On January 6, 1540, as the Christmas festivities drew to a close, King Henry VIII married Anne of Cleves. She was his fourth wife. However, their marriage only lasted six months as Henry declared he could not consummate the marriage, citing Anne of Cleves’ appearance as the reason for his lack of interest and inability to fall in love with her. Despite this, Anne of Cleves remained friends with the king and resided in England for the rest of her life.

Who Was Anne of Cleves?

Born in 1515 in Düsseldorf, Germany, Anne of Cleves was the second daughter of John III (Duke of Cleves) of the House of La Marck, an ancient, noble German family. Her mother was Maria, Duchess of Julich-Berg.

Anne grew up at Schloss Burg in Solingen, a castle in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. The territory was part of the Holy Roman Empire, which stretched from the Baltic to the Italian Peninsula. Anne’s mother was in charge of her education, teaching her daughters traditional skills that German noblewomen were expected to have, including cooking, managing the household, and reading and writing in their own language.

Alongside these skills, Anne also likely learned regional property laws, taxation laws, and how to manage finances. However, Anne and her sisters were not educated in subjects that other noblewomen in places like England would have been exposed to, including singing, playing musical instruments, learning foreign languages, and playing cards. Anne spent much of her time secluded in women’s quarters and was taught to be pious like her mother, who was a devout Catholic.

Unlike her mother, Anne’s father, inspired by the Renaissance theologian and philosopher Erasmus, was much more tolerant of religious differences. Though he remained Catholic for the duration of his life, he was accepting of other beliefs entering his duchies, including Lutheranism. In fact, he arranged the marriage of his eldest daughter, Sibylle, to Johann Friedrich of Saxony, a Protestant friend and supporter of Martin Luther, as well as an enemy of the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V.

At the age of 11, Anne was betrothed to the Duke of Lorraine’s son, eight-year-old Francis. The betrothal was not a formal marriage, however, as Francis was not of age to contract a legal marriage in Germany, and the betrothal was nullified seven years later.

A Key Alliance

Advised by politician and lawyer Thomas Cromwell, who served as his chief minister for six years, King Henry VIII sought a political alliance with Anne’s brother, William, Duke of Cleves. William was a leader amongst the Protestants of western Germany.

Both Cromwell and Henry believed the alliance was necessary as they felt threatened by France and the Holy Roman Empire. Since both countries were major Roman Catholic powers, Cromwell and Henry worried they would attack England, a Protestant country. Cromwell advised that a marriage should be arranged to establish ties with England and Lutheran leaders within the Holy Roman Empire.

In light of this, in 1538, Cromwell contacted the Cleves family to arrange a marriage between Henry and one of the daughters. When the family agreed to a potential union, Cromwell sent the acclaimed Renaissance artist Hans Holbein the Younger to paint two portraits of the sisters, Amalia and Anne. The portrait of Anne depicted her as tall, slender, with blue eyes and blonde hair. She wore a Dutch-style dress and appeared serene and content. Once in possession of the portraits, Henry was blown away by Anne’s beauty and chose her to be his next wife.

Henry VIII, Catfished?

In November 1539, Anne traveled from Germany to England to marry Henry. Despite experiencing tempestuous weather on the English Channel, which delayed her journey by a few days, Anne finally made it to England and was warmly greeted by large crowds. Upon meeting Anne along her journey, Henry’s noblemen and ambassadors wrote to Henry and expressed that Anne was amiable, cheerful, and kind, and that the portrait was an accurate depiction of her beauty.

Anxious to meet Anne for the first time, Henry set off on January 1, 1540, to meet her, which was earlier than planned. Though Henry had hoped to marry Anne by Christmas, the wedding was postponed to January 6 as Anne’s journey had taken longer than expected. When Henry arrived to meet Anne, he disguised himself in a costume. He knelt before Anne and kissed her hand. However, Anne was taken aback by this gesture. She was unfamiliar with English Medieval culture and therefore did not understand that Henry expected her to recognize her future husband through his disguise.

Henry was humiliated by the awkward interaction with his future wife, believing that she disliked him and was ignoring him. He left the room in a huff and threw off his disguise, only returning to Anne once he adorned himself in a royal purple coat. Upon seeing Henry for the second time, Anne bowed before him and expressed her embarrassment as Henry briefly kissed her and then left the room.

An Unhappy King

Henry was not pleased with his bride-to-be and loudly expressed his dissatisfaction when he returned to his residence at the Palace of Placentia in Greenwich. He argued with courtiers who had found the portrait of Anne beautiful and complained to Cromwell, expressing his disdain for his future wife.

The king expressed that he did not find Anne as “fair” as she had looked in the portrait and had been reported by others. He also complained that Anne knew very little English. Cromwell listened as Henry told him how much he disliked Anne and pleaded with him to find a way to end the arrangement.

However, to Henry’s dismay, it was decided that there was no way to nullify the engagement without angering the Cleves family, particularly Anne’s powerful brother, so Henry proceeded with the marriage.

The unhappy marriage of Henry and Anne would prove to be Cromwell’s downfall, as the king blamed Cromwell for the arrangement and his subsequent disappointment upon meeting Anne.

Marriage on the Rocks

Though the wedding went ahead, Henry spent six months trying to find a way to divorce Anne.

The morning after their wedding night, it was reported that Cromwell asked Henry how he liked the queen, and Henry responded that he liked her even less than before. The king added that he did not consummate the marriage since Anne repulsed him, and he even doubted her virginity.

Within a few weeks, Henry informed his Privy Council that God would not allow him to consummate the marriage and that the union was doomed. He also requested that Anne’s previous betrothal to the Duke of Lorraine’s son be examined to make sure that the contract had not been binding. From the outset, Henry began setting the stage for an annulment based on non-consummation of the marriage.

At first, Anne did not seem concerned about her relationship with Henry, but by February 1540, she was aware that her marriage was struggling. She tried desperately to win over the king as he continued to dine with her and sleep beside her each night. However, as weeks and months ticked by, Anne did not become pregnant, and her ladies-in-waiting feared what would happen if she did not bear a child soon.

By the spring, the king was spotted crossing the Thames in the evenings to visit his new mistress, 16-year-old Catherine Howard, the Duke of Norfolk’s niece. The public was unhappy with Henry’s infidelity, expressing similar sympathy to Anne of Cleves as they had with Anne Boleyn, the king’s second wife, who was also a victim of Henry’s infidelity as he pursued a relationship with Jane Seymour.

Union Dissolved

On June 24, 1540, Henry sent Anne to live at Richmond Palace. He shrouded the move in concern for his wife’s safety and well-being as a plague ravaged London. However, Henry clearly was not concerned about the plague since he himself remained in the city.

Three weeks later, Henry obtained the annulment of his marriage based on non-consummation and Anne’s prior betrothal to the Duke of Lorraine’s son. Anne received notice of the divorce on July 10, 1540. She was told that if she agreed to it, the king would provide for her for the rest of her life, and she would be treated kindly and fairly at court.

Anne was tearful and humiliated when she received notice that Henry desired to divorce her. Initially, she refused to agree to the divorce and summoned the Cleves family ambassador. However, a day later, Anne settled for Henry’s wishes, realizing that if she refused, she might be the next victim of his temper. She accepted the divorce and even noted that she hoped to still meet Henry occasionally as friends.

Henry was generous with Anne, as he was delighted that she calmly agreed to the terms without threats or backlash. On July 12, he wrote to Anne, informing her that she was free to return home to Germany. However, if she decided to remain in England, Anne would be given an annual income of 4,000 pounds along with the estates of Richmond, Bletchingly, and Hever Castle. He also said she would be allowed to marry again if she wished and that she was welcome at court any time, as he saw her as a “beloved sister.”

Anne readily accepted Henry’s offer and decided to remain in England. She wrote to her brother, indicating that she was happy and content with the agreement and would be spending the remainder of her life in her adopted country.

Anne of Cleves’ Life After Queendom

After her marriage to Henry ended, Anne lived for over a decade on her English estates and was known for being kind and generous to all those who served her. She remained devoted to Henry and his family. After the execution of Catherine Howard, rumors circulated that Anne might remarry Henry. However, she remained single for the rest of her life.

Anne was especially close to Henry’s daughters, whom she corresponded with and offered guidance and support. Even after Henry’s death in 1547, Anne was still welcomed at court, including during the reigns of Edward VI and Mary I. She walked with her former stepdaughter, Elizabeth, in Mary’s coronation procession.

Anne remained in royal favor until Wyatt’s Rebellion in 1554, when Queen Mary I suspected that Anne might have aided the rebels because she was a suspected Protestant sympathizer and was friendly with Elizabeth. After the rebellion, she was no longer welcomed at court and lived in solitude on her estates. Anne passed away at Chelsea Manor on July 16, 1557, from what historians believe was cancer. She was buried in Westminster Abbey.

Though Anne of Cleves’ marriage to King Henry VIII lasted only six months, she emerged with wealth, autonomy, and a respected position at court. Unlike many of Henry’s wives, she avoided scandal or execution, instead building a secure and peaceful life in England. Anne’s legacy is often seen as one of diplomacy and survival, as she avoided the wrath of Henry and was able to live independently for the remainder of her days.

The 18th-century French philosopher François-Marie Arouet, better known by his pen name Voltaire, had a reputation for making ironic and pithy comments about the world around him. In his 1756 book An Essay on Universal History, the Manners, and Spirit of Nations, Voltaire famously quipped that “the Holy Roman Empire was neither Holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire.” To what extent was Voltaire’s observation a truthful description of the Holy Roman Empire?

Defining the Holy Roman Empire

The Holy Roman Empire spanned over 1,000 years and is one of the most important realms in European history, but its name, the territory it controlled, and its institutional arrangements changed over time. Before assessing whether the Holy Roman Empire was worthy of the three attributes in its name, it is worth defining what it is and how long it lasted.

The establishment of the Holy Roman Empire is traditionally dated to Charlemagne’s coronation as emperor by Pope Leo III in Rome on Christmas Day 800 AD. While Charlemagne claimed to have revived the “Roman Empire,” his empire quickly fragmented under his descendants. In 843 AD, the Carolingian Empire was partitioned into West Francia, Middle Francia, and East Francia. The kingdom of West Francia evolved into France, East Francia into Germany, while Middle Francia or Lotharingia would become a contested zone.

Following the death of Emperor Berengar I in 924, the office of emperor remained vacant until 962, when German king Otto of Saxony was crowned emperor in Rome. Otto is now widely regarded as the true founder of the Holy Roman Empire, which maintained a German character for the rest of its history.

The epithet “holy” only became associated with the empire in the 12th century, when the emperor claimed to derive his authority directly from God rather than via the Pope. By the late 15th century the formula “Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation” began to be used. The Holy Roman Emperors are known in Germany as “Roman-German Emperors” to distinguish them from the Roman emperors of antiquity and the emperors of the German Empire (1871-1918).

Holy?

Although it took several centuries for the polity to be known as the “Holy” Roman Empire, its religious aspect was clear from the very beginning with Charlemagne’s coronation in Rome. This pivotal event was a pragmatic event that worked to the advantage of both parties.

In response to an appeal from Pope Adrian I, Charlemagne vanquished the kingdom of Lombardy in northern Italy in 774 and incorporated the territory into his Frankish empire. After Adrian’s death in 795, his relatives challenged the authority of his successor Leo III, who received military support from the Frankish troops. In return, Leo crowned Charlemagne emperor, making him the first emperor in Western Europe for over three centuries.

Although the emperor owed his imperial title to a Papal coronation in Rome, the late 11th century witnessed a major power struggle between Pope and emperor as the boundaries between spiritual and temporal power became increasingly blurred. The dispute over the right to appoint bishops came to be known as the Investiture Controversy. One of the most dramatic events was Emperor Henry IV’s journey to the castle of Matilda of Tuscany in 1077 to beg for forgiveness from Pope Gregory VII following his excommunication.

Despite Henry’s apparent penance, the conflict continued for half a century as emperors created antipopes and popes crowned anti-emperors. Pope Urban II’s preaching of the First Crusade in 1095 was a demonstration of the Papacy’s secular power. The Investiture Controversy finally came to an end in 1122 with the Concordat of Worms. The Pope retained the right to appoint bishops and abbots in the presence of imperial officials, while the bishops and abbots who wielded temporal power would swear fealty to the emperor in a separate ceremony.

Even after the agreement, Papal-Imperial relations remained fraught. While the emperor sought to assert his feudal rights as king of Italy, independently minded Italian princes often rallied around the Pope to resist German influence. In the 12th and 13th centuries, Italy was engulfed by conflict between pro-Papal Guelphs and pro-Imperial Ghibellines.

While German kings continued to journey to Rome to be crowned emperor, this was often achieved by lengthy diplomacy or military coercion. At the turn of the 16th century, the Habsburg emperor Maximilian I assumed the imperial title without being crowned by the Pope. His grandson and successor Charles V was the last emperor to be crowned by the Pope in 1530, in Bologna rather than Rome.

Roman?

After his coronation in 800, Charlemagne called his realm the Roman Empire and adopted the title of Augustus. While the Roman Empire had survived in the east as the Byzantine Empire, the throne in Constantinople was then occupied by a female ruler, Irene of Athens, which facilitated Charlemagne’s claim that he was the true successor of Rome through the concept of translatio imperii or the transfer of power.

After the empire was revived by Otto the Great in 962, the Germans adopted the title of kaiser, derived from the Latin Caesar. Meanwhile, prior to their coronation as emperor, the king of Germany was officially known as king of the Romans. After the Habsburg dynasty gained effective control of the empire, the title was often held by the designated successor to the emperor. Even after the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire, Napoleon alluded to this tradition in 1810 by making his newborn son the King of Rome.

Even though the German rulers adopted Roman titles and called themselves kings of Italy, most Italians regarded them as undesirable German outsiders who sought to trample on their rights and liberties. Accordingly, Italian princes often asserted their independence from imperial rule. These challenges to imperial authority obliged the emperor to cross the Alps to bring their wayward vassals to heel. However, the emperor could not remain in Rome indefinitely, and once he returned to Germany his authority was again eroded.

