Military History Autumn 2022

Carthage Must Be Destroyed!

The Royal Navy and Operation Retribution When Chechnya Stalled the Russians Washington’s ‘Mad and Rash Fellow’ HISTORYNET.com

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French Foreign Legionnaires engage Austrian troops at the June 4, 1859, Battle of Magenta in Lombardy.

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AUTUMN 2022

Letters 6 Dispatches 8

34

Features

The Foreign Legion Long celebrated in literature and on film for its far-ranging exploits, France’s best-known military organization is also its most international.

By Jon Guttman

24

Poking the Bear

Pinned between the Caucasus Mountains and Russia, Chechnya has a long history of rebelling against its imperial overlord.

By Ron Soodalter

Departments

14

Interview Commander Billie Farrell A New Captain on Deck

18

Valor Arctic Survivor

2 MILITARY HISTORY AUTUMN 2022

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Reviews 72 War Games 78 Captured! 80

48

A Mad and Rash Fellow

George Washington’s young aide-de-camp John Laurens risked all in pursuit of his nation’s independence.

By Matthew T. Beazley

56

Retribution

The 1943 operation to foil an Axis retreat from North Africa was more than duty for the Royal Navy—it was personal.

By Peter Kentz

64

‘Carthage Must Be Destroyed’

In 146 bc Scipio Aemilianus carried out Cato’s threat against Rome’s resurgent North African nemesis.

By Marc G. DeSantis

40

Longshanks’ Vain Victory at Falkirk In 1298 England’s King Edward I waged a ruthless and ultimately futile campaign against the Scots.

By John Walker

20

What We Learned From...

Brunanburh, 937

22

Hardware USS Constitution

On the cover: French Foreign Legionnaires engage Austrian troops at the June 4, 1859, Battle of Magenta in Lombardy. (Château de Versailles)

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Hallowed Ground Blanc Mont Ridge, France

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6/8/22 10:40 AM

MICHAEL A. REINSTEIN Chairman & Publisher

AUTUMN 2022 VOL. 39, NO. 2

The Warriors Who Nearly Destroyed Cortés As conquistador Hernán Cortés made his way toward Mexico’s Aztec empire, he fell afoul of the Tlaxcalans, a people who could ally with or annihilate him

By Justin D. Lyons I N THE A R C H IV E S:

The 100 Greatest Generals of All Time We combed through three millennia of history, from the classical era to present, to identify standout field commanders

By Brian Sobel with Jerry D. Morelock

Interview Entertainer Bob Hope’s daughter

Linda talks about her new book, relating her father’s correspondence with World War II GIs

Hardware American Essex-class aircraft carriers contributed significantly to the Allied victory in the Pacific during World War II HISTORYNET Love history? Sign up for our FREE weekly e-newsletter at: historynet.com/newsletters

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Letters

Dear Military History readers:

The January 2022 article “McArthur’s Gamble,” by Bob Gordon, was excellent, as was the entire selection of articles in that issue.

The McArthur article noted Sherman’s 1864 March to the Sea from Atlanta to Savannah as a follow-on example.

But that action was actually a conquest, smashing a 60mile-wide path through Georgia in the combined drive to crush the South and win the Civil War. A better example of a similar type of raid to McArthur’s is the highly successful Grierson’s Raid (April 17–May 2, 1863), a 600-mile strike through southern Tennessee and Mississippi on into Un i o n - o c c u p i e d B at o n Rouge, La. This 1,700-troop cavalry raid tied the central Southern forces in knots, distracting from efforts to marshal forces to counter Ulysses S. Grant’s pending attack on Vicksburg, and all with very low Union losses. Grant used this successful example of living off the land to push his rapid attack on Jackson, Miss., before turning back to

lay siege to Vicksburg. These successes were the basis on which Sherman later planned his order-of-magnitude-larger March to the Sea. Mark Prose Oracle, Ariz.

Editor responds: Fair enough, though Brig. Gen. Duncan McArthur arguably faced a stiffer challenge in that his operation, unlike those of Col. Benjamin Grierson or Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman, was a round trip through enemy territory.

The Few, the Proud

For this Marine, one of the really fulfilling days of my life was a visit to the studio of Col. Charles Waterhouse [the subject of “Honoring ‘The Few, The Proud,’” by Jon Guttman, March 2022].

I knew his studio was in Toms River, N.J., and in 2007 I decided to pay a visit. I was welcomed by his wife, Barbara, and daughter Jane. Because the colonel was busy in his sculpture room, Barbara took me on a tour of the studio and told me about their history. I felt like family.

Second to None

[Re. the March 2022 letter about the U.S. 2nd Infantry Division motto, “Second to None”:] I attend West Valley College in Saratoga, Calif., with a gent who served in Korea with the Rhodesian Rifles. They went into the line next to a U.S. Marine unit— he didn’t recall which. The Rhodesian Rifles put up their sign: Second to None.

Next morning the Marines had placed their own sign.

It read, None.

Glenn Bass Sonora, Calif.

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SARIN IMAGES (GRANGER)

McArthur’s Gamble

Later, when the colonel was free, one Marine took another on a complete tour of the studio and his works.

To use the word “outstanding” would be to minimize what I saw. What a talent, and what a kind and generous man. One of the items I purchased was his book Marines and Others. Within its covers are virtually all his paintings, plus personal artwork to his wife and family.

If anyone is truly interested in military art and history, this book is a must.

Militar y Histor y could spend a year featuring Col. Waterhouse’s works and barely touch what this great man accomplished.

Jim Able Hudson, Fla.

Beginning with this issue, Military History is moving to a quarterly publication schedule.

But worry not: We will extend existing subscriptions, so you’ll get all the issues for which you paid. Meanwhile, we’ve made exciting improvements, with other surprises in the works—all in the aim of giving our valued readers even more than before:

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Dispatches

By Dave Kindy

CONNECTIONS

History Repeats in Ukraine

The recent dismantling of a Soviet-era monument in Kyiv to Russian-Ukrainian friendship speaks to the animosity fostered by the ongoing war in Ukraine.

‘All the war propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting’ —George Orwell

8 MILITARY HISTORY AUTUMN 2022

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TOP: AMERICAN HERITAGE MUSEUM; BOTTOM: BLACK LABEL MEDIA

SOUND OFF

TOP: SOPA IMAGES (GETY IMAGES); RIGHT: CPA MEDIA PTE LTD. (ALAMY STOCK PHOTO)

I

n 1941, when the German war machine rolled into Soviet Ukraine, teenager Fania Rosenfeld fled for her life as Nazi occupation forces and homegrown collaborators targeted her and fellow Jews with execution, imprisonment, forced labor and other atrocities. A desperate Rosenfeld turned to her Gentile friend Maria Blyshchik, whose family hid Fania in their home during the occupation. Most of Rosenfeld’s own family was killed during the war.

Among the survivors, Fania relocated to Israel, where she married and raised a family.

This spring Rosenfeld’s granddaughter, Sharon Bass, returned the wartime favor, opening her home in Israel to refugees Lesia Orshoko and Alona Chugai, granddaughters of Blyshchik who fled Ukraine in the wake of the 2022 Russian invasion. History continues to echo in recent headlines.

Ukraine was a bitter battleground in World War II, first as the Nazis invaded and then as the Soviets fought back. Then as now, loyalties were divided, some Ukrainians collaborating with the Nazis to fight the Russians and vice versa. Even today Ukraine’s Azov Battalion counts neo-Nazis among its ranks and uses a variation of the Wolfsangel (“wolf ’s hook”) insignia worn

by Waffen-SS invaders eight decades ago.

Since the 1991 dissolution of the Soviet Union, Russia has had designs on Ukraine. The nations first went to war in 2014 as Russian forces allied with separatists in the Donbas region and annexed Crimea. When war broke out again this year, volunteers from other nations joined the fight, calling to mind foreign intervention during the 1936–39 Spanish Civil War. As tensions deepened this spring, officials in Kyiv dismantled a Soviet-era monument symbolizing RussianUkrainian friendship. As in the past, the conflict has been hardest on civilians. Nearly 6 million Ukrainians have fled the fighting, creating a refugee crisis not seen in Europe since World War II.

WAR RECORD

Oct. 15, 1943

Andrew Browne Cunningham is promoted to First Sea Lord of the Royal Navy. Months earlier the British admiral led Operation Retribution (P. 56), a successful blockade to keep defeated Axis troops in Tunisia from fleeing across the Mediterranean to Sicily during World War II.

Oct. 17, 1854

The French Foreign Legion (P. 34) joins the Siege of Sevastopol amid the 1853–56 Crimean War. Among its officers is Lt. Jean Danjou, who in a fight to the death against 50-to-1 odds at the 1863 Battle of Camarón, Mexico, brought the legion victory and its legendary status.

BLUE YONDER

New Life for a Nieuport

Oct. 27, 1991

The oldest original airworthy combat aircraft flown by American forces took to the skies again this spring. Owned by the American Heritage Museum in Stow, Mass., the restored Nieuport 28 C-1 biplane (Serial No. 512) is the same type flown by pilots of the American Expeditionary Forces in World War I. Delivered in late 1918, this plane served in the postwar U.S. Army Air Service and appeared in several films, including the 1930 and ’38 versions of The Dawn Patrol.

REEL WAR

TOP: AMERICAN HERITAGE MUSEUM; BOTTOM: BLACK LABEL MEDIA

TOP: SOPA IMAGES (GETY IMAGES); RIGHT: CPA MEDIA PTE LTD. (ALAMY STOCK PHOTO)

Devotion

Due out in October, Devotion recounts the bond forged by U.S. Navy pilots Lt. j.g. Thomas J. Hudner Jr. (played by Glen Powell, pictured) and Ensign Jesse L. Brown (Jonathan Majors) amid the Korean War. On Dec. 4, 1950, Brown—the Navy’s first black aviator—was shot down over the Chosin Reservoir and trapped in the burning fuselage of his Vought F4U Corsair. Hudner deliberately crash-landed his Corsair and worked in vain to free his friend and wingman from the wreckage, but Brown died of his injuries. Evacuated by helicopter, Hudner later received the Medal of Honor for his actions. Directed by J.D. Dillard, the film is based on the 2017 best seller Devotion: An Epic Story of Heroism, Friendship and Sacrifice, by Adam Makos.

Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Dzhokhar Dudayev is elected president of the breakaway Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, setting in motion a series of events leading to the 1994 Russian invasion of Chechnya (see P. 24).

Oct. 28, 1754

John Laurens (see P. 48) is

born in Charleston, S.C. As an aide to Gen. George Washington the “mad and rash fellow” risked all in support of American independence, dying in battle at age 27 on Aug. 27, 1782.

Late October 218 BC

At the outset of the Second Punic War Carthaginian general Hannibal completes his legendary crossing of the Alps into Italy.

In 146 bc, amid the Third Punic War, consul Scipio Aemilianus carries out orders to destroy

Rome’s archenemy Carthage (P. 64) once and for all.

Nov. 16, 1272

King Henry III of England dies, leaving the throne to son Edward I. Known as “Longshanks,” the warrior king leads many campaigns, including victory over the rebellious Scots under William Wallace at the 1298 Battle of Falkirk (see P. 40).

9

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What’s Wrong With This Picture?

German immigrant Emanuel Leutze’s monumental painting Washington Crossing the Delaware is undoubtedly a stirring rendition of Continental Army Gen. George Washington and troops en route to capture Trenton from the Hessians on the night of Dec. 25–26, 1776. Historically speaking, however, it falls short, perhaps in part because Leutze painted the 149-by-255-inch oil on canvas in 1851—75 years after the fact. Historians have flagged several mistakes, including the furled Stars and Stripes (Continental troops flew the Grand Union), the conditions (the crossing took place around midnight amid a snowstorm—albeit hard to capture), the vessels (Washington’s men crossed in larger flat-bottomed Durham boats) and the river (the Delaware

HONORS

‘Ghost Army’ Gets Its Due

“Ghost Army” veteran Bernie Mason displays the unit insignia.

This is dummy copy right here when this used can go here very used seen when dummy used fly best us asked for.

is not as wide where they crossed). The celebrated version on display at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art is actually a duplicate. The original hung in the Kunsthalle Bremen art museum until destroyed by a 1942 RAF bombing raid during World War II. A privately owned 40-by-60-inch version displayed at the White House from the 1970s through 2014 was the highlight of a recent auction at Christie’s in New York, fetching just over $45 million, more than double its presale estimate.

The Ghost Army—a 1,100-man U.S. Army tactical deception unit whose clandestine activities in World War II remained largely unknown until declassified in 1996—has been recognized for its service with a Congressional Gold Medal. Leading up to D-Day and through war’s end the 23rd Headquarters Special Troops employed visual deception (such as inflatable tanks and planes), sonic deception (such as recordings of engines and artillery fire) and “spoof radio” traffic to dupe the Germans into moving troops where there was no opposition. Its sister unit, the 3133rd Signal Service Company, did the same in Italy in 1945. The act awarding the medal recognizes “their proficient use of innovative tactics during World War II, which saved lives and made significant contributions to the defeat of the Axis powers.” A film about the Ghost Army, by director Todd Phillips, is in the works.

TOP: METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART; LEFT: TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY LLC (ALAMY STOCK PHOTO)

ART OF WAR

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CONNECTIONS

Is Moskva Largest Warship Sunk in 40 Years?

On April 13, 2022, an explosion heavily damaged the Russian guided missile cruiser Moskva in the Black Sea some 65 miles south of Odessa. A day later the flagship of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet sank while being towed to port.

While Moscow insisted an onboard fire had caused munitions to explode, the Ukrainian military claimed to have struck the vessel with two shorebased R-360 Neptune anti-ship missiles. If the Ukrainian account proves true, Moskva would be the largest warship sunk in combat in 40 years.

During the 1982 Falklands War the combatant nations, Argentina and Britain, each sank a major enemy warship. On May 2, 1982, the Royal Navy submarine Conqueror struck the Argentine light cruiser General Belgrano with two torpedoes, marking the only time a nuclear-powered sub has sunk a warship in combat. Two days later an Argentine Dassault-Breguet Super Étendard fighter struck the British Type 42 guided missile destroyer

The guided missile cruiser Moskva, the flagship of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, shows a noticeable list to port before sinking on April 14, 2022.

Sheffield with an Exocet anti-ship missile. The heavily damaged destroyer sank on May 10.

The largest warship sunk in combat to date was the World War II–era Japanese battleship Yamato. Displacing 70,000 tons and armed with massive 18.1-inch main guns, Yamato was struck by bombs and torpedoes dropped by carrier-based American aircraft and sank on April 7, 1945, as it sailed toward Okinawa to attack U.S. warships.

TAP S ‘Candy Bomber’ Gail Halvorsen Colonel Gail Halvorsen, 101, the retired

U.S. Air Force pilot who gained fame during the 1948–49 Berlin Airlift as the “Candy Bomber,” died in Provo, Utah, on Feb. 16, 2022. Halvorsen was a lieutenant flying supplies into the Soviet-blockaded, Western-controlled sectors of Berlin when he conceived a plan to drop candy to German youngsters from his C-54 cargo plane. For his compassion “Uncle Wiggly Wings,” as the children called him, received a Congressional Gold Medal and a German Order of Merit among other awards. Visit Historynet.com to read an interview with Halvorsen.

‘Coast Guard Lady’ Lois Bouton Lois Bouton, 102, known affectionately as

the “Coast Guard Lady” for having penned an estimated 100,000 cards and letters of encouragement to “Coasties” worldwide, died in Rogers, Ark., on Jan. 29, 2022.

Bouton served as a Coast Guard radio technician in World War II and married a fellow radioman. She began her letter-writing campaign after retiring in the 1970s.

Commando John Singlaub Retired U.S. Army Maj. Gen. John K. Singlaub, 100, one of the first American commandos and a forefather of the present-day Green Berets, died in Franklin, Tenn., on Jan. 29, 2022. Singlaub led covert missions in World War II, Korea and Vietnam, and commanded the famed Military Assistance Command, Vietnam–Studies and Observations Group (MACV-SOG) from 1966 to ’68.

TOP: PICTORIAL PRESS LTD (ALAMY STOCK PHOTO); LEFT: NATIONAL ARCHIVES

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5/29/22 2:54 PM

Interview A New Captain on Deck

By Dave Kindy

Cmdr. Billie Farrell For the first time in the 224 years since its maiden voyage the heavy frigate USS Constitution [ussconstitutionmuseum.org] has a female captain.

Cmdr. Billie J. Farrell took the helm of the world’s oldest commissioned warship still afloat during a change-of-command ceremony in Boston Harbor in January 2022. Among other assignments, the 2004 U.S. Naval Academy graduate previously served as the combat systems officer on USS San Jacinto (CG 56) and the executive officer aboard USS Vicksburg (CG 69), both guided missile cruisers. The mother of two young children, she is married to a fellow Navy officer, Cmdr. Paul Farrell.

Military History caught up with the new skipper of “Old Ironsides”(see related story, P. 22) to get her thoughts about serving on such a historic ship.

You served on guided missile cruisers. How does this command compare?

It’s a little different [laughs]! Not the same weapons system I’m used to. There are a few things to learn, for sure, especially with 224 years of history. The foundations are actually pretty much the same: The hard work, dedication, drills, things sailors had to do 224 years ago, we still have to do in today’s Navy. Constitution was undefeated in battle; she was 33 and 0. Part of the reason she was so successful was the drills the captains had the crews do. They ran gun drills more than their adversaries and were able to cut the time it took to get rounds downrange.

We rely on the same skill sets today— attention to detail and staying proficient.

It is a nice reminder of where we were, where we are and where we’re going. This is where the Navy started. This ship’s mission is still a mission we have today: protection and freedom of the seas.

How did you prepare for this two-year assignment?

It is definitely different. Part of our mission is to preserve, promote and protect the legacy of Constitution. A large part of what we do is focused on the history and telling that story. But we’re also part of the Navy. Half of our crew are first-term sailors. When they leave here, they’re going to do the jobs they were assigned in their rates, so we have to make sure they’re ready to do that as well. We have to balance the challenges of 224 years ago with the challenges of 2022. We do sail training on certain days, so we can do our “underways” effectively and safely. But then we have to do, say, cyber awareness training, because that’s something the Navy says we need to do and to stay proficient in.

Constitution’s first captain was Samuel Nicholson (1798–99), and you’re the 77th. How does that legacy strike you?

That’s another thing I’m always in awe of. Right outside this bulkhead is the list of all the previous commanding officers.

When you look at those names, there is something to be learned from every one of those individuals—all the way back to Nicholson. It’s a testament to their attention to detail and work ethics and the lessons they drove into their crews that

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LANE TURNER/BOSTON GLOBE (GETTY IMAGES)

It’s amazing. It’s just a great opportunity to be here and be in this position. Women have been serving as commanders of combatants for the Navy since 1998.

While it’s unique for this ship, it is not unique for the surface Navy. And so I get to be the representative to highlight the fact that we have women in command of ships all across the world right now. Capt.

Amy Bauernschmidt of USS Abraham Lincoln is the first woman in command of an aircraft carrier on deployment.

More than 70,000 women serve in the Navy today. This provides a great platform to showcase the amazing things they’re doing across the world.

A lot of my job relies on the day-today operations of the ship here and then engagement with the community. I make it a point to come on the ship at least once a day, especially if I see a large tour group.

I like to come over and say hello wearing my 1812 uniform. The boots are very slick, though. They don’t have any tread on them, so I have to be careful.

RANDY GLASS STUDIO

How does it feel to be the first woman to command Constitution?

made them successful. And that’s the skill set we still rely on heavily today.

LANE TURNER/BOSTON GLOBE (GETTY IMAGES)

RANDY GLASS STUDIO

What is it like learning the ropes on a ship like this?

It’s all an internal program. The Navy doesn’t have any schools to teach you how to sail a square-rigged ship anymore. I love explaining to guests that this is where the phrase “learning the ropes” comes from—the rigging of a sailing ship. We have programs to train our sailors to do the things they need to do to be safe and effective. For me, I think the last time I sailed on a ship like this was at the Naval Academy during “Fleet Summer.” We trained on 44-foot sailboats. Still slightly different than this ship, but it definitely gave me an appreciation, even in that scale, for how much work it entails to actually sail a vessel.

We do sail training year-round, even in winter. We do lectures. We have a mock-up room in one of the buildings so sailors can practice climbing the rigging. Then we do the things that any other Navy ship would do when it goes

out. We check the tides, currents and weather. We do our briefs with communications and talk to the pilots. We have to do all the same things a modern Navy ship does.

Are there any 21st-century conveniences or technologies aboard Constitution?

