Her condition soon came to the attention of William Warham, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who sent an Episcopal Commission to investigate her case. They found her to be neither a dissembler nor unorthodox in her beliefs. She spoke only of the Mass and Confession, they said. Cleared of any wrongdoing she was carried from the Chapel at Court-le-Street in triumph by the crowd of admirers that had gathered to hear the verdict, miraculously cured, or so it seemed.

The fit and healthy Elizabeth now became a nun at the Benedictine Convent of St Sepulchre’s. But here her trances and revelations only seemed to intensify. Though her supposedly divine messages remained theologically orthodox, they were being relayed at a time when there was about to be a profound shift in English religious thinking. Even so, she may well have been left alone had her predictions not begun to impinge upon the realm of politics.

Still by 1528, she had become something of a Tudor celebrity. So famous was she that she had a private meeting with the Chancellor, Cardinal Thomas Wolsey. He was impressed by this simple woman of little education. So much so that he was to arrange two meetings for her with the King himself. It was at the second of these meetings, however, that everything was to change for Elizabeth.

In January, 1528, Henry VIII announced his intention to divorce his wife Katherine of Aragon and marry the notorious courtesan Anne Boleyn. Katherine was hugely popular with the common people whilst Anne Boleyn was regularly referred to as that ” Goggle-Eyed Whore.”

At their second meeting Elizabeth spoke to the King of his proposed marriage to Anne Boleyn. She told him that should he persist ” he should no longer be King of his Realm and die a Villains death.” That he should be aware of the dire consequences that would follow. God had spoken to her and said that the marriage was blasphemous in His eyes and that Henry would be dead within one month of taking his marriage vows.

Henry did not respond but remained silent to what in some quarters could have been perceived as a threat. Indeed, he did not react at all to Elizabeth Barton’s latest revelation for almost a year. Perhaps he did so out of fear of God’s wrath, perhaps because the Holy Maid of Kent was more popular amongst the common people than he was. After all, thousands made the pilgrimage to her Convent to pray for her, or in the hope of being touched by her. But her opposition to the Royal Marriage and the fast-moving English Reformation could not remain unchallenged.

The King’s agents now began to spread rumours that the Holy Maid of Kent was not all that she seemed. She had engaged in sex with priests, it was said. That she had lascivious thoughts about both men and women, that her thirst for lust was unquenchable, that she was little more than a common whore and a charlatan.

When in May, 1533, Henry formally announced his divorce from Katherine of Aragon, Elizabeth went public with her revelations. In September of that same year she was arrested and charged with treason.

Such was her status that John Fisher, the Bishop of Rochester, was in regular communication with her, and the ex-Chancellor Sir Thomas More visited her in prison. But neither her celebrity nor the love of the people could save her. The successor to William Warham as Archbishop of Canterbury was Thomas Cranmer, the prime mover, along with the Chancellor Thomas Cromwell, of the English Reformation. He was determined to be rid of this troublesome woman. In a letter dated 20 December, 1533, he described his first meeting with her: ” When she brought hither and laid before the Image of Our Lady, her face was wonderfully disfigured, her tongue hanging and her eyes being in a manner plucked and laid upon her cheeks and so greatly disordered. Then there was a voice heard speaking within her belly, as it had been in a tun, her lips not greatly moving; she all that while continuing by the space of three hours in a trance.”

Under torture the Holy Maid of Kent confessed all. She had not received Divine Revelations at all but had merely possessed the talent of ventriloquism that meant she could speak without moving her lips that gave her lies and deceits a credibility that they may not otherwise have had. She was convicted of treason on the basis of her confession. Even though evidence obtained by torture, even in Tudor times, was considered inadmissible as evidence in a Court of Law.

Elizabeth Barton, the Holy Maid of Kent, was hanged at Tyburn with seven of her closest associates on 20 April, 1534. She was 28 years of age.

A rather blunt and rude title; but I imagine it evokes; or it should, a bit of irritation, maybe even a bit of anger.  This was the commentary that an essay was wrapped within, by William Nelson Cromwell, aka George Kateb, Professor of Politics Emeritus, at Princeton University.

The essay he wrote “On Patriotism” I came across almost by accident on a web site called “CATO UNBOUND”[1].  Professor Cromwell, along with John Rawls and Isaiah Berlin have added prolifically to Liberal Political Theory; but the last few years Professor Cromwell has turned his attention to fighting, what he sees as the erosion of individual liberties, wrought by the Bush administration.

The focus of this paper is to analyze “On Patriotism” partially as a rebuttal to what I see as the illogical and subjective aspects of Professor Cromwell’s agenda; but also to define and demarcate the rather obvious problems that we in the military have, when dealing with the reigning Intellectual Elitism that seems to have taken over every aspect of our society. 

Professor Cromwell and those like him, limit our ability to communicate the truth and urgency of our needs, with the dire circumstances that face our country if those needs are not met.  Understanding those who attack us, malign us or disrespect us is a first step toward our goals; but we also have to attack in kind and in form, those untruths as they are printed, to wit, “On Patriotism”[2].

The nature of how we define patriotism and by its extension, “The Patriot”, evokes a range of emotions and descriptions of those emotions that are innately simplistic, or gratuitously complex.  In every generation; the current one included, the concept of patriotism is abused, used and gloried in, both by the politicians that lead us and the individual citizens which grant them proxy power to steer our course into the future of our world.

All too few of our representatives search for answers to the many questions that would give us guidance on the path we should walk, as opposed to the path we find ourselves all too often being led down.  Many such leaders we elect to office; but all too often the decision makers are those that stand behind the throne, or are those who find positions in middle management, that filter out the essence of truth to those we elect.

In point of fact; be it on the throne, behind it, or kneeling in front of it, it has always been the intellectuals among us that write and pontificate through our writings and sermons, that are the true catalytic agents that mark the cadence of our course; personalities such as Jackson, Washington, Madison, Franklin and many others; some of whom had excellent academic backgrounds; but many of whom did not. 

The only watchword of the day was “Vision”; the vision of a farmer to create a stable home for his children and grandchildren; the vision of the average man or woman to become something more than average, by the nature of what they believed, and what they were willing to fight for with their collective visions coming together, through battles wrought as often by the pen, as the gun.

Through it all, it has been the intellectual that seeded the world with the logic of their words.  Words designed to manipulate, to use; sometimes with permission, and many times without; as to the nature of what a vision can do for, or to a society.

Intellectual validation as a rule did not depend on pedigree, or a piece of paper that told of what they should be capable of; but depended rather on the nature of a person’s thoughts, how well they could express them, and how well they transformed those thoughts, into the creative power that defined the birth of our country.

The Intellectual Elites of today; as many have so named them have divorced themselves from the reality of how thought and the abstract process should be connected to the practical aspects of life.  They define the theoretical nature of those things they study; but limit the nature of their understanding to those things only provable in the virtual world of their own mind.

The logic of their minds and the decision making process that these elitists use, is the end-all-be-all of what is in their philosophy, the true difference between the concept of man and the other forms of life that coexist in our world.  They negate or ignore as inconsequential, the emotional, or the spiritual by which the wisdom of our ethical or moral behavior is defined.

It is the ego of the intellectual and the “rightness” of their assumptions they use in their logic; that drives the significance of their errors.  For they do not understand the emotional and spiritual needs of humanity; that give any intellectual process its context, and by definition the wisdom that defines our morality as a species.

When defining the essence of choice, it is not enough to mathematically state or model a problem as is  the way of these elite’s;  for although a solution to a problem can be logically derived, the assumptions we make will always be subjective, and by definition, unpredictable outside the context of our goals. 

The nature of the Universe is by definition unquantifiable in the snapshot of a formula, an array of data, or the approximation that comes from the limited language we have in mathematics.  This is not to say that these tools are not usable; but they have to be used within the understanding of their limits, and the significance of those limits.

The ability to calculate, to analyze a problem, to see the symmetry and patterns of life around us, and how it connects us to one another, is the pinnacle of what we as a species should aspire to.  This is the essence of the Renaissance thinker.  This is the essence of many of the founding fathers, and oh so many of the citizens, then and now; who created, and help to support this grand experiment called the United States of America.

The province or ability to be a great thinker does not depend on a formal education, or its lack thereof; but it does require honest introspection of oneself, the ability to intuitively, or if you will, to syllogistically work through the logic of how life processes around you work, and ultimately never being able to settle for the easy answer; to reject a life of swimming in the shallow end of the intellectual pool, and seek out the depths of truth in ourselves and in those around us.

The nature of an objective truth, processed by such a mind as this; is what we all should aim for; but by which we all fall short of at times.  This is the essence of the Renaissance mind by which path we should follow; but by which today’s elites are slowly destroying.  

We as a species are like the school children who are given the task of learning math; but cheat their way through it by using a calculator and the given formulas.  They may pass the test; but the art of solving the problem’s and the mental growth that comes from such effort are lost in the homogenized environment of our public educational system.  It is the fast food mentality of our society that this has created, that now drives the ignorance of many of today’s intellectuals.

Professor Cromwell and his essay “On Patriotism”, is an example of the type of failure of today’s elitist intellectual.  He is one of today’s shining intellectuals who have lost any sense of an objective truth, on his path through the delusion of his own self-image.  Like many people who make their way in this world through the nature of how well they “live-in-their-head”; Professor Cromwell, is one such Aristotelian personality.  His essay is an example of a brilliant mind caught up in the false shadows of his own logic; wedded to assumptions more suitable for a grade school child, then the man of thought that he aspires to be.

He thinks, defines and melds his inner world into a form that by itself; is an art form of self-delusion, which at its core defines the unknown landscapes of his “wish” of how the world should be.  His logic is impeccable in its nature; but his assumptions and the data he derives from those assumptions, feed a lifetime of synergistic works, that each in their own, drive us further and further from the balance the founding fathers, so exquisitely defined within the Constitutional formulary that we live our lives by.

The Founding Fathers did not haphazardly bring their thoughts together without an understanding of the nature of humanities emotional and spiritual needs; as well as knowing the limits of those needs and how they should be integrated into the practical application of a Rule-of-Law. 

They understood the need of a common vision driven by the action of individual patriotism, and the need for a mix of cohesive forces that would bring together those idealistic visions into a well-balanced governmental institution, which could provide safety and shelter to the majority of its people. 

At its cusp, that is what drives the nature of patriotism and the visions that give it power; the need for a group of people to find stability for their lives and that of their families in the body politic, that we now call our “Republic”.

Loose adherence to the Rule-of-Law and the legal subjectivity of precedent defines chaos, and the “slippery-slope” syndrome that destroys a society.  Too much of an adherence to the strict “letter-of-the-law” breeds conformity, and decreases the ability of the law to be adaptable to the nature and needs of its people.

The Founding Fathers understood there is a practical logistical limit, to how much a governmental institution should involve itself in the daily lives of its people, as well as how much direct control the individual citizen should have, in the process of the daily activities of the government that they elected to represent them.  This is the balance defined and regulated by the Constitutional Formulary; a well-defined conservative document that the Founding Fathers set into motion, to act as the foundation for our way of life.

Although the Founding Fathers for the most part were devout Christians, they had a well-reasoned process of thought that drove them to limit governmental intrusion into the choices its citizens would make; even if that choice were not Christian based.  That is the true mark of an intellectual; the ability to set aside their own needs and wants, and to see the objective truth that benefits all, and not just the one.

The intellectual elites of today; mix and match their private agendas, with the honed skills of the written word, so as to run roughshod over those around them who are more easily lost in academic language.  Language they spent a lifetime in learning; but yet somehow expect the intelligent; but non-academic to connect with, digest and easily form a rebuttal.

Professor Cromwell epitomizes the nature of the modern day Intellectual Elitist.  He starts out his essay “On Patriotism” with:

“Patriotism is love of country.  What kind of love is that?  Some defenders of patriotism who want us to love our country use such terms as fatherland and mother country.”

And he ends the first paragraph with:

“they know that of course a country is not a person, yet they act with energy on the belief that it is. The metaphor facilitates an exploitable mental confusion.”

He starts out with a sophomoric argument generalizing the concept of patriotism, using the colloquial expressions “fatherland” and “mother country”; while intellectualizing  “country”, as an object without substance,  evoking emotions on the part of the reader, that harkens us back to the days of the Nazi Swastika, European imperialism, and Communist Russia.

