnene was born to Emperor Alexios and Empress Eirene in 1083, just two years after Alexios wrested the imperial throne from his predecessor, Emperor Nikephoros III Botaneiates, after a typical Roman civil war. As a child, Anna gained a broad, but thorough, education. She was interested in many topics—literature (plus grammar and rhetoric), medicine, philosophy, metaphysics and geography. She continued to be fascinated by intellectual pursuits all her life. She would later gather salons of great thinkers and give them patronage to encourage them to continue writing and making new discoveries. She also helped with the construction of the important Nichomachean Ethics, which served as a standard for the study of philosophy and the works of Aristotle in the Western civilizations.
The imperial family was always on the lookout for political alliances. Unfortunately for Anna, that meant arranged marriage. While she was still very, very young, Anna Komnene was betrothed to a man named Constantine Doukas, but the man mysteriously disappeared and the betrothal was void. In 1097, however, when Anna was only fourteen years old, she was married to Nikephoros Bryennios, a man who would be a close friend and advisor to the emperor, especially during the later parts of Alexios’ reign. Though this match, too, was an arranged marriage, Anna Komnene grew to love her husband truly and deeply. When she wrote The Alexiad, the then widowed Anna Komnene accompanied every mention of her husband with passionate exclamations of love, mourning and longing.
Anna Komnene lived an exciting life, at least while her father lived. As a princess of the Byzantine Empire, she had a unique perspective on the events that occurred in her lifetime and could meet face-to-face with many of the people who would later feature in her history. Her connection to the imperial family would also become ceaselessly useful in her search for source material—she learned where information was archived and how it could be obtained.
Anna Komnene watched her father grow old as he faced off against threats from all angles, within and outside of the Byzantine Empire. By 1118, Alexios’ life was drawing to a close. Anna Komnene, still interested in medicine since her childhood, tried to diagnose her father’s illness. Unfortunately, all she could deduce was that Alexios was dying slowly, wheezing away life one painful, irritable and uncomfortable labored breath at a time. As the emperor neared his end, the Byzantine historians John Zonaras and Niketas Khoniates claimed that Anna Komnene and Empress Eirene attempted to sway Alexios into naming Anna’s husband, Nikephoros Bryrennios as the imperial heir. Despite their pleading, Alexios’ heir remained Anna’s younger brother, John—the future Emperor John II Komnenos (1118-1143).
After Emperor John II ascended to the imperial throne, Anna Komnene continued to plot, hoping to usurp power from her little brother. Nevertheless, John II and his network of agents discovered the plot, seized Anna’s property and forcibly retired her into a convent. Anna Komnene likely was the mastermind of the plot, for her husband, Nikephoros Bryennios, remained in fairly good standing until his death in 1138. Even though being exiled to a convent clearly annoyed Anna Komnene to no end, it also gave her decades of downtime to prepare and write her greatest achievement—The Alexiad. Scholars surmise that Anna Komnene wrote her history during the last decade of her life, a timeframe dating from 1143-1153.
The History of Anna Komnene
Most historians recognize Anna Komnene as the first female historian, or at least The Alexiad is the first known history to have been written by a woman. As for her motive, different historians propose different reasons about why Anna wrote her history. Some claim she used the book to undermine Alexios’ imperial successors (she has few complimentary words for them) and to reassert her bid for the throne. Other historians take Anna Komnene at her word when she claimed her goal was to leave a record, for the sake of posterity, about the eventful life of her father, Emperor Alexios.
Alexios Komnenos was the emperor of the Byzantine Empire in an unbelievably chaotic time of history, and his daughter, Anna Komnene, was alive to witness most of the major events that occurred in his reign. Even though Anna Komnene restricted her history to her father’s lifetime, there was no shortage of historical happenings for her to cover.
The Alexiad consists of a prologue and fifteen books, and extends, at least in English translations, to nearly five hundred pages. In scope, Anna began her history at Alexios’ early military career in the army of the Byzantine Empire. The history follows the life of Alexios, though sometimes selectively and chronologically incorrect, from war to endless war, until the book ends with the death of the emperor in 1118. While Anna Komnene collected all of this history into a concise text, she also imbued the prose with a distinct tone and personality—it is one of her unique characteristics as a historian. Anna Komnene was never afraid to give her personal opinion on people or events, and she filled her history with ample allusions to classical epic poems and mythology. In fact, the title of The Alexiad was meant to draw a comparison between the war-torn life of her father and the legendary warriors of The Iliad.