No. This is an 18th-century sailing vessel.

No motor, no modern communication system, no radar. We go out under total sail power. We do have electricity and some damage control. Otherwise, she’s true to what she would have been back in the day. We don’t even have heat, so it gets very cold on the ship in the winter. I’m planning to spend a few nights in the captain’s quarters, but only when it’s warm.

We sail seven times a year on different cruises, usually to honor certain groups. We have a good partnership with Vietnam veterans, and we take them out once a year. July 4 is the big one—when we turn the ship around so it wears evenly at the dock—and that’s open for a public

Commander Farrell is proud to represent USS Constitution and often greets visitors clad in her replica 1812 uniform, hat and epaulets.

lottery. We’ve been encouraging people to sign up for the once-in-a-lifetime chance to get underway with us by visiting our social media pages. We usually take out 150 people, though last year we only did 25 because of COVID-19 restrictions.

Do you adhere to any particular ceremonial duties?

We do colors twice a day—at 8 a.m. and sunset. Every morning and evening we do the flag and fire the gun. You can set your watch by it. We also do the standard 12 o’clock reports, which is something we still do on all Navy ships. It’s rooted in tradition. Every day a sailor tells me they have the daily reports ready and requests permission to strike eight bells.

The Navy has done a great job maintaining these traditions. It’s so hard sometimes for organizations to hold on to that, and we have managed to do it. Even with the 1812 uniforms and today’s service

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dress blues, you can see the similarity between them. We still wear the Navy blue jacket with the white shirt, black neck tab and gold buttons.

We still do captain’s mast, which comes from “laying before the mast” for judgement from the captain. Most ships don’t have masts anymore, but we use phrases that are tied to our past.

Do you have a favorite story about Constitution?

The August 1812 battle with HMS Guerrière is the most iconic. It’s the one everybody knows, but that’s for a reason. The ship’s nickname, “Old Ironsides,” came from that battle. They [the crew] saw the enemy cannonballs bouncing off the ship’s sides, and the name stuck. It’s an amazing story of perseverance, dedication and winning.

What prompted you to join the Navy?

I saw a Naval Academy graduation on TV when I was in sixth grade. I immediately went to my parents and said, “That’s where I’m going to go to school,” which made my dad very excited. At the time, my mom said, “You can’t do that— they don’t let women go there,” which wasn’t true but that’s what she thought then. I had completely forgotten that

story until she reminded me about it recently. She didn’t know the first female class graduated in 1980. In her mind that was just something her baby girl was not going to be doing.

I decided that’s what I wanted. It would be a great education and a great chance to serve my country. I had a high school physics teacher who was a retired Navy captain. He took me under his wing and helped me through the application process. I also had a neighbor who was a retired Navy captain who liked to sit around and tell sea stories, which made me want to do it even more.

Tell us about your first visit to Constitution, when you were in high school.

It was a family vacation, a very long road trip. We actually went to the Naval Academy earlier in the trip so I could look at the campus. There’s a picture of me standing next to the ship wearing a Navy hat, because we had just come from Annapolis. As fate would have it, we stopped here and snapped that picture. The first thing I did when I found out I was selected for this assignment was to go back to the photo album and find it.

At the time did you wonder what it might be like to

command Constitution?

No, not at all. I remember just being in awe of the ship. The second you walk onboard “Old Ironsides” you feel the history. She’s beautiful. You feel the presence of all those people who have served here and gave their lives on these decks.

There’s no way I could have predicted that 24 years later I would be in command of this ship. And I’m very privileged to be able to do so.

Do you have any plans during your time in command?

The ship turns 225 this year, so my focus right now is making that the best celebration we can. We’re doing outreach programs so the public will come and visit the ship. We’re pushing that more this year to reach a bigger audience because of the anniversary. We are America’s ship, homeported here in Boston.

We are open for the entire country to visit and excited to host anybody who wants to come see us.

What are you most looking forward to as commander?

I’m looking forward to all of it. I want to share my love of the Navy and this ship with the public and the crew. Our 80 active-duty sailors are phenomenal.

They come here on special-duty orders.

They’re handpicked because they want to be here and want to tell the story of the ship. To get to work with them is just an awesome opportunity. MH

LEFT: NAVAL HISTORY AND HERITAGE COMMAND; RIGHT: DAVID L. RYAN/BOSTON GLOBE (GETTY IMAGES)

On Aug. 19, 1812, two months after the United States declared war on Britain, Constitution (above, at right) engaged HMS Guerrière off Nova Scotia, dismasting and sinking its smaller opponent. Today the only broadsides fired by Constitution (right) are ceremonial in nature.

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Valor Arctic Survivor

In late March 1943 25-year-old Norwegian commando Jan Baalsrud, three other Special Operations Executive officers and a crew of eight sailed northeast from the Shetland Islands aboard the fishing boat Brattholm. The four-man team was to recruit resistance members in far northern Norway with an eye toward sabotaging enemy installations. Their jumping-off point was an island north of Tromsö, Norway, 270 miles above the Arctic Circle.

The mission soon went awry when Baalsrud and companions revealed themselves to a shopkeeper they mistakenly believed to be their contact. Fearing he was being tested by the Germans, the man alerted authorities to the team’s presence.

The commandos returned to Brattholm, but on March 30 a German warship discovered the boat. After lighting a time-delay fuze to destroy their cache of explosives, the team and crew made for shore in dinghies. The detonation completely destroyed Brattholm, but in a subsequent firefight the Germans killed one of the team and captured everyone else—except Baalsrud. Having swum ashore, the young Norwegian killed a German officer and wounded a soldier while making good his escape.

That evening Baalsrud, soaked to the skin and having lost a boot, chanced upon two teenage cousins out for a walk. The girls took him home, where relatives provided food, dry clothes and replacement boots. The eldest boy then rowed Baalsrud to Ringvassoya Island, hoping the husband of the local midwife could transport the commando to the mainland. The man had left hours earlier, so Baalsrud kept on the move, traveling at night and sheltering by day with fellow Norwegians willing to help him.

One sympathetic fisherman rowed him to the mainland and gave him a pair of skis.

Baalsrud was soon caught in an avalanche that broke one ski and swept away the other with his food satchel. Four days later he stumbled into the farmhouse of a family with resistance ties. Snow-blind and starving, he looked more dead than alive.

On April 12 his rescuers took the helpless Baalsrud east by boat across Lyngenfjord to a crude, remote hut the grateful commando nicknamed the “Hotel Savoy.”

2nd Lt. Jan Baalsrud Special Operations Executive St. Olaf’s Medal with Oak Branch Norway 1941–45

Despite his bravado, he was suffering terrible pain in his legs, and his toes had turned blackish gray with gangrene.

Realizing the infection would spread, he used his sheath knife to cut off one of his big toes and part of another toe.

On the night of April 24 resistance members took Baalsrud by sled into the Revdal Mountains to meet a group from nearby Manndalen that would spirit him into Sweden, but their contacts weren’t waiting at the rendezvous point. Confident they were en route, the team left Baalsrud on his sled tucked snugly beneath a rocky overhang. It was a fortunate choice of shelter, as four days passed before resistance members could make it back up to the commando’s hiding place.

After ensuring he was alive, they sent a message to Manndalen: “The fish yarn is completed and ready to be picked up.”

On May 11 the Manndalen team carried Baalsrud to lower ground and hid him in another cave. He remained there 17 days, during which he removed six more of his gangrenous toes and amputated a seventh to the middle joint.

Finally, two Sámi (Lapp) brothers volunteered to take Baalsrud into Sweden. They carried him on a pulk—a sled without runners—drawn by reindeer.

A German patrol fired on the trio as they crossed the Swedish border.

Arriving in a Swedish hospital after 63 days in occupied Norway, Baalsrud was asked who had amputated his toes. The physician was stunned when the young man responded he had done it himself.

There Baalsrud learned his team members had been tortured and executed.

Following Norway’s liberation Baalsrud was awarded the St. Olaf ’s Medal with Oak Branch for his wartime service. “I am not the hero,” he insisted until his death at age 71 on Dec. 30, 1988.

“The people in [the region of] Troms are.”

Every July locals still gather for a 125mile commemorative march along Baalsrud’s wartime escape route. MH

STIFTELSEN JAN BALLSRUD, FURUFLATEN; INSET: ARMÉMUSEUM, STOCKHOLM

By David Saunders

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What We Learned From...

Brunanburh, 937

By William John Shepherd

T

he 1066 Battle of Hastings is the most famous engagement in British medieval history, as it raised the edifice of Norman England from the remains of the Anglo-Saxon state. The latter had been decisively defined, along with the subordinate status of Scotland and Wales, in the long lost to history 937 Battle of Brunanburh.

Britain in the early 10th century was divided and ruled by many kings and lesser factions battling for power. Almost relegated to mythical status, Brunanburh is re-emerging through the groundbreaking research of American historian Michael Livingston, supported by the local Wirral Archaeology group, to verify the battle’s location at Bromborough, north of Chester, where volunteers have unearthed more than 4,000 objects dating from before 950. Referred to in the near contemporary Anglo-Saxon Chronicle as a “never greater slaughter” in the British Isles, this rediscovered battle offers many lessons for the 21st century world.

In Britain’s far north the Celts were divided into the kingdoms of Alba (mainly in Scotland), led by Constantine II, and Strathclyde (southwest Scotland, Cumbria and parts of Wales), ruled by Owain ap Dyfnwal. Northern England was ruled by Viking earls, who also ruled much of Ireland under King Olaf Guthfrithson of Dublin. The Anglo-Saxons controlled most of central and southern England under King Athelstan of Wessex, with several subkingdoms, Mercia in particular, under his control but not yet formally united. Since the late 8th century invading Vikings had encroached southward into Anglo-Saxon territory as the latter consolidated their lands in the south while pushing the Celts farther westward. The situation came to a head in 927 when Athelstan mounted a pre-emptive strike against Jorvik, the Scandinavian kingdom of York. Athelstan’s resulting victory caused great concern to Constantine, who feared the waxing power of the Anglo-Saxons would flood both Celtic and Viking territory. The aging king made frantic diplomatic overtures to his Norse neighbors. This may have included marrying off a daughter to Olaf of Dublin,

Lessons: Good intel is essential. Awareness of

the coming attack by the Celtic-Norse alliance enabled Athelstan to adequately prepare his defenses at Brunanburh.

Hit the right target. By sailing around the south coast of England and directly assaulting Athelstan’s power base in Wessex, the Celts and Norse might well have convinced the Celts of south Wales and Cornwall to join the fight.

Consider all proposals. A wedding of Constantine’s daughter and Athelstan might have prevented bloodshed and allowed the unification of Britain as a joint Celtic and Anglo-Saxon state. MH

STAPLETON COLLECTION (BRIDGEMAN IMAGES)

The late 9th century Anglo-Saxon Chronicle describes the Battle of Brunanburh as a “never greater slaughter.”

thus allying with the Norse of both Ireland and Northumbria, as well as with the Celtic Owain of Strathclyde, in an attempt to strike down Athelstan.

In 937 the three leaders assembled an army of about 10,000 men, some marching down the northwest coast of England, others arriving from Ireland and the western and northern Scottish isles.

Athelstan gathered his own army, also of some 10,000 men, and the forces met for the battle that determined the development of England for the next millennium.

The fight took place at Brunanburh, probably present-day Bromborough. The Celtic-Norse army likely built timberfortified trenches, though Athelstan’s men quickly breached them. It remains debatable if it marked the first instance of a British army using cavalry in battle. The Anglo-Saxon victory secured the northern borders of England and contained the Celts to the west. Most important, Athelstan—known since as “the Glorious”— confirmed the unification of Wessex and Mercia, creating the unified kingdom of England that has remained dominant over its historically Celtic neighbors.

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TODAY IN HISTORY JANUARY 16, 2001 THEODORE ROOSEVELT BECAME THE ONLY U.S. PRESIDENT EVER TO RECEIVE THE MEDAL OF HONOR. PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON AWARDED THE MEDAL TO ROOSEVELT POSTHUMOUSLY FOR HIS SAN JUAN HILL BATTLE HEROICS. THEODORE ROOSEVELT JR. ALSO RECEIVED THE MEDAL OF HONOR AS THE OLDEST MAN AND ONLY GENERAL TO BE AMONG THE FIRST WAVE OF TROOPS THAT STORMED NORMANDY’S UTAH BEACH. For more, visit HISTORYNET.COM/ TODAY-IN-HISTORY

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Hardware USS Constitution

By Jon Guttman Illustration by Tony Bryan Specifications:

Length: 304 feet (bowsprit to spanker) Beam: 43 feet 6 inches Height: 220 feet (mainmast) Draft: 23 feet (aft) Tonnage: 1,576 tons Displacement: 2,200 tons Sail plan: 42,710 square feet Speed: 13 knots (15 mph) Original complement: 450 (including 55 Marines and 30 boys) Original armament: Thirty 24-pounder long guns, twenty 32-pounder carronades and two 24-pounder bow chasers Maximum range: 1,500 yards

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3 2-pounder carronades (20 on spar deck) 28-foot whaleboats (three) Spencer boom Spencer mast Mizzenmast Wheel 24-pounder guns (15 on each side) Mainmast Main hatch and boat skids Spar deck beams 36-foot pinnace 24-pounder bow chaser

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Charley Noble (galley smokestack) Foremast Bowsprit Lower studding sail boom (port and starboard) 17. Sick bay 18. Main hold 19. A mmo-passing scuttles (six on deck) 20. Purser’s issuing room 21. Gun deck 8 22. Officer’s quarters 23. Wardroom

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fter nearly a decade with no national maritime force, a reluctant Congress in March 1794 authorized the construction of six armed frigates as the nucleus of a new U.S. Navy. Designed under the direction of Joshua Humphries, an experienced shipwright from Philadelphia, the vessels were each built in a different seaport. The three smallest were Chesapeake (36 guns; built in Norfolk, Va.), Congress (38 guns, built in Portsmouth, N.H.) and Constellation (38 guns; built in Baltimore). Humphries’ masterpieces, however, were the three larger frigates—President (built in New York), United States (built in Philadelphia) and Constitution (built in Boston).

Each displaced 2,200 tons and mounted a formidable 44 guns (often increased to 50), designed to counter the great naval powers with warships that could outrun whatever they couldn’t outgun and outgun anything they could not outrun. Laid down in Edmund Hartt’s shipyard on Nov. 1, 1794, Constitution was launched on Oct. 21, 1797, and logged its maiden voyage on July 22, 1798.

Initially dismissed abroad as oversized freaks, the three large American frigates enjoyed a measure of success, setting a standard for the next generation of sailing frigates after 1815. Constitution proved the standout. It was aboard Constitution in 1805 that representatives of the United States and Tripoli signed the treaty ending the First Barbary War. During the War of 1812 Constitution sank the British frigates Guerrière and Java and captured the light frigate Cyane, the sixth rate Levant and the schooner Pictou. Its final capture was the American illegal slave ship Gambril in 1853. From 1860 to ’71 Constitution served as a training ship for the U.S. Naval Academy. Restored in 1877, 1907, 1931, 1976 and 1995, Constitution—the world’s oldest commissioned warship still afloat—operates as a museum ship [ussconstitutionmuseum.org] at Boston’s historic Charlestown Navy Yard. MH

FROM AMERICAN HEAVY FRIGATES, 1794–1826 (NEW VANGUARD NO. 79) BY MARK LARDAS (OSPREY PUBLISHING, BLOOMSBURY PRESS PUBLISHING)

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POKING THE BEAR Pinned between the Caucasus mountains and Mother Russia, Chechnya has a long history of rebelling against its imperial overlord

By Ron Soodalter

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In a scene that looks decidedly current, Chechen fighters use a Russian-made Lada Niva wagon to roll through the devastated streets of Grozny in 1996.

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Chechen fighters wore strips of green fabric around their heads, hats and helmets to symbolize Islam and a declared global jihad.

Caucasus, the roughly 700-mile mountain range that stretches east to west from the Caspian Sea to the Black Sea, forming a natural frontier between Europe and Asia. It is hemmed in by Georgia to the south, Russia to the north and the fellow Russian republics of Dagestan and Ingushetia to the east and west, respectively. Its population comprises largely ethnic Chechens, as well as Russians, Ingush and other ethnic groups.

Islam is the predominant religion, while most Russians practice Orthodox Christianity.

The clan-based Chechens—or Nokhchiy, as they refer to themselves—are among the oldest indigenous ethnic groups in the region.

The 1994 Russian invasion of Chechnya was nothing new. In his comprehensive volume Russia Confronts Chechnya historian Referred to in English as the VDV—the transJohn B. Dunlop traces the history of Russoliteration of its Russian Chechen hostilities to Peter the Great’s 1722 designation—the airborne incursion into the Caucasus. Six decades component of Moscow’s later Chechens staged an unsuccessful revolt military fought in both against the forces of Catherine the Great. the First and Second Chechen wars. During Annexed in the 1870s after a bitter, decadesthe 1994–96 conflict it long resistance, Chechnya failed repeatedly in suffered high casualties its attempts to regain its sovereignty in the amid urban fighting. years following the dissolution of the Russian empire. By then Chechen hatred for Russia had long been ingrained in its populace, and things would only get worse.

In 1944, eight years after the Soviet government arbitrarily merged Chechnya and Ingushetia into the ChechenoIngush Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, Joseph Stalin falsely accused the Chechens and Ingush of being in collu-

VDV Patch

After the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union the rebranded Russian Federation was much depleted, both economically and militarily. Though newly elected President Boris Yeltsin worked feverishly to curb any nationalistic aspirations among Russia’s federal subjects, by year’s end Ukraine, Georgia, Belarus, Moldova, Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan and Armenia would all declare their independence. Yeltsin feared others might follow suit.

Chechnya did precisely that. On September 6 Chechen militants led by charismatic former Soviet air force general Dzhokhar Dudayev staged a coup, ousting the Sovietaligned Checheno-Ingush government, declaring the independence of a Chechen republic and calling for free elections. Dudayev was handily elected president, and the newly sovereign nation named itself the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria (the traditional Turkic name for the region). Unsurprisingly, Yeltsin dismissed the election results, declared a state of emergency and sent a regiment-sized paramilitary force to Grozny, the Chechen capital. Surrounded by a superior force of Chechens, the Russians returned home.

In March 1992 Yeltsin presented a Treaty of Federation to the region’s 20 ethnic republics. Eighteen signed. Chechnya refused, reaffirming its status as an independent state, and creating a new flag and national anthem. Things did not go well, however, for between 1991 and ’94 Chechnya erupted internally in what amounted to an undeclared civil war. Organized crime flourished, and violent confronta-

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ALBUM (ALAMY STOCK PHOTO)

Chechnya sits on the northern flank of the Greater

sion with the Nazis. In fact, by that late stage of World War II tens of thousands of Chechens and Ingush were fighting in the Red Army against the Germans. Nonetheless, Stalin ordered the forced removal of both ethnic populations from their ancestral homeland to Central Asia.

Dubbed Operation Lentil, the mass deportation began on February 23. Nearly a half million Chechen men, women and children—and some 90,000 Ingush—were crammed into freight cars and shipped up to 2,000 miles east. Scores died en route, the trains stopping only occasionally to allow hasty burials in the snow. While Russian sources estimate up to one-third of the deportees died during the subsequent 13 years of exile, Chechen sources claim closer to half of them perished from illness, starvation, exposure and other causes. Not until 1957, five years after Stalin’s death, did the Soviets allow them to return home. Exactly 60 years after the diaspora the European Parliament labelled the mass deportation an act of genocide.

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he 20th century witnessed assorted struggles against imperialism worldwide. Perhaps no latter-day war of independence, however, was fraught with as much bitterness, desperation and resolve as that of Chechnya in its David and Goliath struggle against Russia.

Russia painted the 1994–96 First Chechen War as essentially a Christian vs. Muslim conflict. However, the war was—at least at its outset— a fight for survival and self-determination. Pitted against superior numbers, ordnance and airpower, Chechnya fought a bloody two-year guerrilla war and emerged as the autonomous Chechen Republic of Ichkeria. From then on autonomy was its to lose.

ALBUM (ALAMY STOCK PHOTO)

PREVIOUS SPREAD: ERIC BOUVET/GAMMA-RAPHO (GETTY IMAGES); THIS PAGE, TOP: JON C. BOCK; LEFT: MIL.RU, CC BY-SA 4.0

The wars of the 1990s were not Chechnya’s first attempt to throw off the Russian yoke.

