HistoryExtra https://www.historyextra.com Sat, 14 Nov 2026 07:00:07 GMT en hourly 1 Daily Quiz: 14 November https://www.historyextra.com/membership/daily-history-trivia-quiz/ Sat, 14 Nov 2026 07:00:07 GMT https://www.historyextra.com/membership/daily-history-trivia-quiz/ Test your history knowledge with our daily quiz – updated each morning at 7am UK time View Riddle on the source website
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]]> Lands of make believe? How Gulliver's Travels highlighted tensions in Georgian Britain https://www.historyextra.com/membership/lands-of-make-believe-how-gullivers-travels-highlighted-tensions-in-georgian-britain/ Fri, 13 Nov 2026 15:30:41 GMT https://www.historyextra.com/membership/lands-of-make-believe-how-gullivers-travels-highlighted-tensions-in-georgian-britain/ Gulliver’s Travels, a picaresque yarn of unknown countries and bizarre peoples, has become a literary classic. But as Robert Hume reveals, behind Jonathan Swift’s fantasy lay a thinly veiled attack on the Georgian political elite On the evening of Thursday 8 August 1726, a mysterious packet was dropped off by horse-drawn carriage at the home of London publisher Benjamin Motte. Inside was the first quarter of a manuscript and a peculiar letter from a certain Richard Sympson, claiming that he had edited his cousin’s account of some extraordinary travels. Sympson admitted that the text might seem “a little Satyrical”, but assured the recipient that it would “sell very well”. Motte was instructed not to let the manuscript out of his sight, and given three days to reach a decision. If he wished to publish, he should pay £200 up front. He did agree to publish, and received the remaining pages – though paid later.
Presented in four parts, Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World records Lemuel Gulliver’s journeys to fanciful lands over the course of 16 years and seven months, his escapades interrupted only for brief visits to his family back in England.
The book begins with the former ship’s surgeon sailing from Bristol on 4 May 1699 – a decade after the so-called ‘Glorious Revolution’ had limited the monarch’s power and boosted that of parliament’s bickering Whig and Tory factions. Driven by an “insatiable Desire” to see foreign lands, Gulliver witnesses astonishing sights. He meets frisky people less than six inches tall in the islands of Lilliput and Blefuscu. In Brobdingnag, he encounters a nine-year-old girl who, though 40 feet tall, is considered short for her age. He discovers that the inhabitants of a flying island called Laputa are obsessed with measurement, yet unable to make themselves properly fitting clothes. Finally, in Houyhnhnmland, he confronts the Yahoos – brutes in human form, howling and making “odious faces” – who live alongside the Houyhnhnms, calm horses who value “a short silence” before speaking.
Fantastic satire
Clearly, Gulliver’s Travels can be read on one level as a fantastical fairy tale – an adventure through exotic lands populated by dwarves, giants and magicians. On another, though, it’s dripping with innuendo – a biting satire targeting the bickering political factions, corrupt leaders and social ills of the day. But who wrote it? And how did readers and its targets react to the publication of such an incendiary and potentially libellous book?
The shady ‘Richard Sympson’ who’d delivered that mysterious manuscript in 1726 was actually one Jonathan Swift, born in Dublin in 1667 to Protestant Anglo-Irish parents, though his father had died by the time of Jonathan’s birth. He graduated from Trinity College Dublin but experienced a succession of professional disappointments, aggravated by an inner-ear disorder that caused nausea and vertigo.
Moving to England around 1688, Swift became secretary to Whig politician Sir William Temple but, without any real prospect of advancement, in 1694 he left to take holy orders in the Church of Ireland. He moved back and forth between Ireland and England over the following years, during which he also developed writing and political careers, penning propagandist works for the Tories deriding the Whigs and attacking wrongdoing and incompetence.
In London, Swift enjoyed the company of other satirical writers and poets, including Alexander Pope, in an informal literary association known as the Scriblerus Club. In 1714, he returned to Ireland where he continued his writing, targeting colonialism, deprivation and social injustice, particularly in the land of his birth.
Over the years that followed, financial scandal and corruption gripped England. It came to light that influential Whig politicians had received gifts from the over-hyped South Sea Company before its stock crashed in 1720, ruining many of the richest people in the land. Yet Robert Walpole – regarded as Britain’s first prime minister (1721–42), and who had earlier been imprisoned for corruption – managed to build the lavish Palladian Houghton Hall in Norfolk.
Against this backdrop, Swift had been writing the novel that would make his name: Gulliver’s Travels. The first full draft was completed by summer 1725, and the following spring he returned to England, where he met numerous literary and political bigwigs including Pope and Walpole, and prepared the manuscript that was delivered to Motte before sailing back across the Irish Sea.
Published in two volumes on 28 October 1726 at a hefty eight shillings and sixpence, the first print run sold out within a week; 10,000 copies were bought in the first two months. Poet and dramatist John Gay, a fellow member of the Scriblerus Club, claimed that it was read “from the cabinet-council to the nursery”. Gulliver’s Travels was a literary sensation – and its themes, aims and reception reveal much about the social and political milieu of England and Ireland during the reigns of Queen Anne and George I.
Hot takes
Three more Georgian novels with subversive political subtexts
Making a mockery of social mores The History of Tom Jones by Henry Fielding (1749)
This tale of an unfortunate lad and his misadventures depicts a rigidly hierarchical society in which political power lies in the hands of a male-dominated landed elite. In it, Fielding lampoons decorum and pedigree: Master Blifil, of respectable birth, is outwardly pious and seemingly fit to govern but inwardly a “rascal”. Yet Tom, a mere foundling, is “honest”. Comedy of manners The Expedition of Humphry Clinker by Tobias Smollett (1771) In this lively romp across Georgian Britain, the action is recounted through 84 engaging letters from a cast of six colourful characters commenting on the destinations and personalities they encounter. The Duke of N[ewcastle] is referred to as an “ape in politics” and the “father of corruption” who had personally chosen every bishop. Bath Corporation is blamed for noise and dirt, with hypochondriac gentlemen getting “lost in a mob of impudent plebeians”. Castaway celebration or colonialist critique? Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe (1719) On his desert island, Crusoe becomes an owner, a “lord” with a “castle”, a “prince” who could “hang [or] give liberty” to his subjects, a colonist who educates the cannibal Friday and expects to be called “Master”. Like European rulers, he accumulates wealth, power, even slaves. Though some have read it as a celebration of colonial triumphs, it’s widely seen as a satire on imperial expansionism.
