100 Mistakes That Changed History (19 page)

Henry took an interest in a noted beauty in the court, Anne Boleyn. Anne was young, appealing, willing, and more. With her, Henry could have his heir, and a good time. But there was a kicker. The heir could not be had from anyone but the queen. The illegitimate child of a king’s mistress could be given honors, but he could never succeed to the throne. And Henry VIII was still married to Catherine, who just happened to still be the daughter of the king of Spain. This was a major political concern as Spain was then the richest and most powerful nation in Europe.

But where love, or lust, is involved, political considerations tend to be ignored. Henry wanted Anne, and he wanted an heir, so he sent his highest-ranking cleric, Cardinal Wolsey, to ask for another favor from the pope in Rome. This time he wanted the dispensation that let him marry Catherine revoked. He wanted a dispensation from the dispensation. If there had been no original dispensation, then his marriage to Catherine would not be valid. Henry would then be free, because Catherine’s surviving daughter, Mary, would then be a bastard and no threat, and everyone would be happy . . . everyone except Catherine and all of Spain.

There had also been one change that complicated Henry’s plan. There was a new pope. Julius II had died and Clement was now pope in Rome. But Clement took his religious duties much more seriously than had his predecessor. The new pope also was aware of which kingdom, Spain, donated far more funds to the Church than England ever could. So after months of arguments and political maneuvering, Pope Clement ruled that the dispensation stood. Henry was, in the eyes of Rome, still married to Catherine.

The pope’s decision that he was still married put Henry in what he must have felt was a terrible position. Anne and he were already very active on a personal level, and she had pretty much put him on notice that she would stay on as queen, but not as lifetime mistress. There still remained the need to create a male heir. So Henry VIII found another way. If Rome would not allow him to dissolve his marriage, then he would dissolve his relationship with the pope. He and all of England would break away from the Roman Catholic Church. Countries and dukedoms all over Europe were doing the same thing that a part of the Protestant movement was doing.

Henry VIII would found a new church, the Church of England, which he controlled. The plan even had a second advantage. Henry needed money, and, among other things, powerful Spain was going to be angry (it was; see pages 147-152), so he was going to need a better navy and army. But England was always short of hard currency to pay for such things. If England broke with Rome, then it was okay for him to grab a fortune in Church lands and holdings. He could solve his budget problem and his marriage problem in one stroke. The new Church of England, of course, voided the dispensation, and Henry was free to marry Anne Boleyn, and four more wives later on. Henry VIII also went on to grab and sell just about every convent, monastery, and church in England.

While this new Church of England (or Anglican Church) still subscribed to many Catholic rituals and beliefs, anyone who remained a Catholic had to assume any heir he had with Anne had no right to the throne. So Catholics in England were almost immediately persecuted in the wake of Henry’s decision. In fact, the Roman Catholic churches and the priests who remained in England were illegal until well into the nineteenth century. This violent and energetic persecution of Catholics included among its victims the venerable Sir Thomas More, who years earlier had helped Henry write that book defending the Catholic Church from Martin Luther’s attacks. More was executed when he refused to attend Anne’s coronation. This was but the beginning of a cycle of violence that would persist in England for hundreds of years.

Henry VIII ended up having six wives and three true heirs (Edward, son of Jane Seymour; Mary, daughter of Catherine of Aragon; and Elizabeth, daughter of Anne Boleyn). After Henry’s demise, Edward VI took the throne but died of illness soon thereafter. Mary restored the nation to Catholicism and earned the nickname “Bloody Mary” for the hundreds of dissenters she ordered executed during her reign and the ensuing violence. Upon her death, Elizabeth took the throne, and she reestablished the Church of England.

Had Julius II not granted the dispensation, Henry would not have been married to Ferdinand’s beloved daughter, whom he felt forced to divorce later. Spain might have remained friendly to England, reversing the course of Europe for two centuries. And with England supporting Catholicism, the Protestant Reformation would have been very different and far less sweeping. An England allied to Spain and France, rather than supporting the Protestant states, would have made a military difference that would have doomed Protestantism. Henry might even have met, married, and had the heir he so desired with a woman he truly loved. This alone would have made quite a difference to the women Henry VIII did marry, saving their heads and extending their lives if nothing else.