After Peter the Great’s 1722 incursion into the Caucasus the Chechens staged a number of unsuccessful revolts. Here Imam Shamil surrenders to imperial officers in 1859.

tions broke out between Chechens and non-Chechens (mainly ethnic Russians), and between pro- and antiDudayev factions. Tens of thousands of non-Chechens fled the country, while the largely northern-based opposition formed its own coalition and militarized. After two failed attempts to violently remove him from power, Dudayev suspended Parliament and declared one-man rule.

The goal of those opposing Dudayev was to restructure the government into a provisional council, and they sought help from Moscow. That was just the opening Yeltsin needed.

When the opposition mobilized against Dudayev in August 1994, Yeltsin secretly supplied them with arms, troops and funds. He also directed unmarked Russian planes to bomb Grozny. Emboldened by Russian support, the opposition twice attacked the city and was twice repelled.

In the process Dudayev’s national guard forces captured several dozen Russian soldiers, civilian combatants and agents and paraded them before television cameras.

With Russia openly involved, Yeltsin issued an ultimatum in late November, ordering all warring factions to disarm and surrender. Dudayev refused, and Russia immediately resumed the heavy bombing of Grozny and various Chechen

military targets. On December 6 Dudayev and Russian Defense Minister Pavel Grachev announced their agreement to mutually stand down. Assurances notwithstanding, five days later some 40,000 Russian troops invaded Chechnya, supported by tanks, jets and helicopter gunships.

In September 1991 Chechen militants staged a coup and declared independence Yeltsin’s professed justification for the invasion was to “disarm illegal armed formations” in order to “establish constitutional order in Chechnya and to preserve the territorial integrity of Russia.” Grachev was less eloquent, brusquely announcing that a single Russian airborne regiment would defeat Dudayev within hours. It would be, he stated, “a bloodless blitzkrieg that would last no longer than December 20.”

Grachev would be proven wrong on all counts. The Russian incursion would unite a seemingly impossibly divided coun-

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Above middle: Clad in snow camouflage, Chechens sprint between buildings in Grozny in January 1995 while under fire by a Russian sniper. Above: Russian troops shelter behind a mine-clearing tank.

try in a war that would grind on for the next 21 months, leave a trail of devastation and take a stunning toll of civilian lives.

On Dec. 11, 1994, Yeltsin set in motion a three-pronged attack on Grozny. The invasion suffered a temporary setback when high-ranking members of both the Russian military and the government—including the deputy commander of Russian ground forces, Yeltsin’s adviser on ethnic affairs and the deputy minister of defense—resigned in protest.

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Dzhokhar Dudayev

Dudayev would quickly capitulate were soon dashed, largely due to issues within the invasion force itself, which Russian security affairs expert Mark Galeotti described as a “war machine whose gears were rusty, whose levers were broken and whose fuel was sorely lacking.” Progress was slow. From the beginning, morale among the Russian troops, many of them green recruits, was low. Entire units, all of which were understrength, ignored orders to advance and in some instances sabotaged their own equipment.

More than 800 soldiers and officers refused to participate, 83 of whom were convicted in subsequent courts-martial.

The rest were discharged. One of Russia’s highest ranking military officers, Lt. Gen. Lev Rokhlin, would later refuse the decoration and title of Hero of the Russian Federation for his role in the conflict.

As mobile units of Chechen fighters hindered the enemy incursion, Russian tactics expanded to include indiscriminate carpet-bombing and rocket and artillery barrages that killed countless civilians. After seizing the airfield outside Grozny on December 29, the Russians staged a New Year’s Eve attack on the city itself, as Chechens worked feverishly to prepare bunkers and establish fighting positions. In the subsequent weekslong battle Russian shelling killed thousands of noncombatants, most of whom, ironically, were ethnic Russians. According to author and Islamic history professor Bryan Glyn Williams, it was the heaviest bombardment campaign in Europe since the destruction of Dresden a half century earlier, though Russia would rain similar destruction from the air during its 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

In addition to thousands of ground troops, the combined attack on Grozny involved air strikes, armored thrusts and artillery barrages. The Russian commanders had not reckoned on the fierce street-by-street resistance of the Chechens, who initially drove enemy troops out of the city center at a tremendous cost in both men and materiel. British journalist Anatol Lieven reported, “Russian troops, when confronted with heavily armed and determined Chechens, have simply stood aside—something I saw with my own eyes.” Upward of 1,000 Russian soldiers died in the initial New Year’s Eve assault alone, while hundreds more were killed, wounded or captured over the following two days and nights.

Finally, on Jan. 18, 1995, despite sustaining heavy casualties, the Russians captured the bombed-out ruins that had been the presidential palace and announced control of the city. The fighting elsewhere in Grozny, however, continued into early March before the outnumbered and outgunned Chechen fighters withdrew. During those five weeks between 25,000 and 30,000 civilians perished, an estimated 5,000 of them children.

By then Russians had expressed increasing disapproval of the war, with as prominent a figure as former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev labeling the invasion “a disgraceful bloody adventure.” Other world leaders concurred, German Chancellor Helmut Kohl deeming it “sheer madness.”

TOP LEFT AND BOTTOM: GEORGES DE KEERLE (GETTY IMAGES, 2); RIGHT: CHUCK NACKE (ALAMY STOCK PHOTO); MIDDLE: ALEXANDER NEMENOV/AFP (GETTY)

Boris Yeltsin

IVAN SHLAMOV/AFP (GETTY IMAGES)

TOP LEFT AND BOTTOM: GEORGES DE KEERLE (GETTY IMAGES, 2); RIGHT: CHUCK NACKE (ALAMY STOCK PHOTO); MIDDLE: ALEXANDER NEMENOV/AFP (GETTY)

A Russian unit’s lead T-72 tanks—one mounted with a mine-clearing system— pause during the initial advance on the Chechen capital in December 1994.

Meanwhile, Russian forces expanded south to attack cities and villages deep in Chechnya’s mountain region.

The number of civilian casualties climbed, and allegations of outrages perpetrated against noncombatants leaked out, with accounts of looting, rape, torture and mass murder attributed to Russian ground troops. Soldiers prevented citizens from fleeing war zones and withheld access to humanitarian organizations. Journalists were harassed, and nearly two dozen were killed during the conflict. In early April Russian troops, reportedly under the influence of alcohol and/or drugs, slaughtered more than 100 citizens without provocation in the town of Samashki. Such acts, while both horrific and predictive of future Russian behavior, galvanized Chechen resistance.

Not that Chechen fighters were averse to equally brutal tactics. Chechen fighters later acknowledged the summary executions of captured Russian pilots and the kidnappings and arbitrary killings of civilian hostages and suspected collaborators throughout the war.

Almost from the beginning the Chechens were fighting largely as an unconventional force. Although a number of Dudayev’s military commanders had fought in Afghanistan, Abkhazia and Azerbaijan, as the war progressed more and more volunteer militia and guerrilla units formed, peopled in part by women and even child soldiers. Thousands of largely Muslim foreign volunteers—including Caucasians, Dagestanis, Georgians, Ingush, Arabs, Turks and Ukrainians—provided further military assistance. In separate incidents intended to publicize the crisis, Chechen sympathizers

commandeered a Turkish ferry carrying more than 100 Russian passengers and hijacked a Cypriot passenger jet. Although no one was killed, both events made international headlines.

By mid-June 1995, as Russia’s incursions

First Chechen War DEC. 11, 1994–AUG. 31, 1996

6,700

CHECHEN FORCES

into the southern mountain strongholds continued to take an awful toll, Chechen tactics and objectives underwent a radical change.

KILLED OR MISSING Influential members of the Chechen military command began to frame the struggle more as an Islamic religious conflict than one bent on RUSSIAN FORCES national independence. Prominent Chechen separatist and avowed terrorist Shamil Basayev, whose wife, child and other family members KILLED OR MISSING had recently been killed in a Russian air raid, PLUS: 52,000 WOUNDED called for global jihad (Islamic holy war), while fellow commander and al-Qaida field officer Ibn al-Khattab pursued a close relationship with Osama bin Laden. Other Chechens were undergoing military training at bin Laden’s camps in Afghanistan. Their focus was on establishing what researcher Gordon M. Hahn, an expert on global jihad, refers to as “an expansive Southern Eurasian caliphate.”

The Russian propaganda mill took full advantage of the Chechens’ turn toward religion as their prime motivation, stressing its nation’s mission to neutralize the enemy threat to Christianity. Each side effectively demonized the other, using as their rationale the centuries-old conflict between practitioners of two irreconcilable faiths.

17,391

94,300 5,732

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1994–95 First Chechen War

E

nmity between Chechnya and Russia stretches back to 18th century incursions by successive Russian rulers. Annexed by imperial Russia in the 1870s, Chechnya for decades struggled in vain to regain its sovereignty. The 1991 dissolution of the Soviet Union prompted a resurgence of national pride among Russia’s federal subjects, many of which declared independence. That fall Chechnya followed suit, staging a coup, holding elections and declaring itself the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria (the Turkic name for the region).

But the nascent republic soon devolved into ethnic and political infighting. In the summer of 1994, after Chechen President Dzhokhar Dudayev imposed authoritarian rule, his opponents sought the financial and military backing of their great northern neighbor to overthrow him.

That November Russian President Boris Yeltsin ordered all factions to disarm and surrender. Despite mutual agreements to suspend hostilities, however, Russia launched a full-scale invasion on December 11, sending 40,000 troops across the border, supported by tanks, jets and helicopter gunships. Stretching 21 months, the First Chechen War was marked by extreme violence, terrorism and war crimes, and ended in stalemate. MH

Battles of Grozny

The seesaw struggle for the Chechen capital witnessed some of the more bitter fighting of the war. The initial two-month battle pitted four Russian columns in a street-by-street fight against entrenched defenders. The invaders claimed victory in March 1995, but the combatants waged two more battles for the city, and in August 1996 the Chechens emerged victorious.

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Caught in a Bear Hug

Backed up against the Caucasus Mountains to the south and hemmed in on three sides by Russia and fellow Russian republics, Chechnya has a population comprising largely Islamic ethnic Chechens and a smattering of Orthodox Christian Russians and other ethnic groups. Internal conflict and centuries of Russian expansionism boiled over into two wars in the 1990s.

Russian Intervention

The initial invasion secured control of the capital of Grozny by Jan. 18, 1995.

From there Russian troops drove south into the mountain region. However, Moscow soon found its troops bogged down in guerrilla warfare, its citizens plagued by terrorism on the home front. While Chechnya won this round, Russia returned in 1999 and brought the region back under its dominion.

MAP BY GENE THORP (CARTOGRAPHIC CONCEPTS, INC.) DATA SOURCES: OPEN STREET MAP, NATURAL EARTH, LSIB

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Second Chechen War

30,000 16,299

80,000 7,476

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TOP: REUTERS (ALAMY STOCK PHOTO); ABOVE: ALEXEY NIKOLSKY/RIA NOVOSTI/AFP (GETTY IMAGES)

As part of their new strategy Chechens engaged in hostage-taking. On June 14 trucks carrying some 200 heavily armed separatists led by Basayev crossed into Russia and traveled 85 miles to the city of Budyonnovsk. There they seized several public buildings, took upward of 1,500 hostages (including some 150 children) and holed up in the city’s largest hospital, en route shooting dozens of civilians who refused to cooperate. Basayev demanded a cease-fire in Chechnya MAJOR COMBAT PHASE: AUG. 7, 1999–APRIL 30, 2000 and the initiation of peace negotiations. Three days into the siege Russian special forces made several unsuccessful attempts to storm the hosCHECHEN FORCES pital, leaving scores of hostages dead.

On June 18 Basayev, in discussions with Russian Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin that KILLED were broadcast live on Russian television, nego14,113 KILLED 1999–2002; tiated the release of the remaining hostages in 2,186 KILLED 2003–09 exchange for a cessation of bombings and combat operations, the appointment of a delegation RUSSIAN FORCES to negotiate peace terms, and his and his men’s safe conduct back to Chechnya. The prime minister agreed, and Basayev returned home a national hero. Incredibly, despite the deaths of KILLED upward of 130 Russian civilians and wounding of several hundred others, the attack did in fact bring about a brief cease-fire. The Budyonnovsk hostage crisis marked what analyst Dianne L. Sumner called “the beginning of a successful campaign of terrorism by Chechen combatants that had a decisive impact on the outcome of the war.”

By then both Russians and Chechens were engaging in what the world perceived as terrorist acts. The internationally accepted rules of war no longer applied, and—as in all wars—it was the civilian population that suffered most.

It was not unusual for the often-grisly events of the day to appear on the world’s evening news programs. Television played a major role in the conflict, not only in raising global awareness of what was occurring in Chechnya, but also in bringing about the ultimate cessation of hostilities. Daily broadcasts brought uncensored images of the carnage into Russian homes, increasing opposition to the war and causing Yeltsin’s popularity to plummet. Many who had initially supported the invasion saw it as a no-win situation. Meanwhile, the unprecedented devastation of Chechen cities, towns and villages, and the indiscriminate slaughter of civilians, had succeeded in driving an increasing number of Chechen oppositionists into Dudayev’s camp.

Yeltsin remained concerned that peace without victory in Chechnya would send the wrong message to the federation, inspiring other member countries to secede. He continued his offensive, but it went badly. On March 6, 1996, 2,000 Chechens staged a three-day raid against Russian-occupied Grozny, seizing munitions and supplies. Elsewhere, they continually attacked Russian troops and armored columns, taking a significant toll in lives and equipment.

On April 21 a Russian guided-missile strike killed Dudayev, but the separatists quickly appointed an acting president, and the Chechen resistance continued. On May 28, in a clearly political ploy, Yeltsin announced a cease-fire and prematurely declared victory, but the Chechens fought on.

On August 6, three days before Yeltsin’s second presidential inauguration, more than 1,500 Chechen fighters staged another surprise attack on Grozny. Despite being outnumbered 8-to-1, the Chechens took back the city within days, killing up to 1,000 Russians and capturing thousands more.

Finally, on August 31 Russian national security adviser Alexander Lebed and Chechen military chief of staff Aslan Maskhadov co-drafted and signed the Khasavyurt Accord, which called for a mutual military withdrawal from Grozny and the withdrawal of all Russian forces in Chechnya by December 31. Representatives of the respective governments

LEFT: GEORGES DE KEERLE (GETTY IMAGES); RIGHT: REUTERS (ALAMY STOCK PHOTO)

Russians aboard a BTR-80 APC patrol Grozny’s ruined landscape in 1995.

Above right: Avowed terrorist Shamil Basayev negotiates with officials in Moscow after having taken hostages at a Russian hospital in June 1995.

Tactical Takeaways

TOP: REUTERS (ALAMY STOCK PHOTO); ABOVE: ALEXEY NIKOLSKY/RIA NOVOSTI/AFP (GETTY IMAGES)

LEFT: GEORGES DE KEERLE (GETTY IMAGES); RIGHT: REUTERS (ALAMY STOCK PHOTO)

Cities devour tanks.

As Russians learned in the First Chechen War, large armored vehicles are sitting ducks within the confines of closequarters urban combat.

Never underestimate.

Determined Chechen resistance foiled Moscow’s plans to subdue the breakaway republic within days.

Arrogance kills.

While Russia ultimately dominated Chechnya, Vladimir Putin forgot the lessons learned there, repeating many of the same mistakes during the bungled 2022 Ukraine invasion.

signed further agreements over the next few months, and at Moscow’s Kremlin on May 12, 1997, Yeltsin and newly elected Chechen President Aslan Maskhadov co-signed a treaty acknowledging Chechen autonomy.

As Russian affairs expert Galeotti noted, “A mix of brilliant guerrilla warfare and ruthless terrorism was able to humble Russia’s decaying remnants of the Soviet war machine.”

Because the Chechens had fought

“as a loose network of cells consisting of clan-based fighters led by semiindependent commanders,” as one group of analysts put it, it is impossible to precisely calculate the number of Chechen fighters killed between December 1994 and late August 1996.

Although Russia claimed to have killed as many as 15,000 Chechen fighters, author Tony Wood, an authority on Chechnya, puts the number at around 4,000.

As for the number of Russian soldiers killed during the two-year invasion, Russia declared that fewer than 4,000 died in the fighting—a figure that cannot be trusted, author Robert Seely insists, because “at no point in the campaign did…[anyone] on the Russian side of the conflict show the slightest respect for accuracy of information.”

Suffering the greatest number of casualties by far were civilians. According to estimates from both sides, anywhere from 50,000 to 100,000 noncombatants died during the fighting, victims of cluster bombs, rocket attacks, indiscriminate bombardment and deliberate acts of savagery. The number of injured may well have reached a quarter million.

Worse was to come. Almost immediately after the fighting ended, Chechnya again descended into internal chaos.

The country was rife with banditry, corruption and crushing unemployment amid power struggles among the many warlords, politicians and religious zealots, with Maskhadov virtually powerless to exert meaningful control. In the fall of 1999 a joint force of Chechen, Arab, Turk and Dagestani Islamic militants led by Basayev and al-Khattab invaded the neighboring Russian republic of Dagestan in support of its Muslim separatists. Once entrenched, noted a study in the Harvard International Review, they “declared a jihadist separatist movement to cleanse the region of ‘unbelievers.’”

Around the same time someone detonated explosives that destroyed apartment blocks in three Russian cities, killing some 300 residents and injuring more than 1,000. Though he lacked proof, then–Prime Minister Vladimir Putin immediately blamed the bombings on Chechen extremists.

Others suggested Putin himself orchestrated the attacks, to

Top: Russian heavy artillery bombards civilian areas in Grozny to break the population’s will to resist. Above: In the wake of the wars Vladimir Putin speaks with Russian-installed Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov.

further justify another invasion of Chechnya and to garner popular support while paving his way to the presidency.

In 1999, using the Dagestan invasion and domestic apartment bombings as a pretext, Russia again invaded Chechnya, and its much better-trained and -equipped forces quickly prevailed. During the course of the combat phase Putin ordered the unrestricted bombardment of Grozny.

It was reduced to what the United Nations described as “the most destroyed city on earth,” and upward of 5,000 civilians were killed. Putin lavished expansive praise on his troops, stating they had “fulfilled their task to the end.”

Since back in Russia’s fold, Chechnya operates under Russian law and is governed by Chechen-born, Putinappointed president, Ramzan Kadyrov. A despot known for widespread human rights violations, he maintains a personal paramilitary bodyguard that numbers in the hundreds.

According to Reuters, in late February 2022 Kadyrov sent them to fight in support of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. MH Ron Soodalter is a frequent contributor to HistoryNet publications. For further reading he recommends Russia Confronts Chechnya: Roots of a Separatist Conflict, by John B. Dunlop; Russia’s Wars in Chechnya, 1994–2009,

by Mark Galeotti; and A Small Corner of Hell: Dispatches from Chechnya, by Anna Politkovskaya.

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Members of the 1st Foreign Cavalry Regiment rehearse for an annual ceremony marking the Battle of Camarón on April 29, 2014, shortly before moving their headquarters from Orange to Carpiagne.

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THE FOREIGN LEGION France’s most celebrated military formation is its most international

By Jon Guttman

A

year after France invaded Algeria in 1830, it created a special army formation to seize and hold its growing empire in Africa. Aside from French officers, its ranks were open to volunteers of any nationality, who could serve France without losing their original citizenship. From the outset these mercenaries proved outstanding soldiers, achieving truly legendary status with their stalwart stand against impossible odds at Camarón, Mexico, on April 30, 1863. The legion soon added other hard-earned battle streamers with iconic names to its regimental standards, such as Tuyên Quang, Indochina (1884–85) and Bir Hakeim, Libya (1942). During World War I the legion fielded thousands of ground troops, and hundreds of its foreign volunteers were permitted to transfer into aviation, including the mostly American escadrille N.124 “Lafayette.”

Foreign Legion loyalties could get politically heated. In World War II legionnaires—some loyal to the Vichy government, others to the Free French exiles under Gen. Charles de Gaulle—sometimes fought each other. When de Gaulle’s postwar government decided to withdraw from Algeria, many legionnaires joined those who rose in opposition. In the wake of the resulting 1961 “Algiers putsch” and various acts of sabotage and assassination, however, de Gaulle remembered the legion’s World War II service and did not completely disband it, instead downsizing it from 40,000 to 8,000 men.

