LACK OF PLANNIN 7 page

. SUPERSTITIONcan 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.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.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.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.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.

. JUST INCREDIBLY BAD JUDGMENTis 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.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.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.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.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.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.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.long fight had used up much of both the Spanish and the English powder and shot. But neither side knew just how low the enemy’s supplies were. Then the weather turned rough. To the Spanish captains, more used to sailing in the relatively placid Mediterranean, a Channel storm, with the rocky French coast nearby, was a frightening threat. Even the English pulled back to give themselves more sea room. The armada anchored along a sheltered part of the French coast near Calais. They kept their tight formation and anchored close to each other for mutual protection. There was only a few hundred feet at most between ships when the first English fire ships appeared. Fire was one of the great dreads of any sailor in the age of wooden hulls and canvas sails. Just about every element of a sailing ship was flammable. One spark could doom a ship in minutes. Cutting their anchor cables, the ships of the armada rushed away from the tar-coated, burning, and possibly gun powder-filled vessels coming at them.rapid rush out of the anchorage meant that the Spanish warships were no longer mutually supportive and in close formation. They found themselves spread out in rough weather, with some ships too far away to be assisted by the others. English sea dogs, such as Francis Drake, gathered in groups of three to as many as ten, and they swarmed the isolated Spanish warships. More than a dozen of the big Spanish galleys were lost and most of the remaining ones were captured, before the armada was able to regroup into an effective defensive formation. Spanish morale was no longer soaring. A decision had to be made on what to do next.remaining thirty of the larger ships would likely have been able to escort Parma’s army across the Channel. The ships captured by the English were not going to be ready to fight against their former owners for some time. England could still be conquered. Even if they had to wait a few weeks more than planned for Parma, the plan could still work. But Medina Sidonia made a different choice. He saw that their shot and powder were low and that the armada had nowhere to replenish. He had to suspect the English supply was also low—it was, actually, even worse than that. The English had effectively used the last of their shot and cannonballs attacking the stragglers. But Medina Sidonia did not take the chance that this was the case. The idea of another anchorage with the sea dogs hovering just out of reach likely did not appeal to him.commander of the armada decided to abandon the invasion and just get his ships back to Spain. There was always next year. At this point no mistake had been made. The strategy would work, and there was no way for the commander of the armada to know the deplorable status of his opponent’s lockers.Medina Sidonia made a mistake that cost Spain her armada.bulk of the armada was sitting low on ammunition, having already lost many of their warships at the top of the English Channel. Below them and between them and Spain was a virtually undamaged mass of English ships whose own ammunition status was unknown. If they were as low on powder and shot as his ships were, the armada could wave as they passed by and reach Spain untouched. If the English had been able to get into their nearby ports and restock, then sailing toward those ships guaranteed the loss of the armada. So instead, Medina Sidonia chose to go the other way. He ordered sailors, experienced only at sailing in the calm and warm Mediterranean and South Atlantic waters, to sail north and return to Spain by sailing around Scotland and Ireland. If the armada had been a marching army, and they had a chance to walk back unopposed, this would have made sense. Being a land commander and looking at the maps, this decision must have seemed like an excellent choice to Medina Sidonia. But the armada was not an army just taking a different route to march back to friendly territory. It was a fleet sailing into unknown and unfamiliar waters. Waters where weather was a factor, and the weather in those North Sea waters was always fierce. A seemingly safe route that would have served an army well on land was a disaster for the armada.the cold northern water and almost two weeks of storms, less than half of the remaining ships in Medina Sidonia’s armada lived to see Spain again. His decision to avoid the sea dogs and go “safely” north changed history. It began the age of English dominance of the seas, and it marked the beginning of the collapse of the Spanish empire. Too much of Spain’s wealth had been spent on the armada, and with the effective loss of control of the seas, the wealth that flowed in from the Indies began to dry up. This was not the only cause for Spain’s economic collapse, but within a few decades after the armada turned north, Spain had been relegated from the leading power of Europe to an incidental player.

