History Through Tinted Spectacles (1952)

From the October 1952 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is evident to anyone who is a student of history, however humble, and who is at the same time interested in trends in modem society, that much effort is being expended in bringing the minds of the public to bear on the so-called glories of the Mediaeval Age.

One can think of a number of reasons for this; first, there is the short-term policy—that of “cashing in" in a box-office sense, on the public’s natural curiosity for things of the past, as is evidenced by the spate of so-called “historical’’ films now being shown throughout the country.

The second and more serious reason for this revival in Mediaevalism and obscurantism is to provide an opiate for a society which is beginning to be restive, and in some cases, resistive to the present conditions of graft and gloom that its “leaders” are continually creating for it. These “leaders” are becoming increasingly aware that society is desperately ill and is heading for another major breakdown. Blame is continually laid at the "other fellow’s” door; it is either the poison of Russian "Communism,” which persists in corrupting the Capitalist Democracies or the poison of Capitalist germ bombs which continue to pour down on the heads of "Communist” countries.

The "free world,” i.e., the countries outside Russian Imperialism but subjected to other brands of the same disorder, are on the one hand building up economic barriers to protect themselves from one another (Britain, Australia, U.S.A. are all devoted to the cause of export whilst frowning on imports), while on the other hand they claim they are forced by the threat of Soviet Imperialism to form military alliances for their mutual protection.

It is plain to see that the world is rapidly dividing into two camps, the one representing the well-known company of actors who have for many years treated the general public with drama after drama—usually tragedy from the audience’s point of view—the other a somewhat newer company, branded as upstarts by the more respected company of stock-brokers, bishops and bankers but nevertheless feared for its lustiness and cleverness born of a study of the weaknesses in the make-up of its adversary. No amount of assurances from either side that both companies can continue to do business without coming to blows should convince us when we realise that it is in the nature of both to expand at the other’s expense. In the meantime the audience is being suitably conditioned by both sides whether it be the hypnotic influence of the Russian political ballet or the sanctified self-righteousness of the Western Capitalist knight errants both striving valiantly in the lists at U.N.O.

Which brings us back to Mediaevalism. It is one of the weapons in the armoury of Capitalist, the idea being to feed the workers on past glories in order to forget present-day problems. It is believed by some that a return to Mediaeval faith and philosophy, to the Mediaeval spirit of adventure and chivalry, will give this wobbling society of ours some "spiritual stability” whatever that may mean.

The lusty infant, Soviet Capitalism, utilises history too. It is more than ever tending to portray Russian history as a means of propaganda to its own and other audiences. It has made its peace with the Church on conditions mutually beneficial to Church and State.

In Britain, where an official State religion helps the Capitalist class in its legislation, abetted by numerous other Christian sects, many faithful Protestants banded in the Protestant League are much perturbed at the swing back to Catholicism on the one hand and to the rash of spiritualist churches on the other. While the latter disease is perhaps the misguided groping of befuddled and dispirited workers for a way out of their daily cares, the former appears to be a deliberate plan to bring the minds of people back to the Mediaeval philosophy of poverty.

The attempt to give the bloody wars in Malaya and Korea a semblance of a new kind of “Knight Errantry” is clearly seen from the public utterances of the leaders of Church and State to whom these wars appear as a holy crusade against “Communist” atheism by the one, as an economic necessity by the other, and as salvation to both from the horrors that may come when the exploited classes of all countries break their fetters.

It is when we really study the Mediaeval scene in its true light that we begin to see how utterly funny the present attempts at re-creation are, funny if they were not so terribly serious, if is time that the exploited masses realised the truth about the so-called glories of the Middle Ages; that it was a time of pestilence, famine and rigid class distinction when no man could get outside the pattern of lighters, prayers and peasants with the latter class supporting the whole Feudal structure on its broad back. The prayers and fighters often allied themselves with one another, as for example during the Fourth Crusade in Palestine. Villehardouin, one of six ambassadors to the Doge of Venice, asked for aid in transporting the Crusaders. He tells of an agreement made in March of the year 1201 —“ Sire, we have come to you on behalf of the noble barons of France who have taken the cross.... they pray for you for God's sake .... to furnish them transports and ships of war." The Doge then tells the ambassadors what aid he is prepared to give and continues, “ . . . and we will do more, we will add fifty galleys for the love of God on condition that of every conquest by sea or land, we shall have one half and you the other ....” While therefore the Venetians were willing to help the Crusade along “for the love of God ” they did not let that great love blind them to a fat share in the booty. The Church was of course extremely interested in the Crusade; the “private" of those days, like some of his counterparts to-day, was only interested in his orders and in the belief that dying in the war for Mother Church was a sure passport to heaven.