His intent seems to mix and match historical stereotypes, in hopes that the reader will not see the illogic of his rhetoric, or to evoke an emotional response to his comparison of Communist or Nazi ideals and to link them to his thesis. 

His thesis defines the concept of Patriotism as some intellectual argument defining political power, instead of it being a collective extension of the “Will of the People”.  Cromwell links the nature of an open constitutional government supported and created by the people, to relics of the past, which even in their peak years of citizen oriented justice, were questionable at best.

He assumes that the nature of patriotism is a love of country, where love is blind fealty of Master and Slave; instead of it being more the innate sense of our social needs, and the support of each other through the dynamic relationships that created, and support the “Republic” we thankfully find ourselves a part of.

 The United States is more than the sum total of its geographic boundaries; it is a collective of families, neighbors, associations and common beliefs; that at its core, does at some level evoke the concept of love.  A love of self for the success of our dreams, a love of family for our desire of their safety, and yes even a love of neighbor; for it is with these associations taken collectively, that gives us a hope of success for what we desire most; the freedom to be, and the freedom to choose the path that our dreams lead us down.

Patriotism like so many other descriptors that we use to interpret a facet of an individual’s psyche, nebulizes into a complex and precarious social philosophy.  Individual philosophies that become instinctive corollaries; or social syllogisms, that when brought together in mass, provide the cohesive connections required to balance out the psychological, physical and logistical aspects required to maintain social order.

 Professor Cromwell continues to argue that the people who are Patriotic are not bright enough to understand that “Love of Country” is a metaphor; but he never quite gives you the sense that he understands the nature of the metaphor he is talking about.  He makes the mistake that it is impossible for a reasoning person to think two contradictory things simultaneously, when in actuality it is normal for the balanced mind to have contradictive thoughts all of the time.  It is the biology that wars in us with the objective reasoning of how we look at things.  Heart versus mind, gut versus head; it is the mixing and matching of all of our senses; both conscious and subconscious that works its way through our mind, and determines the inspirational clarity of our thoughts.

We don’t see the “love of country” as a person or a parent that the metaphor implies; but intuitively we do feel the connection of our fellow citizens as a collective representative of all those things we aspire for ourselves, and our families.  Our patriotism is the extension of our empathy for our fellow man, and we colloquially define it as a “Love of country”; for only in our social connections too our neighbors, do we build a stable life, and save ourselves from the anarchy that would rule without the Republic that now defines our collective natures.

It is irrational to the intellectual elites for the average citizen to recognize that “love of country” is not a person; but yet to act on it as if it is; but it is rational to those of us who see that “love of country” is at some level a collective representation of ourselves, and in some ways acts and reacts with all of the ethical and moral plasticity that this implies.

We could unfold the layers of Professor Cromwell’s diatribe “On Patriotism”; but of course what would be the point.  His logic is impeccable, his historical references are accurate within the context of his goals; but of course his goals are not to elicit objective thought; but more to drive his agenda, and those assumptions that support his agenda into the hearts and minds of all who would listen to his rhetoric.

He continues on with love of country being a monstrous extension of our love of our parents, and that love is relegated to a form of gratitude for one’s personal existence.  He makes a comparison such that:

“Should love of country overwhelm all self-centered reluctance? In particular, is gratitude, a kind of love, the right emotion to feel towards one’s country? Although children are not usually asked to die for their parents, and most parents wouldn’t accept the offer if it were made, some defenders of patriotism imagine the state as a super-parent that may ask its children to die for it. The idea of patriotism is inseparable from killing and dying for your country. A good patriot is a good killer.”

From this point Professor Cromwell uses the academic’s stock-in-trade to guide, to confuse or debilitate through his recitation; philosophical ideals that he can rest his laurels on, without much thought of any argumentative rejection by the reader. 

Words written by Aristotle, Socrates, Viroli, and Pericles top the list, in his venture to validate his assumptions through the connection of his words to those great thinkers.  Never once does he show any sense of fault with his correlative endeavors, to prove a subjective point to the out of context quotes, from the varied historical works of political philosophy he chose to use.

William James[3] seems to be both admired by Professor Cromwell, and rejected in surprise at the same time.

“An intensely American philosopher, William James (in “The Moral Equivalent of War”), can think that it is good for young people especially to feel that they are “owned” by their country. I find it surprising that such a clear-headed thinker, democratic through and through, can voice such a view. But the much larger surprise is that we find in him, where we shouldn’t, a defense of the idea that, being owned, we owe the state or the country a debt, a “blood-tax” that must be paid when the state demands it. A blood-tax, however, isn’t an exaction of gratitude. Rather, the patriotic heroism of dying prematurely or risking death is the best definition of being a man. If James doesn’t follow Socrates in saying that the state, as our parent, gives us our lives, he exceeds Socrates by suggesting that in being owned by the state, we owe it a blood-tax, not merely a grateful readiness to die when it commands. For James, only death or its risk proves patriotism.”

William James was a pacifist, so it is no surprise that the nature of his writings were oriented in a manner at odds, with the moral or immoral use of violence to solve the social problems of the day.  Professor Cromwell’s commentary of being “owned” by the country is not what James was alluding to though.  James’s essay, was a logical progression of ideals in the make-up of society that; from his prospective, gave us alternatives to solving social problems without the use of force.  His expression of “blood tax” was not the use of societies youth through acts of force and the resulting death of those same youth; but more about instituting programs whereby the youth of the day, would be conscripted into organizations that gave back to the state, while simultaneously developing the moral and ethical nature of our countries young adults.

In the quote above by Cromwell concerning William James, he says “For James, only death or its risk proves patriotism.”  Nothing could be further from the truth; for William James was embarking on a fairly radical idea, that the only way to rid the world of war, was first to offer up an alternative.  His alternative was; as will be shown below, a way of developing the youth of our country in a more moral and ethical manner, without losing the benefits of the martial forces of the military.

Professor Cromwell uses the words of James intentional out of context, to evoke in the less well read, assumptions that go against the very tenor of James’s intent in his essay.  James continues with:

“Let me illustrate my idea more concretely. There is nothing to make one indignant in the mere fact that life is hard, that men should toil and suffer pain. The planetary conditions once for all are such, and we can stand it. But that so many men, by mere accidents of birth and opportunity, should have a life of nothing else but toil and pain and hardness and inferiority imposed upon them, should have no vacation, while others natively no more deserving never get any taste of this campaigning life at all, — this is capable of arousing indignation in reflective minds. It may end by seeming shameful to all of us that some of us have nothing but campaigning, and others nothing but unmanly ease. If now — and this is my idea — there were, instead of military conscription, a conscription of the whole youthful population to form for a certain number of years a part of the army enlisted against Nature, the injustice would tend to be evened out, and numerous other goods to the commonwealth would remain blind as the luxurious classes now are blind, to man’s relations to the globe he lives on, and to the permanently sour and hard foundations of his higher life. To coal and iron mines, to freight trains, to fishing fleets in December, to dishwashing, clothes washing, and window washing, to road-building and tunnel-making, to foundries and stoke-holes, and to the frames of skyscrapers, would our gilded youths be drafted off, according to their choice, to get the childishness knocked out of them, and to come back into society with healthier sympathies and soberer ideas. They would have paid their blood-tax, done their own part in the immemorial human warfare against nature; they would tread the earth more proudly, the women would value them more highly, they would be better fathers and teachers of the following generation.”

William James defines a “Blood Tax” as an army of young people conscripted; not into the Army as we know it; but into public works projects, civil services and humanitarian endeavors, so as to help develop their ethical and moral natures; in this way creating a society that could logically and ethical move away from the violence so prevalent throughout the world.  In James’s essay, which was based on a speech delivered at Stanford University in 1906, he originated the idea of an organized national service.  This eventually led to the Peace Corps, and other volunteer agencies sanctioned and supported by the American people.

James further brings out the thought, that in following his model for social engineering, our future would be best served by combining the best of what ideals we find in the military, and the best that we find in the more pacifistic philosophies.

“Such conscription, with the state of public opinion that would have required it, and the many moral fruits it would bear, would preserve in the midst of a pacific civilization the manly virtues which the military party is so afraid of seeing disappear in peace. We should get toughness without callousness, authority with as little criminal cruelty as possible, and painful work done cheerily because the duty is temporary, and threatens not, as now, to degrade the whole remainder of one’s life. I spoke of the “moral equivalent” of war. So far, war has been the only force that can discipline a whole community, and until and equivalent discipline is organized, I believe that war must have its way. But I have no serious doubt that the ordinary prides and shames of social man, once developed to a certain intensity, are capable of organizing such a moral equivalent as I have sketched, or some other just as effective for preserving manliness of type. It is but a question of time, of skillful propagandism, and of opinion-making men seizing historic opportunities.

The martial type of character can be bred without war. Strenuous honor and disinterestedness abound everywhere. Priests and medical men are in a fashion educated to it, and we should all feel some degree if it’s imperative if we were conscious of our work as an obligatory service to the state. We should be owned, as soldiers are by the army, and our pride would rise accordingly. We could be poor, then, without humiliation, as army officers now are.”

At odds with Professor Cromwell’s interpretation of James’s work, we see that James used the term “owned”, not in the sense of slavery to the state; but more of the ethical and moral choices that each mature adult makes, in their contributions to the stability of the “Republic”, and by definition, the stability of their way of life, and that of their neighbors. 

It was an ownership defined by the self-sacrifice of those who choose to give back to the republic, by having a vision that went beyond their personal needs; this is Patriotism, these are the Patriots; people who consciously choose to put the greater good of others before their own, and sacrifice if need be; their tomorrow’s for the greater good of their families, and the extended family that links the common philosophy of our country.

James continues:

“The only thing needed henceforward is to inflame the civic temper as part history has inflamed the military temper. H. G. Wells, as usual, sees the centre of the situation. “In many ways,” he says, “military organization is the most peaceful of activities. When the contemporary man steps from the street, of clamorous insincere advertisement, push, adulteration, underselling and intermittent employment into the barrack-yard, he steps on to a higher social plane, into an atmosphere of service and cooperation and of infinitely more honorable emulations. Here at least men are not flung out of employment to degenerate because there is no immediate work for them to do. They are fed, drilled and training for better services. Here at least a man is supposed to win promotion by self-forgetfulness and not by self-seeking. And beside the feeble and irregular endowment of research by commercialism, its little shortsighted snatches at profit by innovation and scientific economy see how remarkable is the steady and rapid development of method and appliances in naval and military affairs! Nothing is more striking than to compare the progress of civil conveniences which has been left almost entirely to the trader, to the progress in military apparatus during the last few decades. The house-appliances of today, for example, are little better than they were fifty years ago. A house of today is still almost as ill-ventilated, badly heated by wasteful fires, clumsily arranged and furnished as the house of 1858. Houses a couple of hundred years old are still satisfactory places of residence, so little have our standards risen. But the rifle or battleship of fifty years ago was beyond all comparison inferior to those we now possess; in power, in speed, in convenience alike. No one has a use now for such superannuated things.”

Professor Cromwell is either disingenuous in his remarks, or blindly dishonest to the nature of his own meanderings, through the philosophies of others he would use to reinforce the logic of his course.  He works his way through theoretical arguments of a “Social Contract”; but even here he alludes to its nature as still connected to the state instead of that of the people:

“the theory of the social contract never wrestled free of the claim that the people owe their existence to the state and hence that the state owns the people. While the contract theorists unmistakably struggle to establish the proposition the state does not own the people, they nevertheless also say – and I think, inconsistently – that it can require citizens to die to preserve it. All the theorists accept this requirement. It is as if by eroding the idea that the king is father and owner of the people and owes his authority to God’s grace, they feel the compensatory need to replace devotion to the king by some other bond that would yield a moral obligation to sacrifice oneself for the state. The claim is that such a bond is created by a person’s consent to live under a state. The basis of the state in rational choice is turned into the basis for morally allowing the state to cause the death or the risk of death of citizens. Our choice to preserve our lives is turned by the contract theorists into a choice to assume an obligation to die for the sake of what supposedly, in the first place, exists in order to preserve us. Necessity gives birth to the state but the state gives birth to another kind of necessity, which is a dangerous and recurrently lethal necessity. The state for all does not preserve all lives, and loses or wastes a good many.”

