Saturday, 28 May 2011

The Franco Prussian War, 1870

Helmuth von Moltke

Franco-Prussian War                               
It was the Franco-Prussian War that finally established the German armed forces as being the finest in Europe, perhaps the world. It was not German weapons or men that proved decisive, however, but the new concept of a General Staff, which other nations were quick to copy.
After the Austro-Prussian War of 1866, the Prussian commander Helmuth von Moltke engaged in detailed study of what had worked and what had gone wrong. He decided that the key problem had been at the detailed level of logistics. Put simply men and supplies had been ordered to follow routes that were unsuitable, either because of narrow bridges or poor road surfaces or single track railroads. 

He therefore formed a General Staff in Berlin divided into three divisions: Operational, Administrative and Supply. The staff was to be responsible for deciding how many men or supplies could be moved along any particular railroad or road in a given period of time, and then of drawing up detailed movement orders to make maximum effective use of the transport network. By contrast to this detailed work, Moltke believed that his generals should be given a free hand to implement as they saw fit his broadly defined objectives. 

The system worked perfectly when France declared war on Prussia and her German allies on 15 July 1870. Within 2 weeks, the Prussians had 475,000 men on the border complete with heavy artillery and full supply wagons. The French had by this date managed to mobilize only 224,000 men, most of whom were still in barracks without their supply transport having arrived. 

The Prussians attacked, inflicting a series of defeats on the outnumbered and outmanoeuvred French at Saarbrücken, Spichern, Mars-le-Tour, Gravelotte and Metz. The final battle at Sedan on 1 September saw the last French army crushed and Emperor Napoleon III taken prisoner. The French then declared a republic and hastily fortified Paris. The resulting siege dragged on until 15 February 1871 when France finally surrendered. 

Prussia gained not only a free hand to unify Germany under the King of Prussia, including those German states that did not favour the move, but also annexed the long-disputed border territorties of Alsace and Lorraine. s

Thursday, 26 May 2011

A Walk around Penshurst, Kent, and some nice tea and cakes

Walk 6
Teashop:            Quaintways Tea Rooms, High St, Penshurst, Tonbridge, Kent TN11 8BT
  Tel: 01892 870272
Distance:            4 miles
Map:                OS Explorer 147
Parking:            There is a car park in Fordcombe Road in the village.
Public Transport        Penshurst is on the rail network
Conditions:            This walk is a hilly route through woodland and past Penshurst Place.

1) Find the car park on the southwestern edge of the village in Fordcombe Road, the B2188. On exiting the car park turn right to head north along Fordcombe Road. At a T-junction with the B2176, Penshurst Road, turn right. You will pass Quaintways Tea Rooms  on your right. After about 50 yards turn left to enter the churchyard through perhaps the most unusual lychgate in England.

It is not the gate itself that is odd, but the fact that some time around 1550 a local man decided to build his home up and around the gate. The house is still there, complete with knarled oak timbers, bulging walls and sagging roof. It forms a weird form of domestic arch over the lychgate.

Once through the gate you will find yourself in the churchyard of the Church of St John the Baptist, the four towering pinnacles of which make this the tallest building for miles around. The church was begun in the 12th century, and then saw assorted enlargements and alterations in the 13th, 14th and 15th centuries. Then in the early 19th century the Sidney Family added a small private chapel and paid for the entire church to be restored, renovated and generally rebuilt. The result of all this work is a strangely pleasing hotchpotch of styles and materials. One of the more interesting features is a magnificent window of 1620, again paid for by the Sidney family.

2) On the far side of the churchyard the footpath crosses a field. Penshurst Place is on your right. If you have the time to spare you could visit this stately home.

Penshurst Place has been the home of the Sidney family who did so much for the local church since 1552. The earliest of the Sidneys to achieve acclaim was Sir Philip Sidney. This elegant courtier and artist achieved fame with his sonnets, short poems and longer works on a variety of themes. He went on to write the Arcadia, which in its day outsold Shakespeare, Marlow and other writers. He also wrote The Defence of Poetry, a riposte to the growing fashion for stage plays.

