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sixth-light · 5 years ago

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The Crusades: A Fandom Primer

Like many of you, I am very excited to see a whole lot of fic about everybody’s favourite new Crusades-era Muslim/Christian immortal warrior husbands! However, a preliminary reading indicates that fandom is a bit hazy on what actually happened during the Crusades. Or where. Or why. They’re a much-mythologised piece of history so this isn’t surprising, but at popular request – ok like five people that counts – I’m here with a fandom-oriented Crusades primer.

Please bear in mind that I’m not a historian and this primer is largely based on my notes and recollections from several undergraduate history courses I took in the mid ‘00s. I expect the field has moved on somewhat, and I welcome corrections from people with more up-to-date knowledge! There’s also this very good post by someone who is a lot less lazy about links than I am.

Where did they take place?

The Crusades, broadly, describe a series of invasions of the Eastern Mediterranean (modern Israel, Syria, Lebanon, Beirut, Jordan, Cyprus, and parts of Turkey and Greece) by (mostly) Western European armies, religiously justified by their belief that the city of Jerusalem should be part of ‘Christendom’, i.e. ruled by a Christian monarch. In the first expression of European settler colonialism, nobles from the area of modern France and Germany founded four Crusader Kingdoms (aka ‘Outremer’, ‘overseas’) – the County of Edessa, the Principality of Antioch, the Kingdom of Jerusalem, and County of Tripoli.

After a first unexpected wave of success in the First Crusade (1096-1099), which surprised everybody including the participants by conquering Jerusalem, the Crusaders were gradually driven and the last part of Outremer was lost to European control with the fall of the city of Acre in 1291. Crusades after that still nominally aimed to take Jerusalem but rarely got very far, with the Fourth Crusade famously sacking the city of Byzantium, their nominal Christian allies, in 1204. During this whole period activity that can be considered part of the ‘Crusades’ took place around the Eastern Mediterranean.

The most important thing to remember is that modern national boundaries didn’t exist in the same way; Italy, Germany, France, Spain, and the UK were not unified nations. Most of the southern Iberian peninsula (modern Spain) was ‘al-Andalus’, Muslim kingdoms ruled by nobility originally from North Africa. Sicily had been an Emirate up until very recently, when it had been conquered by Normans (Vikings with a one-century stopover in France). Italy and Germany in particular were a series of city-states and small duchies; Genoa, if you’re curious about it for some reason, ;), was a maritime power with more or less a distinct language, Genoese Ligurian (their dialect had enough of a navy to qualify). England had recently become part of the Anglo-Norman Empire, which ruled most of England (but not Wales or Scotland) and also large parts of modern France, particularly Normandy.

The Muslim world was similarly fragmented in ways that don’t correspond to modern national boundaries - there were multiple taifa states in Iberia, the Almoravid Caliphate in Morocco, the Fatimid Caliphate in Egypt, and (nominally) the Abbasid Caliphate in Baghdad, one of the great cities of the era, although the Seljuq Turks were the major power in Anatolia (modern Turkey) and what we describe as the ‘Middle East’.

The largest Christian unified power in the wider European/Mediterranean region was the Byzantine Empire, centered on the city of Constantinople (modern Istanbul), which quite fairly considered itself the direct continuation of the Roman Empire, the capital having been moved there by the Emperor Constantine in 323. In fact, the really big political and religious question of the time for Christians was who got to be considered the centre of Christendom (there was no real concept of ‘Europe’ at this point) – the Orthodox Church, the Byzantine Emperor, and the Patriarch of Constantinople in Constantinople, or the Holy Roman Emperor (er…dude in nominal charge of a lot of German and Italian principalities) and the Roman Catholic Church led by the Pope in Rome. The Orthodox Church in Constantinople and the Roman Catholic Church had agreed to disagree in 1054 in the Great Schism, so in 1096 this issue was still what you’d call fresh.

Onto this stage of East-West disagreement and the heritage of Rome crashed the Seljuq Turks, a Muslim group from Central Asia who swept through Anatolia (modern Turkey), Byzantium’s richest province, culminating in the Battle of Manzikert in 1071 which wiped out Byzantium as an independent military force. The southern provinces had fallen under Muslim rule long ago, during the era of the first Umayyad Caliphate – including Jerusalem, famous as the birthplace of Christianity and a holy site for Judaism and Islam as well, but also a fairly uninteresting provincial town. Until...

Until…what?

Here’s why all the geography matters: It is generally accepted that the First Crusade kicked off largely because Alexios I Comnenus, the then-current Byzantine Emperor, requested aid from Western Europe against the Muslim Seljuq Turks. Byzantium often recruited mercenaries from Western Europe; the Normans (aka the Vikings), who had settled Normandy and southern Italy in the past century were frequent hires. Hence those runes in the Hagia Sophia.

