For God and Country: Faith and Patriotism Under Fire
By James Yee

The Price of Loyalty

The Torture Debate in America

The Culture of the New Capitalism

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461 St Hilarius (Hilary) began his reign as Catholic Pope.

498 Death of Pope Anastasius II.

1493 Christopher Columbus ('Christ-bearing Dove' as his name means; 1451 - 1506) became the first European to go ashore on an island he only saw for the first time the day before. He named it San Juan Bautista (later renamed Puerto Rico).

On his second voyage to the New World, Columbus set sail with 17 ships and almost 1,500 men. He found the island populated by as many as 60,000 Taíno or Arawak Indians. The Taíno Indians who greeted Columbus made a big mistake when they showed him gold nuggets in the river and told him to take all he wanted.

The bodies of infants are very soft, and apparently were quite a tasty treat for the dogs, so the Spaniards regularly fed infants to their dogs, alive, and at times while the horror-stricken parents watched. The Spaniards had contests to see who could cut a living person in half with one stroke of the sword. They would test the sharpness of their blades by beheading the nearest handy native.

Source: The Daily Bleed    Taíno Indian culture

1620 New World: The 'Pilgrim Fathers' – 87 members of a Protestant sect founded in Northamptonshire by William Brewster, arrived at Cape Cod in the Mayflower.

1665 Death of Nicolas Poussin, French painter.

1692 English dramatist and poet laureate, Thomas Shadwell, died of a suspected opium overdose. Thomas Brown eulogized him: "Tom writ, his readers still slept o'er his book / For Tom took opium, and they opiates took".

1703 The death of the Man in the Iron Mask

Held for more than forty years in prison (the 19^th-Century folklorist Robert Chambers* says only the last five years of his imprisonment were actually in the Bastille) during the reign of King Louis XIV, the Man in the Iron Mask was an unknown prisoner. When travelling from prison to prison, he always wore a mask of velvet, not iron. He was buried as 'M. de Marchiel', but his true identity has never been revealed – one suggestion was that he was the Duc de Vermandois, an illegitimate son of King Louis.

Alexandre Dumas, père in his romantic novel suggested that he was an illegitimate elder brother of the king, with Cardinal Mazarin his father – a suggestion originally made by Voltaire. The Duke of Monmouth, twin of Louis has also been suggested, as has a son of Oliver Cromwell, the Duke de Beaufort, Count de Vermandois. Nabo, a black dwarf who allegedly had an affair with Louis XIV's wife, Maria-Theresa, is another candidate.

Lord Acton, the British historian, suggested a minister of the Duke of Mantua, who, in his negotiations with the king, was found to be treacherous and imprisoned at Pignerol.

Chambers says (based on writings of Lord Dover based on French state archival evidence) he probably was Count Ercole Antonio Mattioli, or Matthioli, secretary of state to Charles III, the Duke of Mantua, and afterwards to his son Ferdinand. Matthioli apparently was a triple agent working for Mantua, France and Spain. Louis XIV captured him and showed him no mercy, imprisoning him in the fortress of St Marguérite, though he was removed to the Bastille in 1698. Matthioli is said by some to have voluntarily worn a mask because it was an Italian tradition.

Whenever he was moved, he was disguised with a velvet and whalebone mask, though it entered the popular imagination that this mysterious, unknown character, was masked with iron. After he died on November 19, 1703, his dungeon was scraped to the stone, and his doors and windows burned, lest any inscribed message get out to the world and thus reveal his identity, and Louis's great cruelty to the representative of another state.

From Wikipedia: The first surviving records of the masked prisoner are from July 1, 1669, when Louis XIV's minister Louvois sent a masked prisoner to the care of governor Marquis de Saint-Mars of the Pignerol prison. Saint-Mars was ordered to take a special care of this prisoner. He was to be kept incommunicado and Saint-Mars was told to threaten him with death if he ever tried to talk about anything else than his own personal affairs. The prisoner was to be treated well but he had been ordered to remain silent and masked at all times. Saint-Mars himself had been ordered to feed him. The first rumors of the prisoner's identity (as a Marshal of France) began to circulate at this point.

