If Massachusetts wants to ensure continuity of senate representation, they should start planning to hold a special election given the gravity of Sen. Kennedy's diagnosis. There have been questions in the past concerning Supreme Court Justices at times, Douglas and Fortas I believe.... Granted this was because of a stroke , but tumors can have a similar effect. Gov. Patrick should start soliciting candidates to finish Sen. Kennedy's term posthaste, before his health potentially impairs or call into question votes...
I must say though, Gov. Patterson's eye surgery took me completely by surprise. I'm glad all is well there.
Today I was rereading Bryan Perrett's book Last Stand! Famous Battles Against the Odds, and he raises the point that the last stand was not a common aspect of warfare until the Napoleonic age. Agree? Disagree? Why ?
Your main course follows...
Part Two: Anna Dickinson
As quoted in Commager/Bruun's The Civil War Archive
"As the smoke cleared away there was a general and ferocious onslaught upon the armory; curses, oathes, revilings, hideous and aobscene blasphemy, with terible yells and cries, filled the air in every accent of the English tongue save that spoken by a native American.. Such were there mingled wit hthe sea of sound, but they were so few and weak as to be unoticeable in the roar of voices. The paving stones flew like hail until the street was torn into gaps and ruts and every windowpane and sash and doorway was smashed or broken. Meanwhile divers at tempts were made to fire the building but failed through haste or ineffectual materials or the vigilant watchfulness of the besieged. In the midstr of this gallant defense word was brought to the defenders from headquarters that nothign could be done for their support and that if they would save their lives they must make a quick and orderly retreat. Fortunately there was a side passage with which the mob was unacquainted, and one by one they succeeded in gaining this and vanishing.
THe work was begun, continued gathering in force and fury as the wday wore on. Poltice stations, enrolling offices, rooms or buidlings used in any way by government aauthority or obnoxious as represeenting the dignity of law, were gutted, destroyed, then left to th e mercy of the flames. Newspaper offices whose issues had been a fire in the rear of the nation's armies by extenuating and defending treason and through violent and incendiary appears stirring up "lewd fellows of the baser sort"to this very carnival of ruin and blood were cheered as the crowd went by. Those that had been faithful to loyalty and law were hooted, stoned, and even stormed by the army of miscreants, who were only driven off by the gallant and determined charge of the police and in one place by the equally gallant and certainly unique defense of turning the boiling water from the engines upon the howling wretches, who, unprepared, for any such warm reception as this, beat a precipitate and general retreat. Before night fell it was no longer one vast crowd collected in a single section, but great numbers of gatherings, scattered over the length and breadth of the city. some of them engaged in actual work of demolition and ruin, others, with clubs and weapons in their hands, prowling round apparantly with no definit atrocity to perpertrate, but ready for any iniquity that might offer, and, by way of pastime, chasing every stray police officer or solitary soldier or inoffensive Negro who crossed the line of their vision; thees three objects- the badge of a defender of the law, the uniform of the Union army, the skin of a helpless and outraged race- acted upon these madmen as water acts upon a rabid dog. "
To be continued
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2 comments:
I wonder how common last stands really are. I've heard about a few, but I'm not sure they're actually *common*. I haven't heard of any in the Napoleonic era, come to think of it...probably just the narrowness of my own knowledge, though.
There are a couple of very famous ancient ones -- Thermopylae comes to mind. I was also thinking about Marathon, but that's a little bit the opposite. Against the odds, definitely, but it was a victory. Maybe the greatest against-the-odds victory ever, and probably one of the most significant ever, too. At least I like to think so.
They are not all that common. A number of elements are usually in place for one to occur. No possiblity of retreat, or the objective is so valuable that you won't let your troops retreat.
Napoleon's Old, Middle and Young Guard were destroyed at Waterloo. The 2nd MN at Gettysburg. The 7th Cavalry at Little Big Horn. Isandlwana and Rorke's Drift in Africa.
There were plenty in WWI that would have, at any prior point in history, marked them for immortality. The scope and scale of that conflict precluded it.
Regarding Ancient Greece, there was one other battle that was part of the trinity that allowed Western Civilization to develop, the naval victory at Salamis.
The Teutoburg forrest revolt by Arminius doomed the idea of a Roman Germania. Four centuries later, Arminius' descendents would ensure Roman cruelty would come back to bite them.
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