Read The Good, the Bad and the Unready Online
Authors: Robert Easton
Osman I, founder of the Ottoman Empire, 1259–1326
On his deathbed Osman encouraged his son Orhan to ‘Rejoice my soul with a series of victories.’ Given his father’s extraordinary success in expanding the Ottoman dynasty, primarily at Byzantine expense, it was going to be hard for Orhan to emulate even half of his father’s achievements.
Osman was a simple soul who lived largely in the saddle and commanded a number of Turkish nomadic tribes that captured ‘infidel’ territories in order to increase the land under Islamic control. His first major victory, however, was not military but marital. He told his future father-in-law that he had experienced a dream in which he had seen the city of Constantinople as a jewelled ring on his (Osman’s) finger. The father-in-law was impressed and handed over his daughter, confident that Osman’s vision of personal power could mean nothing but good for him and his family. Successfully married, Osman could now turn his attention to military conquest.
Villages, then cities and then entire regions slowly but surely fell under his sway, until his greatest victory in 1326 when, after a ten-year siege, the great Byzantine city of Bursa capitulated. The Ottomans now had a real capital from which to pursue their imperial designs.
The news of the fall of Bursa reached Osman as he lay dying. To his son he left a vast area of the globe ripe for Ottoman expansion, and also his few personal but much cherished possessions, including his turban, a few pieces of red muslin and a salt cellar.
Waldemar the
Victorious
Waldemar II, king of Denmark, 1170–1241
With
BARBAROSSA
reluctantly acknowledging Danish independence from Germany, and with a guarantee of no further military trouble from Norway, Waldemar felt comfortable enough to lead his forces personally in a crusade against Estonia, where success upon success made him master of much of the Baltic states. His greatest achievement was the final subjugation of the Estonians at the battle of Reval (modern-day Tallinn) in 1219, at which the Danish gained not only a famous victory but also their national symbol. According to legend, a red cloth with a white cross just happened to fall from the sky during the engagement, and from that day on the ‘Dannebrog’ has been Denmark’s national flag.
Napoleon the
Violet Corporal
see
Napoleon the
LITTLE CORPORAL
Elizabeth the
Virgin Queen
see
GOOD QUEEN BESS
Hereward the
Wake
Hereward, Saxon thane,
fl
. eleventh century
In the third quarter of the eleventh century pockets of resistance to William the
CONQUEROR’S
new Norman regime remained throughout the north and west of England, and especially in the fenland of East Anglia, where the Saxon thane Hereward stoutly defended the city of Ely. Stories of Hereward’s heroics abound. Some chronicles state, for example, that in 1068 Hereward returned to his family estate only to find the house occupied by a Norman and his brother’s decapitated head impaled above the doorway. That night, armed with what he could carry, he allegedly ambushed and killed fifteen Norman soldiers and substituted their heads for his brother’s.
In 1071 William mustered his crack troops against Hereward’s rebels and launched an offensive upon Ely. The island garrison eventually surrendered, but Hereward managed to escape into the fen country to become a semi-legendary resistance fighter on a par with Robin Hood.
The name ‘the Wake’ was not attached to Hereward until the fourteenth century, when he appears in the
Chronicle of Abbot John
as ‘le Wake’. The nickname does not mean ‘the Vigilant’ as some profess, but actually refers to the Wake family who, at the time of Abbot John’s work, claimed to have inherited their lands from Hereward following a series of marriages involving his alleged descendants. The Wake family’s claim has not been substantiated.
Henry the
Warlike
see
GALLIC PRACTICE
James the
Warming-Pan Baby
James Stuart, pretender to the English throne, 1688–1766
A disaffected Protestant England dismissed all Jacobite claims that James Stuart was the rightful heir to the throne. Instead it counterclaimed that this so-called ‘son’ of James II (
see
the
POPISH AND PROTESTANT DUKES
) and Mary the
QUEEN OF TEARS
was in actuality a substitute for Mary’s stillborn child, smuggled into the royal bedchamber in a warming pan. Catholic France was much more amenable to the claims of‘James III’, and Louis the
SUN KING
lent his support to ‘the Old Pretender’ as James made a number of half-hearted attempts to gain his crown. After a distinguished career with the French army in the War of the Spanish Succession for which he earned the soubriquet ‘le Chevalier de St George’, James retired to Italy. There his wife Mary gave birth to the ‘Young Pretender’,
BONNIE PRINCE CHARLIE
.
Robert the
Weasel
see
the
SONS OF TANCRED
Charles the
Well-Beloved
see
Charles the
SILLY
Louis the
Well-beloved