So great was the oppression of the serfs by the Chapter of Notre Dame de Paris in the reign of Louis, that Queen Blanche did what many modern philanthropists would do—remonstrated “in all humility" whereto the monks replied that “ they might starve their serfs as they pleased.”

The glorious works of art and architecture, the magnificent cathedrals and palaces, were built not only by the veneration of Christian craftsmen, but out of the sweat of the ignorant and oppressed masses and the blood of the conscript peasant who died fighting holy wars for Christian lords against other Christian lords and even if he did manage to survive the battles alive, lived to supply the wealth with which the members of the late lord's family bribed the Church in order that the period of confinement in purgatory would be lessened.

The progressive thinkers often thought at the peril of their lives if their views were a danger to the existing order. Galileo, who professed the theory of Copernicus that the earth moved round the sun, was forced to recant his scientific belief although earlier, Copernicus had dedicated the same treatise to the Pope. (The Mediaeval Church attracted to herself thinkers and men of learning in order that she might remain the dominating factor, though when she failed at any time she came down with a heavy hand on the blasphemer).

The seamen and explorers of the “Age of Discoveries” were inspired much more by the spur of loot than they were by the spirit of adventure.

It is indeed a fitting comment on the crisis in modern Capitalist society that it must once more revert to a past which it itself burst asunder as being incompatible with the new forms of exploitation and profit-making; that it once again invokes the Medieval spirit on the one hand and piles up super modern weapons on the other.

The writing is on the wall. Capitalism is like the villain in a crime magazine, waiting with bated breath for the stroke of midnight it has nowhere to turn. The world has been grabbed long ago (or almost all of it though various re-distributions go on from time to time, conducted by force or the threat of force as we see in Europe and Asia at the present time). We might remember in this connection the words of Cecil Rhodes, an arch Imperialist to whom the annexation of territories was part of his life blood, “ the world is nearly all parcelled out and what is left of it is bring divided up, conquered and colonised. To think of the stars overhead at night, these vast worlds which we can never reach. I would annex the planets if I could . . ."

The Christian fighting barons had a faith; the rising Capitalist class had a faith; Cecil Rhodes cleariy had one and we know for a certainty that the Church never lacked a faith. The workers should realise that these faiths, common to them all had to have for practical purposes, a vast army of unthinking automatons to keep them going—first peasants, now wage-workers.

The issue facing the perplexed workers is what to believe in and what to do. They can of course swallow the distortions of the glorious past and live in the Cinema dream world; they can stupify themselves with the various brands of opium turned out by the purveyors of the many religious sects from the State Established to those of humbler but perhaps more exciting causes. They can stop thinking altogether and “concentrate” on placing 14 correct symbols in their proper places on a football coupon, thereby hoping to win a fortune. One thing is plain they cannot go back. They are creatures of the present and must .take the consequences of the present.

Alternatively they can learn to understand Socialism. This will not come as a gift from heaven, neither is it mysteriously inspired nor does it come from “ leaders.” It can only grow from knowledge—a knowledge of the nature of Capitalism and the laws which govern Capitalist society. The only emancipators of the world's toilers will be the toilers themselves. They will then build edifices that will be monuments to those that follow—monuments to men who overcame the last barrier, who understood what freedom meant and having understood, became free.

W.T.B.

The crusade for gold (1963)

Book Reviews from the September 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Conquest of New Spain. Bernel Diaz. Translated by J. M. Cohen. Penguin Books, 6s.

Chronicles of the Crusades. Villehardouin and Joinville. Translated by M. R. B. Shaw. Penguin Books, 5s.

Many books have been written about Hernando Cortes and the conquest of Mexico. Many more still have been written about the Crusades. But very few books on either event came from those who were there at the time, and even of these only a handful have survived.

Penguin Books have recently had the happy idea of publishing translations of three of these personal histories. In the first, The Conquest of New Spain, Bernal Diaz, a humble soldier in the Cortes expedition, gives his account of how several hundred Spanish adventurers with a few dozen horses invaded the powerful Aztec empire, overthrew its ruler Montezuma, and conquered his capital of Mexico. The second book, Chronicles of the Crusades, combines two stories: of the Fourth Crusade seen through the eyes of a French feudal lord, Villehardouin, and of the Seventh by a later compatriot Joinville.

