Від кістяка коня Наполеона Бонапарта на ім'я Маренґо до пилки, якою відпиляли ногу лорда Аксбриджа під Ватерлоо (безногий ветеран у самому кінці - це не він єслічо)
В музеї досить багато муляжів солдатів минулих часів. Не Мадам Тюссо, але зовсім непогано. Ось для френдів, що серйозно цікавляться подробицями військових одностроїв 17 століття - може зацікавити
Ever since The School of Athens was painted during the Italian High Renaissance in the early 16th century, it has confounded art historians and scholars. Dedicated to the role of philosophical debate, Raphael presents the quest for knowledge as a transformative force in mankind’s evolution.
His father was a prominent court painter to the Duke of Urbino, teaching his boy basic painting techniques from a young age. He also educated his son in the principles of humanist thinking, and the works of the classicists. Raphael was 11 when his father died in 1494, leaving him to manage the art workshop.
Even as a teenager, he was considered a far more accomplished painter than his father, and was soon noted as one of the finest artists in Urbino, which was considered to be the epicentre of cultural achievement at the time.
Raphael was quickly chosen for a commission at an important church in the neighbouring province of Perugia. By the age of 21, he had moved to Florence, where he was immediately struck by the magnificent works surrounding him on all sides – by Leonardo, Michelangelo, Masaccio.
They seemed to Raphael to have achieved a higher level of mastery in composition than he had ever seen, and he studied their painting in intimate detail, in order to develop a more intricate, expressive style.
Leonardo’s ability to portray human emotion transfixed him, and he quickly began to introduce tender expressions and sublime colouring into his own work. In the same way, Michelangelo’s ability to make his figures interact would dynamically influence Raphael’s use of light to animate his paintings, giving his forms their dimensionality.
Raphael’s superb Madonna of the Pinks can be seen as a clear homage to Leonardo. Indeed, his entire series of Madonnas drew tremendous acclaim, particularly from the leading forces of the Renaissance.
After the Bolshevik seizure of power in October 1917, the British cabinet struggled to decide what to do about Russia. Robert Bruce Lockhart was the man tasked with making sense of the chaos
Michael Tillotson
A painting by Nikolai Lukich Babasyuk of Lenin during the 1917 revolution
When Robert Bruce Lockhart, the former vice-consul in Moscow and future author of the bestselling Memoirs of a British Agent, returned to Petrograd on his way to Moscow in February 1918 he found the streets piled with blackening snow and mobs singing The Internationale. The tune was instantly identifiable but, although he was a fluent Russian speaker, the words were not.
At least not until he realised that each group had its own version. There was a soldiers’ Internationale, a workers’ variety and peasant interpretations. All was chaos and he welcomed the rumour, shortly to be confirmed, that the Bolshevik leadership was about to move to the old capital.
A German bombing raid on Petrograd on March 2 hastened the move and dispatch to London of the veteran social democrat Lev Kamenev to request British aid. In what must have appeared as a speedy demonstration of international solidarity, a company of Royal Marines was landed at the Barents Sea port of Murmansk a few days later. As we shall see, this was in response to an entirely different threat, but it looked good at the time.
Bruce Lockhart had been sent home from Moscow towards the end of 1917 to recover from mental and physical exhaustion brought about by struggling to grapple with and report sequential events in Petrograd. His period of “quiet reflection” was subjected to frequent interruption for interviews with cabinet members and businessmen with interests in Russia.
“Ah, the Mr Lockhart,” prime minister Lloyd George had exclaimed on meeting him; and it was not long before Lord (George) Curzon — that “very special person” and foreign secretary — was briefing him about his mission as an unofficial agent to the Bolsheviks in the Russian capital, after the withdrawal of the experienced ambassador, Sir George Buchanan, and his military attaché.
The British cabinet was in a quandary as to what to do about Russia after the indecisive — as they perceived it — Bolshevik seizure of power in October 1917. There were members primarily concerned about maintaining the Eastern Front against Germany, who were led by Winston Churchill (returned from the Western Front and now minister for munitions); and there was the more pragmatic Lloyd George, who feared for Allied prospects in the war if — through its continuation in the east — Russian oil and wheat lands fell into German hands, not to mention the stocks of warlike stores dumped by British ships in her northern ports and Vladivostok.