Although the legend states that the prisoner wore the mask at all times, it is more probable that he was masked only during transport—such as when he was transported from prison to prison—and when there were outside guests in the prison.

Saint-Mars took the prisoner with him to his subsequent postings in l'Exiles prison and in May 1687 to the island of Sainte Marguerite, one of the Isles of Lérins.

On September 18, 1698, Saint-Mars came to take his new post as a governor of the Bastille prison, bringing the masked prisoner with him. The prisoner was placed in a solitary cell in the pre-furnished third chamber of the Bertaudiere tower. The prison's second-in-command, de Rosarges, was to feed him. Most of the details of the masked man (continuous wearing of a mask and preferential treatment) come from Lieutenant du Junca of Bastille.

The prisoner died on November 19, 1703, and was buried the next day under the name of Marchioly. All his furniture and clothing were reportedly destroyed afterwards.

The fate of the mysterious prisoner - and the extent of apparent precautions his jailers took - created much interest and many legends. However the truth emerged eventually.

In 1890, Louis Gendron, a French military historian, came across some coded letters and passed them on to Etienne Bazeries in the French Army's cryptographic department. After three years, Bazeries managed to read some messages in the Great Cypher of Louis XIV. One of them referred to a prisoner and identified him as General Vivien de Bulonde. One of the letters written by François de Louvois made specific reference to de Bulonde's crime.

At the siege of Cuneo, Bulonde was concerned about enemy troops arriving from Austria and ordered a hasty withdrawal, leaving behind his munitions and wounded men. Louis XIV was furious and in another of the letters specifically ordered him "to be conducted to the fortress at Pignerole where he will be locked in a cell and under guard at night, and permitted to walk the battlements during the day with a mask". The dates of the letters fit the dates of the original records about the man in the mask.

Given the evidence of the letters, there is now little need of an alternative explanation for the man in the mask. However, there were already other theories in existence and some others were propounded before the existence of the letters was widely known. Later commentators have still presented their own theories, possible based on embellished versions of the original tale, mixed with details from stories of other famous contemporary prisoners.

The legends and alternative theories

Contemporary claims about his identity included that he was a Marshal of France; or Oliver Cromwell; or Francois de Vendôme, Duc de Beaufort. Later, many people from Voltaire to Benjamin Franklin have put forward theories about the man in the mask.

1. In 1711, the Palatine Princess Charlotte-Elizabeth of Bavaria claimed that the man was an exiled English nobleman who had been involved with the Fenwick affair to depose King William III.
2. Louis XV and Louis XVI have been attributed as saying that the prisoner was Ercole Antonio Mattioli, minister of Duke of Mantua. Mattioli had been involved with Louis XIV's intrigues in Italy and betrayed his secret negotiations with Duke Charles III of Mantua, for the purchase of an important border fortress. He was registered with a prison pseudonym 'Lestang'.
3. Voltaire claimed that the prisoner was a son of Mazarin and Anne of Austria and therefore an illegitimate older half-brother of King Louis XIV. How serious he was is hard to say. Alexandre Dumas used this theory in his book, The Vicomte de Bragelonne but made the prisoner a twin brother.
4. In 1801, revolutionary legislator Roux Fazaillac stated that the tale of the masked prisoner was an amalgamation of the fates of two separate prisoners, Mattioli and an imprisoned valet named Eustache Dauger.
5. In 1801, there emerged a legend, probably created by supporters of Napoleon Bonaparte, that the mysterious prisoner was the real Louis XIV himself and that Cardinal Mazarin had had him replaced by a more suitable candidate. Legend also held that he had married in prison and sired a son, who would have been taken to Corsica to become one of Napoleon's forefathers. This was most probably an intentionally spread political rumour.
6. One theory is that Eustache Dauger was a valet of imprisoned minister Nicolas Fouquet, also under the guard of Saint-Mars. (The masked man had been assigned to serve as his valet in one point.) After Fouquet's death, the king was afraid that the servant could reveal state secrets if released, so he remained in prison for the next 23 years, until his death. Additional rumors claimed, yet again, that Dauger was in fact twin brother of Louis XIV.
7. Andrew Lang, in his The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories (1903), presented a theory that Eustache Dauger was a prison pseudonym of a man called Martin, valet of French Huguenot Roux de Marsilly. After his master's execution in 1669, the valet was taken to France, possibly by capture or subterfuge, and imprisoned because he might have known too much about his master's affairs. Dauger was later assigned to become one of Fouquet's valets in prison, the other being named La Riviere. Dauger was still in the same prison when Mattioli arrived and he was later transferred with Saint-Mars to his next postings. Tales about Mattioli, Dauger and some of the other prisoners would have been later merged into the story of a single one.
8. In The Man of the Mask (1908) Barnes presents James de la Cloche, the illegitimate but acknowledged son of Charles II, who would have been his father's secret intermediary with the Catholic court of France. Louis XIV could have imprisoned him because he knew too much about French affairs with England.
9. Other suggested candidates have included James, Duke of Monmouth, Armenian patriarch Avedick and Molière.