Ridicule as a weapon
Satire was a weapon wielded commonly by 18th-century caricaturists, pamphleteers and, increasingly, novelists. By diminishing human grandeur and highlighting blemishes, it revealed “hooves under the petticoat and horns beneath the periwig”, as Paddy Bullard observes in The Oxford Handbook of Eighteenth-Century Satire (2019). With intriguing storylines and characters, novels were effective instruments for drawing the readers’ attention to the flaws of their times.
For example, the diminutive Lilliputians suggest all that is trivial in society, and their hostility towards the Blefuscudians recalls the pettiness of the rivalry between England and France in Swift’s day. The “low Heels” and “high Heels” represent Whigs and Tories, who “neither eat nor drink, nor talk with each other”. The episode in which “Man Mountain” Gulliver extinguishes a fire in the Empress of Lilliput’s apartment by urinating on it could perhaps allude to the hasty, legally questionable settlement agreed in 1713 by the Tory government to end conflict between France and Britain during the War of the Spanish Succession.
Contemporary readers would have spotted the analogy offered by the eight-year efforts of a Lagado scientist to extract sunbeams from cucumbers, recalling Isaac Newton’s experiments at the Royal Society. Other individuals are also identifiable: the hobbling Lilliputian “Heir to the Crown”, one heel higher than the other, corresponds to the Prince of Wales, later George II.
Walpole, meanwhile, is caricatured as pompous little Flimnap, Lord High Treasurer of Lilliput. Swift lampoons him for dancing on a rope and creeping under the emperor’s stick, hinting at Walpole’s efforts to curry favour with King George I.
Amusing as these vignettes are, though, Swift had serious intentions. During his four voyages, Gulliver is often led to reflect on the “vices and follies” infecting politics, stressing four key areas of concern.
The first theme Swift highlights is the abuse of power. Take the minuscule emperor of Lilliput, dubbed the “delight and terror of the universe”, who commands a huge territory stretching “to the extremities of the globe”. His prime minister has accumulated great wealth while ordinary people live in misery and fear of their governors’ whims. On pain of exile, Lilliputians must crack eggs at the “smaller end” (the Protestant way), never at the “larger end” (the traditional Catholic way).
Similarly, the king of Laputa has almost unlimited power: he can, at will, deprive the colony of Balnibarbi of sun and rain, hurl down rocks, even attempt to let the flying island drop on rebel cities such as Lindalino. With these narratives, Swift alludes to the idea that Ireland has been reduced to the status of a colony, in the iron grip of its English masters.
Impossible chimeras
Swift also targets corruption and favouritism. In Maldonada, those seeking promotion lick the dust strewn around the royal footstool. In Glubbdubdrib, island of sorcerers and magicians, Gulliver summons from the dead three kings who boast that “in their whole reigns they did never once prefer any person of merit, unless by mistake”.
The king of Brobdingnag repeatedly interrogates his ‘miniature’ guest, Gulliver, asking whether lords and judges are honest in England, and if bribes influence “vulgar voters”. Gulliver’s answers lead the king to conclude that the English are “the most pernicious race of little odious vermin that nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the Earth”. And political strategists at Lagado Academy, Balnibarbi, try to persuade monarchs to choose ministers for their capacity and virtue, and to reward merit, but in Gulliver’s opinion these are “wild impossible chimæras”.
Third, Swift pillories the lack of concern for public welfare shown by scientists and politicians. Lagado scientists spend their whole lives on mad projects, such as discovering how to rear sheep without wool or convert ice into gunpowder. War is indeed one of the worst “evils” caused by princes, who “never think they have land or people enough to govern”, and who enslave their captives to “civilise” them, bemoans the king of Brobdingnag. He declares that “whoever could make two ears of corn, or two blades of grass to grow upon a spot of ground where only one grew before would deserve better of mankind, and do more essential service to his country, than the whole race of politicians put together”.
Finally, in the eyes of Swift, the very nature of politicians makes good government unattainable. Those finely dressed members of the all-powerful House of Lords, “bred from their childhood in idleness and luxury” and “smitten with pride”, are not “people of quality” at all. They are “detestable”, “unteachable”, smelly Yahoos in every respect – just whiter, less hairy, and with shorter claws.
They are a race apart from the “wise and virtuous” Houyhnhnms, “the perfection of nature”, who significantly have no word for lying – a trait endemic among England’s lawyers. A Lagado professor suggests that parliament’s “jabbering” loudmouths might be led to “moderation” by having their brains sawn in two, and exchanging one half with their opponent, so “the two half brains… within the space of one scull, would soon come to a good understanding”.
Incendiary episodes
Despite his righteous anger, Swift was well aware that his barbs would likely provoke a backlash from the ruling and political classes, and that no printer would be “brave enough to venture his eares” being slit for seditious libel. So, before submitting the manuscript for publication, he cut the most politically explosive elements, had the text copied so that his writing could not be used in evidence against him, delivered the work anonymously to Motte, and fled to Ireland.
Another strategy Swift employed to mitigate accusations of personal attacks in his book was to make Gulliver emphasise that it is his interviewers who raise “doubts” and “queries” about political practices, never himself. Gulliver’s own criticisms, he insists, do not apply to England, “the pride and envy of the world”. Even after softening his original material in these ways, though, Swift complained that publisher Benjamin Motte further diluted the satire and “mangled and murdered pages”.
Unsurprisingly, responses to Gulliver’s Travels ranged from acclaim to affront and anger. Some readers began signing themselves “Yahoo”; others tried speaking Houyhnhnm. The book was applauded by fellow members of the Scriblerus Club including Alexander Pope and John Arbuthnot, and Henry Fielding praised it for ridiculing “several errors and immoralities” of the age.
Many politicians thought Swift’s satire too severe, but stopped short of taking legal action to complain of specific examples lest they be embarrassed in court. Meanwhile, outraged churchgoers called it “evil”, complaining that it belittled human nature. In his 1747–48 novel Clarissa, fellow author Samuel Richardson has his character Lovelace condemn the “abominable Yahoo-story”.
