A Treasury of Deception

by Michael Farquhar

  To perpetuate the idea that another huge strike was imminent, all the activity that preceded the invasion of Normandy was mimicked for the benefit of the enemy. Special forces and intelligence teams were parachuted to the Pas-de-Calais. Submarines and mine sweepers appeared off the French coast, while air and naval forces began to bombard potential landing areas. Messages to the French Resistance were relayed, just as they had been before D-Day. In England, FUSAG’s dummy ships, along with a sprinkling of real ones, were brightly lit at night to make it appear from the air that they were being loaded with cargo and mobilized. Increased radio traffic between air and ground crews made it appear that a mammoth operation was underway. Double agents sent false messages to their controllers. One, code named Brutus, reported that he had seen “with my own eyes the Army Group Patton was preparing to embark at east coast and southeastern ports.” Brutus also quoted Patton as saying, “Now that the diversion in Normandy is going so well, the time has come to commence operations around Calais.” Another agent, called Garbo, sent a long, detailed report to his Nazi handler about gathering operations, and concluded, “I transmit this report with the conviction that the present assault [on Normandy] is a trap set with the purpose of making us move all our resources in a rushed strategic redisposition which we would later regret.”

  Meanwhile, Erwin Rommel and other German generals pleaded for reinforcements from the Pas-de-Calais to Normandy. Their forces were being slaughtered by the Allies, they said, while the army at Calais idled. Hitler, having been thoroughly hoodwinked by the Allied deception campaign, refused. He was adamant in his belief that another attack was in the works, and insisted the Pas-de-Calais remain strongly defended. So, while the Germans utilized their best troops to defend against a phantom force in Calais, the real one established itself at Normandy. The enemy, General Omar Bradley wrote in his memoirs, “played into our hands in the biggest single hoax of the war.”

  Bismarck itching for a fight with Napoleon III

  Part IV

  STATE-SPONSORED DECEPTIONS

  “He who has known best how to employ the fox has succeeded best. It is necessary . . . to be a great pretender and dissembler; and [citizens] are so simple, and so subject to present necessities, that he who seeks to deceive will always find someone who will allow himself to be deceived.”

  —NICCOLÒ MACHIAVELLI, The Prince

  Machiavelli understood how difficult the pursuit and maintenance of power could be, and that it often required every available means to keep it from collapsing. “A wise ruler cannot and should not keep his word when such an observance of faith would be to his disadvantage,” he counseled five centuries ago. It was a lesson many leaders throughout history knew instinctively, or learned quickly. And that’s why fraud has flourished so abundantly in the great halls of state.

  1

  A Bogus Bequest

  Being pope in the eighth and ninth centuries was no picnic. His Holiness was often at the mercy of grasping Roman aristocrats or murderous mobs, such as the rabble who in 799 tried to blind Leo III and tear out his tongue. The Lombards loomed as a constant threat from the north. And as far as the Byzantine emperor and the Frankish king were concerned, the Vicar of Christ was just another bishop of a vassal state to be controlled and manipulated. These were Dark Ages indeed.

  Out of this chaotic era emerged a remarkable forged document, known as the Donation of Constantine, designed to prop up the papacy and bestow upon it unprecedented power and supremacy. It was supposedly written in the fourth century by the first Christian Roman emperor, Constantine the Great, as a solemn legal bequest to Pope Sylvester I and his successors. The Donation was divided into two parts. In the first part, entitled “Confessio,” Constantine—or rather the guy impersonating him on paper—recounted how he was instructed in the Christian faith by Pope Sylvester, and how he was miraculously cured of leprosy at his baptism (a legend widely believed when the forgery was produced sometime between 750 and 850). The “emperor” also made a full profession of faith in the “Confessio.”

