Crossbow pages

In medieval times it was common for aristocrats to employ boys as young as seven in their households. These were often the sons of other nobles, and the practice of passing one’s son on to a neighbouring lord would be a means of establishing friendly relationships or maybe of discharging a debt. 

The boys would work as “pages”, doing menial jobs within the household, but would also be treated well and be given education and military training, including being taught to ride a horse. 

One aspect of the military training would be learning to use weapons, but there would be limits on what weapons boys could use, given that lances and longbows were large weapons that required considerable physical force to operate them. However, one weapon that a young boy could use was the crossbow. 

Crossbows were operated by winding the “string” back with a handle, which needed far less physical effort than that involved in firing a longbow. Boy pages were therefore expected to be able to use a crossbow should an aristocrat’s castle come under siege. A child could thus be an effective killer without having to engage in hand-to-hand combat with an enemy. 

Boy pages would also be expected to accompany their lord into battle, their main duties being to dress and arm their employer. Even if they did not use a crossbow in the field, they could assist the archers by winding the crossbows between shots. 

Medieval military etiquette decreed that boy pages could not be targeted during a battle. This convention was ignored by the French side during the Bartle of Agincourt in 1415, a circumstance that so annoyed King Henry V that he absolved himself from another aspect of the military code and proceeded to slit the throats of his prisoners.

© John Welford

The Children's Crusade, 1212

Many stories have been told about the Children's Crusade of 1212, and it is not easy to distinguish fact from myth, but it does appear that there was such an event and it did not end well.

The Crusades were a series of attempts to wrest the “holy places” of Palestine back from Muslim rule. The First Crusade was sanctioned by Pope Urban II in 1095 and the final official Crusade – the Ninth – took place in 1271-2. There were also several unauthorized attempts to achieve the same (or a similar) end, and the Children's Crusade was one of these.

A young French shepherd boy, Stephen of Cloyes, had the idea that Jesus had called him to lead a peaceful crusade that merely sought to convert Muslims to Christianity. Stephen was apparently able to perform miracles – or what other people might regard as such – and he gathered a sizable following as a result.

As many as 30,000 adults and children from across Europe rallied to the cause and headed south to the Mediterranean Sea. Stephen had claimed that Jesus had promised that the sea would part like the Red Sea in the book of Exodus, thus giving them safe passage to the Holy Land. However, not surprisingly, this did not happen.

Many of the Crusaders gave up at this stage and turned back, but some were more determined and looked for other means of progressing in their quest. They were therefore easy prey for slave traders who were only too happy to give them free passage aboard their ships, which promptly headed for the slave markets of Tunisia. Some of the ships were lost at sea, with the loss of their human cargoes.

The whole affair was therefore a dismal failure, as was always likely to be the case.

© John Welford

The sinking of Vice-Admiral Tryon

Vice-Admiral Sir George Tryon died on 22^nd June 1893, at sea in the eastern Mediterranean. As he acknowledged shortly before going under, it was entirely his own fault.

Born in January 1832 into a wealthy Northamptonshire family who owned a country estate, George Tryon was educated at Eton and entered the Navy at the age of 16. His promotion through the ranks was rapid, although much of his experience was away from the sea. He became a Vice-Admiral (following a failed bid to enter Parliament and a post that gave him responsibility for coastguard buildings) in 1889.

As a Vice-Admiral during peacetime, his main responsibility was to direct “naval manoeuvres”, which in layman’s terms means “war games”. It was during one such operation in 1893 that disaster struck.

Tryon had a reputation for keeping his captains on their toes by issuing orders at the last minute and seeing how responsive they were. His aim, as he saw it, was to encourage initiative and quick thinking. It was unfortunate that these were qualities that he did not always demonstrate himself.

On the day in question, Vice-Admiral Tryon was aboard his flagship HMS Victoria at the head of a double column of eight battleships and three light cruisers. They were steaming in two rows about 1,200 yards apart.

Tryon gave orders that the two rows were to turn inwards towards each other in a complete 180 degree manoeuvre, after which they would steam in the opposite direction before turning at 90 degrees and coming to anchor.

There was one huge problem with this idea, which was that the turning circle of a battleship was at least 800 yards. This was pointed out to the Vice-Admiral by some of his officers, and he agreed to increase the distance between the columns to 1,600 yards, which would just be sufficient if the ships continued at their current speed.

However, not long after the new formation had been adopted, Sir George went back to Plan A. Just for good measure, he ordered the ships to increase their speed. It would now be impossible for the manoeuvre to be made safely. All the senior officers knew this, with the sole exception of Vice-Admiral Sir George Tryon.

