DEDICATION
for Marilyn
CONTENTS
DEDICATION
INTRODUCTION
371 B.C. - THE SACRED BAND
213 B.C. - ARCHIMEDES’ SECRET WEAPON
52 B.C. - UP AGAINST THE WALL
60 A.D. - WARRIOR PRINCESS
532 - DARING DANCER
732 - AN ISLAMIC EUROPE?
832 - SPOILS OF WAR
1090 - HISTORY’S HITMEN
1207 - THE SWALLOWS OF VOLOHAI
1281 - DIVINE WIND
1287 - ARMS RACE
1314 - DANGEROUS GAMES
1428 - GOD IS IN THE DETAILS
1452 - WEAPONS WIZARD
1519 - SIEGE OF BREAD AND BUTTER
1592 - FIGHTING TURTLES
1618 - A FALLING-OUT IN PRAGUE
1620 - DREBBEL’S DREAM
1642 - BEES IN BATTLE
1683 - THE SIEGE THAT GAVE BIRTH TO THE CROISSANT
1739 - WAR OF JENKINS’ EAR
1755 - A DANDY TALE
1775 - OLD MAN’S FIGHT
1775 - FIGHTING WORDS
1776 - THE GENERAL’S GAMBIT
1776 - FORGOTTEN FIGHT
1777 - MIRACLE AT SARATOGA
1778 - TRICK OR TREASON
1788 - BULLDOG OF THE BLACK SEA
1794 - REVOLUTIONARY PENCIL
1796 - AMERICA’S WORST GENERAL
1801 - BLIND MAN’S BLUFF
1802 - THE FEVER FACTOR
1803 - SHELL SHOCK
1808 - RUM REBELLION
1812 - THE WAR OF BAD TIMING
1814 - AN ARMY OF TWO
1814 - “THE STAR-SPANGLED BANNER”
1815 - BAD DAY AT WATERLOO
1816 - SPEARHEADING A REVOLUTION
1825 - BUDDING STATESMAN
1836 - DAVY’S DEATH
1839 - TEA PARTY
1842 - SPENCER’S LEGACY
1849 - TERROR FROM THE SKIES
1854 - THE ART OF WAR
1854 - DRESSED TO KILL . . . OR BE KILLED
1855 - OVER THE HUMP?
1857 - BITE THE BULLET
1859 - RED CROSS
1859 - THE PIG WAR
1861 - NATIVE GUARDS
1862 - TWENTY-FOUR NOTES
1862 - THREE CIGARS
1863 - UNLEADED ZEPPELIN
1864 - BURIAL GROUND
1864 - A BITTER HARVEST
1866 - THE DAY THE IRISH INVADED CANADA
1869 - CHEW ON THIS
1870 - PARIS POST
1889 - WINDS OF WAR
1898 - FIGHTING JOE
1903 - A TALE OF TWO GENERALS
1912 - GLORY DEFERRED
1913 - THE LAST CHARGE
1913 - FLYING CIRCUS
1914 - LIGHTS! CAMERA! WAR!
1914 - THE BATTLE OF THE LUXURY LINERS
1914 - CHRISTMAS TRUCE
1917 - THE BLACK SWALLOW OF DEATH
1917 - ONE AGAINST WAR
1921 - THE FEMALE LAWRENCE OF ARABIA
1929 - ENIGMA
1937 - THE GOOD MAN OF NANKING
1940 - THE RESCUER
1940 - THE MAN WHO SAVED BUCKINGHAM PALACE
1940 - THE LADY IS A SPY
1942 - HEROES O’HARE
1942 - GADZOOKS!
1942 - AN OFFER HE COULDN’T REFUSE
1942 - THE YOUNGEST HERO
1943 - THE WRIGHT STUFF
1943 - PIGEONS IN A PELICAN
1943 - ONE-SIDED BATTLE
1943 - A COUNRTY OF HEROES
1944 - THE GREATEST HOAX IN HISTORY
1944 - IS PARIS BURNING?
1944 - PATTON’S PRAYER
1944 - FU-GO ATTACK
1945 - FLAG DAY
1945 - SHADES OF GRAY
1945 - ABOUT FACE
1946 - FLOOR IT
1961 - BOMBS AWAY!