There is cruelty lodged in the heart of the theory of the social contract, even though it seeks to demystify the state and to replace the traditional awe of the parent-state by clear-sighted understanding of the state’s rational purpose. The language of obligation supersedes the language of gratitude and devotion. But the mentality of self-sacrifice perhaps takes on a greater strength when it is made to flow logically from the obligation that choice creates. The social contract tends to become a more ingenious trap than any appeal to the patriotic love of country rooted in filial loyalty, whether in its pure Socratic form or in the various dilutions of it that is always current. Just because parents usually don’t ask their children to die for them, and consider it an unspeakable tragedy when any child dies before its parents, the metaphor of the state as parent must contradict its literal source: parents

If neither the metaphor of the parent-state nor the idea of the people’s consent to government can justify killing and dying for the state, patriotism has not run out of resources. Whatever theory says, patriotism will prevail. One main reason is that it is a usually tacit ideology and flourishes without philosophical assistance. The theoretical debate about patriotism directly interests only thinkers who concern themselves with questions of political and moral philosophy, and publicists who are eager to promote some policy or other. The debate about patriotism reaches undeniably to some of the most profound speculative matters, yet patriotism itself proceeds as a brute fact of life. The trouble is that this brute fact contributes to the erosion of the sentiment that government exists by consent and has the status of servant to the people. But haven’t I just said that the manifestation of consent, the social contract, tends to rationalize killing and dying for the state? Yes. But I think that properly revised, it need not; the revision must build on the ambivalent work of Hobbes and the ambiguous work of Locke, as I have elsewhere tried to suggest. In any case, modern liberty can’t do without the premise that government rightfully exists only by means of popular consent to a system of government that routinely works through continuous popular consent. The point is to show that patriotism facilitates the erosion of the idea of rational consent, and does so by means of an improvident and un-reasoned acceptance of a second social contract that usurps and inhabits the body of the original one that created the system of constitutional democracy.

The brute fact of patriotism is made brute by the inveterate inclination in men to associate virility with the exertion involved in killing and risking death. No theory can ever defeat or discredit this inclination, which helps to engender the fantasy that the competition of political units is the highest kind of team sports. Men love teams, love to live in a world where they are called on to back or play for their team against other teams, even though the sport of war is soaked in blood. Socratic notions of gratitude or Jamesian notions of infinite indebtedness are not necessary for this love. In the sport, where aristocrats used to play their games, elites now mobilize groups or masses to slaughter each other. Men can become peace-loving for a while, but not forever. The women who love them encourage their inclination to see team sports as the essence of their masculinity, and to call patriotic this inclination when it is projected into politics. The pity is that men lend their energies to a state that sooner or later embarks on an inherently unjust imperialist career and thus gets constantly engaged in policies that are deliberated in secrecy, and sustained by secrecy and propaganda, and removed from meaningful public deliberation. Patriotism is indispensable for sustaining this career of anti-democracy.

In general, an activist foreign policy works tirelessly to de-legitimate any constitutional democracy. Patriotism is the greatest asset in the internal and ever-present war against the sentiments and institutions of free government. The support of one’s team is not the defense of the Constitution. What gets hollowed out is government by rational consent, while a number of basic freedoms are steadily attenuated. The original contract for constitutional democracy is usurped, and replaced, in significant part, by a second contract for expansion and predation. It is bad enough that the original contract is interpreted to mandate dying for one’s country. Much worse is the displacement of the original contract. The spoils of activism and imperialism intensify political and economic inequality while immunizing leaders from their accountability to citizens to an ever greater extent. Citizens become followers. Leaders and followers live in different worlds. Citizens allow the patriotic thrill of team sports to obscure the radical alteration that descends on the original contract, while acquiescing in the gains of large and sometimes sinister interests that use patriotism in their appeals for support. The great theorists of the social contract would have been horrified; they didn’t quite have such a drastic mutation in mind – not to mention the anti-imperialist Socrates in his espousal of the parent-state.

Patriotism, more than any other passion in political life, makes virtues do the work of vices while promoting the praise of vices as disguised virtues. It thus sustains enormous moral perversity. If no one were a patriot, the world would be better off than it now is, when almost all are patriots. Theorists shouldn’t join in.”

Professor Cromwell seems to have totally misunderstood the intent of the Founding Fathers and the nature of Patriotism.  He validates this by his quote that “It is bad enough that the original contract is interpreted to mandate dying for one’s country”; but that the act of Patriotism somehow supersedes or mutates the original contract into something the Founding Fathers never intended.

The truth is that the Founding Fathers came together with the same moral and ethical limits we find in ourselves, for that is the state of human existence; but even so, they created an amalgam of words and deeds that brought the essence of the best of them together, balancing out the worst of their natures, to create a document that is not just a litany or list of thoughts about freedoms, or rules; but of balance.

A balance defined within the Constitutional Formulary, that supports our freedom to choose; but at the same time provides limits on being able to choose too much.  The Founding Fathers understood that it is the nature of man to need limits to his behavior, for a healthy state to exist, as well as the health of the individual citizen.

The Constitutional Formulary was by definition a conservative document, defining a balance of power between the Executive Branch, the Senate, Congress as well as the individual power of each state.  In so doing they created a direct link to the balance of power of the state, to the individual citizen and the representative government they vote for.  The nature of each part, like the nature of the Founding Fathers; a template whereby the essence of the best of them are brought together, balancing out the worst of their natures.

Unlike civil governments of the past, where Patriotism was in some way an allegiance to the state, without regard to the individual, or any legal or statutory connection to the control of the state by the individual, the United States was built on the very premise that the individual liberties were sacrosanct. 

The growth of this belief kept time with the aggressive nature of its people to be free of governmental influence; but contradictorily still finding the need to have some governmental control for social stability, and to avoid the sublime anarchy that reigns when committees of individual’s take the lead. 

Though it all; the very fabric, the very nature of the Constitutional Formulary is built around the true nature of Patriotism.  Throughout our lives in our fight against nature; to paraphrase William James, there will always be battles to be waged, social mountains to be climbed; but through it all, we only win when we have allegiance to each other.  The Renaissance minds of old knew this, the Intellectual Patriots of today know this, that for us to succeed as individuals, requires that we succeed as a country, and the nature of that success can only be found in the connections that intelligently bind us to one another.

Throughout the diatribe that Professor Cromwell makes us work our way through, there is validity in his premise if we look at the historical aspects of political thought, when analyzing European Imperialism, the political systems talked of by Aristotle, or Socrates, and even at some level in his mismanaged quotes of William James.  His ideas on Patriotism and by its extension the Patriot as being the best type of killer works well, if you think of Patriotism as some self-aware entity bent on maligning and driving the populace of a country, to acts of violent group behavior.

Professor Cromwell makes it obvious that his intellectual dissociation has blinded him to the concept of American Exceptionalism.  It is a concept that defines the unique nature of our way of life, and the inherent national stability that extends from it.

What surprises me throughout Professor Cromwell’s essay is the one-sidedness of his argument.  He maligns the concepts that are the basic glue that holds our society together.  His quote “the best patriot is the best killer”, seems at odds with the intellectual objectivity that Cromwell wants us to believe that he maintains.

Throughout the history and philosophical writings that he quotes in his argument; he, like many elitist of today, put blame on the military, the patriot, or any individual who claims a sense of patriotism to their country; but what about the intellectual that uses the written word to manipulate, and drive the nature and fervor of the individual citizen.

I would submit, that it is not Patriotism, and by definition the act of the Patriot that is destroying the nature of the Constitutional Formulary (or Social Contract as Cromwell calls it).  It is Cromwell’s lack; and others, to see and understand the uniqueness of American Exceptionalism, and how the Constitutional Formulary attempts to keep its inherent balance; even against those who write and weave their agendas through the hearts and minds of the average citizen.

Today there seems to be; as some call it; a “liberal haze” to the social battlefield of ideas and ideals about our own self-government.  There has been a secular push to cleanse the government of all those things, that out of context are considered politically incorrect, or unseemly; to get rid of any words that may spark off shadows of Christianity, or even defining a separation of Church and State, that in truth has never existed.

The tenets of the Constitution defined that no religion would be sanctioned by the government over any other; but of course the politically correct thing to do today, has been to lazily interpret this in such a way, that no one has the right to express their religious beliefs on public property.   We’ve all seen examples of this, and they continue to be spearheaded by elitist intellectuals redefining, or misinterpreting our rights, as they reweave the fabric of our Republic.

As individuals we all have thoughts and acts, that we wish that we could relive, forget, or change the affects those mistakes had on our lives and others; but throughout our life, the nature of our growth as moral and ethical beings is seeded with the mistakes we made; the introspection of our understanding of those thoughts that became greater than what we once could have understood. 

The development of wisdom is not a concept of age, or intelligence; but of the emotional balance we seek inside of ourselves as we develop our intellect; bound within our introspection, and the process of our thoughts that leads us to who we have become.

So to, America’s history is full of mistakes, full of cultural inconsistencies and contradictions; but through it all, the balance of power that extends itself into a rational rule-of-law has kept us strong, has kept the nature of our patriotic connections in balance to the greater good of society, and through this to the individual.

We cannot change and manipulate those things that are a part of the fabric of our society, without losing the nature of what our country has become, any more than we could the history of ourselves and remain the same individual.

It was the strength of this balance and the strength of the individual that slavery was eventually overturned.  Not as quick as one would hope at times; but it is the nature of Democracies to be slow and chaotic; but to do otherwise breeds anarchy and risks destruction of the Republic. 

It is the balance of doing too much too quickly, or not enough too slowly, that is the magic we find in the Constitutional Formulary; for the balance is a dynamic process of a constant ebb and flow of our collective natures and the choices we each make. 

For this balance to be maintained and to stave off anarchy requires aggressive optimism, and a collective vision by the majority of the Republic’s citizens, to limit the extremes of one social group over another, to believe in those who defend our rule-of-law with their efforts, and many times with their lives.  Above it all, it requires faith; a faith in one another, a faith in the rightness of our goals, and the nature of such faith can be summed up in one word; Patriotism!

In Summary:

The dynamic balance of our society is generational in its swing back and forth, from one limit to another.  We as American’s want social order, limits that define a world in control, a Rule-Of-Law that defines a level playing field for the life we lead.  We don’t ask for an equal share in all things; just an equal opportunity to define how we live, and how we think.  At least those were the ideals that drove those who came before us, and we see them today in those we still call patriots.  People who take personal responsibility for their actions, and the aggressive will to make the effort of their dreams.

For truly in America, we define ourselves through the symbiosis of our ideals, the limits of capitalistic logistics, and the Christian philosophy that defines the underpinning of our social tolerance.  The concept of American Exceptionalism that this defines; is the harbinger of our prophetic need for social stability, and the need for something of ourselves to live beyond our own limited corporeal existence.

The cohesive force that defines the stability of our society is the concept of Patriotism.  It is the “social glue” whereby, the majority of the Republic has a common belief, adheres to a common standard, and by which the “Rule-of-Law”, is followed and applied within the parameters of the law defined and regulated by the people.

People tend to believe that Patriotism is some simple word defining the nature of one’s love of flag, of country, or an expression of Nationalistic pride devoid of thought or reason, and hammered into our children’s heads by the state.  Like the concepts of religion, and politics and others, Patriotism has been maligned as some malignant entity that has a life of its own, and serves the Republic, at odds with the nature and wishes of the people.

In truth, Patriotism; like the other concepts mentioned, expresses the psychological needs of humanity, to control and define some level of social stability within our lives.  Patriotism is the action of our innate needs to actively express solidarity and support to each other, and the life we have chosen to collectively live through the action of the Republic we have created, and continue to invest our futures in.

Patriotism is the expression or active participation within the social structure of our way of life.  It is the voice of our needs, expressing itself as an infinite series of collective actions by the people; sometimes irrationally, sometimes logically; but always it plays a prominent role in the direction our society takes.