  In the second part of the forgery, called “Donatio,” Constantine supposedly made the pope all-powerful, setting him above all other bishops and churches throughout the world and giving Sylvester “all the prerogatives of our supreme imperial position and the glory of our authority.” That included the right to wear the imperial crown, “which we have transferred from our own head.” The pope turned down that particular honor, according to the Donation, but he did allow the emperor to hold the bridle of his horse and perform “the office of groom for him.” Finally, “to correspond to our own empire and so that the supreme pontifical authority may not be dishonored” by a temporal ruler in Rome, “Constantine” supposedly gave the pope and his successors not only that city, “but all the provinces, districts, and cities of Italy and the Western regions.” (In 330, Constantine had moved the imperial capital east from Rome to the city that bore his name, Constantinople, now Istanbul, thus giving the Donation a touch of historic credibility.)

  Historians are uncertain who authored the fake document. Because of its obvious benefits to the papacy, many believe it originated in Rome. Others, however, think the Donation may have been produced by the Franks—an attempt to buttress the papacy, then under the protection of King Pépin and his successor Charlemagne, against the Byzantine emperor in Constantinople and his claims to the papal states. Whatever the case, Constantine’s “donation” was for centuries believed to be genuine. And though the popes did not enjoy any immediate benefits from the forgery—they were still murdered, maimed, and deposed with alarming regularity—it did serve as part of the foundation upon which later medieval popes reigned with imperial power and grandeur.

  The fraud was finally exposed in 1440 by Lorenzo Valla in his Discourse on the Forgery of the Alleged Donation of Constantine. Valla showed with devastating precision just how preposterous the Donation really was, citing its historical anachronisms and other glaring errors. Valla also noted that the temporal claims derived from the document had made the popes not leaders of the faithful, but oppressors of Christians—“so far from giving food and bread to the household of God . . . they devoured us as food . . . the Pope himself makes war on peaceable people, and sows discord among states and princes.”

  Valla’s lesson was apparently lost on Pope Clement VII, who less than a century later had Raphael decorate his staterooms with frescos glorifying the Donation of Constantine and the supremacy of Rome. During that same reign, the city was sacked by Emperor Charles V. And no words put in a dead emperor’s mouth could save it.

  2

  Three Kings with Aces Up Their Sleeves

  The sack of Rome in 1527 was just one episode in a tangled series of plots and counterplots among three of Europe’s most powerful monarchs: Francis I of France, Henry VIII of England, and the Holy Roman emperor Charles V (who was also Charles I of Spain). Theirs was an international game of trickery and betrayal, played beneath a veneer of courtly civility that sometimes bordered on farce.

  The rivalry between Henry and Francis was perhaps the most intense, infused as it was with the longstanding enmity that existed between England and France. Centuries of intermittent warfare between the two kingdoms had left mutual antipathy and mistrust practically encoded in their genes. The fact that each king fancied himself the Renaissance ideal of a royal stud only added to the tension. They were like two strutting peacocks stuck on the same world stage. Close in age, both were handsome and athletic,8 patrons of artists and scholars, at ease equally on the battlefield and the dance floor.

  Charles V had none of Henry and Francis’s more refined qualities. Sullen and remote, with a freakishly deformed lower jaw, he could hardly be described as Prince Charming. But what the emperor lacked in looks and style, he more than compensated for with power. From his four grandparents he inherited half of Europe, along with vast riches from the New World. His potential hegemony made him dangerous to Henry and Francis, and it was this threat that in 1520 broug
ht the two together for an extravagant summit known as The Field of Cloth of Gold.

  Ostentation was the theme, and both monarchs nearly went bankrupt in the effort to outshine one another. Their entire courts accompanied them to the encounter, held in a valley between the French towns of Guînes and Ardres. Fountains of wine flowed beside tents woven in gold and pavilions studded with precious gems. The ladies and gentlemen of the French and English courts all dressed sumptuously and ate lavishly, while Francis and Henry jousted and wrestled in outwardly friendly tournaments. Each king paid due homage to the other’s queen and accorded to each other all the proper dignity and respect. “The Field of Cloth of Gold was the last and most gorgeous display of the departing spirit of chivalry,” wrote historian A. F. Pollard; “it was also perhaps the most portentous deception of record.”

