One might think that however tragic the deaths on 9/11 — the destruction of the Towers sans deaths would merely be a blessing, as would be virtually every building since 1920 ( but including the deaths of all foul present modernist architects and scum bastard building workers everywhere who destroyed the old and erected the pointless vile concrete new ) — the swap of 30,000 Afghani civilians since would placate the manes of the 3000 murdered then

Anyway, for the demonic bin Laden, the present choices are: that he was either dead long ago in the Caves of Tora Bora; dead from his numerous ailments ( which included Marfan’s, kidney disease, liver disease etc. etc.); killed in Abottabad; or snatched for a life of imprisonment and torture under the auspices of the vengeful state — which has not treated those on Guantánamo, ever unclosed yet, whose guilt in much less culpable crimes than those of bin Laden was unproven, at all well. Or he may have escaped and a double killed, yet his charisma and mystique vanished.

The ‘DNA evidence’ is as valueless as anything else the propaganda machine issues, since we have to rely on, the retrieved bits actually coming from the corpse in Abottabad, the matching being done by the state who killed him, and the control sample actually having been taken from his sister’s corpse — bearing in mind that it was recently discovered that the piece of skull held by the Russians which they alleged was that of Hitler really belonged to some poor woman — and that in all reports the administration controls what information is released, and however generous they are in releasing in succession utterly different stories, this means believing in the good faith of Obama, a man rarely capable of understanding, let alone telling, truth; the Pentagon; and the various state security forces. One thing that is certain is that the corpse, real or not, was actually about his height: since the killers had omitted, understandably enough, to bring along a tape measure, one of them of a similar length lay down besides the body to provide a datum.

And even if the event is broadly true, whilst the raid was a credit to the hit squad, killing a bewildered old man was evidently preferred to capture, as execution of the unrighteous; especially since they said that anything less than utter submission — difficult to manage for the least alarmed when being shot at — didn’t qualify as surrender, and that attempting to retreat, as was the demonic bin Laden before he was rubbed out proved resistance. Since when they killed this sick old fellow crawling on the floor, in front of his 12 yr-old daughter, he seemed incapable of a fight to the death with tooth and nail, being unguarded and unarmed, which seems extraordinary carelessness on the part of a supervillain.

While this affair reminds one of the horrifying 2004 murder of Shiekh Yassin, which temporarily changed my internet signatures to:

‘If you could have heard the old man scream as he fell, and the noise of his bones upon the pavement !’

[ from The Story Of The Young Man With The Cream Tarts by RLS ]

&

I have to kill a 67-yr-old man
Considering he’s paraplegic, should I choose a knife fight ? Or as he’s blind, it might be pistols at dawn: in order to demonstrate my sheer fighting courage perhaps I should use a helicopter gunship when his wheelchair is exiting morning prayers.

the mention of dreary old Adolf may as well include here my very favourite joke, as told in Germany in late ’45, and perhaps almost relevant in this matter:

When they found the Führer’s body, there was a little note attached: ‘I was never a Nazi.’

 
Down in the Valley

And with all this cavilling, the fact remains the aging prisoner in Abottabad was wistfully planning yet more wacky mayhem: his computer files, as released by the administration showed his meticulous planning for a new atrocity. “…was looking into trying to tip a train by tampering with the rails so that the train would fall off the track at either a valley or a bridge.”; yet worse, this was to be specifically aimed at Amtrak’s 805 km per hour trains — which I’ll assume can cross the continent in three and a half hours — no doubt as the doleful plumes of smoke rose from the valley below the opera-glass gazing conspirators would toss their tophats into the air and fondle their waxed moustaches whilst cackling fiendishly.

For someone who hated America so, I’m guessing he had very little idea of daily life in America; let alone Amtrak.

And at the last the final question remains: What sort of person is terrified by a weird old loony such as bin Laden ?

Yanks of a liberal disposition now try to disassociate themselves and Bush-Lite from any suspicion of Obamamania, claiming that it was their opponents who fastened the unreal expectations of a new dispensation upon the reputation of a remarkably shifty candidate and soon to be dilettante president, yet none who actually lived through November of ’08 will forget the revolting genuflections and hosannas which accompanied that victory; like Boulanger, who twisted in turn to solicit support from correct legitimists and the slippery factions who composed the body politic of the corrupt Third Republic, orleanists, bonapartists, socialists, clericals etc. etc., all realising in turn that he lacked spirit to do good for any, and not even for himself, the president courted foolishly his alleged enemies for bi-partisan support without having much of a plan for even the semblance of victory. As to whether being a hollow man is better than being a criminal worshipped war-lord, I can’t say; but trying to be both is a respectable recipe for disaster.

As Gorman includes: In Politics one insisted to the last that one’s party was winning, and when one’s party did not win one spent the the next week inventing extraneous excuses for the defeat. The simple fact that one’s party had lost because it had not received as many votes as the other fellow’s party was never a conclusive explanation in itself. Politics, it appeared, was a constant self-justification. If I had done that, if I had done this, if the question had been properly presented, if my agent in that particular place… if the funds had been distributed as… if… if… if… Ah, that was politics. It was an absurd game of chess with crazy moves and cheating antagonists who stole your pawns when you were not looking. There was more politics, she thought, in republics than there were in kingdoms or empires for the simple reason that in republics there was no definitive iron hoof to stamp it out. That was good. So everybody said. The People spoke. Sometimes they spoke in a dozen clashing voices and nothing was resolved, or, if was resolved, it took a long time and the resolution lost a part of its strength. Like the American Congress. A wilful minority in that Paradise of democracy could indefinitely obstruct the will of the majority. That was called rule by the people. It sounded more like rule by the sediment that was too clotted to go down the drain. It held back everything.