Since then the Foreign Legion has continued to uphold its status as an elite force of troubleshooters, sent wherever French interests require. Although it has had to abandon its original Algerian headquarters for metropolitan France, most of its 21st century exploits still center on Africa, such as Operation Serval in northern Mali in 2013–14. MH

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THE FOREIGN LEGION A

B

D

Building a Legend A Moving from Algerian desert patrols to major combat during the Crimean War, the Foreign Legion participates in the Sept. 8, 1855, Battle of Malakoff, in a painting by Adolphe Yvon. B Captain Jean Danjou commanded the legionnaires to his own death at Camarón on April 30, 1863. C Danjou’s wooden hand, recovered from Camarón, is on display at the Foreign Legion Museum in Aubagne. D This kepi was worn by a Free French legionnaire during World War II. E Lieutenant Colonel Paul-Frédéric Rollet (center) stands with fellow soldiers of the Marching Regiment of the Foreign Legion in 1918. F Free French legionnaires assault an Axis strongpoint near Bir Hakeim, Libya, in June 1942.

PREVIOUS SPREAD: BORIS HORVAT/AFP (GETTY IMAGES); A: CHÂTEAU DE VERSAILLES; B: ROGER-VIOLLET (GRANGER); C: JEAN-PIERRE LAFFONT; D: INTERFOTO (ALAMY STOCK PHOTO); E: PRINT COLLECTOR (GETTY); F: IMPERIAL WAR MUSEUMS

C

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PREVIOUS SPREAD: BORIS HORVAT/AFP (GETTY IMAGES); A: CHÂTEAU DE VERSAILLES; B: ROGER-VIOLLET (GRANGER); C: JEAN-PIERRE LAFFONT; D: INTERFOTO (ALAMY STOCK PHOTO); E: PRINT COLLECTOR (GETTY); F: IMPERIAL WAR MUSEUMS

E

F

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THE FOREIGN LEGION

G

H J

Upholding the Edifice

K

G Back full circle, legionnaires patrol the Sahara Desert in the 1950s against a new enemy—the Algerian National Liberation Front. H Airborne legionnaires arrive to reinforce the base at Dien Bien Phu, French Indochina, in 1953. I An airborne legionnaire participates in the French intervention in Kolwezi, Zaire, in 1978. J Members of the famous 13th Demi-Brigade of the Foreign Legion patrol in Djibouti in December 1983. K The dextrochère (right arm with sword) is the beret pin of the Foreign Legion paratroopers. L New recruits in the 4th Foreign Regiment learn the steps amid 15 weeks of arduous training at Castelnaudary, France. M A sniper of the 2nd Foreign Infantry Regiment takes aim with his GIAT FR F2 rifle in the mountains of Afghanistan in 2005.

G: KEYSTONE-FRANCE (GETTY IMAGES); H: POPPERFOTO (GETTY); I: PETER JORDAN (ALAMY STOCK PHOTO); J: GYSEMBERGH BENOIT (GETTY); K: AFFILIATED AUCTIONS; L: JOSÉ NICOLAS (GETTY); M: DAVRIC, CC BY-SA 3.0

I

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G: KEYSTONE-FRANCE (GETTY IMAGES); H: POPPERFOTO (GETTY); I: PETER JORDAN (ALAMY STOCK PHOTO); J: GYSEMBERGH BENOIT (GETTY); K: AFFILIATED AUCTIONS; L: JOSÉ NICOLAS (GETTY); M: DAVRIC, CC BY-SA 3.0

L

M

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LONGSHANKS’ VAIN VICTORY AT FALKIRK In 1298 England’s King Edward waged a ruthless and successful campaign against rebelling Scots— but it was ultimately all for naught

By John Walker

Edward I was a warrior king in the truest sense, spending much of his 35-year reign in arms, including a decade of campaigning against rebelling Scots in his northern realm.

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Edward’s smile on the face of a circa 1280 English coin belies the ruthless nature for which “Longshanks” became known.

I

n keeping with the medieval tradition of warrior kings leading their armies into battle, King Edward I of England spent most of his long and turbulent reign (1272–1307) in almost constant campaigning, be it in Wales, Scotland, continental Europe or the Holy Land. In October 1297 he had just concluded a papalbrokered armistice with his archenemy, French King Philip IV, amid the Franco-Flemish War when he received shocking news: An English army had suffered a devastating defeat at the hands of Scottish pikemen at Stirling Bridge that September 11, and the victorious Scots had since mounted cross-border raids as far south as Durham. Returning to England in March 1298, Edward established his headquarters in York and set about raising ground and naval forces from every corner of his realm to subjugate the northern rebels.

Edward—dubbed “Longshanks” for his notable height of 6 feet 2 inches—had conquered Scotland in 1296 with customary brutality. The bloodbath that attended his order to sack the fortified Scottish burgh of Berwick-upon-Tweed was appalling even by medieval standards. His subsequent high-handed efforts to strip Scotland of its national identity and oversee it as an English guardianship had only provoked further unrest. By mid-1297 the violence erupted into a full-scale insurgency on either side of the River Forth, led by the highborn Sir Andrew Moray (or Murray) of Petty in the north and the lowborn William Wallace in the south.

To defray the costs of his forthcoming campaign, Edward resorted to the usual feudal methods. He issued military “writs of summons” to English and Scottish nobles, petitioned Parliament for new taxes to fund mercenaries, ordered levies of foot soldiers from Wales, pardoned criminals to help fill the ranks and ordered provisions delivered from Ireland, to which he’d inherited the lordship. It became apparent Longshanks would go to any length to raise funds.

In 1290 he issued an edict expelling the entirety of England’s estimated 2,000-strong Jewish population. Under its terms he forfeited any property they left behind and transferred to his account any outstanding debts owed them.

The cruel edict added considerably to his coffers.

The army Edward cobbled together at York was the largest invasion force assembled in the British Isles since Roman general Gnaeus Julius Agricola led the conquest of Britain in the 1st century. Longshanks’ army comprised 2,250 heavy cavalry and 12,900 infantry, more than half of whom were in paid service. Scarcely 2,000 of the foot soldiers were English. The rest were from interior Wales and the Welsh Marches (borderlands). Edward esteemed the Welsh in particular as the bravest, most experienced infantry under his command.

Mounted atop a magnificent black charger armored and accoutered from muzzle to hindquarters, Edward led his personal retinue across the Anglo-Scottish border, joined the assembled infantry and cavalry at Roxburgh in early July, and marched north for Edinburgh. There the king, an expert logistician, expected to meet his large convoy of supply ships en route from eastern English seaports. halted. Bad weather and contrary winds had dispersed the fleet carrying the vital provisions, leaving Longshanks’ troops on the verge of starvation by the time they encamped.

Though Edward’s army was impressive in scope, the rank and file were undisciplined. The Welsh archers quarreled with Gascon crossbowmen, while a number of English knights threatened to desert and join Wallace. Hoping to regroup and replenish his demoralized troops, the king fell back on the outskirts of Edinburgh, but ongoing desertions and disputes among the English knights, Gascons and Welshmen took a

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ANGUS MCBRIDE, FROM STIRLING BRIDGE AND FALKIRK 1297-98 (CAMPAIGN 117) BY PETER ARMSTRONG (OSPREY PUBLISHING, BLOOMSBURY PRESS PUBLISHING); RIGHT: SOTHEBY’S

As his multinational army pushed north toward central Scotland, Edward found Wallace’s scorched-earth tactics had left little forage, and his troops and horses began to suffer from the scarcity of provisions. Meanwhile, Wallace, in sole command of the Scots after Moray’s death from wounds sustained at Stirling Bridge, also marched his army north, shadowing his foe while wisely avoiding pitched battle. Unaware of the Scottish army’s location, Edward resolutely pressed ahead through Lauderdale and Dalhousie to Kirkliston, just west of Edinburgh, where he

PREVIOUS SPREAD: CULTURE CLUB (GETTY IMAGES); TOP: BRITISH MUSEUM

Edward’s high-handed efforts to strip Scotland of its national identity provoked further unrest

ANGUS MCBRIDE, FROM STIRLING BRIDGE AND FALKIRK 1297-98 (CAMPAIGN 117) BY PETER ARMSTRONG (OSPREY PUBLISHING, BLOOMSBURY PRESS PUBLISHING); RIGHT: SOTHEBY’S

PREVIOUS SPREAD: CULTURE CLUB (GETTY IMAGES); TOP: BRITISH MUSEUM

Longshanks’ “9/11” fell on Sept. 11, 1297, when Scottish pikemen defeated an English army at a bridge across the River Forth in Stirling, Scotland.

further toll. At one point Welsh troops engaged supplies, they likely spoiled for a fight with the in a drunken riot. Though quickly quelled by enemy instead of among themselves. Led English men-at-arms, the fracas cost the

by Longshanks’ armored cavalry, the Englives of 80 Welsh and 18 English. Edward’s lish host marched 10 miles and encamped 1298 campaign had essentially stalled, on Burgh Muir, just east of Linlithgow. and the Plantagenet monarch remained Arriving late, the army spent the night oblivious to his enemy’s whereabouts. under arms. “[They] lay down to rest on Weighing his options from the conthe ground,” English chronicler Walter of cealed Scottish camp in Callendar Wood Guisborough recorded, “arranging their south of Falkirk, Wallace realized a setshields as pillows and their arms as coverpiece battle against Edward’s formidable lets. Their horses, too, tasted nothing save host was unacceptable. On hearing of Longhard steel and were tethered each one hard William shanks’ troubles, he resolved to either launch by his lord.”

Perhaps falling asleep on night Wallace a surprise night attack on the English camp or watch, Edward’s page lost control of his lord’s harass the rearguard and baggage train if the factious charger, which trod on the sleeping king, breaking army withdrew. On July 21, however, two traitorous Scottish two of Longshanks’ ribs and causing a commotion that earls—jealous of Wallace and eager to gain the king’s good roused the entire army. Cries went up they were under graces—warned Edward of Wallace’s intentions and betrayed attack. Though calm was quickly restored, the troops rethe location of the Scottish camp near Falkirk, scarcely 15 mained on high alert. Seizing on their renewed spirits, miles west of the English camp. “Thanks be to God, who Edward pushed through his pain, climbed into the saddle hitherto has extricated me from every danger!” the period and led a predawn advance on Falkirk. chronicles have Edward exclaiming. “They shall not need to follow me, these Scots, since I shall go forth to meet them.” As sunrise approached on July 22, the English vanguard That very afternoon Edward ordered an advance on observed a body of spearmen on the heights of Redding Falkirk. Though his men remained hungry and low on Muir and assumed it was the main Scottish army. After

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LEFT: CLASSIC IMAGE (ALAMY STOCK PHOTO); RIGHT: ADAM HOOK, FROM EUROPEAN MEDIEVAL TACTICS (2) (ELITE 189) BY DAVID NICOLLE (OSPREY PUBLISHING, BLOOMSBURY PRESS PUBLISHING)

BRITISH MUSEUM

Comprising lesser Scottish nobles armed with lances and swords, William Wallace’s cavalry at Falkirk numbered some 500 riders—no match for Edward’s 2,250-man heavy cavalry.

rapidly forming into battle order, the English advanced upslope and crested the ridge. Finding no sign of the enemy, they halted to pitch a tent as a makeshift chapel on the banks of the Westquarter Burn. While Edward and Anthony Bek, the warrior Bishop of Durham, celebrated Mass, the morning mists cleared, and the English could clearly see the Scots massing on the crest of a ridge just south of Callendar Wood, a mile to the northwest.

Surprised by the sudden appearance of Longshanks’ army, Wallace resolved not to risk a disorderly retreat but to fight a defensive battle in the best possible position.

Callendar Wood lay to the Scottish rear, and the hillside before them sloped several hundred yards to the valley floor. Unlike at Stirling Bridge, however, Wallace found no terrain, natural or man-made, that might buttress his defenses. Convinced the English would attack from all sides, he massed his 8,000 pikemen into four huge, roughly oval formations called schiltrons. “The schiltron was a hedgehog formation of grounded spears held together with ropes staked into the ground,” historian Peter Traquair notes. “Not very maneuverable, it was the only defense foot soldiers had against the bulldozer that was a medieval mounted charge. An unmissable target for the English bowmen, the schiltron required protection by mounted troops able to drive off enemy archers.”

“In these circles the [Scottish] spearmen were settled,” Guisborough recounted, “with their lances raised obliquely, linked each one with his neighbor, and their faces turned toward the circumference of the circle.” Some accounts claim the Scots implanted log palisades to their front, but it’s doubtful Wallace had time for any such preparations.

Wallace dispersed his 1,500 bowmen under Sir John Stewart in the gaps between the four schiltrons. Trained in the Selkirk and Ettrick forests, the archers carried longbows made from yew staves that were, contrary to some accounts, equal in every way to those carried by the Welsh and English. The Scots’ chronic weakness in missile weapons was largely due to an acute shortage of men to wield them. The Scottish cavalry, scarcely 500 lances commanded

by Sir John’s brother Sir James, High Steward of Scotland, likewise suffered from a crippling shortage of numbers.

Committed by the Comyns and other earls who supported the rebellion but were conspicuously absent from the field, the riders comprised lesser nobles and their retinues seemingly not under Wallace’s command. They assembled on the Scottish right, beside and to the rear of that flank’s schiltron, a flawed position that invited a cavalry attack.

Thus deployed on the ridge, the Scots waited stoically for the vaunted English host. Almost the entire flower of Anglo-Norman chivalry was on hand to support Edward.

But Longshanks’ gallant knights were unaware that heavy rains had turned a swath of the valley floor into a waterlogged morass wholly unsuited to mounted warfare.

After Mass, Edward coolly suggested pausing to pitch tents and feed the men and horses, none of whom had

LEFT: CLASSIC IMAGE (ALAMY STOCK PHOTO); RIGHT: ADAM HOOK, FROM EUROPEAN MEDIEVAL TACTICS (2) (ELITE 189) BY DAVID NICOLLE (OSPREY PUBLISHING, BLOOMSBURY PRESS PUBLISHING)

BRITISH MUSEUM

Battle of Falkirk

eaten since setting off the previous afternoon. According to Guisborough, his field commanders cautioned the king against such a provoking display. “This is not safe, Sire, for between these two armies there is nothing but a very small stream.” It could be the overeager knights had simply run out of patience. Perhaps sensing their zeal for combat, Edward deferred to his subordinates. After invoking the Holy Trinity, he ordered the attack.

The English host comprised four battles, or divisions, of cavalry. Led by Roger Bigod, Earl Marshal of England, and the earls of Lincoln and Hereford, the 18 bannerets (knights leading their own troops) and 430 knights and troopers of the vanguard were the first into the fray. Descending Redding Muir, they crossed the upper reaches of Westquarter Burn and headed directly north toward the Scottish line.

Shortly after Bigod’s riders crossed Glen Burn, near its confluence with Westquarter Burn, their horses went slipping and sliding across the swampy valley floor, abruptly halting the advance. After some confusion, the re-formed van skirted the western edge of the bog. Continuing uphill, the English knights soon gained the flank of the Scottish right, where Wallace’s cavalry bided their time. Meanwhile, John de Warenne, 6th Earl of Surrey and the loser at Stirling Bridge, led his battle of 15 bannerets and 410 knights and troopers in the wake of the van, wisely skirting the boggy loch to the enemy’s front before also gaining the Scottish right.

Next to ride out was the battle commanded by Bek, the warrior bishop, numbering two dozen bannerets and 400

Edward marched his army west from Edinburgh to do battle at Falkirk.

After the English cavalry routed the Scottish horse (above left), Wallace waged a defensive battle with four ovular schiltrons of bristling spears.

knights and troopers. Having also witnessed the van’s discomfiture, his cavalry kept Westquarter Burn to their left and veered eastward around the bog. They had scarcely cleared the obstacle when many of Bek’s leading riders, rash and eager to come to grips with the enemy, spurred their mounts and left their countrymen behind. Rather than attack in piecemeal fashion, Bek ordered the others to

Thus deployed on the ridge, the Scots waited stoically for the vaunted English host await the arrival of Edward’s battle, the largest of the four with 43 bannerets and 850 knights and troopers, shielded by 100 mounted Gascon crossbowmen. Bek’s supremely arrogant deputy, Sir Ralph Bassett, the former English governor of Edinburgh Castle, had no intention of waiting for the king and rudely chided the bishop for his caution.

Heedless of Bek’s attempts to restrain them, Bassett and the other glory-seeking knights continued uphill toward the dense masses of Scottish pikemen.

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ANDREW STEVEN GRAHAM (ALAMY STOCK PHOTO)

As Bek’s cavalry charged the waiting pikemen on the Scottish left, the ground trembling from the thundering hooves of more than 400 chargers, Bigod’s vanguard challenged the Scottish cavalry on the right. Though they matched the English horse in numbers, the inexperienced Scots were outmatched by Bigod’s heavily armored veteran knights and quickly driven from the field in an unseemly rout. Several contemporary narratives accused the high steward’s cavalry of withdrawing without striking a blow.

But a handful of courageous knights did dismount and join the hollow schiltrons to fight afoot.

Having dispatched Wallace’s cavalry with alarming ease, Bigod’s van thundered into the schiltron on the enemy right while Bek’s riders attacked on the left. The tightly packed ranks of Scottish pikemen readily repulsed the ensuing armored onslaught, their bristling masses of iron-tipped 15-foot pikes presenting a seemingly impenetrable barrier.

Unable to break through the dense walls of steel, both English cavalry forces fell back in good order, having suffered light losses in men and horses. Mustering another charge, they turned their attention to the vulnerable Scottish archers in the gaps between the static schiltrons. Guisborough described the resulting chaos as the overwhelmed archers fought desperately, clustered around the body of their leader, Sir John Stewart, “who fell by chance from his horse and was killed.” They

BRITISH LIBRARY

Led by Anthony Bek, the warrior Bishop of Durham (center), the English cavalry met stiff Scottish resistance till numbers told in Edward’s favor.

ANDREW STEVEN GRAHAM (ALAMY STOCK PHOTO)

BRITISH LIBRARY

Tactical Takeaways

stood no chance against the armored English riders and mounts. The few surviving Scottish bowmen sought Intelligence is crucial. refuge among the ranks of their fellow Though Edward fielded pikemen. Thus the immobile schilthe superior force, he trons were left isolated and alone, was wholly unaware of Wallace’s location until with no means to mitigate the seemtraitorous earls betrayed ingly impossible odds they faced.

Battlefield conditions had changed the Scottish camp.

The better part of valor. profoundly to the benefit of the EngWhen surprised by the lish, and Edward had yet to commit English, Wallace curled any part of his massive infantry. Rehis army into a defensive calling his years fighting pikemen ball. An orderly retreat might have left it intact in northern Wales, Longshanks knew Wallace’s schiltrons were little more to fight another day.

Combine your arms. than sitting ducks. Throwing off any Having driven off the remaining caution, he brought his Scottish cavalry, ridden entire force to bear against the bedown Wallace’s archers and riddled his pikemen leaguered Scots. After sending his regrouped and refreshed cavalry units with arrows, Edward brought his entire army against the enemy flanks, Edward to bear and prevailed. advanced his 5,500 Welsh longbowmen and 400 Gascon crossbowmen into line opposite the Scottish front at extremely close range, about 100 yards. He then split his 7,000 spearmen, placing half on either side of the longbowmen. A fearsome sight, the English front numbered nearly 13,000 troops. Longshanks then ordered his missile troops to loose steady, sustained volleys of arrows, crossbow bolts and slingstones.

As they needed both hands to wield their long pikes, Wallace’s men were unable to bear shields in their defense.

Most were clad in rough tunics of homespun cloth. Few had helmets or any form of armor to shield them from the unremitting torrent of murderous missiles that rained down on them. The Scots were particularly fearful of English longbow arrows, which were accurate to a range of 200 yards, generated enough force to pierce chain mail and plate armor, and could pin a knight to his horse. From astride their mounts at the center of the English line, Edward and Bek watched in satisfaction as their longbowmen, crossbowmen and slingers fired salvo after salvo into the Scottish ranks. The barrage soon began to tell on the exposed schiltrons. Gaps appeared in the Scottish line, enabling the English cavalry to break through and hack and slash the pikemen at close quarters.

Edward finally sent in his spearmen to fight hand to hand. According to the English scribes of the Lanercost Chronicle, the remaining Scots, though assailed from all sides, “stood their ground and fought manfully.” Inevitably, however, the four shattered schiltrons collapsed, and the survivors broke and ran, grimly pursued by Edward’s horsemen and Welsh spearmen, who killed with abandon. Urged by his lieutenants to flee, Wallace followed them north into Callendar Wood and escaped into the mountains, leaving behind at least 7,000 dead Scotsmen. Though the English

Though Edward prevailed at Falkirk and oversaw Wallace’s execution in 1305, Robert the Bruce (above) ultimately won the Scots independence.

lost just two knights, upward of 3,000 English foot soldiers lay dead on the field—a testament to the ferocity with which the Scots fought against insurmountable odds.

