Amazing Military Facts You Probably Didn't Know ( Part 2 )

Amazing Military Facts You Probably Didn't Know

( Part 2 of 3 )

Written by : Jeffrey R Hilton

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French National Guard

Charles Delahaye once played four sets of tennis wearing his French national guard uniform with a field pack and carrying a musket with bayonet fixed.  His opponent who was dressed in a tennis outfit, lost three of the four sets.

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Greek Fire

Greeks once set fire to a ships at sea from shore,  by reflecting the suns rays from their highly polished shields.  While it may sound a bit dodgy,  a modern day experiment was conducted and proved it possible.  Greek fire was a term used to describe the Greek practice of using an inflammable mixture of sulphur,  naphtha, and quick lime to fire at the enemy.  The Byzantines used the mixture in bronze tubes affixed to their ships,  which would spurt the flaming concoction at enemy ships.

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Raiders Of Dunkirk

Anglo-Dutch Wars, Sea Battle, Dunkirk, 1639

Dunkirk certainly has had it's share of hostile takeover plans

and thwarted almost as many.  While most people associate Dunkirk with the horrific and heroic evacuation of British troops in WWII,  with the coast heavily defended by the Germans,   in 1658, June 28, Dunkirk was in a single day of fighting,  owned by three different countries.  The Spanish owned it in the morning,  at noon,  it surrendered to the French, and it was captured by the English in the evening.

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Pizarro, Battle For Peru

Pizarro launched his first attack on the Inca Empire in Peru in 1524, with only 2 cannons in his arsenal.  Bad weather and the ferocity of the natives,  promptly turned away the attack.  Pizarro tried again in 1526 and again was turned away.  His persistence eventually paid off after even more attacks, and eventually,  he formed the city of Lima.  His popularity in Peru,  isn't exactly exalted as he is credited with destroying their indigenous culture,  language and religion. 

   

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First Cheap Knockoff Swords

At some point in history when the Vikings gained a foothold in Europe, they needed more swords and made a deal to buy these swords from fine craftsmen of the Rhineland that made made their swords to be of the best quality and superior to many other sword makers of the time.  These swords bore makers marks on the blades such as INGELRII or ULFBERHT and often took a month to make and were very expensive.  Eventually the Vikings unwittingly became perhaps the first victims of forged goods as hundreds of swords purchased at some point,  supposedly the usual quality ones, were so inferior  to the real thing that the blades would break in a heavy battle and their cutting power was almost non existent.  These swords bore the same inscriptions and looked like the real thing.  

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Bucket Wars

Wars don't always start for reasons of lofty ambitions and gains,  and such was the case when a  North Italian soldier in 1249 Bologna deserted to the other side taking an oak horse watering bucket with him to Modena. When he wouldn't give it back,  a war began between the two sides lasting 22 years and after all that the bucket is still in Modena.

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Robert Blake 1598-1657

Set The... Uh.. Mainsails.

Robert Blake,  no relation to Beretta, became England's second greatest Admiral.  This must have been quite a feat,  considering he was a merchant and knew nothing of nautical matters until age 51.

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Walter Devereux

Murder They Wrote

While England was ruled by Elizabeth I,  the English were particularly brutal and pressed their violence on Ireland regularly and in one instance alone the Queen's own Deputy Walter Devereux attacked the island of Rathlin near Antrim in 1575 knowing full well that the Macdonnells had left behind their women,  children, the sick,  the infirm and the elderly had been left there for their safety and guarded only by a small garrison.  Upon seeing it was greatly outnumbered,  the garrison offered to surrender to the English troops if they could be allowed to set sail for Scotland.  This refused,  Devereux ordered all men,  women  and children  on the island to be killed immediately.  A total of 600 vicious and heartless slayings.

Elizabeth I

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Don't Blame The Welsh

English Longbowsmen

The legendary English long-bows were invented by the Welsh.  Edward I,  1239-1307,  acquired the bows during his conquest of Wales.  Edward wasn't a man to keep promises
and after defeating the Welsh,  he promised them a non-English-speaking leader.  he then made his own son this leader,  declaring him the Prince Of Wales.  Well,  he couldn't speak English or Welsh,  true,  but the fact that he was an infant helped this lie.  Edward subjected the English to the same deceit as he promised no certain taxes would be collected without the consent of Parliament,  and then Welshing,  as the saying goes and collecting those same taxes.