Twilight was falling

Twilight was falling when the Prince, looking very much like a blown-up caricature of his august uncle, waddled into the large library with the General at his heels.
      “If you enter politics,” he was saying, “you will soon discover it to be a nasty and merciless business. Have you a fortune ?”
      “Not a sou, “replied the General.
      “Well,” said the Prince, as he thrust his hand into the front of his waistcoat, “if you run aground you will never be a stranger here.”
Thiébaud, who was standing by one of the glass cases of relics with Berthet-Leleux, turned smilingly towards the two men.
      “I have been thrilled by some of the objects in this case, Your Imperial Highness,” he declared. “Look here, my General. Here are some things that will stir your soldier’s heart.”
Boulanger advanced towards the relics eagerly, and the Prince followed, his broad face wreathed with smiles.
      “Yes,” he said, “I intended to show you some of these sacred souvenirs. Berthet-Leleux, hand me the keys.”
The four men gathered before the case, while the Prince awkwardly unlocked the glass-panelled door.
      “There are the spurs that He wore on the return from Italy,” he explained. “And there is the cockade that was in His hat the day He made them eat grapeshot at the Church of Saint-Roch. There are two of His pistols and the sash He wrapped around His middle when He drove the recalcitrant Council of the Five Hundred out of the Orangerie. And here… here…”
He reached into the case and withdrew an Egyptian sabre in a gold-plated and bejewelled sheath. He extended it towards the General.
      “This is the sword the First Consul carried at Marengo,” he said solemnly.
For an instant the magic of the Cult impregnated the still air in the library. Afterwards Thiébaud swore that he heard the distant grumble of grenadier drums as the General stretched forward a respectful hand and lightly touched the hilt of the glittering weapon.
      “Are you sure that this is the sabre of the First Consul ?” he demanded in a hushed voice.
The Prince smiled.
      “Do you think that this is bric-à-brac I have collected in flea-markets ?” he asked proudly.
      “It is a beautiful souvenir,” declared the General in a reverent tone.
His hand again caressed the hilt of the sword as lightly, as tenderly as though it were the upturned face of a beloved woman. Thiébaud saw the grave melancholy visage of a professional soldier to whom warfare was a religion and in whose eyes the saints wore burnished epaulets. Like the Moor in the English play his profession was his life and without it he would have no life at all… nothing, indeed, but existence. What, then ? What, then ? The journalist closed his mind to the answer. The Prince, too, observed the General’s emotion and instinctively understood it. After all, he was a Bonaparte. Turning, he carefully placed the sabre back on the velvet in the open case.
      “General,” he said, “when you have returned Alsace and Lorraine back to France I will offer you this sword.”
Justin entered the shadowy library with a lighted candelabra.

As elsewhere, earlier in the book, eternal truth remains for some of us outside all such montebanks of apparent power…

It was after four o’clock in the morning when the Polish waiter, leaning like an old collapsed scarecrow against the corridor wall, saw the door open and the octet emerge in a compact group. They were no longer laughing.
      “Remember,” said Laguerre. “My dinner is tonight. You are all invited. In the meantime…”
      “In the meantime we have accomplished nothing,” snapped Clemenceau.
      “We are moving to an understanding,” said the General mildly.
Ignace observed how Clemenceau turned a brief sour glance at the handsome gentleman with the blond beard.
      “Whose understanding ?” demanded the Breton abruptly.
Nobody answered.
As they were going down the stairs Ignace turned to Monsieur Frédéric.
      “They all detest one another,” he remarked in a surprised tone.
Monsieur Frédéric, who had been a maître d’hôtel for thirty years, shrugged his shoulders.
      “After all,” he replied, “we live under a Republic. They have the liberty to detest one another. As for me… I am a Royalist.”

Even the terrible Bismarck, whose great stature made Wickham Hoffman of the U.S. Legation think of Agamemnon, positively glowed with goodwill. Beauties of Paris society surrounded him. admired his dazzling White Cuirassier unform and the enormous spread eagle upon his shining helmet, and attempted to provoke him; but in vain. In conversation with Louis-Napoleon, he dismissed last year’s Austro-Prussian war as belonging to another epoch, and added amiably ‘Thanks to you no permanent cause of rivalry exists between us and the Court at Vienna’. The festive atmosphere temporarily obscured the full menace of this remark.

On April 12th, the Emperor attended the première of one of the great entertainments to be produced in honour of his Royal guests: Offenbach’s La Grande Duchesse de Gérolstein…

…Now here was this new triumph about the amorous Grand Duchess of a joke German principality, embarking on a pointless war because its Chancellor, Baron Puck, needed a diversion. Its forces were led by a joke German general called Boum, as incapable as he was fearless, who invigorated himself with the smell of gunpowder by periodically firing off his pistol into the air. The farce, tallying so closely with Europe’s private view of the ridiculous Teutons, was too obvious to be missed. When the Tsar came to see it, his box was said to have rung with unroyal laughter. Between gusts of mirth, members of the French court peeped over at Bismarck’s expression, half in malice, half in apprehension, wondering if perhaps King Wilhelm’s lack of tact about his previous visit to Paris had not been revenged to excess. But nobody appeared to be showing more obvious and unrestrained pleasure than the Iron Chancellor himself; one might almost have suspected that the pleasure was enhanced by the enjoyment of some secret joke of his own.

