100 Years Ago

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/register/the-moonlight-air-raid-km9h7nfds

september 6, 1917

The moonlight air raid

It cannot be said that Londoners were unprepared for Tuesday night’s air raid. The sorties towards the coast on previous nights showed that the Germans had realized the possibility of raids during the full moon. During the evening there was talk in trains and tubes of a raid, and people on the way home from the theatres discussed the subject. Indeed, when the theatregoers were on their way home the first sounds of firing came from the outskirts of London. Watched from a high point in Hampstead, which overlooks the whole city as far as the Tower Bridge and the Crystal Palace, the raid was spectacular and particularly noisy.
The first intimation was given by the sound of distant gunfire. At about 11.30pm the droning of enemy aeroplane engines could be heard. Many people thought that Zeppelins were approaching, for the raiders were big machines, probably Gothas. The Gotha’s twin engines, with cylinders firing twice as many to the minute as a single-engine machine, make a droning sound quite unlike the machine-gun effect of a single rotary or vertical motor.
When the first plane showed up anti-aircraft guns came into action. That the targets were very high was evident, for it was possible to count five or six seconds between the report of the gun and the time when the flash of the bursting shells could be seen. British aeroplanes went up in large numbers, but with little success, for one of the chief guides as to the locality of the bombing machines is denied a defending pilot, in that he cannot hear the enemy engine over the noise of his own.
At the first sound of gunfire many people rushed for shelter. Those nearer the tubes went to the stations in all stages of undress and were conveyed in the lifts to the underground platforms. Others, infinitely more foolish, stood in clusters in the open streets and watched the bombardment. Guests in evening dress just returned from the theatres, others in scanty attire with dressing gowns and overcoats over their night clothes, streamed downstairs, where they waited until the last raider had disappeared.
Many theatre-goers on their way home, noticing the pathetic crowds of women and children on the stations underground, wisely waited below. Stations on the Hampstead line were very congested.


https://www.thetimes.co.uk/past-six-days/2017-09-05/register/the-fall-of-riga-7cfhdprzb

september 5, 1917

The fall of Riga

The incontinent abandonment by the Russian Army of the great city and port of Riga and of the Dvina front is of grave significance to the Allied cause. General Korniloff’s prediction at Moscow has been fulfilled in a week. He said that “if our Army does not help us to hold the Gulf of Riga the road to Petrograd will be opened wide.”
As on previous occasions, portions of the Army failed when the enemy struck. Some of the regiments bolted without orders, the rest had to fall back to avoid destruction or capture. The further intentions of the enemy can only be surmised. They may have entered Riga merely in order to winter there, instead of shivering on the other side of the marshes as in the last two winters. They will hardly be checked by troops whose constancy has been undermined by “committees”, who will neither fight nor obey, and who attend “political classes” for three hours daily.
In the West there has been far too much expectation of a miraculous restoration of Russia’s fighting capacity. We have been told that Russia has a resilience under adversity which we Western nations do not possess. No experienced soldier has lately shared these rosy hopes, for armies which have sunk to the depths of degradation reached by the Russian troops take a long time and iron discipline to recover their manhood.
The true cause of Russia’s military failure is the baneful activity of the Workmen’s and Soldiers’ Councils, composed of soldiers who are unwilling to fight and of “workmen” who have never worked in their lives. There can be little hope of the regeneration of Russia while the Soviet usurps the authority of the Provisional Government and while “committees and commissaries” flourish in what from courtesy must still be called “the fighting line”.
The blackest feature of the situation is that over the whole of Russia broods the shadow of imminent famine, due less to lack of food than to the breakdown of transport and to the absence of an organized system of distribution. The Allies must frankly face the effect of the Russian collapse upon the general military situation. There is still time for Russia to atone for the folly and the slackness of the last six months, but meanwhile the military consequences are immediate.

This week in history - The Last Battle of the Crusades (8-14 September)

https://ospreypublishing.com/thisweekhistory/


The army of Suliman the Magnificent under the command of Mustapha Pasha had landed on the island on 19 May and begun siege operations four days later. The epic and finally successful defence was led by the Grand Master of the Hospitallers, Jean Parisot de la Valette. It showed the Christian world that the might of the Ottoman empire could be resisted and bought its defenders some much-needed breathing space. Six years later, the great naval victory at Lepanto off the west coast of Greece halted the expansion of Turkish power over the western and central Mediterranean, and marked the beginning of its decline.