. DEAD-END SCIENCEscientists from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries defended the phlogiston explanation of heat and chemical change. One of the best thinkers of his time, George Ernest Stahl, popularized the idea while a professor at the University of Halle from 1694 to 1716. Phlogiston was an “element” said to be contained in all substances that could be burned. It was often described as “inflammable earth.” Phlogiston was used to explain and predict all things relating to heat and fire. Indeed, Joseph Priestley, considered the father of modern chemistry, went to his grave defending the phlogiston theory. It was thought to be a material that did not just contain heat but was itself the heat. Phlogiston was without color, smell, weight, or taste. When you burned something, you were dephlogisticating it—that is, driving all of the phlogiston out of the material. Often this left behind only ash.is how phlogiston seemed to work: Such chemicals as charcoal and sulfur were thought to be made almost completely of phlogiston. This was because when you burn them there is nothing left except a little ash, which was explained as the impurities in the phlogiston. After all, if you dephlogisticate a material that was made up mostly of some form of the heat itself, there will be little left behind.another illustrative example: If one room was warm and the other cool and you opened a door between them, then the phlogiston, like any gas or liquid, would seek to balance itself between the two rooms. Phlogiston would flow into the cool room and out of the warm, phlogiston-filled room; and since it’s the essence of heat, it would raise the temperature of the cooler room and lower that in the warmer room. Eventually the amount of phlogiston would level out between the two rooms, and they would be the same temperature.remarkable thing about this amazing theory was that it seemed to have worked, and it had been used by eminent and respected early scientists for an entire century before it was finally proven wrong. It was not until science progressed to the point that researchers understood the fluid dynamics of the second example and Lavoisier explained the chemical changes that occurred in burning charcoal that the idea of phlogiston died out. This disproving was done by Antoine-Laurent de Lavoisier at the end of the eighteenth century. He did this when he discovered oxygen and determined the actual chemical reactions that occur during combustion. Phlogiston theory was perhaps the most persistent, widespread, and totally wrong mistake made by scientists all through the age when science, as we know it today, was developed.

. ALL COURAGE AND NO PLANApril 16, 1746, about six miles from Inverness, on the Drumossie moor, Bonnie Prince Charlie and his ragtag army of Highlanders faced the duke of Cumberland in what would be the decisive battle in the Jacobite cause. Charlie fought on behalf of his father, the Old Pretender, James Francis Edward Stuart, in a bid to seize power from George II. He was expected to lead the Jacobites into glory, thereby laying the ground for what might have been the rebirth of the Scottish nation under Stuart rule. Instead, he led his men to slaughter and forever buried any dreams of a ruling Stuart dynasty.Jacobite cause had its beginnings in the Tudor dynasty. When Elizabeth I of England failed to produce an heir, the Scottish king James VI came to rule as king of both England and Scotland. The Stuart dynasty, which traced its lineage back to the daughter of Robert the Bruce, became the supreme ruling power over a united English-Scottish empire. After the Cromwellian takeover and the beheading of Charles I, a new enemy of the people arose—the Catholics, who were viewed with great suspicion. The Anti-Catholic Test Acts, put into commission at the time of Charles II, required that all holders of public office be Protestant.posed certain problems for James II, brother and heir to Charles II. James lived in exile in France during the English Civil War and even served in the French army. If being raised as a Frenchman weren’t bad enough, he was also a Catholic. Although his two daughters, Mary and Anne, grew up as Protestants, it was not enough to secure his popularity with the people. He did not have the charm and charisma that his brother had. He also seemed to lack a sense of humor and was even nicknamed “Dismal Jimmie” by the Scots. Suspicions grew when James issued the Declaration of Indulgence establishing freedom of worship for all Catholics.of James invited his daughter Mary and her Dutch husband, William of Orange, to take over as joint rulers of England and Scotland. When William landed and advanced toward London, James fled the country. William and Mary took their oaths of coronation on April 21, 1689. Despite the newly established monarchy, James still had a small group of supporters, mostly in the Scottish Highlands. They were known as the Jacobites (from Jacobus, the Latin version of his name). His only real chance at regaining power came in 1690 in Boyne, Ireland. But James lost his nerve, turned tail, and ran. His lack of courage earned him the Irish nickname Seamus an Chaca, or James the Shite.defeat did not silence the Jacobite movement. For the next fifty years, there were plots, skirmishes, revolts, uprisings, and massacres all in the name of Dismal Jimmie. But in 1746 a new champion for the cause swept his way across the British Isles. Though James II had long been deceased, his grandson Charles Edward Stuart decided to take up the challenge. By this time, most of Scotland was apathetic toward the Jacobites. Support for them came mostly from the Highlanders, who were looked on by the city dwellers as being mostly bandits. The rest of the Scottish populace favored the Hanoverian king, George II. And, it should be noted that George was the great-great-grandson of James I, thereby making him a direct descendant of the Stuart line, a fact polished over by many historians. The main objection to him seemed to be more about the fact that he was German and less about his lineage. So, the Italian-born, French-speaking darling of the Highlanders sought to depose him.Bonnie prince teamed up with Lord George Murray, who became his field commander. Together, the two took Edinburgh and then trounced Hanoverian forces at Prestonpans. They pressed on to England, where the people feared the worst. There was a run on the bank in London and general panic ensued. The panic proved to be premature. When Charlie realized he had no support in England, he turned his forces around just 100 miles outside of London and headed back to Scotland. He decided to go head-to-head with the king’s son, William Augustus, the duke of Cumberland. So far, Charlie had been considerably lucky. He controlled much of Scotland and had his followers convinced he could easily take the rest. But facing a force of 9,000 trained British soldiers with 5,000 untrained Highlanders was folly. Going against the advice of Lord Murray, the prince continued onward and concentrated his forces on the Drumossie moor near Culloden house. He lay in wait for the British army to arrive.seems the duke had better things to do than fight a battle with the rebellious Scots. He stopped eight miles away in Nairn to celebrate his twenty-fifth birthday. When Charlie heard this, he decided to surprise the duke. He gathered his troops and attempted to march over the moors at night. The march proved too challenging for the tired, starving Highlanders, so they turned around and went back to their original position. They had exhausted themselves on the long trek through the moors and were ill-prepared for the battle yet to come. The following morning, the duke met up with the Jacobite forces.actions were well calculated and well implemented. He began with a barrage of artillery aimed directly at the Highland infantry. To parry the onslaught, the infantry ran full-on toward the enemy. The British infantry made ready. They stood fast in three ranks, one kneeling, the next stooping, and the third standing. Cumberland had another trick up his sleeve. He had trained his men to attack to their left in order to evade the Highlanders’ target, while thrusting under the sword arm. His plan was effective. Hanoverian forces rendered the Highlanders’ assault on the left flank useless and managed to outflank them on the right. The Jacobites began a hasty retreat. In the end, 1,000 Highlanders lost their lives and 1,000 more were taken prisoner.became a fugitive with a £30,000 price on his head. He eventually made his way back to France and died a rather anticlimactic death four decades later, after many years of drowning his sorrows in the bottle and reminiscing on what might have been. Had he been more patient, the Bonnie prince might have become the reigning king of an independent Scottish nation. He needed only to concentrate his efforts in the north instead of trying to gather support in the staunchly Hanoverian English counties. Because of his poor judgment and lack of skills as a military leader, Charles ensured that the Jacobite cause would be lost in the annals of history forever.

