In high school my least favorite subject was history mainly because of the way it was taught. I was always interested in the stories but all my teachers were obsessed with isolated events and their dates. One final exam was two legal size mimeographed sheets. The first contained about a hundred or so events with short blanks in front of them for us to fill in the dates. The second was that many dates with larger blanks for us to fill in the events — a real test of historical understanding. I recall once doing a report on England’s Henry VIII. I concentrated on his wives, which ones lost their heads, and why. My teacher was more interest in the dates of his reign, when he issued the Act of Supremacy, etc.
When I got to college I discovered what history was really about, earned a Ph.D. in English History, and ended up teaching it for over forty years from seventh grade through college level. But I never taught dates, per se. I taught stories. History is a lot of stories which have a lot of interesting sub-stories — most which don’t get included in textbooks. I always tried to expose my students to a lot of these. Here are a few.
In 1769 the island of Corsica was in revolt against French rule. A band of Corsican insurgents, which included a minor government official and his very pregnant wife, was being pursued by a French military unit when they came to a stream swollen by recent rains. In the process of fording it, the woman and the mule on which she was riding were swept away by the swift waters. The men shouted to her to abandon her mount and try to save herself. However, knowing that this action would most certainly result in her being drowned, she stayed abroad and managed to reach the opposite bank. A few weeks later she gave birth to a healthy baby boy, Napoleon Bonaparte. Quite often we fail to realize the delicate balance in which history sometimes hangs.
At times the French have had trouble with their left flank — militarily speaking, that is. One such incident occurred in the late 1790s. Napoleon had taken an army and a fleet to Egypt with the goal of taking over English possessions in the Near East before marching further East and attacking India. He encountered little opposition in Egypt but soon an English fleet under the command of Lord Nelson showed up. Napoleon’s naval commander pleaded with him to allow him to meet the English in the open sea but Bonaparte had other plans. He anchored his ships in an arc, broadside to the sea, in front of his army and put all their guns on the seaward side. In addition, the ships were linked together with cables, making it impossible for Nelson’s ships to get through the gaps. Napoleon was simply using his fleet to screen his army. This also gave the French more firepower than the English. However, as the battle raged, one audacious English captain thought he had a chance of running the French left flank between the last ship and the shore. He scraped bottom but he got through. When other captains saw this, they came through as well, putting several English ships behind the anchored French fleet that had all its guns pointing in the wrong direction. The English had a field day completely destroying the French feet and isolating Napoleon’s army. Napoleon was a military genius on land but he had a lot to learn about naval combat.
Nelson sent the mast of the French flagship back to England and had it made into a coffin for this burial which, unfortunately, came all too soon.
A century and a half later the French again had problems with their left flank — on a much larger scale. Germany had been defeated in World War I but the French felt sure they would have to fight her again. So, they spent a goodly portion of the 1920s and ’30s constructing a line of concrete fortifications along their eastern border to keep the Germans at bay. It was called The Maginot Line. However, they were reluctant to complete the line to the sea on their left flank since they bordered Belgium, a friendly country, in that area. As a result, when Germany attacked France in 1940, they simply ran mechanized divisions through Belgium, around the French left flank, and in behind the fortifications. Again, the French guns could only fire east toward Germany. The Maginot Line fell with barely a whimper.
There is still discussion today about how far out to sea a country’s jurisdiction extends. The first limit was three miles, then twelve, and then much argument for fifty with some even arguing for the extent of the Continental shelf. I’m not sure what international laws say today but it’s interesting how it all got started.
After Napoleon became Emperor of France, he got involved in a war in Spain. He was supplying his army by ship from France’s Mediterranean ports. He was having a lot of trouble with his supply ships being attacked by the English. His answer was to build gun emplacements all along the shore between the French ports and Spanish ports. Some of these still exist today. He armed them with naval guns that had a range of three miles---thus, the three-mile territorial limit was born.
Cape Trafalgar is located on the Spanish coast northwest of the Strait of Gibraltar. In 1805 it was the site of a significant naval engagement, the Battle of Trafalgar, which is often referred to as “Napoleon’s naval Waterloo.” The English fleet under the command of Lord Nelson fought the combined French and Spanish fleets. As they were preparing for this epic conflict, Nelson had signal flags put up on his flagship, the H.M.S. Victory, which read, “England expects that every man will do his duty.” They did and the English won the battle but Nelson was killed. They were a long way from England and in order to preserve his body for the trip, they put it in a cask of rum. Now, English sailors in that day were the dregs of society. Many were there only because they had been kidnapped by press gangs who roamed the pubs of port cities picking up drunks and vagabonds. Nelson called them “the scum of the earth” but they loved fighting under his command. It is said that when they docked in London, they took Nelson’s body from the cask and the sailors drank the rum. Considering the English sailors of that era, this could well be true. No sense in letting good rum go to waste.
If you’re ever in London, be sure to visit Trafalgar Square, named for the battle, and see the Nelson Monument which stands in its center.
