The Hinge Factor: How Chance and Stupidity Have Changed History
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The Hinge Factor: How Chance and Stupidity Have Changed History
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Overview
Writing with the style and flair that has made him an award-winning war correspondent, Durschmied takes us through the major battles of history, from the battlefields of ancient Greece to the Gulf War. In a series of gripping narratives, he vividly recreates the crucial events in all their mayhem and confusion while pointing out the decisive moments that changed the course of history. We see Agincourt, where rain combined with French arrogance to give Henry V the day; the Crimea, where a badly worded order led to the disastrous charge of the Light Brigade; and colonial Africa, where an attack by African killer bees, described by the London Times as Germany’s secret weapon, repulsed an Allied invasion. And in a chilling epilogue, we are given a disturbing glimpse of the secret attempt by Libya to buy atomic weapons from China for use against Israel.
Drawing from a variety of sources, including personal accounts such as soldiers’ diaries and letters home, The Hinge Factor is an instructive, fascinating look at how the unpredictable, the absurd, and the bizarre have shaped the face of history in war.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781628721775 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Arcade |
| Publication date: | 10/01/2011 |
| Sold by: | SIMON & SCHUSTER |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 416 |
| Sales rank: | 972,702 |
| File size: | 3 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
A Wooden Horse
Troy, 1184 BC
'Do not believe this horse. Whatever it may be, I fear the Greeks, even when bringing gifts'
Virgil's Aeneid, 20 BC
The year is 1184 BC.
A god descends from heaven; disguised as a swan he lies with Leda. Their love results in a daughter, Helen, a maiden so fair that every prince desires her for his wife. She chooses Menelaus, King of Sparta. One day a handsome young prince comes to visit them. He is Paris, son of King Priam of Troy, a fortified city on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean. Paris is royally received but does not reveal the purpose of his visit.
Before Paris left his native Troy, King Priam had been warned that his son would bring ruin to his country. And so it came to be. The high drama began the day Paris was visited by three goddesses, Aphrodite, Hera and Athena. They handed him a golden apple and asked him to choose the fairest among them. Hera promised to make him Lord over Asia and Europe, Athena said that she would lead him to great victory over the Greeks, and Aphrodite offered him the loveliest maiden on Earth. The Judgement of Paris went to Aphrodite, goddess of love. She told him about Helen of Sparta.
While Menelaus leaves for Crete to do war, Paris takes Helen to Troy. It is not certain if she follows for love or by force. On his return from Crete, King Menelaus calls upon all the Greek heroes to help him punish the wicked deed and lay Troy in ashes. Under the leadership of Agamemnon, the Greek Army is strong. But so is Troy. King Priam has brave sons, the bravest is Hector, who has only one equal, the champion of the Greeks, Achilles. For years on end they fight it out, and for many years victory wavers. Once again, a fierce battle rages, when Helen appears on the ramparts. Her face is so lovely that all fighting stops, only Achilles and Hector continue in single combat. Athena hands her spear to Achilles who drives it into Hector's throat. 'Return my body to my father,' begs the dying Trojan hero.
'I would that I could make myself devour your raw flesh for the evil you have brought upon me,' replies Achilles. The Greek warrior then drags the slain Hector behind his chariot around the walls of Troy. Aphrodite gives Paris a poisoned arrow. Paris takes aim and shoots it into the Greek's only vulnerable spot, his heel. Achilles dies. Then another arrow strikes Paris, and he dies.
But Troy holds out. After a siege which has lasted ten years the war has reached a stalemate. Unless the Greeks can break down the walls they will never conquer the city fortress and must accept defeat. Odysseus, the cleverest of the Greeks, devises a cunning plan: to build a wooden horse, slightly taller than the Scaean Gate. Then hide Greek warriors inside the horse, and leave it standing outside the walls of Troy. That done, the Greeks set sail, but hide their fleet behind the nearest island. To make sure the Trojans fall for his ruse, Odysseus leaves Sinon the Greek behind who convinces the Trojans that they must pull the horse into the city as a votive offering to Athena.