 

More    The other Man in the Iron Mask: Harry Bensley    The Man in the Iron Mask (movie)

L'homme au masque de fer was an 1848 book by Alexandre Dumas, père, based on this legend, the third volume of Dumas's novel The Vicomte de Bragelonne.

Princess Tarakanova - a Russian version of the Man in the Iron Mask

Free eBook of The Man in the Iron Mask at Project Gutenberg

1726 England: Mist's Weekly Journal reported on Mary Toft, the woman who claimed to have given birth to a litter of rabbits.

"19 November 1726   From Guildford comes a strange, but well attested piece of news. That a poor woman who lives at Godalmin, near that town, was, about a month past, delivered by Mr John Howard, an eminent surgeon and man-midwife, of a creature resembling a rabbit; but whose heart and lungs grew without its belly. About 14 days since she was delivered by the same person of a perfect rabbit; and, in a few days after, of 4 more; and on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, the 4th, 5th, and 6th instant, of one in each day; in all nine. They died all in bringing into the world. The woman hath made oath, That two months ago, being working in a field with other women, they put up a rabbit; who running from them, they pursued it, but to no purpose: This created in her such a longing to it, that she (being with child) was taken ill, and miscarried; and, from that time, she hath not been able to avoid thinking of rabbits. People, after all, differ much in their opinion about this matter, some looking upon them as great curiosities fit to be presented to the Royal Society, andc. others are angry at the account, and say, that if it be fact, a veil should be drawn over it, as an imperfection in humane nature. (Mist's Weekly Journal)"   Source

From Wikipedia: Toft was a maidservant from Godalming, England who became the subject of considerable controversy when she was alleged to have given birth to at least 16 rabbits, according to her doctors.

She was 25 years old and married at the time, and despite a miscarriage in August still seemed pregnant. She went into apparent labor and the local doctor John Howard arrived to assist. Howard reported that he delivered several rabbits, all stillborn, and that afterward she still seemed pregnant. He sent letters to some of England's greatest doctors and scientists asking for help investigating the situation, and among those who came to his assistance were Nathaniel St Andre, surgeon-anatomist to King George I, and Sir Richard Manningham, the most famous obstetrician in London. Toft gave birth to several more dead rabbits in their presence.

Toft claimed that during pregnancy she had an intense craving for roast rabbit, that she tried to catch rabbits in the garden, that she had admired them in the village market, and that she had dreamed about rabbits. Based on this the doctors explained the births as a result of "maternal impressions", contending that a pregnant woman's experiences could be imprinted directly on the fetus at conception and cause birth defects.