The Founding Fathers understood all too well the nature of these forces of humanity, and the needs to guide them with some sense of clarity and purpose.  This is the beauty of the U.S. Constitution; an amalgam of intuitive and formal understandings into the nature of leadership and law.  It is a formulary that does not require perfection from the people, nor it, the people who use it to govern.  It only requires that the majority of the Republic’s citizen’s participate in a measured and thoughtful manner in the usage of their voting rights.  Like all system processes, the very nature of each person’s opinions cancel out the extremes of one side or the other; thus the body politic becomes an intuitive organism searching and growing as an extension of its defined core beliefs, i.e., the collective drive of a citizens Patriotism.

Patriotism is the action and the will of that action that the individual citizen uses to express his or her innate feelings of their social drive.  The defining connection that brings to stasis, the majority of a group of people who have come together to create a society greater in its whole, than in the sum of its parts.  Patriotism like Damocles sword cuts both ways though, it supports and defines the stability of a society; but destroys a society if used or manipulated beyond the core values and needs of the People.

That is the problem with Professor Cromwell’s essay and other intellectual elite’s when they subjectify reality with their inner world needs.  They do not understand the psychological needs of the group to find a status quo in a common belief system, and his misconception of defining Patriotism as just some surface emotion or trait defining a love of country, shows the skewed logic he and others seem to consistently employ.

To understand the nature of Patriotism begs the need to understand who we are, and how we communicate our individual needs, and the emotional and sometimes cognitive thoughts that we share.  As communications and the technologies that support it, have broadened our ability to share information to the masses; it has at the same time decreased mass exposure to any real knowledge beyond the lowest common denominator.

Throughout this monologue, essay, or diatribe; judge it as you will, the one constant question that keeps arising in my mind in reference to Professor Cromwell’s quote, “The best patriot is the best killer” is the question:  What’s the moral difference between causing the death of an individual or contributing to the death of our Republic with a gun and the pen that Professor Cromwell chooses to use?

Professor Cromwell continues with another quote, “If no one were a patriot, the world would be better off than it now is, when almost all are patriots. Theorists shouldn’t join in”.  To the very end he dissociates any responsibility from himself for the nature of the chaos he creates in the words he writes

Professor Cromwell, and many of his same ilk, accuse us “the academically challenged” of not understanding the nature of “good government”, of not understanding the lessons of history, and of not realizing the dangers we are creating for ourselves in our support of concepts, like duty, honor, courage, self-sacrifice, and yes even a little bit of patriotism from us, the aging and out of date patriots.

In response to this I would quote  Hilaire Belloc (1870-1957  )in his book “The habour in the North”.

“The voyage which I was born to make in the end, and to which my desire has driven me, is towards a place in which everything we have known is forgotten, except those things which, as we knew them, reminded us of an original joy.”

My original joy is the knowledge of having walked quietly beside those I admire and who have held true to the ideals the Founding Fathers gave to us, in the Patriotic birth of what we hold most dear, our freedom. 

I have no doubt that Professor Cromwell is intelligent, probably moral in any objective sense of right and wrong that our society accepts; but he has come full circle to the mirror image of his own destruction, and that of the society he takes part in helping to destroy.

His hands are covered in blood, just as any soldier’s hands are covered in blood, in his drive to change the nature of his birth.  The question is never whether there is blood on our hands; but how much and with what intent. 

Every thought we have, every choice we make, creates synchronistic vibrations in the collective nature of the will of the people.  Sin is not the act of causing a death; but whether there was intent in the nature of that cause.

For when the confusion of our thoughts becomes the nature of our actions, and our actions fall short of the nature of our hearts, and we’ve lost that center or balance of ourselves that defines the essence of any objective truth, then we have no recourse; but to look at those basic truths that define the nature of the path we have come to walk. 

The future is unmapable, and we are only responsible for those things we can predict; only Professor Cromwell can answer to the level of his guilt, and the nature of his intent, in his drive to destroy through his own misunderstandings, or intentions, the fabric that defines our Republic, and by extension “we the people”.

Sir Edmund Verney, was the patriarch of a large and respected Buckinghamshire gentry family. He had been born on 1 January, 1590, and was in almost every respect unremarkable for a man of his class. He was educated in the normal way, taught to be obedient, loyal, true to his word, believe in God, and to serve his King. In 1606, he married the daughter of a neighbouring gentry family, Margaret Denton, with whom he had 10 children. He was knighted by King James I in 1612, and became a Gentleman of the Privy Chamber to the sickly, painfully shy, Charles, Duke of York. The always fragile Charles needed taking care of and Sir Edmund was the right man for the job. He was undemonstrative, loyal, and devoted. He studiously went about his business but at the same time exuded a quiet authority. He ensured that the life of the future Monarch remained as trouble-free as possible. He was particularly concerned about the influence wielded over the young Prince by the ambitious and unscrupulous Duke of Buckingham.

Sir Edmund Verney

Sir Edmund’s own life was far from trouble-free, however. He had little financial sense and was reckless with money. By the 1620’s he was heavily in debt and despite the many rewards he reaped from his devotion to the Royal Family he was to remain so for the rest of his life. Even so, he managed to secure his ever-growing family’s future.

In 1623, he accompanied Charles and Buckingham to Spain on a madcap scheme to woo the Spanish Infanta. They travelled, so they thought, anonymously, using false names and wearing fake beards and moustaches. Sir Edmund was not at ease with such nonsense and his temper snapped when he caught a Catholic priest trying to give the last rites to a dying member of the Prince’s entourage. He pulled the priest away and punched him to the ground. It was an ignominious end to a ridiculous fiasco. The party returned home empty-handed their reputations hardly enhanced by such shenanigans.

In 1624, he was elected Member of Parliament for Buckingham and a year later was appointed Knight Marshal (the man who ran the Royal Court) for life. By now the Prince Charles had been crowned King Charles I, and Sir Edmund, was to be his most devoted servant. For his loyalty he was to be well-rewarded benefiting from the sale of monopolies and receiving a Court pension, which went some way to alleviating his financial difficulties.

Even so, he was in disagreement with many of his policies, particularly those concerning religion. Sir Edmund was a Puritan, though not of the fanatical kind he shared the concerns of those of the same persuasion. He feared the return of Popery by the back door and thought Charles, perhaps naively, was permitting this to happen. He agreed that the King was being led astray by evil Councilors.

By 1640, after 11 years of personal rule without recourse to Parliament, Charles’s regime was beginning to unravel. His attempt to impose the Common Book of Prayer and the Archbishop of Canterbury William Laud’s Church reforms upon the Presbyterian Scottish Kirk had been violently rejected. Charles refused to budge on the issue and tried to impose his reforms by force but he had neither the army nor the means to do so. The Scots responded in kind and invaded England capturing Newcastle and cutting off the coal supply to London. Despite always having had a fractious relationship with his Parliament, Charles was forced to recall it. They had demands of their own, however. Under the leadership of John Pym, who was aware that he could demand only a small majority, oversaw the passage of the Grand Remonstrance, a list of grievances against Charles’s personal rule that Parliament wished addressed before it would release the funds for Charles to raise and equip an army up to the task of quelling rebellion, by just 6 votes (there were 200 abstentions). By now Charles was desperate. In the Autumn Ireland had risen in revolt and many Protestants had been massacred in Ulster. Even so, Charles refused to compromise. Pym had wanted to clip his wings and make him more of a constitutional monarch, but Charles was firm in his conviction that he was King by Divine appointment. On 3 January, 1642, he tried to arrest Pym and 5 others in the House of Commons but they managed to evade capture. The political elite of England were hopelessly split, war was inevitable.

Like many families throughout the country the Verney’s now had to choose. Just which side would they support in the coming conflict? Where would their consciences lead them? Despite his qualms regarding Charles’s religious policies, Sir Edmund was firm in his conviction that he could not betray his Lord and Master: ” I do not like the quarrel, I do heartily wish that the King would yield to their desires, but I have eaten his bread and served him near thirty years, and will not do so base a thing as to forsake him now; and choose rather to lose my life (as I am sure to do) to preserve and defend this which it is against my conscience to do.”

His son Ralph, who had sat beside his father in the House of Commons throughout the great debates of those turbulent few months, was equally firm in his own convictions. He had agreed with his father on the issues but unlike Sir Edmund was unable to reconcile himself to the King’s cause. He believed that the people, through their representatives in Parliament, should have precedence in the governance of the country: ” Peace and our liberties is all I desire. Until we have peace we can have no liberty; and without liberty I shall desire no peace.” Moreover, he had been present during the debates regarding the Militia Bill by which Parliament had sought to wrest control of the military from the King, and had sworn the Militia Oath. Oaths were no small thing and were not lightly broken. He could not go back on his pledge of allegiance to Parliament.

Sir Edmund accepted his son’s decision with regret. Ralph’s younger brother Edmund was less inclined to be treat it with such equanimity. A fervent Royalist, rash and hot-headed, so unlike his more reflective brother, he argued long into the night. Surely every Englishman’s first allegiance was to their King. Moreover, what of his duty of obedience to his father! He was outraged, but Ralph could not be swayed. They would soon go their separate ways. 

King Charles I raised his Standard at Nottingham on 22 August, 1642, effectively a declaration of war. Sir Edmund’s reward for so many years of devoted and loyal service was to be appointed the Keeper of the King’s Standard. He vowed to defend it with his life. The first great battle was fought at Edgehill on 26 October. The Cavalier Commander Sir Jacob Astley’s prayer before the battle has since become rightly famous, ” O Lord, thou knowest how busy I must be this day. If I forget thee, do not thou’st forget me.” The Lord was to forget Sir Edmund this day. He was in the thick of the fighting but refused to loosen his grip on the Standard as the carnage swirled around him. A witness described what happened, ” he killed two with his own hands before his poor servant Jason was struck down. He refused to relinquish the Standard and was killed in the push of pike.” Sir Edmund’s body was never recovered only his severed hand was found still clasping the Standard. It was identified by its signet ring. 

Ralph heard of his father’s death whilst sitting in the House of Commons listening to the Earl of Essex declare defeat at Edgehill a great Parliamentary victory. He was heartbroken and struggled to hold back the tears. The family, he was to discover, did not even have a body with which to hold a proper Christian burial. Though he was to remain true to his convictions his enthusiasm for war as a means to an end waned.

With the war going against Parliament, and himself dying of cancer, John Pym, in his desperation and to secure a Scottish Army in Parliaments support, agreed to the Solemn League and Covenant which promised to make Presbyterianism the official religion of England. It was to turn the tide of the war but it was something Ralph could not sign up to. Unable to reconcile himself to the King’s cause, he went into exile. In 1646, in his absence, his estates were sequestered. 

Whilst Ralph languished in exile his younger brother Edmund continued to fight the Royalist cause. With the King executed and the war in England seemingly over, Oliver Cromwell turned attentions to Ireland and the Royalist Army of the Duke of Ormonde. By the 11 September, 1649, he was besieging the city of Drogheda. Though greatly outnumbered and outgunned the garrison’s Commander Sir Arthur Aston refused to surrender. Despite being twice repulsed the outcome was inevitable. The final assault was led by Cromwell himself, the infantry opposing him by Edmund Verney. He fought bravely but was cut down and killed. At least he avoided the terrible massacre that was to follow when more than 2,000 men were brutally murdered after having laid down their arms.  

Ralph Verney did not return to England until 1653, upon his arrival Oliver Cromwell promptly ordered his arrest. He was deemed to be unsound and had, it was said, been implicated in Royalist plots. He was released two years later following the Lord Protector’s death. Though, he was to be elected to Parliament on a number of occasions he served only briefly, for he was done with politics. He focused instead on running the estates that had been returned to him and his work as a local Magistrate. Later in life he secured a number of royal sinecures that were to secure his family’s financial future. He died on 24 September, 1696, aged 82.  

View the 10 most evil figures in human history ….

The following list includes the most wicked, evil and bloodthirsty men and women who ever lived.(no pictures)

   Starting then reverse the list of evil;

10 — Delphine LaLaurie

LaLaurie was a sadistic social woman who lived in New Orleans. The house was a hall of horrors. On April 10, 1834, fire broke out in the kitchen of the mansion, and firefighters found two slaves chained to the stove. It turned out that they had started the fire themselves in order to attract attention. Firefighters were driven by slaves in the attic where what they saw shocked them!

The LaLaurie left before you get caught – and never caught.