Sir Robert Bruce Lockhart at his home in Edinburgh in 1955GETTY IMAGESBruce Lockhart’s task was to try to make sense of all this and advise the cabinet whether it should support the Bolsheviks in the hope of restoring the Eastern Front and keeping the Germans out of Russia, or abandon them as a potential ally and economise on stores and shipping in futile attempts to support them.
Marshal Gustav MannerheimAt the time of the Bolshevik coup in October 1917, Major-General Frederick Poole of the British Supply Mission had wired the Foreign Office: “Disabuse your minds and that of all others in London as to the idea of a ‘war party’ in Petrograd. A few stalwarts talk big about wanting to go on with the war, but it is all talk with no chance off action. The people are tired and will never fight again.”
During the pause in peace negotiations in Brest-Litovsk he changed his mind and advised the director of military operations at the War Office: “If the (Western) Allies once recognised the Bolsheviks, they would turn anti-German and (re)-join us.”
Lloyd George was not impressed, noting that in the 12-day pause in peace negotiations the Germans had advanced 150 miles into Russia and needed only to turn south to threaten the oil fields on the Caspian Sea.
Lenin, left, and the social democrat Lev KamenevALAMYOn his way from England to Petrograd in February, Bruce Lockhart had crossed from Sweden to Haparanda on the northern shore of the Gulf of Bothnia to find Finland in a fast-spreading civil war. On Lenin’s declaration of the various freedoms the Bolsheviks would grant, the prime minister and half the cabinet of Finland, at that time a tsarist grand duchy, took the train to Finland Station in Petrograd and politely asked for theirs. Perhaps flushed with success and real power at last Lenin agreed, but the announcement of national independence led the “Red Finns”, influenced by the blandishments offered by the Bolsheviks over the border, to rise in revolt.
The government “White Finns” opposed them, but were in danger of being overwhelmed until the future Marshal Gustav Mannerheim was appointed to command the government forces. A former corps commander in the Russian army, Mannerheim had concentrated and organised the White forces in the west of the country, but the north and southeast initially remained largely in the hands of the Reds. This caused alarm in the mind of General Poole of the British Supply Mission in Archangel and it was his plea to London that brought the Royal Marines to Murmansk.
British reinforcements guard locomotives damaged by Bolsheviks during the Allied intervention on the Archangel and Murmansk fronts during 1918-19GETTY IMAGESArchangel could receive Allied supplies only during the summer months because the White Sea, on which the port stands, froze in winter. This threw reliance on the less developed port of Murmansk on the Barents Sea that remained ice-free and connected to Petrograd by a recently completed railway. Inconveniently, in view of events in Finland, the railway ran parallel with the Russo-Finnish frontier lying a hundred miles or so to the west and it was not long before news reached Bruce Lockhart that Mannerheim, who spoke five languages including German, had asked Berlin to provide him with troops to help him clear the Reds out of southern Finland. He expressly intended no threat to Petrograd that lay only 15 miles beyond the Finnish frontier, but who was to say what the German general staff might have in mind? There was little to deter their troops from crossing the frontier and cutting the railway.
Moreover, the White Finns were closing in on the fishing port of Pechenga, a mere 60 miles west of Murmansk. General Poole had cause for concern for his line of supply from England and onwards to Petrograd. He urged London to disembark a fighting force at Murmansk and to reinforce him at Archangel. The landing of 130 Royal Marines at Murmansk by the Royal Navy on March 6, 1918, was London’s first demonstration in response.
As the war on the Eastern Front came to an end with the signing of the Brest-Litovsk treaty, focus switched to the Western Front, with the American Expeditionary Force making an impression as the Allies’ morale ebbed
Allan Mallinson
An artist’s impression of the sinking of the TuscaniaALAMY
The Pope had made his appeal for peace in August 1917, declaring his neutrality to be “appropriate to him who is the common father and who loves all his children with equal affection”. It brought him little filial warmth by reply.
