Titans of History (56 page)

Churchill wrote a vivid account of the resulting battle, and the famous cavalry charge:

The trumpet jerked out a shrill note, heard faintly above the trampling of the horses and the noise of the rides. On the instant all the sixteen troops swung round and locked up into a long galloping line, and the 21st Lancers were committed to their first charge in war
.

The pace was fast and the distance short. Yet, before it was half covered, the whole aspect of the affair changed. A deep crease in the ground—a dry watercourse, a
khor—
appeared where all had seemed smooth, level plain; and from it there
sprang, with the suddenness of a pantomime effect and a high-pitched yell, a dense white mass of men nearly as long as our front and about twelve deep …

The Dervishes fought manfully. They tried to hamstring the horses. They fired their rifles, pressing the muzzles into the very bodies of their opponents. They cut reins and stirrup-leathers. They flung their throwing-spears with great dexterity. They tried every device of cool, determined men practised in war and familiar with cavalry; and, besides, they swung sharp, heavy swords which bit deep … Then the horses got into their stride again, the pace increased, and the Lancers drew out from among their antagonists. Within two minutes of the collision every living man was clear of the Dervish mass
.

Churchill's next adventure was in the Boer War when captured by the Boers. His escape from his captors was another piece of derring-do, immortalized by Churchill's own account.

After moving into politics Churchill was elected a Conservative MP, but in 1904 he scandalized his party by crossing the floor to join the Liberals. He also married his wife Clementine that year, and for the rest of his long life she was to provide him with unwavering support—and frank criticism when she felt it was necessary. Churchill became home secretary in 1910 and First Lord of the Admiralty the following year. During the First World War, Churchill ensured the fleet was ready but took the blame for the failure of the Gallipoli campaign, which cost the lives of 46,000 Allied troops. He resigned to serve at the Western Front, returning to become Lloyd George's minister of munitions in 1917.

In 1919–21 Churchill was secretary of state for war and air, then, switching allegiance to rejoin the Conservatives, chancellor of the exchequer in 1924–9. In the 1930s he was out of office again, almost in political exile, but from the backbenches he foresaw the dangers
of Hitler and German rearmament. His warnings were ignored by the appeasing government of Neville Chamberlain and much of the press. It was not until the Second World War broke out that he returned to favor and was brought into the War Cabinet, returning to his old position as First Lord of the Admiralty in 1939: “Winston's back!,” the Admiralty signaled to the fleet.

When, in May 1940, Chamberlain resigned in the face of the Nazi onslaught on western Europe, there was a political feeling that Britain should make peace with Hitler. In one of the clearest cases of how one man can change history and save not just a nation but a way of life, Churchill insisted on defiance, and he became prime minister. He rose to the occasion. Just after becoming prime minister he addressed Parliament:

I say to the House as I said to ministers who have joined this government, I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat … What is our policy? … to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalog of human crime…. What is our aim? … Victory, victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror; victory, however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival
.

With British troops evacuated from Dunkirk and a German invasion of the homeland apparently inevitable, Churchill told the House of Commons: “We shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.” Two weeks later, as he announced the fall of France, he again addressed the House: “Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, ‘This was their finest hour.'”

He kept his nerve as the RAF defeated the Luftwaffe in the Battle of Britain, making a Nazi invasion impossible. In the Cabinet war rooms, Churchill directed the war with energy and imagination, whether traveling abroad to visit troops and foreign leaders or holding meetings from his bed in the morning and pushing his exhausted officials until 3 or 4 a.m., drinking large volumes of champagne and brandy as he worked. He worked hard to develop a good relationship with President Roosevelt, and he engaged positively with Stalin, despite his innate dislike of communism. At a series of summit conferences, he agreed with both leaders not only the strategy against Hitler but also the shape of the postwar world.

In the election held in July 1945 after the defeat of Germany, Churchill and the Conservatives lost power. The following year he described, presciently, the “Iron Curtain” now descending across a Cold War Europe. He returned as prime minister from 1951 to 1955. He turned down the offer of a dukedom but the “greatest living Englishman” remained an Edwardian romantic imperialist with an Augustan style and vision, although he never lost his impish wit. When his grandson once asked him if he was the greatest man in the world, he replied, “Yes! Now bugger off!” When accused of drinking too much, he responded, “I've taken more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me.” His writing was as fine as his leadership; he was the only political leader in history to have won the Nobel Prize for Literature. On his death in January 1965, Churchill received a state funeral, an honor rarely accorded those outside the royal family.