09 — Ilse Koch

Known as the “bitch of Bucharest,” because of sadistic cruelty to prisoners, Ilse Koch was married to the Nazis, who served in the SS, Karl Otto Koch, but overshadowed by the cruelty and inhuman disregard for life that was the trademark.

After the war, was arrested and imprisoned in various categories and finally hanged in her cell in 1967, apparently by her guilt.

08 — Shirō Ishii

Ishii was a microbiologist and chief lieutenant of Unit 731, a biological unit in the war of the Japanese army during the Second Sino-Japanese war.

A complete list of these atrocities can be found here.
Having taken an exemption from the American occupation authorities at the end of the war, Ishii never jailed for his crimes and died at age 67 from throat cancer.

07 — Ivan IV of Russia

Ivan the fourth of Russia, also known as “Ivan the Terrible” was the Grand Duke of Muscovy, from 1533 to 1547, and was the first ruler of Russia who had assumed the title of Tsar.
In 1570, Ivan was under the belief that the elite of the city of Novgorod planned to aftomolisei in Poland, and led an army to stop them on January 2.

In 1581, Ivan struck the pregnant bride for indecent clothing, causing her miscarriage.
His son, also named Ivan, just learned about the incident came into conflict with his father, thus fatally struck by the hand of his father in the head with a cane, apparently at random!

06 — Oliver Cromwell

Cromwellian conquest of Ireland (1649-1653) refers to the re-conquest of Ireland by the forces of the English Parliament, led by Oliver Cromwell, during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. The consequence of this conquest (in order to dislodge the Catholic authority) was 200,000 civilian deaths from war-related hunger and disease, and Irish and 50,000 is seized as slaves.

His body was later dismembered and thrown into a pit and his head nailed to a pole outside Westminster Hall for the next twenty four years.

05 — Jiang Qing

The Jiang Qing was the wife of Mao Zedong, the Communist dictator of China. By means of clever maneuvering, managed to reach the highest position of power within the Communist Party (close to becoming president). It is believed that this was the main driver of the Chinese Revolution (of which he was the deputy director).

Estimates of the number of dead – citizens and the Red Guards – from various Western and Eastern sources is approximately 500,000 for the actual year of chaos 1966-1969, but some estimates are as high as 3 million deaths and 36 million to be prosecuted.

04 — Pol Pot

The Pol Pot was the leader of the Khmer Rouge and the Prime Minister of Cambodia in 1976 – 1979, and had been leader since mid-1975. During his stay in power, Pol Pot has imposed an extreme version of rural communism, where all city dwellers migrated to the countryside to work in collective farms and forced labor.

To save money on ammunition, executions often took place with hammers, axes and bamboo sticks.

03 — Heinrich Himmler

Heinrich Himmler was the architect of the Holocaust and is regarded as the greatest mass murderer ever born, by some (though others say it Joseph Stalin). The Holocaust would not have happened if not for this man. Try to create a perfect race with Nordic appearance, the Aryan race.

He committed suicide by swallowing cyanide shortly after.

02 — Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany in 1933 to become “Fuehrer” in 1934 until his suicide in 1945. By the end of the Second World War, Hitler’s policy of territorial conquest and racial subjugation, brought death and destruction to tens of millions of people, including the genocide of approximately six million Jews in what is now known as the Holocaust .
On April 30, 1945, after intense street battles in the city where Soviet troops had stopped one to two blocks from the Chancellery, Hitler committed suicide by shooting himself, while she bit a cyanide capsule

01 — Josef Stalin
Stalin was General Secretary of the Communist Party’s Central Committee of the Soviet Union from 1922 until his death in 1953. Under the leadership of Stalin, Ukraine suffered from famine (Holodomor) so much, seen by many as an act of genocide by Stalin’s government.
Estimates of the number of deaths from 2.5 to 10 million.

The famine resulted from direct political and administrative decisions. Apart from the famine, Stalin ordered purges within the Soviet Union of any person who was considered an enemy of the state. Overall, the estimates of the number killed under the reign of Stalin, counts 10 million to 60 million people.

After almost four years of brutal civil war that had cost the lives of more than 400,000 people, King Charles I’s army was decisively defeated by the forces of Parliament on 14 July, 1645, at the Battle of Naseby. It was the turning point of the war. Over the next few months those cities loyal to Charles surrendered and his remaining armies defeated in battle as Parliament brought superior forces to bear fled and dispersed. By the turn of the year he was besieged in his capital at Oxford. Escaping in April, 1646, with just two companions he tried to find a ship to take him to the Continent. Unable to do so, he eventually surrendered himself to the Scottish army stationed at Newark. After some fruitless negotiations the Scot’s sold him onto the English, to which Charles somewhat bitterly remarked that he had, ” bartered rather cheaply.”  

To most people in England the very idea of putting the King on trial for his crimes was unthinkable. But Charles did his best to remedy this. His continued defiance of Parliament even in defeat, his refusal to negotiate with any sincerity, and his active encouragement of a Second Civil War, made him the eyes of many as the sole man responsible for the unwarranted and unjustified continuation of bloodshed.

On 11 November, 1647, Charles escaped his incarceration at Hampton Court and fled to the Isle of Wight where he believed its Governor, Robert Hammond, would be sympathetic to his cause. He was not and Charles was imprisoned again, this time in Carisbrooke Castle.

From his imprisonment on the Isle of Wight, Charles continued to deflect overtures from Parliament that he become a responsible Constitutional Monarch, and instead negotiated the “Engagement” with the Scot’s Presbyterians. By this agreement the Scottish army would invade England, in conjunction with a Royalist uprising, and restore Charles to the throne in return for the establishment of Presbyterianism in England for a minimum of three years. The Royalists did indeed rise up but support was patchy, uncoordinated, and easily suppressed. Even so, the Scottish army invaded England as promised; but on 19 August, 1648, they were defeated by Oliver Cromwell at the Battle of Preston. Forced to retreat back to Scotland the last chance of Charles being restored to the throne had gone. It had also become evident to many on the Parliamentary side that this was not a King who could be negotiated with, and that as long as he lived there could be no prospect of peace. One of those so convinced was, Oliver Cromwell.  

There was no real desire, however, within Parliament to try the King. What they sought was a constitutional arrangement whereby Charles would agree to be be a responsible Monarch. The Grandees of the New Model Army though were tired of Charles’s constant vacillations and playing off of one faction off against another. When the army tried to negotiate directly with the King he rejected their proposals out of hand and even refused to read them. When Parliament also rejected them and voted to accept the King’s response they decided to act. On 6 December, 1648, Colonel Thomas Pride surrounded the Houses of Parliament and the Commons Chamber with troops. As the M.P’s entered he checked each name off against a list. By the time he had finished only 71 of the 489 M.P’s remained. The others had been barred, either permanently or temporarily, and 189 were arrested and imprisoned. The Long Parliament, which had sat since before the beginning of the Civil War 8 years earlier, had been dissolved. What remained became known as the Rump.

Oliver Cromwell, who had been campaigning in the north returned to London the following day and immediately endorsed Pride’s Purge. He was now determined to ” cut off the King’s head with the crown on on it.” 

On 4 January, an Ordinance was placed before the Rump demanding that the King be tried for treason. Of the 71 M.P’s remaining only 46 turned up for the vote, and of these only 26 voted in favour, but it was enough. The following day the same Ordinance was overwhelmingly rejected by the House of Lords. But this was ignored.

The trial of King Charles I began on 20 January, 1649. There was no precedence for this and a High Court of Justice had to be created for the purpose of trying the King. This was to consist of 135 hand-picked men who would pass judgement on Charles. Of whom only 68 actually turned up. Unable to find anyone from amongst the original 135  willing to be Chief Justice, the role went to an ambitious young lawyer, John Bradshaw. The trial was unpopular with the people and fearing for his own life he wore a specially made steel helmet throughout the trial to protect him from possible assassination.

As he read out the charges on that first morning the Court Room was rapt. This was the first time that a ruling Monarch had ever been put on trial for committing treason against his own people: ” out of a wicked design to erect and uphold in himself an unlimited and tyrannical power to rule according to his will, and to overthrow the rights and liberties of the people of England, Charles Stuart is hereby charged with treason.” When asked to plea Charles refused, nor would he defend himself against the charges (indeed, he even refused to remove his hat which could be seen as a sign of respect for the Court) instead he wanted to know by what power he was brought forth. Speaking clearly and audibly and without his usual stammer he asked: ” I would know by what power I am brought hither. What lawful power? For there are many kinds of power. Robbers on the highway. When I know by what lawful power, I shall answer. Remember, I am your King, your lawful King – and what sins you bring upon your head and the judgement of God upon this land, think well upon it, before you go from one sin to a greater.” 

Bradshaw was outraged by the King’s attitude towards the Court. Likewise, Cromwell was disgusted by his refusal to accept God’s Will so clearly shown by his defeat in the Civil War. But then Charles was being, as indeed would the defendants at the Nuremberg Trial nearly three hundred years later, charged for a crime that at the time it was supposedly committed did not actually exist. Regardless, the trial continued as witness after witness testified to the King’s deliberate provocation of war and his culpability in its continuation.

On 27 January, the Court was packed and you could hear a pin drop as the verdict was read out and the sentence passed. ” This Court doth adjudge that he the said Charles Stuart, as a Tyrant, Traitor, Murderer, and Public Enemy to the good people of this nation, shall be put to death by the severing of his head from his body.”

At this moment Charles attempted to read out a speech he had prepared earlier. Bradshaw refused him permission to address the Court. When he continued to try to do so he had the soldiers present bundle him out of the room. As he was being dragged out Charles was heard to shout, ” If I am not suffered to speak, Imagine what justice other people will have.”

It had, of course, been a Show Trial. There was never any prospect of the King getting a fair hearing and the verdict was a foregone conclusion. It’s intention was not just to kill this King but to kill the Monarchy, and to do so publicly for the whole world to see.

Cromwell, who had for so long demurred about executing the King, was now eager to get the job done. He gathered together 58 of the Commissioners who had sat in judgement of the King to sign the death warrant. Many were reluctant to do so and had to be bullied into signing. One even had his hand forced by Cromwell himself. Despite the intimidation 9 steadfastly refused to be condemned by history as regicides.

Charles I of England was to be executed on 30 January, 1649, just three days after sentence was passed. He received few visitors, his family had long ago fled abroad, and spent what time remained to him in prayer and on his meditations. On the morning of his execution was  permitted to walk his pet dog in the garden at St James Palace and then had a final meal of some bread and a glass of wine. It was a bitterly cold day and Charles asked to be provided with an extra shirt, ” the season is so sharp as probably may make me shake which some observers may imagine proceeds from fear. I would have no such imputation.”

The public hangman, Richard Brandon, had refused to carry out the execution, so a different executioner and a deputy had to be found. Handsomely paid, they were masked to hide who they were, and even to this day their true identities are shrouded in mystery.

As Charles was taken to the scaffold outside the Banqueting House the many thousands who had been encouraged to attend stood in silence. As was customary he then addressed them:

” I never did begin a war with the two Houses of Parliament. And I shall call God to witness, to whom I must shortly make an account, that I never did intend for to encroach upon their liberties. They began upon me. For the people, I truly desire their liberty and freedom as much as anybody whomsoever. But I must tell you, that liberty and freedom consists in having of Government those laws by which their laws and their God’s be most their own. It is not for having a share in Government, Sir, that is nothing pertaining to them. A subject and a Sovereign are clear different things.  

If I would have given way to an arbitrary way, for to have all laws changed according to the power of the sword, I needed not have come here, and therefore I tell you that I am the martyr of the people. I go from a corruptible to an incorruptible Crown, where no disturbance can be.”

One witness wrote that as the axe fell there was, ” such a groan by the thousands then present, as I never heard before and desire I may never hear again.” Many people then rushed forward to dip their handkerchiefs in the supposedly healing qualities of the King’s blood.

On 6 February, 1649, the Monarchy was abolished as being unnecessary and dangerous to the freedom and liberties of the people of England, followed two days later by the House of Lords. A Council of State was established to run the country. Its first Chairman was Oliver Cromwell. 

