On This Day ... in 1415 & Others
Henry V laid siege to Harfleur after landing in France. The town fell six weeks later. (The siege provides the backdrop for one of Shakespeare's best-known speeches, beginning "Once more unto the breach, dear friends...”)
1779: A well-led surprise attack by US revolutionary forces under Major Lee took a large number of prisoners at the British fort on the peninsula at Paulus Hook, at what is now Jersey City. The defenders were mostly local loyal New Jersey troops. The fort was saved by a small number of Hessian soldiers in British service, who held out in a redoubt. Lee retreated, having embarrassed the British but failed to destroy the fort or its guns.
1812: The frigate HMS Guerriere fought the large US frigate Constitution in the Gulf of St Lawrence. After a fierce fight lasting two hours, the British ship was forced to surrender.
1914: Two Royal Flying Corps officers, Lieutenant Mapplebeck in a BE2a biplane, and Captain Joubert de la Ferte in a Bleriot monoplane, flew the first British operational aircraft sorties ever: reconnaissance flights over German army positions.
1940: Luftwaffe activity was much reduced, with the emphasis on reconnaissance and harrassment raids.
1942: Allied forces, predominantly Canadian, attempted to seize the French port of Dieppe. Three Victoria Crosses were won, including one awarded to a Canadian Army chaplain, John Foote, who worked tirelessly to help evacuate wounded, then, rather than avoid capture, stayed behind to care for those who could not be rescued. Lieutenant Colonel Merritt, commanding the South Saskatchewans, was decorated for his unremitting gallantry, not least in an attack on an enemy held bridge. The third VC was awarded to Captain Porteous, a Royal Artillery officer who, although landed to serve as a liaison officer, took a leading role in an infantry attack on a coastal battery.
Comments
Hessians, my mum claims ancestry from them via Canada and the end of the Colonial war!
Posted by: TimC | August 20, 2007 10:38 AM
Six week seige? It didn't seem like 6 weeks in Shakespeare's play.
Then again, the Trojan War didn't seem like 10 years in the movie "Troy." :)
My favorite speech in Henry V was Harry's threat if Harfleur didn't surrender. We need leadership like that to face Iran, North Korea, Hamas, Al Qaeda, and Islam:
How yet resolves the governor of the town?
This is the latest parle we will admit;
Therefore to our best mercy give yourselves;
Or like to men proud of destruction
Defy us to our worst: for, as I am a soldier,
A name that in my thoughts becomes me best,
If I begin the battery once again,
I will not leave the half-achieved Harfleur
Till in her ashes she lie buried.
The gates of mercy shall be all shut up,
And the flesh'd soldier, rough and hard of heart,
In liberty of bloody hand shall range
With conscience wide as hell, mowing like grass
Your fresh-fair virgins and your flowering infants.
What is it then to me, if impious war,
Array'd in flames like to the prince of fiends,
Do, with his smirch'd complexion, all fell feats
Enlink'd to waste and desolation?
What is't to me, when you yourselves are cause,
If your pure maidens fall into the hand
Of hot and forcing violation?
What rein can hold licentious wickedness
When down the hill he holds his fierce career?
We may as bootless spend our vain command
Upon the enraged soldiers in their spoil
As send precepts to the leviathan
To come ashore. Therefore, you men of Harfleur,
Take pity of your town and of your people,
Whiles yet my soldiers are in my command;
Whiles yet the cool and temperate wind of grace
O'erblows the filthy and contagious clouds
Of heady murder, spoil and villany.
If not, why, in a moment look to see
The blind and bloody soldier with foul hand
Defile the locks of your shrill-shrieking daughters;
Your fathers taken by the silver beards,
And their most reverend heads dash'd to the walls,
Your naked infants spitted upon pikes,
Whiles the mad mothers with their howls confused
Do break the clouds, as did the wives of Jewry
At Herod's bloody-hunting slaughtermen.
What say you? will you yield, and this avoid,
Or, guilty in defence, be thus destroy'd?
Posted by: POWinCA | August 20, 2009 4:45 AM
If memory serves Chaplain Foote did not merely stay behind, after he had helped several wounded back to the landing craft, he waded back to the beach to certain captivity stating "the men ashore would need me far more in captivity than any of those going home". He was with the Royal Hamilton Light Infantry by the way.
Posted by: AlinCornwall(Canada) | August 20, 2009 5:20 AM
There is an outstanding rendition of the siege of Harfleur in Bernard Cornwell's recent novel, Agincourt. It bears comparison with the astonishing, magnificent account of the siege of Zbaraj in Henryk Sienkiewicz's With Fire and Sword, one of the greatest novels ever.
Posted by: Bill | August 20, 2009 4:24 PM