This Day in History

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1489 Ottoman Sultan Bajazet II agreed to pay Pope Innocent VIII 40,000 ducats a year to keep his brother Djem as a "guest"

1696         Louis François Armand de Vignerot du Plessis, later le duc de Richelieu and Marshal of France, d. 1788 -- Richelieu was a childhood friend of King Louis XV (r. 1715-1774), who made him a marshal in 1748 for his services in the Wars of the Polish (1733–1738) and Austrian Succession (1740-1748).  Now, like all close friends, from time to time Richelieu and the King had their little fallings-out.
Once, apparently during the Seven Years' War, Richelieu was at a banquet, when he said something that irked King Louis, probably a crack about the royal mistress, the famous Madame de Pompadour, whom he greatly disliked.  The King gave Richelieu a slap, not a playful tap with a gentle hand, but a fair smack.  Normally, as a proper nobleman, such an act would have required a demand for immediate apologies or satisfaction.  But Richelieu could hardly demand that the king apologize or challenge his sovereign to a duel, and striking the Royal Person was totally out of the question.  Yet neither would his honor bear respect among the other nobles if he bore the insult.
Thinking fast, the Marshal turned immediately to the man at his right and, saying, "The King wishes you to pass this on," gave him a slap in turn.  The assembled diners promptly broke out in laughter, and the smack was passed from nobleman to nobleman.

1763         Guillaume Marie Anne Brune, Marshal of France. Brunei was a staunch Republican, Napoleon probably made him a marshal as a sop to that faction.  "A la Brune" was French version of all screwed up.  He was notable for running out of provisions on a couple of occasions, in an army that lived off the land.  Personally, he had a slight tendency to loot, and believed he was something of a poet.  After Waterloo, he was attacked by a royalist mpb.  Shot, he died sneering at his enemy's marksmanship.

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1757         Vice-Adm. John Byng, 52, executed "to encourage the others"

1648  Spanish troops had a daily wine ration of 2-4 pints, which was actually less than that for day laborers back home, who usually got 6!

1844. Umberto I, King of Italy (1878-1900), on his father's brithday. Assassinated, 1900, after four or five earlier unsuccessful attempts

1918 During the last weeks of World War I the British Army was expending about 21,000 tons of artillery ammunition a day

1935. the Soviet Union bought several warships from Italy, paying in the form of aviation fuel, which the Italians then used to help the Spanish Nationalists fight the Spanish Republicans, who were being supported by the Soviet Union.

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509 BC   Installation of the first consuls: L. Iunius Brutus & L. Tarquinius Collatinus

1697 – A band of Abnaki Indians made a raid on Haverhill, Massachusetts. Twenty-seven women and children were killed in the raid. Less than a week from childbed, Hannah Duston was captured along with her infant daughter and a nurse, Mary Neff. Hannah’s husband managed to escape with their seven other children. The baby was brutally killed, and Hannah and Mary were taken northward by their captors. After a march of 100 miles, the party paused at an island (afterward known as Penacook, or Dustin, Island) in the confluence of the Merrimack and Contoocook rivers above the site of present-day Concord, New Hampshire. There the two women were held and told that after a short journey to a further village they would be stripped and scourged. On the island they met Samuel Lennardson (or Leonardson), an English boy who had been captured more than a year earlier. During the night of March 30, Hannah and the boy secured hatchets and attacked their captors; 10 were killed, 9 of them by Hannah. The three captives then stole a canoe and escaped, but Hannah turned back and scalped the 10 corpses so as to have proof of the exploit. They reached Haverhill safely and on April 21 presented their story to the General Court in Boston, which awarded the sum of 25 pounds to Hannah Duston and half that to each of her companions.

1781 – In the Battle of Guildford Courthouse, North Carolina, British General Cornwallis achieves a Phyrric victory over the American forces of General Greene and General Morgan. Cornwallis suffers such severe losses that he abandons the campaign to establish British control over the Carolinas. It is the largest, most hotly-contested action of the Revolutionary War’s climactic Southern Campaign. Major General Nathanael Greene and his army of 4,400 Americans contested the British invasion of North Carolina at Guilford Courthouse. Lt. Gen. Charles, Earl Cornwallis, commanded the tough professional force of 1,900 British soldiers. Greene deployed his men into smaller groups to take advantage of the terrain. The Courthouse battle was fierce. The veteran British troops were severely crippled. Cornwallis lost a quarter of his army and almost a third of his officers. Greene lost only six percent of his men. With greatly diminished ranks and depleted supplies, Cornwallis withdrew to the coast, 200 miles away.