Further reading

Campaign 50: Malta 1565 Last Battle of the Crusades (extract below) is a compelling account of this ferocious siege. Warrior 41: Knight Hospitaller (2) 1306-1565 (extract below) is the second of two volumes on daily life in the Order, at war and in peacetime. Elite 58: The Janissaries and Men-at-Arms 140: Armies of the Ottoman Turks 1300-1774 are portraits of the Christian defenders' formidable historic adversaries. Campaign 114: Lepanto 1571 The greatest naval battle of the Renaissance completes this bloody final chapter in the long conflict between east and west, Muslim and Christian, that began in the 11th century. New Vanguard 62: Renaissance War Galley 1470-1590 examines the development of this remarkable war machine from its classically inspired resurrection in the 15th century until its demise in the early 17th century.

This Week in History - Hitler's assault on Poland (1 September)

https://ospreypublishing.com/thisweekhistory/


Border clashes, sabotage carried out by German guerrilla units, and high-altitude reconnaissance flights by the Luftwaffe had put a strain on German-Polish relations. Despite the German threat, only 65% of the Polish army was mobilized; France and England pressured Poland not to commit to what they feared would be seen as an act of provocation. German Panzers reached Warsaw in a week. Russia invaded on 17 September, intervening 'to protect its fraternal Byelorussian and Ukrainian population' and acting under secret terms of a recently signed non-aggression pact with Germany. The last Polish resistance was crushed early in October and the country was partitioned.

For the German Army this campaign was a necessary trial of new technology, organization and training, and above all of a new tactical doctrine of mechanized, combined arms warfare. The significance of this in the campaign's rapid success was generally underrated at the time, as was the effectiveness of the Polish Army's gallant but hopeless resistance. However, the German achievement was fully appreciated by a few more perceptive observers, amongst whom the term 'Blitzkrieg' was coined. This became established currency a few months later as the doctrine, improved by lessons learned in Poland, was applied so devastatingly in the invasions of the Netherlands, Belgium and France.

Almost exactly five years later, on 2 September, a future president of the United States (and the future father of a president) was the pilot of one of four TBM Avengers in a raid on Japanese installations on Chi Chi Jima. Lieutenant (Junior Grade) George Bush's plane was hit by antiaircraft fire but he completed his attack and was on target with a number of bombs. His engine burning, he flew several miles from the island, then bailed out with one other crew member. For this action, Bush was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross. For more information about George Bush and his fellow pilots, Warrior 52: US Naval Aviator 1941-45 examines service life and wartime experiences in all three types of carrier squadron vividly portraying what it was like to fly and fight for the US Navy.

Further reading

This Week in History - Second Manassas (25-31 August)

https://ospreypublishing.com/thisweekhistory/

Since 'Jeb' Stuart's raid behind the Union lines on 22-3 August there had been skirmishes and manoeuvring along the Rappahannock and, in the early hours of 25 August, Robert E Lee had launched 'Stonewall' Jackson on a bold, 56-mile flanking march. By midnight on August 26 Stuart had captured Manassas Junction and by morning most of the rest of Jackson's force were feasting on the massive Union supply depot there and destroying what they couldn't carry away. Jackson then withdrew to what he himself described as a 'commanding position' by the village of Groveton, waiting for Lee and James Longstreet to link up with him, having followed the route he had taken. He was also ready for the full Union response to his presence in what had been their rear. The expected clash took place on August 28, a fierce prelude to the main battle, in which the Stonewall Brigade reinforced their reputation and the Iron Brigade first established theirs.

On August 29 Jackson's corps was positioned in a strong defensive line along the workings of an unfinished railroad. Fierce attacks were met with equally fierce defence and the Confederates were pushed back but not broken. In one of the several spectacular misjudgements that lost him this campaign and his command, the Union General John Pope wrote a despatch early the next morning claiming victory in a 'terrific battle … which lasted with continuous fury from daylight until dark, by which time the enemy was driven from the field, which we now occupy.' In fact, with Lee and Longstreet now on the scene and placing a fresh corps most threateningly on his left flank, it was Pope who was to be driven from the field on 30 August.

The first day's fighting had been inconclusive although Pope thought he had the Confederates beaten. However, Lee had brilliantly executed his strategy of forcing a confrontation at a place of his choosing with the Army of Virginia, before it could be reinforced and lengthen the odds against him to two-to-one. He had also fulfilled his purpose of drawing the war away from the Confederate capital and positioning himself to take it into Union territory.