In February 1918 it would be the turn of the Kaiser to speak of sacred matters. “War is a disciplinary action by God to educate mankind,” he told the citizens of Bad Homburg gathered in the courtyard of the castle, his summer residence for 30 years and now the place of his February kur (spa treatment) at the spa town.
He had good news for them: the new People’s Republic of Ukraine, detached from the Russian empire in the wake of the Bolshevik takeover, had signed a peace treaty the day before. It signalled ultimate victory, he said, and in the meantime would bring them more bread, because Ukraine always had a surplus of grain. (In many parts of Germany the flour was being supplemented with potato peelings and sawdust.) It was, indeed, the Brotfrieden, the bread peace. However, he warned them that Ukraine was “shaken by a civil war . . . [and] could be overrun by the Bolsheviks and large parts of the grain could be carried away by the Red Army”.
“Their knees are on our chest and our position is hopeless.” That is the argument by which the Bolshevist chief Lenin urged the Soviet to submit to the terms dictated by Germany. Harsher terms have seldom been imposed upon a conquered foe by the unbridled will of triumphant “militarism”. But the argument was unanswerable, and the body which has filled the world for months with its protestations of undying devotion to the extremest development of ultra-democracy and with its pledges to fight to the last in the sacred cause has meekly yielded to the Kaiser’s orders.
Lenin’s pretence that the peace is accepted only “as a respite” until the Bolshevists can make ready their “decisive resistance to the bourgeoisie and to Imperialism” can hardly have deceived the silliest of his comrades. Their defeat at the conference table has been not less shameful than their defeat in the field. In a few short months this self-constituted Government of talkers and doctrinaires have brought Russia to her present plight. She lies, crushed and humiliated, at the feet of foes who trembled before the impending advance of her armies but a year ago. They are driving her soldiers before them like sheep, they advance where they please into what were her territories, and they insolently tell her that, if she desires to escape further chastisement she must sign without demur the conditions laid before her.
The Bolshevists have posed before the world as the high priests of a pure and fiery brand of super-Socialism. Not many weeks ago M Trotsky was adjuring the “working democracies of the Central Powers” to “put in a weighty word” on their behalf. Only a few days back he and Lenin were talking about the time when the German proletariat “shall rise and conquer”. Even now Lenin proclaims that “the proletariat of the whole world will come to our aid.”
The men who deliberately flung away the well-tempered Russian sword and bade their fellow-citizens rely exclusively upon oratory and idealism against the “militarism and imperialism” of the enemy have been forced to promise silence. They have riveted German fetters on the land they undertook to guide in the paths of freedom. They have plunged it into civil war. They have reduced it to anarchy and to ruin.
The news today indicates that the Germans continue to advance along the line to Reval, Pskoff, and Minsk, while the Austrians and Ukrainians are verging on Kieff. The Russian soldiers are offering little or no resistance. According to one of tonight’s papers, no less than 27 trains have been seized by them, and are conveying some 40,000 demobilized men back to Moscow. The Germans are not taking any prisoners; they only disarm the Russians and set them free. German proclamations are being distributed by aeroplanes calling upon the inhabitants to remain calm and to preserve order as the Germans are coming to suppress anarchy and will even introduce food supplies as soon as possible.
Great perturbation and pessimism reign in Bolshevist circles. Meetings of the Council of Commissioners and Bolshevist partisans, together with members of the Left wing of the Revolutionary Socialist Party, are taking place at Smolny and in the Tauris Palace day and night. M Trotsky is reported to be ill and unable to attend, owing to the effect upon his health of the German renewal of hostilities.
The People’s Commissioners have decided to order a general mobilization of the whole male population. The appeal orders the formation of a Red National Army, with iron discipline and free from hooligans and marauders, for the purpose of defending the Revolution with the last drop of Russian blood.
The conviction that Petrograd is the ultimate objective of the German advance has produced considerable commotion and no little anxiety among the remaining members of the British colony here. The British Consulate is crowded with agitated inquirers desirous of getting away as soon as possible. A certain number will, of course, be obliged to stay in any case owing to family or business ties, old age, or illness. It is hoped that the Germans will not repeat the atrocities practised at the beginning of the war. A British military order has been issued for all British subjects of military age in Petrograd who hitherto have enjoyed exemption on various grounds to hold themselves ready to start home at six hours’ notice. Other British subjects who are able to go, especially women and children, are advised to leave without delay.