1964 - G.I. JOE
1966 - ACOUSTIC KITTY
1969 - THE SOCCER WAR
1969 - LIKE FATHER, LIKE SON
1982 - SCRAP METAL WAR
1991 - THE DOMINO’S THEORY
SOURCES
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
PHOTO CREDITS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ALSO BY RICK BEYER
COPYRIGHT
ABOUT THE PUBLISHER
INTRODUCTION
“War is hell,” said William Tecumseh Sherman. But it has also spawned some mind-bending true stories.
Consider: a topless dancer saved the Roman Empire, and Daniel Boone was once tried for treason. One conflict broke out because of a soccer game while another was halted so a soccer game could be played. An African-American unit managed to serve on both sides during the Civil War. And Santa Anna, the general who massacred the defenders of the Alamo, was instrumental in the invention of modern chewing gum.
I am a lifelong history enthusiast lucky enough to be earning a living doing what I love: making history documentaries. A few years ago I got the chance to produce a series of history minutes for THE HISTORY CHANNEL.® The Timelab 2000® series, hosted by Sam Waterston, was so well received that it led to my first book, The Greatest Stories Never Told. I filled that book with the kind of history I love—stories that turn your expectations upside down and leave you shaking your head in wonderment. Happily, readers and critics enjoyed the stories as much as I did.
Now I have turned my attention to the subject of war and warriors, human experience at its most concentrated and extreme. For better or worse, war has been a fundamental part of history, touching every generation and reaching into every corner of the globe. “War means fighting,” said Confederate general Nathan Bedford Forrest, “and fighting means killing.” Hard words, and true. But there is more to war than death and destruction. War can be a catalyst for change, an engine for innovation, and an arena for valor, deceit, intrigue, ambition, audacity, folly, and, yes, humor. That’s what makes military history so compelling.
Beyond the big-name battles and celebrated soldiers lies a wealth of amazing characters and unbelievable happenings. As I did for my first book, I set out on a quest for the unusual, the surprising, and the ironic—stories that cry out to be told. Here they are in your hand, gathered from more than two thousand years of history. The very first one is about an elite military unit composed entirely of gay soldiers, and the last is about Pentagon pizza deliveries predicting the start of the first Gulf War. In between you can find out why George Washington’s house was named after the inventor of grog, what the Mafia did to help win World War II, and how a Civil War general who didn’t know a note of music still managed to write a song that everybody knows.
Though I have read a fair bit of history, I was quite amazed by some of the stories I came across. Each of them has been painstakingly researched and carefully fact-checked. Many a fascinating tale has failed to make the cut because it didn’t hold up under scrutiny. The ones that made it in, bizarre as they might seem, are as true as I know how to make them.
“It is well that war is so terrible,” blurted out Robert E. Lee in the midst of a battle, “or we should grow to love it.” Human beings have been fascinated by war since the dawn of history. What could be more dramatic, after all, than high-stakes, life-and-death conflict on a grand scale? For all of war’s horrors, its pull remains strong. I hope that the stories that follow truly do “astonish, bewilder, and stupefy.” I also hope they will prompt readers to ponder the ultimate folly of war, and why it is that we never quite manage to make it a thing of the past.
371 B.C.
THE SACRED BAND
An elite fighting unit like no other.
The Spartans of ancient Greece were among the most famous and fearsome warriors of all
time. Never have there been a people more single-mindedly devoted to the military arts. Spartan boys were taken from home to attend military school at age seven, and every male between twenty and sixty had to serve in the armed forces. The result was that Sparta fielded the most powerful military force in Greece.
Nevertheless, the vaunted Spartan army was defeated by Thebes at the battle of Leuctra in 371 B.C. The turning point in the battle came when an elite Theban military unit known as the Sacred Band led a breakthrough against the Spartan right wing. Famed for both its fighting ability and its unusual makeup, the Sacred Band consisted of 300 soldiers who all had something in common.
They were gay.
This one-of-a-kind unit consisted of 150 homosexual couples. The idea was that every man would be motivated to fight to his maximum ability both to protect his lover and to avoid shaming himself in front of his lover. In modern military jargon, it was thought that this Theban “band of lovers” would enjoy a high degree of unit cohesion.