From the 12th century onwards, the Republic of Venice and the Papacy began to push back against imperial forces, enabling smaller Italian city-states to enjoy unusual degrees of independence. The Florentine poet Dante Alighieri, who held political office as a Guelph, later lamented the absence of a powerful emperor who could bring peace to the warring city-states.

The imperial retreat from Italy and the French conquest of Burgundy in eastern France meant that the Holy Roman Empire became increasingly German. Nevertheless, Italy remained important to the empire. Emperor Charles V spent much of his reign seeking to gain control of Milan, a crucial strategic node in his sprawling empire. In 1527, while Charles was seeking to put pressure on the Papacy, underpaid imperial troops marched into Rome and sacked the Eternal City.

Empire?

The term empire is derived from the Latin word imperium, which referred to the power of military command in Republican Rome. Successful generals were hailed as imperator, but after Augustus the title was exclusively associated with the imperial family.

In medieval Europe, the concept of empire came to be associated with universal rule. When Charlemagne was crowned emperor, he was by definition the most powerful man in Christendom. While the power of the Carolingian rulers decreased significantly, the 12th and 13th century emperors Frederick I (Barbarossa) and his grandson Frederick II were some of the most powerful rulers of medieval Europe.

While the emperors were never able to consolidate their authority in Italy, imperial power over Germany was also uncertain. Since the king of the Romans was elected by a German princely assembly, no single family could claim the imperial crown as a hereditary possession.

The institutional arrangements of the Holy Roman Empire changed significantly in 1356, when the right to elect the king of the Romans was limited to seven powerful princes: the archbishops of Mainz, Cologne, and Trier; the king of Bohemia, the count palatine of the Rhine, the duke of Saxony, and the margrave of Brandenburg.

The creation of the prince-electors meant that candidates only had to bribe and influence seven people. In the 14th and 15th centuries, Charles IV and his son Sigismund I from the House of Luxembourg initially leveraged their status as kings of Bohemia to secure the imperial title, but their Austrian rivals from the Habsburg dynasty eventually prevailed. Several Habsburgs had won election as king of Germany, but Frederick III was the first to be crowned emperor in 1453.

Frederick’s great-grandson Charles V was Europe’s most powerful sovereign since Charlemagne, by virtue of being King of Spain and Duke of Burgundy as well as Holy Roman Emperor. Charles sought to revive the concept of universal empire but was ultimately forced to divide his inheritance between his son King Philip II of Spain and his brother Emperor Ferdinand I. A combination of bribery and marriage diplomacy ensured that the imperial crown remained with the Habsburgs almost exclusively until the dissolution of the empire in 1806.

While the Habsburgs ruled over vast territories in their own right, including Austria, Bohemia, and Hungary, in Germany itself their power gradually ebbed away. Following the Protestant Reformation, Emperor Charles V was unable to defeat his Protestant enemies in Germany and was forced to compromise at the Peace of Augsburg in 1555. After Germany was ravaged by the Thirty Years’ War, the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 created the nation state, rendering the Holy Roman Empire an anachronism.

Voltaire’s Holy Roman Empire

By the 18th century, the institutional link between the Holy Roman Empire and the Papacy had been broken for over two centuries. While the Habsburg emperors had been at the forefront of the Catholic Counter-Reformation, Empress Maria Theresa pursued a more moderate religious policy. Her son Emperor Joseph II would extend religious toleration even further.

While the title of Holy Roman Emperor remained the most prestigious according to European diplomatic protocol in the 18th century, its importance was mostly symbolic and ceremonial. By the early 18th century, several imperial electors became kings in their own right. In 1697 the Elector of Saxony was elected Augustus II of Poland, in 1701 the Elector of Brandenburg crowned himself King Frederick I of Prussia, and in 1714 the Elector of Hanover was crowned King George I of England. In 1740 Frederick II (the Great) of Prussia opportunistically conquered the province of Silesia from Maria Theresa, Emperor Charles VI’s daughter and designated successor.

The Habsburg emperors continued to regard themselves as the inheritors of the Roman imperial legacy, even if their Italian possessions were limited to Milan and Tuscany. After Napoleon expelled the Habsburgs from northern Italy at the turn of the 19th century, he had himself crowned king of Italy with the Iron Crown of Lombardy in Milan in May 1805. Napoleon’s establishment of the Confederation of the Rhine in western Germany prompted Emperor Francis II to formally dissolve the Holy Roman Empire in August 1806.

Although the Holy Roman Empire could justifiably be considered all three during the medieval period, Voltaire’s observation was broadly accurate in the 18th century. Despite the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire, the Austrian (later Austro-Hungarian) empire of the Habsburgs outlasted the Napoleonic Empire and survived to 1918.

When scores of Scottish Presbyterians and English Anglicans first set foot in Ulster, then the most Gaelic region of Ireland, in the early 17th century, they may not have imagined that their presence on Irish soil would lay the foundations for centuries of conflict. Generations of 20th-century men and women, both Protestant and Catholic, would pay with their lives for the decision of a Protestant English king three centuries earlier, James I (1566-1625), to colonize Ulster and consolidate his power. In a sense, the history of Derry/Londonderry is a lens through which we can read and study Irish history.

A Border Town

Derry is a city of many names. Among its Protestant and Unionist population, as well as within the United Kingdom, it is usually referred to as Londonderry, reflecting its loyalty to and association with London and the United Kingdom. Catholics and Nationalists prefer the name Derry, an anglicization of Doire from the Old Irish (or Old Gaelic) name Doire Calgaich, meaning “oak wood of Calgach.” It is believed to be in honor of a (now unknown) pagan or of Calgacus, although the latter interpretation is less likely.

Historically, the city walls, now lined with more than 20 cannons and fully accessible on foot, have never been breached despite the many sieges the city has withstood over the centuries, hence, Derry’s nickname the “Maiden City.” Derry is the only city on Irish soil to have completely intact and walkable city walls.

The border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, a part of the United Kingdom, curves just around Derry/Londonderry, skirting the outskirts of the city. To the west, the border runs parallel to the River Foyle, a river which is itself a symbol of the border, as it originates from the confluence of the Finn and Mourne rivers and straddles two Irish towns, Lifford and Strabane, which are themselves divided by the border. While Lifford is in County Donegal, one of the 26 counties of the Republic of Ireland, Strabane, on the east bank of the Foyle, is in County Tyrone, one of the six counties of Northern Ireland.

The River Foyle also runs through Derry/Londonderry, one of the oldest continuously inhabited places in Ireland, and divides the city into two areas: the so-called Cityside (on the west bank of the river) and the Waterside (on the east bank of the Foyle).

It was the construction of the first wooden bridge over the Foyle in 1789-1791 that led to the creation of the Waterside, now a predominantly Protestant (and Unionist) area. The Cityside, on the contrary, is home to Derry’s Catholic (and Republican) population. Today, the two areas are linked by three bridges, the Craigavon Bridge, the Foyle Bridge, and finally the Peace Bridge.

Opened in June 2011, the Peace Bridge physically and symbolically connects Ebrington Square in the Protestant Waterside and the Guildhall, in the Catholic Cityside. The opening ribbon-cutting ceremony was attended by then First Minister of Northern Ireland Peter Robinson, then the Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness (1950-2017), and then Taoiseach Enda Kenny, as well as the EU Commissioner Johannes Hahn and former Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) leader John Hume (1937-2020).

From the Plantation to the Rebellion of 1641

The Irish Rebellion of 1641 shaped the perception of Derry as a loyal Protestant stronghold and set the stage for further division and death. Like many other violent events in Northern Ireland’s history, the rebellion had its roots in the “Plantation,” the colonization and settlement of Ulster by King James I in the 17th century. It was during the Plantation, between 1613 and 1619, that the walls of Derry were built and that the city was officially renamed Londonderry in the Royal Charter of 1613.

More than ten centuries earlier, in the mid-6th century, St. Columba (or Colmcille) had built a Christian monastery on the west bank of the Foyle on land granted to him by a local king. It was on this land that Derry/Londonderry was eventually built. In the 6th century, Derry was still known as Doire Calgaich and remained a predominantly monastic settlement with people living in the surrounding area.

From 1609, however, the British Crown embarked on a major colonial project, the so-called Plantation of Ulster. On the one hand, the Crown wanted to bring the region, then one of the most Gaelic areas in Ireland, under its control and to spread Protestantism and English laws. On the other hand, it also wanted to completely eliminate the rule of the native Gaelic-speaking Irish lords. As a result, thousands of Anglican and Presbyterian settlers (“planters”) from southern Scotland and northern Great Britain who were loyal to the Crown were encouraged to move to Ulster.

Derry/Londonderry was founded as a Protestant town and remained a predominantly Protestant town for almost two centuries, from the early 1600s to the late 1700s. During the Plantation, thousands of acres of land in the present counties of Donegal, Cavan, Tyrone, Armagh, and Londonderry were confiscated and distributed to Protestant landowners.

Thousands of Gaelic Irish Catholic families were dispossessed and lost their lands and influence. Sir Phelim (Felim) O’Neill (1604-1653), one of the leaders of the Irish Rebellion of 1641, was one of them.

During the seven-month rebellion, which lasted from October 23, 1641, to May 1642, O’Neill and his men were responsible for occupying strategic points and towns throughout Ulster, from Dungannon to Lisburn, from Derry to Coleraine. In mid-November, Irish rebels marched 100 Protestant prisoners from the Loughgall prison camp to a bridge over the River Bann at Portadown, stripped them naked, and forced them off a broken wooden bridge down into the cold river below. Anyone who tried to swim ashore was shot with muskets. The Portadown massacre was the largest and bloodiest (but not the only) massacre of Protestants during the rebellion.

At this time, Derry/Londonderry became a refuge for thousands of Protestants who had fled from the surrounding countryside, which had been devastated by clashes between the Catholic Irish rebels and the British forces. The 1641 Rebellion and the massacres of Protestants that took place in various Ulster counties, from County Armagh to Tyrone, served to exacerbate sectarian divisions and deepen mistrust between the Irish Catholic population and Protestant settlers, not only in Derry/Londonderry but throughout Ulster. Indeed, because of its strategic location and defensive walls, Derry was chosen by the Crown as a military base to restore order in Ulster.

Ensuring Protestant Ascendancy

Brian Walker effectively sums up the history of Ulster when he writes in his article for the Irish Review: “These three dates mark what are often regarded as key events in Unionist and Protestant history. 1641 is the date of the outbreak of the rebellion in Ireland, 1689 is the year of the Siege of Derry, and 1690 marks the date of the Battle of the Boyne. (…) 1641 represents a time of betrayal and death, 1689 marks a famous siege, while 1690 is the date of a great victory.”

The Siege of Derry in 1689 was a direct consequence of the Glorious Revolution of 1688-89, which led to the deposition of the (Catholic) King James II (1633-1701) in favor of the (Protestant) William III (1650-1702), or William of Orange, and his wife Mary II (1662-1694), James II’s daughter. In Ulster, the Catholic population largely supported James II, while the Protestants sided with William of Orange.

When James’s troops, the Jacobites, arrived outside Derry in April 1689 and the (deposed) king himself called on the city to surrender, the defenders fired cannons at them from the city walls. Some of them were heard shouting “No surrender!” a slogan that can still be seen painted on the walls of Derry more than three centuries later.

The siege, the longest in Irish history, lasted for 105 days, and up to 10,000 people died within Derry’s fortified walls, mostly from disease and starvation. Relief came three months into the siege in the form of four ships, the HMS Dartmouth and three merchant ships, which managed to break through a blockade on the River Foyle and bring food to the exhausted people of Derry. By the end of the month, James’s forces had lifted the siege.

On the morning of August 1, the besieged, leaning over the walls of Derry, discovered that the army was gone. The Siege of Derry, like the Battle of the Boyne, is part of what British historians call the Williamite War (1689-1691). In Ireland, it is known as the War of the Two Kings.

The Boyne is the name of a river that rises near Carbury in County Kildare, in the Republic of Ireland and flows northeast through County Meath and County Louth before emptying into the Irish Sea. In July 1690, a force of some 23,000 Irish Catholics and French allies led by James II clashed with (and were defeated by) William of Orange’s army—a multinational force of 36,000 English, Danish, Dutch, and Huguenot men—on the banks of the Boyne River at Drogheda.

If the Siege of Derry had consolidated Protestant control in Ulster, the Battle of the Boyne dashed the Jacobite hopes of restoration. It also cemented William III’s rule over Ireland (as well as England and Scotland). From this point on, the Penal Laws further segregated Irish society, preventing Catholics (and Protestant dissenters) from participating in public life, serving in Parliament, joining the army, possessing firearms, marrying Protestant men or women, inheriting “Protestant land” (i.e. land that had previously belonged to a Protestant), buying land on a lease of more than 31 years, or building stone Catholic churches near main roads. William III’s victory at the Battle of the Boyne had the effect of securing the ascendancy of Anglican Protestantism in Ireland (and particularly in what is now Northern Ireland) and set the stage for the Irish Rebellion of 1798.

The Partition of 1921

By 1850, although Catholics comprised most of the population in Derry, the city was ruled by a Protestant oligarchy. This significant imbalance continued after the Government of Ireland Act 1920 (or Fourth Home Rule Bill) and the 1921 partition of the island of Ireland into the Irish Free State (which later became the Republic of Ireland) and Northern Ireland (which remained part of the United Kingdom).

By the end of the 19th century, Hennessey writes in his A History of Northern Ireland, “There was a new divide, that between nationalists who wanted self-government for Ireland—which had been absorbed into the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland in 1801—and unionists, who wished Ireland to remain part of the United Kingdom.” This divide was to shape the history of Derry/Londonderry and Ulster throughout the 20th century.

In early June 1920, Derry entered a week of bloodshed. At the time, the West Bank was still a largely mixed area, where Catholics (who were the majority) still lived side by side with Protestant families. After a group of Unionists shot dead five people, Nationalists began to mobilize.

Over the next few days, as gunfire ripped through the walled city, shops were looted and destroyed, many residents were forced to flee their homes, thousands of Catholics and socialist workers were expelled from their workplaces, and bystanders were caught in the crossfire. On June 24, ten-year-old George Caldwell was killed as he looked out of a window in Nazaret House. A woman, Margaret Mills, was killed in her own home after answering a knock at her front door. Howard McKay, the son of the governor of the Apprentice Boys of Derry, was abducted, blindfolded, and shot by nationalist gunmen. Bodies were found floating in the Foyle.