Across Europe, opinion was also split. Gulliver’s Travels quickly sold out in France, where it inspired similar works about imaginary voyages. Voltaire commended Swift’s “strokes of imagination”, though he doubted that French people would appreciate the political satire. Translator Pierre-François Desfontaines cut “impenetrable allegories… base thoughts, crude banter and insipid jokes”, and added his own moral messages.
Many considered the work a mere expression of its author’s misanthropy. German writer Christoph Martin Wieland labelled the Yahoos “a hideous mixture of ape and devil”. Swiss anatomist Albrecht von Haller slated the book’s “gross and indecent” imagery. Details such as turning human excrement back into food and sucking wind from the posterior with bellows were just vile obscenities, it was claimed.
In Italy, the precise references to ships, measurements and dates led Venice bookshops to sell the Travels as a genuine account by a Mr Lemuel Gulliver of his adventures in unknown lands. Theologian Elia D’Amato defended the authenticity of the giants in Part II, because they were corroborated by the Book of Genesis.
Throughout the 18th century new editions were published, including one for children in the 1770s. Since then, the novel has become a classic. In 1946, George Orwell declared that: “If I had to make a list of six books which were to be preserved when all others were destroyed, I would certainly put Gulliver’s Travels among them.”
The secret of its enduring success lies in the very fact that the bleak portrait it paints of politics and human nature continues to hold true even today. By exposing corruption, Swift aimed to put a “full stop” to it. Six months after the book’s publication, though, he admitted that it had not produced “one single effect according to mine intentions”. Three centuries later, we might look at the world and say the same thing.
Robert Hume is a writer and former history teacher. His latest book, The Hidden Lives of Jack the Ripper’s Victims (Pen & Sword), is out now in paperback and audiobook
This article was first published in the December 2026 issue of HistoryExtra Magazine
]]> Why did thousands of Spaniards risk their lives to fight for Hitler? https://www.historyextra.com/period/second-world-war/why-did-thousands-of-spaniards-risk-their-lives-to-fight-for-hitler/ Fri, 13 Nov 2026 15:30:31 GMT https://www.historyextra.com/period/second-world-war/why-did-thousands-of-spaniards-risk-their-lives-to-fight-for-hitler/ Still recovering from the Spanish Civil War, tens of thousands of men joined the Nazis so that they could rid the world of communism During the Second World War, Spain maintained an official policy of neutrality, or at least ‘non-belligerence’, but that did not stop the nascent regime of dictator Francisco Franco from finding ways to side with the Axis Powers of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy.
One way for Franco to show support and keep Hitler happy without committing the country to all-out war was the Blue Division.
Spanish versus Soviet
In June 1941, the Nazis launched Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union. In Spain, this was seen as an opportunity for the diehard fascists to wage their ongoing crusade against communism, as well as get revenge on the Soviets for their role in supporting the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War. Germany and Italy had given significant support to Franco’s nationalists.
Just days after the invasion got underway, Franco offered assistance to Hitler in the form of a special unit for the Eastern Front. When the call went out, recruiting offices were inundated with more than 18,000 volunteers, the majority being serving military personnel or civil war veterans, or members of the fascist party, the Falangists. A large number of ideological university students would also enlist.
Under the command of Agustin Munoz Grandes, they formed the 250th Infantry Division within the German army, but became known as the Blue Division on account of the blue shirts of their symbolic uniform. Spanish pilots, meanwhile, formed the Blue Squadron.
Resilience and courage
The Blue Division was sent to Bavaria for training, which would be fast-tracked to ensure that they got to the action before all the fighting was over. (They had no reason to think, of course, that the Eastern Front would drag on for years and ultimately seal the Nazi defeat.)
Although criticised by their German comrades for a lack of discipline, the Spanish soldiers quickly earned a reputation for unyielding resilience. Indeed, their deployment involved a march of 500-plus miles from Poland to Russia, where they endured the freezing conditions, disease and shortages, the latter exacerbated by constant communication issues with the Germans supplying them.
- Read more | “Weimar's citizens cheered on Hitler”: why the home of German democracy was easy prey for the Nazis
Then once in battle, as part of the Siege of Leningrad, they demonstrated a fearless courage. For months, they held the line against the Red Army even though it cost many lives. Around this time, command of the Blue Division was given to General Emilio Esteban-Infantes Martin after Grandes was recalled to Spain, having been decorated with one of the highest military honours in Nazi Germany, the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross.
At the battle of Krasny Bor in early 1943, a 5,000-strong detachment of the Blue Division held off a force outnumbering them sixfold, and equipped with tanks and artillery. They suffered horrific casualties yet successfully halted the Soviet offensive in the region. Hitler himself remarked: “One can’t imagine more fearless fellows. They scarcely take cover. They flout death.”
In 1944, the entire division would be granted a unique honour, the Commemorative Medal for Spanish Volunteers in the Struggle Against Bolshevism.
Legacy of the Blue Division
By then, however, Franco had been pressed by the Allies to reaffirm his country’s neutrality and disbanded the Blue Division. While most of the men returned to Spain, several thousand refused and continued to fight, either under the new name of the Blue Legion or assimilated into other units of the Wehrmacht. The last remnants of the Blue Division fought right up until the fall of Berlin in 1945.
Around 47,000 men served on the Eastern Front in total, with 5,000 never returning. Thousands more were injured or taken prisoner, some of whom were not released by the Soviets until 1954.
The Blue Division has a complicated legacy in Spain, remembered by some as anti-communist heroes or Nazi collaborators by others. While they never took part in the worst atrocities committed by the Nazis – in fact, they drew ire from the Germans for their fair treatment of the Jewish people they encountered – the Francoist regime looked to downplay their role quickly in the aftermath of the war.
]]> The Cromwells: the dynasty that made modern Britain https://www.historyextra.com/membership/cromwells-dynasty-that-made-modern-britain-podcast/ Fri, 13 Nov 2026 09:05:31 GMT https://www.historyextra.com/membership/cromwells-dynasty-that-made-modern-britain-podcast/ Miranda Malins discusses the awesome impact of the two titans of the Cromwell family – Thomas and Oliver – on British history We can't stop talking about the Tudors. The Stuarts bestride the 17th century. Yet if you're looking for a family that truly changed the course of British history then, argues Miranda Malins, you need look no further than the Cromwells.
