Modern History
Posts in The Copybook tagged ‘Modern History’
As Napoleon Bonaparte swept from victory to victory in Europe, he began to think he might add the East to the possessions of the French Republic.
In 1793, the new French Republic began exporting her political ideals across Europe through the French Revolutionary Wars. By 1798, policy was dominated by Napoleon Bonaparte, a brilliant general who made breathtaking gains across southern Europe; but as Jawaharlal Nehru explains, when Napoleon’s eyes strayed towards India he awoke an altogether more formidable enemy.
King Charles I ended two years of uneasy peace with his Parliament by bursting into the Commons with a heavily-armed tactical unit.
For eleven years, King Charles I did not consult his Parliament at all, turning a deaf ear to their ever louder complaints about the country’s finances and about religious and civil liberties. In 1640 he relented, acceding to most of their demands; then on January 4th, 1642, Charles burst into the Commons to arrest in person five MPs on a charge of treason. It was to prove the opening shot of the Civil War.
As Governor of Bengal, Robert Clive hoped to use his powers and his formidable reputation to make the East India Company mend its ways.
As Governor of Bengal in 1757-60 and 1765-66, Robert Clive strove to reform the East India Company’s wasteful, mercenary and supercilious bureaucracy. The Company responded in 1773 with a Parliamentary smear campaign so masterly that to this day, many regard Clive as a microcosm of all that was wrong with British colonialism, but it is hard to see that Clive in Sir John Malcolm’s account of him.
After two punishing years rising to the top of the East India Company’s armed forces in India, Robert Clive could not spare the time to go courting.
By the end of March 1752, Robert Clive was lonely and exhausted. He had almost single-handedly relieved the fortress at Arcot from a French siege, and then captured two French forts at the head of a band of five hundred raw recruits no other officer would agree to command. As he listened to his friend Edmund Maskelyne reading snatches of his letters from home, a resolution formed in his breast.
Highwayman Claude Du Vall robbed a carriage on Hampstead Heath in the most courteous manner imaginable.
Claude Du Vall (1643-1670) was brought over to England by Royalist exiles shortly after the restoration of Charles II in 1660, as a stable-hand. He rose to footman under Charles Stewart, 3rd Duke of Richmond, but fell into debt through drinking, and embarked on a new career as a highwayman. Yet Du Vall was ever a gentleman, and in all the carriages he robbed, he apparently never shot anyone...
During the Battle of Copenhagen in 1801, Horatio Nelson decided it was time to turn a blind eye.
Horatio Nelson lost his right eye in battle off Corsica in 1793, and his right arm at Tenerife in 1797. Undeterred, and now a Rear Admiral, he was in the line of fire again at Copenhagen on April 2nd, 1801: a vital action, as Denmark was hampering England’s efforts to fend off invasion from Napoleon’s France. By lunchtime his Commander-in-chief Sir Hyde Parker, some way behind, was getting anxious.