  Festering beneath all the glittering opulence and diplomatic niceties was toxic animosity. “These sovereigns are not at peace,” wrote a Venetian observer. “They adapt themselves to circumstances, but they hate each other very cordially.” Indeed, no sooner had the last empty formalities concluded than Henry was off to conspire with Charles V against Francis. Their meeting was a lot less flashy than The Field of Cloth of Gold, but it was far more productive.

  King and emperor came to a secret accommodation against France and sealed it with the marital commitments so characteristic of royal diplomacy. Henry promised to break off the engagement of his daughter Mary to the French dauphin, and Charles agreed to pursue no further his commitment to marry Francis’s daughter. There was even talk of the possibility that the emperor might take Princess Mary as his wife. (Charles was the nephew of Henry VIII’s first wife Katherine of Aragon, which made Princess Mary Tudor his first cousin.)

  The pact between Henry and Charles at the expense of Francis made little political sense for England, as it risked giving the emperor complete dominance over European affairs. It was in Henry’s best interests to play Charles and Francis off each other, and thus maintain a balance of power. Pope Clement VII was among those bewildered by the secret alliance.

  “The aim of the King of England is as incomprehensible as the causes by which he is moved are futile,” observed the pope. “He may, perhaps, wish to revenge himself for the slights he has received from the King of France and from [France’s allies] the Scots, or to punish the King of France for his disparaging language; or, seduced by the flattery of the Emperor, he may have nothing else in view than to help the Emperor; or he may, perhaps, really wish to preserve peace in Italy [where both Francis and Charles vied for dominance], and therefore declares himself an enemy of anyone who disturbs it. It is even not impossible that the King of England expects to be rewarded by the Emperor after the victory, and hopes, perhaps, to get Normandy.”

  Not long after Henry and Charles sealed their alliance, King Francis took advantage of a rebellion the emperor faced in his Spanish realm and invaded Navarre, a kingdom wedged between France and Spain. The conflict soon spread to other regions that both the French king and the emperor claimed. Each turned to England, which had guaranteed in an earlier treaty to fight against whichever monarch proved to be the aggressor against the other.

  Henry sent his minister, Cardinal Wolsey, to mediate the dispute, but it was a trick. The English king had every intention of siding with the emperor against France, and Wolsey’s role was to delay a resolution of the dispute while Henry and Charles prepared for war. “The cardinal might be profuse in his protestations of friendship with France, of devotion to peace, and of his determination to do justice to the parties before him,” wrote Pollard. “But all his painted words could not long conceal the fact that behind the mask of the judge were hidden the features of a conspirator.”

  Wolsey served his master well. “Henry agrees with Wolsey’s plan that he should be sent to Calais under color of hearing the grievances of both parties,” wrote Charles V’s ambassador, “and when he cannot arrange them, he should withdraw to the Emperor to treat of matters aforesaid”—specifically, the plot against France. Wolsey’s excuse for suspending the hearing in Calais—prearranged with Charles—was that he had to meet with the emperor personally in Bruges because Charles’s representatives claimed to have no authority to negotiate for their master. Wolsey further delayed the proceedings by feigning illness. Meanwhile, he finalized with Charles plans for an attack on France and secured the emperor’s engagement to King Henry’s daughter Mary. Charles also promised to use his influence in Rome to help Wolsey get elected as the next pope.

  The invasion of France was set. The Duke of Bourbon, Constable of France and the most powerful peer in the kingdom, was to betray his king and stir up rebellion among Francis’s disaffected subjects. Charles V was to attack from Spain, and the Duke of Suffolk was to lead English forces into the heart of France from Calais. But the plan fizzled. Bourbon’s treason was discovered and he became a fugitive. Suffolk got within sixty miles of Paris but was forced to retreat. And Charles never bothered to invade at all. Furthermore, the emperor reneged on his promise to help Wolsey get elected to the papacy, and negotiated a marriage not with Princess Mary, as promised, but with Isabella of Portugal instead. Such were the fruits of the secret alliance between England and the emperor.