Of the cases of so-called “soldier’s heart” - which is not true heart disease but is often treated as such - about 60 per cent returned to duty as the result of a system of physical training
April 2, 1917
Some remarkable views are expressed in the “Report Upon Soldiers returned as Cases of Disordered Action of the Heart or Valvular Disease of the Heart” just issued by the Medical Research Committee. The report is the result of the work carried out at the Hampstead Military Hospital at the instance of Sir Alfred Keogh, who appointed Sir Clifford Allbutt, Sir James Mackenzie, and Sir William Osler consultants to the hospital. Dr Thomas Lewis, the head of the clinical staff of the Medical Research Committee, was placed in control of the research work. A number of officers specially selected by the War Office, and including two officers of the Canadian Army Medical Service, composed the staff, and a vast amount of highly specialized scientific work was carried out.
The report makes a protest against medical examinations in these cases founded on the detection of so-called abnormalities while the patient “is at rest”. The test of a hearts capacity, certain forms of gross disease having been eliminated, is its power to do work. Of the cases of so-called “soldier’s heart” - which is not true heart disease at all but is often treated as such - about 60 per cent returned to duty as the result of a system of physical training. The usual stay in hospital,too, was cut down by about half. This was an immense saving of time and money and it proved that the test of capacity is the true test in these cases, for nearly half of the men who returned to duty had “systolic murmurs” which, by older standards, might have gained for them the diagnosis of “heart disease”. The fact was that the men with these supposed disability signs did just as well as the men without them. “Rest in bed”, says the report, “is harmful, and should be avoided at all stages of treatment except in instances of severe praecordial pain, severe headache, or severe giddiness”. The ordinary symptoms of “soldier’s heart” are breathlessness, pain, exhaustion, giddiness and fainting, with palpitation, lassitude, and irritability. Having established the test value of capacity to do work as against sounds heard with a stethoscope and the value of physical training as against rest in bed, the report goes the length of stating that “auscultation” (ie, the use of the stethoscope) “is the least valuable method employed in sorting soldiers suffering from cardiovascular derangements the sorting can almost always be effected without its aid.” This again is a very striking view, for the use of the stethoscope is universal and the respect paid to its findings often reverent. The report appeals to common sense against exaggerated fears “of overlooking early heart disease” by the dictum: “It may be taken as an axiom that no soldier who is free from symptoms on duty has an affection of the heart which incapacitates him, and this axiom may be adopted irrespective of any unusual sign found in the heart. Now actual heart disease in young soldiers, in the absence of a history of rheumatic fever or of syphilis, is a comparative rarity.”
It is recommended that attention should not be called to “heart trouble” in these cases at all, as thereby undue fears are aroused. A further recommendation which is of value at present is that men from sedentary occupations should be very carefully scrutinized and trained “by tenderer methods in the initial stages than those in vogue for conscripts as a whole.” The choice of the Hampstead Hospital for this work was a very happy one. The fine air and good surroundings have certainly played an important part in helping soldiers towards recovery and so in promoting the success of treatment. The hospital has from the beginning been under the able command of Colonel T More Reid, who recently conducted the King and Queen over it.
For the last week Russia has been cut off from Western Europe by revolution and civil war in Finland. Outgoing passenger traffic has been suspended or greatly inconvenienced by damage to the railways. British and other travellers anxious to leave Russia are deterred by accounts of the spread of Russian revolutionary methods and hooliganism in Finland. Armed men enter trains to examine luggage and help themselves to anything that pleases them. An officer here in hospital tells me that he was wounded at Viborg while rescuing a lady from a party of armed ruffians who were robbing her of her money and her overcoat. The officer shot two of them with his revolver, but received a bayonet wound in the breast, and was dragged insensible by the lady into a yard. Efforts are being made to provide steamer accommodation from the southern Finnish coast, but it is only safe for neutrals.
There is great uncertainty as to the contending forces in Finland. According to one version, the White Guards are being driven northwards, and pushed back to the Bothnian Gulf by the Red Guards. Another version represents the Red Guards as being pressed on all sides by White Guards.