Alistair Horne : The Fall of Paris

The Russians had reverted to becoming savages by 1945: the Americans maintained their customary anthropological status as barbarians. Their especially barbaric political system of representative democracy had grave consequence as victors… The very first moralistic theatre was the judicial murder of General Anton Dostler, of which may be read here, written by the son of his American defense counsel. Essentially, 15 American soldiers were captured disguised as Italian civilians, and the — non-nazi — General referred the case to Kesselring, who ordered them to be executed. Admittedly Smiling Albert had enough to occupy his mind right then without giving this a great deal of thought, but under the laws of war this was a done deal anyway. It is pointless to object or blame soldiers for disguising; it is equally pointless to object to the consequence — which procedure is actually there to protect civilians. Thus although guiltless — neither prosecutor nor defence expected anything except acquittal — General Dostler was then sentenced to death after new instructions were handed down from Washington in response to the revelation that the prosecution would fail, that is that henceforth in these trials hearsay evidence would be admissible. This was to satisfy the voting constituents. Democracy is awesomely repellent not merely in practice, but still more so in idealist theory…

‘Hope to God we never lose a war.’ said the prosecutor.

[See post to watch Flash video]

 
Another version, shorter, but with a few more frames

[See post to watch Flash video]

Incidentally, this trial caused the innocent prosecutor to lose his faith in the Rule of Law forever…

[See post to watch Flash video]

Anyway, during the royalist war in the Vendée against the brutish scum of the French Republic, there was another notable piece with a sweet name. She was a bit bigger, but just as lovable.

Really, the only engaging with life which makes the curious matter of existence endurable is to destroy republicans… And maybe, to collect cannon. Not only for that good purpose, but just because… I find myself unable to believe God created us in order that we might worship Him — although He would have every right so to do if He so Chose ( that’s the arbitrary and unfettered bit that is the essence of power; which we must try to mirror, howsoever unsuccessfully here on earth, at least for His equally arbitrarily Chosen lieutenants… ) — and His reasons for creation must remain a mystery, but fighting on the right side each time consoles us at least during each such struggle.

 
The soldiers reassembled in large numbers, till, with Bonchamps’ division, there were close on forty thousand, but destitute of powder; the army spent the night before La Châtaigneraie, which had been re-occupied by the Republicans. At daybreak the town was found to have been evacuated, all the Blues having fallen back on Fontenay. The Catholic Army marched forward without delay and towards noon reached Pissotte, three-quarters of a league from Fontenay; the Blues, to the number of ten thousand, with upwards of forty pieces of cannon, were drawn up in battle array before the town. The priests were asked to give the men absolution before the battle. “We have no powder, boys“, the generals said to them; “Come on and recapture Marie-Jeanne with your cudgels, as you did at first. See who can run fastest, for we cannot stop to fire this time.” M. de Lescure was in command of the left wing; his men showing a disposition to hang back, he was obliged to ride on alone forty paces ahead of them; then, pulling up, he called out “Vive le Roi !” He was instantly greeted with six rounds of grapeshot, for the enemy had aimed at him as though he was the bullseye on a target; by a veritable miracle he was not wounded, though his clothes were riddled, his left spur shot away, and also a large piece of his boot from the right calf. Turning round he called out to the men, “You see, boys, the Blues cannot shoot. On with you ! Forward !” The men, carried away with enthusiasm, rushed forward at such a pace that my husband had to break into a quick trot in order to keep at their head. Just then the peasants, catching sight of a mission cross, fell on their knees around it, though within range of the cannon. More than thirty balls passed over their heads. At that point there were only MM. de Lescure and de Baugé on horseback. The latter would have had my husband bid them go on. “No, let them finish their prayers first“, he answered quietly. At length they sprang up and rushed upon the enemy. Meanwhile M. de Marigny fired off the few charges we had with good effect. M. de la Rochejaquelein had put himself at the head of the cavalry with MM. de Dommaigné and de Beaurepaire; they all displayed the utmost gallantry, while Henri distinguished himself by a judgment beyond his years. After repulsing the Repub­lican cavalry, instead of pursuing it, he fell upon the flank of the enemy’s left wing, which till then had been maintaining the fight with some success, and by so doing placed the victory beyond a doubt. I wish I could give further details with regard to the circumstances of this battle, but I can only say what I know for certain.

The Blues, appalled by the desperate onslaught of the Vendeans, were completely routed in three quarters of an hour. The left wing, under the command of M. de Lescure, reached the gate of the town, and he himself was the first to enter, but his men, to begin with, had not the courage to follow him. MM. de Bonchamps and Forest, spying him from a distance, dashed forward to join him ; it was high time, for he was alone and in a very perilous situation. The three officers together were rash enough to penetrate into the town, though the streets were still crowded with over four thousand Blues, who, paralysed with terror, fell on their knees and began begging for quarter. When they had reached the square they separated and took three different streets, likewise thronged with armed volunteers, to whom they cried, “Surrender, down with your arms ! Vive le Roi ! We will do you no harm.” Scarcely had he parted from M. de Lescure, however, than M. de Bonchamps was wounded. One of the soldiers, after laying down his musket and crying for quarter like the rest, picked it up again as soon as he had passed, and fired, shooting him through the arm and fleshy part of the breast and inflicting four wounds upon him : luckily our troops were just then crowding into the town in the wake of their generals. Bonchamps’ men in their fury closed in on the street and slaughtered about sixty Blues who were in it, so that the guilty one should not escape their vengeance.