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597   BC   Nebuchadnezzar's Babylonians capture Jerusalem, destroying the First Temple

1914         Gaston Calmette, 55, editor of 'Le Figaro,' shot by Mdm. Henriette Caillaux, wife of France's finance minister, over some indiscrete letters he had published, initiating a scandalous trial that would preoccupy public attention until the outbreak of war in late July

1941         The Pennsylvania Railroad's Cleveland-Pittsburgh express was derailed near Baden, Pa., with 5 deaths, over 100 injured; German inspired sabotage was suspected, but no arrests were ever made.

1995         Simon Frazier, Lord Lovat, commando (Loflotten, Hardelot, Dieppe, Relief of Pegasus Bridge at Normandy), at 83

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45 BC   P. Attius Varus & Titus Labienus, Pomepeian generals, kia at Munda, Gnaeus Pompeius, executed

180         Commodus becomes sole Roman Emperor (180-193), without having murdered Marcus Aurelius

1776         British forces evacuate Boston; George Washington orders an extra gill of whiskey to every Irish soldier in the army

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1692 – Following the accession of William III to the English throne, Pennsylvania is declared a royal colony and New York governor Benjamin Fletcher is declared governor of Pennsylvania, depriving William Penn of his proprietary powers. The Crown takes over Pennsylvania because the pacifist Quakers refused to involve themselves in the war against France and because William Penn had maintained friendly relations with the former English monarch, James II.

1915         the British & French lost 6 ships attempting to force the Dardanelles .  on
the eve of Turkey's entry into World War I, British Rear-Ad. Arthur Limpus was the head of a naval mission in Constantinople. Of course, when it became clear that Turkey was about to enter the war on Germany's side, the British naval mission was recalled home. Surprisingly, Limpus saw no further significant service in the war; promoted to vice admiral, he was sent with his staff to run Royal Navy Dockyard in Malta, a post which he held from September 1914 until October 1916.
Now this is odd, because early in 1915 Britain and France decides to undertake a naval expedition against Constantinople, with the intention of forcing the Dardanelles and Bosphorus to capture the city and open an all weather sea route to Russia. The man chosen to lead that effort was Vice-Adm Sackville Carden, who was given a formidable Anglo-French fleet, including 16 mostly older battleships. But Sackville Carden proved to lack the physical and moral strength to gain success.. After frittering away several weeks in fruitless "organizing," he essayed two attempts to bombard the defenses (February 19th and 25th), and then suffered a physical collapse. Rear Adm. John de Robeck inherited his command, a man whose most recent experience had been as commander of the Cape Verde Station, a small squadron of cruisers charged with helping to clear the seas of German ships.
On March 18th de Robeck boldly steamed into the Straits, and promptly had three old battleships sunk and two damaged by Turkish mines, not to mention one disabled by enemy coast artillery. This set the stage for the even more disastrous Gallipoli Campaign (April 26, 1915 � January 9, 1916), which would cost the Allies a quarter of a million men killed and wounded.
Now it's just possible that had Limpus been in command, the Anglo-French expedition might actually have been able to force the straits. After all, he probably knew more about the capabilities of the Turkish Navy and the defenses of the straits than any other Allied officer. So why hadn't he been given the job?
The answer is an odd one, though very, very British. At the highest levels it had been decided that to give Limpus the job of fighting the folks he had so recently been advising might not be considered quite gentlemanly not "cricket" as it were. And so Limpus was sent to Malta, "having been instructed not to supply any information which could be used against the Turks."