And it worked. The Sacred Band stood undefeated for more than thirty years. When it was finally overcome in battle against Macedonians, it is said that the unit was so unwilling to yield that every single man fought to the death.
“PERISH ANY MAN WHO SUSPECTS THAT THESE MEN EITHER DID OR SUFFERED ANYTHING THAT WAS BASE.”
— PHILIP II OF MACEDON, VIEWING THE BODIES OF THE SACRED BAND SLAIN IN BATTLE BY HIS ARMY
The Spartans were the original men of few words. Sparta was part of a larger area known as Laconia, which is where the word “laconic” comes from. The story is told that Philip II sent a threatening message to the Spartans, warning, “If I enter Laconia, I will level it to the ground.” The Spartans’ one-word reply: “If . . .”
The Spartans’ daily regimen was so demanding that Plutarch claimed they were the only men in the world for whom war was a welcome rest from training.
213 B.C.
ARCHIMEDES’ SECRET WEAPON
How one old man held off an entire Roman fleet.
In 213 B.C., a Roman fleet under the command of Marcus Claudius Marcellus attacked the Greek city-state of Syracuse. Marcellus was confident he could take Syracuse in five days. Instead, it took more than a year, thanks to the ingenuity of one old man.
Archimedes.
Archimedes is best remembered for shouting “Eureka!” in his bath and running through the streets naked. But there was much more to the man than that. He was Einstein and Edison combined, the greatest scientist of the ancient world, and also a brilliant inventor. As the military adviser to the king of Syracuse, he spent years devising mysterious “engines” to protect the city. When the Romans came, Syracuse put Archimedes’ machines to work.
There were large catapults capable of hurling rocks the size of wagons, and small catapults called “scorpions” that shot darts at the Romans. A giant grappling claw lifted Roman ships by the bow and smashed them against the rocks. Mousetrap-like mechanisms levered giant weights down upon Roman siege ladders.
Then there were the mirrors.
Archimedes, according to several chroniclers, created a series of mirrors that could focus the sun’s energy on ships and cause them to burst into flame—a death ray in the ancient world.
Marcellus had to admit he could not take the city by storm. He was forced to lay siege to it for many months before he finally found a way in. Archimedes was killed in the sack of the city, but not before demonstrating that the genius of one man could prove equal to all the military might in Rome.
“ARCHIMEDES USES MY SHIPS TO LADLE SEAWATER INTO HIS WINE CUPS.”
— ROMAN GENERAL MARCUS CLAUDIUS MARCELLUS
Archimedes so terrorized Roman sailors that every time they spied a rope or a piece of wood sticking out from the walls of Syracuse, they feared it was another of his fearsome engines, and fled. “The Romans” said Plutarch, “began to think they were fighting with the gods.”
Numerous historians have expressed skepticism about the mirrors. But in 1747, French scientist George-Louis Leclerc de Buffon pulled off a successful demonstration of the technique. He used an array of mirrors to make a piece of wood two hundred feet away burst into flame. It was a great PR stunt that made him famous across Europe.
52 B.C.
UP AGAINST THE WALL
Hail Caesar and the bold tactics that led to his greatest victory.
Julius Caesar had just suffered his first defeat in six years as a proconsul. The tribes of Gaul, united at last, were threatening his demise. A long way from Rome, he was short on food, and had no hope of reinforcements.
This was the prologue for one of the most boldly conceived battles in military history.
When Caesar came upon an army of eighty thousand Gauls holed up in the fortified town of Alesia, he ordered his legions to build a siege wall encircling the town. Then Caesar learned that another army of two hundred thousand Gauls was coming to crush his army and lift the siege. What to do?
Caesar’s solution was as daring as it was innovative. He ordered his legions to build a second set of fortifications around the city. While the first wall faced inward, this one faced outward, encircling his army and protecting it from the outside.
Military history records nothing else like it. Caesar had surrounded an army larger than his own, and then found himself surrounded by a second, still larger army. When the Gauls attacked, the Roman forces between the two walls found themselves fighting in both directions, against armies that outnumbered them six to one.