As for M. de Lescure, he had the greatest pleasure a man can experience ; on leaving M. de Bonchamps and Forest he had taken the Street of the Prisons, which he caused.to be thrown open, to the cry of Vive le Roi, and flung himself into the arms of M. de la Marsonniere and the two hundred and forty prisoners confined along with him. This officer and several of the men were to have been guillotined the following morning; he had shown at his examination a nobility and greatness of character worthy of the highest praise. M. de Lescure had hastened to deliver them for fear they should be mas­sacred by the Blues, and having done so flew at once to another prison in which were confined the relations of émigrés and other suspected persons, to the number of over two hundred. They had viewed the battle from afar and barricaded themselves on the inside for fear of being butchered by the patriots. M. de Lescure knocked repeatedly, crying, “Open, in the King’s name !” Immediately the doors flew open, while the prison rang with cries of Vive le Roi ! All the captives embraced M. de Lescure, but without recognizing him, even though a great many were relations or friends of his ; after telling them his name he left them, to engage in the pursuit of the patriots like all the other officers.

Forest had taken the street leading to the Niort road, and accordingly found himself at the very head. Every­one’s chief concern was to recapture Marie-Jeanne, the idol of the army, while the Blues, who were aware of this, used every endeavour to save her. They were already well over a league from the town. Forest had pushed forward so far that he found himself in the midst of over a hundred gendarmes ; fortunately he had the horse, saddle and weapons of a gendarme he had killed in a previous engagement, besides which, he was not dressed like a peasant and had no white cockade, and as at that time most of the Republican regiments were full of new recruits not yet in uniform, the Blues took him for one of their own men. “Comrade,” said one of them, clapping him on the shoulder, “there is a reward of twenty-five thousand francs for those who save Marie-Jeanne; she is in danger; let us turn back and prevent her from being taken.” All the Blues promptly turned back, whereupon Forest began to play the hero, declaring that he must be the foremost, and so gradually worked his way forward till he found himself leading, some way ahead, and followed only by the two boldest. When he was only a short distance from our men, he turned round with a cry of Vive le Roi ! and killed the two Blues who were following him, while the Vendeans, recognizing him, fell upon the enemy and captured Marie-Jeanne who was defended by some foot. To bring the history of this gun to a conclusion, I will add that she was brought back by the soldiers in triumph to La Vendée, where, in all the villages, the women came out to meet her, embracing her and covering her with flowers and ribbons.

Memoirs of the Marquise de La Rochejaquelein [ trans : Cecil Biggane ]

 
A/ Marie-Jeanne was a 12-pounder, one of six sisters from the Château de Richelieu.

B/ The insurgents had a wise grasp on the historic duplicity of the English and their historic lack of good faith [ after all, the British governance was equally as, and is still, revolutionary as the American or French of then or now: their oligarchs merely moved in a century earlier than those two others ]. Two excerpts:

i/ M. de Tinténiac was the second son of the marquis of that name, and belonged to one of the noblest and wealthiest families in Brittany. He was a man of thirty, of small stature, with a face that sparkled with intelligence, and his countenance did not belie him. He carried his despatches in two double-barrelled pistols, fully loaded, in which they took the place of wads. He was firmly resolved, if arrested, to fire all his four shots and so preserve the secret of his mission. My father, MM. de la Rochejaquelein, de Lescure, the Bishop of Agra, des Essarts and de Béjarry were at La Boulaye. At first they received M. de Tinténiac with some suspicion, enquiring how he came to be chosen in preference to so many other émigrés who belonged to that part of the country. He replied that several had declined so dangerous a mission, while others did not happen to be within reach, and added with a noble candour : “Over and above the motives that would have prevailed with anyone else, I will not hide from you that I have had a very blameworthy youth and wished to wipe out my past follies or die in the attempt.”

He then delivered his despatches, which were, I think, from the English minister Dundas; there were also letters from the Governor of Jersey. The despatches contained compliments on our valour together with extremely flattering offers, and expressed a wish to co­operate in the maintenance of the insurrection. Nine questions followed ; I think I can remember them more or less ; they were :—
Why had we not established relations with England ? What was the real object of the revolt ? What had given rise to it ? What were our relations with the other provinces and the Allied Powers ? What was the extent of the territory in revolt ? How many men had we ? What were our resources in the way of money, provisions, clothing, cannon, muskets and powder ? How came we by them all ? In conclusion they offered to provide us with all we needed, and asked us to suggest a suitable place for a landing.

All the despatches were written in a tone of sincerity together with a sort of apprehension lest we should reject the help of England, since we had not asked for it; they even seemed to be doubtful, or at least not to know for certain, whether we were out and out Royalists or sup­porters of a Constitutional Monarchy or even Federalists. Everything was addressed to M. Gaston, the hairdresser of Challans of whom I have made mention, who had been the first to be named in the newspapers as a leader of the rising, and who the English thought to be the same as a M. Gaston who had commanded at Longwy in the campaign of 1792.