Except in the case of the French Revolution, Mel Brooks’ humorous maxim “It’s good to be the king” has held historically true. As a divine-right monarch, King Henry VIII got away with dumping two wives, beheading two others, and establishing the Church of England in opposition to Catholicism. Pope Clement VII’s decision not to grant Henry an annulment caused a schism in his own Church that resulted in sectarian violence within England for decades. Had Clement simply acceded to Henry’s demands, Anglicanism would have never existed and Catholicism would look vastly different. Two popes’ mistakes dramatically altered the political and religious landscape of Europe and the world.

36

SUPERSTITION

Gods and Gold
1521

S
uperstition can get you into trouble. It doomed the Athenian expedition against Sicily in 415 BCE, made the Black Death worse in 1305, and in 1521 ensured the fall of an entire New World empire. A number of factors led to the conquest of the Aztecs by Hernando Cortes and his 500 soldiers of fortune. The Aztecs had been dominant over their large empire for less than a century. They had inherited, by way of a three-way alliance, the original empire of the Toltecs. It wasn’t until 1431 that the Aztecs were in a position to begin expanding, and they did so with a vengeance. By 1465, their empire dominated all of Mexico and Central America as far as today’s Guatemala. But this was never an easy occupation. Rome endured because it made the people they conquered part of their empire. The Aztec religion ensured that could never happen.

The faith of the Aztecs was the worship of sky deities, particularly the sun. But their sun god needed constant replenishment. That came in the form of blood and sacrificed prisoners. On a major Aztec religious holiday, thousands of humans would be sacrificed. The most common victims were prisoners. If there wasn’t a war going on, the Aztecs often needed to start one to ensure a steady supply of sacrifices. This need for blood guaranteed a high degree of antipathy from the Aztecs’ neighbors and subject peoples. Although this belief may have contributed to the dramatic downfall of the Aztec empire, it was not the primary cause. When Cortes landed in the New World, he found a land full of conflict and peoples who harbored a deep hatred for the dominant Aztecs. Almost from the beginning, he was able to recruit entire tribes into what quickly became a crusade against their oppressor. As much as anything, the conquistadors were a catalyst around which resentful Aztec enemies and subject tribes rallied. The superstition that encouraged the resentment and, at a key point, ultimately undermined Aztec resistance, was that of Quetzalcoatl, the white god.

Quetzalcoatl was a man with godlike powers who occasionally appeared among the Central American peoples, performing miracles and teaching them new skills. (Yes, modern UFO believers make much of this.) The myth was that when he next returned it would be the beginning of a golden age. Hernando Cortes was pale skinned, wearing armor far superior to any that could be made in the Americas, and was accompanied by horses and cannons. It is not surprising that he reminded so many Native Americans of the story. The Spaniard quickly saw the advantage this myth gave him and played it for all he could.

Tens of thousands of local warriors and chiefs joined the Spanish against the Aztecs. But the real edge that the legend of Quetzalcoatl gave to Cortes, and the one that made his conquest possible, was the fact that Montezuma, who had been the Aztecs’ leader for more than a quarter century, was highly superstitious. In September 1521, as Cortes and his allies marched toward the Aztec capital, the guns and horses of the conquistadors proved decisive in several battles. When Cortes was warned of an ambush and avoided it, rather than looking for spies, Montezuma took this as a sign that the Spaniard really was Quetzalcoatl and could not be resisted. Rather than having to fight their way in, Cortes and his men were welcomed into Tenochtitlan, today’s Mexico City, by Montezuma. They were then showered with gifts.