Meanwhile in Western Europe, the Pope – Urban II – was having difficulty with the current Emperor, and was eager to heal the Schism and establish the primacy of the Roman church. He declared that an expedition to aid the Byzantines would have the blessing of the church, and that a new kind of pilgrimage – an armed pilgrimage – was religiously acceptable, if aimed against the enemies of Christendom.

Pilgrimages (travelling to holy sites, such as churches that held saints’ relics) were a major part of European Christianity at the time and many people went on pilgrimage in their lives, so this was a familiar concept. Western Europe was also somewhat overpopulated with knights – don’t think plate armour, this is 1096, think very murderous rich men with good swords – who could always use forgiveness, on account of all the murder. The Roman Catholic church, unlike the Eastern Orthodox church, also subscribed to the concept of ‘just war’, that war could be acceptable for the right reasons. And so a whole lot of nobles from the area of modern France, Belgium, England, Germany, and Italy decided that this new Crusade thing was something they wanted in on – and they took several armies with them.

I’m going to skip over a bunch of stuff involving the People’s Crusade (a popular movement of poorer people, got literally slaughtered in Anatolia), the massacres of Jews in Eastern Europe, and a lot of battles, but the takeaway is this: Alexios probably thought he was getting mercenaries. He got a popular religious movement that, somewhat unfortunately, actually achieved its goal (Jerusalem), did next to nothing to solve his Anatolia problem, and gave a succession of Popes a convenient outlet for errant knights, nobles, and rulers: going on Crusade.

How many were there?

Official Crusades that anybody cares about: Nine, technically. Crusade-like military events that immortal soldiers might have got involved with, plus local stoushes in Outremer: way more. WAY more.

The First Crusade (1096-1099): First and original, set a frankly (heh) terrible precedent, founded the Crusader States and captured Jerusalem. Only regarded as a clash of civilisations by the Western Christians involved. For the local Muslims it was just another day at the ‘Byzantium hires Frankish mercenaries to make our lives difficult’ office.

The Crusade of 1101: Everybody who peaced out on the First Crusade hurried to prove they were actually up for it, once the remaining First Crusaders took Jerusalem. Didn’t do much.

The Second Crusade (1147-1150): The County of Edessa falls, Eleanor of Aquitaine happens (my fave), the only winners are the people who semi-accidentally conquer Lisbon (in Portugal) (but from Muslim rulers so that…counts?).

The Third Crusade (1189-1192): You all know this one because it has RICHARD THE LIONHEART and SALADIN. Much Clash of Civilisations, very Noble, did enough to keep the remaining Crusader kingdoms going but access to Jerusalem for Christian pilgrims was obtained by treaty, not conquest. Indirectly responsible for the Robin Hood mythos when Richard gets banged up in prison on the way home and is away from England for ages.

The Fourth Crusade (1202-1204): Aims for Jerusalem, ends up sacking the Eastern Orthodox city of Constantinople, just not a great time for anybody, more or less the eventual cause of the fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans in 1453.

The Fifth Crusade (1217-1221): Still going for Jerusalem, starts with Cairo instead, does not get anywhere it wants to even after allying with the Anatolian Sultanate of Rum, making the whole ‘Christians vs Muslims’ thing even murkier than it already was post the Fourth Crusade.

The Sixth Crusade (1228-1229): Somehow these things are still going. Nobody even does very much fighting. Access to Jerusalem is negotiated by treaty, yet again.

The Seventh, Eight, and Ninth Crusades: Seriously nobody cares anymore and also nobody is trying very hard. Kings have better things to do, mostly. People end up in Egypt a lot. We covered these in one lecture and I have forgotten all of it.

The Albigensian Crusade (1209-1229): Why take a three-year trip to the Holy Land to fight pagans when you can fight the ones in your own backyard (southern France), AND take their stuff? Famously the source of the probably apocryphal ‘Kill them all, God will know His own’ quote, regarding the massacre of most of a city harbouring Cathars (a Christian sect deemed heretical).

Can we circle back to that ‘massacres of Jews’ bit? WTF?

Crusades, historically, were Not A Good Time for Jewish communities in Europe; when Christians were riled up to go and Fight The Infidel, it was a lot quicker to massacre local Jews than travel to the Holy Land. Also, then you could take their stuff. I will note here that it is VERY TACKY to use historical pogroms as backdrops for your non-Jewish main characters so keep this in mind but, like, use with extreme caution in fanfic, okay? Generally life was a lot easier for Jewish communities in Muslim-ruled states in this period, which is why so many Hispanic Jews ended up in Turkey after they were expelled from Spain.

What were they really about, then?

Historians still Have Opinions about this. Genuine religious fervour was absolutely a key motivator, especially of the First Crusade. The ability to wage war sanctioned by the Church, or to redeem your local sins by going and fighting against the pagans, was part of that, too. Control of key trade routes to the East was probably not not a part of it. The Crusader States were definitely Baby’s First Experiment With Settler Colonialism, and paved the theological and rhetorical ground for the colonisation of the Americas. But many individuals on the Christian side would absolutely have believed they were doing God’s work. The various Muslim rulers and certainly the local Christian, Jewish, and Muslim inhabitants of the Holy Land itself were mostly just getting invaded by Franks. As time wound on the Crusades became more and more political (frequently featuring intra-religious violence and inter-religious alliances) and less and less about their forever nominal goal, control of Jerusalem.