M. de Tinteniac was speedily convinced that we were Royalists pure and simple. He read our proclamation of Fontenay, reprinted at Angers, with which the English must certainly have been acquainted for all they pretended to know nothing about it, for how could a proclamation published in all the newspapers possibly have been unknown to their Government ? This proves beyond a doubt that their pretended uncertainty as to our opinions was a piece of sheer duplicity. We, for our part, per­ceiving that M. de Tinteniac was really an emigre con­fidence was established between us, and laying aside the character of English ambassador he unbosomed himself and told us the truth without reserve.

ii/ We were to have proceeded from Fougères to Rennes; it was our best plan, and we were on the point of adopting it, for Henri had never favoured the march on Granville; but two émigrés, sent by the English Government, arrived with the news ( which was quite true ) that there were troops at Jersey ready to support us; we must therefore do our best to capture a sea-port, and then the English would supply us with all we needed. What chiefly decided us was the hope of securing a safe refuge where we could leave the women, children, old folk, wounded and non-combatants, amounting to about twenty thousand people, who greatly hampered the army and whose own lot was most pitiable. By this course all these advantages appeared to be combined.
I do not know the names of the two emigres who came to Fougères; they were disguised as Breton peasants, and one of them was a member of the Parliament of Brittany; they drew the English despatches out of a hollow stick. The English Cabinet, after making them the most favourable offers, asked the Vendeans what kind of government they wished to set up; to which we replied that all we wanted was to restore the King to the throne, without troubling about what laws he established there­after, which was no business of ours. When the two envoys had discharged their commission from the English Government, they snapped their stick in another place and took out a short letter from M. du Dresnay, one of the most important of the Breton nobles, who informed us that all the émigrés in Jersey were burning to join us, but that they had been deprived of their arms and all pos­sibility of getting across. [ eg: by the British. ]

My italics in the last. No nobler sentiment has ever been expressed on God’s Earth. Even a non-legitimist such as Evelyn Waugh, whatever faults he may have had, never voted once in his life, because as he said magnificently: it was not for him to advise his sovereign on whom to choose for a government.

That is what it means to be a Subject, and merely not a wretched pitiful little piece of waste as a Citizen.

It appears that the unfortunate King of Martaban had reckoned greatly upon the assistance of the Portuguese, and had held out in the full hope that they would give him efficient succour. When he found them, to his intense chagrin, ranged on the side of his enemies, he gave up his cause for lost, and entered into negotiations with his assailant, offering to surrender his capital on condition that he should be allowed to retire in safety with his family. The faithless Burmese tyrant, after pledging his word that this condition should be granted, shamefully broke the promise he had given, and the un­happy prince was led forth in triumph with his wives and children, and exposed to great humiliation and ignominy. Pinto gives a very circum­stantial account of the procession of guards and captives who marched forth from Martaban, giving the names of many of the princes, the chief priest, &c. He then says — “Immediately after these there came in a litter Nhay Canatoo, daughter of the King of Pegu, whose kingdom the Burmese monarch had taken away, and wife of the Chambainhaa. She had with her four little children, two boys and two girls, the greatest of whom was not more than seven years old, and around her were thirty or forty young women of noble family, and grandly beau­tiful. They all had their faces bowed down towards the ground, and tears in their eyes, and leaned upon other women. After these marched in order certain Falagrepos, who are among themselves like the Capu­chins among us, and who all, barefooted and bareheaded, marched onward praying, and carrying in their hands a kind of chaplets. Moreover, they encouraged these ladies as well as they could, throwing water in their faces to revive them when their hearts failed them, which happened often enough — a lamentable spectacle, which it was impossible to look upon without shedding tears. This unhappy company was followed by a number of foot-guards, and after these came some five hundred Burmese on horseback. Near them was the Chambainhaa, mounted on a small elephant, in token of poverty and of the disregard of the world, conformably to the religion to which he had devoted him­self anew. There was no greater pomp about him than this, and he was dressed simply in a long garment of black velvet, in token of mourning, having his beard, his hair, and his eyebrows shaved off; and, moreover, he had caused an old cord to be placed about his neck before he gave himself up to the king. This spectacle, too, was so mournful that none could look upon it and refrain, from weeping. With regard to his age, he was about sixty-two years old, of very lofty stature, with a grave and severe countenance, and the look of a very generous prince. When he had come to a place where a confused company of women, children, and old men awaited him, when they saw him in such a lamentable condition, before he had emerged from the city, they all raised, six or seven times, such a loud and terrible cry, that one would have said the earth was crumbling under his feet; and these lamentations and cries were incontinently followed by a multitude of blows that they inflicted on their own faces, striking themselves heavily with stones, with so little pity for themselves that the majority of them were in a short time covered with blood. Moreover, these things so horrible, to see and so terrible to hear, in such measure afflicted all the bystanders, that even the Burmese guards, though they were men of war, and con­sequently little inclined to compassion, and enemies of the Chambainhaa, could not refrain from weeping like children. It was at this place, also, that the heart of Nhay Canatoo, the wife of the Chambainhaa, twice failed her, and: all the other ladies gave way also, insomuch ilhat it was necessary to let him dismount from the elephant on which he was riding, that he might be able to encourage his wife and to console her. Then, seekig her lying on the ground like one dead, and embracing her four littte children, he knelt down on the ground and looked up with tears in his eyes.”

The severest part of the unfortunate prince’s trial was the mortifica­tion of meeting the Portuguese, who had behaved very treacherously towards him, and who were now standing to see him pass “all clothed in holiday dresses, with cuirasses of buffalo leather, their hats on their heads ornamented with a great number of plumes, and their arquebuses on their shoulders.” Juan Cayeyro, one of the number, especially attracted the notice of the Chambainhaa by flaunting in crimson satin. On seeing him, the fallen monarch bent forward on his elephant’s neck, and declared that he would go no farther unless these wicked and trea­cherous men were removed. The Birmans themselves were irritated at the double-dealing of the Spaniards, and the captain of the guard sar­castically bade them go shave their beards, and no longer deceive people into the belief that they were soldiers; and the Burmese would hire a number of women in their stead, who would serve for money. The Burmese guards, following their commander’s lead, thereupon pushed away the Spaniards with great contempt, and Pinto adds pathetically, “Not to tell a lie, nothing ever so sensibly affected me as this, for the honour of my compatriots.”