Impossible as it seems, Caesar won this battle, personally leading his reserve force out of the fortifications to attack at a critical moment. He defeated the army surrounding him, forcing the surrender of Alesia and the army within.
That decisive victory brought peace to Gaul. Caesar’s reputation, already glittering, soared to new heights. And an emperor’s throne awaited.
The double siege walls built by Caesar’s army were one of the greatest military engineering feats in history. These reconstructed fortifications show the complexity of the walls, complete with earthworks, trenches filled with sharpened stakes, wooden guard towers, and palisade walls. Remarkably, the Romans completed the two sets of fortifications in little over a month.
The captured soldiers inside the town became the slaves of the soldiers who had defeated them. They were lucky. After conquering one rebellious town, Caesar ordered that everyone who had borne arms against him should have their hands chopped off, as a warning to others. Caesar’s eight-year conquest of Gaul made him rich, famous, and powerful, but the province paid a high price: a million dead, a million more enslaved, and eight hundred towns taken by storm.
The inner and outer lines of Caesar’s fortifications were about two hundred yards apart at their closest point, nearly a thousand yards apart at their widest.
60 A.D.
WARRIOR PRINCESS
She took on the armies of Rome . . . and almost beat them.
Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. And Queen Boudicca had been worse than scorned by the Romans. After the death of her husband, who was king of a Celtic tribe known as the Iceni, Roman authorities moved in to annex his kingdom, plunder his property, and humiliate his family. When Boudicca dared to protest, she was flogged and her daughters were raped.
The Romans soon discovered the error of their ways.
Boudicca vowed vengeance, and raised a huge army of Celts to expel the Roman oppressors. She attacked a Roman colony at Colchester, slaughtering its residents and putting it to the torch. Informed that the Roman Ninth Legion was rushing to the colony’s aid, she laid an ambush and annihilated 1,500 elite Roman infantryman.
When the Roman governor heard she was marching on London, he and his forces abandoned the city. A prudent move. Boudicca’s angry army murdered and mutilated everyone they found there, and burned London to the ground.
The Romans were terrified of Boudicca. Though no strangers to the brutality of war themselves, her blood lust astounded them. “The British could not wait to cut
throats, hang, burn, and crucify,” wrote Roman historian Tacitus, who estimated that her army killed seventy thousand Roman soldiers and civilians.
Eventually the Romans scraped together an army to meet Boudicca in battle, and defeated the Celts. Tens of thousands of Boudicca’s soldiers were slaughtered, and she chose to take poison rather than be captured.
Rome would rule Britain for three more centuries . . . but they never forgot the warrior woman who almost voted them off the island.
Boudicca’s torching of London left an indelible mark on the city that remains to this day. Archaeologists digging down through the strata have found a layer of ash three feet thick from the time of the fire that testifies to the total destruction she wreaked upon the city.
“SHE WAS VERY TALL, IN APPEARANCE MOST TERRIFYING, IN THE GLANCE OF HER EYE MOST FIERCE . . .A GREAT MASS OF THE TAWNIEST HAIR FELL TO HER HIPS.”
— ROMAN HISTORIAN DIO CASSIUS, DESCRIBING BOUDICCA
532
DARING DANCER
The circus girl who saved an empire.
Theodora was a striptease dancer with one heck of an act. Crowds flocked to the circus in Constantinople to watch her dance half-naked with lions. One of those who found himself mesmerized by Theodora was Justinian, nephew of the emperor and next in line to rule the Byzantine Empire. He fell in love with the beautiful Theodora and married her. When Justinian eventually became emperor, Theodora became his empress.
Lucky for him—because her fearlessness would one day save his empire.
A few years into Justinian’s reign, a tax revolt broke out. There was chaos and rioting in the streets. It seemed the end of Justinian’s reign might be at hand. Shaken, the emperor prepared to flee. A ship was ordered to stand by, ready at any moment to take him and his wife into exile.
But Theodora wouldn’t have it. The one time circus girl made it clear she would rather die than surrender the royal rank she had attained. “Royalty is a good burial shroud,” Theodora calmly told her husband.