How’s Wikipedia on this?

Basically not too bad but I’m not totally confident on some of the bits about motivation (see: white supremacists love this period, ugh.)

Why did they stop?

The prospect of re-taking Jerusalem vanished entirely as the Ottoman Empire centralised and took a firm hold over most of the Levant (and made inroads into Europe, as far as Austria, taking Constantinople in 1453 and finally ending the continuous Roman Empire), the Spanish Reconquista and various intra-European conflicts (the Hundred Years’ War, for example) absorbed military attention, and then the Reformation happened and half of Europe stopped listening to the Pope and started stabbing each other over who was the right kind of Christian. But the concept lingered; white supremacists love the Crusades. Which is why it is a very good idea to be sparing with Crusader imagery around Niccolò in fanfic set in the modern era, and please for fuck’s sake stop with the ‘crugayders’ tag, Yusuf wasn’t a Crusader.

What other fun facts should I keep in mind re: Nicky | Nicolò and Joe | Yusuf?

· Genoa is not the same as Italy; Nicolò is Nicolò di Genova and would have spoken Genoese (Ligurian) and considered himself to be Genoese. Italian as a language didn’t really exist yet. The language he and Yusuf would most likely have had in common was the ‘lingua franca’ (Frankish language, literally) of the Mediterranean trading region, a pidgin based heavily on maritime Italian languages. Yusuf 300% would have thought of him as a ‘Frank’ (the generic term for Western Christians) and probably annoyed him by calling him that until at least 1200 or so.

· Yusuf is apparently from ‘Maghrib’, which I assume means al-Maghrib/the Maghreb (as his actor is IIRC of Tunisian descent), i.e. North Africa. He could have had relatives in al-Andalus (southern modern Spain), he may have spoken languages other than Arabic natively (Mozarabic or Berber), his native area had universities before Europe did. Basically: this is as useful as saying he’s ‘from Europe’, do better backstory writers.

· Taking the whole ‘Nicky used to be a priest’ backstory at face value: being a priest in 1096 looked pretty different to how it did even 200 years later. They were still working on the celibacy thing. The famous monastic orders were still forming. Some priests could and did hold lands and go to war (this wasn’t common but it happened, especially if they were nobles by birth). Nicolò di Genova would not necessarily have seen a conflict between going on Crusade and being a priest, is what I’m getting at. If he was ALSO trained as a knight, he was from a wealthy family; it took the equivalent several villages to support a knight.

· ‘Period-typical homophobia’ is going to look very different for this period. They are NOT getting beaten up for holding hands. Or sharing a bed! Or even kissing, depending on the circumstances! I am not an expert on Islamic sexual mores of the era but Christian ones were heavily on the side of ‘unsanctioned sex is bad, sanctioned (marital) sex is slightly less bad’, and there was no concept of ‘being gay’. An interfaith relationship would be in some ways more of a problem for them than the same-sex one (and in some ways less difficult to navigate than a heterosexual interfaith relationship.) The past is another country.

· Look just no more fanfics where Yusuf is trying to learn ‘Italian’ in the early twelfth century I am BEGGING you all

#the old guard #history #finally that BA gets a workout #fourteen years later

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ithisatanytime · 4 years ago

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i deny the holocaust

Most of the “EVIDENCE” is witness testimony gathered during the nuremberg trials, and those were a fucking joke and everyone knew it. the “confessions” are now known to have been extracted via testicular torture, which is like regular torture but they torture your fucking balls, many of them had shattered testicles and all of them suffered beatings during interrogations. which sure fine if they were cold blooded murderers of 6 million innocent people, but the holocaust narrative is psychically impossible, and frankly, stupid. incinerating the bodies the way they say, is impossible, literally impossible, and there are testimonies given of bodies cremated regularly in under a half hour, which is fucking absurd. with modern tech, under ideal conditions, it takes over an hour, and then there is maintenance that needs to be done, and when i say an hour i mean from the time the furnace turns on until the body is reduced to ash, and cremation technology has come a long way in the eighty years since the holocaust never happened. with modern technology, under ideal circumstances, meaning you dont even have to load bodies in, or clean out the furnaces or maintain them, again with MODERN technology, it would have taked no less than 30 years to do what they said was done in 4. its beyond impossible, its actually ridiculous, and this is when you give the narrative every conceivable advantage.