British troops arrived in the city on June 23, 1920, to restore order alongside the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC), further enraging Nationalists. In the two years between July 1920 and July 1922, 557 people were killed in the widespread sectarian violence that accompanied the birth of Northern Ireland. The majority of them were Catholic. The level of violence that shook Derry/Londonderry in June 1920 was a grim harbinger of what would happen in Derry some 50 years later, with the outbreak of the Troubles.

A City of Riots?

Derry/Londonderry was one of the cities that suffered most in the early years of the Troubles, the conflict that brought death and destruction to the people of Northern Ireland and isolated the province from the rest of Ireland and Europe for thirty years, from 1968-69 to 1998. Although the Troubles did not begin on a specific date, most historians agree that the conflict started on the streets of Derry/Londonderry in August 1969, following the Battle of the Bogside.

The Troubles, writes Irish historian Niall Ó Dochartaigh in his From Civil Rights to Armalites (1997), grew out of a “… situation of rapid social and political change that began after the end of the second World War in 1945,” changes that, year after year, eventually “disrupted a set of relationships, in particular a tradition of quiescence by the Catholic population in Northern Ireland, on which the very existence of the Northern Ireland state had been based.”

The activism of the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA), an organization founded in 1967 which began campaigning for reforms in housing allocation and voting rights through marches modeled on those of the American civil rights movement, was one of the factors which, in the eyes of many Protestants and Unionists, posed a threat to the status quo. It was during a peaceful march organized by NICRA that 13 demonstrators were killed by British soldiers from the 1st Battalion of the Parachute Regiment in the Bogside on January 30, 1972, during one of the most violent years of the Troubles. Another died of his wounds a few months later. All the victims were Catholics. In the aftermath of the massacre, now known as Bloody Sunday, thousands of young men and women joined the ranks of the Irish Republican Army (IRA).

The Protestant Exodus

Niall Gilmartin notes that the violence of the Troubles “… has typically been measured using standardised assessments,” assessments that have primarily taken into account the fatality rate, the number of people injured and the economic impact of bombings and related attacks, and that “much of the focus with regards to addressing legacy has, understandably, centred on the needs and interests of those who lost loved ones or those physically and psychologically harmed through shootings and bombings. But there are other forms of violence, harm and trauma which need to be considered.”

The so-called Protestant Exodus is one of them. Following the outbreak of the Troubles in 1969, thousands of Protestants decided to leave their homes and flee Derry. In the decade between 1971 and 1981, the Protestant population of Derry fell from 8,459 to 2,874. By 1991, it had fallen to 1,407, with a reduction of 7,052 in just two decades.

Forced displacement during an armed conflict is traumatic in itself, as it involves the disruption of one’s community and social networks. Many of the people interviewed by Niall Gilmartin and whose stories he shares in his Trauma, Denial, and Acknowledgment: The Legacy of Protestant Displacement in Londonderry/Derry during the Troubles, recall the heartbreak of leaving their homes, homes that “you had paid for, that you had furnished and done up, built on a bathroom and kitchen.”

Interviewed by the News Letter, Doris Carruthers, a Protestant living with her husband and three-year-old child in a predominantly Catholic area in 1969, recalls how, after the Troubles broke out, “we had to live with the back windows boarded because Jeanette was a young child in the back bedroom. We had the wire cages on the front of the house. We had to basically barricade ourselves into the house.”

In 1971, the Carruthers were finally able to move into the newly built Newbuildings estate in the Waterside, on the east bank of the River Foyle. A report commissioned in the autumn of 2016 by the Pat Finucane Centre, “a non-party political, anti-sectarian human rights group,” named after Irish human rights lawyer Pat Finucane, identified housing and employment issues as some of the factors behind the Protestant Exodus. However, based on his own field research, Niall Gilmartin writes that “The overarching reasons for many were intimidation (direct and indirect), the targeting of RUC and UDR personnel by the IRA, bomb attacks in the city centre, feelings of insecurity and vulnerability, and an overwhelming sense that Protestants, their identity and culture were not welcome in the West Bank.”

Since the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, Derry/Londonderry seems to have struck a new, albeit precarious, balance. The checkpoints have largely disappeared. The city center has been revitalized. In 2013, Derry/Londonderry was named the UK City of Culture, attracting visitors from across Ireland and Europe. And while parades and commemorations, particularly in July, continue to highlight the long-standing sectarian divisions at the heart of Derry/Londonderry, for more than two decades after the end of the Troubles, its citizens have been able to work together to secure peace and cross-community dialogue and cooperation.

Queen Elizabeth II’s Silver Jubilee in 1977, marking the 25th anniversary of her reign, came after one of the bloodiest years of the Troubles, the sectarian conflict that ravaged Northern Ireland for three decades from 1969 to 1998. For the first time in eleven years, the Queen decided to visit Belfast, then one of the most dangerous cities not only in the United Kingdom but in the whole of Europe. Unionists and Loyalists, loyal to the Crown and determined to maintain Northern Ireland’s status within the United Kingdom, felt reassured. On the other hand, Nationalist and Republican groups saw her visit as a further insult and a symbol of British imperialism.

Belfast, 1977

Queen Elizabeth II’s visit to Northern Ireland as part of her Silver Jubilee Tour came at a particularly tense time. Indeed, the early months of 1977 were a turning point in the history of the Troubles. 1976 had been the second bloodiest year in the history of the Troubles with 308 victims, the vast majority, 220, were civilians.

As McKittrick & McVea note in Making Sense of the Troubles, Loyalist violence (violence perpetrated by Loyalist paramilitary groups determined that Northern Ireland should remain part of the United Kingdom) fell sharply, going “from 127 killings in 1976 to just 28 in 1977. In the five years prior to 1977 the loyalist toll was 590; in the five years from 1977 on it was only 84.” One of the reasons for this was the appointment of Roy Mason (1925-2014) as Secretary of State for Northern Ireland in September 1976.

Determined to defeat the Irish Republican Army (IRA), whose members Mason believed were nothing less than terrorists, as well as Loyalist paramilitary groups, he immediately made it clear that the British would never withdraw from Northern Ireland. As a result, many reassured Loyalists began to move away from violence.

Mason’s security and political policies for Northern Ireland were based on the three-part strategy introduced by his predecessor, Merlyn Reese (1920-2006): normalization, Ulsterization (also known as “the primacy of police”) and criminalization. The only way to achieve a normalization of the situation in Northern Ireland, that is, to reduce the level of violence and the death toll, was to cause an Ulsterization of the conflict by recruiting the men of the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) and Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR) locally and reducing the number of British soldiers killed and wounded.

The third part of the strategy, criminalization, involved the abolition of special category status for Republican prisoners, who would then be considered “ordinary,” rather than political, prisoners.

In May 1977, the loyalist United Unionist Action Council (UUAC) launched a major strike to pressure the British government into a tougher security policy and restore majority rule, that is, devolved government in Northern Ireland under a system of simple majority rule. As gangs of Ulster Defence Association (UDA) men appeared on the streets of Belfast threatening shopkeepers, blocking roads, and hijacking vehicles, the strike quickly became known as “Paisley’s strike,” after Ian Paisley (1926-2014), then leader of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP). In 1977, after eight years of conflict, Northern Ireland was still one of the most dangerous and militarized areas in Europe. So were Belfast and Derry/Londonderry, which Queen Elizabeth visited in August.

The Silver Jubilee

In 1977, Queen Elizabeth II celebrated the 25th anniversary of her accession to the throne. She was a 25-year-old mother of two when her father, George VI (1895-1952), died at Sandringham House on February 6, 1952 at the age of 56. In 1977, thousands of people gathered throughout the UK and Commonwealth to celebrate her reign, as well as her birthday on April 21.

The trip to Northern Ireland was part of a major three-part tour of the Commonwealth, which took Queen Elizabeth and her husband, Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh (1921-2021), to Scotland in May and then to Wales and Northern Ireland. As the official website of the British Royal Family notes, “No other Sovereign had visited so much of Britain in the course of just three months; the six jubilee tours in the UK and Northern Ireland covered 36 counties.” They also traveled to Western Samoa, Fiji, Tonga, New Zealand, Australia, Tasmania, Papua New Guinea, the British West Indies (BWI), and finally Canada.

On the morning of August 10, HMY Britannia, the royal yacht in service from 1954 to 1997, dropped anchor in Belfast Lough to a 21-gun salute. It was the Queen’s first visit to Northern Ireland in eleven years. In 1966, just before the Troubles broke out, she had traveled to Belfast to open a new bridge. As the royal limousine made its way down Great Victoria Street, a 17-year-old nationalist boy from west Belfast threw a concrete block at the car, denting the bonnet.

In 1977, while Prince Philip met the workers of a local shipyard, the Harland and Wolff, Queen Elizabeth made only two appearances during her 38-hour visit to Northern Ireland. One at Hillsborough Castle, the other at the New University in Coleraine. On August 10, Queen Elizabeth II then traveled by helicopter from Belfast Lough to Hillsborough Castle, where she was greeted by a crowd of schoolchildren waving Union Jacks.

It was reportedly the first time in her 25-year reign that she resorted to traveling by helicopter to avoid possible ambushes. Security was stepped up at Hillsborough Castle, a late-18th century Georgian country house in the north-west of County Down, which has served as the official residence of the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland since 1972 and as the British monarch’s when visiting Northern Ireland. British soldiers could be seen patrolling the grounds outside Hillsborough Castle while Queen Elizabeth inspected a guard of honor made up of members of the UDR, the infantry regiment of the British Army formed in 1970 and active until 1992, when it was amalgamated with the Royal Irish Rangers to form the Royal Irish Regiment.

33 years later, in December 2005, Queen Elizabeth met Irish President Mary McAleese, the first President of the Republic of Ireland to be born in Northern Ireland, in the Hillsborough’s Red Room.

The Speech in Coleraine

On the night of August 10, the Royal Yacht sailed from Belfast Lough and anchored off the north coast at Portrush. From there, Queen Elizabeth traveled once again by helicopter to the New University of Ulster, some 60 miles north of Belfast.

On what was to be the “last day of her Jubilee visit around the United Kingdom,” she told her audience that it had been eleven years since she had last been there, but “during much of that time we have watched events with deep concern and sadness. No one could remain unmoved by the violence and the grief that follows it. But we have also watched with admiration the fortitude and resilience with which the challenge has been met. The sufferings here have evoked sympathy and concern throughout the world and nowhere more than in the rest of the United Kingdom. To see such conflict taking place within our country emphasizes the clear and continuing responsibility for us all to bring back peace and stability to this community.”

By reassuring the Northern Irish Protestant community of Northern Ireland’s place within the United Kingdom, “within our country,” and by describing the people of Northern Ireland as “one community,” Queen Elizabeth was achieving a double objective. On the one hand, she was winking at the loyalist and unionist community who had made it clear that there would be unrest if the Queen’s visit to Northern Ireland was canceled at the last minute. On the other, she was echoing what many thinkers and writers, including Belfast-born Robert McLiam Wilson, would later argue. Namely, that the people of Northern Ireland are neither wholly Irish nor wholly British, that they are members of a unique community that is ultimately Northern Irish.

Violence is always “senseless and wrong” Queen Elizabeth continued, adding that “if this community is to survive and prosper” people with different beliefs and aspirations “must live and work together in friendship and forgiveness. There is no place here for old fears and attitudes born of history, no place for blame for what is passed.”

And despite the threats of the IRA and the bloodshed on the streets of Belfast just a few days before her visit, Queen Elizabeth said that when she had the opportunity to meet “men and women from all walks of life, including many who have been directly affected by violence,” she saw “hopeful signs of reconciliation and understanding. Policemen and soldiers have told me of the real cooperation they are receiving. I have sensed a common bond and a shared hope for the future.”

She concluded her speech by saying that “the aim of all, government and people, must be to turn into reality our hopes for a peaceful and stable future and a better life for all. I believe the opportunity is there to be grasped. I look forward to the day when we may return to enjoy with the people of Northern Ireland some of the better and happier times so long awaited and so richly deserved.”

Northern Ireland was the last stop on the Queen’s Silver Jubilee tour of Britain and the Commonwealth. As the Troubles continued, the Queen did not visit Northern Ireland at all during the 1980s. It was not until June 1991 that the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh finally traveled to the army’s Thiepval Barracks in Lisburn, before holding a garden party at Hillsborough where they met the families of some of the victims.

The royal couple returned to Northern Ireland three more times before the turn of the century, in 1993, 1995, and 1997. In June 2012, long after the official end of the Troubles with the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in April 1998 and 35 years after the Silver Jubilee celebrations, the Queen returned to Belfast, and on the final day of her visit, she shook hands with former IRA commander Martin McGuinness (1950-2017) at the Lyric Theatre.

Queen Elizabeth, a Symbol

Queen Elizabeth II was reportedly “terribly, terribly tense” about her 38-hour visit to Northern Ireland. And rightly so. For heavily armed Republican groups like the Provisional IRA, she was a symbol of occupation and imperialism.

Republicans and members of Sinn Féin welcomed her by taking to the streets of Belfast. Some were photographed holding a banner with the slogan: “Queen of Death, ’69-77 – 1,800 dead.” Anti-monarchist graffiti, reading “Stuff the Jubilee,” appeared on walls and fences in Catholic neighborhoods. Some of the most tense areas of Belfast were eerily empty, except for soldiers patrolling or crouching in doorways. Buses had been diverted. On the other hand, for Unionists and Protestants, Queen Elizabeth’s decision to include Northern Ireland and Belfast in her Commonwealth tour was a reaffirmation of the Crown’s support and presence in Northern Ireland. They welcomed her by draping their homes and streets in Union Jacks.