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19   BC   Triumph of Lucius Cornelius Balbus the Younger for the defeat of the Garamantes of North Africa, the last private citizen to be awarded a triumph until Belisarius in AD 534

1789 the German princely state of Mainz maintained an army of about 2,400 officers and men, which was commanded by one field marshal and a dozen generals, who were supervised by a seven member supreme war council, for a general-to-other rank ratio of 1:120, did not posses a single cannon ball appropriate for use with the available artillery

1848         Wyatt Earp, lawman, gambler, d. 1929

1892 – James Alward Van Fleet was born in Coytesville, New Jersey and raised in Florida. He graduated from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in 1915, and was commissioned as a second lieutenant of infantry. The following year he participated in the Mexican border campaign of 1916-1917. During World War I he commanded a machine-gun battalion in the 6th Division and saw action in the Gerardmer sector and in the Meuse-Argonne offensive. In the interwar period, Van Fleet endured the round of peacetime assignments: teaching military science at Kansas State Agricultural College, South Dakota State College and the University of Florida; he was a student and an instructor at the Infantry School; a unit instructor of the organized reserve at San Diego, California; commanded a battalion in the 42nd Infantry Regiment in Panama, served with the 5th Infantry Regiment at Fort Williams, Maine, commanded a battalion in the 29th Infantry Regiment; and, beginning in February 1941, with the rank of colonel, commanded the 8th Infantry Regiment. Unlike his contemporaries, America’s entry into World War II did not bring Van Fleet rapid promotion to general rank or high command. When Van Fleet had been at the Infantry School, George C. Marshall, then assistant commandant in charge of the academic department, had confused him with someone else who had a similar name and was a well-known alcoholic. Consequently, as Marshall’s importance in the Army grew in the 1930s, culminating in his appointment as chief of staff in 1939, Van Fleet’s career progression suffered. He was not selected either for the Command and General Staff College or the Army War College. The pattern continued after Pearl Harbor, so that in 1944, Van Fleet was still commanding the 8th Infantry with the rank of colonel. On D-Day he led the 8th Infantry, part of the 4th Division, ashore at Utah beach, Normandy, and several weeks later in the capture of Cherbourg, France. In these actions, Van Fleet displayed courage under fire and demonstrated that he was a driving leader who got things done. Thereafter, with the confusion about his identity finally “cleared up” to Marshall’s satisfaction, Van Fleet’s rise was spectacular. Promoted to the rank of brigadier general, Van Fleet was assistant commander of the 2nd Division during the St. Lo breakout and the capture of Brest, France, and commanded the 4th Division during the Siegfried Line Campaign and the 90th Division during the operation to capture Metz, France, and the Battle of the Bulge. In March 1945, Van Fleet, now holding the rank of major general, assumed command of the III Corps, leading it through the American First Army’s encirclement of the Ruhr pocket in Germany and the American Third Army’s drive into Austria. By the end of the war, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, supreme commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force, regarded Van Fleet as one of the “greatest fighting” soldiers in his command.

1942  William Slim takes command of the British Burma Corps.

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1597. Voivode Alexandru III "the Bad" of Wallachia (1592-1593), ousted, exiled, executed by strangulation by the Ottomans

1865 – A plan by John Wilkes Booth to abduct U.S. President Abraham Lincoln was ruined when Lincoln changed his plans and did not appear at the Soldier’s Home near Washington, DC.

1799 .Siege of Acre begins. Napoleon besieges Ottoman forces supported by British squadron under Sidney Smith, HMS Tigre (74)

1890. Kaiser Wilhelm II fires Chancellor Otto von Bismarck

1927   Joseph Goebbels leads the first Nazi pogrom, attacking Jewish shops in Berlin.

1917 – Gideon Sundback, Swedish-born engineer, patented an all-purpose zipper while working for the Automatic Hook and Eye Co. of Hoboken, New Jersey. The zipper name was coined by B.F. Goodrich in 1923, who used it to fasten rubber galoshes.

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630       Roman Emperor Heraclius returns the "True Cross", recaptured from the Persians, to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher

1782 – English Prime Minister, Lord North, resigns under pressure from the peace faction in Parliament. He is succeeded by Lord Rockingham on 22 March who will seek immediate and direct negotiation with American representatives.