There were tons of jewish concentration camp survivors who were interviewed by steven spielburg for his film schindlers list, their interviews were used as part of a making of documentary. they left out the dozens of “death camp” survivors who described the death camps as work camps, where no one was gassed, and they were treated rather fairly, there was even currency printed specifically for the deathcamps so that they would get paid for their work, there were hospitals that treated the ill (both of the most famous first hand accounts of the holocaust, “Night” and “the diary of anne frank include accounts of jews being treated for illnesses at on site hospitals, not experimented on just treated) which makes sense if you are running a work camp, and makes no sense if you are running a death camp. also the emaciated figures we see, i think these comprise the most compelling of the evidence, its a striking visual, until you look up american pows in japan, and see those same gaunt figures, google it right now and click images, tell me those men are not the same as the ones you see in the holocaust propaganda, typhus was pandemic around the world at the time, and thats what it does to you. notice the piles of emaciated corpses, never a fat corps among them in the photos, but according to the propaganda, most of the jews were killed upon arrival at the camp, and yet they appear to be either in the advanced stages of extreme starvation OR suffering from typhus. there are documented cases of the guards at these “death camps” (work camps) who were EXECUTED for STRIKING and stealing from prisoners, seems like a terrible waist of manpower if the goal was to kill them all anyway, the red cross inspected many of what we once called deathcamps and found no evidence of any wrong doing, not once. there are no aerial photographs from spy planes depicting the massive smoke that would have been created by continuosly cremating bodies (at impossible speed and/or volume). there exists not one single document even referencing this massive industrial under taking, and the germans were notorious for keeping records. i could litereally go on all day, but again the reason you believe this impossible story has nothing to do with evidence and everything to do with emotion.

in my early twenties i would be exposed to some holocaust denialism, and it was always swiftly debunked. this is a tactic called (ironically) poisoning the well, whereby you purposefully seed your enemy with bad arguments to be used against you so you can easily tear them apart and make anyone questioning the narrative seem ridiculous as a result. so i was pretty skeptical until i did the math myself. its not possible, its not even close to possible, there is no way in this universe that happened. The tiny minority of ethnic jews did in germany what they attempted to do in every country they ever lived in, they took over. the german revolution of 1919 just after world war one ended, communist jews (look up the leadership of the 1919 german revolution, 7/10 were ethnic jews) and the german people were subjected to all kinds of terrible shit, mostly starvation as they bled the country dry from the top. they were also pushing things like gender theory (first ever gender reassignment was in berling, just prior to hitlers rise to power) promoted prostitution, owned the newspapers and film studios. basically everything we are seeing in america and the rest of the west today, it was called the weimar era, and the germans living under the weimar jews universally despised them. when the nazis rose to power they tried to deport the jews living in germany but no one wanted them, you see ethnic jews were notorious for doing this kind of thing, they had been kicked out of over 100 countries throughout history as a result of doing this kind of shit, so no other countries wanted them seriously there was a meeting of dozens of leaders from countries around the world and the only country who agreed to accept jews was the fucking dominican republic. they would still have this reputation today, if not for the holocaust narrative making any kind of racial classification the ultimate taboo, thats in part why they invented it, the other part was to justify britain just awarding them someone elses country while they were still living in it! the fact that they got away with that is amazing, really think about that if nothing else, because something bad supposedly happened to them, they were just GIVEN a COUNTRY that not only didnt belong to them, but was inhabited already by muslims who believed it to be their sacred land. its insane! anyway hitler just wanted to deport them and he tried (google the haavara agreement, its literally excepted history that hitler tried like hell to deport them, which is a bad idea if your final solution is the complete annihilation of the jewish race and not to deport them) when the jews around the world declared war on germany (literally a new york times headline at the time) via staging a massive worldwide boycott using the papers they owned and all the political clout they purchased via owning the international banking cartels, germany had jews registered and placed into seperate housing so they could not try to stage another revolution, they had already done it several times in germany with the spartan uprising and others, eventually even successfully overthrowing the government during the aforementioned german revolution of 1919. and then he had them put into work camps when even then they revolted violently. america did exactly the same thing, putting its ethnic japanese population in internment camps for fear of a rebellion within the country or acts of sabatoge or espianage, literally the same thing at the same time for the same reason. there were no gas chambers, they literally tell you the crematoriums are reconstructions at the death camps, because hitler “had them blown up”. there were crematoriums at the death camps, remember typhus was pandemic at the time, but the showers were just plain old showers. no jews were gassed whatsoever, an american doctor traveled to the death camps in poland (except they were work camps) and performed hundreds of autopsies, in an attempt to prove that people were gassed, he found not one single body had been gassed via cyanide out of over a hundred autopsies performed, they had died from typhus, basically got dysentary and shit themselves until they starved, it sucks but it was happening all over the world even in the pacific theater. and again the timeline for the burning of just the six million is beyond impossible and remember he supposedly killed 11 million total in his impossible deathcamps with its impossible ovens.