Roughly three hundred years separate these two periods, three hundred years which saw the final crumbling of feudalism before the forces of expansion in which the discovery of the New World played such an overwhelming part. The books reflect the deep gulf between the two societies, but even more interesting and striking is the way they reveal the factor common to both of them—the drive of economic interest.

All three histories purport to be written by religious men. Both the chroniclers of the Crusades tell us frequently of their Christian mission, of their joy at the “taking of the Cross" against the Saracen and the infidel. And throughout his story Diaz tells us again and again of the way he and his companions shattered the Mexicans’ “heathen idols” and of how they tried to get them to see the “true faith.” All their disasters (and they were many) were sent by God to punish them for their misdeeds, and their escapes and triumphs were due solely to his intervention.

But through all three stories comes the asides, the complaints, the intrigues, the reproaches, the admissions, that make it clear that whatever the ostensible reason for their campaigns, the real motive was wealth, land, booty, and loot.

Gold is the word that weaves its way into every thread of Diaz’s story. Gold was what he and his companions were after, the fabulous mines in the west which would make them rich beyond the dreams of avarice. Every settlement through which they passed on their long road to Mexico was assessed in terms of the gold it possessed; every present given by Montezuma in an effort to buy them off was meticulously valued in pesos. Gold was the prize for which they went through innumerable and fantastic hardships and for which so many of them died—to have their hearts torn from their still living bodies and their limbs thrown to their opponents to feast upon. And, supreme irony of all, and as so often happens, it was the leaders and rulers who got most of the spoil and Diaz and his fellows nothing.

Our two Crusaders tell the same story. It was the Venetian merchants who supplied the ships and provisions for the Fourth Crusade—at a good price, plus one-half “of everything we win." And whatever may have been the depth of religious conviction of the two authors, it is certain that most of their companions embarked on their adventure for the booty to be won and the lands to be conquered. The Fourth Crusade, in fact, never got further than Constantinople and ended in a bloody struggle between the French and Germans against the Greeks who were, incidentally, also Christians and whose lands bad been seized by the Crusaders. As for the Seventh Crusade, the feudal barons who left so eagerly in search of loot and land were soon tempted to leave their “saintly king Louis'’ in the lurch when they found the opposition keener than they had expected. Louis himself was captured and had to buy himself back to France at the cost of a heavy ransom. The whole campaign was in fact a fiasco, ruined by the greed of the big feudal lords and their primary concern for their own economic interests.

It should be remembered that the wealth to permit these feudal aristocrats to go out on their jaunts, either for religious or just for mercenary gain, was extracted from the vast inert, mass of Western European serfdom. Then, as now, a small minority of privileged lived on the backs of a majority who did all the useful work of society, pawns who were passed from one feudal lord to another as the tide of battle fluctuated between the various warring actions.

By Diaz's time this system had virtually broken up and a new one was evolving. He was only one of many who thought to get rich quick by volunteering for expeditions to open up new lands. The old order was disappearing and the world becoming bigger, but much of it was illusion. Most of them died, or came back crippled or broken with disease. Their leaders, true, often shared the same hardships but did have somewhat of a better chance of looking back and considering them worthwhile. But the real winners, as always, were the big men behind the scenes who financed the expeditions—and, of course, the rulers of the time who couldn't lose anyway because they were automatically entitled to a fifth of everything that was going.

Courage, adventure, cruelty, and privation—these two books recount such things on a scale to make us marvel. But, underlying everything, they confirm once more that then, as now, history was shaped by economic interest. The holy cross might have stood out brightly on the banners, but it was the urge for gold, land, booty, and profit, that burned in the breasts of most of those who fell in behind.

Stan Hampson

War: Methods of Offence and Defence (continued) (1941)

From the March 1941 issue of the Socialist Standard

Link to Part 4.

(Continued from February issue.) 

An excellent picture of the times is contained in contemporary reports of the siege of Jerusalem in 1099 by eye-witnesses and participants in the event. A number of these reports are contained in the above-mentioned work of Duncalf and Kreg, from which the following extracts are taken.

Firebrands were hurled into the city. They consisted of burning wood and straw.