In 1572 Sidney chanced to be in Paris when the horrific St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre took place. He managed to save himself from the Catholic murder squads, which butchered an estimated 30,000 Protestants over a six day period, by seeking refuge in the home of the English ambassador. Other Protestants were not so lucky and were cut down even as they reached the steps of the house. The brutality of the event changed Sidney. He still wrote poetry, but spent rather more time on military campaigns. He joined the Dutch Protestant rebels fighting against the Catholic monarch Philip II of Spain. In 1586 he was badly wounded fighting in the Battle of Zutphen, but famously handed his water bottle to a wounded comrade saying “Thy necessity is yet greater than mine”. He died a few days later.

The Sidney family, meanwhile, prospered. They later rose to be Earls of Leicester, but when the direct male line died out so did the title. The Sidneys are today the Barons de l’Isle and Dudley. The great house in which they live began as a fairly modest manor house in 1340, some parts of which remain. The Hall, for instance, is reckoned the finest medieval feasting hall to survive virtually unaltered anywhere in Britain. The house was extensively rebuilt in Tudor times and it is this which forms most of Penshurst Place as it stands today. The house contains a magnificent collection of table services and of arms and armour - including the helmet Sir Philip was wearing when he received his death wound.

The house and gardens are open daily from early April to late October. At other times of the year you should check opening times on their website or by phoning them on 01892 870307

From Teashop Walks in Kent

Monday, 23 May 2011

A Canny Deal by a Canny Princess at Minster in Thanet, Kent

Start: The Bell Inn, 2 High Street, Minster, Ramsgate, Kent CT12 4BU.

The Isle of Thanet is now no longer an island, though its inhabitants still consider themselves to be distinct from the rest of Kent. It is only in the past three centuries that Thanet has ceased to be an island. Before that time a channel of seawater, known as the Wantsum, cut the island off from the mainland. See Route 9 The Vanished Wantsum for details of this vanished waterway.

The Thanet village of Minster originated as a village in Roman times built on a chalk spur that projected into the Wantsum. Enter the village from the north along the lane from the A299. Find the Bell Inn by continuing along the lane, bearing slightly left in the village centre.

From the Bell Inn, walk to the Minster that gives this village its name. The minster was originally a convent founded by St Ermenburga. Young Ermenburga was niece to King Egbert I of Kent. The details are hazy, but in 673 a nobleman named Thunor murdered Ermenburga’s two brothers, and King Egbert was widely held to be to blame for the killings. By way of compensation, Egbert offered Ermenburga the little village that stood on this site. She accepted, but demanded that she also get as much land as her pet hind would run round within a specified time. Egbert agreed and the deer was set loose. The hind proved to be very fleet of foot and Egbert was soon regretting his promise. Leaping on to his horse he set off to try to steer the running deer on to a shorter course. The horse shied, throwing the king into a water-filled ditch where he drowned. The hind then completed its run, having encircled 1,000 acres for Ermenburga.

Ermenburga promptly converted the land into the estate of a convent that she founded. The convent was sacked by Vikings in the 9th century so nothing of the original buildings remain standing. Most of the buildings to be seen today date to the 11th or 13th centuries. The parish church is of similar date, and was partly built with reused Roman bricks. A magnificent stained glass window depicts the story of Ermenburga, Egbert and the hind.

Whether there is any truth in the story or not is unclear. Certainly the the convent was founded by St Ermenburga with land donated by Egbert. The king did die in 673, though the circumstances are not clear. He was succeeded by his brother, Hlothere, who was murdered two years later by a nephew named Eadric. This Eadric was closely allied to the neighbouring Kingdom of Sussex, but he was killed in 688 by a cousin named Oswini who favoured an alliance to the East Saxons of Essex. Oswini was in turn ousted by Wihtred who was backed by the Franks. Turbulent times, obviously.