I know this is hard to swallow, but you have to swallow it, because its fucking IMPOSSIBLE, you cant burn that many bodies in that amount of time, with the crematoriums they supposedly had, remember all of them are “reconstructions” built by the soviets after the war by their own admission, because hitler supposedly blew them all up. so when people say “have you been to the death camps because i have!” what they are really saying is, i saw the work camps and the crematoriums built after the war, and i was lead as part of a tour into a shower where i was told a spooky story that made me sad. its fake. it has to be fake or else the laws of physics are fake. you can call me a nazi if you want, but what does that mean? its only bad because the nazis killed millions based on their race, but im telling you they literally couldnt have, not how they say that they did. remember its illegal to say what im saying in most of europe, france germany many others, and people are currently in prison, for just questioning it! i do believe jews were killed in eastern europe by germans and others, but you have to understand they were angry for the jews had been killing gentiles for years, thats what the “red terror” was! and there were many massacres of european christians at the hands of communist jews. so some towns killed them as soon as their hegemony was broken. i dont think thats right, but find me a war where this kind of thing doesnt happen and ill give you ten bucks. that other impossible thing? never fucking happened it couldnt have. i could go on forever, but the fact is its not on me to prove it didnt happen, its on someone to prove that it did. remember witness testimony is pretty weak, and you cant convict based on that alone, and evidence of work camps isnt evidence of 6 million gassed and incinerated jews, that is an extraordinary (impossible) claim that requires extraordinary (IMPOSSIBLE) evidence.

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autodidact-adventures · 7 years ago

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World War I (Part 71): The Black Day of the German Army

It was a morning near the end of May 1918, and the German army was on the banks of the River Marne, barely 80km from Paris – this was where they'd been 3.5yrs earlier. They were exhausted, and while moving southwards some of the soldiers had made themselves sick from overeating food taken from enemy stores. But since the start of their Chemin des Dames offensive, they'd advanced constantly to arrive at this point. They'd wrecked 7 British & French divisions, taken 50,000 prisoners, and advanced about 48km. The way ahead looked clear: the Entente troops retreating before them were thin on the ground, had hardly any artillery, and were unable to find a place to stop & turn to fight.

But it was an empty triumph all the same. The Germans' enormous salient was growing longer and wider, but the base of the salient was far too narrow – in fact, it was in danger of becoming smaller. It the French held onto Reims and took Soissons, and closed the salient, then these troops would become trapped.

And the Allies (the Americans were now in the war) didn't really understand how vulnerable the Germans were, either. Germany had taken Soissons and seemed about to take Reims, they were starting to cross the Marne, and seemed unstoppable. Commanders began to panic.

At the eastern end of the front (south of St. Mihiel), General Noël de Castelnau began working out a plan for withdrawing to the west, thus abandoning the fortresses that had made his sector almost impregnable for so long.

To the north, Haig's staff were bringing out plans for evacuation back to England. Foch suggested that Clemenceau should prepare for the government to leave Paris (100,000's of citizens were fleeing the city) and talked of fighting all the way southwards to the Pyrenées.

Franchet d'Esperey ordered the Fifth Army to give up Reims. Lloyd George had returned from Versailles, and finally agreed to give Foch more troops from home. They were desperately needed – Haig was disbanding 145 battalions to replenish the other ones.

Only Pétain was calm. He was sure that the Germans had overextended themselves to a fatal degree, and if the Allies just held on, their defeat was certain.

And then the situation began to turn around. Two of Pershing's divisions had been ordered to converge where the Germans were crossing the Marne, and they linked up with French units & met the Germans at Château-Thierry. This was the Americans' first major engagement, and it forced the Germans to stop.

The commander at Reims ignored d'Esperey's orders to abandon the city, and stopped the Germans there, too. The Germans pulled themselves together for another assault on Reims, but they didn't have Brüchmuller's artillery, and failed miserably.

Reims is the red pointer on the right.

So Ludendorff turned to the next phase of his plan – attacking at the River Matz, west of Soissons. The objective was to broaden the salient's base at the western end, pushing the Allies back far enough that they couldn't threaten the one railway line that was supplying the German troops on the Marne. The attack would begin on June 9th, with Oskar von Hutier's army leading it. Secrecy was impossible, as everything had to be done so quickly.

As preparations were going on, American Marines launched an attack at Belleau Wood, to block one of the Germans' approaches to Paris. They advanced shoulder-to-shoulder like the Entente troops had at the Somme, but their morale was high and they had so many troops that they kept advancing slowly. After three weeks and many casualties, they would secure the wood, and have killed many German troops that Ludendorff couldn't afford to lose.

Battle of Matz

In fact, Hutier's preparations at the Matz were so rushed and obvious that the French began to suspect that it was merely a ruse, to distract them from something else being prepared elsewhere. German deserters even told the French the exact times of the bombardments and infantry advance.

When the German attack began, it started with a Brüchmuller barrage and forward rush by experienced troops, like the beginning of Operation Michael. It was a complete success, because the commander of the defenders was a follower of Foch, and ignored Pétain's defence instructions, putting his main force on/near the front line. Of course, the German artillery just wrecked it. Hutier's troops advanced about 9.5km that day, demolishing 3 French divisions and taking 8,000 prisoners.