King Priam falls for the Greek trickery and orders the horse to be brought in. For this, the Trojans will have to break a hole into their walls. Troy's chief priest Laocoòn warns his king: 'I fear the Greeks, even when bringing gifts' Priam, a ruthless potentate, is infuriated that a mere priest dares to question the will of his king. Yet Laocoòn is not the only one who fears deceit. The king's beautiful daughter, Cassandra, stands up to her father and echoes the priest's warning. 'Oh miserable people, poor fools, you do not understand at all your evil fate'
The judicious counsel by the philosopher-priest nearly convinces the Trojans, when destiny takes a hand. Two serpents rush from the sea to crush Laocoòn and his two sons. Fate comes to pass, a doom destined for so many prudent sages over the next three millenniums. People never listen to their prophets, rather they watch them being silenced and stride blindly forth to disaster. The Trojans remove the lintel stone from the Scaean Gate, which brings their walls tumbling down. They drag the horse to Athena's temple and celebrate a great feast. 'With song and great rejoicing, they brought death in, treachery and destruction'
In the middle of the night Sinon unlocks a secret door beneath the Wooden Horse. Odysseus and his warriors steal out while the rest of the Greek host rushes in through the breach and sets the city on fire. By the time the Trojans rise from their drunken stupor, blood flows in rivulets. This is not fighting, it is butchery. Desperate men bear down on each other, killing before they are killed. Trojans take off their own armour and put on that of the dead Greeks. Greeks, believing they are being joined by their own units, pay for that error with their lives. From the rooftops, Trojan women hurl burning beams on their attackers, a palace tower crushes a great number of Greeks. But the contest is unequal, too many Trojans have already died and the Greeks smash their way into the palace. King Priam is brutally struck down in front of his wives and children. With his death the Trojans lose heart and the Greeks rape, pillage and plunder. They kill the men, hurl the children from the battlements, and carry the women into slavery. Troy dies.
Only Aeneas, Aphrodite's son, escapes the bloodshed. He crosses the sea and the winds push his vessel onto a distant shore, at the mouth of the River Tiber. There he founds a town which is to become Rome, the city state that will eventually defeat the conquerors of Troy.
Ultimate justice shrouded in the veil of mythology.
What really took place that night, three thousand years ago, we can only guess. 'To the gods I owe this woeful war\ proclaimed a downcast Priam.
We may forget about an active participation by the gods, and turn towards more strategic, military and economic aspects. In the late nineteenth century, a German amateur archaeologist, Heinrich Schliemann, discovered ruins of what may have been Priam's Troy, a fortified city founded by the warrior tribe of Phrygians on the Mound of Hissarlik. From its geographic location, we can assume that Greek and Trojan maritime ambitions clashed. Vital control over the Hellespont (today's Dardanelles), the Aegean Sea, and with it, the trade routes along the Mediterranean, was at stake.
As for the ten-year siege, no siege could have possibly lasted ten continuous years; without harvesting seasonal grain, armies on both sides would have starved. Therefore, the war must have been a series of raids, and possibly actions fought by sea.
A vital factor which should not to be overlooked is the warning by the philosopher Laocoòn, which, assuming that Troy was run by a despot, shows opposition to tyrannical rule, a trend carried to new summits by the greatest of Greek philosophers, Socrates, and his disciples.
Ten years passed and nothing happened. Suddenly, everything was resolved in a single instant. The Wooden Horse is certainly not a figment of fiction; ruse has always been employed during the siege of fortified places, the simplest way to put the vigilance of the defenders to sleep and breech the walls. Thus, the story of Odysseus' Horse is something tangible, a conquest by stratagem.
Strange are the circular paths of history. The Greeks learned from the Trojans, Trojan refugees founded Rome, and the Romans conquered Greece, only to adopt its culture.
CHAPTER 2The Loss of the True Cross
The Horns of Hattin, 4 July 1187
'1 shall not lay down my armsuntil there is no more infidel on earth.' 3 Sultan Saladin, recorded by Beha ed-Din
IbnShedad, 1187
Spread out before the Frankish host lay a desert, hot and dry, the Plain of Baruf. To venture into it during the heat of the day would mean courting certain death for a great army of iron-clad and chain-mailed knights. Yet Guy de Lusignan, King of Jerusalem, ordered them to do just that. A tall man approached the king. He was dressed in chain mail covered by a white cloak with the embroidered crimson Cross of the Holy Quest. Around his waist, dangling from a leather belt, was his long, straight sword. The baron's head was protected by the type of bullet shaped helmet with nasal guard worn by Crusader knights. He was a heroic figure of medieval history: Raymond III, Count of Tripoli. 'My liege, why are you ordering your host to move into these barren lands?'
To succour your lady in distress.' The king referred to a message received from the Lady Eschiva, Countess of Tripoli, besieged by the Saracens inside the walls of Raymond's fortress of Tiberias, situated on the Lake of Galilee.