Sir Richard Manningham eventually exposed the rabbit birthings as a hoax, but not before many of London's most eminent doctors had been thoroughly taken in by it. In the aftermath of the hoax the medical profession received a great deal of public mockery for its gullibility.

1788 The last two ships of Australia's First Fleet, Fishburn and Golden Grove, returned to Britain.

1794 The United States and the Kingdom of Great Britain signed Jay's Treaty, which attempted to clear up some of the lingering problems left over from the American Revolutionary War.

1799 Huncoates, Lincolnshire, England: A UFO was seen, as reported in Gentleman's Magazine.

"Nov. 19, at 6 a.m., folk of Huncoates, Lincolnshire, were alarmed by vivid flashes lasting 30 seconds, from a ball of fire passing in the sky."
Harold T Wilkins, Flying Saucers on the Attack   Source

1800 Australian colonies: The first copper coins arrived at Sydney in the New South Wales colony from England for use as currency.

1816 Warsaw University was established.

1828 Death of Franz Schubert, Austrian composer.

1850 Alfred, Lord Tennyson, was appointed Britain's poet laureate, succeeding William Wordsworth. Tennyson held the post for 42 years.

1850 Death of Richard Mentor Johnson, American politician.

Lincoln didn't deliver the Gettysburg Address
"Most Americans have forgotten, or never knew, that the real Gettysburg Address was delivered that day, November 19, 1863, by the featured speaker on the program, the famous orator Edward Everett. Lincoln's speech was listed as 'Dedicatory Remarks by the President of the United States' and was intended as a brief and formal follow-up to Everett's two-hour address dedicating the opening of a new Civil War cemetery at Gettysburg."   Source

1872 Corrupt New York City politician, William M 'Boss' Tweed, who milked millions from the state, was sentenced to 12 years' in jail.

More

1893 Sydney, Australia: Some 250 members and sympathisers of the radical Active Service Brigade marched through Sydney after 'gatecrashing' the service in St Andrew's Cathedral. Full story yesterday in the Book of Days.

Lawson & Co: associations with Henry and Louisa Lawson

1905 The British steamer Hilda sank off France, with the loss of 128 lives.

1907 Australia: At least 2,000 coal workers in Newcastle went on strike over working conditions.

1908 A court in Saint Petersburg was adjourned when the prosecutor refused to work with Russia's first female barrister.

1914 A riot broke out amongst Austrian and German internees in a British detention camp.

1915 USA: After a controversial trial believed by many to be a miscarriage of justice, IWW (Industrial Workers of the World) labor organizer, folk-poet and songwriter, Joe Hill (Joseph Hillstrom), was killed by a state firing squad in Utah. Hill has become the subject of numerous songs, plays, and books, and some of his songs have been available continuously in the IWW's Little Red Song Book, now in at least its 36^th edition.

Despite an international movement to save him that reached as far as Australia, Utah authorities and copper bosses executed Hill for murder, but many say it was for his organizing with the IWW.

Hill was convicted of killing a grocer and his son, even though the bullets were not from Hill's revolver and no one identified him as the murderer. His last words:

"Don't mourn, organize!"

Poet Alfred Hays wrote a ballad in Hill's memory:

I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night, 
Alive as you and me. 
Says I, "But Joe you're ten years dead," 
"I never died," says he.

Hear Paul Robeson sing Joe Hill (mp3)    Lyrics

Longtime labor organizer for the radical IWW (known collectively as 'the Wobblies') and writer of union songs, Hill became a martyr upon his execution. Efforts by President Woodrow Wilson, the government of Sweden, and many prominent Americans (such as Helen Keller) to get him a new trial had failed.  

Joe Hill's body was rushed from the prison yard in Utah to Chicago, where Wobblies staged a funeral (pictured below) attended by more than 30,000 mourners.

Source: The Daily Bleed

1916 Samuel Goldfish (later renamed Samuel Goldwyn) and Edgar Selwyn established Goldwyn Company (the company later became one of the most successful independent filmmakers).