But then on June 11th, the French suddenly counterattacked west of Soissons, directed by Charles Mangin, nicknamed “the Butcher”. Throughout the war he had been obsessed with feriously attacking and never defending, and he'd been alternately praised and condemned for it, even removed from command for taking things too far. Foch had put him in back in command of a corps, and this time he was the right man for the job.

The French were concealed by fog, and they attacked eastwards, catching Hutier's troops on open ground without any prepared defences. They threw the Germans back with such force that Ludendorff immediately called off the Matz operation.

After that, there was a month of relative quiet. Both Germany and France were preparing new attacks. Also during this period, the first cases of Spanish influenza were appearing. While all the armies were affected, the Germans had it the worst because of chronic malnutrition. All along the front line, thousands of men became too sick for duty – as many as 2,000 per German division. In the end, 186,000 German soldiers and 400,000 German civilians would die of the disease.

Battle of Hamel

The Battle of Hamel was on July 4th. It was one of the most remarkable operations of the war, and relatively bloodless. It took place near Amiens, in order to clear away the German threat to the city. Lieutenant-General John Monash planned and executed it. In April, he'd been knighted by King George, promoted to his current rank, and appointed to be the first non-English commander o the BEF's Australia-New Zealand corps.

Monash grew up in the Australian outback, and was the son of Jewish shopkeeper parents who had emigrated from Prussia. The Monasch (original spelling) family home wasn't far from Ludendorff's birthplace.

Monash had gained degrees in engineering, liberal arts and the law; he was an accomplished musician & linguist; and founded a construction firm that directed bridge & railroad construction all across Australia. In Australia's tiny army he became a reserve officer; designed a breech-loading cannon; and became a popular lecturer on tactics and military strategy.

At the start of the war, he was given command of one of Australia's first brigades; he spent 1915 at Gallipoli, where his brigade went ashore as part of the first invasion, and stayed until the end. At Messines Ridge in 1917, he contributed significantly to Plumer's success; at Third Ypres and Passchendaele he commanded a division as a Major General.

Powerful Australians had tried to keep Monash out of the war; later in Europe, people tried to obstruct his advancement. He was an amateur soldier, a colonial, Jewish, and his parents were from Germany. In 1918, his being given a third star and command of 200,000 Anzacs raised eyebrows. He only continued to succeed & advance because every general who served with him came to admire & defend him, and the king came to respect him.

Monash was an organizational genius and had plenty of experience in the management of huge projects. At Hamel, he integrated all the new machinery of war in a way that no-one else had managed to do – machine-guns, artillery, tanks and aircraft. With his plan of attack, the troops took only 93min to reach all their objectives, capturing 1000's of enemy soldiers, and taking only light casualties. They secured Amiens and opened a way for further Allied offensives.

Basil Liddell Hart said that Monash “had probably the greatest capacity for command in modern war among all who held command.” He had abandoned the old-school dash and flair of the British & French professionals, and “fulfilled the idea that gradually developed in the war – that the scale and nature of operations required a 'big business' type of commander, a great constructing and organizing brain.”

Hamel has been called the first truly modern battle, and for good reason. Later British operations used it as a model. A brochure describing Monash's tactics was distributed to every BEF officer. And it set the stage for the Anzacs to serve as Britain's shock troops for much of the rest of the war (often operating jointly with the Canadians).

Second Battle of the Marne

This began on July 15th, when 49 divisions of Crown Prince Wilhelm's army attacked Reims yet again. It was supposed to be the climax of the Chemin des Dames offensive, open a second railway line into the Marne salient, and prepare the way for the offensive in Flanders (which was to begin 5 days later).

But unfortunately for the Germans, Pétain had finally won the commander of the French Fourth Army over to his way of thinking, and an effective defence system was put into place east of Reims – the Germans got nowhere on that side of the city. The west side was still following Foch's beliefs, and the Germans penetrated deeply and quickly, despite not having the advantage of surprise at all. But by the second day, it was obvious that the eastern failure had left the western German troops dangerously exposed as they advanced.

Ludendorff called off the attack, and left to meet with Crown Prince Rupprecht at Tournai, in the north. It was time to finalize the preparations for Flanders, and Brüchmuller's guns were already being transported by train. But it was not going to be as he'd envisioned.

It was four months since the original plan, and the Entente were in a much better position in Flanders than they had been. Haig had finally got his 100,000 labourers fully employed, building new fortifications and laying out miles of wire, thus greatly improving the defences. They still had powerful reserves nearby, because Foch had refused to release them for the Marne.

The attack had to go ahead anyway, because Flanders was the last card left in Ludendorff's hand, and he was determined to play it. But while he and the CP were deep in discussion, news arrived. The Germans south & west of Soissons had been hit by a huge French offensive. They were in retreat.

