Sommaire pour May 2022 de History Revealed

In 1783 – two years after the British surrender at Yorktown – the Treaty of Paris brought the American Revolutionary War to an official end. For eight long years, the 13 North American colonies had fought for independence from British rule in a host of bloody battles and skirmishes that had seen tens of thousands of people killed and injured. The Constitution of the United States came into effect on 4 March 1789, and so the US as we know it was born. In this month’s Essential Guide, we’ve teamed up with Professor Benjamin Carp to explore how, when and why war broke out in 1775, and meet the men and women involved. Turn to page 28 to get started. Elsewhere, we examine a real-life murder mystery from the 1920s…

If you ask most people to name a notorious gangster from history, the chances are that they will say the New York-born crime lord Alphonse ‘Al’ Capone. However, despite his reputation for murder and vice, Capone’s life could have taken an altogether different path. Born in 1899 to Italian immigrants Gabriele and Teresina, the young Capone was known to be a diligent student and thrived at elementary school in his native Brooklyn. However, as he entered his teenage years, things took a sour turn. After being kicked out of education for assaulting a teacher, the 14-year-old became embroiled with a gang known as the James Street Boys, led by the formidable Johnny Torrio. Not content with being a member of one criminal organisation, Capone joined Manhattan’s Five Points gang aged…

Q: What was the American Revolutionary War? A: The American Revolutionary War, in a nutshell, started out as a political protest against the impositions of the British empire, such as taxation, and eventually turned violent when the American colonists took up arms. The first military clash took place on 19 April 1775 and the conflict officially ended with the Treaty of Paris in September 1783. Q: Could war have been avoided if Britain had given its American colonies representation in parliament? A: Representation for the colonies was not very realistic and not really what the Americans wanted, either. Any group of American representatives in parliament could have been easily outvoted, or their representatives could have been corrupted. Plus, it took three to four months for messages to get back and…

LEXINGTON AND CONCORD: 19 APR 1775 “BRITISH TROOPS WERE FORCED INTO A HUMILIATING RETREAT BACK TO BOSTON” PATRIOT VICTORY 3,960 patriots v 1,500 British ESTIMATED CASUALTIES 94 patriots and 272 British The first exchange of fire during the American Revolutionary War actually arose out of a failed attempt to try and prevent conflict. In April 1775, as tensions rose between the two sides and frustrated American colonists began to form militias, stories started circulating that patriot weapons were being stockpiled in the town of Concord. When the rumours reached the ears of Massachusetts governor Major-General Thomas Gage, he quickly ordered Lieutenant-Colonel Francis Smith to travel to Concord with an 800-strong force to seize the cache of arms and ammunition. The colonists, however, were one step ahead and had already been…

“FORMER LOYALISTS TO THE CROWN WERE SOMETIMES HUNTED DOWN AND BEATEN BY SELF-STYLED PATRIOTS” Yorktown. It’s a name seared on to the brain of all lovers of US history. When a combination of American and French troops launched a siege upon the Virginia tobacco port in September 1781, they not only forced the British garrison stationed there into surrender, but they also wrote a new chapter in history. That chapter would see the British, reeling from this sudden defeat, coming to the painful realisation that they could no longer stay in the fight against the American patriots. For those American colonists, victory in the Revolution –a conflict that had raged since 1775 – was all but assured. Yorktown was, in short, a decisive major battle of a war that would…

How did people try to ‘cure’ the Black Death? SHORT ANSWER On top of the crushed emeralds and poultry accessories were some keepers, like social distancing LONG ANSWER Needless to say that in utterly desperate times, the scared masses of 14th-century Europe turned to desperate measures to try and live through the Black Death. Some of the ‘cures’ aren’t that unusual in the pantheon of strange (and ineffective) medicinal treatments throughout history, such as bloodletting and drinking arsenic or mercury, but that’s just the beginning. Believing that the disease spread in foul air – the miasma theory – some people would carry anything sweet smelling, like flowers or packets of herbs, while others took the opposite approach and hid from the killer vapours by sitting in sewers. Having fires constantly…

EVENTS & EXHIBITIONS Abbey of St Edmund: 1000 Years PAID ENTRY Various venues in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, throughout 2022, visit-burystedmunds.co.uk/abbey-1000 Back in 2020, as the Covid-19 pandemic caused everyday life to come grinding to a halt, museums and heritage attractions across the globe were forced to put their events programmes on hold. For sites that were supposed to be celebrating key anniversaries, such as the Abbey of St Edmund (founded in 1020) this must have been especially disappointing, given the months of hard work that had gone into planning the festivities. Fortunately, thanks to the recent easing of restrictions, the attraction has now been given the green light to commence its Abbey 1000 programme, featuring an exceptional variety of events aimed at the whole family. Every month between May…