Following the restoration of the Monarchy in 1660, Charles’s son, also Charles, undertook an act of public vengeance. Those regicides that had signed the King’s death warrant and were still alive were hunted down, tried for treason, and executed. On 30 January, 1661, the twelfth anniversary of Charles’s execution, the bodies of those already dead, including Oliver Cromwell and John Bradshaw were disinterred and hung from the gibbets at Tyburn.  

The young Catherine of Aragon

The early years of Henry’s marriage were happy and he and Catherine made a good working partnership but this soon began to turn sour once it became apparent that Catherine was unable to bear healthy children. Catherine was also deeply religious and formal in manner which became an irritation to the fun-loving and aggressively energetic King. He  began to seek his entertainment elsewhere.

Henry had never been shy in taking mistresses, and he had already sired a son by Elizabeth Blount, Lady Talboys, when a year later on 7 June, 1520, he attended the Field of the Cloth of Gold, a meeting of great  ostentation and unparalleled extravagance, that had been organised by Henry’s Chancellor Cardinal Wolsey to cement an alliance between the English King and his French counterpart Francis I designed to curtail the power of the Hapsburg Emperor Charles V. But for all its grandeur and grandiloquence the Field of the Cloth of Gold achieved little politically. No treaties were signed and the meeting ended on a sour note when Francis threw Henry on his back during a wrestling match. It was, however, at the Field of the Cloth of Gold that Henry was to meet the 19 year old Anne Boleyn, the woman who would change Mary’s life and the history of England forever. First, however, he would have an affair with Anne’s older sister Mary, which would earn her the unfortunate soubriquet, ” The King’s Prostitute.”

Anne Boleyn

Henry and Anne, were to meet again in 1522, when she attended Court as a lady-in-waiting in the retinue of Queen Catherine. Though she was described, somewhat dismissively, by the Venetian Ambassador as, ” not the handsomest woman in the world,” men appeared to adore her. She had long, thick, dark brown hair, olive skin, and large dark eyes that some said were almost black, and were much commented upon. Even so, she was considered plain and to be lacking in prettiness. But then Anne did not rely upon looks for her attractiveness. Her natural vivaciousness and flirtatious manner at a time when female behaviour was bound by strict convention brought her many admirers, and King Henry was hopelessly smitten.

Henry’s desire to divorce Catherine and marry Anne was to entangle him in an 8 year legal battle that was to become known as ” The King’s Great Matter.” It was to lead to the arrest of Cardinal Wolsey, the martrydom of England’s two leading theologians, the break from Rome, the destruction of the monasteries, the English Reformation, and the establishment of the Church of England. It also led to the ruination of Mary’s mother, Queen Catherine. She staunchly refused under the most intense pressure to grant Henry his divorce. She had previously, if briefly, been married to Henry’s brother Arthur. Henry had received special Papal dispensation to marry Catherine. He now argued that the marriage had be illegal because Catherine and Arthur had had coital relationships. Catherine insisted that their marriage had never been consummated. Her tears, and public avowals of fidelity and devotion won her public support and earned Anne the epithet that would remain with her for the rest of her life as, “ the goggle-eyed whore.”

Mary felt her mother’s and her religions persecution deeply. Despite Catherine’s great courage, Henry would have his divorce. In early 1533, he married Anne Boleyn and Catherine, no longer Queen, became Dowager Princess of Wales. As a result Mary was proclaimed illegitimate and demoted to the rank of Lady Mary. Her place in the line of succession going to her half-sister Elizabeth, the daughter of Anne Boleyn. She was banned from Court and parted from her mother whom she would never see again. 

Like her mother, Mary was stubborn and brave, but she was always far more likely to express her unhappiness. Stoicism, a feature so characteristic of Catherine, was lacking in Mary. She was often ill. Some of these maladies were genuine, others a figment of her often tortured imagination. She was isolated and alone, friendless and starved of affection, and her paranoia grew exponentially.

In 8 January, 1533, Catherine died. She had insisted to the very end that she was the rightful and legitimate Queen. At last, Henry and the Anne Boleyn, the woman whom Catherine had derided as ” the scandal of all Christendom,” were rid of her. Henry ordered festivities be held and Church bells rung. Unaware to Henry, however, on the same day that Catherine died, Anne miscarried, the baby would have been a boy. Within six months of Catherine’s death, Anne would also be dead, executed on the orders of the King who had once put his entire reign in peril just to have her.

Just two weeks after Anne’s execution, Henry remarried to Jane Seymour. It was Jane, of all his many Queens, who would provide him the son he so longed for. Though it would cost her her life, she at least had done her duty. Henry’s final wife would be Catherine Parr. Catherine worked hard to bring the family together and re-unite Henry with his children. The guilty King lavished gifts on his daughters, particularly Mary, whom he had always been particularly fond of. On 28 January,1547, the obese, arthritic, half-blind King, whose physique had once turned heads and made admirers swoon, died. His 9 year old son became Edward VI, under the Regency of the Seymours.

It was during Edward’s short reign that the Protestant Reformation in England really occurred. Under the guidance of his Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Cranmer, religious life in England was transformed. The monasteries had already been destroyed and the land sold, clerical celibacy was banned, as was the Mass, and the Common Book of Prayer introduced. The Church of England was the established religion and the break with Rome complete.

Mary, however, insisted on being allowed to take Mass and worship in the privacy of her own Chapel. This caused a rift with her brother (who though still a child was a fervent Protestant) who denied her. She was only allowed this right when pressure was brought to bear by her cousin the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V.

In January, 1553, Edward fell ill with a pulmonary disease. As it became increasingly clear that his illness was terminal urgent plans were put in place to deny Mary the Succession. Along with his Council he drew up the “Devise for the Succession.” It was agreed that his 16 year old cousin Lady Jane Grey, a Protestant, would succeed him.

On 6 July, 1553, Edward died. Four days later Lady Jane Grey* was crowned Queen of England. Her reign was short-lived. She had no popular support and most people acknowledged that Mary was the true Queen. When she entered London 9 days later any support for Jane quickly dissipated and she was arrested and sent to the Tower.

.

Mary was 37 years of age. For most of her life she’d had to endure bullying, intimidation and isolation. She had even been denied permission to attend her mother’s funeral. That she was more than a little neurotic, paranoid, and wore her Martyr Complex on her sleeve, is perhaps little surprise. She trusted no one and her closest adviser was to be the recently released from prison Bishop Gardiner, who was to become her Archbishop of Canterbury.

Desperate to have the child that would deny Elizabeth, her Protestant half-sister and still the next in the line of succession, the throne, Mary agreed to marry the future Philip II of Spain, a Catholic and the man who 34 years later would launch the Spanish Armada. They married on 25 July, 1554. England was outraged and rebellions broke out the length and breadth of the country. The most serious was the rebellion of Sir Thomas Wyatt, the son of the famous poet. His intention was to oust Mary in favour of Elizabeth. Though it was eventually crushed it was to cost Lady Jane Grey her life, and put the 17 year old Elizabeth’s in peril. She was arrested and sent to the Tower of London. There she was interrogated by Archbishop Gardiner. She gave nothing away and demanded that she be permitted to see her sister. Mary eventually yielded and Elizabeth was able to plead her case in person. She denied any knowledge of Wyatt’s rebellion, which probably wasn’t true, and refused to deny her Protestant faith, and though respectful stood up for herself and was not cowed by Mary’s threats and intimidation. Elizabeth was released from the Tower but kept under close house arrest for the rest of Mary’s reign, and she was to live in constant fear that any future insurrection would cost her her life.

Queen Elizabeth I 

Mary and Elizabeth had a peculiar relationship. Both were daughters of women who had loathed each other. Both had suffered humiliations and indignities at the hands of their father. Both had lived in peril of their life. But at the end of the day they were sisters. On occasions Mary is known to have adopted an almost maternal attitude to the sister who was twenty years her junior, and Elizabeth had thought of her as more as an aunt than a sister. Mary was small of stature, dark, and plain. On those occasions when she didn’t feel the whole world was against her, Mary could be kind and generous. But she was a difficult person to get to like and was petulant and peevish by nature. Elizabeth, could not be more different. By no means beautiful she was flamboyant and effervescent, and her long mane of red hair gave her a striking resemblance to her father.

Still desperate for the child that would secure England for Rome, Mary endured a number of phantom pregnancies. Indeed, her belief that she was pregnant became almost pathological. She would become hysterical with anyone who dared deny her pregnancy, and her husband Philip couldn’t wait to escape his increasingly frenzied wife. When he departed to command his armies abroad, Mary fell into a deep depression. He rarely returned.

Mary was powerless to reverse England’s slide into Protestantism. The new vested interest was simply too influential. The best she could do was reconcile England with Rome, and then vent her impotence in a series of vindictive and often unwarranted persecutions. On 4 February, 1555, John Rogers became the first of the Marian Martyrs. The most prominent victims were the Bishop of Gloucester, Bishop Hugh Latimer, Bishop Nicholas Ridley, and Thomas Cranmer. On 25 July, 1554, as the flames were lit Hugh Latimer said to Nicholas Ridley, ” Be of good cheer Master Ridley, and play the man, for we shall this day light a candle in England, as I trust by God’s grace, shall never go out.” They were the words of a martyr.

Thomas Cranmer, the architect of the Protestant reforms in England, was the real target of Mary’s vengeance. Cranmer had written numerous letters of submission to the Pope whilst under arrest but he had always then torn them up. Eventually, with what he believed was a promise from the Queen that he would be spared he signed and handed over his letter of submission. Mary then reneged on her promise, however. She now demanded that Cranmer make a full confession from the pulpit and then be burned anyway. Instead of doing what was expected of him, Cranmer denounced the Pope as Anti-Christ. Amid a furore he was hauled from the pulpit and carried to the stake. He shouted to the crowd, ” I have sinned, in that I signed with my hand what I did not believe in my heart.” He then thrust that hand into the flames. 

Most of the Marian Martyrs, however, were common people whose only crime had been to try to find the truth of God for themselves. They were later immortalised in John Foxes Acts and Monuments, published during the reign of Elizabeth, and better known as his Book of Martyrs.

In the Winter of 1558, Mary again believed she was pregnant. What she in fact had was cancer of the stomach. She died in great pain, a frustrated and angry woman, on 17 November, 1558. She had so longed for a child who would take England back to Rome, and just as importantly for Mary, secure her mother’s legacy. She failed and her reign was ill-starred from the start. Her insecurities had been her own, when she became Queen they became England’s. On hearing of the news of her sisters death, Elizabeth prayed to God for her deliverance. They were later reunited in death. incarcerated in the same tomb the inscription reads, ” Consorts in realm and in tomb, here we sleep, Elizabeth and Mary, sisters, in hope of resurrection.”

* See: Lady Jane Grey, the Nine Day Queen  ( Related Article )     

  
Mk VIII Cromwell (A27M)

In autumn 1941, BRCW plants in Birmingham, upgrading the original design of A27 and adapting it to the new tank engine Rolls-Royce Meteor and transmission Merritt-Brown, developed a new draft cruising the tank and soon built the first prototype. January 20, 1942 Tank went to the factory test.

In February, testing began in Farnborough. Within two months of intensive work the new tank was 3500 km, with a mandatory mileage of 1600 kilometers. Serious breakages and damage is not noted, and test reports were clearly positive and defined a new car as “exceptionally good”.

At the same time contracts were signed for the construction of the first 950 tanks A27M, with a leading firm remained factories BRCW. However, due to lack of sufficient engine Meteor first tank left the factory premises only in January 1943

Soon responsibilities leading firms in both variants A27 (ie, Cromwell and the transitional type Centaur) were transferred to the concern Ley land. But he experienced the same problems and substantial shipments A27M began arriving in troops only in mid-1943

Table 3. Manufacture of tanks Cromwell.
Number of Rooms machines Producer Contract Note
order. made.
T120415-T120689 275 275 Metro T11513, 7.02.1942 Cromwell I uVI
T121150-T121822 673 376 BRCW T / M 6415,4.03.1942 Cromwell I
T188065-T190064? 300 Ley / and 2225
? Fowler 88 M 6074 Cromwell IV
including T188617, T188686? 30 Metro M4433 Cromwell VI
T255310 1 1 of its 8 / 6722 Cromwell Vw
Total: 1070

In the summer of 1943 in the Training Center in Bovington tank forces were organized comparative tests of English and American technology. They included 14 cars, tanks Centaur, Cromwell and Sherman (in variants with a diesel engine of M4A2 and M4A4, with five conjugated petrol engines). At the end of the first day run to the center back M4A2, for them – M4A4, consume more fuel and require additional refueling on the track. After a brief inspection crews went to rest. In the twilight, and Cromwell tanks arrived late at night – Centaur. These machines need a rather long maintenance. In his report to the head of the major tests Clifford said that he would not command a unit of tanks A27L Centaur, unreliable in operation and requiring significant finds staff. Cromwell, he argued, could become a valuable fighting machine, but in this version it can be considered only as a test model, which requires further work on the final design.