1918 – General Erich Ludendorff has planned a knock-out blow on the Western Front. He recognizes that, with the imminent arrival of scores of thousands of US troops in France, Germany is likely to lose the war. Ludendorff plans to strike first. He transfers some 70 divisions of troops from the Eastern Front, where the turmoil following the Russian Revolution has effectively ended Russian involvement in the war. In the short term, therefore, Germany has a clear numerical advantage over the British and French. Ludendorff’s plan is to exploit the differences between Britain’s and France’s strategies for facing any major German offensive. He believes the French will give priority to the defense of Paris, while the British are more concerned with defending the ports along the north French coast through which their supplies and troops flow. Ludendorff aims to attack the juncture between the French and British forces in northeast France. To this end he ahs three armies, the Seventeenth under General Otto von Below, the Second led by General Georg von der Marwitz, and General Oskar von Huiter’s Eighteenth, prepare for the offensive. These are to advance along a 50-mile front from Arras to St. Quentin and La Fere. This zone is defended byt the British Third Army under General Sir Julian Byng and General Sir Hubert Gough’s Fifth Army. Ludendorff had 63 divisions, many led by elite storm trooper units, earmarked for the attack, while the British can muster just 26. the offensive is code-named Operation Michael but it is also known as the Kaiserschlacht (Kaiser’s Battle). Operation Michael begins with a sudden five-hour bombardment on the British by 6,000 artillery pieces. They fire both gas and high-explosive shells. Under cover of thick fog the Germans attack, with the specially trained storm trooper units leading the way. The surprise and shock of the onslaught overwhelms the thinly spread British. Gough’s Fifth Army collapses in confusion, exposing the right flank of Byng’s Third Army. However, Bying’s forces, which are holding a narrower front than those of Gough, withdraw across the Somme River in good order. The attackers here, drawn from the German Seventeenth and Second Armies, make significantly fewer gains. Operation Michael will end on April 5th with no decisive victory along these lines on the Somme

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1630 – The Massachusetts Bay Colony outlaws the possession of cards, dice, and gaming tables.

Preacher Cotton Mather later celebrated this act for driving idlers and gamblers to more sober activities, and giving up frivolous gaming which was "the devil's playground and recruitment."

1931. William Shatner, actor ("Captain Kirk"); see 2228

1945 Third Army crossed the Rhine
 One afternoon as his glorious Third Army was driving across the Rhineland under rainy skies, Gen. George S. Patton spotted a number of troops gathered around a tank parked a rod or so off the road. Driving up in his jeep, Patton jumped out, and asked what was up. He was told that the men were trying to repair the tank, which was suffering from some malfunction. At that, the general natty uniform and all promptly crawled beneath the vehicle to join the two surprised mechanics who were actually working on the problem. After nearly a half hour under the tank, Patton crawled out, his normally splendid uniform torn and covered with mud and grease. Climbing back into his jeep, Patton ordered his driver to press on.
As they drove off, the general's driver asked "What was wrong, General?"
To this, Patton replied, "I don't know, but I'm sure that the word will spread throughout the division that I was on my belly in the mud repairing a tank."

2228. James Tiberius Kirk, future captain of the starship 'Enterprise', in Riverside , Iowa

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0      Roman Festival of the Tubilustrium - Purification of the War Trumpets

1514   Born  Lorenzino de' Medici, author, later murderer of his kinsman Duke Alessandro "il Moro" de' Medici of Florence in 1537, murdered in turn by his kinsman Duke Cosimo I de' Medici of Florence in 1548

1862 – Confederate General Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson suffers a rare defeat when his attack on Union forces in the Shenandoah Valley fails. Jackson was trying to prevent Union General Nathaniel Banks from sending troops from the Shenandoah to General George McClellan’s army near Washington. McClellan was preparing to send his massive army by water to the James Peninsular southeast of Richmond for a summer campaign against the Confederate capital. When Turner Ashby, Jackson’s cavalry commander, detected that Yankee troops were moving out of the valley, Jackson decided to attack and keep the Union troops divided. Ashby attacked at Kernstown on March 22. He reported to Jackson that only four Union regiments were present–perhaps 3,000 men. In fact, Union commander James Shields actually had 9,000 men at Kernstown but kept most of them hidden during the skirmishing on March 22. The rest of Jackson’s force arrived the next day, giving the Confederates about 4,000 men. The 23rd was a Sunday, and the religious Jackson tried not to fight on the Sabbath. The Yankees could see his deployment, though, so Jackson chose to attack that afternoon. He struck the Union left flank, but the Federals moved troops into place to stop the Rebel advance. At a critical juncture, Richard Garnett withdrew his Confederate brigade due to a shortage of ammunition, and this exposed another brigade to a Union attack. The northern troops poured in, sending Jackson’s entire force in retreat. Jackson lost 80 killed, 375 wounded, and 263 missing or captured, while the Union lost 118 dead, 450 wounded,