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A Boy And His Dog

Not Easily Parted

John Granville of Kilkhampton England was a soldier of just 16 years old when he was wounded in The Battle of Newbury and buried right there on the battlefield.  Very soon after that,  his faithful dog appeared on the battlefield and dug him up in his shallow grave and he lived to be 73 years old after that miracle.

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It's All In The Name

General Lord Combermere,  captured the powerful fortress of Bhartpur in India in a single day.  The defenders laid down their arms and conceded to Combermere when they found out his name,  meaning Alligator in Hindi as this was a part of an ancient prophesy that the town would be captured by an alligator and were convinced that this was happening right  before their eyes. 

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Tamerlane ( 1336-1405 )

Could Tamerlane's Evil 

Have Caused WWII ?

Tamerlane was a tartar successor to Genghis Khan,  and no less a maniacal murdering marauding torturing heathen than Khan.  It's for that reason that his legacy is one of being labelled one of the greatest conquerors of all time.
On the pretext that he was abiding by the Koran, The Mongolian without remorse or regard for human life massacred 2 million men,  women and children, and that was just getting started.


When Tamerlane died,  he was laid to rest in a tomb in Samarkand.  The tomb was inscribed with a curse written on a huge Jade block.  The message read,  " If I should be brought back to earth,  the greatest of all wars will engulf this land. "   Soviet scientists on an expedition opened the tomb and removed his mummified body at 5 a.m. on June 22, 1941.  That same moment, 2,500 miles to the west, Russia was attacked by 160 German Divisions and 14,000 tanks,  turning the scientists homeland into a blood bath.

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Francisco Solano Lopez
1827-1870

Murderous Megalomaniac

History is full of them and Lopez fancied himself as the Napoleon of South America.  A Brigadier General at 18, and the eldest son of then President Carlos Antonia Lopez,  whom he succeeded on the throne, he was desperate to put Paraguay on the map.  In 1865,  he declared war on Argentina,  Brazil,  and Uruguay simultaneously thus causing the name the Triple Alliance War.


Paraguay lost nine tenths of it's population in this war before he was beaten and killed in 1870.  During his reign,  he was responsible for having put to death, 68,200 people on conspiracy and treason,  the number includes his two brothers,  two sisters,  two brother in laws and even his own mother whom had earlier admitted that he was born out of wedlock.

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The War Magnet 

Julius Brittlebank of Charleston S.C. was a most enigmatic man that somehow attracted war like iron to a magnet.  He was in Cuba when the Spanish-American War began,  in China when the revolution of 1912 started,  in Montenegro at the outbreak of the Balkans,  1912 conflict,  in Germany at the onset of WWII,  and in England when she declared war.

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Baron Karl Von Werther
1750-1822

Karl Werther was a gentle and peaceful German born statesman.  But everywhere he went, war followed him.

When he was Ambassador to Paris,  France went to war with Spain and Algeria.  He then became Ambassador to Denmark and the war of 1864 broke out.  He went to Russia and the Crimean war started.  He moved back to Germany and the Austro Prussian war began.  Fed up,  he went back to Paris,  but then the Franco- Prussian war broke out.  His last post brought him to Turkey where the Russo-Turkish War started.

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Blind Faith And Military Genius

John Zizka 1360-1424

John Zizka was a brilliant military strategist that got his start as no other than the Good King Wenceslas of the Christmas carol's namesake,  as a page boy.  He envisioned modern tank warfare, 500 years in advance,  using armored wagons and artillery.  He was born into Bohemian nobility and became a royal chamberlain before he started serving as a knight for the Teutonic Knights,  fighting the Poles.

He later fought for the Austrian's against the Turks. He fought for King Henry V in Agincourt.  He became commander of the Hussites and his brilliant military tactics came through again as he defeated the army of King Sigismund that was 10 times larger than his own,  capturing Prague.  He suffered the loss of one eye in an earlier battle and lost his other eye in a later battle at the siege of Raby

in 1421.  This didn't stop him from leading his troops to victory in 12 more brilliantly conceived battle plans over Sigismund,  whom decided to grant religious liberty to the Hussites.  He went on to fight another battle but died from the Plague during the fight in Przibislav and his own skin was used over a drum head and carried into battle so that he could continue to proudly serve,  even in death.

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PART 3 COMING SOON

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If you have made it this far down the page, I would like you to know that this blog currently has only 4 members.

While I'm not sure whether to take that personally or not

it remains as a bit of an insult.  Membership costs nothing

but a minute to join and anonymity is even an option.  So please show your support if you enjoy my blog.  Thank you very much in advance.  Sincerely; Jeff.

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And A Brilliant Week

Jeffrey R Hilton