In this episode, Miranda tells Spencer Mizen about the awesome impact of the two titans of the Cromwell family – Thomas and Oliver – on British history, the striking similarities between these two men, and how she thinks they'd have got on if they'd have met.
]]> History crossword: 6 November https://www.historyextra.com/membership/history-crossword-6-november/ Fri, 13 Nov 2026 08:32:39 GMT https://www.historyextra.com/membership/history-crossword-6-november/ View Riddle on the source website]]> Can you solve our history crossword of the week? https://www.historyextra.com/period/general-history/crossword/ Fri, 13 Nov 2026 08:31:07 GMT https://www.historyextra.com/period/general-history/crossword/ View Riddle on the source website]]> The History Round: our weekly trivia challenge https://www.historyextra.com/period/general-history/weekly-history-quiz/ Fri, 13 Nov 2026 08:30:08 GMT https://www.historyextra.com/period/general-history/weekly-history-quiz/ Have you been paying attention? Test your knowledge of the stories we’ve published over the past seven days with our weekly quiz, updated every Friday. Test your knowledge with our general knowledge weekly history quiz...
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Did you know we have other regular quizzes here at HistoryExtra? To test your historical knowledge even further, try our daily quizzes, or our weekly crossword.
]]> From teenage bride to child blinder: the brutal rise of Rome’s first female emperor https://www.historyextra.com/membership/from-teenage-bride-to-child-blinder-the-brutal-rise-of-romes-first-female-emperor/ Thu, 12 Nov 2026 11:30:40 GMT https://www.historyextra.com/membership/from-teenage-bride-to-child-blinder-the-brutal-rise-of-romes-first-female-emperor/ From teenage bride to ruler of the Roman Empire, Irene built a formidable political network, restored the veneration of icons and seized the imperial throne – but at a devastating cost to her own family. Edward J Watts charts her extraordinary life Sometime after August 797 AD, the Eastern Roman court in Constantinople (now often called the Byzantine court) issued an unremarkable law about inheritances in the name of the new basileus (the masculine Greek noun used for a Roman emperor).
While the text of the law itself is rather dull, the name of the basileus is not. Because she was named Irene and she was the first woman to rule the Roman Empire using that imperial title.
Unimaginable grandeur
It was impossible to imagine such a fate for Irene when she was born in Athens around 752. Irene’s father was a member of the noble Sarantapechos family, but she grew up in a small city of a few thousand people cut off from the capital, aside for the few days a month when a ship arrived.
The emperor Constantine V, however, believed a marriage joining his son Leo IV to Irene would secure her relatives’ support for his planned campaign to reestablish Roman control over central Greece. So it was that Irene left home for Constantinople in early October 769.
Irene must have been terrified. She was a teenager barely out of puberty, her father had died some years before, and she set sail from Greece accompanied only by a small group of female relatives and attendants.
When she arrived outside Constantinople at the head of a flotilla of silk-draped warships on 1 November, she would have been stunned by the size of the city, the height of its walls, the magnificence of the imperial palace, and the splendour of Hagia Sophia, the world’s largest church. Nothing she had ever seen could have prepared her for such unimaginable grandeur.
Building a network
As soon as Irene disembarked, she was thrust into a series of choreographed ceremonies that welcomed her to the city, celebrated her engagement, crowned her as empress and solemnised her marriage. Each of these involved receptions in which magistrates, senators, bureaucrats, and their wives all greeted Irene and bowed to the floor beneath her knees.
Few young princesses had the capacity to remember all the people they met on such an important day. Irene was different. She saw individuals within this blur of new faces, and she recognised that each face belonged to a possible ally in a city where she knew next to no one. She soon began constructing a network of powerful supporters based around some of those same people she met that day.
Irene’s position at court became much more secure on 14 January 771 when she and her husband welcomed their first child, a boy they named Constantine. He was what Romans called a porphyrogenitus, which meant ‘born in the purple’, and designated him as an imperial heir who entered the world in a purple chamber of the palace. Porphyrogeniti were both literally and figuratively born into the imperial purple.
Taking power
Constantine VI’s birth enabled Leo IV to assume power without challenge when his father died on 14 September 775 because, unlike his five ambitious half-brothers, Leo was not only the first in the line of succession but he also had a child who could continue the imperial dynasty for another generation.
Soon after Leo took power, he formally designated the five-year-old Constantine as imperial heir and forced his half-brothers to swear a public oath to support the young prince. Less than a year later, they were sent into exile after supposedly breaking this vow.
Whatever Irene did to help sideline these rivals happened outside of the view of contemporary historians. Everyone, however, noticed her political skills when Leo died on 8 September 780 following an infection of his hair follicles he developed from wearing a heavily-jewelled crown on his head for too long.
With Leo’s death, the Roman throne officially belonged to the nine-year-old Constantine VI, but Irene exploited the fact that no living Roman had lived under such a young emperor to take actual power for herself.
A careful balancing act
While several young children had served as emperors in the empire’s 800-year history, none had done so for almost 150 years. Part of this was because the last imperial regency, which extended for only a few months in 641, had been a disaster.
The empress Martina had seized effective control of the state while her son and stepson nominally ruled together, but her regime proved so unpopular that the army quickly deposed the empress, slit her tongue, cut off the noses of her sons, and exiled all of them to the Mediterranean island of Rhodes.
Irene wanted the power Martina briefly possessed while also hoping to avoid her predecessor’s terrible fate. This required a careful balancing act. Some of the first coins issued after Leo’s death featured portraits of Irene and her son on the front and images of the deceased emperors Leo III, Constantine V and Leo IV on the back.
They emphasised that Irene and Constantine VI together represented the imperial dynasty’s fourth generation. The public acclamations preserved in our sources also suggest that people in Constantinople were encouraged to speak about Irene and Constantine VI as “our emperors”.
And the empress made sure that everyone knew about a coffin found by a man in Thrace that foretold the reappearance of Jesus “in the reign of Constantine and Irene”.
Brutal and efficient response
Irene’s regency faced its first major test just six weeks later when her allies in the city exposed a plot to replace Irene with Nicephorus, one of Leo VI’s half-brothers. Irene responded brutally and efficiently.
The nobles backing the plot were publicly whipped, forcibly enrolled in the clergy, and then sent into exile. Nicephorus and his brothers were also arrested, tonsured (their heads shaved), and compelled by Irene to “administer communion to the people on the feast of Christ’s nativity”.