1918         Paris is shelled by German very-long range artillery

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3019   of the Third Age the Ring was destroyed, Gollum died, and Sauron was overthrown

421         Venice, founded by fugitives from the Hunnish sack of Aquileaia

1300  Sometime cavalryman and poet Dante Alighieri took a walk

1863 – Before daybreak, rams Switzerland and Lancaster got underway to run past Vicksburg to join Rear Admiral Farragut below with U.S.S. Hartford and Albatross. Colonel C. R. Ellet reported: ‘The wind was extremely unfavorable, and notwithstanding the caution with which the boats put Out into the middle of the stream, the puff of their escape pipes could be heard with fatal distinctness below. The flashing of the enemy’s signal lights from battery to battery as we neared the city showed me that concealment was useless.” Under full steam, the rams rounded the bend into a concentrated fire from the Confederate works. On board Switzerland, Colonel Ellet noted: ”Shot after shot struck my boat, tearing everything to pieces before them.” La,’-caster, under Lieutenant Colonel John A. Ellet, followed, steaming steadily down river, “but,” the senior Ellet reported, “I could see the splinters fly from her at every discharge.” Directly in front of the main Vicksburg batteries, a shell plunged into Switzerland’s boiler, stopping the engines. The pilots, who “stood their posts like men,” kept the ram in the river and she floated down, still under a hail of shot, to safety. The Lancaster, meanwhile, received a fatal shot which pierced her steam drum ” and enveloped the entire vessel in a terrible cloud of steam About this time,” reported her commanding officer, ”a heavy plunging shot struck her in the frailest part of her stern, passing longitudinally through her and piercing the hull in the center near the bow, causing an enormous leak in the vessel.” She sank almost immediately. The planned joint attack on Warrenton was called off because of the extensive repairs required by the Switzerland.

1958 – Elvis Presley is inducted into the army on this day in 1958. Although he had been drafted the previous December, the army granted him a deferral so he could finish shooting his film, King Creole.

1986         Gulf of Sidra Incident: Libyan forces fire on US vessels making a freedom of the seas passage, causing American strikes on missile sites and patrol craft

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1199         King Richard I "Lionheart" of England was mortally wounded by a crossbow bolt during the siege of Chalus.

1753 – Benjamin Thompson (d.1814), Count Rumford, English physicist and diplomat, was born. He was a Tory spy in the American Revolution and discovered that heat equaled motion, which led to the 2nd law of thermodynamics.

1945. Winston Churchill pissed in the Rhine, near Ginsberg, with great satisfaction, to the cheers of nearby Allied troops

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47   BC   Ptolemy XIII of Egypt (c. 15), brother and husband to Cleopatra, drowned in the Nile fleeing Caesar's troops

1757         Robert Francois Damiens, executed at 42, by being skinned, doused with molten lead, castrated, and drawn and quartered, for attempting to kill Louis XV of France

1782         George Washington authorized the kidnapping of Prince William Henry, a midshipman in the British fleet at New York.

1870 – 129 Marines seized and destroyed illicit distilleries in “Irishtown” (Brooklyn), New York

1937         Pope Pius XI publishes anti-Nazi encyclical "Mit brennender Sorge"

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1942  Sergeant Thomas Frank Durrant, Royal Engineers. During the famous British naval raid on St. Nazaire, France, on the night of March 27-28, 1942, Sgt. Durrant (1918-1942) was serving with No. 1 Commando, manning a dual-mounted Lewis gun on HM Motor Launch 306. Proceeding up the Loire River, the boat came under heavy fire from the German destroyer Jaguar, which greatly outclassed her. She was hit repeatedly, and Durrant was wounded several times. Twice the Germans summoned the boat to surrender and were refused. Finally the launch was boarded and those who were still alive were taken prisoner, among them Sgt Durrant, who had been wounded 16 times. He died of his wounds on the 29th. Speaking with the prisoners, Kapitänleutnant F.K Paul, commander of the Jaguar, commended them for their gallant fight, and singled out Durrant for special praise. Acting with Paul’s comment in mind, Durrant’s commanding officer, Lieutenant R. O. C. Swayne, initiated the process that led to the award of the V.C. to Sgt. Durrant. Durrant also has the distinction of being the only British soldier to have won the V.C. while serving with the Royal Navy.