. POOR PRIORITIESrevolution by the American colonists was just about over. The revolt had begun with a number of successes. When those victories failed to get the Coercive Acts, stamp tax, quartering of soldiers, and takeover of the courts rescinded by the British Parliament, the cry for rights changed into a demand for independence. But just as the Continental Congress passed the Declaration of Independence in July 1776, the tide turned.July 4, the first 10,000 of 30,000 veteran soldiers were carried to New York City by the Royal Navy. These were veteran red-coats who had conquered India, parts of China, a good portion of Africa, and the rest of the British empire. Lord Howe and his experienced regulars quickly won three battles and drove Washington’s army from the colony’s largest and most important city. Washington was driven from New York and then New Jersey. His army was broken and supplies were dwindling. Only the onset of winter forced Howe to go into winter quarters and allowed the rebels to escape to a primitive camp at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania.of the soldiers at Valley Forge had enlisted with Washington after his capture of Boston that last spring. After months of defeat and retreat their morale was beyond poor. Desertion was a problem and hard to prevent. There seemed little risk in deserting a rebel army that was close to total defeat. The risk of staying with it and being punished by the victorious crown seemed a greater threat.one wanted to back a loser. The financiers of the revolution risked retaliation that included loss of their wealth and even hanging. The price was too high when defeat seemed all but certain. So the revolution’s finances and credit were disappearing. The soldiers at Valley Forge were short everything from food to clothing.British, warm and comfortable in the nearby cities, expected there would not even be any more fighting. By the spring, what little remained of the colonial army was expected to dissolve. They were almost right. That might well have been the case if one of their most experienced officers had not handed the colonials a victory that restored their morale and changed the entire face of the war.1776, there was no group more hated than the Hessian regiments. They were used to foraging, which meant taking what they needed, as was typical in European wars. The German soldiers spoke little English. Not being able to communicate, they had little sympathy for the “rebels” and often didn’t bother to determine whether someone was a royalist or a rebel before treating them badly. The Hessians are today often called “mercenaries,” but in reality they were from Hanover and so was the king of England, George III. They were German, not British, and they were not well paid. They were working under their own sovereign as well. So they were not true mercenaries.needed a victory, but no one in that time fought in the dead of winter. But right across the river were garrisons of the hated Hessian soldiers in their winter quarters. A victory over them would be doubly effective. Today we have often heard about how Washington crossed the Delaware River amid the ice floes and surprised the Hessians, and in hindsight it seemed as if the conclusion was foregone. This is very, very far from the truth.the plan called for two groups of rebel soldiers to attack across the river. The other failed to make the crossing at all. And the success of Washington’s attack was far from guaranteed. He led 2,400 men, some poorly armed and partially trained, against nearly 1,500 crack troops who would be on the defensive.rebels’ only edge would be surprise. To ensure they had this, the river crossing was done in darkness. The problem was that the same darkness and fierce cold that hid them also slowed the crossing. Instead of arriving at Trenton to attack at sunrise on December 26, 1776, the Americans were still marching toward the Hessians. Not all of the local people were rebels. In fact, at this point many were still loyal to the crown. As the army marched down the road toward Trenton in the very early-morning hours, a loyalist farmer realized who they were and hurried off to warn the Hessian commander, Colonel Johann Rall.farmer got as far as the colonel’s door. There a guard stopped him and would not budge. Tradition says the colonel was deep into a game of either chess or cards and had left orders not to be disturbed. The farmer hurriedly scrawled a note to Colonel Rall. The note reached the colonel, but was in English. Rather than trying to summon a translator that early and leave his game, the colonel put the warning note, unread, into his pocket. From that point on victory was inevitable. Washington’s 2,400 rebels surprised the Hessians, many of whom were asleep and mostly hungover or still drunk from the prior night’s Christmas celebrations. For the loss of four wounded and no one killed, Washington’s army killed 22 Hessians, wounded 94, and captured almost 1,000; the remaining 400 German soldiers scattered into the countryside. Just as important, Washington captured the food, clothing, and supplies of a well-equipped British regiment.Colonel Rall bothered to read the farmer’s note there is a high probability that the well-trained Hessians would have thrown back any rebel attack. Another defeat, combined with the ending of many of his men’s enlistments, would have broken Washington’s army. The Revolutionary War would have ended with a victory for Lord Howe, and today America might still be a British colony. The world would have been turned upside down.