Wednesday, 18 May 2011

Pevensey Castle - and some tea and cakes

In Pevensey the main attraction is the huge castle. This vast defensive work was established by the Romans toward the end of their rule in Britain. The outer walls with their massive bastions were built in around ad350 to form part of the defences known as the Saxon Shore. There was then a harbour just outside the walls where the Roman warships could dock, but this has now silted up completely and the sea retreated a mile or so to the south. The fortress formed a heavily defended base and arsenal from which the ships went out to patrol the Channel and attack the Saxon raiders. By this date the Saxons were raiding far down the Channel and even attacking the northern coasts of Spain. The Saxon Shore command with its fleet, soldiers and forts did much to curb their depredations, but they were costly to maintain. In about ad410 the Empire abandoned Britain, granting an independence that everyone thought to be purely temporary and telling the Britons to defend themselves. For a while the Saxon Shore defences were maintained, but then they collapsed in circumstances that remain mysterious. Over the next fifty years the Saxons and their allies the Angles and Jutes established themselves as settlers in eastern Britain. Later, when Romano-British resistance collapsed around 540 with the death of the man remembered as King Arthur, the invaders established themselves as masters and founded a series of kingdoms that would become England.

One of the key events in this process took place here. In 491 Aelle attacked Pevensey, then held by a strong force of Romano-Britons. He and his men managed to get inside the defences and slaughtered everyone that they found. The brutal battle seems to have marked the moment when Aelle became independent of the central British authority that had survived from Roman times to about this time. We know that Aelle had landed at Selsey in about 477, but do not know his exact status. It is likely that he was a mercenary who may have been working for the Romano-Britons or who settled here to engage in a bit of blackmail. Whatever the details of his relationship with the Romano-Britons the attack on Pevensey ended it. The victory also brought Aelle the leadership of all the other Saxons, Angle and Jutish war bands operating in Britain at the time. The new found independence that he had won proved to be permanent. Large numbers of Saxons flooded across the seas from northern Germany to settle in the lands that Aelle had conquered. These were to become the Kingdom of the South Saxons, or Sussex.

The strategic position of the site and the robustness of the Roman walls were not lost on later generations. The English maintained the defences, though they do not seem to have manned them permanently except at the height of the Viking menace. William the Conqueror gave the castle to his half-brother Count Robert of Mortain on condition that he manned the defences. Robert did not have enough men to man the entire fortress, so he built a castle in one corner of it. This castle was improved and enlarged several times over the next 300 years and remains to this day. The fortress was updated again in 1588 to stop soldiers from the Spanish Armada getting ashore here. It was renovated again in 1803 when Napoleon threatened to invade, and was most recently refortified in 1940 to guard against a German assault.

Having viewed the castle, find Castle Cottage Tea Rooms nestled under the castle walls, close by the car park at the top end of the High Street.

From Teashop Walks in Sussex


Monday, 16 May 2011

The Didcot Newbury Southampton Railway nears completion

While the disputes over the southern route dragged on, the northern section of the DNS was completed. On 12 April 1882 the formal opening of the line took place. The GWR provided 30 special saloon cars, divided into two trains, to run from Newbury to Didcot. The opening ceremony was performed by Lady Loyd-Lindsay, soon to become Lady Wantage when Sir Robert was raised to the peerage. She cut a ribbon and made a short speech on a platform erected on the London Road bridge, just outside Newbury. A noisy salute of anvils followed, as gunpowder charges were set off between pairs of anvils. The two special trains then set off,waved on their way by a crowd of thousands that had gathered at Newbury station. The trains were met at Didcot by more cheering crowds. The events were captured by an artist from The London Graphic, which published several pages of copy and illustrations to celebrate the opening of the new railway.

The full public service between Newbury and Didcot opened the following day. There were to be five passenger trains each way on weekdays only, with no passenger service at the weekends. Sir Robert and Lord Carnarvon were frank about their inexperience of actually running a railway. They therefore opted to contract in services from the GWR. The GWR provided engines, rolling stock and train crew for the services that ran on the DNS in return for 60%, later reduced to 51.5%, of the fares and freight charges.

The GWR usually provided tank engines for use on the Newbury-Didcot section of the DNS. At first this was because of the lack of a turntable, which was planned for further south. When the southern section of the line was completed, with its turntable, tender engines could and did run from Newbury to Didcot. The tanks remained more usual, however, with engines of the 2-4-0 Metropolitan or 2-6-2 6100 classes being common. Passenger coaches were almost always older rolling stock that the GWR did not want to use on its own lines and routes.