No crowds gathered in May 1897 to see Oscar Wilde’s release from prison. Although Wilde had once been the most famous man in London, celebrated as much for his witticisms and dandyism as his writing, his release took place with little fanfare. It was all in sharp contrast to the scandal caused by the infamous trials that led to the poet and playwright’s imprisonment; court cases that revealed Wilde’s homosexuality to the wider world. The lack of reporters was a matter of design. On 18 May 1897, Wilde, who spent most of his two-year sentence in Reading Gaol, was quietly transferred to Pentonville. On his release the next day, Wilde was met by More Adey, his friend and editor, and Stewart Headlam, an Anglican vicar who, even though he had…

When Great Britain emerged victorious from the Seven Years’ War in 1763, most of its American colonists celebrated the event as ardent British patriots. They were proud to belong to the Protestant commercial empire and they honoured their king and queen. But the end of the war with France also exposed problems in North America that proved difficult to resolve. Amid a postwar economic depression, the continent’s settlers, enslaved labourers and indigenous peoples faced an uncertain new world. For decades, many indigenous Americans had been able to play British and French interests against one another, but the departure of the French had changed the equation. The British empire no longer depended as heavily on its Native allies and the ministry hoped to reduce its expenses. After General Jeffrey Amherst scaled…

“Remember the ladies,” Abigail Adams urged her husband John, in a now famous 1776 letter. “Be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors.” Otherwise, she warned the future president, the patriots resisting British rule would soon face a revolution of their own, as women would not “hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice or representation”. In their famed exchange letters – of which more than 1,000 examples have survived – Abigail often advised her husband on political matters. She was a champion of education for women, writing to John in 1778 that, “You need not be told how much female education is neglected, nor how fashionable it has been to ridicule female learning.” Abigail was just one of many women – respected wives,…

The US Constitution is one of the most revered of all political documents – the backbone of the world’s most powerful nation. Yet it endured the most troubled of births. That birth occurred in the immediate aftermath of the American Revolutionary War when, having secured their independence from Great Britain, the victorious colonists realised they needed a template for governing the new nation – a document that established the principles of the government’s relationship with its citizens. And so, in February 1787, delegates from all 13 colonies were summoned to Philadelphia to debate what the Constitution should look like. By September, they had reached an agreement and brought the Constitution to life in an official signing ceremony. But there was a problem. A number of the former colonies were distinctly…

George Orwell wrote in a 1946 essay: “What would be... the ‘perfect’ murder? The murderer should be a little man of the professional class living an intensely respectable life... he should plan it all with the utmost cunning and only slip up over some tiny, unforeseeable detail. The means chosen should of course be poison.” He made it clear he was thinking of Major Armstrong, and indeed the case coincided with the rise of crime novelists such as Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers, both of whom incorporated elements of the story in some of their plots. Their stories, like those of several other contemporary bestselling writers, involved amateur sleuths solving cunning and complex murders among the middle classes through ingenuity, almost like a game. The books were very popular in…

King Henry I was, in many historians’ estimation, an accomplished ruler. He cemented his father, William I’s, conquest of the kingdom of England, successfully fought off a series of rebellions across the Channel in Normandy, and burnished England’s reputation among the kingdoms of Europe. Yet, for all his undoubted qualities, Henry made a complete mess of the succession to his throne. And so, when the ageing king died in 1135, England was pitched into civil war. That conflict is now better known as the Anarchy, a word that conjures images of turbulence and chaos. And so it proved, as the two contenders for Henry’s crown – his daughter and nominated heir, Matilda; and Stephen of Blois, a grandson of William the Conqueror – embarked on a bitter battle for power.…

INCOMPETENT OR INSPIRING? Having read the recent Essential Guide to Elizabethan England (March 2022), I regret that you chose to accept, without question, the self-promotion of Elizabeth I and perpetuate the mythologising of an incompetent leader whose only achievements were in spite of her rather than of her own making – Shakespeare’s dramas being a notable example. The Spanish invaded because the defence of the realm (unlike during her father’s reign) was not a priority and even something as significant as gunpowder was in short supply. Elizabeth behaved cowardly during the invasion, yet took credit for what was, in effect, the abject failure of the Spanish. She then failed to honour those who took part by demobilising them without pay, some sailors subsequently dying in destitution in places like Margate.…