 
The plunder of the rich city of Martaban was the bait that had attracted the Spaniards to serve the Burmese invader. They made no doubt that their help would.be paid for by the abandonment to them of a great part of the spoil. But the Burmese conqueror had all the cunning of an Asiatic and all an Asiatic’s disregard of promises and oaths. He eaused the gates of the city to be very strictly guarded, that none might enter or go out without his express permission. He took occa­sion to convey away the Chambainhaa’s treasure privately; and so great was this treasure, according to Pinto’s assertion, that a thousand men were employed for two days in removing it. When he had thus taken care of his own interests, the tyrant gave up the city to be plun­dered by his own soldiers, to the great chagrin of the Portuguese, who found themselves cheated of the wages of their treachery. Pinto tells the story of these events in his usual graphic style. He says —

“After these two days were past, the king went very early on a hill called Beiddo, distant a couple of gunshots from thence, and caused the captains who guarded the gates to withdraw. Then the miserable city of Martaban was given up to the mercy of the men of war, and as a last signal a cannon was fired. Immediately all the soldiers rushed pell-mell into the place in such crowds that it is considered more than three hundred were suffocated at the entrance of the gates; for as there was an infinite number of men of different nations, the majority of them without a king, without law, or £he fear of God, they all rushed with dosed eyes to the spoil, and were so fierce about it, that they made no scruple of killing a hundred men for a crown. In truth, the disorder in the town was so great that the king was obliged to go six or seven times to allay it. The sacking of the city lasted three days and a half, and was carried on with such avarice and cruelty by these barbarous enemies that it was completely pillaged, and nothing remained that could attract the eye of covetousness.”

And now come some of Pinto’s magnificent figures. He tells us — “When this was done, the king, with a new ceremony of publications, caused the palaces of the Chambainhaa to be destroyed, which were very beautiful and very rich ; and with them thirty or forty houses belonging to the principal captains, together with the pagodas and temples of the whole city, insomuch that, according to the opinion of many, it is held that; the loss of these magnificent edifices may be estimated at ten millions of gold ; with which, not yet content, he caused all the buildings of the city which still remained standing to be set on fire, and by the violence of the wind these kindled so fiercely that on the first night there remained nothing that was not burnt down; and even the walls and the bulwarks were destroyed to their very foundations. The number of the dead was more than sixty thousand persons, and that of the prisoners was no less. There was a hundred and forty thousand houses burnt, and seventeen hundred temples, in which were likewise destroyed sixty thousand statues of idols of different metals. Moreover, during the siege, those of the city had eaten three thousand elephants. There were found there six thousand pieces of artillery of bronze and of iron, a hundred thousand quintals of pepper, and as much more of different drugs — of sandal, benzoin, lac, aloe-wood, camphor, silk, and of divers other kinds of very rich merchandise; but especially an infinity of goods that had come from India in more than a hundred ships of Cambaya, Achem, Melinda, and Ceilam ( Ceylon ), and from Mecca, the Loochoos, and China. As to the gold, silver, and precious stones which were found there, its amount cannot be truly known, because things are usually concealed; therefore it shall suffice me to say that what the Burman king had for himself of the treasure of the Chambainhaa amounted, so far as I was assured, to more than a hundred millions of gold, whereof, as I have before said, our king ( the King of Portugal ) lost more than half, as much for our sins as for the weakness and want of courage of men who were cowardly and full of evil inclinations.”

The promises of the Burman tyrant were no more kept towards his captives than his engagements with the Spaniards had been. Wars in Eastern Asia at that time, and long afterwards, were wars of extermination. A captured dynasty was generally put-to death to the last man, woman, or child, for fear of reprisals; and this course was pur­sued by the conqueror of Martaban. He caused a number of gibbets to be erected; a great body of horsemen came forth from the king’s quarters, proclaiming that no man, “on pain of death, should appear in arms, or say with his mouth what he thought in his heart.” [ * ] Presently the whole army was paraded, and amid a great display of barbaric pomp and splendour of war, the unhappy king and his wives, children, and dependants were hanged en masse with circumstances of atrocious cruelty. In concluding the chapter which tells us of these barbarous proceedings, Pinto says — “As for the rearguard, it consisted of a hundred elephants, like those that marched in front. So that the number of warriors who were present at this execution, partly as a guard and partly for the pomp of justice, amounted to ten thousand foot soldiers and two thousand horsemen, and two hundred elephants, not to mention an infinity of other men, natives and foreigners, who had assembled to see the end of this wretched and miserable tragedy.”