Even though The Alexiad is a history about the events in Emperor Alexios’ life, not all events were treated equally. Anna Komnene focused most of her time on five major instances. The first is the invasion of the Normans into the Byzantine Empire from 1081-1085, which was led by Robert Guiscard and his son, Bohemond. Next, Anna shifted her focus to the recurring invasions of the Pechenegs, which occurred in the 1080s and 1090s. That was a chaotic time where the Pechenegs posed a major threat, but Alexios also had to be simultaneously cautious of the Cuman and Turkish forces that were all operating in his empire. The climax of the history is considered by many to be Anna Komnene’s book about the First Crusade (1095 (pope’s speech)-1099 (capture of Jerusalem)). There, she wrote valuable eyewitness descriptions of the crusade leaders and their dealings with Emperor Alexios. Another important section of her history deals with Byzantine-Turkish relations, though this section is where most of Anna Komnene’s errors can be found. Finally, the last major historical event covered by The Alexiad consists of Bohemond’s invasion of the empire in 1107. Anna Komnene’s history covers many more events and people than these five, but the majority of the book deals with these issues.
There is no known list of sources recorded by Anna Komnene, but scholars suspect she had an abundance of records and materials. In The Alexiad, Anna claimed that she gathered written accounts (and possibly oral interviews) from veterans of her father’s military to support her history. Along with the accounts of veterans, she must have had access to a military archive. In addition, she managed to obtain several documents, letters and treaties, several of which she wholly quoted in her history. She also admitted that she relied on her own personal upbringing and experience—she was the daughter of Emperor Alexios and knew many of his trusted generals. She especially relied on her own senses for describing the appearances of people. She seemed to enjoy assessing people by their looks, and compared many a warrior to the legendary heroes of Homer’s epics.
The result of her work is a timeless piece of history—it is still read by students, teachers and history enthusiasts to this day, even after more than eight hundred years.
Written by C. Keith Hansley.
Check out some great quotes from Anna Komnene, HERE.
Sources:
Alexander the Great (356-323 BCE)
“You will either welcome me into your city or I will besiege it!”
Lionel Giles (1875-1958)
“The greatest fault in war is hesitation; the worst calamities for an army arise from indecision.”
A Horrid War
The Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) was an astoundingly brutal war. Fueled by a frenzied hate between opposite political spheres, the civil war was filled with torture, executions and all sorts of ugly atrocities on both sides of the conflict. For those who have not studied the Spanish Civil War, here is a brief description of the sides involved in the conflict. The war began when a large conservative contingent of the Spanish military (eventually led by Generalissimo Francisco Franco) rebelled against the left-wing government of the Second Spanish Republic. To the confusion of many readers from the United States, historians often label the supporters of the left-wing government in the war as ‘Republicans’ and Franco’s forces are often called the ‘Rebels’ or the ‘Nationalists.’
While hardly any war can be called pleasant to study, the Spanish Civil War is an especially discouraging topic. Some historians and statisticians propose that around the same number of people died off the battlefield as those who fell on the war front. Possibly 200,000 deaths were caused by regular warfare, and another 200,000 caused by execution, terror and reprisals. While unimaginable violence, murder and post-mortem mutilation was prevalent in the Spanish Civil War (again, on both sides) this short article will focus on another gruesome topic—torture.
The first problem posed by this undertaking is how to define torture. That is a question still very much in debate, today. For the purpose of this article, an act will be labeled as ‘torture’ when violence and pain was inflicted on a victim with an intention of not merely causing punishment or death, but of a prolonged, unjustifiable suffering, both physically and mentally. Fair warning: some of the acts described below will likely be disturbing. They will escalate from the least gruesome to the most horrific, some ending in a slow, drawn-out death.