“The wood was dipped in pitch, wax, and sulphur, then straw and tow were fastened on by an iron band, and when lighted these firebrands were shot from the machines, all bound together by an iron band, I say, so that, wherever they fell the whole mass held together and continued to burn.“ (Raymond of Agiles. Canon of Puy. “History of the Franks who captured Jerusalem”—written about 1112.)

This writer follows on with a description of the incidents after the capture of the town.

“But now that our men had possession of the walls and towers, wonderful sights were to be seen. Some of our men (and this was more merciful) cut off the heads of their enemies ; others shot them with arrows, so that they fell from the towers; others tortured them longer by casting them into the flames. Piles of heads, hands and feet were to be seen in the streets of the city. It was necessary to pick one’s way over the bodies of men and horses. But these were small matters compared to what happened at the temple of Solomon, a place where religious services are ordinarily chanted. What happened there ? If I tell you the truth, it will exceed your powers of belief. So let it suffice to say this much at least, that in the temple and portico of Solomon, men rode in blood up to their knees and bridle reins. Indeed it was a just and splendid judgment of God, that this place should be filled with the blood of unbelievers, when it had suffered so long from their blasphemies. The city was filled with corpses and blood.”

Another writer states : —

“Neither woman or children were spared;”

and adds:—

“Our squires and poorer footmen discovered a trick of the Saracens, for they learned that they could find byzants [gold coins] in the stomachs and intestines of the dead Saracens, who had swallowed them. Thus, after several days they burned a great heap of dead bodies, that they might more easily get the precious metal from the ashes.” (Fulk of Chartres, “The Deeds of the Franks who attacked Jerusalem.”)

Another contemporary author says : —

“Afterwards, the army scattered throughout the city and took possession of the gold and silver, the horses and mules, and the houses full of loot for all.” (“Deeds of the Franks and Crusaders,” by an anonymous author.)

Curious how little war has changed, in its fundamental aspect, across the ages.

Towards the end of the Middle Ages, after the introduction of gunpowder to Europe in 1320, cannon replaced the former feeble siege weapons in the attacks on strongholds. Primitive though they were, they yet hurled missiles heavy enough and forcefully enough to batter breaches in the walls of the most powerful fortifications. From that time dates the decline of the impregnability of the mediaeval castle. The capture of Constantinople by the Turks in 1453 was due to the use of artillery. The Turks changed over to artillery long before Europe. They used arquebuses and field-pieces—the latter joined together by chains to prevent horsemen charging between them.

As the big barons swallowed little ones the internal wars began to come to an end. Military protection being no longer needed by the town and country people, the baron was transformed into a courtier. When gunpowder had revolutionised mediaeval warfare, the power of the baron declined still further. The equipment and maintenance of a company of artillery was so expensive that it became the monopoly of the wealthier princes, and the power of the latter consequently grew as the barons declined.

Gunpowder finally brought back into war the mass of the people as a fighting power when the infantrymen, with gun and cannon, ousted the armoured cavalrymen as the supreme striking force and cut the ground from under the privileged aristocracy of Feudalism.

Thus, gunpowder helped to destroy the mediaeval lord, raise the bourgeoisie (the monied class, as such) and established for a time the power of kings. We have now reached the end of one form of social organisation and the beginning of another— the end of the mediaeval world and the beginning of the modern or capitalist period.

Before continuing the discussion of the development of the implements of war we would like to direct attention to some points that are worth bearing in mind.

Imperialism and the building up of empires commenced with the introduction of slavery as a general feature of communities. All the great antique civilisations were based upon chattel slavery, which freed fighting men for the pursuit of loot—in fact, built up masses of wealth worth looting. In the period of tribal communism, which preceded the introduction of slavery, there were no empires. Even the largest aggregations of settled tribal peoples, such as the confederation of Iroquois tribes occupying what is now the State of New York, exhibited no empire-building traits.

Another interesting fact is that empires grew cut of small city states like Babylon, Athens and Rome, or were established by war chiefs like Mahomet, Genghis Khan and Tamerlaine. In each case, behind the apparently accidental growth of a mushroom empire there was productive development of a high order. This is shown in the invention and workmanship of the offensive and defensive armour. The mail-clad Arabians and the gunpowder-using warriors of Genghis Khan are evidence of this.

When the economic development within a group reached the point of enabling them to produce a supreme weapon or method of warfare it started them on the road to conquest. If other conditions are favourable, such as the position of Rome on crossing trade routes, then the bid for empire is likely to be successful.