Table 4. Manufacturers of tanks Centaur / Cromwell.
Manufacturer Centaur Cromwell
Nuffield 288 —
LMS 45 —
Ley / and 1158 300
Harland 125 —
88 Fowler 715
ITS 803 1
BRCW – 376
Metro – 305
Total: 3134 1070

    * Nuffield – Nuffield Mechanisations and Aero Ltd., Birmingham;
    * LMS – London, Midland and Scottish Railway, Crewe;
    * Leyland – Leyland Motors Ltd .. Leyland, Lancashire, the main plant in Kingston-upon-Thames, Surrey;
    * Hariand – Hariand and Wolff Ltd., Belfast, Northern Ireland;
    * Fowler – John Fowler and Co., Hunslet, Leeds;
    * ITS – English Electric Valve Co,. Stafford;
    * BRCW – Birmingham Railway Carriage and Wagon Co., Birmingham;
    * Metro – Metropolitan Carriage, Wagon and Finance Co., Ltd., Plants in Oldbyuri and Uednesbyuri, Staffordshire.

Such work was carried out in parallel with the serial production. In early February, Leyland took a number of design improvements A27M. Thus, one of the new models of the tank, so called. “Fighting Cromwell” (Battle Cromwell), but the improved engine and transmission, had upgraded the mechanism of elevation barrel turret gun, increased booking (additional 6-mm armored plate underneath the tank), and the corps was reinforced by additional internal connections. In another model, Cromwell Pilot D, changed primarily the chassis and suspension – the tank has improved shock absorbers, wider track (which caused an increase in the number of teeth of the leading asterisks), rollers with rubber tires of the type Avon.

Simplify and technology of production of hull and turret. Prototype tank with cast turret offered firm Vauxhall (soon rejected) and Rolls Royce, a draft of which was called Cromwell Applique. In this modification made to the traditional method of building and tower welded additional armored, increasing the thickness of the reservation up to 101 mm. But this model has not received further development, but in BRCW serial production started (in April 1944 built the first tank 82 of 160 ordered) version with a welded front hull and turret armor (hereinafter turret armor is mounted on bolt) 101 mm thick. This version received the designation of the tank Cromwell Vw (w – welded, welded).

Change design of the tank resulted in a 5 versions of the case:

    * A – the first, the original version with the hatches of the driver and gunner in the roof of the office management;
    * In the – case without a side drawer and a hatch hands, opening sideways and forward, over the upgraded air intake valve in the engine compartment;
    * C – a new construction of the inlet valve on the engine compartment, more subtle armored (ibid.), change in shape nadgusenichnyh wings;
    * D – modified the hatch driver and plate design on the engine compartment;
    * F-removed another side of the box with the other side and the driver’s hatch opens sideways and forward.

Modernization Program.

Since the end of 1943 – in relation to the rearmament of thousands of tanks as Centaur, Cromwell and 75-mm gun, as well as the replacement for A27L Liberty motors powered Meteor and the need to implement many of the later improvements in the design and separate mechanisms A27 – began the process of modernization Almost all machines of both types. In the original version by the end of the war were only a few instances.

Modernization is not only the tanks were arriving for the overhaul of the educational units and zones, but also completely new car with low mileage that came to the mobilization of storage reserves. Priority modernization (replacement of weapons, engines and components) was arbitrary, leading to a variety of types of modernized machines. In the process of development and improvement of design, as well as modernization in the years 1943-1945. appeared the following models and variants of the tank Cromwell:

Cromwell I – the first production version. Shells 30 cars were made of hardened steel and armed with 6-pounder cannon OQF. Tanks Cromwell IA had a body that is identical with the machines Centaur I (sometimes it was called “Type C”). Series production enterprises BRCW began in February 1943. Initially, the tank received the designation Cromwell III, in accordance with a system whereby all new tanks received the name of Cromwell. In November, the names have changed:

Cavalier (A24) – Former Cromwell I and Centaur (A27L) – Former Cromwell II. Most of the tanks of this type, the original training, were later converted into a model V, VI, VII, VIII;

Cromwell II – prototype version of the tank was a caterpillar width 15.5 “(394 mm) to 14″ (355 mm) in the previous model. In addition, Cromwell II was withdrawn by the exchange rate 7.92-mm machine gun Besa Mk.II. Number of members of the crew was reduced to 4 people. Total built 16 machines of this modification;

Cromwell III – so designated tanks Centaur I with 75 mm cannon, which Liberty engines were replaced by Meteor. Originally refitted cars were called Cromwell X. Case – “type D”. The model was used exclusively for educational purposes, and then upgraded as modification IV, VI, VII, VIII;

Cromwell IV and IVw – the first substantive model, armed with 75 mm tool. This tank comes in two versions: either the machine was built as Cromwell (re-model I – III or the beginning of a new gun), or – Centaur III upgraded with the body “type D”. This last option has been the most numerous and constitute the basis of weapons of tank units of allied troops in the first phase of the fighting on the continent in the summer of 1944 Cromwell IVw-machines, with welded-hull “Type F”;

Cromwell V and Vw – identical tanks modification “IVw”. When building used exclusively welding (and on Mk.IV IVw alementy gathered some bolt-on). The lower part of the Office of the cast. Machinery modification V is also denoted Vw (welded – welded). They had frontal hull and turret armor, reinforced armored up to 101 mm. Results released several hundred of these machines;

Cromwell VI – tank support with 95 mm Howitzer: with such a model was built initially arming or it was rearmed Centaur I or IV, or Cromwell I and III. Howitzer had a barrel length 20-21,8 caliber and the total weight of 394 kg. The corners of the vertical guidance – -5 (+37),. Muzzle velocity – 328 m / sec. Ammo – 51 shell. Built about 200 cars;

Cromwell VII and VIIw – later model, introduced in September 1944 as a result of modernization of various modifications of the Centaur or Cromwell, or to build on the prototype model – tank Cromwell Pilot D. Tanks modification VII had increased the reservation (Block “type E”), upgraded suspension, broadened the caterpillars (15.5 “) and an improved gearbox. Maximum speed – 51 km / h. A small number of tanks, model VII Corps had a” Type F “. Designation VIIw were modernized tanks Cromwell Vw;

Cromwell VIII – tank support with 95 mm howitzers. appeared as a result of modernization Cromwell I, III, IV, V, VI, which consisted of re-(from the gun options) and increasing the thickness of your reservation up to 101 mm. Upgraded several dozen cars.

Variants of special machines based on the tank Cromwell:

Cromwell ARV – several dozen tanks, the first option (I-III) converted to cross bronetyagachi or tow truck – Armoured Recovery Vehicle. Deprived of the towers tanks equipped with folding crane 3000 kg. Could be installed and additional arrow. In tank regiments, armed with which consisted A27M, one such truck was available in each squadron;

Cromwell Command – standard tanks turned into a commander’s vehicle in two versions – with preservation of the tower guns and dismantled the main arms and rocket racks. The second case was replaced by a wooden model of the instrument. In the tower installed two radio stations “Type 19″ (HP or LP), a tablet to work with the card, etc. The tank was intended to command tank brigades and divisions, the radio station allowed to liaise with the command (corps, division) and subordinate (brigade, regiment). Outwardly, this model features additional antennas (mounted in different locations), and tanks on nadgusenichnyh shelves (3-4 cans), and near – the lack of holes in the muzzle brake barrel layout. Some of these tanks were manufactured in the factory, part – force field workshops, so they all differed from each other;

Cromwell Control – tanks with turret armament, equipped with two radio stations “Type 19″ (LP) and a “type 38″ and designed for tank commanders razvedpolkov; stations allowed to communicate in the radio division;

Cromwell Rear Link – tank with turret armament, radio stations “Type 19″ (HP) or “type 38″, who were transmitting stations in the tank regiments;

Cromwell OR – disarmament, equipped with additional radios and surveillance devices mobile observation posts for officers spotter Hartog-nya in the shelves of self-propelled or towed artillery, armored divisions;

Cromwell CIRD – experimental tanks, equipped with an additional circular Canadian mine sweeps CIRD (Canadian Indestructible Roller Device);

Cromwell Prong – tank, equipped device Cullin Hedgerow Cutting Device for mowing passes in hedges (bocages), the surrounding fields in Normandy. Design creates an American sergeant CJ Kullin. The tests took place in England in the tank Centaur III. Produced 500 sets of such equipment. At the end of fighting in Normandy, the device removed;

Cromwell Crocodile – flamethrower tank, the prototypes were tested at the end of the war;

Cromwell CDL – tank, equipped with two powerful searchlights (Mercury Vapour Searchlights), servants to blind the enemy, the experimental design.

Mass production A27M Cromwell was completed in January 1945, the original tanks (ie, initially had engines Meteor) was built around 1100. Many more well-known under this name machines came with the modernization and restructuring of the A27L Centaur. However, their exact number is unknown so far.

Construction Cromwell became the basis for development in 1942-44. subsequent models of the battle tanks of various types and options – cruising, infantry support and self-propelled guns. Most of them remained in the stage of the project, some fruition in the metal as a single prototype, and only three were accepted for service and put into serial production:

A28 – project Cromwell – version in the version of the tank support for infantry – with reinforced booking, which cover and chassis, 1942;

A29 – draft cruising tank weighing 45 tons from 17 lb. instrument (light version wore designation A29A), development of U. Robotema, 1942;

A30 – in two versions: the tank and SU. The tank, which has been drafted U. Robotem also had a pair of elongated rollers on the chassis and body. 17 lb. instrument was installed in a rotating high rectangular tower. Prototype BRCW manufactured by the company in 1942, the tank was adopted for the title on the Challenger as the tank support (for the destruction of armored targets). The volume serial production limited 200 copies. Constructed in 1943-44. and used in battles on the Western European theater of operations. Self-propelled plant also had a swivel tower, but with a much thinner armor and an open top. The body and chassis – the other designs. Prototype was built in BRCW in 1944; machine put into service as a tank destroyer Avenger. The series of 230 SU put troops after the end of hostilities;

A31 – a project of the tank support for infantry in armored chassis A27M, with welded hull and turret, which was taken from Churchill, 1942;

A32 – Cromwell with booking standard Churchill and more powerful gear, weight machines – up to 33 tons; project company Rolls-Royce; 1942;

A33 – the so-called. Assault Tank (Assault tank), known as the Excelsior, offered to replace the A22 Churchill. Project 1942. In 1943, built a prototype vehicle in two versions. Model firm English Electric – Pilot A – had the chassis and suspension of American heavy tank T1 and 57 mm gun. The second model, developed by LMS and Rolls-Royce (Pilot B), was armed with 75 mm gun and had the suspension type RL. Mass of both variants reached 40 tons, armor – up to 114 mm (it was planned to increase up to 150 mm), both chassis armor and cloaked in the guise mounted engines Meteor. Tests of both machines (the third prototype was being developed, Pilot C, but before it was built, it did not get) began in late 1943 and in 1944 to further work declined. Pilot in a tank on display in the museum at Bovington.

A34 – Cromwell with 77-mm weapon of new design (the company Vickers) * in the new, larger tower developed feeding niche. Draft Leyland 1943 in February 1944 built a prototype car, after testing and refinement of adopting, as cruising the tank Somet Serial production started in September 1944 in parallel with the production of A27M and the first cars took part in the hostilities in the spring of 1945 in Germany. In the postwar period, prior to admission to the troops tanks Centurion, Comet – the main tank of the British Army. To retire after 1959;

* In fact, it was 76 mm caliber, but in order not to confuse it with other instruments of the same caliber, he became known as the 77-mm.