Humiliation and Beatings
Franco’s forces had a standard torture that was used prevalently throughout the war—victims were forced to drink castor oil (often mixed with sawdust or dry crumbs) to cause severe abdominal pain. After the victims drank the oil, they were usually beaten, shot, or both. Another common torture used by Franco’s troops involved shaving women’s heads, sometimes leaving only a tuft on which they would tie a ribbon. Many of these women would also be forcibly separated from their children—a simple, but extremely effective torture.
Sexual and Psychological Torture
In Republican territory, religion came under heavy attack. Priests and military officers were frequent victims of torture and execution. Monks and priests were often stripped naked and paraded around, or driven through rough and jagged terrain. There are many accounts of priests being tortured through mutilation and castration of the genitals. Nuns, for the most part, were spared horrific death—but that did not mean they were safe. There were multiple (but fairly rare) accounts of nuns being sexually tortured, raped and murdered. In one of the worst incidents, five nuns were attacked in Riudarenes village, Girona. Three other holy women suffered at Peralto de la Sal in 1936.
Franco’s soldiers surpassed the Republicans in rape. There are accounts of captured women being locked in rooms with twenty-to-fifty hardened, merciless soldiers who had lost any sense of morality in Spain’s brutal colonial wars in Morocco. John T. Whitaker recorded one soldier’s observation after two captured women were handed over to around 40 soldiers from Morocco: “Oh, they’ll not live more than four hours” (Whitaker, We Cannot Escape History). The soldiers also seemed to use some intense psychological torture, as there are reports of victims being driven to commit suicide.
Dismemberment And Graves
The Republicans, too, would inflict psychological terror on their victims. There are accounts of prisoners being forced to dig their own graves, after which they would be killed with their own pickaxes or shovels. The Republican executioner, Santiago Aliques Bermúdez, is known to have used this particular method of execution. There was also at least one account of nuns being dismembered, and priests, as said earlier, often were put under the knife, with the extreme being the amputation of their genitalia and the possibly of decapitation.
Franco’s troops matched the Republicans here, too. In one instance, a military chaplain named Juan Galán Bermejo captured five people (one was a woman) in a cave. Convinced they were Republicans, the chaplain—who was a deputy priest of the Church of La Candelaria—had his captives dig their own graves. When the graves were dug, he shot them and buried his victims while they were still alive. As for dismemberment, the execution of Juan Sosa Hormigo in January of 1937 demonstrates the brutality of the Spanish Civil War. He had basically been drawn and quartered—his arms and legs had been ripped from his body.
Written by C. Keith Hansley.
Sources:
Geoffrey Chaucer (1342-1400)
“A knowing wife if she is worth her salt
Can always prove her husband is at fault.”
Hunters will often do odd things to approach their prey—they dress up like foliage, imitate strange animal sounds and climb into precarious tree stands. Yet, one of the most bizarre hunting methods ever used was the stalking horse, a technique definitely practiced in the Middle Ages. The concept, however, probably has been around since the days horses were tamed and first used in hunting. In modern times, however, political scientists and economists have cruelly hijacked the term, “stalking horse,” for their own theories, but let’s get back to the history of this peculiar hunting technique.
The concept of the stalking horse is simple—wild game is more afraid of humans than horses. Therefore, hunters started to creep up (‘stalking’, if you will) on the unsuspecting animals by keeping the horse between the hunter and the hunted. By using the horse as a screen, the hunter could supposedly get much closer to the prey than if the horse was absent.
Of course, humans love to build and improve; so new versions of the stalking horse were invented. Real horses were interchanged for various horse-shaped decoys and illusions. Some of these decoys were just wooden or canvas screens the hunter could hide behind, but there were also cloth stalking horse suits that the hunter could wear to approach unsuspecting prey, probably with the addition of some added scent to make the stalking horse actually smell like a genuine horse.
Unfortunately, not much information remains about the medieval and ancient uses of the stalking horse, and even fewer sketches or paintings have survived. Nevertheless, a few of the public domain images we managed to find are included below.
Julius Caesar (100-44 BCE)
“You take favors for offenses, and insults for benefits, are insolent and restless in peace, and cowardly and effeminate in war.”