SHACKLETON’S ENDURANCE FOUND IN THE ANTARCTIC The wreck of HMS Endurance , the ill-fated vessel of Sir Ernest Shackleton’s 1914–17 Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition, has been located at the bottom of the Weddell Sea, nearly 107 years after it sank. Standing upright on the seabed, at a depth of 3,008 metres, the ship is said to look much as it did on 21 November 1915, when it finally succumbed to the crushing sea-ice that had encased it for months and sank into the icy water below, forcing Shackleton and his crew to escape on foot and in small boats. The 35-day mission to locate Endurance was organised and funded by the Falklands Maritime Heritage Trust, which navigated heavy sea ice, blizzards and temperatures as low as -18˚C in a bid to…

Hosted in Switzerland with seven countries taking part, the Eurovision Song Contest makes its debut in 1956. Although the BBC broadcasts the inaugural event – won by Swiss singer Lys Assia ( above ) – the United Kingdom doesn’t enter the competition until the following year, when Patricia Bredin performs a song entitled ‘All’. The contest has been held annually every year since, apart from 2020 when it was cancelled due to the Covid-19 pandemic. EVERY MONTH THROUGHOUT 2022, WE’LL BE COMMEMORATING THE BBC’S 100TH BIRTHDAY WITH A TRIP DOWN MEMORY LANE...…

“Londoners threatened to cut strangers to pieces and sack their houses on the first of May” WHAT WERE THE EVIL MAY DAY RIOTS? The Evil May Day Riots (also known as the Ill May Day Riots) were violent disturbances that took place in London during the evening of 30 April 1517 and early hours of 1 May against foreigners living in the city. It is considered to be one of the earliest race riots in the world and early modern London’s largest outbreak of violence against immigrants. WHAT WERE RELATIONS LIKE BETWEEN IMMIGRANTS AND THE ENGLISH RESIDENTS OF LONDON BEFOREHAND? As a thriving port and international city, London was home to people from many nations, including Italy, the Netherlands and France. The capital’s thriving economy attracted merchants and artisans from…

10 FEB 1763 The Seven Years’ War, fought between several nations including Britain and France, ends with the signing of the Treaty of Paris. France surrenders its territory in North America and the Caribbean to Britain. 5 APR 1764 One of Britain’s first attempts to defend its colonies is the Sugar Act. This imposes a series of laws on the cost of goods such as sugar and coffee, imported into the colonies. Intended to discourage smuggling, it leads to widespread protests. 22 MAR 1765 The Stamp Act is passed by Britain. This taxes newspapers, legal documents and even playing cards. Resistance by American colonists sees the act repealed the following year. 1 OCT 1768 Boston is occupied by British troops who are there to enforce the Townshend Duties. Passed in…

On 2 July 1776, in the Pennsylvanian State House in Philadelphia, representatives from Britain’s colonies in North America voted, at last, to publicly break their bonds with the mother country and its king, George III. But 2 July is not the day that Americans celebrate every year. They chose instead 4 July, two days later, when congressmen approved the final version of the Declaration of Independence – a document that would announce their decision to the world. Drafted mostly by Thomas Jefferson, a prominent lawyer and planter from Virginia (and later the third president of the United States between 1801–09), the Declaration of Independence features the famous lines: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal” and have “certain unalienable rights” – among them “life,…

Dido Elizabeth Belle and Lady Elizabeth Murrayby David Martin, c1779 Hanging in the Ambassador’s Room at Scone Palace in Perth, Scotland, is one of the most extraordinary works of British portraiture, and one whose story has only recently been rediscovered. It is the only known portrait of Dido Belle, the illegitimate daughter of Sir John Lindsay, an officer in the Royal Navy, and Maria Belle, an enslaved African woman whom Sir John had liberated from a Spanish slave ship. What is significant, though, is that Dido – a mixed-race woman living in London near the peak of the transatlantic slave trade – is portrayed as an equal to the painting’s white sitter – her cousin, Lady Elizabeth Murray. It is, in short, one of the earliest positive portrayals of a…

When Prince William Adelin drowned in the English Channel in 1120, Henry I lost his only legitimate son and heir. Fifteen years later, when the king breathed his last, this hole in England’s line of succession came home to roost. Henry’s daughter Matilda and her cousin Stephen of Blois both staked their claim to the throne, plunging the nation into the Anarchy. This long civil war is remembered as one of the darkest periods of England’s Middle Ages – famously described by the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle as one in which “Christ and his saints slept”. The reality may not have been quite as bleak as that but there’s little doubt that this was a period of significant turmoil, with Matilda’s forces dominating southwest England, King David of Scotland occupying the north…