Some of the empires of the past were of huge extent, even judging by present-day standards. The Tartar Empire of Genghis Khan, in the 13th century, was one of the largest ever built up, comprising a vast area of Russia, China and Central Asia—half of the known world of the time. After the oft-repeated legends of the barbarous Mongol hordes it is refreshing to read the following recent description of the effect of the Tartar conquest: —

“The blood feuds of the grand princes of ancient Russia—lords of Iwer and Vladimir and Sasdol were buried under a greater calamity. All these figures of an elder world appear to us only as shadows. Empires crumbled under the Mongol avalanche, and monarchs fled to their deaths in wild fear. What would have happened if Genghis Khan had not lived, we do not know.

What did happen was that the Mongol, like the Roman peace, enabled culture to spring up anew. Nations had been shuffled to and fro—or rather the remnants of them—Mohammedan science and skill carried bodily into the Far East, Chinese inventiveness and administrative ability had penetrated into the West. In the devastated gardens of Islam, scholars and architects enjoyed, if not a golden age, a silver age under the Mongol ll-khana; and the thirteenth century was notable in China for its literature, especially plays, and its magnificence—the century of the Yuan”.—(Pages 200 and 207. “Genghis Khan, Emperor of All Men,” by Harold Lamb.)

Apparently neither Chinese nor Mongols knew how to cast cannon, but they were well-acquainted with the detonating effect of gunpowder and used it in fire-projectors to burn or frighten the enemy. 

A Chinese annalist at the Siege of Kaifong, in 1232, records the following: —

“As the Mongols had dug themselves pits under the earth where they were sheltered from missiles, we decided to bind with iron the machines called chin-tien-lei (a kind of fire-projector) and lowered them into the places where the Mongol sappers were ; they exploded and blew into pieces men and shields” (quoted by Lamb, page 224).

Now to get back to the development of gunpowder-using weapons.

We will first examine the evolution of small-arms, leaving until later the evolution of cannon, which were first used in ships.

The principal steps in the development of firearms concerned the method of igniting the charge. The progression was: Primer and match, matchlock, wheel-lock, flint-lock, percussion cap.

Early in the 15th century a hand cannon came into use. It was probably the first form of hand firearms and consisted of a small cannon fixed to a wooden stock, and it was fired by applying a match to some fine powder that had been poured on the touch-hole. These hand-guns required two men to handle, one levelling the gun while the other applied the priming and the match. The loading, levelling and fixing, however, took such a long time that in their early use they rarely fired more than one shot during a battle. In spite of this their effect upon enemy troops was considerable. They were used successfully by the Swiss in 1476 at the battle of Morat, at which were employed 6,000 of these hand-guns or culverins. Their most successful use at the time, however, was by cavalry, to which they were soon adapted. In practice, one group of cavalry fired a volley and then made way for another group to do the same, while they reloaded, thus keeping up a constant fire.

Early in the 16th century the Spaniards invented the arquebus, or match-lock. Its great feature was a lighted match held in a serpentin or hammer in such a position that when the trigger was pulled the serpentin dropped into the flashpan and the match ignited the priming powder. This speeded up the firing.

The match-lock was troublesome in wet weather and when a method of covering the match was devised it was necessary to blow it into flame before firing or it might not ignite the charge.

The next step was the invention of the wheel-lock in Germany in the 16th century. In this a flint was placed in the serpentin, which dropped to the flash pan when the trigger was pulled. The edge of a wheel, rotating at the side of the stocks after the style of a ratchet, came in contact with the flint and produced sparks that ignited the priming.

The wheel-lock was intricate and very expensive to use, consequently it did not come into general use, being employed mainly by the wealthy for sporting purposes.

Early in the 16th century the flint-lock was invented by the Spaniards. This gun was in use for over a century. In it the cover plate of the flashpan was knocked back by a blow from the flint that was screwed into the cock or hammer, and the resulting sparks ignited the priming powder.

In 1807 the Rev. M. Forsythe patented the percussion principle of igniting gunpowder in muskets by means of detonating powder, and percussion caps came into use between 1820 and 1830.

This brief description will give some idea of the steps in the development of small firearms. After their introduction the best workmanship and much ingenuity was employed in producing very fine specimens, both for quality and for ornamentation. Some of the guns were very richly embellished. It was not until the introduction of the rifled barrel that the accuracy of these guns could be depended upon in spite of intricate sighting arrangements.

We will have to leave for the next article a consideration of the effect these different inventions had on the conduct of warfare.

Gilmac.