King Edward’s 1298 campaign involved considerable expense, and while it destroyed the power of Wallace, it yielded few other results and didn’t come close to ending the war. Stubbornly determined to force the Scots to acknowledge his lordship, Longshanks led a series of grueling campaigns from 1301 to 1304 that forced the submission of many leading JULY 22, 1298 nobles. By mid-1304 Scotland was firmly in his grasp. English troops garrisoned its castles, and order was restored. On having Wallace cruelly executed in 1305, Edward hoped he’d finally ENGLISH FORCES 2,250 CAVALRY, 12,900 INFANTRY cowed the Scots into ceasing hostilities. That hope was shattered in March 1306 when Robert the Bruce, Earl of Carrick and 7th Earl of AnnanKILLED dale, claimed the throne of Scotland, thus resuming the First War of Scottish Independence.

“Edward’s military prowess was such that he might have secured a consensual union of SCOTTISH FORCES 500 CAVALRY, 9,500 INFANTRY the Celtic regions, had he not repressed them so brutally,” historian Simon Jenkins argues.

“As it was, he found himself in the familiar trap KILLED of England’s medieval monarchs, encircled by resentful Celts and opportunist French.” Longshanks died of dysentery in 1307 while campaigning against Robert the Bruce, who after two more decades of bitter fighting finally secured Scottish independence. MH

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John Walker is a California-based freelance writer and a Vietnam War veteran. For further reading he recommends Freedom’s Sword: Scotland’s Wars of Independence, by Peter Traquair; In the Footsteps of William Wallace, by Alan Young and Michael J. Stead; and Stirling Bridge and Falkirk, 1297–98, by Peter Armstrong.

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A MAD AND RASH FELLOW Personally appointed by George Washington as an aide-de-camp, young John Laurens risked all in the pursuit of American independence from Great Britain

By Matthew T. Beazley

John Laurens was wounded during the Oct. 4, 1777, American assault on Cliveden, Benjamin Chew’s stone country manor in Germantown, Pa. The Patriots ultimately lost the battle.

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B

Born on Oct. 28, 1754, in to the abolitionist movement. John attended many meetings Charleston, S.C., Laurens was raised and debates on the issue and soon became a strong propoin affluence. His father, Henry Laurens, nent of the cause, a most unusual position for a Southern was one of the wealthiest plantation owners aristocrat whose father owned a half dozen plantations and in the British province. But in childhood John was sur- one of the leading slave-trading houses in North America.

Like many of the soon-to-be American foundrounded by death. Of Henry and wife Eleanor’s ers, Laurens read enlightenment philosophy, dozen children, only five survived to adultand in response to Britain’s heavy-handed tax hood. John not only watched his siblings die, policies and its refusal to grant the colonies dibut also lost his beloved mother, in 1770 at SEPT. 11, 1777 rect representation in Parliament, he became age 15. Despite such emotional trials, John grew convinced Americans should seek indepeninto a highly intelligent and capable young man. dence from the Crown. Indeed, the cause of A year after his wife’s death, Henry Laurens moved to London with two of his surviving CONTINENTAL ARMY American liberty became an obsession that would consume the remaining years of his life. three sons (the third already resided there), When tensions in the colonies erupted into open leaving his daughters in the care of their Uncle KILLED rebellion, Laurens read with increasing alarm James in Charleston. Henry gave John the best 600 WOUNDED, 400 CAPTURED of the siege of Boston, the Battle of Bunker Hill, education money could buy, including personal Washington’s flight from Long Island and other tutors and some of the finest private schools desperate actions. By then Henry Laurens had in Switzerland and England.

BRITISH ARMY returned stateside to lend a hand to the political By the outbreak of the American Revolutioncause. Son John had made a life in London, in ary War young Laurens was studying to become KILLED 1776 marrying Martha Manning, the English a lawyer at London’s prestigious Middle Temple.

488 WOUNDED, SIX MISSING daughter of a prominent family friend. But as It was around that time friends introduced him

Battle of Brandywine

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BRANDYWINE RIVER MUSEUM OF ART

John Laurens

PREVIOUS SPREAD: DELAWARE ART MUSEUM (BRIDGEMAN IMAGES); THIS PAGE: NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY, SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION

y early afternoon on Sept. 11, 1777, Gen. George Washington’s Continental Army had been fending off Hessian assaults across Chadds Ford for several hours. Having reconnoitered the advancing British army under Maj. Gen. Sir William Howe, Washington had chosen a strong defensive position on the east bank of Pennsylvania’s Brandywine River. If his men could hold the fords, the enemy would be unable to cross from the opposite shore to threaten Philadelphia.

But around 2 p.m., as Washington surveyed the situation at Chadds Ford with some satisfaction, members of his staff noticed movement to the north. Scouts soon reported the approach of ranks of soldiers in red coats. Having crossed unguarded Jefferis Ford, 5 miles to the north, the main British body, led by Lt. Gen. Charles Cornwallis, had unexpectedly arrived on the American right flank in force with some 8,500 men. Washington’s staff, who only moments before had been calm and confident of the day’s outcome, searched frantically for reinforcements to counter the British flank attack and stave off disaster.

Among the American commander’s harried subordinates was a young and enthusiastic South Carolinian named John Laurens, who had joined the Continental Army a month earlier. Well educated, well connected and fluent in French, he’d been appointed to Washington’s staff as an aide-de-camp. While three divisions under Maj. Gen. John Sullivan rushed to the right to confront the British flank attack, Laurens rode in the opposite direction, looking for Maj. Gen. Nathanael Greene on the American left.

As Greene’s reinforcing division pivoted to confront the British flanking force, it was inundated with panicked Americans from Sullivan’s crumbling divisions. Mustering the energy and determination for which he would become famous, Laurens rallied many of the fleeing men under fire. Greene and his ad hoc mixture of Regulars and militia then made their stand on high ground near the Birmingham Meetinghouse. Conspicuous among the combatants was Laurens. The young South Carolinian wasn’t the only brave man on the field that day, but he certainly inspired many others to stand and fight. The men on Birmingham Hill put up a stubborn defense against veteran British soldiers, thus allowing Washington’s army to conduct an orderly retreat. Although the Battle of Brandywine was a defeat for the Americans, and the British went on to capture Philadelphia, the bravery of Greene’s men and those Laurens had cobbled together had kept the withdrawal from turning into a rout. “It was not his fault that he was not killed or wounded,” quipped Gilbert du Motier, the Marquis de Lafayette, of Laurens’ conduct during the battle. “He did everything that was necessary to procure one or t’other.”

And so began the inspiring and tragically brief military career of John Laurens.

BRANDYWINE RIVER MUSEUM OF ART

PREVIOUS SPREAD: DELAWARE ART MUSEUM (BRIDGEMAN IMAGES); THIS PAGE: NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY, SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION

Artist Howard Pyle’s 1903 painting The Nation Makers immortalizes the Sept. 11, 1777, Battle of Brandywine, the first clash in which Laurens participated as an aide to George Washington.

the bad news from home piled up, young Laurens also felt compelled to return home—to join the fight. So, in December 1776 he said his farewells to Martha (pregnant with their daughter) and boarded a ship bound for the colonies.

He arrived in Charleston in April 1777 and traveled to Philadelphia, where Henry Laurens took a proffered seat in the Continental Congress and secured 22-year-old son John a position on Washington’s staff.

After defeating the Americans at Brandywine that September, the British captured Philadelphia. Leaving a

3,000-man garrison in the city, Howe then moved his 9,000-strong main army north to the nearby village of Germantown. Presented a chance to decisively defeat the British—much as he had the Hessians at Trenton earlier that year—Washington led four columns to converge on Germantown, marching overnight for what he hoped would be a surprise attack.

Just after 5 o’clock on the morning of October 4 the undetected Continentals made contact with British pickets on the outskirts of town. Laurens was in the vanguard and took a musket ball to the fleshy part of his right shoulder

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during the initial engagement. Disregarding his wound, Laurens pushed forward with his fellow Continentals to Cliveden, attorney BenOCT. 4, 1777 jamin Chew’s country estate, a stone structure packed with some 120 enemy troops.

Despite being outnumbered, the British CONTINENTAL ARMY stubbornly held their ground, shooting effectively from the second-story windows. An American officer under a white flag demanded KILLED the holdouts surrender, only to be shot dead 521 WOUNDED, 438 CAPTURED for his trouble. The Continentals then brought a 6-pounder cannon to bear on the house, but the iron balls merely bounced off its sturdy BRITISH ARMY walls. Laurens finally joined others in an effort to burn out the defenders. During the failed KILLED attempt he was badly bruised in the side by 448 WOUNDED, 14 MISSING a spent ball. Washington had counted on surprise, but confusion due to heavy fog and the half hour delay at Cliveden gave the British plenty of time to form for battle and launch a counterattack that ultimately drove the Continental Army from the field.

Following the defeat at Germantown, Washington established winter quarters at Valley Forge. While encamped, Laurens conceived a plan to form regiments of slaves, who would be given their freedom at war’s end. The plan gained traction in the North and received the approval of both Washington and the Continental Congress, but it predictably fell on deaf ears down South. Laurens’ home state of South Carolina had an acute shortage of soldiers for its defense. But even after the British seized Savannah and threat-

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ened Charleston, the South Carolina Legislature still overwhelmingly vetoed Laurens’s attempt to raise slave regiments within the state. Undeterred, Laurens pursued the cause throughout the war. Though individual liberty, natural law and self-government were bedrock principles of the American Revolution, abolition proved too radical a cause for the age, at least in the labor-dependent plantation South.

Following the British near upset at Germantown on October 4 and Maj. Gen. John Burgoyne’s humiliating defeat two weeks later at Saratoga, N.Y., Howe resigned his command. He was replaced by Maj. Gen. Sir Henry Clinton, who abandoned the Northern strategy, evacuated Philadelphia in June 18, 1778, and moved to consolidate his forces in New York.

As the dispirited British army plodded south across New Jersey, it presented Washington another irresistible opportunity. On the morning of June 28, as the British rearguard began to decamp, the van of the Continental Army under Maj. Gen. Charles Lee struck near the county seat village of Monmouth Courthouse. On seeing the mass of British infantry before him, however, Lee lost his nerve and ordered a retreat. The order angered many of his subordinates, none more than Laurens, who tried vainly to reverse the tide of panic-stricken Americans.

Arriving on the field, Washington took command of what was left of Lee’s forces and formed a defensive line on the high ground atop Perrine’s Hill. As the Americans beat back several British attacks, reinforcements arrived to bolster the Continental line. The fighting under a hot summer

HERITAGE IMAGES (GETTY IMAGES)

Battle of Germantown

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TOP, FROM LEFT: CHATEAU DE VERSAILLES; AMERICAN MUSEUM & GARDENS, BATH; METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART; MAP BY BRIAN WALKER; RIGHT: K. AAINSQATSI

Though the Patriots failed in their assault on the Chew estate and lost the broader Battle of Germantown, Laurens was noted for his courage and leadership in action.

BATTLE OF GERMANTOWN

Sir Henry Clinton

PHILADELPHIA

BATTLE OF BRANDYWINE

TOP, FROM LEFT: CHATEAU DE VERSAILLES; AMERICAN MUSEUM & GARDENS, BATH; METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART; MAP BY BRIAN WALKER; RIGHT: K. AAINSQATSI

HERITAGE IMAGES (GETTY IMAGES)

Marquis de Lafayette sun went on for hours until both sides were exhausted.

Throughout the struggle Laurens was consistently in the midst of the fighting with the van of Americans battling their way across a bridge that spanned a ravine at the base of the hill. During the fierce hand-to-hand confrontation with an elite British grenadier battalion, Laurens received a glancing wound from a musket ball when his horse was shot out from under him. With the coming of night the British retreated on the road to Sandy Hook, where ships waited to transport them to New York. The Battle of Monmouth went down on the list of lost opportunities for the Continental Army. In the wake of the fiasco Laurens challenged Lee to a duel and wounded the feckless general in the side with his first shot. The duelists’ seconds ended the affair before Laurens could reload.

After Monmouth the British pursued a new strategy built around invading the Southern colonies. Their first move was the capture of Savannah on December 29. From there several thousand British troops marched northeast toward Charleston. With his hometown under threat, Laurens took leave from Washington’s army to join Maj. Gen. Benjamin Lincoln’s small army in the South Carolina Lowcountry. He soon found the action he craved during a May 3, 1779, skirmish along the Coosawhatchie River near Savannah. An incident there highlighted the young officer’s raw and often rash aggression.

Tasked with escorting a rearguard force of militia to Brig.

Gen. William Moultrie’s main position, Laurens instead crossed the river looking for British to attack. He got more than he bargained for. Severely wounded in an enemy ambush, he nearly got himself and his whole outfit captured.

Although his courage and fighting spirit were commendable, they sometimes led Laurens to make poor decisions.

“Colonel Laurens was a young man of great merit and a brave soldier, but an imprudent officer,” Moultrie wrote in his postwar memoirs. “He was too rash and impetuous.”

Thomas-Antoine de Mauduit du Plessis, a French artillery

Alexander Hamilton

BATTLE OF MONMOUTH

BATTLE OF YORKTOWN

AT L A N T I C OCEAN NORFOLK

captain who fought alongside Laurens in the Continental Army, labeled the young American a “mad and rash fellow.”

After a short convalescence, Laurens returned to

Lincoln’s army in time to participate in the October 1779 Franco-American siege of British-held Savannah. With French Vice Adm. Charles Henri Hector d’Estaing’s fleet blockading the harbor, ground forces launched the assault against British defenses on October 9.

In command of a mixed unit of South Carolina light infantry and dragoons, Laurens supported the main attack on a stiffly defended redoubt. Though repeatedly fired on by British defenders to their front and enemy artillery on either flank, the South Carolinians refused to retreat, but they were unable to surmount the parapet wall of the Designed by Col. William redoubt. A bayonet charge by emerging Brit- Moultrie in 1775, this flag was the standard of ish troops degenerated into a brutal hand- the South Carolina militia to-hand fight that raged more than an hour. during the Revolution and With mounting losses and no sign of vic- serves as the basis of the tory or reinforcement, Laurens was com- state flag today. On his pelled to retreat. His heroic recklessness 1777 return from London, spawned a number of legends. One account Laurens would have seen it flying from nearly every

by John Church Hamilton, in a biography of flagpole in his home state. famed father Alexander Hamilton, claimed that at the moment of defeat Laurens faced the enemy guns with arms spread wide in a Christlike pose, as if inviting death. Another spurious story had Laurens gazing down at fallen Americans outside the British redoubt, saying, “Poor fellows, I envy you,” before casting down his sword and withdrawing.

Attacks elsewhere along the line proved uncoordinated, and on October 17 Lincoln and d’Estaing abandoned the siege.

In late March 1780 Clinton arrived on the outskirts of Charleston with his large army. Although more than a year

Moultrie Flag

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had passed since the fall of Savannah, South Carolina was unprepared for the invasion, and Charleston’s defenses remained wholly JUNE 28, 1778 inadequate. As the British laid siege to the city, Laurens was among the small number of Americans who rallied to its defense. They CONTINENTAL ARMY stubbornly held out for six weeks, surrendering on May 12 only when it became evident no reinforcements were coming. In keeping CASUALTIES with the military etiquette of the day, Laurens and the other Continental officers were paroled, expected to sit out the fight till swapped BRITISH ARMY in a prisoner exchange. In a letter to Washington two weeks later Laurens described the capitulation as “the greatest and most humiliCASUALTIES ating misfortune of my life.” Six months passed before the eager young officer was exchanged, after which he spent the better part of a year in France on a diplomatic mission. Congress had appointed him to the position, but he chafed to return to the fight. Laurens finally rejoined Washington’s army in Williamsburg, Va., on Sept. 18, 1781, just in time to participate in the siege of coastal Yorktown, occupied by a British army under Lord Cornwallis.

14,300 370+ 17,660 358+

Approaching Yorktown in late September, Washington’s

Continentals and their French allies surrounded the Brit-

ish defenses with parallel trenchworks from which to bombard the enemy. Laurens was intimately familiar with the siege technique, having been on the receiving end of it at Charleston.

Before Franco-American forces could extend their trenches within mortar range of the main British position, however, they would have to capture two outer defenses that protruded from the enemy lines. The plan of assault called for French troops to assault Redoubt No. 9, while the Americans tackled Redoubt No. 10. Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Hamilton would command the main assault on No. 10 while Laurens led a detachment around the rear of the redoubt to prevent the escape of any British soldiers.

A daunting obstacle, Redoubt No. 10 was ringed with sharpened log abatis, palisades and a moat and manned by nearly 50 veteran British and Hessian soldiers under Maj. James Campbell. Hoping to avoid detection by its defenders, Hamilton and Laurens waited until nightfall on October 14, a moonless night, to launch their assault. Once in position, Hamilton’s 400 light infantrymen rushed across the noman’s-land between opposing fortifications. They managed to cross undetected and begin chopping through the abatis before British defenders sounded the alarm and commenced lobbing grenades and pouring musket fire into the attackers. Moving swiftly through the remaining obstructions, the Americans scaled the parapet and entered the

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DELAWARE ART MUSEUM, WILMINGTON (BRIDGEMAN IMAGES)

Battle of Monmouth

MONMOUTH COUNTY HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION

Washington rallies Patriots at the June 28, 1777, Battle of Monmouth, N.J., another lost opportunity during which Laurens was wounded.

DELAWARE ART MUSEUM, WILMINGTON (BRIDGEMAN IMAGES)

MONMOUTH COUNTY HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION

redoubt. Simultaneously, Laurens’ detachment entered the redoubt from the rear, the young officer personally capturing Campbell. The rapidity of the assault mercifully limited casualties on either side.

With the loss of the redoubts, Cornwallis knew it was only a matter of time before he would be compelled to surrender. Four days later, when the terms were being negotiated, Laurens was given the honor of representing the Americans. Cornwallis wasn’t present, and he refused to attend the formal surrender ceremony on October 19, citing illness.

In the wake of Cornwallis’ surrender Laurens was transferred to Greene’s army near Charleston and ultimately given command of the general’s light troops, including the combined cavalry and infantry force formed by Maj. Henry “Light Horse Harry” Lee. Known as “Lee’s Legion,” the tight-knit unit posed a leadership challenge, as its beloved namesake commander had recently retired, and the men regarded Laurens as something of an unwanted stepfather. Adding to their discontent, duties in the Lowcountry largely entailed uneventful patrols and picket duty. Idleness gave men plenty of time to ponder grievances. Thankfully, the occasional skirmish with British units still waging war served to keep the American troops’ surliness in check.

In August 1782, on learning of one such British foraging party marching up the Combahee River, Greene sent several hundred of his light troops to stop them. Laurens, though bedridden with a fever, rose from his sickbed and rode out to join the fight. On the morning of August 27 Laurens and a detachment of 50 foot soldiers split off toward a redoubt downriver, hoping to cut off the likely British escape route, while the main body of 150 cavalrymen sought battle with the enemy. Unknown to Laurens, the British had anticipated his movements and prepared a roadside ambush with 140 men.

When the British sprang the trap, Laurens did what he always did—attacked without hesitation. He could have awaited the arrival of the cavalry, which he knew would ride hard to join him. But such prudence was not in Laurens’ character. The “mad and rash fellow” instead led his outnumbered infantrymen into the very muzzles of the British muskets. Before reaching the enemy line, Laurens and a score of men fell to an enemy volley. Leaderless and outgunned, the surviving Americans wisely fled. The reinforcements covered their retreat and managed to recover Laurens’ body, which was temporarily interred at the nearby Stock family plantation. He was later buried in the family cemetery at Moncks Corner, S.C., north of Charleston.

Americans justly remember John Laurens as a national

hero. An acquaintance of such seminal revolutionary figures as Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Paine, George Washington, Alexander Hamilton and the Marquis de Lafayette, he had expended much of his short life in the effort to wrest inde-

In September 1781 Laurens returned from a diplomatic mission to France just in time to participate in a key assault on Redoubt No. 10 at Yorktown, Va.

pendence from Great Britain. Laurens believed with all his heart in the “unalienable rights” of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Unlike most propertied Southerners of his era, he also believed such rights should extend to slaves.

Although not a brilliant tactical leader, Laurens was fearless and embodied the spirit of American independence like few others.