Mangin led this attack, and again it had come out of the forest west of the Chemin des Dames. 23 divisions (including 4 American divisions), with 500 tanks in front of them, had attacked eastwards, with the goal of retaking Soissons and sealing off the German salient.

By 9:30am (while Ludendorff was hurrying southwards by train), the Americans & French had overrun three German lines. The American First & Second Divisions were at the centre of the attacking force.

A soldier would later recall, “Machine guns raved everywhere; there was a crackling din of rifles, and the coughing roar of hand grenades. Company and platoon commanders lost control – their men were committed to the fight – and so thick was the going that anything like formation was impossible. It was every man for himself, an irregular, broken line, clawing through the tangles, climbing over fallen trees, plunging heavily into Boche rifle pits. Here and there a well-fought Maxim gun held its front until somebody – officer, non-com, or private – gained a few men together and, crawling to left or right, gained a flank and silenced it. And some guns were silenced by blind, furious rushes that left a trail of writhing khaki figures, but always carried two ore three frenzied Marines with bayonets into the emplacement; from whence would come shooting and screaming and other clotted unpleasant sounds, and then silence.”

German reserves eventually arrived, and stopped the Entente advance. Their field artillery, firing at point-blank range, destroyed most of the tanks. By the end of the day, the Germans had managed to put together a defensive line about 8km back from where they'd started. But they'd lost 15,000 men as POWs, and 400 guns.

While they'd stopped Mangin from taking Soissons, he was still a major threat. There was no hope of taking Reims, and Soissons was in increasing danger, and the Marne salient was simply too vulnerable to keep. Ludendorff had to postpone Flanders indefinitely to deal with the situation.

He sent an army to defend Soissons, and later on in the day he met up with Kaiser Wilhelm, and told him that (as in 1914) they had to withdraw from the Marne. Preparations were begun for getting the troops out, and as many guns & supplies as possible, up through Soissons to safety.

Back in March, the Germans had had 300,000 more troops than the Allies. But between the start of Operation Michael and the end of July, they'd lost a million troops (killed, wounded or POW), many of them the young, skilled storm troops. Britain & France had lost half a million men each, and the French had almost no replacement.

But now, over 250,000 Americans were arriving in France every month; the Allies now had 200,000 more troops than Germany, and the difference was increasing every day. The Allies did have fewer divisions, but the German divisions were in terrible shape – over 100 were classified as unfit for use on the offensive.

The men who had fought their way across the Marne were now being destroyed by the Entente armies, and the only thing left was to escape back out of the salient before they were cut off. One German soldier later recalled, “Midnight. Time to leave, to escape the annihilating fire at daybreak. The Sixth Company remains behind the cover the retreat. The first group starts off, ten minutes later the second, and then after a few rifle salvoes the rest. We leave the ruined glade, climbing over the numerous shell holes in the underbrush. Here and there rises a sandy mound in which a rifle is stuck, a steel helmet over its butt. There they lie buried, those who would never come back from the battle of the Marne...Along the road back to Romigny the column passes rattling artillery, the riders in the blowing rain bent over in their saddles, the cannoneers hanging on the limbers of the guns. Between slouch the dispersed fragments of infantry, the remnants of companies, guns slung round necks, tarpaulins over heads against the rain, the knapsacks underneath bulging with the effect of a line of comic hunchbacks...The long lines of infantry file in the grey morning out of the woods, over the open field, without haste...Behind us thunder the engineers' demolitions. The engineers soon come running down the slope, followed by the infantry rearguard...Only our dead remain behind.”

The Flanders offensive, the whole point of Operation Michael and everything that had come afterwards, was long overdue, and not even all that likely to take place. Ludendorff was in a terrible state – self-isolated and distracted, easily enraged, and on the edge of collapse. And he worried about what would happen when the German public realized how great his failure was.

On Foch's orders, Allied troops were attacking all around the edges of the Marne salient. The salient was shrinking quickly as the Germans hurried to make their escape. On July 24th, Foch, Pétain, Haig and Pershing met and agreed (with some difficulty) on a co-ordinated series of major offensives.

Haig would attack eastward our of Amiens (this was possible because of Hamel's success). Pershing was demanding that the divisions that had been scattered to help deal with the German offensives be returned to his section; he would advance on the old St. Mihiel salient south of Verdun.

For both of these offensives, the purpose was to capture railway lines that the Germans needed, and that would help the Allies greatly with their own supplies. The fact that the Allies were now able to make such large-scale plans showed that they had now completely taken the initiative, and Ludendorff could only react.

The next day, July 25th, Ludendorff made a final attempt to encircle Reims, and yet again it was a failure – his forces simply weren't strong enough for an offensive punch.

The retreat towards Soissons continued in an orderly fashion, even though the Allies were still attacking from three directions. The Germans launched counterattacks to stop them getting too close.

When Pétain's forces attacked along the Marne, they encountered a thin – but tenacious – rear guard, and made little headway. But this attack drew in more German troops, thus preparing the way for the next French blow.

