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.