. FINANCED HIS OWN WORST NIGHTMAREare few records of someone in such a position of power that he managed, by his own decisions, to destroy himself and end a 1,000-year-old dynasty. This feat was accomplished by Louis XVI of France. Louis had taken the throne in 1774 and inherited his nation’s antipathy toward Britain. His father, Louis XV, in 1771 had managed to reduce the power of France’s parliament until it was nothing more than an advisory body. When the American colonies revolted, this seemed a good chance for France to hurt Britain at no risk to itself. Over the next five years, France sent aide and soldiers to assist the American colonists. This may well have made all the difference: The French fleet holding the bay outside Yorktown in 1881 ensured Cornwallis had to surrender and guaranteed American independence. XVI’s American intervention was a foreign policy coup that greatly discomforted the British. But in the long run, it did more harm to his own monarchy. Supporting the American war was very expensive. It virtually bankrupted the royal treasury. This, in turn, meant that the French financial system had to be modernized and taxation changed so that the losses could be replaced. A specially summoned session of the Assembly of Notables was called to approve the changes. They refused to do so. This left the French king with only one more place to turn for approval of his financial plan. This was to summon the Estates General, the grand parliament with representatives from every level of French society. That was where his encouragement of the American Revolution and its popularity in France once more turned on the king who made it successful.justify their independence, the American rebels had to make the point that the rights of men were more important than the prerogatives of any monarch. The Americans meant the will of George III of Britain, but the ideas also took root among the intellectuals of France. When the Americans won, again with Louis XVI’s help, the writings of such men as Paine and Adams were reflected in those of Rousseau and the leading minds of Paris.financed and legitimized a revolution against a monarchy in the name of the rights of men, it should not have come as a surprise when the Estates General took the same view. Only this time, the king was Louis himself. The Estates General not only didn’t pass the laws the king had summoned them to consider but instead began to rebuild the entire French government based on the philosophy begun by the leaders of the American Revolution. By 1787, the most powerful king in Europe had become a very limited, constitutional monarch who derived his power not from his throne but from the people. By 1789, Louis XVI, never an active leader, had withdrawn from involvement in the government and spent all his time on his hobbies of locksmithing and masonry. By 1793, the man who legitimized revolution in the name of the rights of men and financed the first one was beheaded in the name of the people of France.Louis XVI, financing and supporting the American Revolution put into motion results, attitudes, and actions that cost him first his throne and then his head. For him, and perhaps the thousands of those who died in the Terror of the French Revolution, it was a mistake that changed the world. It also was the mistake that ensured American independence and led to the rise of Napoleon.

Date: 2015-02-16; view: 1050