This came on August 1st. Mangin's troops advanced eastwards, as they'd agreed, in another attempt to take Soissons, and they nearly succeeded. The combined French-American force pushed the Germans back 8km in one day, and captured the high ground south of the Vesle river (which Reims stands on), and from there they could train their guns on Soissons. But their attack had come just a bit too late – the Germans slipped out of the salient and took up new positions north of its base, giving up Soissons with barely a shot fired. The French followed, moving in behind them.

Like 1914, the Germans had reached the Marne and crossed it, been unable to sustain the advance, been forced to retreat, and had stabilized themselves across the Aisne. But the German army was reduced and battered; it faced stronger enemies than it had in 1914; and there were fewer resources with which to establish a defensive line. But Ludendorff could not see this. Even as late as August 2nd, he spoke of an imminent return to the offensive, in a communication to his army commanders. And that would be impossible.

Third Battle of Amiens

August 8th was the first day of the Third Battle of Amiens, and what was known afterwards as the Black Day of the German Army (as Ludendorff named it). The British attacked east of Amiens under Monash, whose corps had become part of a new army created to replace Gough's broke Fifth Army. The attack had been organized hurriedly, in order to prevent the Germans from gaining any opportunity to regroup after their escape from the Marne.

It went perfectly, lead by 600 tanks and Monash's Anzac troops, taking the Germans by surprise and scattering them in all directions. Morale and organization collapsed quickly. By 10:30am the Anzacs had advanced about 9.5km, and by noon it was about 19km.

The Germans were refusing to respond to orders, or even attempt to stop and fight. Reinforcements came up from the rear, and they were taunted as “scabs” and “strikebreakers”. The Germans lost over 650 officers and 26,000 troops on August 8th alone, with 2/3 of them surrendering willingly and eagerly, often in large, well-armed groups.

But Marwitz managed to bring the situation under control, sealing the hole in his line with reserves and organizing a counterattack that pushed the British back to only a few miles forward of where they'd started from. And the Allied tanks were not invincible. Many would break down after an hour or two of action; some overturned or got stuck in the mud; they could also be broken open with heavy machine-gun fire, or blown apart by field artillery.

Also, the British & French infantry were inexperienced on the offensive, and this helped the Germans. August 8th showed that the Germans were in a terrible state, but also that finishing them would likely be costly and slow.

With Foch in command, the Allies were constantly attacking or in preparation for attacking. The Germans defended effectively under conditions that, because of Ludendorff, were needlessly difficult. His staff & the army group commanders were begging him to order a retreat to the Hindenburg Line and other redoubts left behind by his offensives, but he refused. He may have been unwilling to admit that the army's gains were useless and barely defensible. Forcing the troops to hold their positions was just making it easier for the enemy, though, and increasing their own losses.

But at meetings of the German leadership, even Ludendorff had to admit that military victory was no longer posible. But no-one did anything to try and start negotiations. At one point, the kaiser instructed Foreign Minister Richard von Kühlmann to approach the Queen of the Netherlands about acting as at an intermediary, but Kühlmann didn't do anything to follow it up.

The leaders were hoping that if they restabilized the front and restored it to stalemate, they'd be able to initiate peace talks from a strong position. But this was a vain hope – the troops were in a terrible state, and many were rebellious and undependable. Ludendorff had ordered deserters to be executed, even though up until now, the German army had been more lenient than Britain & France in using the death penalty for cowardice or desertion.

Second Battle of the Piave River (June 15th - 23rd)

Conrad von Hötzendorf had been replaced as Vienna's Chief of Staff a while back, but he was now in a field command. In May, he had bullied the young, demoralized Emperor Karl into approving his new plans. The Emperor actually made them worse by suggesting that they expand it into a two-pronged attack, which made it certain that it definitely wouldn't have enough strength the succeed.

The offensive was originally planned for May 28th, but Austria's transport & supply system was barely functioning, and problems with it delayed the offensive.

The battle began on June 15th, with the Austrians succeeding at first, managing to push the Italians back and cross the River Piave. Ludendorff hoped for a brief period that, if they managed to continue, the Austrians might force the Americans to shift some troops to Italy.

But when the Austrians ran into a British-French rear guard, they were forced to abruptly halt. On the second day of the offensive, they were driven right back to where they'd started, having lost 46,000 men.

By June 25th, their losses were 142,000 men – 11,000 had been killed, and 10,000's had surrendered. Those left were without food or ammunition.

The battle left Austria-Hungary's armies incapable of maintaining a decent defence. Conrad was removed from command on July 25th, and for some reason elevated from baron to count.

The Alpine snows were melting, but desertions were growing. Soon, Austria had to tell Germany that they couldn't continue. If Germany wouldn't join them in seeking peace, then Austria would have to do so alone. But when they tried to approach the Allies, they were rebuffed – they'd left it too late.