He then raised a signal flag to order the ships to make the 180 degree turns. Rear-Admiral Albert Hastings Markham, who was in charge of HMS Camperdown at the head of the opposite column, had serious doubts about the order – which he knew to be unsafe – and he hesitated to obey it. Sir George sent a tetchy signal that was visible to all the other captains, to the effect of “what are you waiting for?”

So the turn was made. Knowing Vice-Admiral Tryon’s reputation for pulling rabbits out of hats, it might have been the case that everyone was expecting another order to come that would have saved the situation. But that was not the case.

HMS Camperdown hit HMS Victoria and tore a large hole below the waterline, causing Sir George’s flagship to sink in 13 minutes. Fortunately, none of the other ships in the column had followed the order as quickly as the two at the front and there were no other collisions.

Vice-Admiral Tryon went to the bottom along with 358 members of his crew. One of the 357 survivors was John Jellicoe, an officer who would later become Admiral of the Fleet and take charge at the Battle of Jutland in 1916.

So why did the disaster happen? There was an enquiry, at which various explanations were put forward. One was that Sir George made a simple arithmetical mistake. Another was that the intention had been for the columns to cross each other as they turned, with one ship passing behind its opposite number. 

However, what was going on in Vice-Admiral Tryon’s head will never be known.

© John Welford

The assassination of King Carlos of Portugal

The Kingdom of Portugal began in 1139 when Afonso I (“The Conqueror”) declared himself King. It ended in 1910 when the last monarch, Manuel II, was chased into exile and Portugal became a republic. During that time only one King was assassinated, that being Carlos, who was the last King but one.

Carlos came to the throne in 1889, at the age of 26, and proceeded to demonstrate his unsuitability for the role by maintaining a profligate lifestyle at the time of a severe economic downturn. As the crisis got worse and republican agitation grew, Carlos appointed Joao Franco as Prime Minister, which meant virtual dictator. The popular perception was that Franco was siphoning off money from the treasury to fund Carlos’s personal spending at the same time as causing great distress to the people with his attempts to get the economy back on track.

Eventually, government oppression coupled with hatred of King Carlos led to open revolt and the deaths of Carlos and his son Luis Filipe. They were gunned down on 1^st February 1908 as they rode in an open carriage through Lisbon. Their two assassins, who were immediately killed by Carlos’s bodyguards, may have been members of the Carbonaria, a republican secret society.

Carlos’s 18-year-old second son, Manuel, was also in the carriage but only suffered a minor injury. He was declared King but only reigned for two years before a second Carbonaria revolt, in October 1910, ended the monarchy for all time. Manuel spent the rest of his life in England, where he died in 1932.

© John Welford

The slapping of Pope Boniface VIII

King Philip IV of France (reigned 1285 to 1314) is known to history as Philip the Fair, on account of his blonde hair and good looks, but whether he acted fairly towards the Roman Catholic Church and Pope Boniface VIII (Pope from 1294 to 1303) is a matter for debate.

Philip and Boniface shared certain character traits, such as arrogance, cunning and ruthlessness. Boniface had shown his true character by the way he became Pope, namely by forcing Pope Celestine V to resign and then taking his place, after which Celestine was imprisoned and died ten months later. 

Philip was keen to gain some of the wealth of the Church for himself, so he levied taxes on the clergy and imprisoned a French bishop as a means of gaining secular control over the clergy. Boniface’s response was to excommunicate Philip.

Philip reacted with fury and dispatched a small army, under Guillaume de Nogaret, to confront the Pope at his summer palace at Anagni, which is about 45 miles south-east of Rome. Nogaret was joined along the way by Sciarra Colonna, who had his own quarrel with Pope Boniface.

Nogaret and Colonna reached the palace on the night of 7^th September 1303, and had no trouble the following morning in breaking down the barricaded doors in order to confront Pope Boniface. The cornered Pope, now effectively a prisoner of King Philip, expected to be killed on the spot, but Nogaret preferred to humiliate Boniface instead.

Nogaret and Collona openly discussed in front of Boniface and his papal court what they should do with him, including executing him on the spot, which reduced the elderly man to a quivering wreck. They then read out a list of charges that Boniface should answer, including heresy, idolatry and sodomy, slapping him across the face as each one was announced. They then left the room.

Boniface was now a broken man, having been mortified and treated with contempt. The excommunication of Philip was promptly forgotten about and Boniface returned to Rome. He died there only a month later.

This was a rare instance in medieval times of a Pope who tried to impose his will on a civil ruler but was then thoroughly put in his place.

© John Welford