That he met his end at age 27 in an insignificant skirmish in the South Carolina Lowcountry is one of the many tragic ironies of the Revolutionary War. He nonetheless died doing what he loved most—fighting alongside and for his fellow Americans. MH

Siege of Yorktown

SEPT. 28 –OCT. 19, 1781

17,800

CONTINENTAL ARMY

INCLUDING 7,800 FRENCH TROOPS AND 29 FRENCH WARSHIPS

88

KILLED

CONTINENTAL ARMY: 28 KILLED, 107 WOUNDED; FRENCH TROOPS: 60 KILLED, 194 WOUNDED

9,000

BRITISH ARMY

309

Matthew T. Beazley is a Georgia-based archaeologist and lifelong student of military KILLED history. For further reading he recommends 595 WOUNDED, 7,685 CAPTURED John Laurens and the American Revolution,

by Gregory D. Massey; and An American Soldier: The Life of John Laurens, by Sara Bertha Townsend.

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The aptly named May 1943 operation to foil an Axis evacuation from North Africa was more than duty to the officers and men of the British Royal Navy’s Mediterranean Fleet—it was personal

By Peter Kentz

Hoping to escape British forces in Tunisia, these members of a Luftwaffe anti-aircraft unit paddling a raft north toward Sicily were instead among the nearly 900 German troops intercepted and captured by the Royal Navy.

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O War Ensigns

casualties and prisoners, Retribution faded from the story of World War II. However, such numbers and the official dates of Retribution fall woefully short of relating the complete story of the blockade. From November 1942 onward the Axis desperately tried to resupply its beleaguered armies in Africa.

In response Cunningham’s destroyers, motor torpedo boats and submarines fought for control of the sea lanes to Sicily, resulting in a bloody clash of naval forces that stretched five months, until early May 1943. As Cunningham noted in postwar correspondence, “Our main naval effort [in early 1943]…was against the enemy’s lines of communication between Sicily and Tunisia…interrupting the enemy’s supplies to North Africa.” It was those earlier efforts that had bought the relative quiet during the five days of Retribution.

For the battered sailors of the Mediterranean Fleet it was an emotional victory. On a grander scale, Retribution was the culminating victory for the Allies in North Africa.

For German-Italian forces in North Africa the closing

weeks of 1942 marked a time of defiance. With short supply lines from Sicily and a compact defensive position, Axis commanders planned to create an impregnable Tunisian stronghold. “Any hope for an Axis victory in Tunisia,” notes naval historian Barbara Brooks Tomblin, “depended on the volume of men and supplies that could be delivered by the Italian navy or Axis air forces.” Grand Adm. Erich Raeder, the German naval commander in chief, believed “the decisive key position in the Mediterranean has been and still is Tunisia.” Wehrmacht chief of staff Alfred Jodl concurred, writing, “North Africa absolutely must be held as a forefield of Europe.” Having deemed Tunisia the “cornerstone of our conduct of the war on the southern flank of Europe,” Adolf Hitler ordered its defense at any cost. Thus supported by his advisers, the Führer, in the words of German historian Horst Boog, turned “Tunis into an existential question” and rushed reinforcements to the theater.

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TOP: IMPERIAL WAR MUSEUMS; BELOW: BUNDESARCHIV

Operation Retribution was the purposefully named Allied air and naval blockade intended to thwart the evacuation of enemy troops from Tunisia to Sicily. The war in North Africa was grinding to a close. Anglo-American forces that had come ashore during Operation Torch—the November 1942 landings in Vichy French– ruled Morocco and Algeria—were closing in from the west, while British Gen. Bernard Montgomery’s Eighth Army, the victors of El Alamein, approached from the south. Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, the famed “Desert Fox,” and his vaunted German-Italian panzer army were trapped in an ever narrowing vise.

Their only means of reinforcement or escape was the tantalizingly narrow Strait of Sicily.

Admiral of the Fleet Andrew Browne Cunningham, the unwavering commander of the Royal Navy’s Mediterranean Fleet, understood both the emotional and strategic importance of the blockade. On May 8, 1943, Cunningham officially launched Retribution with an order Nelsonic in its simplicity During World War II ships and unequivocality: “Sink, burn and destroy. of the belligerent navies Let nothing pass.” flew these distinctive flags.

Only five days later, on May 13, the opThe British naval ensign eration was over. Despite its chilling name, (top) combined the Union however, its scorecard lacks distinction.

Jack and St. George’s Cross; Germany’s KriegsCunningham’s warships encountered few marine flew the Reichsblockade-runners and no major evacuakriegsflagge (middle); tion effort. British sailors captured just shy and Italy’s Regia Marina hoisted this flag (bottom). of 900 fleeing enemy soldiers. The Allies suffered few casualties, and their ships came under serious attack only accidentally from friendly aircraft. The blockade did manage to bottle up more than a quarter million Axis troops—exceeding the number taken after the pivotal battle of Stalingrad—but their surrender was received by the advancing land armies. With few

PREVIOUS SPREAD: IMPERIAL WAR MUSEUMS; THIS PAGE, FROM TOP: HERITAGE AUCTIONS; HISTORIC COLLECTION, PICTURE ART COLLECTION (ALAMY STOCK PHOTO, 2)

n the afternoon of May 11, 1943, the gray hulks of Type II Hunt-class British Royal Navy destroyers sliced through the glistening Mediterranean waters in the narrow Strait of Sicily, their officers scanning the nearby Tunisian coastline.

Lieutenant Commander Richard Rycroft, the 31-year-old captain of HMS Tetcott, trained his binoculars on Kelibia, an idyllic Tunisian fishing town on the Cap Bon peninsula founded by the Carthaginians in the 5th century bc as the fortified town of Aspis. Millennia after a Roman fleet besieged Aspis in 255 bc amid the First Punic War, warships had returned to Kelibia’s coastline. Rycroft spotted his prey and directed Tetcott toward a small boat filled with fleeing Germans. The few enemy soldiers posed little threat, but the British destroyer, its bow surging through the azure water, showed no signs of slowing.

As it sped past the enemy vessel, the ship’s log noted, Tetcott “lobbed a depth charge close to it, blowing it to bits.”

Rycroft’s cold efficiency at the helm of Tetcott was not unique. A day earlier Lt. Cmdr. John Valentine Wilkinson, commanding HMS Zetland, had received orders to investigate enemy boats sighted in the Gulf of Tunis and found three rafts carrying 30 Axis soldiers. The destroyer charged the small craft, and “the boats were rammed or capsized and rendered unserviceable.” Wilkinson’s report, like Rycroft’s, made no mention of survivors plucked from the sea.

Yet such actions were not random bloodlust on the part of the British captains. This was their retribution.

Andrew Browne Cunningham

Convoy H] off the Gulf of Tunis, and for the enemy it was a holocaust. Engaged at point-blank range, four supply ships or transports and three destroyers were sunk or set on fire. It was a ghastly scene of ships exploding and bursting into flame amidst clouds of steam and smoke; of men throwing themselves overboard as their ships sank; and motor vehicles carried on deck sliding and splashing into the sea as vessels capsized. What men the enemy lost, what quantities of motor transport fuel and military supplies were destroyed, I do not know; but not one ship of that convoy survived.

Cunningham understood both the emotional and strategic importance of the blockade

By the spring of 1943 Field Marshal Erwin Rommel’s combined German-Italian panzer army was trapped between advancing American and British forces, their only escape by sea to Sicily.

TOP: IMPERIAL WAR MUSEUMS; BELOW: BUNDESARCHIV

PREVIOUS SPREAD: IMPERIAL WAR MUSEUMS; THIS PAGE, FROM TOP: HERITAGE AUCTIONS; HISTORIC COLLECTION, PICTURE ART COLLECTION (ALAMY STOCK PHOTO, 2)

Several Italian escort ships did survive, but Force Q sank all four troopships of the enemy convoy in what history records as the Battle of Skerki Bank.

Over the following weeks and months British torpedo boats out of Bône and Sousse, Tunisia (south of Cap Bon), “were a constant menace to the Axis shipping,” Cunningham recalled. “Hardly a night passed but they were off Tunis and Bizerte, mining, harrying the patrols, attacking and sinking vessels carrying the stores, ammunition and petrol so badly needed by Rommel’s army.” Joining in the

The Royal Navy’s Mediterranean Fleet was equally defiant. Six months before formally ordering Retribution, Cunningham sent Force Q—a flotilla of three cruisers and two destroyers under Rear Adm. Cecil Harcourt—to the port of Bône, Algeria, with clear instructions to cut off Tunisia. Foreshadowing the ruthlessness to be exhibited that spring, Force Q gave the enemy “every reason to dread the night attacks,” as Cunningham later wrote: At about half an hour after midnight on December 1st– 2nd these ships [Force Q] fell upon the convoy [Italian

fray, Allied submarines sank 14 merchant ships, two destroyers, one U-boat and two small vessels in November and December. In the first three months of the new year they added 57 merchantmen, a submarine, a torpedo boat and seven small vessels to their tally of kills.

While relentless, the Allied vessels were hardly untouchable. Working in conditions of extreme hazard, the British submarines suffered especially heavy losses, including Tigris, Thunderbolt and Turbulent in February and March 1943. “[The] destroyers were being used to the limit of their capacity,” Cunningham wrote, and “did not escape unscathed.” Enemy attacks sank Lightning and Pakenham only weeks apart in March and April.

The Axis maintained its air superiority. Enemy aircraft pounded the Force Q base at Bône, which sustained damage from more than 2,000 German heavy bombs in December and January. The cruiser Ajax was severely damaged by a 1,000-pound German bomb, while the minesweeper Alarm was knocked out of the war by an air attack.

Cunningham hardened his heart. After all, such losses were the price of a successful blockade. Those successes mounted quickly. “Liable to surface, submarine and air attacks throughout the whole of their passage,” he noted, the Italian navy lost 485 ships from November to May. Of the 314,000 tons of supplies the Axis sent to Tunisia between

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The destroyer HMS Nubian returns to Malta after patrolling off Tunis amid Operation Retribution. Below left: Intercepted at sea, German troops clamber aboard a Royal Navy warship.

Below right: Captured Germans settle in on the fantail of the destroyer HMS Jervis for the voyage to rear-area POW camps.

In May 1943 the Mediterranean Fleet pivoted to prevent

the Axis from carrying out its own version of a Dunkirkstyle evacuation. Allied intelligence reported enemy engineers were constructing piers and jetties on Cape Bon. According to his command’s war diaries, Cunningham considered an attempted evacuation probable and expected that “an enemy who was still possessed of a great fleet, a substantial merchant navy and powerful air forces would not abandon his trapped armies.”

Yet no rescuers came. The beleaguered Axis veterans of Tobruk, Gazala and El Alamein were left to their fate.

“The sight of those little gray ships of ours off the coast,” Cunningham argued, “prevented any organized attempt at evacuation.” Compared to the Mediterranean maelstrom of the previous months, the official launch of Retribution brought relative quiet.

Acting individually and in small groups, stranded Axis soldiers sought to escape to Sicily aboard pitifully small motorboats and rafts. Cunningham’s orders referred to the May blockade as “the offensive,” and the Mediterranean Fleet

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NATIONAL ARCHIVES

Afrika Korps

ensure no enemy troops escaped, thus clinching the greatest possible victory ashore.

TOP: IMPERIAL WAR MUSEUMS (3); LEFT: INTERFOTO (ALAMY STOCK PHOTO)

December and May, Cunningham’s blockade managed to sink nearly a third. The 200,000-plus tons of supplies that did get through were far from enough, as Axis forces in Tunisia expended that amount in a single month. Meanwhile, the Luftwaffe lost irreplaceable aircraft and pilots.

Overwhelmed, the Axis convoys continued only with what historian Donald Macintyre To protect themselves deemed “a dogged persistence and a fatalagainst the blazing sun istic disregard of the facts of the situation.” of the North African Facing truly legion dangers, Italian sailors deserts, the troops of called the Straits of Sicily la rotta della Erwin Rommel’s famed morte (“the route of death”).

Afrika Korps relied on a variety of protective Denied its Tunisian stronghold, the Axis headgear, including the abandoned its desperate resupply efforts innovative Hermann Meier by early May. Thus it was on May 8 the Mütze (above) worn by Mediterranean Fleet’s guns swiveled south Luftwaffe personnel. to scan the North African coast. The mission was unchanged—thwart enemy use of the Strait of Sicily. But the time had come to exploit the victory won during the brutal months of defensive blockade. Operation Retribution, the offensive phase of the effort, would

acted accordingly. “Beaches where enemy activity is observed should be machine-gunned,” torpedo boat crewmen were instructed. Ships’ logs provide blow-by-blow accounts of the small actions. Noticing enemy soldiers escaping to the small island of Zembra, at the mouth of the Gulf of Tunis, the destroyers Beaufort and Exmoor “circled the island in opposite directions” and sighting “several boats on one beach…shot them up.” Beaufort’s guns then “demolished a few likely-looking outhouses” until a white flag appeared.

No fleeing craft or number of evacuating soldiers was too small a prize. On May 10 the destroyer Lauderdale “picked up four Germans from a small boat” and spent the ensuing days “collecting some more Germans from open boats.” The destroyer Lamerton intercepted “a small fishing vessel…and 17 Italians.” The destroyer Dulverton pulled enemy soldiers from “local fishing boats.” Exmoor stopped “one boat and two floats” from which only one German was recovered. The lack of an organized, large-scale evacuation did not deter the Allied blockading force. As its commander had ordered, the Mediterranean Fleet let nothing pass.

NATIONAL ARCHIVES

TOP: IMPERIAL WAR MUSEUMS (3); LEFT: INTERFOTO (ALAMY STOCK PHOTO)

Allied operation code names often seem to lack meaning.

For example, Dynamo was the impromptu evacuation from Dunkirk, Crusader was the 1941 relief of Tobruk, and Dragoon was the August 1944 landing in southern France. Standing out for its emotional import and relevance, Retribution was different. Cunningham had deliberately named it thus. After years of struggle and loss, Retribution was indeed intensely personal.

On Cunningham’s mind in particular was the Mediterranean Fleet’s harrowing fights for Greece and Crete.

In April 1941 its ships evacuated some 50,000 of the 53,000 British soldiers trapped in Greece, but their rescue came at a heavy price. The fleet lost 26 troop-carrying ships to enemy air attacks, including the destroyers Diamond and Wryneck, both of which were sunk, leaving fewer than 50 survivors of the 800-plus crewmen and troops aboard.

During the ensuing Battle of Crete the fleet commander relayed to the Admiralty that “in three days two cruisers and four destroyers were sunk, one battleship is out of action for several months, and two other cruisers and four destroyers sustained considerable damage.

“We cannot afford another such experience and retain sea control in the eastern Mediterranean,” Cunningham added. “Our light craft, officers, men and machinery alike are nearing exhaustion.…They have kept running almost to the limit of endurance.”

A still greater strain followed in late May as the Royal Navy rushed to evacuate troops in the wake of the Allied defeat on Crete. “Our losses are very heavy,” Cunningham reported. “[The battleship] Warspite, [battleship] Barham and [aircraft carrier] Formidable out of action for some months, [the cruisers] Orion and Dido in a terrible mess, and I have just heard that [the cruiser] Perth has been hit today.

Eight destroyers lost outright and several badly damaged.

Shipped to the United States, Germans captured during Operation Retribution march under guard on arrival in Newport News, Va.

All this not counting [the lost cruisers] Gloucester and Fiji.

I fear the casualties are over 2,000 dead.” Enemy air assaults were incessant. The admiral expressed anxiety “about the state of mind of the sailors after seven days’ constant bombing attack” For five hours the destroyer Kandahar alone was “subjected to 22 separate air attacks” while rescuing survivors. A lamenting Cunningham was justly proud of his fleet: It is not easy to convey how heavy was the strain that men and ships sustained.…They had started the evacuation already over-tired, and they had to carry it through under conditions of savage air attack such as had only recently caused grievous losses in the fleet.…I feel that the spirit of tenacity shown by those who took part should not go unrecorded. More than once I felt the stage had been reached where no more could be asked of officers and men physically and mentally exhausted by their efforts and by the events of these fateful weeks. It is

Acting individually and in small groups, stranded Axis soldiers sought to escape to Sicily perhaps even now not realized how nearly the breaking point was reached. But that these men struggled through is the measure of their achievement.

By the end of the evacuation on June 1 the Mediterranean Fleet’s losses were staggering. Three cruisers and six destroyers were sunk; two battleships, a vital aircraft carrier, two cruisers, two destroyers and a submarine were damaged beyond easy repair; and three cruisers and six destroyers

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Supply ships burn during the 1941 Allied evacuation of Crete—one of several Axis victories in the Mediterranean for which the British Royal Navy sought retribution.

ALGIERS

BÔNE

BIZERTE

SICILY

TUNIS MALTA

SOUSSE SFAX GABES

French forces led by Gen. Philippe Leclerc

TRIPOLI TOBRUK BENGHAZI EL AGHEILA

were damaged. Another 32 transport and auxiliary ships were lost. Cunningham’s fleet had suffered tremendously.

“The army could not be left to its fate,” the admiral dutifully affirmed. “The navy must carry on.”

The lethal resolve of the British Mediterranean Fleet was all too apparent to its Axis foe Cunningham seethed at the battering his ships and men took off Crete. “The Huns amused themselves for an hour or so machine-gunning the men in the water,” he recalled.

“I hope I shall get my hands on a few of them.” In 1943 he got his chance.

“We hoped,” he later wrote of his command, “that those of the enemy who essayed the perilous passage home by sea should be taught a lesson they would never forget.”

SOLLUM

ALEXANDRIA EL ALAMEIN

CAIRO

When one destroyer commander apologized that it had been “too dangerous to stop and pick up one boatload [of enemy soldiers], so he ran over them,” Cunningham “shook him warmly by the hand and left him without enquiring further.” Retribution was Cunningham’s duty, but it was also a satisfying score to settle for earlier losses.

“There is no doubt that the blood of the Mediterranean Fleet was up,” remarked Capt. Angus Nicholl of the cruiser Penelope, “and that even the smallest attempts at a ‘Dunkirk evacuation’ were efficiently and ruthlessly dealt with.” When a half dozen German torpedo boats opened fire on the Force Q destroyers Laforey and Tartar, the former rammed one of the enemy vessels, cutting it in half. The lethal resolve of the British fleet was all too apparent to its Axis foe.

Lamerton’s radiomen, listening to enemy chatter, overheard, “Destroyer overtaking…all is lost.”

But the conduct of the operation did not reflect mere brutality. Like their commander, the officers and sailors of Cunningham’s fleet viewed Retribution as both their duty and just vengeance. One young lieutenant recalled that

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NIDAY PICTURE LIBRARY (ALAMY STOCK PHOTO)

British First Army, United States Second Corps, and Gen. Henri Giraud’s North African French forces

TOP: SMITH ARCHIVE (ALAMY STOCK PHOTO); BELOW: DAVID RUMSEY MAP COLLECTION

British Eighth Army

NIDAY PICTURE LIBRARY (ALAMY STOCK PHOTO)

TOP: SMITH ARCHIVE (ALAMY STOCK PHOTO); BELOW: DAVID RUMSEY MAP COLLECTION

when he requested permission to fire on an enemy vessel, his senior officer assented, saying, “It’s your retribution.”

A sailor aboard the cruiser Aurora proudly wrote home to his mother: “I’ve always wanted to get even with the Jerries for the hell they used to give us every night.…I felt pretty proud myself…and didn’t the lads stick their chests out.”

The Mediterranean Fleet savored its victory. Captain Tony Pugsley of the destroyer Jervis whimsically reported the seizure of 96 “entrants” from the “Kelibia Regatta,” while Capt. John Eaton of the destroyer Eskimo crowed how the fleet had “strongly discouraged enemy yachtsmen.”

Even Cunningham revealed his pleasure, writing, “I trust the boating activity is being firmly stopped.” Others’ appetite for vengeance went unsated. An officer of the 7th Motor Torpedo Boat Flotilla was “disappointed that the enemy did not attempt a mass evacuation.” Rear Adm. Arthur Power agreed. “The complete absence of any Axis men of war or shipping,” he wrote from Malta, “was very disappointing.”

Although disappointing to some, the quiet consummation of Retribution in May 1943 represented ultimate victory for the Royal Navy’s Mediterranean Fleet. From the outset of the war the fleet’s priority had been to establish control of the sea. As pioneering British naval historian and geostrategist Sir Julian Corbett wrote, “The object of naval warfare must always be directly or indirectly either to secure the command of the sea or to prevent the enemy from securing it.” His American counterpart Alfred Thayer Mahan similarly argued sea power was “the possession of that overbearing power on the sea which drives the enemy’s flag from it.” In the spirit of these two titans of naval thought, Retribution closed the Mediterranean to the enemy.