A contingent of some 32,000 regular and reserve troops and police officers were deployed on the streets of Belfast. Troops with dogs trained to sniff out explosives swept the grounds of the New University of Ulster in Coleraine, where Queen Elizabeth finally made her short speech. The timing of the Queen’s visit was also highly symbolic. The two-day trip coincided with two important anniversaries in the recent history of Northern Ireland, turning points in the evolution of the Northern Ireland conflict. The first was the 6th anniversary of Operation Demetrius in 1971, commonly known as internment without trial when hundreds of Catholics suspected of involvement with the IRA were arrested en masse, taken to the newly built Long Kesh prison near Lisburn, subjected to “in depth interrogation,” and held for days without trial.

Queen Elizabeth’s visit to Northern Ireland also coincided with the 8th anniversary of the Battle of the Bogside and the (un)official start of the Troubles. On August 12, 1969, Protestant loyalist members of the Apprentice Boys marched through Derry/Londonderry and came dangerously close to the Bogside, a Catholic stronghold. Local Catholics saw the annual parade of the Apprentice Boys as an insult. They began to taunt the marchers. The Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), the police force of Northern Ireland, tried to push the rioters back and moved into the Bogside firing CS gas, the first time it had been used in the United Kingdom. Loyalists followed suit, smashing the windows of Catholic homes. Two days of rioting followed, spreading south into Belfast. At 5 pm on August 14, the British Army arrived on the streets of Derry, marking the official start of the Troubles.

A Bloody Jubilee

The IRA “made its presence felt” during Queen Elizabeth’s trip to Belfast, according to a New York Times article published at the time, although it did not carry out any attacks against the Queen or her staff. IRA men and women, wearing black leather jackets and black berets, attended the funeral of 16-year-old Paul “Jason” McWilliams, a member of the Fianna, the junior wing of the IRA, at Milltown Cemetery in Belfast.

McWilliams, who had recently been arrested for rioting, had been temporarily released from St Patrick’s Training School to attend his grandmother’s funeral. His family was from Ballymurphy, an area dominated in the 1970s by “army bases and fortifications,” as McWilliams’ brother recalled in 2012, an area full of “constant armed foot patrols and raids on people’s homes.” McWilliams was shot dead near his home in Springhill Avenue on August 9.

Sinn Féin reported at the time that two eyewitnesses said that McWilliams was shot in the back as he tried to get through a gap in a fence and that British soldiers had not warned him, contrary to their claims after the killing. Within hours of McWilliams’ death, an IRA sniper killed a soldier from the same unit responsible for his death, the Third Light Infantry Battalion, in retaliation. Once the Queen’s visit to Northern Ireland was finally over, Prince Philip is reported to have patted the Queen’s hand and said: “There now, it’s over. Unless they sink the Britannia we’re safe.” The official website of the British Royal Family estimates that during the 1977 Silver Jubilee Commonwealth tour “the Queen and The Duke of Edinburgh travelled 56,000 miles, mostly on Her Majesty’s Yacht Britannia.”

In 1977, Queen Elizabeth chose Belfast and Northern Ireland as the final stop on her Silver Jubilee tour to celebrate the 25th anniversary of her reign. It was a risky decision. 1976 had been one of the bloodiest years of the Troubles, and her two-day trip fell on two important anniversaries in the recent history of Northern Ireland. If the Catholic community and Republican groups, such as the IRA and the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) saw her presence as a further insult, the Protestant community felt reassured by the monarchy’s determination not to abandon them. Queen Elizabeth’s visit highlighted the sectarian nature of the conflict that was to ravage the province for another 20 years.

Dolours and Marian Price were involved in Irish republicanism during the decades-long conflict that became known as the Troubles. After the two sisters joined the IRA in the early 1970s, they were soon charged for their involvement in the 1973 IRA bombings in London. Whilst imprisoned, they went on a hunger strike that lasted over 200 days. The Price sisters were also part of the “Unknowns,” a secret unit responsible for many disappearances during the Troubles, including that of Jean McConville.

The Price Sisters: Irish Republicanism Runs in Their Blood

Andytown, or Andersonstown, is a suburb in the western part of Northern Ireland’s capital city, Belfast. Nestled beneath two hills that perch high above the city, Andersonstown is a predominantly Catholic, nationalist area of the city. Though it is now a family-friendly, peaceful part of Belfast, it once teemed with paramilitary activity during the Troubles. It was in this suburb that Dolours and Marian Price were reared by a family entrenched in Irish republican ideology.

Dolours Price, born in 1950, and Marian Price, born in 1954, were exposed to Irish republicanism from an early age. Their father was a staunch Irish republican and former member of the Irish Republican Army (IRA). Likewise, their mother (and grandmother) were part of the all-female faction of the IRA, the Cumann na mBan. Bridie Dolan, aunt to the Price sisters, lived with the family, and she, too, was a faithful Irish republican. In her twenties, she lost her eyesight and her hands when she accidentally dropped the explosives she was handling for the IRA.

The girls grew up hearing stories about their parents taking part in bombings and other paramilitary activities, fostering their desire to follow in their family members’ footsteps. The sisters decided from an early age that they wouldn’t stand on the sidelines of the republican cause but would instead take direct action for a united Ireland.

Civil Rights Activists

After attending school in west Belfast, including a teacher-training course, the Price sisters decided they would make more of a difference in their community if they took part in political activism. In 1969, they participated in the Belfast to Londonderry/Derry civil rights march, where they were attacked by loyalists during the Burntollet Bridge incident.

The Burntollet Bridge illustrated the political and civil unrest that had begun months prior in Northern Ireland. Marchers protested gerrymandering, or the manipulation of electoral districts. They called for freedom of speech and fair representation in jobs and housing in Londonderry/Derry, as Catholics were often discriminated against compared to Protestants.

However, during the march, activists were attacked by Ulster loyalists. Many Catholics felt that the police force in Northern Ireland, the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), did not protect the marchers from loyalist attackers, furthering the already ignited tensions between nationalist and unionist communities.

The Price family was familiar with the RUC, as the force had raided the Price home before due to perceived IRA connections. The Burntollet Bridge incident was a turning point for the two women, inspiring them to take up arms alongside the IRA.

“Crazy Prices”

Two years later, in 1971, Dolours Price became the first woman to gain full membership in the IRA. Her membership came on the heels of the reintroduction of internment, a policy by which people, mostly republicans, were imprisoned without a trial. This policy influenced many young people to become “volunteers” for the IRA, prepared to lose their lives or commit acts of terrorism for Irish independence. Marian followed soon after.

The Price sisters walked the streets of Belfast armed, sometimes hiding rifles under their coats for potential confrontations with the British Army. They moved explosives for the IRA, using their charming, self-assured personalities to get through British Army checkpoints. Locally, they were known as the “Crazy Prices.” The sisters were also involved in high-profile paramilitary activity.

In March of 1973, bombs were set off in London. A bomb exploded in a car outside the Old Bailey, the Central Criminal Court in London, and one outside of Westminster. The city had been warned before the bombs exploded, though over 200 people were still injured, and one person died of a heart attack. The IRA was behind the bombing, and Dolours herself took responsibility for the campaign. She believed that bombing London would make more of a statement rather than bombing Belfast, so she, along with Marian and other IRA volunteers, planned the attack.

The group managed to steal four cars in Belfast and refit them with English license plates, shipping them on a ferry across the sea. Bombs were planted in all four cars, and they were all set to explode before 3 pm. However, an informer within the IRA had tipped off the British police, and the authorities were prepared to thwart the attack. In total, two bombs exploded before the police could detonate them.

The IRA volunteers were found at London’s Heathrow Airport, ready to board a flight to Dublin. In total, eight volunteers, including the Price sisters, were convicted and received double life sentences.

A Hunger for Ireland

Once imprisoned, the Price sisters decided to go on a hunger strike. Throughout Irish history, Irish prisoners had used fasting and starvation as a form of protest and as an example of their willingness to die for Ireland. In the early 20th century, Irish and British suffragettes alike used hunger strikes to protest the lack of women’s rights during the suffragette movement.

In 1981, in the midst of the Troubles, Bobby Sands and nine others died on hunger strike as they worked to put pressure on Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and her government. Years before, though, Dolours and Marian had begun their own hunger strike, demanding to be transferred to a prison in Northern Ireland and to be recognized as political prisoners.

Due to public outcry over the sisters being fed against their will in prison, the British government discontinued their force-feedings, though the two continued with their hunger strike for more than 200 days. They were eventually transferred to Armagh prison in Northern Ireland. Dolours spent six years in Armagh and was eventually released because of her physical deterioration. Likewise, Marian was released in 1980 due to her health decline.

The “Unknowns”

Dolours belonged to the “Unknowns,” a secret unit in the IRA, and it is believed Marian was also part of the elusive group. The unit was responsible for a number of disappearances during the Troubles, including that of Jean McConville. McConville was a mother of ten who went missing in Belfast in 1972.

After being seen helping a British soldier and with rumors spreading that she was an informer, McConville was abducted by the IRA. It is believed Dolours was one of the volunteers who aided in her disappearance, driving her across the Irish border where she was held captive and later murdered. However, it is also rumored that Marian was the one to kill McConville after Dolours had confided to a number of people that Marian was the murderer. McConville’s body was found in 2003 on Shelling Hill Beach in County Louth in the Republic of Ireland.

That same year, Dolours was part of the kidnapping and disappearance of Seamus Wright after it was discovered he was a double agent for the British Army. Price drove him and Kevin McKee, a teenager who was also discovered to be an informer, across the border. Both were executed and secretly buried. In 1999, the IRA admitted that it had murdered nine out of the 16 “Disappeared,” people who had been abducted, murdered, and interred in remote locations by republicans during the Troubles. The remains of three of the victims have never been found.

The Price Sister’s Lives After the Good Friday Agreement

After she was released, Dolours moved to Dublin, where she worked as a journalist and married the actor Stephen Rea. When the Good Friday Agreement was signed in 1998, both sisters criticized it, believing the deal did not justify the suffering the people of Belfast went through during the Troubles. In the early 2000s, she contributed to the Belfast Project.

Based out of Boston College in Massachusetts, the project was an oral history archive intended to document people’s experiences during the Troubles. The director of the project was Ed Moloney, an Irish reporter who had extensive experience interviewing paramilitaries. Dolours was one of more than 40 paramilitaries who were interviewed. She detailed her experiences within the IRA, particularly her participation in disappearances. She revealed that she had driven Joe Lynskey, an IRA volunteer who was caught having an affair with the wife of another IRA member, across the border to his death.

Dolours was also known for speaking out against Gerry Adams. Adams is an Irish politician, civil rights activist, and former president of Sinn Fein, a democratic socialist party present in both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. He was also instrumental during the peace process. Dolours disclosed Adams as her commanding officer in the IRA, though he adamantly denies this claim. Until her death in 2013, Dolours supported a united Ireland.

In 2009, Marian Price was arrested in connection with the attack on the Massereene Barracks in Northern Ireland. The attack left two British soldiers dead. She was charged with supporting an act of terrorism by providing an object for the purpose of a terrorist attack. She was later charged with supporting an illegal organization after presenting at a rally in Londonderry/Derry, which commemorated the Easter Rising. In 2011, she was imprisoned but was released in 2013 after protests.

In late 2024, Marian spoke out against her alleged involvement in the disappearance of Jean McConville. In the TV adaptation of Say Nothing, journalist Patrick Radden Keefe’s book detailing the Troubles, Marian is depicted murdering Jean McConville. She has threatened to sue Disney+ over the depiction, saying that she had nothing to do with the disappearance or murder. However, Keefe supports the claim that Marian murdered McConville.

The Price sisters were complicated and controversial figures, representing not only the cost of the Troubles in Ireland as a whole but also of families caught in the crossfires of the conflict.

Few historical figures attract as much attention as Napoleon Bonaparte. Over the last roughly two centuries, scholars have come to learn a great deal about virtually every aspect of Napoleon’s remarkable life and career.

Yet, much of Napoleon’s life is also wrapped in myth and legend. We’ll explore one enduring debate about Napoleon’s life: his height. Contrary to popular belief, Napoleon was not exceptionally short. Recent scholarly estimates place his height between 5’5″ and 5’7″, which was considered average for men of his time.

Why Does the Truth About Napoleon’s Height Matter?

It might seem silly to focus so much on a historical figure’s physical appearance. However, Napoleon’s height played a significant role in shaping his legend and legacy among both his supporters and detractors.

As we will see below, much of what we know regarding Napoleon’s alleged dramatically short stature stems from British propaganda. Britain was revolutionary and Napoleonic France’s most frequent enemy in the more than two decades of near-constant warfare between 1792 and 1815.

In the highly literate and politically active world of early 19th-century Britain, it made sense to publish pamphlets and political cartoons depicting a tiny and annoying rival that the mighty British military would crush. Depicting a diminutive opponent was one way to project confidence in a British victory over France.

However, the British were not alone in producing caricatures of their rival, Napoleon. French Royalists and other opponents also created anti-Napoleonic images.

Moreover, Napoleon Bonaparte and his supporters made use of his stature to create a popular image to celebrate among the French troops and the wider public.

Thus, while it might seem insignificant to talk about Napoleon’s physical appearance, it is relevant to our understanding of many aspects of his life and the Napoleonic era in general.

How Tall Was Napoleon?

Scholars have long debated the question of Napoleon’s height, just as they have virtually every other aspect of his life and career. According to historian Martyn Lyons, Napoleon “was a short man, even by the standards of the day” (1994, 1).

However, current scholarship on Napoleon moderates the view held by Lyons and many others on Napoleon’s height. For example, historian David Bell says Napoleon stood at 5’4” or 5’5” or roughly an inch or two shorter than the average adult male height of the time (2019, 19). Other estimates place Napoleon’s height at 5’6” or 5’7”.

In other words, Napoleon was not a particularly tall man, but he was also far from the familiar diminutive caricatures in the contemporary British press.

The initial cause of the discrepancy comes from the fact that Napoleon measured just 5’2” in the pre-metric French measurement system. Yet, as David Bell notes, this measurement was different than British measurements at the time (2019, 19). Lyons’ assessment is technically correct, but perhaps could be read as a slight exaggeration.

Contemporary Accounts of Napoleon’s Appearance

Anyone with an interest in finding out what people who knew or at least met Napoleon thought of him has no shortage of surviving letters, memoirs, and other written accounts to study.