  In a huff, Henry refused to assist Charles when the emperor finally did get around to storming France. He then sat back and watched his entire foreign policy backfire. Charles attacked Marseille, but was repelled by Francis’s army. The French king would have done well to bask in the victory and leave it at that. Instead, he decided to chase Charles down through the Alps and into Italy, where he hoped to regain Milan. Francis was captured at the Battle of Pavia in 1525 and held as a prisoner of war. “The victory is complete,” wrote the Abbot of Najera to Charles from the field of battle, “the King of France is made prisoner. . . . The whole French army is annihilated. . . . Today is the feast of the Apostle St. Mathias, on which, five and twenty years ago, your Majesty is said to have been born. Five and twenty times thanks and praise to God for his mercy! Your Majesty is, from this day, in a position to prescribe laws to Christians and Turks according to your pleasure.” Just what Henry VIII had dreaded.

  The emperor demanded some extremely harsh terms for the release of Francis, including the French territory of Burgundy and the king’s renunciation of all claims in Flanders and Italy. “I am resolved to endure prison for as long as God wills rather than accept terms so injurious to my kingdom!” declared Francis. But in 1526 he signed the Treaty of Madrid, seeming to accept Charles’s demands. To ensure the French king’s compliance, the emperor demanded Francis’s two sons as hostages. The pact was then sealed with Francis’s betrothal to Charles’s sister Eleanor. That part of the bargain the French king kept (and eventually gave his second wife a scorching case of the clap as a wedding present).

  After Francis was released from his gloomy prison cell in Madrid, Charles rode with him part of the way to the border. When the emperor gave his hand in a farewell gesture, he asked, “Do you remember all that you have promised?”

  “Set your mind at rest, brother,” Francis replied. “My intention is to keep it all, else you may call me a wicked coward.”

  Francis, however, had no intention of keeping his word. He had signed the Treaty of Madrid under duress, he said, and repudiated it within a week of his release. He then organized the League of Cognac against the emperor, while Henry VIII and Cardinal Wolsey secretly urged him on from England. Charles was infuriated by the French king’s duplicity and even challenged him to a duel. When the emperor heard the pope was in cahoots with Francis (hoping to check Charles’s power) he reproached him: “Certain people are saying that Your Holiness has absolved the King of France from the oath by which he promised to keep to what was agreed; this we do not wish to believe, for it is not a thing that the Vicar of Christ would do.” Yet that’s just what the Vicar of Christ had done. He would pay a heavy price for siding with the king of France when the emperor’s armies stormed Rome in 1527
.

  “All the churches and the monasteries, both of friars and nuns, were sacked,” wrote a cardinal present at the scene. “Many friars were beheaded, even priests at the altar; many old nuns beaten with sticks; many young ones violated, robbed and made prisoners; all the vestments, chalices, silver, were taken from the churches. . . . Cardinals, bishops, friars, priests, old nuns, infants, pages, and servants—the very poorest—were tormented with unheard-of cruelties—the son in the presence of his father, the babe in the sight of its mother. All the registers and documents of the Camera Apostolica were sacked, torn in pieces, and partly burnt.”

  The sack of Rome proved to be a major headache for Henry VIII, as well as a turning point in the Reformation. The king looked to the pope for permission to shed his first wife, Katherine of Aragon, and marry his mistress Anne Boleyn. The request was a relatively routine one among monarchs of the era, but in this case the pope was in no position to cooperate. He was a prisoner of the emperor with whom Henry had foolishly allied himself. Now Charles controlled his destiny. And he wasn’t about to let the king of England divorce his aunt Katherine. Thus Henry’s eventual split with Rome.

  Henry, Francis, and Charles continued to plot and scheme against one another in various combinations for the next two decades. The king of England and the king of France, rivals to the end, both died in 1547. Charles abdicated and went into a monastic retirement nine years later, pooped, it’s said, from decades of duplicity.

  3

  Cardinal Sin

  In 1634, Cardinal Richelieu—the power behind the French throne, not to mention a prince of the Roman Catholic Church—leagued himself with the Prince of Darkness, aka the devil himself, to destroy a priest who had dared to defy him.