In 1883 Loyd-Lindsay suffered a sudden bout of serious ill health. His doctor ordered complete rest and a prolonged holiday in sunnier climes. Carnarvon turned to James Forbes, who was already Chairman of the London, Chatham & Dover Railway, to take over. It was Forbes who abandoned the idea of pushing the DNS line to Southampton docks, opting to link with the LSWR at Winchester instead. And it was Forbes who oversaw the opening of the line along its entire length in 1891.


Thursday, 12 May 2011

The Lonely Duke of Surrey

There has only been on Duke of Surrey, and he came to such a sticky end that nobody seems to have wanted to follow him in the title. Thomas Holland was born son of the 2nd Earl of Kent in 1374. In 1397 he was summoned by King Richard II and given the task of arresting for treason his own uncle, a task he carried out with skill and efficiency. Richard rewarded Thomas by making him Duke of Surrey and bestowing him with rich lands and estates. However, Richard’s capricious arrests and executions were soon to prove too much for his subjects to put up with and he was overthrown by his cousin Henry Bolingbroke, who became King Henry IV. The new king stripped Thomas of his title as Duke of Surrey and of his new estates, but allowed him to keep the lands inherited from his father. Thomas was outraged and began plotting a rebellion with similarly disgruntled men. The rebellion was called for 4 January 1400 at Kingston in Surrey. Henry was, however, too quick for the rebels and managed to send out messengers summoning an army while he defied the rebels from the walls of London. The rebellion broke up and the leaders scattered. Thomas Holland, one time Duke of Surrey, got as far as Cirencester before he was recognised by men loyal to Henry. He headed for the local abbey hoping to claim sanctuary, but was grabbed from behind, dragged to the town square and beheaded with an axe.


Monday, 9 May 2011

Red Leicester Cheese Pie

Leicester Cheese Pie 

Serves 8
Preparation time: 20 minutes
Cooking time: 1 hour

This is a great way to use Red Leicester cheese. The final dish comes out of the oven beautifully browned and releases the most wonderful aroma when it is cut open. I like to have some Worcestershire sauce on the table for this and slap it over liberally.

1lb shortcrust pastry
1lb Red Leicester cheese, grated
1 small onion, chopped
2 tomatoes, chopped
2 tsp English mustard
3 eggs, beaten
Salt and pepper
A little milk

Roll out 2/3 of the pastry to line the base and sides of an 8 inch pie dish.
In a bowl mix the grated cheese, onion, beaten eggs, chopped tomatoes, mustard and salt and pepper.
When it is completely mixed, pile the mixture into the pie case.
Roll out the remaining pastry into a circle large enough to form the lid.
Place the lid on to the pie, using milk to get a good seal.
Cut a small hole in the top of the pie lid to allow steam to escape.
Brush the pie lid with a little milk.
Bake in a moderate oven (180C Gas Mk 4) for an hour.

Thursday, 5 May 2011

The German Navy starts to rearm - before Hitler

Hitler was, first and foremost, an army man. He had served in the army during the four long years of the Great War when he lived in the trenches of the Western Front for months at a time. When he because Führer it was to the army that he first turned his attention. For Hitler the air force had interest only in so far as it served the army. The navy was barely of interest at all. And yet if Germany was to live up to Hitler’s pretensions to world power, it would need a navy to project that power.

The German war navy had been secretly re-equipping itself for war before Hitler came to power. Under the terms of the Versailles Treaty, the Germans were forbidden to have any submarines at all, and surface ships were restricted to 10,000 tons, less than a third the size considered necessary for a battleship and barely large enough for a light cruiser. The navy had no intention of being bound by these restrictions, but through the 1920s were hindered by the politicians, who feared that the building of large warships could neither be hidden nor explained away.

In 1928 Erich Raeder was appointed Commander-in-chief of the Reichsmarine and given instructions to make the navy as effective as possible within the terms of Versailles. Significantly, during the 1920s, Raeder had been writing the official history of the cruiser operations of World War I, having served in cruisers for most of the war. It was as a cruiser man that he looked at the problem.