It does not appear that many of his troops were initially impressed by Napoleon’s appearance when he took command of the Army of Italy in 1796. For example, one sergeant described him as “small, skinny, very pale, with big black eyes and sunken cheeks” (Bell, 2019, 29). One of his future marshals, André Masséna, described Napoleon in that same Italian campaign as being “small” and having a “puny face” (Roberts, 2014, 75).

Napoleon’s success on the battlefield rapidly won over the officers and soldiers of the Army of Italy. While nobody would have considered Napoleon a particularly tall and imposing figure, many certainly recognized the qualities that made him a powerful force in early 19th-century Europe.

Chief among those qualities was Napoleon’s boundless energy. Indeed, Napoleon frequently wrote or dictated thousands of letters per year on even the most minute details of government or military affairs. Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand, the political chameleon and longtime French foreign minister who would eventually become a bitter opponent of Napoleon, once said, “What a pity he wasn’t lazy” (Bell, 2019, 29).

The Napoleonic Legend

Napoleon played an active role in shaping his public image as an invincible military commander and superior political leader. For example, Napoleon himself helped propagate the image of a successful and popular commander among his troops during the Italian campaigns of 1796-1797 as the “Little Corporal.”

Much of this promotional image portrayed Napoleon as a self-made lawgiver and military genius who harnessed revolutionary energies and rewarded merit. In this narrative, many elements of his physical appearance became emblematic: the gray greatcoat and generally simple dress read as frugality, the controlled stance as disciplined will, his familiar profile as a logo of order and success after the chaos and instability of the French Revolution.

There was certainly truth to this depiction of Napoleon. He did, as historian Andrew Roberts points out, spend little money on clothing and certainly raised many ordinary soldiers to high ranks in the military and French society (2014, 469-470). Many of his initiatives as Emperor of the French (1804-1814, 1815) fused conservative elements of the pre-French Revolution Ancien Régime with the republican spirit of the French Revolution.

However, much of this positive image is also exaggerated. Napoleon was not exactly a man of the people. Indeed, the “Little Corporal” was not averse to gambling with the lives of thousands of his soldiers. Indeed, Napoleon’s attitude towards war and treatment of his soldiers became a source of criticism among his detractors.

Yet, even with the fictions and more frequent exaggerations, Napoleon led a remarkable life.

The Black Legend of Napoleon

Just as Napoleon and his supporters were actively propagating legends and stories to celebrate the man, his opponents did the same to offer criticism and condemnation.

The so-called “Black Legend” depicted Napoleon as a usurper and ruthless warmonger. Opponents in Britain and on the Continent framed him as a Corsican upstart who threw Europe into chaos thanks to his nepotism, systematic looting of conquered provinces, and seemingly endless will to wage war.

The brutality he showed when confronted with uprisings, particularly in Italy and Egypt, also became focal points of the Black Legend. Perhaps the most enduring example of this brutality was immortalized by Spanish artist Francisco Goya in his works Dos de Mayo and Tres de Mayo, detailing the violent suppression of the uprising against French rule in Madrid in May 1808 (Bell, 2019, 82).

Just like the more positive legend, there is much truth to what Napoleon’s critics have said over the centuries. On the other hand, to read the black legend critically is not to absolve Napoleon; it is to separate indictment from the caricatures, such as those produced by James Gillray. For example, historian Matthew Zarzeczny notes that one of the leading experts on Napoleon, the late Dr. David Chandler, described Napoleon as a “great, bad man” (2013, 214). This mixed view of Napoleon persists to this day.

Historians thus remain divided in their assessments of Napoleon, just as psychologists continue to debate whether the famous Napoleon complex condition truly exists.

Napoleon’s Legacy

A thorough account of Napoleon’s legacy requires at least one book-length project. However, we can sketch out the broad details of Napoleon’s impact and influence on France, Europe, and the world.

Historian David Bell explains that in the 19th century, Napoleon became a popular hero of European Romanticism, in large part because of many famous episodes in his career, including his victories in Italy in 1796-1797 (2019, 113). His exploits and legal reforms inspired many revolutionaries across Europe and the Americas in the 19th century, including Simón Bolívar.

Napoleon’s supporters throughout the 19th century attempted to gain political power in France by associating with his legendary triumphs. Napoleon’s supporters, known as Bonapartists, carried on his memory and legacy well after he died in exile on the remote South Atlantic island of Saint Helena in 1821.

Bonapartists used many Napoleonic symbols and likenesses of Napoleon on various products, including chocolate tins and snuffboxes, to keep his memory alive and promote their political vision for France.

According to historian Richard J. Evans, Bonapartism stood for national pride, universal manhood suffrage, efficient and centralized bureaucracy, and military glory. It was also closely associated with Republicanism (2016, 12). Bonapartism as a political force in France only collapsed as a result of Napoleon’s nephew, Napoleon III’s defeat in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71.

References:

• Bell, D.A. (2019). Napoleon: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press.
• Evans, R.J. (2016). The Pursuit of Power: Europe 1815-1914. Penguin.
• Lyons, M. (1994). Napoleon Bonaparte and the Legacy of the French Revolution. Macmillan Education.
• Roberts, A. (2014). Napoleon the Great. Penguin.
• Zarzeczny, M.D. (2013). Meteors that Enlighten the Earth: Napoleon and the Cult of Great Men. Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

If you want to hear about secrets and scandals, there is no better place to look than the royal courts of England. Any noble courtier, whether they be from the Tudor, Stuart, Georgian, or Victorian era, would have had a myriad of tales to recount to a willing listener. This is because the reigns of each and every monarch have been brimming and seething with accusations, murders, plots, affairs, executions, poisonings, and gossip.

In this article, we will consider three of the greatest scandals that occurred at the court of King James I; some that lasted a few years, and others that stayed with him a lifetime.

Scandal Number 1: King James I and Homosexuality

When considering the reign of King James I of England, what is the first scandal that comes to mind? Academics and history-enthusiasts alike would almost certainly claim it to be the sexuality of King James himself. This is because he is remembered largely for his adoration of the attractive young gentlemen attending his court.

Huw Lemmey and Ben Miller wrote that King James I had a “persistent, foolhardy habit of falling head over heels for beautiful, arrogant and reckless favourites.” David M. Bergeron characterized King James’s relationships as “special intimacy, including, but not restricted to, homoerotic desire” and “same-sex love.” Keith Coleman also described King James’s relationships with men as sexual, describing him as bisexual, but with “a strong preference for men.” 

On the whole, there seems to be little doubt among historians that King James was interested in men and pursued them not only for sex, but also for love, friendship, and affection. As stated by Coleman, he may very well have desired women too, for he fathered several children with his wife, cared for her deeply, and some elements of their relationship were extremely passionate. Even more convincingly, King James was also thought to have sought further intimacy with women, for he is known to have taken a Mistress named Anne Murray.

In private, King James showered his favorites with sweet expressions of love, but in public, it was a different story altogether. He expressed the opposite opinion and portrayed himself as a man who agreed with the Church and the laws at the time that such behaviors and desires were wrong, unforgivable, and frowned upon by God.

Although King James spent a lot of time and effort on publicly condemning potential same-sex relationships, many of his contemporaries were unconvinced. Of course, he had plenty of cause to hide who he really was and to conceal his romantic inclinations. His intimacies with certain gentlemen were meant to have been kept secret, but in reality, the rumors regarding his forbidden bedroom activities were widespread.

In the interests of fairness, and taking into consideration the wider views of bigger groups of historians, it should be noted that not everyone agrees that King James was gay or bisexual. Some say that his verbal and written expressions of love, such as those so often found in his personal letters, may have been misinterpreted as words of romance and obsession rather than of innocence and brotherly friendship. The themes of male bonding and platonic but intense friendships were prevalent during this era, particularly among the upper classes, in part due to the amount of time spent with other young men during youth.

It is impossible to understand someone’s true thoughts and feelings—especially those of a king who has been dead 400 years—and consequently, the topic of his true affections and intentions has been hotly debated throughout the centuries. What we do know for certain is that King James I had many male favorites, and whether or not it was true, the people around him genuinely believed that his relationships with these men were both romantic and sexual.

Three Male Favorites of King James I

What do Esme Stewart, Alexander Lindsay, George Gordon, Robert Carr, Philip Herbart, and George Villiers have in common? Well, not only were they all great favorites of King James I, but they were also all rumored to have shared his bed. With some, King James may have offered not only sex, but actual romantic love.

Let us now take a moment to briefly review the most notable facts regarding three of these men, and to question why, when, and how they became the subject of royal attention and affection.

Richard Preston, 1st Earl of Desmond

Robert Preston had his turn at being a favorite of King James. In the year 1609, thanks to his acquired favor, he was made Lord Dingwall. Ten years later, still evidently in James’s thoughts, he was also granted the title Earl of Desmond, by which he is now well remembered.

The relationship between Richard Preston and King James began not in England but in Scotland. After the exile of King James’s first love interest, Esme Stewart, the position of court favorite lay vacant. It was soon filled by Preston, who appears to have gained special royal favor by the early 1580s.

Their relationship was long-lived, but eventually ended shortly after King James inherited the throne of England and met a whole host of new and eligible gentlemen. One of whom was Robert Carr, whom King James noticed in 1608, and who replaced Robert Preston swiftly and successfully.

Robert Carr, Earl of Somerset

Robert Carr, 1st Earl of Somerset, is best remembered for being a politician and the favorite of King James I. Shortly after the arrival of the new King James in England, Robert Carr suffered an accident at court. He broke his leg at a jousting match whilst King James was in attendance, and this appears to have been the event that caused King James to notice him properly for the first time.

The relationship between King James and Robert Carr was completely different from that which had existed between King James and Robert Preston. Everything happened quickly, for he was installed as favorite, given an enormous amount of power, then later disgraced and thrown into the Tower of London within less than a decade. Robert Preston had managed to stay in favor much longer and much more securely, but the relationship with Robert Carr was slightly more complicated.

At the height of his influence, however, Robert Carr was instrumental in persuading King James to dissolve parliament, perhaps with the fear of being displaced by them in mind. On March 24, 1611, he was created Viscount Rochester.

It was in the following year, the time of his marriage to Frances Howard, that things began to go downhill for Robert Carr and King James. The relationship was eventually brought to a dramatic close by a scandal that would taint the court for several years.

George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham 

George Villiers is, perhaps, the most famous of the potential lovers of King James. It may be that George is most famous in the history of the love of King James’s life because it was he that the king wrote most passionately and beautifully about. “I, James, am neither a God nor an angel, but a man like any other,” he began, “therefore I act like a man and confess to loving those dear to me more than other men.” 

Anne of Denmark seemed untroubled by the relationship between her husband and George. On the contrary, they actually became great friends. Her letters to him were always filled with affection, and she requested that he “always be true” to James.

At the height of their relationship, King James even referred to himself and Buckingham as husband and wife. In one notable letter of December 1623, after the death of Anne, King James informed the Duke that he was looking forward to their upcoming marriage. “I only desire to live in this world for your sake,” he claimed, “and that I had rather live banished in any part of the earth with you than live a sorrowful widow’s life without you.” 

At the time of King James’s death in 1525, George Villiers was abroad on a diplomatic mission in France. It is reported that the news instantly brought him to tears.

On the accession of the new King Charles I, George Villiers remained in royal favor and became one of his closest friends and advisors. His image at court changed dramatically overnight, and his persona went from that of a feminine lover to that of a strong, independent, experienced, and masculine figure.

Scandal Number 2: The Overbury Scandal

Now we move on to scandal number two, which involves a man named Thomas Overbury and also Robert Carr, whom we met in the previous scandal.

Sir Thomas Overbury was an English poet and essayist who lived between the years of 1581 and 1613. However, he is most famous for being at the center of the political and social scandal that now bears his name, in a very unfortunate way.

The scandal began around 1612 with an affair between two historic figures: Robert Carr and Frances Howard, Countess of Essex. Overbury and Carr had been great friends, but Overbury was extremely opposed to this new romantic relationship. Not only was Frances already married, but Overbury considered that she was already notorious for her immodesty. Robert Carr was a favorite of King James, and possibly even a lover. However, Carr and Frances were supposedly infatuated, and nothing would stop them from continuing the affair.

In response, Thomas Overbury penned a poem entitled A Wife, which painted a picture of a virtuous and Godly woman, one whom a man of the early 17th century should choose for a spouse. After reading the finished result, Frances was infuriated and saw this poem not only as an attack on her personally but also as an attempt to convince Carr to break up with her.

King James I attempted to resolve the whole situation by getting Thomas Overbury out of the way for a while. To do so, he offered Overbury an assignment as ambassador to the court of Michael of Russia. Overbury declined, and King James was so enraged over the situation—and may also have been influenced by the jealousy he had felt previously regarding his close relationship with Robert Carr—that he had him held in the Tower of London, where he died on September 14, 1613.

Just two months later, after a successful appeal for annulment from her first husband, Frances married Robert Carr. The ceremony was the most prominent event of the season at court.

Over the months that followed, rumors that Thomas Overbury had been murdered began to circulate. Two years later, as late as 1615, King James was persuaded to investigate the affair further. This was despite the fact that he himself, alongside Frances and Carr, was rumored to have arranged his murder.

Rather scandalously, Frances Howard and Robert Carr were both found guilty and were even sentenced to death for their parts in the conspiracy to kill Thomas Overbury. Predictably, however, they were released and pardoned by King James six years later, giving just enough time for him to remove himself from the scandal. However, their four accomplices were not so lucky and, lacking any royal favor, were executed by hanging.

The Overbury scandal hung over the Court of King James I for seven years and caused irreparable damage not only to James’s relationship with Carr, but also to his reputation.

Scandal Number 3: The Lake and Cecil Scandal

Next, we move on to the Lake and Cecil Scandal. This was one of the most notable scandals that occurred during the reign of King James I, and comprised a feud between two noble families. These families were connected by the marriage of Anne Lake and William Cecil, who was also known as Lord Roos. Events began in the year 1618, and the disaster that ensued tainted the Stuart court for several years afterward.

Despite the negative impact the scandal had on King James and his followers, it has been somewhat understudied by historians. Many similar happenings have been researched and written up by various academics, but there is only ever a brief mention of the Cecils and the Lakes. However, this does not lessen the length or volume of the repercussions that followed.