Raymond, who knew that the leader of the Turks, the Sultan Saladin, would always conform to Saracen honour and never hurt a woman of rank, also understood that the same Saladin was as smart as a desert fox. He wished for nothing more than to lure the Frankish army onto a hasty rescue mission that could only then lead to disaster. That's why Saladin had allowed the messenger, dispatched by Lady Eschiva, to pass without hindrance. 'Sire,' replied Raymond, 'if you wish to do combat with Saladin so, let this be near our fortress of Acre. If matters go ill we can count on the town to march to our rescue. On the other hand, if God is with us, we can blunt the Saracens.'
'Blunt them?' shouted one of the noble barons, Reynald de Chatillon, the Lord of Kerak. 'Blunt them? What perfidy do I hear?'
'Aye, blunt them,' replied the Count of Tripoli, 'and blood them as well, and Saladin will be so crushed that he must flee the Holy Land, never to return. My liege,' he turned towards the king, 'out in the desert, Saladin has the advantage of mobility, his strength will ride over us. Then who is there to defend Jerusalem?'
The king tended to agree with Raymond's wise counsel.
That night, after a repast which King Guy had shared with his barons, the loom of intrigue, vanity and ambition began to weave. The cunning Gérard de Ridefort, Master of the Templars, came into the king's tent. 'Sire, the Count of Tripoli wishes us to cringe like cowards.'
The king, fearful of the Templar, a man of great power who had been instrumental in helping him usurp the crown from the rightful heir, wavered. He pulled back the flaps of his tent to look at the night sky, at the same stars his adversary would be looking at on the other side of the desert. His mind was engaged with the problem to seek certainty which might justify his act. As it has happened so many times to other men of ultimate power, having staked their whole future on one decision, he too became uncertain, he feared that his travel order might lead to tragic consequences. But Ridefort was not about to let pass an opportunity to prove himself invaluable to his king. 'My King, you know the Count of Tripoli doesn't like you. He speaks treason and only cares to uphold his truce with the Turk. We are of superior mettle to the pagan. I counsel you to go from hence and march on to glorious victory.'
That same night, it is said that a servant of the king spotted an eagle with seven darts in its claws pass overhead. He heard it scream: 'Beware, Jerusalem!'
Yes, there was treachery in the air, and foolishness, but it did not come from the Count of Tripoli, a knight who had studied Saladin's generalship. He knew that the Sultan would lay wait for them in ambush. One last time, before sunrise, the count tried to change the king's mind. 'Roi Guy, I warn you, do not stir from this place or Saladin will assuredly set upon us in the desert.'
Confronted by the only baron who had failed to support his claim for the throne of Jerusalem, the king now turned on the knight, and spoke furiously: 'It is not for you to tell your king what to do. I want my knights to mount up and prepare to move for Tiberias.'
And so, the Frankish King of Jerusalem headed for a disaster of his own making.
The beginning of the Crusades can be set with the defeat of the armies of the Eastern Empire, at Manzikert in 1071, by the Seldjuk Turks' rider hordes which spilled from the steppes of Asia and adopted Islam. Constantinople, despite its ongoing quarrel with the Church of Rome, asked the Pope for his help to recover Asia Minor. In 1095, Pope Urban II launched the First Crusade, an adventure which, even by today's standards, can be considered unique. Godfrey de Bouillon led a host of French nobility, knights from the military orders on their 'Way to the Cross. His followers were promised forgiveness for their sins and salvation for eternity. By 1099, the Crusaders had captured the City of God - a victory stained by the massacre of Jerusalem's entire Muslim population. This led directly to a holy Jihad which lasted the next two centuries, and, in retrospect, has never ended. The first Frankish Crusaders founded the Kingdom of Jerusalem. For nearly a hundred years, all went well, the Christians held the walled towns and strong places, such as the Acre, Jaffa, Tyre or the Kerak des Chevaliers, while the countryside was beset by roving bands of Saracens. It was not until the disastrous defeat of the Eastern Emperor Manuel at Myriocephalum in 1176, that events began to move towards their final climax. Without Byzantine support the Frankish knights had no longer sufficient men to hold out against the forces of Islam brought against them in Palestine. Christians and Muslims moved rapidly towards a confrontation.
To make matters worse, the age of chivalry in a quest for the Holy Cross had passed to a ragamuffin band of barons, eager to fill their pockets. Reynald de Chatillon was one of the adventurers who had come to the Holy Land to seek fortune. Instead of proving his valour as a defender of the True Faith, he seduced the widow of the Prince of Antioch, who became so besotted by his charms that she gave him the key to her provinces. Quickly tired of her ageing charms he rejected her to marry another noble maiden, the Lady of Kerak, and then continued with his business, which was to rob caravans. Another knave was Gérard de Ridefort, who had applied a ruse to get himself elected Master of the Templars. He then used his noble warriors to terrorise and plunder helpless citizens. The most vicious of all was the Patriarch of Jerusalem, Heraclius, a 'chaste monk' whose mistress was a notorious prostitute, known to all in the Holy City as 'The Patriarchess'. This unholy threesome was to lead the Kingdom of the Franks to its downfall.
