istoryworld
Romantic Scotland
Scott surpasses himself in the cause of romantic Scotland when he organizes the festivities, in 1822, for the first visit of a British monarch to Edinburgh since the union of 1707. A year after his coronation in Westminster, George IV travels to the north of his realm. The ageing reprobate appears in the role of a Scottish chieftain, wearing tartan (banned until quite recently) and thus launching the 19th-century craze for Highland dress.The nation's love affair with romantic Scotland reaches its climax in 1856, when ...
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Philip II and Louis IX
The piety of Saint Louis (he is canonized in 1297) is very much in the spirit of his time. He creates one of the most spectacular of Gothic buildings, the Sainte Chapelle, to house a relic - the supposed Crown of Thorns. And he twice goes on crusade to the Middle East, dying in north Africa during the second expedition. Louis' domestic policy to some extent reflects this piety. Solemn edicts are issued against prostitution, gambling and blasphemy. But he also runs an honest and ...
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The age of Walpole
The thrust of his policy is lower taxation, increased trade and peace abroad - excellent intentions which Walpole does much to achieve. Late in his administration, and to his distress, he fails to prevent Britain going to war with Spain in 1739 after the dramatic episode of Jenkins' Ear (see the War of Jenkins' Ear). This conflict merges, in the following year, in the broader War of the Austrian Succession.Walpole resigns during the war, in 1742, and retires to Houghton Hall, the house which he ...
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Balaklava and Inkerman
A British and French army lands near Sebastopol in September 1854. During the next eight weeks there are three battles with Russian forces, at the river Alma in September, at the allies' supply port of Balaklava in October and at Inkerman on the heights just outside Sebastopol in November.Alma is an allied victory but brings little advantage in the central purpose of seizing the fortified port of Sebastopol. The other two battles are inconclusive, with very heavy casualties - Balaklava also being famous in British ...
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Savonarola
In 1491 Savonarola becomes prior of the Dominican convent of San Marco in Florence. His powerful sermons, critical of decadence and luxury in both church and state (meaning papal Rome and the princely circle of the Medici) are already familiar in Florence, for he has been in the convent of San Marco on and off since 1482. In spite of his savage voice, Lorenzo the Magnificent encourages this incorruptible man of God. Contrary to rumour, Savonarola blesses Lorenzo on his deathbed in 1492.
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Chronometer
The terms are demanding. To win the prize a chronometer (a solemnly scientific term for a clock, first used in a document of this year) must be sufficiently accurate to calculate longitude within thirty nautical miles at the end of a journey to the West Indies. This means that in rough seas, damp salty conditions and sudden changes of temperature the instrument must lose or gain not more than three seconds a day - a level of accuracy unmatched at this time by the best ...
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Good works and late baptism
The Arian heresy has not been suppressed as conclusively as Constantine may like to think, but his last years are calm enough for him to devote himself to his chosen religion. He becomes increasingly pious, and is a generous builder of churches in Rome and Palestine as well as Constantinople. In Jerusalem he constructs the church of the Holy Sepulchre on the supposed site of the Crucifixion. Happily the excavations reveal what is taken to be the actual cross (or True Cross) on which Christ ...
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The Parthenon
The destruction of Athens by the Persians in 480 BC has reduced the acropolis to a pile of debris. The Athenians rapidly build new retaining walls and fill the gaps with the rubble (later providing archaeologists with a rich haul of broken ornament and statuary). But reconstruction of the buildings on the summit, and in particular of the great temple to Pallas Athene (known as the Parthenon because the goddess is parthenos, a virgin), is delayed until a brief interval of peace in the middle ...
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Romanesque
Vézelay is a pilgrimage church (the monks here have on show the bones of Mary Magdalene), and many of the Romanesque churches of France are on the great pilgrimage routes which develop at this period - particularly those leading to Santiago de Compostela in northern Spain. An innovation of architectural significance in French Romanesque relates to the pilgrims. The ambulatory, a passage behind the altar following the curve of the apse, makes possible the addition of several small chapels to contain relics. The pilgrims can ...
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Cave paintings
Prehistoric cave paintings have been discovered in many parts of the world, from Europe and Africa to Australia. Africa has some of the earliest paintings and rock engravings to have been securely dated. Nearly 30,000 years old, they are discovered in 1969 on the rock face in a cave near Twyfelfontein in Namibia. But the most numerous and the most sophisticated of prehistoric paintings are on the walls of caves in southwest France and northern Spain. About 150 painted caves have been discovered in this ...
