History
Posts in The Copybook tagged ‘History’
When he left Calcutta in February 1799 for a tour of Europe, Abu Taleb Khan scarcely expected to spend so much of his time in England trying to keep out of the courts.
On January 21st, 1800, Mirza Abu Taleb Khan arrived in London, full of eager anticipation. What he never foresaw was the trouble he would get from litigious shopkeepers and tradesmen, who repeatedly defrauded him with the help of a corrupt judicial system. If the Indian ever felt he was being targeted he was quickly disabused: the natives of Jane Austen’s London were being skinned daily too.
Edmund Burke explained to the Duke of Bedford that in politics there is very great difference between change and reform.
In 1789, the leaders of the French Revolution promised liberty, equality and fraternity to the downtrodden people of France, and Francis Russell (1765-1802), 5th Duke of Bedford, admired them for it. But Edmund Burke warned him that to France’s new elite, righting the wrongs of the poor was infinitely less exciting than the chance to conduct a relentless socio-economic experiment on the peoples of Europe.
In 1585, English merchant Ralph Fitch found himself at the heart of Mughal India, as a guest at the court of Emperor Akbar the Great.
In 1600, Ralph Fitch was among the advisers engaged in the founding of the East India Company, thanks to his account of a daring tour of Syria, Iran and India from 1583 to 1591 that had gripped Queen Elizabeth I and all London. In July 1585, Fitch had arrived in the Indian city of Agra, which with nearby Fatehpur-Sikri lay at the heart of the realm of Akbar the Great (r. 1556-1605), third Mughal Emperor.
Sir Richard Steele reflects on the ingredients in his recipe for the perfect English gentleman.
Sir Richard Steele came home one day after tea with some very pleasant ladies, feeling he had rather let himself down. Respecting his maxim ‘Never contradict or reason with a sprightly female’ he had allowed himself to agree to a definition of a Gentleman that would hardly do outside a ballroom. Now he felt compelled to redeem himself in the pages of The Guardian.
Snorro Sturluson records some of the miracles attributed to Olaf II, King of Norway, after Englishman Bishop Grimkell declared him a saint.
King Olaf II Haraldsson (?995-1030) ruled Norway from 1015 to 1028. A year after Olaf died in the Battle of Stiklestad on July 29th, 1030, Grimkell, English-born Bishop of Nidaros (Trondheim), glorified him as a saint. Here, Snorro Sturluson records some of the miracles that were reported at Nidaros Cathedral in Trondheim, St Olaf’s shrine, where building began in 1070.
Frederick Ponsonby’s involvement in the Battle of Waterloo began early, and it seemed to him that it went on for ever.
Early in the Battle of Waterloo on June 18th, 1815, the Union Brigade inflicted heavy losses on the French guns and then withdrew, shielded by Colonel William Ponsonby’s 12th Light Dragoons. But then 300 Polish lancers, French allies, rode up. There was a crush. The French fired indiscriminately. In minutes, Ponsonby had lost the use of his arms, his sword and his reins. Then with the flash of a sabre he was down.