A large proportion of the working proletariat in the urban and industrial centres of Southern Finland is thoroughly leavened by germs of Russian Bolshevism. These are the Red Guards. The White Guards in the north and west represent bourgeois classes, and the latter are aided by the return of Finns through Riga, who have served and been trained in German Finnish battalions. It is said that there are German officers amongst the White Guards, and that they receive instructions from Germany.
An alarming rumour circulated here this evening that German troops have landed on the Finnish coast. Dvinsk was occupied by the Germans yesterday afternoon. This places them 330 miles from Petrograd on the main line railway. The burning question is: will they come here or not?
Detachments of partisans are to be formed for the purpose of harassing the invaders. The Russian troops in retreat have been ordered to destroy everything, so that more frightful devastation will be committed in this already ruined country.
War correspondents’ headquarters. The German offensive is now undoubtedly very near. Evidence accumulates daily, especially convincing being the statements of prisoners taken recently. The German army firmly believes the event to be immediately impending.
An immense amount of training for the attack has been going on. Of that we have been assured by our airmen. To escape observation, much of the training is being done in remoter areas. Troops must be brought up at the last moment and largely during the night before. So they are being trained to make long marches of perhaps 20 miles to the hypothetical scene of action.
So far as our front is concerned, especial attention is being given to sectors between Arras and St Quentin. The training is largely in the nature of open fighting, for the Germans seem to count on breaking our lines and getting the warfare into the open country behind, in which they are going to be aided by the use of gas, tanks and trench mortars. There will probably be no obliterating bombardment such as has preceded most of our great attacks, but in the days before the assaultcounter-battery shooting, both with gas and high-explosive shells, and long spells of destructive fire on trenches, communications, billets, and so forth. Immediately before the attack there will be only a short burst of fire, behind which men are to come over in one grand rush, while immense numbers of mobile guns and trench mortars will push up behind the supporting troops.
Having just returned to the front, I would like to mention that people, especially women, at home seem to be writing to their men out here absurdly exaggerated stories of the hardships of queueing, and of the inadequate supplies of butter and margarine. Of course, it is nice to make interesting letters, and women are not exempt from the human love of exaggeration. But it is very unkind to the men. I am sure that if the women were really suffering they would conceal it from their men. It is only because it is the first inconvenience from the war that people at home make too much of it. But it is neither kind nor wise, for telling men depressing things cannot make them better soldiers, and the men out here are entitled to all the cheery news they can get.
The Supreme Council of the Peace Conference, by its
resolution of the 25th of June, 1919, has authorized the Government
of the Polish Republic to occupy a great portion
of the Western Territory of the Ukrainian Democratic Republic;
that is to say, East Galicia up to the Zbruch River.
The purpose of this resolution was, after its own terms, "to
safeguard the lives and property of the peaceful population
of East Galicia against the dangers and threats of Bolshevist
bands." The Supreme Council of the Allied and Associated
Powers has decided to authorize the forces of the Polish
Republic to extend their operations up to the Zbruch
River.
The undersigned, plenipotentiary representatives of the
lawfully and duly elected Government of the Ukrainian
people, solemnly protest against this decision which abolishes
the principle of the self-determination of peoples, violates
in a most iniquitous manner the sovereignty of the Ukrainian
Democratic Republic over its own territory, and delivers
the Ukrainian people of East Galicia, liberated after
a long period of slavery, to the mercies' of an unbridled Polish
imperialism, to the horrors of a regime by Polish authorities,
and to the brutalities of the Polish soldiery. In alleging
the motives which actuated the decision of the 25th of
June, the Supreme Council is in evident contradiction with
the principles of self-determination of peoples, and the principles
of democracy embodied in the well-known Fourteen
Points of President Wilson and accepted by all the Allied
Powers as a basis for peace.