1876–1953

His personal ambition is boundless, but is tempered by great discretion and caution. He is a relentless enemy while opposition lasts, but in the hour of victory is one of the most humane Arabs in history. As for his system of rule … he keeps his own counsel even among his relatives, and essentially his rule is absolute
.

Eldon Rutter

Abdul Aziz al Saud—known to Westerners as Ibn Saud—was a self-made king, a shrewd statesman, masterful diplomatist, tribal politician, religious ascetic and an athletic desert warrior. Over six foot four inches tall, he was famous for his prowess in battlefield, on camel-back and in the bedroom and created the new kingdom of Saudi Arabia, still a medieval dynastic autocracy well into the 21st century. Saudi Arabia remains a key player in the Middle East yet there is a contradiction at its heart: this ally of America is an Islamic autocracy in which opposition is repressed, women have few rights and the country is ruled by a strictly puritanical and anti-Western form of Islam—Wahhabism—which the Saudis export along with their oil riches.

Ibn Saud's achievement was not the first blossoming of his dynasty but the third. In the 18th century a puritanical Islamic preacher named Muhammad al-Wahhab had attacked the superstitions and shrines of traditional Islam in Arabia, demanding a return to the fundamentalist asceticism that he claimed was the original way of the Prophet. Wahab allied himself with a local
sheikh around Riyadh in the Najd region of Arabia named Muhammad ibn Saud. They formed a political and religious alliance cemented by dynastic marriages between the families. Wahhabism proved a powerful force and Arabians flocked to join Saud's armies. The Ottoman empire nominally ruled Arabia, with the sultan-caliph in Istanbul serving as guardian of the Holy Places, Mecca and Medina. But the Ottoman empire was in crisis, struggling to control its heartlands, let alone the remote provinces of Arabia. Taking advantage of this, Saud and Wahhab founded a Saudi state around 1744 that terrorized more moderate Muslims, destroyed their shrines, conquered much of Arabia, raided up into the Ottoman provinces of Iraq and ultimately conquered Mecca and Medina, where they imposed their new puritanism. The Ottoman sultan repeatedly sent armies to destroy the Saudis but in vain until, in the early 19th century, Istanbul asked the semi-independent Pasha of Egypt, Mehmet Ali, to restore order. In 1818, Mehmet Ali and his son, Ibrahim Pasha, completed the defeat of the Saudis, the Saudi sheikh was sent to be beheaded in Istanbul and the sultan was back in charge. A few years later, the Saudis reestablished a small state in the Najd but it was not until Ibn Saud that the family restored its fortunes fully. In the meantime, Arabia was dominated by the al Rashid family that drove out the Sauds while the Ottomans appointed the sherifs of Mecca from the traditional Hashemite family.

As a child, Ibn Saud had to escape by night from the family seat in Riyadh to avoid the triumphant Rashid family, living with his father in Kuwaiti exile. But young Ibn Saud was determined to changed the family fortunes: backed by his elder ally Muburak al Sabah and the Sabahs, the ruling family of Kuwait, he pulled off a remarkable coup with a tiny army of Bedouins and tribesman when he seized Riyadh in 1902.

It was the beginning of a remarkable career of military adventure
and diplomatic intrigue. Ibn Saud won victories against the Rashid and other rivals but the battles were small, the armies scarcely larger than a thousand fighters at a time. But the young prince was able to resuscitate and harness the vigorous fanaticism of the Wahhabis whom he mobilized into a new military-religious legion—the Ikhwan or the Brothers—who became the heart of his desert army. He built up a relationship with the British, and when the Ottomans and British started to bid for his favor during the First World War, Saud played them off against one another. But he was less aggressive in his promises than Sherif Hussain, the Hashemite amir of Mecca, who offered the British an Arab revolt from Arabia to Syria against the Ottoman sultan. Hussain was Saud's sworn enemy and the two increasingly vied for control of the whole of Arabia. Declaring himself king of the Arabs, Sherif Hussain, backed by his sons Abdullah and Faisal, launched their attack against the Ottomans, funded by vast British financial grants. But their actions never delivered a mass Arab revolt and scarcely defeated the Ottomans, even around Mecca.