Confronting this villainy was the noble Raymond III, Count of Tripoli, the appointed Regent of Jerusalem and one who upheld his oath to his child-king, Baldwin V. But the feeble infant died, and Guy de Lusignan, another adventurer who had married the king's aunt, usurped the crown. Raymond fell out with the new ruler over this. It was a grave blow to the cause of Christianity, since Raymond was the only baron who enjoyed the trust of Saladin. In 1185, the Frankish prince and the Saracen sultan had established a truce, based on mutual trust and the word chivalry. It was only after the incident at the Springs of Cresson, when the Saracens were about to invade Galilee, that his fidelity to the Christian cause forced Raymond to rejoin his liege.
At the end of the twelveth century, the Frankish Kingdom of Jerusalem was faced by the greatest of all warrior sultans, the fabled Salah ed-Din, or Saladin. He was a Turk whose ancestors had migrated from the foot of the Altai Mountains of Central Asia. In the tenth century, that warrior tribe came into contact with Islam. It can be said that the conversion of the Turks to Islam had a similar impact on the Orient as Teutonic Christianism had for the Occident. Saladin, born as the son of a lieutenant to Sultan Nur ed-Din, Emir of Aleppo and Damascus, had proven his valour in a series of battles against the Franks as well as dissident Moslem rulers. By 1169 he became Vizier to the Caliph, and in 1171 he deposed the last of the decadent Fatimids. As new Caliph of Egypt and Vizier of Syria he now held the Crusader Kingdom in a vice, leaving open only the sea lanes to Cyprus and Europe. For thirteen years the Christians could hold Saladin at bay, until two events upset this delicate balance. The first was set in motion by Reynald de Chatillon.
One night a spy arrived at Lord Reynald's castle to inform him about the passage of a pilgrim caravan on its way to Mecca, bearing great riches. The Lord of Kerak and his followers went on a raid and seized the camel train. This caravan not only carried gold and spices, but an even greater treasure: the sister of Saladin, a maiden so fair that the nightingale praised her beauty'. The Sultan dispatched a messenger to King Guy's court to demand that his noble sister be set free immediately. Reynald de Chatillon, who expected a sizeable ransom for the royal lady, refused to obey the order by his king, claiming that, contrary to Raymond de Tripoli, he had never concluded a truce with the Saracens.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "The Hinge Factor"
by .
Copyright © 2011 Erik Durschmied.
Excerpted by permission of Skyhorse Publishing.
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Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
| List of Illustrations | xi | |
| Prologue | xiii | |
| 1. | A Wooden Horse: Troy, 1184 BC | 1 |
| 2. | The Loss of the True Cross: The Horns of Hattin, 4 July 1187 | 7 |
| 3. | A Rabble with Bare Feet: Agincourt, 25 October 1415 | 27 |
| 4. | A Barrel of Schnapps: Karansebes, 20 September 1788 | 49 |
| 5. | A Fistful of Nails: Waterloo, 18 June 1815 | 61 |
| 6. | The Fourth Order: Balaclava, 25 October 1854 | 101 |
| 7. | Three Cigars: Antietam, 17 September 1862 | 123 |
| 8. | Two Counts and One Prince: Koniggratz, 3 July 1866 | 143 |
| 9. | A Fair Fight: Spioen Kop, 24 January 1900 | 163 |
| 10. | A Slap on the Face: Tannenberg, 28 August 1914 | 189 |
| 11. | The Sting of a Bee: Tanga, 5 November 1914 | 211 |
| 12. | Der Halte Befehl: France, 21 May 1940 | 225 |
| 13. | A Shark on the Loose: North Atlantic, 27 May 1941 | 255 |
| 14. | The Sorge Enigma: Moscow, 6 December 1941 | 289 |
| 15. | One Man's Death: Vietnam, 31 January 1968 | 313 |
| 16. | And the Wall Came Tumbling Down: Berlin, 9 November 1989 | 331 |
| 17. | The Zero Factor: The Gulf, 17 January 1991 | 345 |
| Epilogue | 369 | |
| Bibliography | 379 | |
| Index | 385 |