Even as the Mediterranean Fleet endured the Battles of Greece and Crete, Prime Minister Winston Churchill joined the Admiralty in reminding Cunningham, “Above all, we look to you to cut off seaborne supplies from the Cyrenaican ports and to beat them up to the utmost.” Though the fleet was stretched thin, losing ships and men, its priority remained the blockade of North Africa.

By May 1943 the Axis navies were wholly unable to move anything across the Strait of Sicily, neither supplying nor evacuating their soldiers and equipment stranded in Tunisia. The vengeance-seeking ships of the Mediterranean Fleet diligently hunted down even the smallest rafts and boats. As Tetcott and Zetland proved off Kelibia, nothing would pass.

For his illustrious half century career Admiral of the Fleet Andrew Browne Cunningham earned a place in London’s Trafalgar Square, the symbolic heart of the British empire.

It is Retribution that largely justifies the proximity of the admiral’s bust to Nelson’s Column. At Aboukir Bay in 1798 legendary Rear Adm. Horatio Nelson did not receive the surrender of an enemy army; French forces were already ashore in Egypt. Yet Nelson’s naval victory secured control of the Mediterranean, thus ensuring the ultimate defeat of Napoléon Bonaparte’s Egyptian expedition. Likewise, Cun-

Like many of the Germans who sought to reach Sicily, the occupants of this raft were captured by Allied troops before even leaving the beach.

ningham did not receive the Axis surrender in 1943, but his choking blockade enabled victory on land. Retribution, like Lord Nelson’s Battle of the Nile, projected sea power far inland. Fulfilling Churchill’s belief that “much if not most of the navy’s work goes on unseen,” when the German-Italian army in North Africa surrendered, the reward of the Mediterranean Fleet’s tireless efforts was collected in the desert.

As commander of Allied forces in North Africa, Lt. Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower summarized the 1943 operation. “The total enemy shipping and craft which offered themselves as targets for the [Royal] Navy seemed a poor reward for its skill and untiring vigilance,” he wrote. “Retribution, in fact, developed into a situation where only isolated small parties of stragglers sought safety by sea, to find that the sea was not theirs.” By then the sea belonged to Cunningham’s Mediterranean Fleet. MH

Tactical Takeaways

Have an exit strategy.

Though initially victorious in North Africa, Axis forces eventually found themselves with their backs to the sea and no other viable escape routes.

Fire begets fire.

The ferocity with which the Royal Navy engaged escaping Axis forces was a response to the firestorm the Germans had earlier rained on Allied forces.

Sea power helps.

Allied ground forces defeated the Afrika Korps, and the sea blockade kept it from escaping to Sicily.

Washington, D.C.–based Peter Kentz holds history degrees from Georgetown University and King’s College London. For further reading he recommends With Utmost Spirit: Allied Naval Operations in the Mediterranean, 1942–1945, by Barbara Brooks Tomblin; The Battle for the Mediterranean, by Donald Macintyre; and A Sailor’s Odyssey, by Andrew Browne Cunningham.

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‘CARTHAGE MUST BE DESTROYED’ In 146 BC consul Scipio Aemilianus carried out the elder statesman Cato’s standing threat against Rome’s resurgent North African nemesis

By Marc G. DeSantis

Rome had hoped a punishing treaty signed in the wake of its 202 bc victory over Hannibal at Zama would hobble Carthage. But within a half century Rome’s bitter rival was again too big to ignore.

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Cato and his fellow war hawks only needed a proper casus belli against Carthage to have their way. They got it when the aged Massinissa, king of Numidia and an ally of Rome since the closing days of the Second Punic War, became embroiled in a territorial spat with Carthage over the North African region of Emporia (present-day western Libya). Under the terms of the 201 bc treaty Rome was compelled to adjudicate the dispute. Not surprising, the Senate came down heavily, even outrageously, in favor of Massinissa’s rather dubious claim to Emporia. Adding insult to injury, it also imposed an indemnity of 500 talents (a talent was roughly 70 pounds of silver) on Carthage for having enjoyed the fruits of the region.

Thus emboldened, the Numidian king continued to encroach on Carthaginian territory, eventually claiming just about all of it, with the exception of the city of Carthage itself. Realizing Rome would never rein in Massinissa, Carthage went on the offensive against Numidian raiders at Oroscopa (in present-day northwestern Tunisia) in 151 bc.

Its 30,000-man army, under the command of Hasdrubal the Boetharch, aggressively pursued the Numidians, only to be encircled in a hilltop camp and starved into submission.

Notwithstanding its abject failure, the campaign represented a blatant breach of the peace of 201 bc, which forbade Carthage from waging war without first seeking Roman approval. That was all the excuse Rome’s pro-war party needed.

Hoping to placate the Romans, the Carthaginians condemned Hasdrubal and sent an embassy to Rome but were coldly rebuffed. The Senate then approved a formal declaration of war against Carthage and dispatched an expeditionary force of 80,000 infantry, 4,000 cavalry and 150 war galleys to Africa under the two consuls for 149 bc, Manius Manilius and Lucius Marcius Censorinus. The North African port city of Utica, within 30 miles’ march of Carthage, went over to the Romans and became a base for their army.

Wholly unprepared to contend with such an immense invasion force, Carthage rushed another embassy to Rome.

The envoys were instructed to deliver 300 children from

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MUSÉE NATIONAL DE CARTHAGE/DE AGOSTINI/G. DAGLI ORTI (AKG-IMAGES); MAP BY BRIAN WALKER

Rome and Carthage had previously fought two long wars.

While the First Punic War (264–241 bc) centered on Sicily, the Second Punic War (218–201 bc) engulfed Iberia, North Africa, Sicily, Sardinia and mainland Italy. (The Latin word punicus derives from the Greek term Phoinix, a reference to the Carthaginians’ Phoenician origins.) Each conflict had been enormously costly to the warring empires. Rome had outlasted Carthage both times, despite having been brought to the verge of ruin by Hannibal in the Second Punic War. The latter ended with Carthage agreeing by treaty in 201 bc to relinquish its overseas territories and pay Rome a massive indemnity over the next half century.

Contrary to expectation, Carthage prospered greatly in the wake of its Scipio second defeat, its people focusing on Aemilianus trade and the agricultural development of their remaining North African holdings.

The result was a robust economy that enabled Carthage to shoulder the heavy burden of the annual indemnity payments to Rome.

One Roman in particular, the octogenarian consul and statesman Marcus Porcius Cato, was dismayed by Carthage’s resurgence. On paying a visit to the flourishing city in 157 bc and recalling the prior Punic wars, Cato perceived a mortal threat to Rome in Massinissa the making. Back home he ended all of his public speeches with the same refrain: “I am also of the opinion that Carthage should cease to exist.” The phrase is remembered today in its pithier form: “Carthage must be destroyed.” During at least one speaking occasion Cato held aloft a ripe, three-day-old North African fig to illustrate just how dangerously close Carthage lay to Italy. He argued for a pre-emptive war to eliminate their long-standing nemesis before it did the same to Rome.

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he great captains of antiquity were not often given to bouts of melancholic introspection. They were a hardened lot, largely inured to the carnage and suffering they caused.

Publius Cornelius Scipio Aemilianus, commander of the Roman legions that besieged Carthage in the mid–second century bc, was not a typical great captain of the ancient world. A Roman aristocrat, he was the son of Lucius Aemilius Paullus Macedonicus, victor of the 168 bc Battle of Pydna, and the adoptive grandson of Scipio Africanus, who had vanquished Hannibal at Zama in 202 bc. Scipio Aemilianus was also the patron of the eponymous Scipionic Circle, a gathering of literary and philosophical luminaries that included the Greek historian Polybius, the Roman African playwright Terence and the Stoic philosopher Panaetius. Scipio and friends were foremost among Romans who embraced Greek culture and refinement.

In the spring of 146 bc once mighty Carthage fell to Scipio’s troops. Observing the city in its death throes, he began to weep and quoted aloud a line from the Iliad: “The day shall come in which our sacred Troy, and Priam, and the people over whom spear-bearing Priam rules, shall perish all.” Polybius was at Scipio’s side when he spoke Homer’s words and asked what the consul meant by them. Scipio, believing Carthage’s doom was the ultimate fate of all great nations and empires, expressed his fear Rome would one day suffer a similar fate.

ROME TYRRHENIAN SEA

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CARTHAGE

aristocratic Carthaginian families as hostages to the consuls, then en route to Africa, and to obey the latter’s commands in all other respects. If they did these things, the Senate declared, then Rome would respect Carthaginian sovereignty, freedom, property and laws. Out of options, Carthage agreed and surrendered the nobles’ children to the consuls.

The consuls next ordered the Carthaginians to disarm, which they promptly did. But Rome’s bad faith became manifest when the consuls ultimately proclaimed their standing orders: Carthage was to be razed and its populace displaced at least 10 miles inland. The Carthaginians would never again be a maritime people.

Facing the wholesale destruction of their capital city and way of life, the Carthaginians finally resolved to fight.

They produced weapons at a breakneck pace to replace those they had handed over. Military operations in the hinterlands were entrusted to Hasdrubal, who remained at the head of some 30,000 soldiers.

The consuls would have to secure victory the hard way.

Laying siege to a sprawling city of as many as 800,000 inhabitants was a daunting prospect. Not only did Carthage boast a 20-plus-mile perimeter of stout, tower-studded walls some 40 feet high and 30 feet thick, but also its topography rendered it a formidable challenge. The city lay on a peninsula connected to the mainland by a 3-mile-wide isthmus, a difficult expanse for any besieger to effectively guard. Thus Hasdrubal, having access to cities deeper in Carthaginian

This modern reconstruction of Punic-era Carthage hints at the massive task before the besieging Romans in 149–146 bc.

territory, was able to run supplies straight into Carthage, right past the Romans’ porous blockade.

Neither Manilius nor Censorinus made much initial headway, as Hasdrubal’s men continually harried both consuls’ rear-area operations. Censorinus brought up giant

Marcus Porcius Cato argued for a pre-emptive war to eliminate Rome’s long-standing nemesis battering rams and opened a breach in the walls, but counterattacking Carthaginians readily repulsed the legionaries.

Only the levelheadedness of a single tribune, Scipio Aemilianus, prevented a catastrophe. As the main body of legionaries surged inside the walls, Scipio wisely held back his men in the event the attack failed. When it did, Scipio’s troops plunged in to fend off the enemy and spare the retreating Romans from total destruction.

From within the city the enterprising Carthaginians successfully sortied with fireships to burn much of the Roman fleet at anchor. A follow-up attack one night very nearly overran Manilius’ camp. On that occasion Scipio intervened

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to strike at the rear of the Carthaginian force, prompting it into a hasty retreat. During a subsequent abortive attack

by Manilius against the nearby city of Nepheris, four Roman cohorts found themselves trapped atop a hill ringed by enemy troops. Again riding to the rescue, Scipio led a small force of cavalry to drive off the Carthaginians and escort the legionaries to camp.

The aged Massinissa, though his greed had been an underlying cause of this war, was conspicuous by his absence. Displeased the Romans had not conferred with him in advance about the campaign, he refrained from taking part. After the grasping king died in 148 bc, at around age 90, Scipio received welcome help from his son, Gulussa, whose incomparable light cavalry helped suppress mounted Carthaginian marauders harrying the Romans in the hinterlands.

By then Manilius and Censorinus were When Carthaginians went reaching the end of their annual terms, and to war, they appealed to incoming consul Lucius Calpurnius Piso and their chief god, depicted his fleet admiral, Lucius Hostilius Manciabove in bust as a second century bc incense burner. nus, were en route to Africa. Scipio dutifully Whether Baal’s adherents sailed back to Rome, where he planned to in Carthage appeased him stand for election as aedile, a mid-level post through child sacrifice is in the Roman government. uncertain. No amount of Over the course of the coming year reworship helped them in ports from the Carthaginian front were no their third war vs. Rome. better than they had been under Censorinus and Manilius. Piso was thrown back when he attacked the city of Aspis, and for the entire summer he lay stymied before the city walls of coastal Hippo Acra. Forced to abandon the siege, the humiliated consul led his men on the ignominious march into winter quarters in Utica.

Baal Hammon

Meanwhile, Hasdrubal remained at large with his army.

At that juncture Carthage’s prospects didn’t look so bleak.

It had proven Rome anything but invincible. Yet infighting had taken a toll. Hasdrubal the Boetharch, scheming for more power, brought an accusation before Carthage’s popular assembly, alleging that the city’s commander, also named Hasdrubal and a nephew of the Numidian Gulussa, was plotting to betray Carthage. Swallowing the rumor, the assemblymen beat Hasdrubal to death with the very benches on which they sat. They replaced him with his accuser, Hasdrubal the Boetharch.

Meanwhile, Rome was keen to find a new commander

to take the reins of its floundering army in North Africa.

Scipio, the only success story of the war, proved a natural choice. Though he was a candidate for an aedileship and, according to Roman law, was too young (at age 37) to stand as consul, the Senate voted him to the consulship regardless. In an additional gesture of confidence the Roman people voted directly to place Scipio in charge of the latest Punic war, instead of allowing his post to be determined by lot, as was customary.

After collecting fresh troops, Scipio sailed for Africa.

In his absence Mancinus had mounted an amphibious attack on Carthage itself. After seizing a sally port, however, the operation had floundered, leaving the consul, his 3,500 men and their ships stranded inside, unable to advance or retreat, as night came on.

Mancinus sent an urgent plea for reinforcements to Utica, where he expected Piso to be, but the latter was off besieging other towns in Carthaginian territory. As fortune would have it, arriving that very night in Utica was Scipio, Piso’s replacement as consul. Scipio simply sailed on to Carthage, boarded Mancinus’ stranded men on his own ships and spirited them to safety.

After formally assuming command, Scipio assessed his army. What he found was not to his liking. Two years of abject failure had led to a serious decline in morale and discipline. Some legionaries were conducting unauthorized looting expeditions into the countryside. Others had de-

FROM LEFT: JJ OSUNA CABALLERO, NERTHUZ (ALAMY STOCK PHOTO, 2); BELOW: ALEXANDER VAN LOON, CC BY-SA 4.0; OPPOSITE: LAING ART GALLERY

While siege engines like the catapult (above) and covered battering ram (above right) were important tools in the Roman arsenal, the investment of Carthage dragged on for three years. Scipio ultimately had to blockade the entire isthmus on which Carthage sat before launching a final assault.

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Under a Roman officer’s gaze a catapult crew prepares to launch a heated, spear-tipped bolt into Carthage amid the Third Punic War, as depicted in an 1868 oil by English painter Edward Poynter.

serted to the Carthaginians, a truly reprehensible step for any Roman soldier. Furthermore, lax security had allowed a force of Carthaginians to set up camp scarcely a half mile from the city. They were soon joined by Hasdrubal, who brought with him 6,000 infantry and 1,000 cavalry.

Scipio moved quickly to restore order and discipline, first casting out the camp followers and other assorted hangerson. Having secured a firm grip on his army, Scipio made his first move as commander, leading an assault force equipped with axes, ladders and pry bars against Megara, a suburb abutting the city walls of Carthage. Its defenders ultimately spotted the Roman force and repelled the main attack, but a handful of legionaries managed to capture a deserted tower almost adjoining the city walls. From this redoubt they ran planks across the gap, dropped into Carthage and broke open a gate. Scipio rushed inside at the head of 4,000 legionaries.

Its defenders, thinking the city lost, retreated within Byrsa, Carthage’s fortified central citadel. Megara, however, proved

a bewildering maze of streets and water-filled ditches. Scipio, concerned his men might fall into an ambush in the darkness, again showed his coolness under pressure by withdrawing his troops.

Scipio understood the only way to capture Carthage would be to sever its links to the outside world Hasdrubal the Boetharch, who had taken over Carthage’s defense after his successful takedown of the previous Hasdrubal, vented his rage at the Roman attack on Megara by having Roman prisoners tortured within view of Scipio’s besieging forces and then tossed from the city walls. Though intended to stiffen Carthaginian resolve, his cruelty instead

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Third Punic War

ward communication with the rest of Africa. As food supplies dwindled, Hasdrubal gave what little remained to his soldiers, leaving citizens to starve.

Scipio next constructed a breakwater, extending across the harbor ROMAN TROOPS 80,000 INFANTRY, mouth from a finger of land called the 4,000 CAVALRY Taenia, to sever Carthage’s seaward communications. Recognizing the existential threat the barrier posed, KILLED the Carthaginians constructed war galleys in secret from whatever scrap wood they could find. Then one day at CARTHAGINIAN dawn they emerged suddenly from a TROOPS PLUS ARMED CIVILIANS newly built entrance beyond the reach of the breakwater, taking the Romans completely by surprise. But the CarCASUALTIES thaginians squandered their opporTHE ESTIMATED CIVILIAN tunity, merely rowing about in a show OFPOPULATION OF 800,000, SOME 50,000 SURVIVORS of force before retiring within the WERE SOLD INTO SLAVERY confines of the harbor. When they emerged again three days later, this time for battle, the Roman fleet was ready for them and mauled the Carthaginian ships, which stacked up along a merchant quay as they sought to retreat back inside the harbor.

Scipio promptly assaulted the quay and brought up siege engines, but Carthaginian swimmers managed to stage a surprise nighttime raid and set fire to the rams and other engines. Refusing to relent, Scipio ultimately captured the quay, from which his soldiers began to launch burning missiles into the city.

In the winter of 147 bc Scipio struck at neighboring Nepheris, which fell after a three-week siege. With its capture the last store of food destined for Carthage was in Roman hands, and the famine within its walls deepened.

The end for Carthage came in the spring of 146 bc. After breaching a harbor wall, Scipio’s troops assaulted the citadel of Byrsa and its surrounding district. Braving a rain of missiles hurled from the district’s six-story houses, the Romans engaged in house-to-house fighting and a vicious rooftop brawl for control. Scipio then ordered the district set ablaze.

The fire quickly spread, claiming the lives of scores of innocent civilians who had sought refuge in Byrsa. As the houses collapsed in flames, the streets filled with shrieking burn victims and scorched and crushed corpses and body parts.

What followed over the next six days and nights was pure butchery. Scipio had his units fight in rotation, swapping in fresh soldiers for tired ones. On the seventh day of the battle for Byrsa, Carthaginian civilians sued for safe passage, and Scipio allowed 50,000 of them to depart, though they were later sold into slavery. Not as fortunate were some 900 Roman deserters who had holed up with Hasdrubal in the lofty Temple of Eshmun, the Phoenician god of healing.

Knowing all too well what fate awaited them if captured, the turncoat legionaries fought with the courage of despera-

84,000 17,000

30,000+

drew the ire of internal critics. Hasdrubal had several such “domestic enemies” summarily executed. As the siege dragged on, he increasingly became a tyrannical commander, seeking to cow his terrified men into compliance.

The streets filled with shrieking burn victims and scorched and crushed corpses and body parts Scipio understood the only way to capture Carthage would be to sever its links to the outside world, for while those remained, its defenders could still bring in food and other supplies to sustain its huge population. Accordingly, he had his men torch the Carthaginian encampment outside the city walls, which Hasdrubal had abandoned amid the attack on Megara. Scipio then built an enormous fortified camp, with trenches and palisades extending from one side of the isthmus to the other, thus cutting off the capital’s land70 MILITARY HISTORY AUTUMN 2022

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The final 146 bc Roman assault on Carthage included a rooftop brawl (top) for control of the citadel of Byrsa and its surrounding district. In the wake of the siege the victorious legions left not one stone wall standing (above).

BRIDGEMAN IMAGES (2)

750,000

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BRIDGEMAN IMAGES (2)

Scipio received an anticipated triumph through the streets of Rome (above) for his victory. But while viewing the destruction of Carthage (ruins shown below), he correctly envisioned a similar fate for Rome.

tion. After a period of bitter resistance, they made their last stand on the temple roof. Meanwhile, Hasdrubal left behind his wife and two sons with the holdouts at the temple to surrender himself to Scipio, cravenly hoping to save his own skin. Scipio had Hasdrubal paraded before the diehards.

Cursing their faithless erstwhile ally, the surviving defenders set fire to the temple and leaped to their deaths in the blaze. Hasdrubal’s wife, clad in the best clothes left to her and showing far more courage than her husband, let loose a torrent of insults against him. She then slew her sons, tossed their bodies into the flames and jumped in after them. With that horrific end to all resistance, the sack of the city began.

In the aftermath Scipio found himself standing beside

Polybius and quoting Homer as they watched Carthage die.