In drawing up plans to make the German navy an effective weapon of war, Raeder made a number of assumptions. First he reasoned that German naval operations would be limited to inshore work in support of the army in the event of a war against any likely enemy, except Britain. Second, Raedar believed that if Britain were the main enemy then Germany would have to aim to strangle Britain’s sea supply routes. Germany could attempt to take on the Royal Navy and defeat it in open battle, but this would need the construction of large battleships which Versailles forbade. Alternatively, Germany could develop a fleet of ships designed specifically to sink merchant ships and to avoid rather than defeat the Royal Navy.

The most obvious type of warship to achieve this was the U-boat, but again Germany was forbidden to have any submarines in its fleet. Nothing daunted, Raeder turned to the small team of engineers who had been recruited in 1925 by Wilhelm Canaris, later to be head of military intelligence, to design U-boats in case Germany were ever allowed to own any. Under Raeder this team began building U-boats for export to Turkey and Spain. Thus, the Germans gained the equipment and expertise necessary to build and operate a U-boat fleet but without contravening Versailles.

Monday, 2 May 2011

Rasputin - The Evil Genius of Russia

The Russian mystic Grigori Rasputin (22 January c.1869 - 29 December 1916) has been reviled throughout most of the 20th century as a religious charlatan and trickster, though during his lifetime he was hailed as an almost saintly figure by many who knew him. Undoubtedly his image was tarnished by the events surrounding his death and the Russian Revolution that followed, and new evidence continues to emerge.

Rasputin was born into a peasant family at Pokrovskoye in Siberia. Later stories held that during his childhood Rasputin showed supernatural powers, such as the ability to identify thieves merely by looking at them, but these derive from his family members and are not considered reliable. He was, however, an unruly boy and when a teenager his family sent him to spend three months at the Verkhoturye Monastery to learn a bit of discipline. Instead he had a vision of the Virgin Mary which convinced him that he had miraculous powers and that he was destined by God to be a wandering preacher. He then fell in with a secretive and banned sect, the Khlysty, rumoured to indulge in sexual acts as part of their rituals. Rasputin quickly left the group and went to live with a hermit monk named Makariy. He then returned home and, outwardly, settled down to being a peasant. He married, had three children and began farming. But in 1901 he left home to begin his ministry.

By 1905 Rasputin had established a firm reputation among country folk as a fervent preacher, gifted holy healer and miracle worker. In 1905 he was approached by a noble lady, Anna Vyrubova, who asked if he could cure haemophilia, a rare genetic blood disorder that stops the blood from clotting, leading to massive bleeding from the most minor of wounds. Rasputin said he would try and was led to a small boy suffering huge internal bleeding from a bruise caused by falling from a horse. The boy was Alexei, son and heir to Tsar Nicholas II of Russia. Rasputin led the boy in prayer and insisted that he was given total bed rest. The bleeding stopped and the prince’s life was saved. Thereafter the Tsaritsa Alexandra insisted that Rasputin should stay nearby so that he could come to her son whenever needed. Alexandra came to believe that God spoke to her through Rasputin. Even the Tsar Nicholas considered him a holy man and friend.

Others at the Imperial court were not so convinced by Rasputin’s claims to sanctity. It soon became known that he had a voracious sexual appetite - once seducing a nun - and that he drank to excess most nights. The fact that he gradually came to have some degree of political influence over Alexandra, and through her over the Tsar, angered and disturbed government officials while senior figures in the church disliked his unorthodox preaching. Rasputin claimed that before achieving redemption it was necessary to sin, which he did with great enjoyment and often with noble ladies as well as peasant women, before abasing himself before God.

When World War I began, the Tsar left for the front leaving his wife in charge of domestic policy. Soon opposition to her poorly thought-out policies began to centre on Rasputin. One of those opposing the government, Prince Felix Yusupov, decided that Rasputin had to die. Exactly what happened next is uncertain. Yusupov gave several different and self-contradictory versions of the killing. What is certain is that Rasputin went to attend a dinner at Yusopov’s house in St Petersburg and was found dead three days later floating in the Neva River. In the 1990s it emerged that a British spy had been present at the killing and may have helped or even instigated the plot.

“Rasputin - the evil genius of Russia.” politician Vladimir Purishkevich 1916.