Ibn Saud meanwhile waited out the war, and when the Ottoman empire collapsed in 1918, the Hashemites proved no match for him and his Ikhwan fighters. In a series of clashes, Hussain's ambitious eldest son Prince Abdullah (the future king of Jordan) was defeated by the Saudi forces. Britain was alarmed at the collapse of its ally. Saud had his own problems: the Ikhwan were hard to control and started to raid into Iraq (controlled by Britain), where they especially loathed the Shiites whom they regarded as heretics. In response, the British army and RAF attacked the Ikhwan. Ultimately Ibn Saud managed to suppress the over-mighty leaders of the Ikhwan and then defeated King Hussain's son King Ali of Hejaz, taking control of all of Arabia and Mecca and Medina in 1924 before finally overcoming the Ikhwan in battle, the last time he commanded in person. Ibn Saud declared himself king of Hejaz
and in 1932 he became king of Saudi Arabia. (The Hashemites went on to amass precarious thrones outside Arabia: Faisal was first king of Syria, then Iraq where, his family ruled until 1958. Abdullah's great-grandson Abdullah II became king of Jordan in 1999).

Ibn Saud had always prided himself on his prowess as a fighter and a lover: he was usually married to three wives, divorcing earlier ones as he married the new. It was said he kept a harem of seventy odalisques and he left around seventy children including forty sons.

The kingdom he created was an absolutist dynastic monarchy combined with a Wahhabi theocracy in which the Saudi king acted as a guarantor of religious purity. The discovery of oil empowered the kingdom, giving it vast wealth, a process that began in 1933. On his death in 1953, Ibn Saud was succeeded by his feckless, inept and inconsistent son Saud, who was deposed by the princes in 1958. He kept the title but handed over power to Faisal who succeeded as king on Saud's death. Faisal was experienced and shrewd but was assassinated in 1975. The succession then went to Ibn Saud's sons, King Khalid and then King Fahd. In 1979 fanatics seized the shrine of Mecca, challenging the corruption of the Saudis: as many as 1,000 were killed when Saudi forces stormed the complex and restored order. The real contradiction of Saudi rule was exposed by the 9/11 attack on America: the al-Qaeda terrorists were overwhelmingly Saudis, most notably their leader Osama bin Laden. Well into the 21st century Saudi Arabia was still ruled by Ibn Saud's octogenarian sons but power is gradually passing to the next generation.

1878–1923 & 1819–1919

It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees!

Emiliano Zapata

Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata were Mexico's two most celebrated and notorious revolutionary warlords: they were blood-thirsty brigands or murderous psychopaths to some, romantic heroes or radical reformers to others: both were gifted and charismatic but both were also brutal, cold-blooded and ambitious. Both died violently.

Born as Doroteo Arango, somewhere near San Juan del Río, Durango, in 1878, Pancho Villa hailed from peasant stock. After working as a sharecropper in his late childhood, he moved to the city of Chihuahua when he was sixteen, hoping to make his fortune, but when a landowner from his village sexually assaulted his sister, he returned home immediately and killed her assailant in cold blood. With that one act, he consigned himself to a life of banditry and fled for the Sierra Madre mountains. For the next seventeen years, he terrorized those living within or passing through his mountain fiefdom: cattle rustling, bank robbery and murder were his specialties.

Mexico at the time was ruled by the corrupt dictator Porfirio Díaz. Much of the country's land was ruthlessly exploited by the wealthy owners of large estates (haciendas), leaving the bulk of the population to labor under political repression and grinding poverty. In 1910, the long-serving Díaz stood for “re-election” as
president. Opposition to his rule, however, had crystallized around Francisco Madero, the “apostle of democracy,” supported by volunteers known as
antirreeleccionista
(antireelectionists). When Díaz inevitably claimed victory, Madero proclaimed his Plan of San Luis Potosi, declaring the election fraudulent and calling for an armed uprising. The Mexican Revolution had begun. Villa threw in his lot with the revolution, capturing the towns of both Chihuahua and Ciudad Juárez for the Maderoists. Though he claimed a political “awakening,” it is hard to tell whether he believed in the cause or simply sensed which way the wind was blowing, but whatever one believes, the revolution proved to be a turning point in his life.