The young Roman consul had good cause to ponder the vicissitudes of fortune as his soldiers plundered the fallen

city. Though he was certain to receive a triumph for his successful campaign, his mind dwelled on less fortuitous fates. Troy had fallen, as had Assyria, Media, Persia, Macedon and now Carthage. He envisioned a similarly bleak fate for Rome. Half a millennium would pass, but Scipio’s vision ultimately came to fruition with the fifth century collapse and fall of the Western Roman empire. MH Marc G. DeSantis is the author of Rome Seizes the Trident: The Defeat of Carthaginian Sea Power and the Forging of the Roman Empire (2016) and A Naval History of the Peloponnesian War: Ships, Men & Money in the War at Sea, 431–404 bc (2018). For further reading he recommends Carthage Must Be Destroyed: The Rise and Fall of an Ancient Civilization, by Richard Miles; The Punic Wars, by Adrian Goldsworthy; and A History of the Romans, by Robert Forman Horton.

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Reviews

The ad 865 arrival of a large Viking army in Britain—and the subsequent fall of all the islands’ kingdoms except for Wessex—set the stage for the pivotal battle of Brunanburh.

Never Greater Slaughter: Brunanburh and the Birth of England, by Michael Livingston, Osprey Publishing/Bloomsbury Publishing, Oxford, U.K., and New York, 2021, $28

Building on his groundbreaking 2011 book The Battle of Brunanburh: A Case Study, and supported by the local Wirral Archaeology group, American historian Michael Livingston makes his case for the location at Bromborough, north of Chester, England, of this highly significant, if near mythical, 937 battle (see related story, P. 20) amid the Viking invasions.

In his foreword Bernard Cornwell, bestselling author of the celebrated Last Kingdom novels, which culminate at Brunanburh, deems the battle as foundational to England as Yorktown was to America. He also finds it ironic an American has emerged as the foremost interpreter of “England’s battle”—or in Livingston’s words, “England’s bloody day of coming of age.”

Livingston argues against using the term “Dark Ages,” saying it reflects more on our ignorance than on those who lived in that era.

While conceding the culture shock, especially to churches, that attended the arrival of Viking

raiders and invaders, he challenges other longheld beliefs about Viking culture. For example, he questions whether a method of ritual execution recorded in period poetry as the “blood eagle” was authentic or merely a literary invention. He also disputes the story that Englishmen threw defeated Viking leader Ragnar Lodbrok into a snake pit, an act that reportedly precipitated the 865 arrival of the vengeful “Great Heathen Army.” This Scandinavian horde overran all but the “last kingdom” of Wessex, whose priestly but combative monarch, Alfred the Great, set the stage for his warrior grandson Athelstan’s heroic stand at Brunanburh.

Livingston employed “conflict analysis”— including archaeology, multisource verification and knowledge of period warfare, as well as following known roads and walking potential battle sites—to determine if there was a major battle (involving some 10,000 men on either side) at Bromborough. The Battle of Brunan-

HISTORICAL IMAGES ARCHIVE (ALAMY STOCK PHOTO)

The Last Kingdom

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burh pitted an unlikely alliance of Vikings from Ireland, Scots and Britons of Strathclyde against Athelstan, whose success was described in the near contemporary Anglo-Saxon Chronicle as an unprecedented slaughter.

The victory effectively left him first king of all England.

Livingston’s research is supported by endnotes, an index, maps and an appendix of alternative battle sites, as well as 34 color photos of relevant sites, artifacts and historic documents. His book will likely become the standard on the topic.

—William John Shepherd The Quiet Americans: Four CIA Spies at the Dawn of the Cold War— A Tragedy in Three Acts,

by Scott Anderson, Random House, New York, 2020, $30

HISTORICAL IMAGES ARCHIVE (ALAMY STOCK PHOTO)

Journalist, historian and novelist Anderson dissects U.S. foreign policy at the dawn of the Cold War through the linked biographies of four men—Michael Burke, Edward Lansdale, Peter Sichel and Frank Wisner—veterans of the World War II Office of Strategic Services who served in the newly formed CIA.

Anderson believes American foreign policy is inherently flawed, doomed to failure at its inception. In the postwar period, he argues, fear of communism led to a series of national security directives that established the CIA and freed it to initiate a host of covert operations, everything from infiltrating agents into the Balkans and Eastern Europe to overthrowing elected governments in Guatemala and Iran, blackmail, sabotage, even murder.

Ironically, the author concludes that domestic enemies ultimately undermined the United States’ early attempts to maneuver in the postwar world. Soviet mole Kim Philby, liaison for MI6 (British intelligence) to both the CIA and the FBI, was spilling all to the Russians, while FBI director J. Edgar Hoover used the “Red” scares to decimate the ranks of the CIA and State Department.

Anderson’s exhaustive research, narrative pacing and eye for detail and character make The Quiet Americans a wonderful read.

—Bob Gordon Firepower: How Weapons Shaped Warfare, by Paul Lockhart, Basic Books, New York, 2021 $35 From handheld muskets and rifles to carriage-mounted artillery and machine guns, firearms have played a central role in Western wars for 400-plus years. In this comprehensive study author Paul Lockhart relates that history from a unique perspective, focusing not on battles or wars but on the weapons with which they were fought.

Firepower opens on some of the earliest firearms and their use in wars of the 16th century. For example, Lockhart describes in detail the matchlock harquebus, its strengths and weaknesses, and instances in which it was effectively or poorly deployed on the battlefield.

He goes on to relate notable benchmarks in the evolution of technology, from flintlock and percussion ignitions to rifling and the self-contained metallic cartridge. The development of breechloading rifles, magazines, clips, machine guns and assault rifles are also given their share of attention before the author arrives at the weapons of today.

Firepower is not just about handheld weapons. Lockhart devotes chapters to naval firepower, land-based artillery and other firearms.

He also looks at the tank and the airplane, exploring the ways each has been used to deploy firepower.

Given such a broad topic, it’s no surprise Firepower (counting the notes and extensive index) comes in at more than 600 pages. Yet Lockhart doesn’t get bogged down or digress for too long on any one technology, allowing for a far easier read than one might expect. The

book can get confusing toward the end as chapters jump between a wide array of technologies (and backward or forward in time), but Lockhart’s focus on firepower helps fit everything together. The resulting book is a thorough survey of the history of firepower in Western warfare, everything from technology to doctrine, strategy and tactics.

—David Harris Empires of the Normans: Conquerors of Europe, by Levi Roach, Pegasus Books, New York, 2022, $29.95 English speakers usually associate the Normans with their 1066 conquest of England, the replacement of Saxon rule with the Plantagenet dynasty and the subsequent effect of Norman rule on English culture,

government and language.

However, as author and Cambridge scholar Levi Roach explains, there was a great deal more to Norman influence over Europe.

The Normans were originally Vikings who ravaged the lower Seine valley in the early 10th century—that is, until the king of France offered them the land now known as Normandy in ex-

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Recommended

The Greek Revolution

By Mark Mazower Columbia University Ira D. Wallach professor of history Mazower relates the 1821–29 Greek War of Independence, an unlikely victory against apparently overwhelming odds. With help from Western allies, Eastern Europe’s first nationalist uprising spelled the beginning of the end of the doddering Ottoman empire and ushered in the world of nation-states in which we now live.

change for their conversion to Christianity and defense of his realm from other invaders. Over the next three centuries the Normans’ power expanded until they ruled England and Scotland as well as much of France, Italy and the Middle East. By the end of the Middle Ages, however, Norman power was a thing of the past, and Normandy reduced to little more than a French province. The Normans assimilated into whatever realm and culture they happened to rule until, eventually, as in Britain, they were no longer a separate people.

As Empires of the Normans reveals, their impact on Western civilization was profound.

They redrew the map of Europe, established new attitudes of law and justice, and their influence did a great deal toward integrating the regions of Europe. This book recounts a story that has received far less attention than it deserves.

—Robert Guttman To the Uttermost Ends of the Earth: The Epic Hunt for the South’s Most Feared Ship—and the Greatest Sea Battle of the Civil War, by Phil Keith and Tom Clavin, Hanover Square Press, New York, 2022, $29.99

Tiger vs. Churchill

By Neil Grant This illustrated history compares the German Tiger and British Churchill tanks of World War II. Author Grant —a trustee of the U.K. Royal Armouries and an affiliate of the world-class Bovington Tank Museum in Dorset —explores their design and development, relates their head-to-head encounters and includes firsthand accounts from crewmen who fought in them.

One of few notable naval clashes of the American Civil War, the June 19, 1864, Battle of Cherbourg, pitted two modest sail/steam powered sloops-of-war against each other off coastal France. The single-ship action resulted in the destruction of Alabama, the Confederacy’s most effective oceangoing warship, which had bedeviled Union merchant shipping for the better part of two years. While

the battle itself occupies just a dozen pages, the authors have combined a fine history of wartime commerce raiding with biographies of the opposing captains.

A career naval officer, Mar yland-born Raphael Semmes (1809–77) was middle-aged when his adoptive Alabama seceded from the Union. Despite a plethora of volunteer soldiers, what the South needed most was fighting ships and the men to sail them. Semmes was among the few with command experience to offer his services to the Confederacy.

Commanding the makeshift commerce raider CSS Sumter, Semmes ranged the Caribbean, capturing or destroying nearly 20 Union merchantmen before making for neutral Gibraltar. There Sumter remained, bottled up

by American warships, until disarmed and sold.

In August 1862 Semmes took command of a repurposed steamer christened as CSS Alabama. Over the next 22 months he and his crew captured some 65 Union merchantmen and sank the ironhulled steamer USS Hatteras.

Union businessmen, furious at their losses and skyrocketing insurance, demanded action from the wartime ad-

ministration of President Abraham Lincoln.

Enter one John Winslow (1811–73), a career naval officer and native North Carolinian who knew Semmes but, unlike his counterpart, remained loyal to the Union.

After service down South with the Union’s Mississippi River Squadron, Winslow took command of the sloop of war USS Kearsarge in 1863.

Tasked with hunting down Alabama, he sailed off to find a specific ship somewhere on the Earth’s oceans, a hopeless project in that era. Indeed, after a fruitless 14 months at sea Winslow resolved to limit his search to the English Channel, whose ports Alabama often used. To his great satisfaction the Rebel raider entered Cherbourg Harbor in June 1864.

The hourlong battle itself was anticlimactic. Confronted by calm and experienced Union gunners aboard Kearsarge, who holed the Rebel raider beneath the waterline, Alabama struck its colors and sank. Rescued by a British yacht, Semmes and many crewmen escaped imprisonment. Living to fight another day, they returned Stateside (the Confederate States, that is) and served out the war as an infantry brigade.

While the authors concede that Alabama’s depredations had little effect on the broader war effort, Semmes’ adventures commanded more than their share of ink, and historians never tire of the story.

Four subsequent Navy ships have borne the name Kearsarge, and Semmes remains something of a swashbuckling hero among aficionados of Civil War naval actions.

—Mike Oppenheim

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War & Homecoming Travis L. Martin Available July 2022 MIHP-220700-001 Richard Tedar 'Prussia At War' 1-2Horiz.indd 1

“With sympathy and skill, Martin offers insight into the struggles of the veteran navigating a 5/29/22 landscape that has far too often siloed their lives into neatly defined stereotype and tropes and excoriates their presence with wit and candor.”

2:55 PM

Jerad W. Alexander, author of Volunteers: Growing Up in the Forever War

@kentuckypress

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Hallowed Ground Blanc Mont Ridge, France

T

he U.S. 2nd Infantry Division’s capture of heavily defended German positions on France’s Blanc Mont Ridge on Oct. 3–10, 1918, was the most skillfully executed American divisional attack of World War I. Under the command of Marine Maj. Gen. John A. Lejeune, leathernecks of the 4th Marine Brigade and doughboys of the 3rd Infantry Brigade achieved a far more influential strategic victory at Blanc Mont than they had at Belleau Wood that June. Yet Blanc Mont is one of the least remembered battles fought by the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) during World War I. Among the reasons it was forgotten is that it took place under French overall operational control and in the sector of the French Fourth Army, well west of the American Meuse-Argonne sector. When the AEF under Gen. John J. Pershing attacked northENGLISH ward on September 26 to break the CHANNEL German Siegfried Line (aka Hindenburg Line) in the Meuse-Argonne, BLANC PARIS MONT the French Fourth Army west of RIDGE the Argonne Forest had the mission F R A N C E of attacking to cover the advancing American left flank. The French drive quickly bogged down in front of the heavy defenses on Blanc Mont Ridge. Unable to move, the French commanders asked Pershing for a loan of troops to break the deadlock. With his left flank metaphorically hanging in the air, Pershing had little choice.

Pershing sent the veteran 2nd Division and an attached brigade of the green 36th Division. The French intended simply to plug the Americans into gaps in their line as individual replacements. Lejeune refused to have any part of that. He demanded they let him plan and execute the attack on the ridge his own way while giving him adequate flank support. The French were displeased, but they were desperate. Lejeune’s plan featured innovative tactics the French considered nothing short of insanity.

For one, Lejeune’s two brigades assumed positions in the line with a mile-wide gap between them. The line bent slightly inward at that point, and Lejeune planned a converging attack that would pinch out the gap some 12,000 feet from the line of departure, just short of the main German positions atop the ridge.

Lejeune also planned for a phased, set-piece battle. Following short advances, the infantry would consolidate while artillery moved up to support the next phase of the advance.

His methodical approach was a direct departure from the infantry dominant, continuous advance, open warfare tactics championed by Pershing as a remedy for the conflict’s four long years of stagnant trench warfare.

Against all the pessimistic expectations of the French and AEF senior leaders, Lejeune’s plan worked. Although the fighting was heavy and costly, the 2nd Division took the ridge, held it for several days against fierce German counterattacks and then continued the advance northward. Finally, on the morning of October 10, the Germans began a general withdrawal north to the line of the Aisne River. The Siegfried Line in the Champagne sector was broken—although for the time being it held fast in the American sector between the Argonne and the Meuse.

The 2nd Division sustained 4,821 casualties at Blanc Mont, roughly half the total losses at Belleau Wood, but within seven days of fighting as opposed to 20. Also unlike the fighting at Belleau Wood, American forces at Blanc Mont employed a combination of skillful combined-arms warfare and intensive artillery support. Regardless, when Lejeune’s division returned to American operational control, it drew stern official criticism from the AEF’s inspector general, Maj. Gen. Andre W. Brewster, for failure to follow established American tactical doctrine—irrespective of the actual battlefield success. That was another reason Pershing gave the battle short shrift in his postwar memoirs.

After the war the American Battle Monuments Commission (ABMC) constructed a number of impressive monuments on many of the AEF’s battlefields. The one on Blanc Mont Ridge, the Sommepy American Monument, incorporates remnants of the original German trench lines. More than a century after the war the ABMC beautifully maintains all of its monuments. But Blanc Mont is a rather lonely place. Present-day visitors to AEF battlefields in France tend to focus on monuments in the Marne sector, or those between the Argonne and the Meuse. On any given day visitors to Blanc Mont might well have the entire place to themselves. It is a battle that deserves to be better remembered. MH

MAP BY BRIAN WALKER; OPPOSITE, ABOVE: NAVAL HISTORY AND HERITAGE COMMAND; BELOW: DE ROCKER (ALAMY STOCK PHOTO)

By David T. Zabecki

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MAP BY BRIAN WALKER; OPPOSITE, ABOVE: NAVAL HISTORY AND HERITAGE COMMAND; BELOW: DE ROCKER (ALAMY STOCK PHOTO)

Above: A 1919 painting by George M. Harding depicts the fierce hand-to-hand combat that characterized the fighting for Blanc Mont Ridge. Dedicated in 1937, the Sommepy Monument atop the ridge honors the U.S. 2nd, 36th, 42nd and 93rd divisions and their roles in the battle.

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War Games HMS Liverpool

1 5

Can you match the following warships to the vessels they took out while battling in the Mediterranean?

1. Light cruiser HMAS Sydney 2. Torpedo boat Cassiopea 3. Submarine U-331 4. Light cruiser HMS Ajax 5. Submarine HMS Urge 6. Torpedo boats MAS-16 and MAS-22 7. Submarine U-81 8. Torpedo boat Antares 9. Light cruisers HMS Gloucester and Liverpool 10. Submarine HMS Upholder

6 2

9 3

Light cruiser Giovanni ___ A. delle Bande Nere ___ B. Submarine Proteus (rammed) Aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal ___ C. ___ D. Submarine Tricheco

4

10

7

___ E. Destroyer Espero

Masters of Combined Arms

___ F. Light cruiser Bartolomeo Colleoni

___ A. Philip II of Macedon

___ F. Maurice de Saxe

___ G. Light cruiser HMS Manchester

___ B. Hannibal Barca

___ G. John Monash

___ H. Torpedo boats Airone and Ariel

___ C. Genghis Khan

___ H. Mikhail Tukhachevsky

___ I. Battleship HMS Barham

___ D. Oda Nobunaga

___ I. Heinz Guderian

___ J. Destroyer HMS Pakenham

___ E. Gustavus Adolphus

___ J. Vo Nguyen Giap

Can you identify these warrior-kings with moves like Edward I?

Answers: A10, B6, C1, D4, E2, F9, G7, H3, I5, J8

Answers: A5, B8, C7, D10, E9, F1, G6, H4, I3, J2

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BAYEUX TAPESTRY MUSEUM

Club Med: No Vacation

LEFT: IMPERIAL WAR MUSEUMS; 1: NATIONAL PALACE MUSEUM, TAIPEI; 2: SKOKLOSTER CASTLE; 3: KOLKHOZNAYA PRAVDA; 4: HISTORIOGRAPHICAL INSTITUTE, UNIVERSITY OF TOKYO; 5: BUNDESARCHIV; 6, 8: PETER HORREEE, WORLD HISTORY ARCHIVE (ALAMY STOCK PHOTO, 2); 7: AUSTRALIAN WAR MEMORIAL; 9: GEMÄLDEGALERIE ALTE MEISTER, DRESDEN; 10: WISSENSCHAFTLICHE BIBLIOTHEK DER STADT TRIER

8

Middle-Aged England

1. Who was the only English-born king to have borne the epithet “the Great”?

A. Alfred B. Coenwulf D. Aethelstan C. Edward 2. Who, unlikely though his soubriquet suggests, was the longest-ruling Saxon king?

A. Edward the Elder B. Edgar the Peaceful C. Edmund Ironside D. Aethelred the Unready 3. Who led campaigns to seize the Danelaw boroughs of Derby and Leicester in 917–18?

A. Aethelwulf B. Aethelflaed of Mercia C. Burgred of Mercia D. Edmund Ironside

BAYEUX TAPESTRY MUSEUM

4. What was the ultimate aftermath of the 991 Battle of Maldon?

A. Saxons slaughtered the Danes B. Byrhtnoth became king of Wessex C. Aethelred bought off the Danes D. The Danes swore fealty to Byrhtnoth

HISTORYNET

5. Which of these English kings was not Anglo-Saxon?

Sign up for our free weekly E-NEWSLETTER at B. Alfred A. Knut historynet.com/newsletters D. Edmund C. CoenwulfMIHP-220700-003 Ship I Index 1/2VERTICAL 1-2Vert.indd 1

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Answers: 1A, 2D, 3B, 4C, 5A

LEFT: IMPERIAL WAR MUSEUMS; 1: NATIONAL PALACE MUSEUM, TAIPEI; 2: SKOKLOSTER CASTLE; 3: KOLKHOZNAYA PRAVDA; 4: HISTORIOGRAPHICAL INSTITUTE, UNIVERSITY OF TOKYO; 5: BUNDESARCHIV; 6, 8: PETER HORREEE, WORLD HISTORY ARCHIVE (ALAMY STOCK PHOTO, 2); 7: AUSTRALIAN WAR MEMORIAL; 9: GEMÄLDEGALERIE ALTE MEISTER, DRESDEN; 10: WISSENSCHAFTLICHE BIBLIOTHEK DER STADT TRIER

To grasp English history between Roman and Norman domination, you’ve got to know the Angles.

6/7/22 7:33 PM

Captured!

In the newly occupied Soviet sector of Berlin in 1945 a German woman strongly resists a Russian soldier’s attempt to “liberate” her bicycle. Poor living conditions and political and social repression remained widespread in the Soviet-controlled sections of the former Third Reich until the November 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall led to the collapse of the East German government and the eventual reunification of Germany.

KEYSTONE (GETTY IMAGES)

Tug of War

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We’re Bringing Flexy Back

The Stauer Flex gives you vintage style with a throwback price of only $79.

J

ust like a good wristwatch movement, fashion is cyclical. And there’s a certain wristwatch trend that was huge in the 1960s and then again in the 1980s, and is ready for its third time in the spotlight. We’re talking, of course, about the flexible stretch watch band.

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