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Their status as priests effectively disqualified them from further imperial office while the public administration of communion left no doubt about their new clerical status. That Christmas morning, the empress and Constantine VI “went in a public imperial procession to the church” so she could watch their humiliation.
Irene replaced the other coup plotters with men drawn from the network of eunuchs and other socially stigmatised people she had quietly been building since she arrived in the capital. Her most important aide became Staurakios, a court eunuch who she made “the head of everything and [who] administered all matters”.
She placed a second eunuch named John in command of all the soldiers in Asia and sent Theodore, a third eunuch, to Sicily where he was tasked with putting down a revolt.
The end of iconoclasm
As Irene’s loyalists came to dominate the government and military, some of the people strongly associated with Constantine V and Leo IV transformed into supporters of Irene. One of these pivots made a particularly big impression on Constantinopolitans.
Constantine V, his father Leo III and his son Leo IV were Iconoclasts who restricted the religious veneration of images of Jesus and saints in public and private worship. Irene, however, favoured the use of icons and was looking for an opportunity to end Iconoclasm while she controlled the state.
Her chance came in 784 when Paul, the Patriarch of Constantinople, abruptly resigned his position and withdrew to a monastery. With tears in his eyes, he told Irene and a group of visiting Constantinopolitan senators that he had retired because he was ashamed that he “sat on the throne of the priesthood while God’s Church was suffering oppression” from the Iconoclast emperors.
He then informed the visiting dignitaries that “they would not find salvation unless an ecumenical council took place and the error…is corrected”. Rather conveniently, he died shortly after the meeting concluded.
Irene selected Tarasios, another of the palace officials with whom she had developed a relationship over the past decade, to serve as the new Patriarch of Constantinople.
Tarasios was an interesting choice. He was not yet a priest and he refused to accept ordination unless the church council condemning Iconoclasm that Paul had recommended was convened.
Tarasios’s conditional acceptance of the job was no doubt coordinated with Irene, but it allowed her to claim that she had no option but to call a church council with representatives from Rome and Constantinople as well as all the other most important episcopal sees of antiquity. It was the seventh, and final, ecumenical church council recognised as legitimate by both the Catholic and Orthodox churches.
Power and limitations
Irene’s council showed both the power and limitations of the web of supporters she had built during her time in the palace. Her people had spread across the top leadership positions of the Roman bureaucracy, church and army, but she had not won over the rank and file in any of those institutions.
This became clear when a violent protest by the tagmata (an elite army unit created by the Iconoclast Constantine V and stationed in the capital) disrupted the first session of the council just after it convened in Constantinople’s Church of the Holy Apostles on 1 August 786.
Irene reacted deftly. She summoned the eunuch Staurakios, sent him to an army he had recently commanded in Thrace, and ordered those soldiers to march to the capital so they could disarm the rebellious troops of the tagmata.
Irene discharged all the rebels and reformed the tagmata with soldiers and officers who were loyal to her. She then reconvened the church council in September 787 in the smaller and less politically fractious city of Nicaea, the site of the first ecumenical council called by the emperor Constantine I in AD 325.
Nicaea’s symbolic importance helped obscure the fact that security concerns rather than religious inspiration determined its selection.
The concluding session of the Council of Nicaea represented the high point of Irene’s political career. It began with an invocation celebrating both Irene and Constantine as the orthodox, victorious and peace-loving ‘emperors’ of Rome.
The attendees next called on God to “grant them a peaceful life” and “sustain their rule” since they were “the new Constantine and Helena”, a reference to Rome’s first Christian emperor and his mother.
But, unlike Helena, Irene was the dominant member of this imperial partnership. It was Irene who took the council’s document restoring icons from the patriarch of Constantinople. It was Irene who signed it first. And it was Irene who then “gave it to her son and co-emperor to sign it second”. This was her empire and her moment of triumph.
Public tensions
Irene suffered significant damage to both her public standing and political position over the next few years. Military reverses caused civilians and soldiers to doubt that God really did support the restoration of icons. And, as Constantine VI became an adult, he and those around him grew frustrated that his mother’s regency, which was intended to be temporary, had somehow become permanent.
Tensions between mother and son became public when Constantine VI tried to fire Staurakios from a military command in 790. Irene stepped in, had the emperor flogged, and confined him to his chambers in the palace for a few days. She then sent a message to all military units asking that they take an oath to never permit her son to rule independently as long as Irene lived.
The soldiers in the capital made this vow, but armies in Asia Minor rallied behind the emperor. They instead swore that “they would not accept his mother Irene as basileus ”, demanded that the emperor be allowed to travel to their base, and led him back to Constantinople.
When he arrived home, Constantine had Irene imprisoned, purged the eunuchs and commanders loyal to her, and ordered Staurakios to be whipped publicly before forcing him to become a cleric.
Irene was not finished, however. After two military defeats in 791, Irene’s supporters appealed to Constantine VI to restore Irene to power. Constantine not only agreed to this, but he also foolishly allowed his mother to purge the men who most fiercely backed the emperor from his Asian armies. This left Constantine dangerously short of powerful allies four years later when he divorced his popular wife Maria so that he could marry one of his mother’s attendants.
Irene seized on the discontent her son’s remarriage caused. For much of the autumn of 796, she cajoled and bribed members of the tagmata to “help her depose her son and become sole ruler herself” as soon as an appropriate moment presented itself.
That moment came on 17 July 797 when some of Irene’s friends seized Constantine from a warship and took him to the purple room of the palace in which he was born. There “they blinded him in a cruel and vicious manner with a view to making him die at the behest of his mother and her advisors”. It is not clear how much longer he lived after this, but Constantine VI was now permanently ineligible to rule.
The cost of power
This is why the single word, basileus, that appears in the law on inheritance with which we began means so much. It encapsulates the extraordinary political skills and ruthlessness that enabled Irene to transcend the limits eighth-century Roman society imposed on provincials, worshippers of icons, and women.
But it also points to the costs people like Irene needed to absorb to achieve what they wanted. Irene sidelined family members, imprisoned friends, and mutilated her own son so that she could wield the power that came along with that masculine imperial title.
Irene spent more than half of her life playing and, mostly, winning a series of high-stakes political games in Constantinople. No other Roman woman had ever before played them so well. But even Irene eventually misread the loyalties of the people around her.