It all started when Anne Lake, Lady Roos, accused her husband of having an affair with his step-grandmother, the Countess of Exeter. Both Baron Roos and the countess denied all charges and requested that King James step in and put the matter to rights. King James complied, taking it upon himself to personally investigate all the accusations (and counteraccusations of poisoning and assassination attempts).

The case was eventually taken to the Star Chamber with King James I as judge. The long and short of the story is that both sides sued each other for slander, but the Lakes lost their case. Both Baron Roos and his step-grandmother, the Countess of Exeter, were declared innocent and free to go about their lives.

As a result of her initial accusation and the events that followed, it was Anne’s reputation that suffered. It was written that “there were spoken extraordinarily foul matters of Lady Ross.” As a result of her guilt, Anne Lake spent a short period in the Tower of London. She was soon released and died of natural causes nine years later, in 1630.

Nothing truly dreadful came of these events for either the Lake family or the Cecils. This does not diminish the fact that, for many years, the Lake and Cecil scandal was fervently discussed and whispered about not only by noblemen and women at court, but by members of the public on the streets of London.

King James I: His Death and Legacy

During the later years of his life, King James I was plagued by ill-health. He suffered from arthritis, gout, kidney stones, and fainting fits, all of which caused him to increase his intake of alcohol, endure tooth loss, and retire from almost all public appearances. In early 1625, King James suffered a stroke and died at Theobalds House in Hertfordshire on March 27 of that same year.

The funeral of King James took place on May 7 and was described as a “magnificent but disorderly” affair. Bishop John Williams, who gave the sermon, stated the following. “King Solomon died in peace, when he had lived about sixty years. And so you know did King James.”

Like many kings before him, King James I was laid to rest in Westminster Abbey. The position of his tomb was lost and remained unknown for many years, until his coffin was eventually found in the Henry VII vault, following excavation work in the 19th century.

The inscription on his coffin plate, when translated from Latin to English, reads…

“Laid here are the remains of the most noble Prince James I, King of Great Britain, France, and Ireland: he was born in Scotland on the 19th June 1566, and died most devoutly in England on 27th March 1625. He lived 58 years, 9 months, 8 days, having ruled Scotland for 57 years, 7 months, 29 days, and England for 22  years, 3 days.”

Horatio Nelson is the most famous naval figure of the Napoleonic Wars because of his major victories against diverse opponents (Cape St Vincent 1797, Nile 1798, Copenhagen 1801, Trafalgar 1805, to name a few). But these battles weren’t the only ones he participated in. Ever since he was 16 years old, he had taken part in naval battles and engagements until his last hour of triumph during the Battle of Cape Trafalgar in 1805, in which he was killed. Here is a list of all of his major battles, including the victories and the defeats that aren’t talked about as often.

1. First Experience of Battle

During his stay in the East Indies from 1774 to 1776, Nelson was stationed on HMS Seahorse as an Able Seaman at the age of only 16 years old, to safeguard British convoys in the Indian Ocean, amid the first Anglo-Maratha War.

This conflict pitted Great Britain against the Maratha Empire in India. Two of Hyder Ali’s (the ruler of the Kingdom of Mysore in Southern India) ketches attacked the boat on which Nelson was stationed. After a brief exchange of fire, the two Indian ships sailed off. This was Horatio Nelson’s first experience of battle.

2. Battle of Fort San Juan

Four years later, in 1780, during the American War of Independence, now-Captain Horatio Nelson of HMS Hinchinbrook was given command. Alongside Colonel John Polson, he was to sail up the San Juan River (now in Nicaragua) and capture the towns of Granada and Leon, on the north-western shore of Lake Nicaragua.

The expedition was riddled from the beginning with disease, including yellow fever. Despite this, Nelson pushed his men and succeeded in capturing the Fort of the Immaculate Conception against a Spanish garrison of 228 men under the command of Juan de Ayssa after a two-week siege.

The British held this fortress for nine months before abandoning it to the Spanish in January 1781. They never managed to perform their initial objectives and were forced to return to Jamaica because of disease. Nelson was praised for his efforts, mostly because of his initiative throughout the siege.

3. Siege of Calvi

In 1793, during the French Revolutionary Wars, the Corsican people revolted against the French garrison on the island of Corsica and sought support from the British to expel the French from the island. Captain Horatio Nelson, under the command of Lord Hood, the admiral in command of the British Mediterranean Fleet, took part in the Siege of Calvi.

The French, with a garrison of around 5,000 men, entrenched themselves in the heavily fortified city of Calvi. The British besieged them for over two months, after which the French capitulated. During these months, the French suffered around 700 casualties, whereas the British suffered around 100 casualties. Nelson, always fighting in the front lines, was blinded in one eye after a sandbag exploded in front of him, after being hit by a French cannonball.

4. Battle of Cape St Vincent

On February 14, 1797, during the War of the First Coalition, the British and Spanish fleets met off Cape St Vincent to fight a bitter battle. The British, under the command of Admiral Sir John Jervis, had fewer ships than the Spanish (15 to 25).

Commodore Horatio Nelson, now commanding HMS Captain, refused to obey the admiral’s order and split off from the British group of ships to engage the Spanish fleet almost single-handedly.

Being hit by six different Spanish boats simultaneously, Nelson ordered a boarding and succeeded in capturing the closest Spanish ship, the San Nicolas, an 80-gun ship of the line (compared to Nelson’s 74-gun ship of the line). This wasn’t enough for him, though, and he ordered, from the now-captured Spanish vessel, to board the San Josef, shouting, “Westminster Abbey or Glorious Victory!” This manoeuvre greatly helped the British to win the Battle of Cape St Vincent.

5. Battle of Santa Cruz de Tenerife

During the same war, in July 1797, Horatio Nelson planned and launched an amphibious assault on the Spanish port city of Santa Cruz de Tenerife in the Canary Islands. The British had around 4,000 regulars and sailors, and the Spanish defenders, under the command of Antonio Gutierrez de Otero y Santayana, had around 1,700 regulars and militia.

Nelson, confident in his troops, planned a nighttime landing. The British met fierce resistance from the Spanish defenders, and Nelson decided to lead the next move. He was subsequently hit in his right arm and had to flee to his ships further in the sea. His arm was bleeding continuously and was therefore amputated before being thrown overboard. This battle ended in a complete British defeat, and they had to retreat and leave the Canary Islands alone.

6. Battle of the Nile

Napoleon Bonaparte was given command to sail from Toulon and invade Egypt in the name of the French Republic in May 1798. Horatio Nelson, now Rear-Admiral, was ordered to follow the French forces and stop them from landing anywhere.

After a chase of more than two months, Nelson learned that the French had landed their troops in Alexandria and placed the French fleet in Aboukir Bay, on the Nile. Even though it was late in the day, Nelson ordered the British fleet to engage in combat with the French. The British had 14 ships of the line, whereas the French had 13 and four frigates.

The French admiral, François-Paul Brueys d’Aigalliers, had not placed his fleet directly next to the shore because there were significant shoals between it and the shore, and he thought that no ships could pass through. Nelson, being Nelson, ordered his first ships to go around the French fleet into the shoals so they could fire and concentrate firepower on the first French ships, with British ships firing on both sides.

This strategy worked, and the French vanguard did not engage in the battle. The French suffered almost 5,000 casualties, without counting prisoners. The British suffered fewer than 1,000 casualties. The battle ended with the dramatic explosion of the French flagship L’Orient.

Napoleon was now stuck in Egypt without a fleet to rescue him.

7. Battle of Copenhagen

In 1801, Denmark-Norway, Prussia, Sweden, and Russia formed the League of Armed Neutrality, or League of the North, against Great Britain. The British decided to send a fleet, under the command of Admiral Parker, to Denmark to dissuade them from fighting and to continue on with their alliance.

Nelson, now Rear-Admiral, was given command of twelve ships-of-the-line while Parker stayed behind with the heavier ships. On April 2, 1801, Nelson engaged the Danish fleet anchored in front of Copenhagen. The battle was difficult for the British at the start, with the Danish having the upper hand. Nelson’s commander even gave the signal to his ships to retreat and disengage from the action.

According to eyewitnesses, Nelson then told his flag captain Thomas Foley, “You know, Foley, I only have one eye—I have the right to be blind sometimes,” before holding his telescope to his blind eye and saying,g “I really do not see the signal.” He therefore disregarded Parker’s signal and ended up winning the battle after multiple hours of fighting.

8. Raid on Boulogne

Vice-Admiral Lord Horatio Nelson tried in August 1801 to destroy some French vessels anchored at Boulogne, which were thought to be used for the future invasion of England planned by Napoleon.

Nelson decided to attack at night, but he was met with fierce resistance by the French, and his attack was completely thrown off, just like at the Battle of Santa Cruz de Tenerife.

9. Battle of Trafalgar

Nelson’s last and most important battle was the Battle of Trafalgar in October 1805. The British had 27 ships of the line and four frigates. The combined French and Spanish fleet had over 33 ships of the line and five frigates. Nelson decided to split his fleet into two columns and attack perpendicularly the combined enemy fleet.

This technique, moving away from traditional naval tactics, won him victory in the end. The battle ended up being a major British victory, suffering less than 2,000 casualties, whereas the French and Spanish suffered around 7,000 casualties. However, the British also lost their hero, Admiral Nelson.

The extinction of the Rurikid dynasty in Russia at the end of the 16th century sparked a 15-year period of political turmoil known as the Time of Troubles. During this period, Russia suffered a disastrous famine, the enthronement of a pretender of uncertain origins, unpopular aristocratic rule, and military intervention by Poland and Sweden, which encouraged the formation of patriotic Russian militias that liberated Moscow and restored order with the election of Mikhail Romanov as tsar in 1613.

The Extinction of the Rurikids

The Time of Troubles came about as a result of the extinction of the main Rurikid line—the Grand Princes of Moscow, who claimed descent from the Viking chieftain Rurik—in 1598. This had much to do with Tsar Ivan IV, better known as Ivan the Terrible, who had consolidated his power by executing rival claimants from his extended family.

Ivan the Terrible’s intended successor was his eldest son, Tsarevich Ivan Ivanovich. It is generally accepted that the tsarevich died in November 1581 after an altercation with his father, who chastised Ivan’s wife for not being suitably dressed while pregnant. When the tsarevich intervened on behalf of his wife, the tsar struck his son with his staff in a fit of rage. A famous painting by Ilya Repin depicts the tsar cradling the bloodied head of his mortally wounded son in a display of remorse.

When Ivan the Terrible died in 1584, he was succeeded by his surviving adult son, Fyodor Ivanovich. Nicknamed Fyodor the Bellringer for his piety, the new tsar may have had a mental disability and certainly lacked interest in state affairs, leaving the business of government in the hands of his minister Boris Godunov, the brother of his wife Irina.

When Fyodor became tsar, there was only one other possible successor from the Rurikid line. Fyodor’s half-brother, Tsarevich Dmitry, was born in 1582, but since his mother, Maria Nagaya, was Ivan IV’s sixth wife, the marriage was considered illegitimate by the Orthodox Church. Boris Godunov had them sent to the faraway town of Uglich, where Dmitry was found dead in 1591. While a delegation from Moscow concluded that the child died in a freak accident, it was rumored that Boris was responsible.

Boris Godunov

During the 16th century, the Russian state had tripled in size, and the military expenditure to support this expansion placed a significant tax burden on peasants. The exploitation of the peasantry, combined with population growth, high inflation, and a colder climate caused a series of famines at the turn of the 17th century.

As Tsar Fyodor’s regent, Boris restored order to state administration, albeit at the expense of making powerful enemies among leading Russian aristocrats known as boyars. Meanwhile, Boris’s efforts to address the economic challenges by enserfing peasants—restricting their movement to prevent the further dwindling of the tax base—did little to arrest the economic decline. This gave peasants even greater incentives to run away and become Cossacks on Russia’s southern frontier. Boris’s economic policies not only worsened the conditions of the peasantry but also reduced the status of the lower gentry, who served as militiamen for the tsarist army.

When Tsar Fyodor died childless in January 1598, marking the extinction of the Rurikid line, Boris was the obvious candidate to succeed to the throne. While his rivals amplified rumors of his involvement in the Uglich tragedy, Boris prevailed and was crowned in September.

As an excellent administrator and effective diplomat, Tsar Boris temporarily ended costly wars with Russia’s neighbors, but his reign was overshadowed by the Great Famine of 1601-1603. While he responded energetically by making state grain reserves available to hungry peasants at low prices, he struggled to overcome speculators who manipulated grain prices by buying up the supply. The famine killed around two million people, or just under a third of Russia’s population.

False Dmitry

The Great Famine—now understood to have been caused by global cooling following the eruption of the Huaynaputina volcano in Peru in February 1600—ruined the tsar’s reputation among his subjects. God-fearing Orthodox Russians believed that God was punishing Russia for choosing an illegitimate and sinful tsar, leading many to conclude that Boris had indeed murdered Tsarevich Dmitry.

Nevertheless, Tsar Boris did not face a major threat to his rule during the famine. The Russians still needed a tsar, and the alternative candidates were equally illegitimate. This was until 1604 when a young man claiming to be Tsarevich Dmitry invaded Russia at the head of a small army consisting of Cossacks and Polish soldiers.

When “Dmitry” emerged in Poland-Lithuania in 1603, King Sigismund III of Poland saw an opportunity to turn a rival state into an ally. Upon hearing the news, Boris claimed that the young man was a dangerous runaway monk named Grigory Otrepyev. While few people genuinely believed that the young man was Dmitry, it was enough for the anti-Godunov coalition in Russia to have an alternative candidate who could convincingly present himself as a prince of the Rurikid line.

After Dmitry crossed into Russia in October 1604 at the head of 4,000 men, several cities in southern Russia declared in his favor. On December 21, the rebel army defeated a much larger tsarist force near Novgorod-Seversky (now Novhorod-Siverskyi in Ukraine). Dmitry’s ranks swelled by the day, but a month later, he was defeated at Dobrynichi and barely escaped capture.