On the morning of the second day Lee had set a trap and the confident Pope blundered straight into it. Lee's line was now in the shape of a V, Jackson's corps along the unfinished railroad as before and Longstreet's corps angled off to its right. The final stage of the battle is described in the extract below.
Further Reading

Charles Saatchi's Great Masterpieces: How illness and insanity inspired The Scream

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/art/artists/charles-saatchis-great-masterpieces-illness-insanity-inspired/


Edvard Munch lived a somewhat joyless life. Death and sickness shrouded much of his childhood; in 1868, when he was five, his mother died from tuberculosis, leaving Edvard, his three sisters and younger brother in the care of his religiously doctrinaire and overbearing father.
Munch’s deepest ties were to his older sister Sophie, who also suffered from tuberculosis and died nine years later, when she was just 15. He would never recover from this loss. Another of Edvard’s sisters was institutionalised for mental illness and spent the greater part of her life in confinement. His only brother died while young of pneumonia.
Munch’s father was a Norwegian physician who was consumed by thoughts of the hereafter. Death was therefore always imminent and whispering its way into Munch’s subconscious. In a journal he wrote: “I inherited two of mankind’s most frightful enemies – the heritage of tuberculosis and insanity – illness and madness and death were the black angels that stood at my cradle.”
Understandably perhaps, Munch had little interest in his father’s belief in a protective, omnipresent god. He turned to life within the Bohemian circles of Oslo, and descended into bouts of alcoholism, always deeply ridden with guilt. Munch was 21 when he had his first sexual experience with Millie Thaulow, the wife of a distant cousin. They would meet in secrecy in the woods near a fishing village in Åsgårdstrand. Munch was consumed by his desire for her, and profoundly depressed when she abandoned him and ended their relationship after two years.
His father’s sudden death from a stroke in 1889 spurred one of the greatest stages of Munch’s artistic development. Living between Paris and Germany, he embarked on a series of paintings he called The Frieze of Life. Suggestive of his state of mind, the paintings bore such melodramatic titles as Melancholy, Jealousy, Despair, Anxiety, Death in the Sickroom and The Scream. Shown in Berlin in 1902, the exhibition was a critical and commercial success.

The Scream, 1893 (oil, tempera & pastel on cardboard) 

Charles Saatchi's Great Masterpieces: A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte – how art was transformed by Seurat’s science

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/art/what-to-see/charles-saatchis-great-masterpieces-sunday-afternoon-island/

A grand day out: Seurat’s A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte




Sunday in the Park with George was a Stephen Sondheim musical inspired by an iconic George Seurat painting. The production opened on Broadway in 1984, exactly 100 years after the artist started work on A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte; the show went on to win a Pulitzer Prize and many other notable awards.
The Seurat picture has also featured on the cover of Playboy, in the film comedy Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, TV shows Modern Family, The Simpsons, and Family Guy, Looney Tunes cartoons, and has even been recreated in topiary.
When Seurat began this now ubiquitous work, his single ambition was that it might be accepted for exhibition at the Salon des Indépendants. He had no notion of the immense popular appeal that his painting would one day achieve.
The mile-long La Grande Jatte, an island in Paris, on the Seine between Neuilly and Levallois-Perret, was once a rural retreat for the bourgeoisie, a bucolic area that was also renowned as a venue for prostitutes. Seurat spent numerous hours at the park simply observing potential subjects, and completed many preparatory studies – 30 oil sketches, 28 drawings and three large canvases.

Charles Saatchi's Great Masterpieces: Olympia by Édouard Manet - The Parisian Venus who shocked polite society

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/art/what-to-see/charles-saatchis-great-masterpieces-olympia-edouard-manet/

Negative response: Manet’s Olympia employed a new technique that used quick, broad brushstrokes




In the Salon de Paris in 1865, there was one room that was far more crowded than usual. On Sundays, it was so overwhelmingly packed that visitors struggled to get close to the one painting that they all wanted to see. People were shocked that Édouard Manet’s Olympia was even allowed to be displayed. It was fiercely condemned, not only by the public but also by most art critics and the press.
Olympia differed from classical representations of Eve or Venus. Instead of an angel, she was unmistakably a naked contemporary woman. Manet painted her neither bathing, dreaming nor dressing, but simply doing nothing. This suggested that she was there waiting purely for sex, as a prostitute. A critic wrote: “We prefer to think he has made a mistake. And what is his aim? His canvases are too unfinished for us possibly to tell.” Eventually, the painting was physically attacked and guards had to be posted next to it for protection. Pregnant women were advised against viewing the picture as it was likely to be distressing.