She lost her throne on 31 October 802 following a coup organised by Nikephoros, the man she had placed atop the imperial fiscal department. She was exiled and died on the island of Lesbos on 9 August 803.
While Irene was the first Roman woman to rule in her own name, she was not the last. She had shown Romans that a talented woman’s gender did not preclude her from supplanting an incompetent basileus. Other Roman imperial women would follow in her path – and learn from her mistakes.
Edward J Watts is Alkiviadis Vassiliadis Endowed Chair and Distinguished Professor of History at the University of California, San Diego. He is the author of The Romans: A 2,000-Year History (John Murray Press/Basic Books, 2025)
]]> Tudors on the brink: how the dynasty almost ended before it even began https://www.historyextra.com/membership/tudors-on-the-brink-how-the-dynasty-almost-ended-before-it-even-began/ Wed, 11 Nov 2026 15:30:11 GMT https://www.historyextra.com/membership/tudors-on-the-brink-how-the-dynasty-almost-ended-before-it-even-began/ Henry Tudor’s stunning victory at Bosworth won him the English crown – but also, writes Sean Cunningham, condemned him to a life dogged by conspiracies, rebellions and suffocating paranoia The chances are that you’ve never heard of the battle of Blackheath. Yet at this seemingly minor clash, contested just south of the Thames and Greenwich Palace in June 1497, the reign of Henry VII – and the fate of the extraordinary dynasty that would go on to transform England – teetered on the brink.
The country was in uproar. In May, an uprising had erupted in the south-west, ignited by intolerable levels of taxation levied by Henry to fund his military campaigns. By early June, a rebel army had swept through Devon and Somerset and was heading for London, declaring openly its intention to bring about regime change. One false move in this febrile moment and Henry VII’s still-fragile rule could have been shattered.
The king’s future was balanced on a knife edge. As the rebels closed in on London, some of his greatest military leaders – men such as the Earl of Suffolk and Lord Bergavenny – considered which side to back. If they’d thrown their weight behind the insurrection, royal forces could have been outnumbered and overpowered. Fortunately for the king, the captains couldn’t quite bring themselves to defect. Henry mobilised enough active allies to crush the rebels, after which their leaders were put to death.
He had narrowly averted catastrophe – but this was barely cause for celebration. More than a decade after his great triumph over Richard III at the battle of Bosworth in August 1485, Henry VII was still at war with his own subjects.
Grand union
How had it come to this? After all, victory at Bosworth should have provided the firmest of foundations for Henry’s royal tenure. Richard III was dead, and his most committed followers had been killed or captured. Then, in the first few months of his reign, Henry pulled off the masterstroke of marrying Richard’s niece, Elizabeth of York, thus binding many of her previously hostile Yorkist supporters to her new husband’s Lancastrian regime.
It was a positive start to the Tudor administration, and one on which Henry attempted to build, aiming to ensure a trouble-free period in which he could learn how to be king.
His investment in stability was underlined in his first parliament in November 1485, which restored status and wealth to his Lancastrian allies attainted for treason under Richard and his older brother Edward IV, and which punished his predecessor’s followers. This he achieved by backdating the start of his reign to the day before Bosworth – thus making traitors of Richard’s supporters at the battle, and restoring the badge of loyalty to his own.
This was just one of many examples that, even by the end of 1485, demonstrated Henry’s willingness to exploit information, public spectacle and legalistic tricks to uphold his power. His reputation for parsimony and avarice also became established quickly: he gifted titles and lands to relatives and allies, but largely held onto the crown’s resources. Even Henry’s saviour at Bosworth, Sir William Stanley, had to be content with gifts and offices, not a peerage.
During this period, Henry relied on trusted pre-Bosworth friends who were already in the royal council and household to form the core of Tudor rule. The best of his foot soldiers formed the new bodyguard, the Yeomen of the Guard. The king himself was from a Welsh family, and followers such as Dawyd ap Howel and Cadwaladr John constituted a strong Welsh presence among his personal attendants. But Henry knew that only by expanding this pool could he foster a regime in which anyone could thrive – so long as they proved their loyalty.
He soon put this tactic into practice. On his first royal tour of the country in spring 1486, he was accompanied by courtiers from different backgrounds. Pageants of welcome proclaimed his ancestry and right. At Worcester, an actor playing Henry VI emphasised how the new King Henry had inherited that former monarch’s merciful rule. Brennius and Ebraucus, the mythical founders of Bristol and York, respectively, proclaimed that Henry had been sent from God to restore prosperity.
- Read more | Married three times by the age of 15: Margaret Beaufort, the woman who birthed the Tudor Dynasty
Heir trigger
Despite his initial success, Henry knew that, to fully cement his Tudor regime, he had to produce a male heir with indisputable royal ancestry. And less than a year after he took the throne, on 20 September 1486, his son Arthur was born. The christening celebrations linked the infant prince with the legendary British ruler after whom he had been named, promising ideal kingship under a real Arthur in future.
The Tudor heir’s birth offered the promise of an enduring Tudor dynasty. But the king’s enemies – those Yorkists who would have liked to see that dynasty wiped from the face of the Earth – hadn’t gone away. Henry’s foes knew that the longer he ruled unopposed, the more thoroughly his subjects would accept him. So they ramped up their plotting – and that plotting would dog Henry for the rest of his reign.
The mastermind behind these schemes to unseat the new Tudor king was Richard III’s sister Margaret, Dowager Duchess of Burgundy. According to the Italian historian Polydore Vergil, writing the following century, she “pursued Henry with insatiable hatred and with fiery wrath… employing every scheme which might harm him”.