A35 – a draft version of the weighted A34, 1943;

A36 – weighted version of the tank Challenger – thicker armor, reinforced suspension, in 1943;

A3 7 – Model A33 variant with an elongated body and chassis, a heavy armor and 17 lb. instrument, 1943;

A40 – A30 weighted version of (so-called. A30 “level 2″ or Challenger II), 1943;

A42 – weighted version A27M/A34, 1943

The Civil War (1642 – 1649). King Charles I needed more money to increase the quality of his army, to get more money he had to raise the taxes. But to raise the taxes he had to gain permission from his MP’s, parliament didn’t like the idea of this and did not approve of it. The king was furious and he decided to take this matter into his own hands, first of all he sent parliament home. He raised the taxes anyway and invented ship money, which was taxes for people who lived on ships around the land, but didn’t actually live on the land. Parliament disagreed with the kings decisions and this enraged the king even more. Until eventually he declared civil war.

Cromwell stood up to the king, which nobody had dared to do before. To some people Cromwell may have been quite villainous in fighting back, he could have possibly negotiated and come to terms with the king, but in this situation it looked like he had no other options. He fought the decisive fight at the battle of Naseby. He introduced a new style of fighting; strategies, paying and promoting hard fighting soldiers. He didn’t give people good ranks because they came from royalty. Cromwell was a good leader and believed God was on his side, and he was very tough with discipline towards his soldiers. As large as the king’s army was Cromwell claimed victory with his clever tactics and well-trained men. If he worked that hard to train his men and spent a lot of time thinking up tactics he must be a hero in some way or another.

The Execution of Charles I (1649). The protestants of England thought he was very heroic; he had the courage to stand up to the king which all protestants wanted to do, but didn’t dare because he could easily have them killed and also because of ‘The divine rights of King’s. The divine rights of kings simply means that they were chosen by God to be put ruler of their country and that their authority should not be questioned.

The king was put in prison and in prison he planned a second revolution. Shortly after this, Cromwell put him on trial, which again, nobody else would consider doing. He accused the king of treason, Oliver Cromwell came out on top of the trial and forced some people to sign the king’s death warrant. Because of the death warrant King Charles was hanged, in the eyes of protestants Cromwell was very heroic, but in the eyes of Catholics he was evil. The Catholics knew life would religiously become a lot more difficult.

Dealing with Opposition. After the execution of king Charles , Oliver Cromwell was offered the title King of England. He declined the offer and became lord protector instead. Now that Cromwell had power he had to take all of the complaints and rants from the people of England. He had different views from the Diggers, Levellers, 5th Monarchists and woman about the law. He massacred the Diggers, he didn’t want anyone thinking against him and he didn’t need to take anybody else’s views in. That meant everyone’s demands were not dealt with at all.

The reign of a Catholic ruler meant that the Catholics had more power with the Catholic churches. But Cromwell wanted that to change, he wanted a new, protestant England. And although he had been taught to hate and not to show respect towards Catholics when he was at school, he allowed them to worship in  their own way in private. But he didn’t want large gatherings, especially large gatherings of Catholics, because he wanted to make sure there were no conspiracies.

Drogheda. If Catholics were to break the law they would be punished more severely than protestants, because Cromwell did not like them, some protestants may have liked this putting the Catholics in their place. He was especially cruel to the Irish Catholics and he murdered many of them.  This was quite an unfair and villainous act, people should have equal rights.

Cromwell appeared to be a very boring person and was called a killjoy. Maybe he was called this because of the strictness he had towards his men, but he did have a laugh now and again. He sometimes played practical jokes and laughed at some amusing things. He was seen a bit of hypocrite due to this, because he banned a lot of amusing activities being a puritan. These banned activities included: Christmas, Easter, going to Ale houses, theatres and large social gatherings.

He also began to change how the churches looked, from the colourful decorations and statues to black and white and plain. Cromwell thought that nobody should be distracted at all from the worshipping of their lord. In addition to this he changed the way ceremonies and rituals were performed. After assessing this section I believe that Cromwell has displayed many points of villainy; like the murder of the Irish Catholics.

Conclusion. He changed battles and warfare forever, along with changing England all together. Parliament from there on gained more power than the king had, they represent people and democracy, the people of England had more chance of making a change to the country if they made a complaint. As considerate as this may seem it wasn’t Cromwell’s intention to make people more powerful and he thought he was above because he thought that God had something special planned for him. A very big headed, inconsiderate action. But with his confidence he stood his ground against the king for his country.

He had the king put on trial for treason and actually forced people into signing the death warrant whether they liked it or not. He did not give the king a chance to defend himself, he stood by his convictions and didn’t compromise or negotiate. After Cromwell’s death due to malarial fever at Whitehall on 3 September 1658, Charles heir, King Charles II had every man who signed that death warrant killed. Some historians say that Cromwell may well have been poisoned by his doctor but most historians believe it was the malarial infection. The reign of a Catholic ruler was back, but Cromwell’s legacy is not forgotten and because of his extraordinary legacy he was put on the half crown coin which is about equivalent to 12p today.

The first Portuguese to set foot in Brazil was Gaspar da Gama, a cristão-novo (New Christian), i.e. a  Jew who had been baptized, maybe forcibly, and who later went along with Pedro Alvares Cabral discovering what is now Brazil, in 1500.

Jews settled in Brazil as New Christians or Conversos, names designated to describe Jews (or Muslims) who converted to Catholicism, most of them forcibly.

The Inquisition in Europe kept the New Christians under close surveillance and condemned to death in the bonfire anyone who, being baptized, persisted secretly in the practice of his/her former religion. Emigration to to Brazil was survival.

In 1630, the Dutch conquered portions of northeast Brazil.  As the Dutch permitted the open practice of any religion, Jews migrated. In 1636, the Kahal Zur Israel Synagogue was built by the Jewish settlers in Recife, the capital of Dutch Brazil. The synagogue remains in the same location to this day and is the oldest synagogue in the Americas.

In 1653 Oliver Cromwell took power in England and welcomed Jews considering them “good and useful spies”. Many Jews migrated to Jamaica so that by 1660 it had become the Jews’ principal haven in the New World and the United Congregation of Israelites was established, which exists to this day.

One of the clandestine facts of history is that Jews were instrumental in the success of  Piracy.  In coded correspondence with converso merchants in the Spanish colonies, Jews in Jamaica were able to ascertain what ship was sailing when, its cargo, route destination and what contraband it might carry. 

Financing pirate excursions, gaining first dibs of the booty, created a symbiotic relationship between the Jews of Jamaica, (primarily Port Royal) and the government of England which was engaging in a kind of sea guerrilla war against the Spanish.

Although there was great prejudice against the Jews, it paled when compared to the fact that an estimated four million pounds of silver was sent to England; more wealth than all the other of the other colonies combained.

By the 1700s, although Jamaica was a centre of slave distribution, few Jews were involved. As they were the only importers of other commodities Jews had a virtual monopoly on all dry goods.

Hence before Jews looked to America as the ‘land of the free’, they looked to Brasil and Jamaica.

Many people thought Cromwell as a hero, and they had a lot of evidence to back it. The main one is the fact that he won the war-a good thing for any commander. Also he is a very good commander, who can easily maintain his troops during the heat of battle. Good leadership is always a key to win. Also he had very skilled loyal men in his ‘model’ army. This army was a great success as he didn’t chose people for their rank and title, he chose them because of their strength bravery and skill in the art of war. But they key to the soldiers loyalty was through their stomachs. This new army was well paid and well fed so they would easily mach another army full of poor, tired and hungry farmers who would happily desert their comrades and go home. That was where the success from the model army came from-loyalty.

Many believed that upon killing the king, Cromwell was fit for the throne himself. But Cromwell didn’t take the post and for good reason, He wanted to be admired throughout his life and keeping the place of the last king to a traitor. So when anyone said king, they remembered only a traitor who fought his own people and plotted with the Scottish against his own country.

Furthermore, Cromwell wanted to keep the (or in his mind his) kingdom from arguing. This is what parliament was doing-bickering and bickering about little things. This continued until Cromwell reaches his limits and shut them down. Sound familiar?

Afterwards, Cromwell decided to run the country by himself. So he split it up into 11 districts, each run by a major general. The major generals used to be commanders and where happy to back Cromwell’s ideas as they were getting promoted and paid more. Without parliament to say anything, Cromwell began to introduce new laws. He was only able to do this because there was no parliament and he had the whole army behind him. These new laws were things that would make people lead a more religious life. For example you weren’t allowed to do certain things on a Sunday like getting your hair cut or beard trimmed and something’s like drinking were banned all the time. While this did disappoint some people, it lowered the crime rate by a large scale! But even as the lord protector (Cromwell) is a puritan, he still had parties and still drank and did a number of things against his own laws but, who can arrest the king?

People thought he was a hero because of his treatment to the Irish Catholics. He destroyed them. It was only puritans who thought they deserved to die as they thought they were evil people.

Cromwell was smart not to take the throne as when the army killed a king they didn’t want to make a king, and without the army behind him Cromwell had no control of anything so his laws would be broken continuously if the people learned that nothing would happen when they broke the law. The majority of people are in the lower midst of the hierarchy so the more people on his side the better. Luckily the levellers didn’t want another king so turning down the throne was good for them (not that he would of cared about people so low in the hierarchy. Many royalists would back him up too as they believed in divine right. This is when people think that god chose them for who they are and the king was god’s chosen one and replacing him with Cromwell wouldn’t help. Now that is what Cromwell cared about as they have the money to supply him with armour, weapons and food for his army.

Oliver Cromwell wasn’t all good; many people decided that he was a villain. They say he was almost exactly the same as the king. He lived in his palaces, had his titles, controlled his servants and had his salary of 1000000 pounds (which was like billions in that time). He acted very much like the king too. Closing down parliament and ruling the country by himself (although he did do a better job of it). Also the people who offered him the crown would be angry as he turned them down and they humiliated themselves. The kings choices disappointed and aggravated many people like all choices do but he ruined people’s lives with some of his laws. Once drinking became illegal, all the tavern owners who had put their live in their business lose their money and must partake in another job, which would be hard as many other people would be doing the same. Many more were disappointed to like when gambling was banned, casinos were closed and the owners became poor. This also affects the gamblers too, though much less as they could have lost all their money while gambling. But it was still ruining peoples fun and much more by banning Christmas! As Christmas was a Christian celebration, puritans thought it right to be banned and anyone with meat near the date of Christmas would be fined and the meat confiscated. Also no singing and dancing or playing of musical instruments was allowed on a Sunday.

Some say Oliver Cromwell was a common man with the bravery and courage to fight for his people. He worked on a farm but also was a member of parliament. He was sick off the king abusing his power and rising taxes to high. He trained and formed the new model army. The new model army was made up of common wealth like beggars farmers the were highly equipped ad skilled. Oliver Cromwell put King Charles on trail in the kings own court for treason against his people .the king was executed on may 13th 1649. Oliver Cromwell took the title of lord protector and salary of 100,000 pounds
Oliver Cromwell betray his people .he abused his power by shutting parliament down he made his supporter suffer more by taxes that his former enemy was extorting poor people with because he got money greedy. He made his supporter suffer more by banning Christmas: meals decoration sports may pole dancing getting hair, beard or moustache traveling unless going or coming back from church. He did this because puritans believe in god and the bible strictly they wore plain cloths eat ordinary food they hated entertainment because they thought that entertainment was a form of the evil. Oliver was trying to get people back on the god and off entertainment. Cromwell treated the Irish Catholics very badly because the were catholic and he saw puritans he caused a massacre in witch innocent catholic women and children were killed “It was gods will they deserved it because their religion is catholic. They deserve it because they were rebels fighting against government.” these are all comments from Oliver on this subject he was prejudice towards Catholics.
Despite his obvious skill in battle, many still doubted his capabilities. Some say he won with sheer numbers, and that he didn’t hire from pure skill as he hired his son-in-law. Also many royalists thought killing god’s chosen one as a sin and kept changing their ideas of Cromwell.
I think that Cromwell didn’t think he was being evil when he was as he was pleasing some people while horrifying the other so when somebody pointed something out he said the good thing and then killed them for doubting him. Cromwell had loyal people but at the same time had very bad enemies. Personally I think Cromwell was a VILLAIN.

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