East Galicia, that is to say the country situated between
the San and Visloka Rivers on the west and the Zbruch on
the east, is ethnographically and historically a Ukrainian
territory, in which the Poles, as confirmed by Polish statisticians, scientists, and geographers (Prof. Buzek, Prof. Romer, Prof. Pilat), form, together with the Jews, an altogether
insignificant minority. This country was up to the
middle of the sixteenth century an independent Ukrainian
state, first a principality and then a kingdom, with successive capitals in Peremishl, Halich, and Lviv. Even after
its conquest by the Polish king, Casimir, it formed in the
Kingdom of Poland a separate unit under the name of the
The events of the Franco-Prussian War fell into three main phases. Beginning in July 1870, it opened with a short campaign lasting until September, in which the major battles took place, after which it was largely considered to be over. The war continued until January 1871 because both sides could not agree peace terms. Finally, with peace declared and the war officially over, there was an attempted revolution and civil war in Paris known as the Commune. This was suppressed by the French in May, just as the Treaty of Frankfurt formally ending the war came into force.
Further reading Essential Histories 51: The Franco-Prussian War 1870-1871 (extract below) places the hostilities and the warring nations in their historical context and describes the great battles, the sieges of Metz and Paris, and the establishment and obliteration of the Paris Commune. It also includes portraits of a soldier and a civilian caught up in the conflict and reviews its immediate and subsequent impact on politics and society. Men-at-Arms 233: French Army 1870-71 Franco-Prussian War (1) (extract below) and Men-at-Arms 237: French Army 1870-71 Franco-Prussian War (2) are studies of the uniforms, equipment and organisation of the losing side, and also document the inadequate reforms that were put in place to counter the Prussian threat. Volumes on the Prussian army will be published in 2004. Campaign 21: Gravelotte-St-Privat 1870 (extract below) is a detailed account of the bloody turning point in the invasion of France. With better generalship and organisation, their strong defensive positions and the superior firepower of their Chassepot rifles, the French could have won this battle. But when the Prussians finally abandoned frontal infantry attacks and fully exploited the superiority of their Krupp artillery, this ceased to be a possibility. German casualties of more than 20,000, twice the number sustained by the French, and the manner in which they were sustained were a foretaste of the butchery of the First World War, that far greater conflict easily traced back to the events of 1870-1871.
The Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71 was the largest and most important war fought in Europe between the age of Napoleon and the First World War. Since it ended in the establishment of a new German Empire, contemporaries often called it the ‘Franco-German War’, although neither name fits it perfectly. In 1870–71, ‘Prussian’ forces included those from an alliance of other German states, but Prussia and its interests dominated, just as in the Second World War German armies often included forces from other Axis members. The creation and continued existence of this new united Germany set the agenda for European international politics and war for the next century. The war also marked the end of the French Second Empire under Napoleon III, and with it the end of France’s dominant position in Europe. This was something that was never recovered, although in the longer term the war also established France as the most important and enduring republic on the continent. In a wider sense, both sides were conscious of a rivalry for dominance in western Europe between the French and German peoples that went back for centuries, chiefly for control of the lands that lie on either side of the Rhine and its tributaries from the North Sea to the Alps.
Despite its apparently ancient origins, the Franco-Prussian War also marked the beginning of the creation of modern Europe in every sense. It featured a mixture of aristocratic and conservative behaviour based on old ideas of personal rule and the Concert of Europe, together with the new realities of power politics and national bureaucracies. It was the first experience of what the Prussians called Millionenkrieg, ‘the war of the millions’, but both sides argued the formalities of international law, and treated the frontiers of neutral countries as if the laws that protected them were unbreakable barriers. Both King Wilhelm I of Prussia and Emperor Napoleon III of France made critical distinctions between their behaviour in the private sphere and as public heads of state. In its conduct also, the war mixed the weapons, tactics and methods of an earlier era with new military science and new political attitudes. Personalities decided this war, but so did armaments factories, public opinion, military staffwork and mass revolution.
The events of the Franco-Prussian War fell into three main phases. Beginning in July 1870, it opened with a short campaign lasting until September, in which the major battles took place, after which it was largely considered to be over. The war continued until January 1871 because both sides could not agree peace terms. Finally, with peace declared and the war officially over, there was an attempted revolution and civil war in Paris known as the Commune. This was suppressed by the French in May, just as the Treaty of Frankfurt formally ending the war came into force.