Timeline
Henry VII's rollercoaster life
28 January 1457: Henry VII is born in Pembroke Castle, Wales, the son of Edmund Tudor and 13-year-old Margaret Beaufort 22 August 1485: Henry defeats Richard III at the battle of Bosworth and seizes the English crown 20 September 1486: A son and heir, Arthur, is born to Henry and his wife, Elizabeth of York 16 June 1487: Henry's army defeats the forces behind the boy claiming to be Edward, Earl of Warwick (actually an imposter, Lambert Simnel) at the battle of Stoke Field May–June 1497: A rebel army advances on London from south-west England, finally being defeated at the battle of Blackheath November 1499: Following failed attempts to free the imposter Perkin Warbeck and Edward, Earl of Warwick from the Tower of London, Henry has them both executed 2 April 1502: Prince Arthur dies, probably from the sweating sickness. Ten-year-old Prince Henry is now heir to the throne 11 February 1503: Henry's queen, Elizabeth of York, dies shortly after giving birth to a daughter. The king is distraught 21 April 1509: Henry VII dies of tuberculosis at Richmond Palace, aged 52. His son succeeds as Henry VIII
Margaret persuaded a cadre of Yorkist nobles who’d resolutely refused to accept the outcome of Bosworth to back the last legitimate Yorkist prince: Edward, Earl of Warwick, Richard III’s nephew. The real Warwick was imprisoned in the Tower of London, so the rebels produced a pretender to impersonate him. Lambert Simnel appeared in Dublin at the start of 1487, claiming to have escaped from Henry’s clutches. There he was crowned as Edward VI of England – making Henry “deeply disturbed”, according to Vergil. In June, a large Irish and mercenary army supporting Simnel’s claim, bankrolled by Margaret, invaded northern England.
The king responded by offering pardons to those near the cusp of rebellion, averting widespread northern insurrection – but not the need to fight. Defeating the invaders in a bloody battle at Stoke Field in Nottinghamshire on 16 June 1487, Henry was encouraged by the turnout of loyal lords and knights to believe that his policies were working. (Simnel was pardoned and put to work in the royal household.) But it was to be far from the last challenge to his reign.
Northern uproar
Henry’s knowledge of government and diplomacy developed rapidly – because it had to. In 1489, onerous tax demands sparked protests in northern England, where Richard III had enjoyed widespread support, and the Earl of Northumberland was murdered near Thirsk while trying to collect these levies. To tackle the uprising, Henry turned to a former Yorkist, Thomas Howard, who had been attainted following Bosworth. Restoring Howard’s title as Earl of Surrey, Henry sent him to quash the rebellion and then run the north of England as his lieutenant there.
To rekindle a sense of collaboration across his kingdom, in November 1489 Henry made his son, Arthur, Prince of Wales; fortuitously, his daughter, Margaret, was born on the eve of the investiture at Westminster. Might this signal a change of fortunes for the king? Henry hoped so and, with renewed optimism, drove forward his efforts to end international sponsorship of the Yorkist rebels. As it turned out, his forays into foreign diplomacy would backfire.
Henry’s overseas policy involved forging alliances with the Spanish monarchs and Maximilian Habsburg, ruler of the Netherlands, alienating the French. France’s king Charles VIII responded by increasing his support for English conspirators. And in December 1491, those plotters hatched a new scheme: a boy appeared in Ireland claiming to be Richard, Duke of York, youngest of the princes in the Tower. (The pretender was actually a Flemish lad named Perkin Warbeck.) His claim was backed by Margaret of Burgundy, who ranted to European rulers such as Isabella of Castile that they should not “allow the throne of England to be tyrannically usurped by a supremely wicked enemy”.
According to Vergil, the apparent return of Prince Richard “was not merely believed by the common people but [by] many important men”. Henry became desperate to prove that the claimant was an imposter.
In October 1492, in a bid to end French support for English rebels, Henry launched an invasion of France. After besieging Boulogne, he forced the French to come to terms with him. But, in doing so, he offended Maximilian, who became another champion for Warbeck.
A king in the making
As the threat posed by ‘Richard’ and his backers grew, Henry retreated to the Midlands and moved troops to Ireland to reinforce his tenuous control. Investigators found that support for a Yorkist restoration was growing in the households of Henry’s aristocratic allies. In response, the king decided to boost the profile of his own heir. He had Prince Arthur, still aged only six, installed as a regional leader at Ludlow in the Welsh Marches, to begin intensive training for kingship. Making Henry’s three-year-old second son, also Henry, Duke of York at the end of 1494 reminded everyone that there was only one legitimate holder of that title.
Henry also unleashed a wave of arrests to shatter Warbeck’s support network. One of the hundreds tried was Henry’s former ally Sir William Stanley. More than £9,000 in coin was found at Stanley’s castle of Holt – an amount that could have sustained an army of thousands for weeks. His execution in February 1495 highlighted Henry’s failure to overcome Yorkist sympathies. Around this time, a Florentine merchant in London reported that the king was “rather feared than loved… if fortune allowed some lord of the blood royal to rise [then] his people would abandon him”.
Meanwhile, Warbeck’s supporters continued to harry the king. An attempt to invade England in July 1495, backed by Maximilian, was a failure and he was forced to retreat to Ireland. But by the end of that year Warbeck had appeared in Scotland, cosying up to James IV. In response, Henry levied more taxes to fund an army there – triggering the south-western uprising that culminated in the battle of Blackheath.
Still Warbeck wouldn’t go away. After another failed invasion via Northumberland in September 1496, the following autumn his forces sailed to Cornwall. Recruiting many who’d taken part in the earlier insurrection, he besieged Exeter – but his men melted away as loyal forces approached. Finally, the pretender was captured and interviewed on 5 October. Failing to identify lords who had known Prince Richard before 1483, Warbeck confessed. Henry spared his life and triumphantly broadcast news of the conspiracy’s collapse across Europe.
Safe, but not loved
Henry had survived, but he was far from unscathed. The Spanish ambassador noted that “the king looks old for his years, but young for the sorrowful life he has led”. He was safe on the throne, but not loved. When, at the start of 1499, a Cambridge student named Ralph Wilford impersonated the Earl of Warwick, Henry ruthlessly executed him. The shock of this new threat apparently turned the king’s hair white.
Perhaps unsurprisingly after so many challenges to his reign, Henry became increasingly paranoid, and his rule harsher. In 1499, he introduced a new court, the Council Learned in the Law, strengthening his authority over land and income. That summer, too, an attempt to free Warbeck and Warwick from the Tower was thwarted. Both were tried and executed.
The long-awaited wedding of Prince Arthur to his Spanish bride, Catherine of Aragon, in November 1501 promised a chance for Henry’s reign to be shaped afresh. Pageants, banquets, jousts and discussions reinforced the alliance. As the newlyweds headed back to Ludlow for Christmas, the king might have looked to the future with renewed confidence.