Rather than effectively pursuing the pretender, the tsarist forces allowed him to recover and carried out atrocities against the civilian population in regions that had supported Dmitry, while a large tsarist army fruitlessly besieged Kromy near Oryol, some 200 miles south of Moscow.

The tsarist cause was fatally weakened with Boris Godunov’s death on April 13. Although the boyars in Moscow initially swore allegiance to Boris’s 16-year-old son, Fyodor II, the defection of senior tsarist commanders Pyotr Basmanov and Vasily Golitsyn from the siege camp at Kromy proved decisive in bringing about the downfall of Fyodor II on June 11. On June 20, the deposed Tsar Fyodor and his mother were killed in captivity. The same day, the pretender entered Moscow in triumph and was welcomed as the new tsar.

The Fall of the Pretender

Dmitry was crowned tsar on July 21, becoming the first and only individual in Russian history to be raised to the throne by popular rebellion. Aside from the killing of the Godunovs and the banishment of Godunov’s ally Patriarch Job, the new tsar was magnanimous towards his foes. When the ambitious boyar Vasily Shuisky attempted to seize the throne for himself, Dmitry briefly exiled him and recalled him to the boyar council within a matter of months.

While Dmitry was rumored to have sworn allegiance to King Sigismund, offering to convert Russia to Catholicism and to cede large tracts of land to Poland, he took no steps to do so in power. However, his tolerance of Catholics, Protestants, Jews, and other religious groups caused some discomfort among the Orthodox faithful. Dmitry’s relationship with the Russian Orthodox Church deteriorated in late 1605 when he planned to marry the Polish princess Marina Mniszech. To the dismay of senior Orthodox clergy, Dmitry supported his bride’s refusal to convert to Orthodoxy. This amplified rumors that he was a secret Catholic.

Following his recall to the capital, Vasily Shuisky continued plotting to remove the tsar. He decided to strike on the occasion of Dmitry’s wedding in May 1606, shortly before the tsar planned to leave on a campaign against the Crimean Tatars.

Despite warnings of a plot against him, Dmitry took few precautions. On May 17, Shuisky spread rumors that the Polish wedding guests were intending to murder the tsar and all the Russians in Moscow. While an enraged mob stormed the Kremlin and hunted down the Poles, a group of conspirators broke into Dmitry’s quarters. The tsar attempted to escape out of a window but stumbled and fell, enabling the conspirators to catch up to him and kill him.

Tsar Vasily

Vasily Shuisky quickly moved to seize power and denounced the late tsar as an evil sorcerer and imposter. The dead tsar’s mangled body was initially put on public display before being cremated, after which the ashes were supposedly fired from a cannon towards Poland. Vasily hastily arranged his coronation as Tsar Vasily IV for June 1 before conveying the real Dmitry’s body to Moscow for burial and veneration as a saint.

After Shuisky’s opponents on the boyar council appointed his rival Filaret Romanov as the patriarch of Moscow, Tsar Vasily purged the council and appointed Metropolitan Hermogenes of Kazan as the new patriarch. The elderly Hermogenes proved an energetic ally to Vasily and helped him secure his hold on Moscow.

In the Russian countryside, Dmitry’s supporters claimed that he had miraculously escaped assassination once again and was still alive. Southern Russia once again rose up in rebellion in Dmitry’s name. By fall, rebel commander Ivan Bolotnikov relieved the siege of Kromy and occupied Oryol. By October, rebel columns led by Bolotnikov and Istoma Pashkov were laying siege to Moscow. However, the rebel commanders had fallen out, and elite tsarist forces under Vasily’s nephew, Mikhail Skopin-Shuisky, crushed the rebels on December 2.

Bolotnikov retreated to Kaluga and defeated besieging forces in early 1607 before falling back on Tula. Vasily personally led a large army to besiege Tula, and the tsarist army captured the city in October after diverting the waters of the river Upa. Despite Vasily’s promises to spare his life, Bolotnikov was killed in secret, and many of the rebels rallied to the banner of a man who claimed to be the resurrected Tsar Dmitry.

This new pretender, known to history as False Dmitry II, established his camp at Tushino to the northwest of Moscow and besieged the capital for the next 18 months. Filaret Romanov arrived in Tushino and was reconfirmed as patriarch of Moscow, while Marina Mniszech “recognized” her husband.

Although the rebels surrounded Moscow almost completely, the actions of rebel soldiers in the countryside inspired popular uprisings on behalf of the tsar. In the meantime, Prince Skopin-Shuisky led a force of Swedish mercenaries to defeat the rebels northwest of Moscow, and “Dmitry” was forced to leave Tushino in December 1609.

A Polish Tsar?

As a result of the agreement between Sweden and the Shuiskys, Russia came to serve as a new front for the Polish-Swedish War of 1600-1611. In September 1609, King Sigismund led a Polish army to besiege Smolensk while False Dmitry II rallied new support south of Moscow. The anti-Shuisky boyars considered offering the throne to Sigismund’s son Władysław on condition that he would convert to Orthodoxy.

Tsar Vasily’s cause was undermined by the unexpected death of Mikhail Skopin-Shuisky in April 1610, and it was widely believed that the tsar had murdered his popular nephew to prevent him from challenging his throne. On July 4, 1610, a Polish army decisively defeated a Russian force at Klushino.

The defeat encouraged Shuisky’s enemies to depose him two weeks later and imprison him in a Kremlin monastery. With Polish troops heading towards Moscow, a council of seven boyars headed by Fyodor Mstislavsky formally offered the crown to Władysław.

The Polish commander Stanisław Żółkiewski invited senior Russian dignitaries, including Filaret Romanov, Vasily Golitsyn, and the former Tsar Vasily, to the Polish siege camp at Smolensk on the pretext of negotiating the terms of Władysław’s accession. However, upon their arrival, Sigismund informed the boyars that he intended to rule Russia in his own right. When the Russians refused, they were all taken prisoner and escorted to Poland. Polish troops continued to attack Russian towns, and the council of seven eventually invited the Poles to occupy Moscow to restore order.

Minin and Pozharsky

The Polish occupation of Moscow was naturally unpopular with most Russians, and Patriarch Hermogenes was arrested for denouncing the treason of the seven boyars. Most of False Dmitry II’s supporters were also opposed to Polish intervention, and the pretender’s murder by a member of his entourage in December 1610 encouraged a united front against the Poles.

Patriarch Hermogenes was still able to write secret letters encouraging the townsfolk of Nizhny Novgorod to rise up, while the nobleman Prokopy Lyapunov organized a militia against the Poles in early 1611. After the militia attacked Moscow in April 1611, the Poles were restricted to the city core, while the suburbs were burned to the ground.

The fall of the Shuisky regime and the Polish occupation of Moscow encouraged Swedish troops to secure the submission of Novgorod in June 1611. Even King James I of England considered sending troops to north Russia to secure the trading routes through Archangelsk.

The unity of the Russian militia received a bitter blow when Lyapunov was murdered by Cossacks. The Cossack leader Ivan Zarutsky assumed effective command and championed the cause of the young Ivan Dmitrievich, the posthumous son of False Dmitry II and Marina Mniszech. These efforts were opposed by the Nizhny Novgorod militia led by the butcher Kuzma Minin, who joined forces with the minor aristocrat Dmitry Pozharsky, an opponent of Zarutsky.

Financed by the townsfolk in the Volga region, who had continued to conduct profitable trade throughout the Time of Troubles, Minin and Pozharsky organized the Second National Militia to challenge not only the Poles but Zarutsky, who had recently eliminated a third False Dmitry who emerged in northwestern Russia. From his base at Yaroslavl, Pozharsky attracted many Cossacks from Zarutsky’s ranks.

A New Dynasty

During the summer of 1612, the Second Militia’s prospects improved as the Poles and Zarutsky clashed repeatedly to the west of Moscow, with both sides sustaining heavy losses. In July, Zarutsky was abandoned by his ally, Dmitry Trubetskoy, who joined forces with Pozharsky. However, Trubetskoy was conscious of being a higher-ranking aristocrat and resented being under Pozharsky’s authority.

At the beginning of September, when the Polish commander Jan Karol Chodkiewicz led a relief force to attack Pozharsky’s army besieging Moscow, Trubetskoy remained on the sidelines. However, most of his Cossacks joined the battle and helped Pozharsky achieve victory.

Trubetskoy and Pozharsky soon came to an agreement in which Trubetskoy was appointed nominal commander-in-chief of the militia even though Pozharsky and Minin remained in charge. In early November, the national militia successfully liberated Moscow and forced the Polish garrison to evacuate the city. An interim government nominally led by Trubetskoy was installed while the Assembly of the Land was summoned to elect a new tsar.

The delegates were initially deadlocked, and Trubetskoy’s own candidacy was opposed by Pozharsky and the boyars. The Romanov family, who had supported the first two false Dmitrys before joining the seven boyars, proposed the 16-year-old Mikhail Romanov, son of the imprisoned Patriarch Filaret. While Trubetskoy and Pozharsky opposed the Romanov candidacy, a body of Trubetskoy’s cossack delegates declared in his favor, and Mikhail was elected tsar on February 7, 1613.

While rival boyar families were not enthusiastic about Mikhail, they believed that they could control him via the boyar council. While Mikhail’s position on the throne was initially precarious, Romanov propagandists moved to cover up the family’s association with the pretenders and the Poles, and the tsar’s agents quickly silenced anti-Romanov voices.

During the early years of his reign, Mikhail summoned the Assembly regularly to coordinate reconstruction efforts, but following Filaret’s return from captivity in 1619, the tsar’s father became the effective ruler of Russia until his death in 1633. The Romanov dynasty continued to rule Russia for three centuries until the 1917 Revolution.

Legacy

The Time of Troubles was an incredibly traumatic period of Russian history that has reverberated through the centuries. During the 19th century, Boris Godunov became one of the most famous tragic figures in Russian drama, firstly with Alexander Pushkin’s 1825 play Boris Godunov, which in turn inspired Modest Mussorgsky’s 1872 opera Boris Godunov.

When Napoleon invaded Russia in 1812, Tsar Alexander I made reference to Minin and Pozharsky as he rallied the Russian people to resist the invader. In 1818, a few years after Russia’s victory over Napoleon, a statue of Minin and Pozharsky was unveiled in Red Square, celebrating the militia leaders who liberated Moscow in the 17th century.

In 1815, the Italian court composer Catterino Cavos wrote a two-act opera, Ivan Susanin, based on the legendary tale of an old man who is supposed to have given his life to save Mikhail Romanov from Polish soldiers. Mikhail Glinka’s 1836 opera A Life for the Tsar on the same subject, renamed Ivan Susanin during the Soviet period, is considered Russia’s first national opera.

When Russia experienced a similar period of political turbulence and economic crisis at the beginning of the 20th century with the First World War, the Revolutions of 1917, and the Russian Civil War, opponents of the Bolshevik regime labeled the period as the krasnaya smuta or “Red troubles.”

In contemporary Russia, the Time of Troubles is used to justify the need for a strong ruler who can prevent anarchy and disorder. In 2005, Vladimir Putin’s government instituted a national holiday known as the Day of National Unity on November 4, marking the anniversary of the liberation of Moscow from Polish occupation in 1612.

A popular Red Army song began as follows:

“The White Army and the Black Baron
Are preparing to restore to us the tsar’s throne,
But from the taiga to the British seas,
The Red Army is the strongest of all!”

Many myths surround General Pyotr Wrangel. Famous for wearing a black Cossack uniform,  this charismatic commander played a major role in the Russian Civil War. He did not actually attempt to restore the Romanovs. Even after his defeat, the Soviets considered Wrangel a threat and may have plotted his unexpected death.

A Powerful Family

Born into a famous family of Baltic German origin in Lithuania in the Russian Empire on August 27, 1878, Baron Pyotr Nikolayevich Wrangel had aristocratic blood running through his veins.

His ancestor, Carl Gustaf Wrangel, led Swedish forces during the Thirty Years War and in the Second Northern War. The Wrangel family’s Latin motto, Frangas, non flectes (“You can break, but you can’t bend”), would represent Pyotr Wrangel’s life.

After graduating from St. Petersburg’s Mining Institute, Wrangel worked as an engineer, but his heart remained with the military. When the Russo-Japanese War broke out, Wrangel signed up as a volunteer. He received multiple awards, including the Order of St. Anna for bravery.

Before World War I, Wrangel changed careers by graduating from the Nikolaev Military Academy in Moscow. Next, he joined the Russian Army General Staff while finishing a course at the Officer Cavalry School. This strong affinity for the military set a defining course for the rest of Wrangel’s life.

Rising Star

In 1914, Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand’s assassination sparked a European powder keg. After the Russian Army’s mobilization, Colonel Wrangel led the Life-Guards Cavalry Regiment in a daring attack on an enemy battery in East Prussia. With his horse shot out from under him and suffering from a concussion, Wrangel led his men to victory on foot. Tsar Nicholas II awarded Wrangel the Order of St. George, making him the first officer to receive this military award for bravery during World War I.

Wrangel distinguished himself as a courageous commander for the rest of the war, participating in the successful Brusilov Offensive against Austria in 1916. Now a major general in the cavalry, Wrangel successfully screened the infantry’s retreat after a failed Russian offensive in the summer of 1917. Meanwhile, revolution loomed, threatening Wrangel’s army and his family.

The Coming Storm

After the February Revolution, the Russian Imperial Army began to disintegrate. Over the next several months, desertions increased and workers’ unrest intensified.

In October 1917, the Soviets led a coup that ushered in the Bolshevik Revolution. The Soviets came to power with the slogan “Bread, Peace, and Land,” promising to end the war with the Central Powers and give confiscated property to the people.

At Supreme Command Headquarters, Wrangel planned to raise a volunteer army to continue fighting Germany. When he realized his commander-in-chief had no intention of resisting the Bolsheviks, Wrangel headed south, where an anti-Soviet army started gathering.

Arrest and Escape

The October Revolution forced the general and his family to move to Yalta. But the situation in Crimea became more dangerous. Gangs of Bolshevik soldiers and sailors patrolled the streets. They broke into houses, helping themselves to cash, jewelry, and other valuables and dragging people before revolutionary tribunals.