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Aachen or Aix-la-Chapelle
Five years after the coronation in Rome, Leo III is again with Charlemagne at a religious ceremony. But this time it is in Germany. He is consecrating Charlemagne's spectacular new church in Aachen, begun just nine years previously in 796. The French name of Aachen, Aix-la-Chapelle, specifically features this famous building - a small but richly decorated octagonal chapel which Charlemagne has consciously modelled on another famous imperial church, Justinian's San Vitale in Ravenna.
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Mute monuments
Some pre-literate societies have left tantalizing traces of their religion. Stonehenge in southern England, constructed from about 3000 BC (and therefore contemporary with the start of Egyptian civilization), has prompted endless speculation about its original purpose. Similarly, from around 1000 BC, the temple platforms and the pyramids of the Olmecs, in America, provide evidence of religion without our knowing precisely what that religion was. Climbing up to a temple or altar, as also in the ziggurats of Mesopotamia from about 2000 BC onwards, is a ...
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England sophisticated
By the time of Richard II the English kingdom can hold its own in learning and the arts. The university of Oxford, which earlier in the century has produced William of Ockham (one of the last great figures of medieval scholasticism), is now buzzing with the radical notions of John Wycliffe. He dies in 1384, but his writings have a profound influence in Europe during the build-up towards the Reformation. In art and literature there is the same excellence. Richard II commissions some of the ...
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Cyrus the Great
Cyrus dies in 530, campaigning against nomadic tribesmen in the northeast, near the Oxus and Jaxartes rivers. He is buried in the place which he has made his capital, Pasagardae. His tomb, massive but superbly simple, stands today as an impressive monument to the emperor - though now in parched surroundings where once everything was well watered, in an early version of a Persian garden. Its interior, in which the body lies in a gold sarcophagus on a gold couch, is broken into and stripped ...
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The Phoney War
In France and Britain the immediate aftermath of the declaration of war is a return to the defensive tactics of World War I. The French rush troops to the Maginot Line, an elaborate complex of concrete fortifications connected by underground railway lines, which has been constructed along the Franco-German border between 1929 and 1938. (It is named after André Maginot, minister of war from 1929 to 1931.)France's border with Belgium, running northwest to the sea, is not similarly protected. So, as in World War I, ...
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Maori and the first Europeans
New Zealand is the last major temperate region of the globe to be reached by humans. The indigenous people, the Maori, are believed to have arrived by about800. Their language is Polynesian, relating to the dialects of Tahiti and Hawaii. Their own legends describe their arrival in a great fleet of canoes from a land called Hawaiki.New Zealand is first visited by Europeans in 1642, when Abel Tasman makes a brief attempt to land - resulting in a clash with the Maori and several deaths. ...
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Two Anglo-Afghan Wars
In January 1842 the British garrison of some 4500 troops withdraws from Kabul, leaving Shah Shuja to his fate (he is soon assassinated). Most of the retreating British and Indian soldiers are also killed during their attempt to regain the safety of India. A British army recaptures Kabul during the summer of 1842, more as a gesture of defiance than as a matter of practical policy - for the decision is subsequently taken to restore Dost Mohammed to his throne. He returns from India in ...
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Moghul domes
The first dome of this kind surmounts the tomb of Humayun in Delhi, built between 1564 and 1573. The style is then overlooked for a while - no doubt because of Akbar's preference for Hindu architecture, as in Fatehpur Sikri - until Shah Jahan, the greatest builder of the dynasty, develops it in the 17th century with vigour and sophistication. His first attempt in this line is also his masterpiece - a building which has become the most famous in the world, for its beauty ...
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A new religion in India
The religion becomes a power in the Punjab under the fifth guru, Arjan. Between 1581 and 1606 he builds many Sikh temples (gurdwaras) and compiles the holy book of the religion (the Granth, consisting of the writings of the gurus themselves together with related Hindu and Muslim texts). More conspicuously, Arjan builds Amritsar as a holy city of pilgrimage for all Sikhs. The strength of his sect is now sufficient to alarm the Moghul emperor, Jahangir. Arjan is arrested for disrespect to Islam. He dies, ...
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Multi-racial Britain
The first ship to leave Jamaica is the Empire Windrush. She docks in the Thames, at Tilbury, on 22 June 1948. The new arrivals easily find work, at wages high by Jamaican standards. They are soon followed by many others from throughout the British Caribbean.The arrival of the West Indians transforms Britain into a multiracial society. There is as yet little religious diversity because the new immigrants are nearly all Christians. At this stage only one long established British group differs from the majority in ...
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