If so, it was short-lived. The following Easter, Arthur died suddenly, possibly from the mysterious, virulent sweating sickness that had swept through Europe since 1485.
The future of Tudor rule now rested with 10-year-old Prince Henry, born five years after his brother. His preparation for kingship had to be achieved quickly – and without the support of his mother. In February 1503, Elizabeth of York died shortly after giving birth, along with her infant daughter. The king’s “heavy and dolorous” reaction saw him isolated for several days. For the rest of his life, he suffered episodes of severe respiratory illness, spiking around the anniversary of Elizabeth’s death.
Henry responded to that triple tragedy by doubling down on his efforts to consolidate lasting Tudor power. And in June 1503, Prince Henry’s betrothal to his brother’s widow, Catherine, was confirmed in a new Anglo-Spanish treaty.
Over the first 18 year years of his reign, with threats emerging all too frequently, Henry had held fast to his longstanding friendships, relying on those stalwarts for support and advice. As his confidants began to perish, though, he became increasingly reluctant to delegate.
From 1504, the king utilised the crown’s inherent rights – the royal prerogative – to inflate payments for his goodwill. Royal servants were squeezed hard: the justice Robert Rede, for example, had to pay a £300 bribe to renew his post. Henry put the bureaucrats Richard Empson and Edmund Dudley in charge of this clampdown. Several years of grinding harshness followed as Empson and Dudley filled the royal coffers with fines extracted by legal tricks and informers. Henry aimed to “keep all Englishmen obedient through fear”, suggested Vergil.
Generational strife
Young Henry’s safety now became the king’s priority, and the prince’s independence was curtailed. There was little confidence that Tudor rule would continue should the king die before his heir reached adulthood.
The spectre of civil unrest haunted Henry VII for most of his 24 years on the throne – and had barely subsided when he did perish, at Richmond Palace on 21 April 1509, of tuberculosis. His 17-year-old son, now Henry VIII, knew that he must act quickly to head off yet another rebellion, so his father’s death was concealed for two days to enable the arrest of Empson and Dudley – handy scapegoats for the first Tudor king’s oppressive final years. Young Henry decried his father’s agents as “the most savage extortioners who eagerly plundered all secular and ecclesiastical wealth”. In doing so, he cannily plugged into the public mood.
“Heaven smiles, Earth rejoices; all is milk and honey and nectar.” This famous statement, written by the Tudor courtier Lord Mountjoy, captures the excitement generated by the accession of a vigorous young king – one who promised a clean, bold break from the penny-pinching and paranoia that preceded him.
But should we judge Henry VII’s reign so harshly? It had started with an air of great promise before descending into rebellion and reaction. True, it had been increasingly choked by a suffocating cloud of suspicion and austerity. Yet it’s also worth remembering that Henry VIII was able to ascend the throne only because his father had navigated a period of extreme peril – one in which enemies seemingly lurked around every corner. For all his missteps, Henry VII was a great survivor – and for that, at least, his famous son had cause to be thankful.
Sean Cunningham is head of collections for medieval, early modern and legal records at the National Archives. His books include Henry VII: Treason and Trust (Penguin Monarchs, 2026)
This article was first published in the December 2026 issue of HistoryExtra Magazine
]]> How did plastic save elephants? The surprising history of a game-changing material https://www.historyextra.com/period/how-did-plastic-save-elephants-the-surprising-history-of-a-game-changing-material/ Wed, 11 Nov 2026 13:35:10 GMT https://www.historyextra.com/period/how-did-plastic-save-elephants-the-surprising-history-of-a-game-changing-material/ In the 19th century, scientists looked to find synthetic alternatives to natural resources in the hopes of reducing the damage being done to the environment – ironically enough In terms of natural materials with plastic properties – think rubber, amber, animal horn, gums and shellac – humans have played with the building blocks of plastic for millennia. And playing is the key word there: the Olmec civilisation in Mexico (c1200-400 BC) used rubber to make the balls for the beloved ceremonial ballgame. Their name even means ‘rubber people’.
As for the development of synthetic plastic, however, the story really began in the 19th century.
With industrial production on the rise, the quantities of commonly used natural materials were shrinking; the demand for ivory to make piano keys and billiard balls, for example, had seen elephant populations diminish. Alternatives were needed.
Parkesine makes early strides
While chemically modified materials – such as vulcanised rubber – were a good start, an early step towards plastic was made by English chemist Alexander Parkes. In 1862, he patented a cellulose-based option, which he named Parkesine after himself. Able to be moulded into different objects, from combs and buttons to intricately carved plaques, it won a bronze medal when he unveiled it at the International Exhibition in London.
While this makes Parkes a contender for the ‘father of plastics’, he did not have an eye for business and he soon bankrupted himself. Instead, others investigated the possibilities of cellulose nitrate, such as Parkes’s partner, Daniel Spill.
Celluloid lights a fire
At the same time in the US, a billiards company called Phelan and Collender offered a $10,000 reward to anyone who devised a suitable alternative to ivory, and American brothers John Wesley and Isaiah Hyatt got involved. By adding camphor to cellulose nitrate, they created celluloid.
This came to be used in a number of products, most famously film, but had a major downside in its flammability. The billiard balls developed by the Hyatts’ company could let off an explosion-like pop when struck against each other.
Bakelite sets the mould
Another breakthrough was needed to end reliance on natural materials. This came in 1907 when Belgian-born chemist Leo Baekeland created the first fully synthetic plastic by combining the chemicals of formaldehyde and phenol.
Based in New York, US, Baekeland had made a fortune with his new type of photographic printing paper and had been looking for something that could be used for electrical insulation. He quickly realised that his new creation had countless other uses in manufacturing.
Bakelite, as he called it, could be moulded into any shape when heated and hardened into a highly durable, heat-resistant, non-conducting, long-lasting and inexpensive plastic. No wonder it was marketed as “the material of a thousand uses”.
Baekeland rather understated it when he wrote in his journal: “Unless I am very much mistaken, this invention will prove important in the future.” The world would not be the same again, as plastic quickly became ubiquitous. In the 1920s and 30, a number of variations emerged, including polystyrene, polyester, vinyl, acrylic, nylon and, still the most common plastic today, polythene.
The industry had yet to hit its stride, too. Of course, the true environmental impact of synthetic plastics would not be understood for decades.
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