Relation of Fernand Mendez Pinto, 1547 : World’s Explorers c.1872

* Early political correctness

 
Monday 9th April 1917
Shubin is still very worried. The apparent orderliness of the demon­stration in honour of the victims of the revolution does not re­assure him.
He analysed the psychology of Russian crowds to us with great shrewdness — he understands them better than we do, their men­tality is so far removed from ours.
“I saw,” he told us, “a troop of a thousand demonstrators in a small side-street, waiting their turn to take up their position in one of the processions. There they stood, each one in his place, from ten o’clock in the morning until eight o’clock at night, marking time in the melting snow without the slightest sign of impatience, with nothing to eat and nothing to drink, without asking for anything from the neighbouring houses. The bearers laid five or six red coffins down on the bare earth, and none of this great crowd gave any sign of impatience. And yet, on the banners which they carried, the most extreme and violent demands were inscribed. From time to time a leader raised his baton, giving the note, and they began to sing: ‘We will pillage ! — we will kill ! — we will cut throats ! — to the gallows with the Tsar ! — the bourgeois are vampires !‘ etc. . . . The tenors cried out for the heads of the aristocrats, the sopranos for that of the Tsar, the basses wanted no one spared. Then, when the verse was over they rested for ten minutes and then, at a new signal, they started again. It wasn’t until that night that the procession could start marching, the bearers lifted the coffins on to their shoulders, and the crowd left in an orderly fashion, singing: ‘We will pillage ! — We will murder !‘ etc. . . .”
Fat Shubin mimed the scene all the while he described it, rolling his pale blue eyes, beating time, singing first in a tenor voice, then in a bass… and then marching across the drawing-room with superb calm.
He was most amusing. But his observation is very exact. In no other country could people confine themselves to words like this, without breaking into action. But how dangerous it all is ! Because, once let loose, these brutes are terrifying. In 1905 there were atrocious scenes and the moujiks, so mild in appearance, pillaged everywhere with sadistic cruelty. Someone told me about one ‘estate’, where the peasants cut three legs off all the sheep. In other places they tore out the cattles’ tongues and put out their eyes. Let us hope that we do not see horrors like these !

Wednesday 8th August 1917
Everyone is interested in the battalions of women soldiers who exercise in the courtyard of the Paul Palace on the Fontanka . . . people talk of the ‘heroism of the Russian women‘ and they get all excited about it… as for myself, I feel that it is rather unpleasant histrionics. As far as fighting goes these women can only be thinking of the rough-and-tumble !

Tuesday 14th August 1917
What strikes one about the present events is the lack of men … the Kadets, who stirred up so much trouble in the opposition under the old regime, have shown themselves to be lamentably incompetent when in power. It makes one wonder whether the Emperor wasn’t quite right in not calling on their help. If he had given them power, far from saving him they would have precipitated his downfall, because they have shown themselves to be doctrinaires, muddlers and blunderers. . . .
During the first days of the revolution one of these brilliant theoreticians came to see Shubin, completely panic-stricken. Shubin expressed astonishment at his being in such a state at the moment when the event which he had spent his whole life preparing for was actually taking place…. “Yes,” his visitor replied, “the revolution is all very well, but it is not happening the way I wrote about it in my book….” The whole history of the Kadet party is contained in that answer.

 
What were the considerations which induced the Count to disregard superior orders ?
Although we have no notes left by him personally, his chief of operations and his deputy chief of staff, Major Einbeck, have laid down in a memorandum the arguments of the Corps command. An instructive report is also extant from Lieutenant-Colonel von Ahlfen, the chief of staff of 617th Engineers Regiment.
This is the picture that emerges from these reports: On 28th Decem­ber 1941 Lieutenant-General Himer’s 46th Infantry Division, by rally­ing all its reserves, succeeded in smashing the Soviet bridgehead north of Kerch. The Soviets, and above all the Caucasians, had accomplished incredible feats. In spite of its being 20 degrees below zero Centigrade they had waded to the steep coast up to their necks in water, and had gained a foothold there. Without any supplies they had held out for two days. Their wounded had frozen rigid into ice-covered lumps of flesh. Frozen to death. The landings south of Kerch were likewise sealed off. But at that moment Soviet naval units attacked at Feodosiya, 60 miles behind Kerch. A heavy cruiser, two destroyers, and landing-craft entered the harbour under cover of darkness.
Of Army Coastal Artillery Battalion 147, detailed to defend Feo­dosiya, only four 10-5-cm. guns and the headquarters personnel had so far got to their destination. In addition, only one German and one Czech-manufactured field howitzer were in the port. The Soviet war­ships trained their searchlights on to the defender’s gun emplacements and shelled them to smithereens with their heavy naval guns. Then the Russians disembarked.
For infantry engagements the German forces available consisted of the sapper platoon of an assault boat detachment and a Panzerjager platoon with two 3-7-cm. anti-tank guns. Luckily the Engineers Bat­talion 46, en route to the west, had taken up quarters in Feodosiya for the night Count Sponeck put Lieutenant-Colonel von Ahlfen in charge of repulsing the Soviet landing. The lieutenant-colonel mobilized every single man he could find — paymasters, workshop mechanics, the personnel of food stores and field post-offices, a road construction company, and the men of a signals unit. From this motley crew the first covering line was organized outside the town.
At 0730 hours a signal arrived at Count Sponeck’s headquarters at Keneges: “Soviets are also landing north-east of Feodosiya on the open coast.” An entire division was disembarking.
A few minutes later telephone connections with Army and with Feodosiya were cut—just after Count Sponeck had received the mation that Manstein was sending 170th Infantry Division Sevastopol and two Rumanian brigades from the Yayla Mountains Feodosiya.
What were the Soviet intentions ? Their tactical aim, clearly, was cut the narrow neck of land between the Crimea and the Kerch Peninsula, and to annihilate the trapped 46th Infantry Division. But their strategic objective, undoubtedly, was to strike swiftly into the Crimea from their foothold at Feodosiya, to occupy the traffic junctions behind the Sevastopol front, and to cut off Eleventh Army from its supplies.
That the Russians were in fact pursuing this strategic objective, and not just making local raids on the coast, was proved by the fact that their invading forces comprised two Armies — the Fifty-first under General Lvov at Kerch and the Forty-fourth under General Pervushin at Feodosiya. The Forty-fourth Army had already disembarked some; 23,000 men of 63rd and 157th Rifle Divisions.
General Count Sponeck asked himself: Was 46th Infantry Division strong enough to throw the enemy forces back into the sea at Kerch and at the same time hold the Parpach Isthmus against the new landings at Feodosiya? His answer was No.
Major Einbeck records: “Corps command could only regain their initiative by immediately switching the focus of operations to the Feodosiya area. That was the place where the danger of a drive against Dzhankoy or Simferopol, now threatening Eleventh Army, might be averted. This decision involved surrendering the Kerch Peninsula as far as the Parpach line.”
Count Sponeck believed that, in view of the responsibility he had for his 10,000 men, there was no time to be lost. Because of his clearer, local grasp of the situation he felt justified in acting against the order of his Army commander. He realized that he was risking his neck. He knew the iron law of military discipline. But he was also aware of a military commander’s moral duty to put a meaningful order above a formal one. He did not evade the tragic dilemma which must arise whenever a man’s duty to obey clashes with his personal assessment of operational necessity.
At 0800 hours on 29th December Count Sponeck ordered 46th Infantry Division to disengage itself from the enemy at Kerch, to pro­ceed to the Parpach Isthmus by forced marches, and “to attack the enemy at Feodosiya and throw him into the sea”. He sent a signal to Army informing it of his move, and then ordered his wireless station to be dismantled.
So much for Count Sponeck’s strategic and tactical considerations. They made sense, they were sober and courageous. There was not a trace of cowardice, indecision, or guilty conscience.
In a temperature of 40 degrees below zero Centigrade, in an icy blizzard, the battalions of 46th Infantry Division, the anti-aircraft units, the sappers, and the gunners moved off. The distance they had to cover was 75 miles. Only occasionally was a fifteen-minute halt called to issue hot coffee to the troops. They marched for forty-six hours. Many were frost-bitten in their fingertips, toes, and noses. Most of the horses were not shod for the winter and were emaciated. They collapsed exhausted. Guns were abandoned on the icy roads.