The city and empire were never the same. After Cortes went back to the coast, the garrison he left behind was besieged in a palace. But the conquistador leader quickly returned and easily restored his control of the Aztec capital. From that time on, Montezuma, who mistook a greedy adventurer for a god, was just a puppet. When the Spanish tried to force Christianity on all the Aztecs and banned their old sun-worshiping religion, the Aztecs finally rose up against Cortes and their captive king. Montezuma’s brother was elected to replace him, since he remained a prisoner of Cortes. For a while the Spanish were again besieged, but the real strength of the Aztecs was broken. Their hold over the more numerous tribes and even their unity was gone because one very important and even more superstitious man, Montezuma, mistook Hernando Cortes for Quetzalcoatl. If he had not been so superstitious, a powerful empire might not have fallen to a handful of adventurers. Spain would not have had the Aztec gold that for two centuries made it the most important nation in Europe, and the peoples of the Americas might very well have been treated quite differently had the Aztecs remained a power to be reckoned with.

37

JUST INCREDIBLY BAD JUDGMENT

A Turn for the Worse
1588

I
t is perhaps difficult to analyze through the lens of history because we know how the invasion threat ended, but it can be reasonably argued that the Spanish Armada was actually winning against Sir Francis Drake and the other English sea dogs, even after the English fire ships broke up their anchorage on the French coast. It was later that Spain lost her armada, not by the action of the English navy but through the decisions of its own commander.

Many mistakes are made from ignorance. A lack of knowledge or experience can sometimes override natural talent, ability, and even a soaring intellect. The man the Spanish king chose to command the armada was not a naval officer, but he was one of their best and most experienced army commanders, Medina Sidonia. His failure demonstrates how the skills and assumptions that make you an effective leader in a land battle are different from those needed to command ships at sea. In this case, there were two differences that Medina Sidonia, commander of the Spanish Armada in 1588, did not know. That ignorance led to a mistake that made all the difference in the outcome.

The Spanish Armada had been built for the express purpose of controlling the English Channel long enough to escort an invading Spanish army from the Netherlands to England. In 1588, the Spanish infantry was the best in the world, having defeated every foe they had met for half a century. If the Spanish managed to land in England, they would likely be able to overpower the island’s small professional army and ill-trained militia. The only hope the British had was to prevent that landing to begin with.

So Philip II of Spain created an armada—an armed force made up of almost 100 ships, including approximately 40 large vessels, armed with massive cannons and carrying 19,000 soldiers. The plan was to sail north and meet up with an even larger Spanish army commanded by the duke of Parma. Parma had built barges along the coast that the ships of the armada would escort.

It took months to build and weeks to organize and bring together the armada. The English had plenty of warning, and its sailing date and mission came as no surprise to them. The sea dogs opposed the armada with just over 150 ships of their own. Many of these were actually armed merchant ships, and almost all of them were what today would be described as privately owned.

The real difference between the ships of Spain and England was the type of cannon they carried and the way the ships were constructed. The limiting factor in cannon size was weight. The bigger the cannon, the greater the weight, which increased much more than the caliber, and there was only so much weight a wooden ship could handle. Each of the opponents approached this limit in a different way. The large Spanish warships, and they had about forty of them, were slow, massive, and made of very thick wood. The cannons on all of the Spanish warships had a very large bore and were short in both length and range. In contrast, the English ships were much more lightly built and much more maneuverable. The cost of this was that they were made of thinner wood and could not carry as much “weight of metal” as the Spanish ships. The English vessels carried cannons that were smaller and much longer than those of the Spanish. This meant they could throw a small cannonball very far and accurately. The problem was that those cannonballs were relatively small and far too often they bounced off the thick sides of the armada’s warships. In addition, size mattered, since the English crews were much smaller, and their ships carried no extra soldiers: This meant that there was no way for them to board and capture the much larger Spanish warships.

So the two battling fleets fought their way up the Channel. The dense mass of the armada made it suicidal for the English sea dogs to approach close enough that their smaller guns would have any effect on the thickly hulled armada. Only by staying at long range did they avoid any damage to themselves. Keeping a disciplined and tight formation, the Spanish Armada was able to sail up the Channel under constant, but ineffective, fire by the English. The armada’s guns fired back as well, but they were unable to hurt the English ships as most of their shots fell short or were off target. This was a victory for the Spanish as their goal was not destruction of the English ships, but rather to transport an army across the Channel. Since the British were unable to stop the armada from sailing up the Channel, it appeared they would be equally unable to stop the same ships from crossing over with the duke of Parma’s army on board. England seemed to be doomed, and Spanish morale soared.