One morning, Wrangel woke to loud voices, stamping feet, and slamming doors. As the general sat up in bed, six sailors, swathed in machine-gun cartridges and carrying rifles, rushed into the room.

Two sailors held him at gunpoint, shouting: “Not a muscle, you’re under arrest.”

The sailors hauled Wrangel onto a ship flying a red flag anchored in the harbor. Most interrogations ended the same way. In the water below their feet lay hundreds of drowned victims of summary Soviet trials.

An aristocrat and former tsarist general who openly wore his officer’s shoulder straps on the street in a move that almost got him killed, the baron represented everything the Bolsheviks hated.

His interrogation took place in a cell where a revolutionary chairman named Vakula asked the reason for his arrest.

“Probably because I am a Russian general,” Wrangel replied. “I know of no other guilt.”

The chairman turned to his wife, Olga Wrangel, who had accompanied the baron, and asked why they arrested her.

“I am not arrested,” she clarified. “I just want to be with my husband.”

The Baroness’ calm behavior evoked unusual sympathy among the tribunal.

An astonished chairman told Wrangel, “Not everyone has such wives, and you owe your life to your wife.”

He ordered the general’s release on the spot.

Unlike tens of thousands who disappeared under the Bolsheviks, Wrangel had a lucky escape. He moved to Miskhor, where he lived under a fake passport, avoiding the ongoing wave of raids and arrests.

After the Germans seized the area, Wrangel traveled to Ukraine, where he tried to join Hetman Pavlo Skoropadsky’s government. Having been installed as the leader of a nominally independent Ukraine by the German authorities, Skoropadsky’s government teetered on the brink of collapse. Wrangel therefore decided to join Anton Denikin’s Volunteer Army in September 1918.

Denikin gave him a frigid welcome. Due to his arrest, Wrangel could not participate in the brutal Ice March, which took the Volunteer Army south during the first Kuban Campaign. This meeting foreshadowed future tensions between the two men.

The Black Baron vs the Red Army

Despite frosty relations with Denikin, Wrangel had a reputation as one of the best cavalry commanders in the former imperial army. With a force primarily made up of Kuban Cossack horsemen, Denikin desperately needed a good cavalry general who could relate to the separatist-minded Cossacks.

One of Wrangel’s first actions during the Russian Civil War included taking the city of Stavropol back from the Bolsheviks. In December 1918, Denikin promoted him to lieutenant general.

By 1919, Wrangel began to push back against Denikin’s strategy. He argued that they should join forces with Admiral Aleksandr Kolchak’s troops moving toward the Volga and throw their forces into the fight to take back the critical town of Tsaritsyn (later renamed Stalingrad).

Denikin, feeling threatened, rejected Wrangel’s proposal. Instead, he insisted on defeating the Soviets in the Donbas first. This decision may have proved a fatal mistake.

If the Volunteer Army had joined the battle with the Reds during Kolchak’s Volga Offensive, they could have defeated the Bolsheviks in the Volga region. The Red Army would have had to withdraw troops from Siberia, relieving pressure on Kolchak’s front and enabling him to throw troops into combat at Tsaritsyn. Dividing and conquering the Red Army may have prevented the collapse of Kolchak’s eastern front and the downfall of the Omsk Siberian Provisional Government.

By this time, Wrangel distinguished himself as one of the prominent leaders of the White movement. A popular commander, he also had a reputation as a strict disciplinarian who punished violence and robbery among his troops. In contrast, he faced a ruthless Bolshevik commander named Joseph Stalin. During the second siege of Tsaritsyn (September–October 1918), Stalin clashed with Leon Trotsky, disobeyed orders, and illegally seized supplies sent through Tsaritsyn for the Red Army. Vladimir Lenin refused to tolerate his insubordination and recalled Stalin to Moscow.

On June 30, 1919, Wrangel captured Tsaritsyn in the most successful operation of his career. Vastly outnumbered and using only cavalry units, Wrangel defeated the Soviets at “Red Verdun” and took tens of thousands of prisoners.

March on Moscow

The conquest of the Donbas failed to strengthen the anti-Bolshevik cause. Instead, the campaign brought a largely antagonistic proletarian population under White control. Leon Trotsky’s attack through the Donbas proved fatal for the Volunteer Army. Although the area had rich steel and coal resources, the Whites did not control its military industry. The Volunteer Army, having failed to join Kolchak, proved unable to stop the admiral’s defeat later that year.

Denikin also overestimated the Reds’ defeat at Tsaritsyn. Ignoring the logistical issues his overstretched forces would face, Denikin issued his famous “Moscow Directive.” While aimed at capturing the capital, the Moscow Directive lacked any strategic details. Instead, the White Army marched in spread formation in a single direction. Each corps simply received a roadmap to Moscow.

Wrangel objected. He called the Moscow Directive a “death sentence.” He advised Denikin to strike at Moscow from the shortest possible route, transferring his main forces from Tsaritsyn without waiting for it to surrender.

Denikin refused to listen to Wrangel’s advice. Instead, he split his forces, sending a significant part of the Volunteer Army to capture Kyiv and right-bank Ukraine, a division of strength that dangerously diluted the main march to Moscow.

Wrangles With Denikin

Ultimately, the Moscow Directive failed because Denikin divided and stretched the Volunteer Army too thin across a key section of their front. The Whites also failed to mobilize enough Ukrainian peasants to support their campaign. Unable to concentrate his forces or defend his supply lines, Denikin’s offensive bogged down beyond Oryol, some 200 miles south of Moscow. In contrast, the Red Army mobilized the peasant population. With their chance to take the Soviet capital lost, the Volunteer Army retreated south.

After the Moscow disaster, Wrangel went public with his disagreement with Denikin. He issued a report criticizing Denikin’s strategy and blaming him for the Whites’ defeat. When copies of this report circulated among senior officers, many agreed.

This act came at a cost. In February 1920, Denikin dismissed Wrangel for his outspoken criticism. Facing defeat, Denikin then initiated a disastrous evacuation at Novorossiysk in March. Authorities failed to provide enough ships to evacuate an estimated 100,000 troops, in addition to civilians, fleeing the Red Army. The botched evacuation left thousands of soldiers and refugees behind. In the aftermath, the Bolsheviks executed 60,000 people who could not escape. It is considered the single largest massacre of the Russian Civil War.

A New Command

In April 1920, Denikin resigned. At a meeting of the Military Council, several officers nominated Wrangel to take his place. While not everyone, including Wrangel, agreed that subordinates should elect their commander-in-chief, a shout went up: “Long live General Wrangel!”

Denikin responded by appointing Wrangel commander of the Armed Forces of South Russia. Wrangel accepted the position with the words: “I have shared the glory of victories with the army and I cannot refuse to drink with it the cup of humiliation.”

By now, the Allies, who had funneled resources to the Volunteer Army despite official bans from getting involved in the Russian war, refused to supply further food, weapons, or supplies. Despite this blow, most of the generals voted to keep fighting.

One of Wrangel’s first acts as general was to rename the Volunteer Army the Russian Army. Meanwhile, an amphibious landing via the Black Sea and an advance through southern Ukraine in April met stiff resistance by the Red Army and collapsed.

A Model State

Setbacks in the North Caucasus and Ukraine pushed the Russian Army back toward Crimea. Wrangel used the peninsula as his base to establish law and order, reorganize the army, and create a model anti-Soviet state.

Under Wrangel’s administration, shops opened, postal services operated, and trains ran again. Despite these social and economic strides, the overall war effort kept deteriorating. The British withdrew aid and began negotiating with the Bolsheviks. Wrangel knew millions of pounds’ worth of supplies had been frittered away on Denikin’s army. But after Wrangel cracked down on corruption, foreign aid stopped.

As head of the anti-Soviet government in Crimea, Wrangel rolled out a more liberal social and political policy than Denikin entertained.

“I am trying to make life possible in Crimea, at least on this little patch,” Wrangel announced. “To show the rest of Russia: you have communism there, that is, hunger and emergency, and here…order and possible freedom are being established. No one is strangling you; no one is torturing you—live as you lived before.”

The Baron decided to avoid another march on Moscow. Instead, he concentrated on creating a model state characterized by democracy, economic stability, workers’ rights, and agrarian reforms. He also advocated for broad Ukrainian autonomy.

One of these laws transferred most of the landowners’ land to the peasants but held the government responsible for reimbursing the landowners. The problem was that this reimbursement exceeded the land value due to rampant inflation. If the imperial government had passed this law before 1917, it might have prevented the Revolution. Compared to the Soviets’ sweeping promises, most peasants had little incentive to join the Whites now.

For a time, Wrangel created a model state intended to make the citizens of “Sovdepia” envy them.

The outbreak of the Polish-Soviet War bought the anti-Bolsheviks some valuable time. Taking advantage of the Red Army’s troop diversion, Wrangel launched a cavalry attack to break out of the peninsula. His tactical combination of horses, tanks, airplanes, and armored trains resulted in a resounding victory that defeated Dmitry Zhloba’s cavalry units and captured 9,000 prisoners. Wrangel’s combined arms tactics anticipated those employed in future wars.

Last Stand

The anti-Bolshevik state in the Crimea only lasted six months.

In October 1920, the Red Army dealt the Russian Army a fatal blow at the Soviet bridgehead at Kakhovka on the left bank of the Dnieper. Meanwhile, the Polish Army overpowered the Red Army near Warsaw that autumn. Although the Polish Army could have marched on Moscow, Józef Piłsudski refused. Neither Wrangel nor Piłsudski supported each other in the past, and Wrangel had not recognized Polish independence. As a result, the Polish-Soviet truce in October 1920 sealed the fate of anti-Bolshevik Crimea.

While the French government recognized Wrangel’s Government of South Russia, the lack of internal resources and external aid proved fatal for the White movement. Without coal, oil, military supplies, or food resources, it became only a matter of time before the Russian Army collapsed under the onslaught of the victorious Red Army.

Flight From Crimea

In November 1920, the besieged White forces braced themselves for attack. Five Red Army columns combined to strike the exhausted Russian Army during the Perekop-Chongar Operation. Determined to prevent Wrangel from maintaining his foothold in Crimea, Lenin ordered his commanders to wipe the Russian Army off the map.

As winter came on, an unequal fight began. The Whites had only 41,000 infantry and cavalry, who fought on foot due to a lack of horses, and 213 artillery pieces. In contrast, the Soviets employed a force of 200,000 troops, 40,000 cavalry, 17 armored trains, and 98 artillery pieces.

The White defensive line clung on despite overwhelming enemy forces. In the early hours of November 11, 1920, the Red Army crossed the frozen Syvash Marsh in a surprise attack and broke through the Russian Army’s defenses at Perekop. Under cover of predawn, the White Army fell back to the sea to avoid annihilation.

With fate staring him in the face, Wrangel tried to ensure that this evacuation did not mimic Denikin’s disastrous attempt.

After the Perekop breakthrough, Wrangel appealed to the people: “The Government of the South of Russia considers it its duty to warn everyone about the severe trials that await those arriving from within Russia…The government advises all those who are not in immediate danger from enemy violence to remain in the Crimea.”

Many people decided to stay. Tens of thousands of soldiers and civilians subsequently succumbed to the Red Terror which the victorious Soviets dealt out after conquering Crimea. Still, Wrangel managed to evacuate 145,693 people on 126 ships from the ports of Yalta, Sevastopol, and Feodosia. This number included 50,000 soldiers, army officials, civilians, and 6,000 wounded. The ships transported the refugees to the Gallipoli Peninsula and the Greek island of Lemnos.

Despite its limitations, Wrangel’s evacuation avoided mass panic, demonstrated greater organization, kept the core of the Russian Army together, and shipped about 100,000 more people to safety compared to the previous evacuation attempt.

An Opponent in Exile

Life for refugees on Lemnos was hard. They had no resources, no passports, and no country.

Wrangel landed in Constantinople, where he organized the army for the next two years. In 1922, Wrangel founded the Russian All-Military-Union to unite and support 100,000 military émigrés and continue a political and psychological struggle against Soviet power.

The Black Baron’s strong reputation in the émigré community and his ability to successfully lead troops meant that the Soviets kept trying to discredit or destroy him.

Sickness or Murder?

In 1924, Wrangel emigrated to Belgium where he worked as an engineer. Now the man who once faced down the Bolsheviks on the battlefield feared only one thing: poisoning.

As it turned out, his fears may have been justified.

During the 1920s, the Soviets ramped up their espionage activities in Europe. The next few years witnessed an increase in former White émigrés-turned-Soviet-spies and double agents. This resulted in the kidnapping, disappearance, and murder of several high-profile anti-Bolshevik leaders.

Things took a turn in March 1928 when Wrangel’s orderly, Yakov Yudikhin, asked Wrangel to take in his refugee brother. The baron agreed.

As it turned out, this “brother” was a sailor on a Soviet ship.

When the sailor left on March 8, the general fell suddenly and violently ill. At first, it seemed like a winter cold, accompanied by a high fever, stomach pain, and coughing. Doctors could not agree on a diagnosis. Doctor Weiner diagnosed the baron with intestinal issues. Meanwhile, Ivan Aleksinsky thought Wrangel had influenza. Three days later, three doctors admitted the situation looked more dire than they initially realized.

An analysis revealed that the baron’s lungs were riddled with Koch’s bacilli. The general grew worse daily. He began to hallucinate. Imagining himself back on the battlefield, he tried to get up, directed military operations, and gave endless orders.

After suffering for over a month, General Baron Pyotr Nikolayevich Wrangel died on April 25, 1928. The Black Baron’s sudden death convinced his family and some later historians that an OGPU agent used poison to infect him with a fast-acting bacteria. He died just six months before the discovery of penicillin. For the hundreds of emigrants at his funeral, Wrangel’s death seemed like the end of their hopes to restore their motherland.

Always With Honor

It’s no secret that Wrangel was a strict commander who balanced courage and a sense of honor with military expediency.

While he was a monarchist, the baron believed Russia needed an elected, democratic form of government. He created a short-lived model state based on democratic principles and agrarian reform.

In exile, the general fought for his soldiers’ welfare and waged an ideological war against the Soviets. The Black Baron’s reputation as arguably the most competent anti-Bolshevik commander made him a formidable opponent until his death.