***

Judging by results, therefore, Count Sponeck had been justified. Or was there room for doubt ? Manstein himself, in his memoirs, does not answer the question unequivocally one way or the other. He criticizes Count Sponeck for facing the Army with a fait accompli and making any other solution impossible.
Manstein says: “Such a precipitate withdrawal of 46th Infantry Division was not the way to maintain its combat strength. If the enemy had acted correctly at Feodosiya the division, in the condition in which it arrived at Parpach, would scarcely have been able to fight its way through to the west.” If ! But the enemy did not act correctly, and the outcome alone is what counts. Whichever way one judges the Sponeck affair, the general’s decision sprang neither from dishonourable motives nor from cowardice. His dismissal from his command, decreed by Manstein, can be justified on grounds of principle, as an issue of obedience to superior orders. But this was not all. At the Fuehrer’s Headquarters a court martial was held under the presidency of Reich Marshal Göring which sentenced Lieutenant-General Count von Sponeck, who had been summoned before it, to reduction to the ranks, forfeiture of all orders and decorations, and to death by execution.
Hitler himself must have had some misgivings about this barbarous verdict, for on appeal by the C-in-C Eleventh Army he commuted the death sentence to seven years’ fortress detention. Judged by his later verdicts, this was a remarkable decision, virtually tantamount to acquittal.
But some two and a half years later, after 20th July 1944, one of Himmler’s execution squads amended Hitler’s clemency by brutal murder. Count von Sponeck was shot without cause and without sen­tence.

Paul Carell : Hitler’s War on Russia

 
Download audio file (Radetzky-Marsch.mp3)

Quite apart from the fact that protests rarely succeed in altering anything, any more than voting does, or contacting one’s — and I may add that I take it as a deep and perpetual insult to suppose that anyone can ‘represent’ me — representatives does; ultimately protesters and fascistic guardians are locked in a dance, and in the longer run keep exchanging roles. As Göring once affably pointed out to some ( agreeing ) communist prisoners: it could have easily been him in jail and them as the jailers. In this case I prefer the protesters philosophically, and despise the rigid guardians > yet in another I would as easily crush the iron heel down on protesters I personally despised… And in this case, neither side are efficient — beyond the habitual national characteristic of inefficiency — mainly because each claims to be speaking on behalf of ‘The People’: an entity, who like the Almighty, to which any assorted randomly chosen beliefs and feelings may be attributed. Oddly enough, the protesters prefer not to point out that thus they are speaking on behalf of redneck gun-toting anti-commies who gibber for Bush; whilst the state spokespeople equally refrain from acknowledging part of their constituency are shiftless liberal slackers who would elect for all war-mongers to be hung from apple-trees. Which is one of the prime jokes of conceptual democracy.

But anyway, this is funny and exquisitely chosen: for a state with such a worldwide reputation for wackiness ranging from hippydom to the extreme marcusian egalitarianism enshrined in PC to various cults, Californian policing appears to be modelled on the vague inchoate fascisimo of a Latin American country run by a demented authoritarian general who has been delaying death from extreme old age for thirty years during the mid twentieth century.

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As a bon-bouché for a reprise…

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