1917 A Revolutionary Diplomatic Committee, headed by Leon Trotsky, was established in Petrograd, Russia.

1919 Benito Mussolini and 37 Fascists were arrested in Italy after rioting breaks out on the election of the Socialist Party.

1920 One hundred thousand White Russian refugees from the Crimea arrived in Constantinople, fleeing the Russian Civil War and Communism.

1924 In Los Angeles, California, famous silent film director Thomas Ince ('The Father of the Western') died of a heart attack in his bed, but rumours soon surfaced that he had been shot dead by publishing tycoon William Randolph Hearst.

1925 The British parliament voted for a four-month jail sentence for drunken driving.

1936 Buenaventura Durruti (b. 1896) was mortally wounded under uncertain circumstances while helping to defend Madrid. Earlier that month he was persuaded by García Oliver and Federica Montseny to bring his anarchist column (composed of about 3,000 men) to the city to defend it against General Francisco Franco's fascist army.

1937 Australia: Hubert Opperman arrived in Sydney, having cycled from Fremantle on the other side of the continent, a distance of 2,751 miles, in a record 13 days, 10 hours, 11 minutes.

1941 World War II: The Royal Australian Navy cruiser HMAS Sydney and the German auxiliary cruiser Kormoran sank each other off the coast of Western Australia, with the loss of 645 Australians and about 77 German seamen.

1942 World War II: The Battle of Stalingrad – Soviet Union forces under General Georgy Zhukov launched the Operation Uranus counterattacks at Stalingrad, turning the tide of the battle in the USSR's favour.

1944 World War II: US President Franklin D Roosevelt announced the 6^th War Loan Drive, aimed at selling US$14 billion in war bonds to help pay for the war effort.

1946 Afghanistan, Iceland and Sweden joined the United Nations.

1946 Australian country and western singer, Slim Dusty, recorded his first song, 'When the Rain Tumbles Down in July'.

1959 The Ford Motor Company announced the discontinuation of the unpopular Edsel.

1968 An army coup seized power in Mali.

1969 Apollo program: Apollo 12 astronauts Charles Conrad and Alan Bean landed at Oceanus Procellarum ('Ocean of Storms') and became the third and fourth humans to walk on the Moon.

1984 A series of explosions at the PEMEX petroleum storage facility at San Juan Ixhuatepec in Mexico City ignited a major fire and killed about 500 people.

1985 Cold War: In Geneva, US President Ronald Reagan and Soviet Union leader Mikhail Gorbachev met for the first time.

1985 Pennzoil won a US$10.53 billion verdict from Texaco in the largest civil verdict in US history (Texaco established a signed contract to buy Getty Oil after Pennzoil entered into an unsigned, yet still binding, buyout contract with Getty).

1990 Pop group, Milli Vanilli, was stripped of its Grammy Award because the duo did not sing at all on the Girl You Know It's True album. Session musicians had provided all the vocals.

1994 In Britain, the first National Lottery draw was held. A £1 ticket gave a one-in-14-million chance of correctly guessing the winning six out of 49 numbers.

1997 In Carlisle, Iowa, Bobbi McCaughey gave birth to septuplets in the second known case where all seven babies were born alive.

1998 Lewinsky scandal: The United States House of Representatives' Judiciary Committee began impeachment hearings against US President Bill 'Slick Willy' Clinton.

1998 Vincent van Gogh's Portrait of the Artist Without Beard sold at auction for US$71.5 million.

1999 In Istanbul, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) ended a two-day summit by calling for a political settlement in Chechnya and adopting a Charter for European Security.

2000 "Pheasant, neck wrung by Britain's Queen Elizabeth after one of her dogs brought the bird wounded by a shotgun blast, during a shooting trip at her estate at Sandringham. The next day, a Sunday, the queen would wear to church pheasant feathers on her hat."   Source

Tomorrow: The important marriage of Elizabeth Saxe-Coburg-Gotha to Philippos Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderbert-Glucksburn

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The other Man in the Iron Mask: Harry Bensley

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