by Karl Shaw
Found guilty of spying and sentenced to death, ten days later Jakobs was taken to the Tower rifle range, strapped into a chair and executed by firing squad.
At least Jakobs, who was an otherwise rather inept spy, made his mark in history as the only person to have been shot at the Tower of London and the last to be executed at the site. All future executions of Second World War spies took place by hanging at Pentonville or Wandsworth Prisons.
“I’m just glad it’ll be Clark Gable who’s falling on his face and not Gary Cooper.”
Actor Gary Cooper, on his decision not to take the leading role in Gone with the Wind.
Worst Expeditionary Force
King Charles I had certain set beliefs. One was that, as King, he was always right about everything. So when he decided to launch a futile attack on Spain in 1625, he wasn’t going to shift or modify his beliefs regardless of what arguments were put before him.
The only person Charles was prepared to take advice from on foreign policy was his friend and favourite, the unpopular and incompetent Lord Admiral, Duke of Buckingham. When Buckingham suggested placing Sir Edward Cecil at the head of the invasion fleet, Charles agreed. Unfortunately, although Cecil was a battle-hardened soldier, he couldn’t navigate a rubber duck in a bathtub.
Buckingham and Cecil’s bold plan was to ambush several Spanish treasure ships coming back from the Americas loaded with valuables and then attack the Spanish mainland. It got off to a bad start when Cecil realized too late that his ships had been provisioned with mouldy food and infected water. Then stormy weather hit the fleet, rendering many of his ships barely seaworthy, causing major delays. They were so late that they completely missed the Spanish treasure fleet they were supposed to be attacking.
As a consolation prize, Cecil decided to attack the Spanish city of Cédiz. Meanwhile, several Spanish vessels that might have been captured were allowed to escape to the safety of Port Royal because everyone was waiting for orders from Cecil, but none came.
After landing his forces, instead of immediately attacking Cádiz he decided to attack and capture what he identified as the strategically important nearby Fort Puntel. The attack on Puntel was a complete waste of time and resources because the fort didn’t need to be captured.
After capturing Puntel, Cecil landed his troops further up the coast from where he planned to march his Army into Cádiz. The troops were ill-disciplined, poorly trained and desperately short of provisions. He allowed them to set up camp in a field next to some deserted buildings, which housed gallons and gallons of wine. Before long, Cecil’s thirsty Army was completely drunk, with men shooting each other and threatening any officer who tried to keep order.
Realizing that he had a potential mutiny on his hands, Cecil ordered his men back to their ships. When the Spanish Army arrived, they found over 1,000 English soldiers still drunk; they were put to the sword by the Spanish without a single shot fired in retaliation.
After the Cádiz fiasco, Cecil decided to try to intercept another fleet of Spanish ships that was bringing gold back from the Americas, but this failed as well because the Spanish were tipped off and easily avoided the planned ambush without any trouble from Cecil or his fleet.
With disease and sickness sweeping through the ranks and his ships in a terrible state, Cecil decided he had seen enough and his fleet limped home empty-handed, having cost the English an estimated £250,000. There was widespread outrage over the embarrassing Cádiz Expedition but King Charles, us usual, refused to explain or defend any of his decisions and even gave Cecil a promotion.
In 1627, Charles put Buckingham in charge of yet another military failure, this time in the siege of the French fortress city of Saint-Martin on the isle of Ré near La Rochelle. The English siege engineer drowned during the landing and the siege ladders turned out to be too short to scale the walls. Eventually, Buckingham gave up and sounded the retreat but was harassed by pursuing French troops, and lost about 5,000 men out of a force of 7,000.
Despite the ignominious failure of two expeditions against Spain and France, the King was determined to send Buckingham with another force to La Rochelle but, in 1628, Buckingham spared his nation any further embarrassment by getting himself stabbed to death in a public house in Portsmouth by a sailor with a grudge. Parliament was even less forgiving with the King: two ignominious military defeats started the process that led to Charles finishing his reign eight inches shorter than he was when he started it.
Unluckiest Invasion Fleet
Armies are usually defeated because they face a bigger and more powerful opponent, or they lose because they are outwitted by a cunning adversary. Just occasionally they lose because of some bizarre set of circumstances no one could have foreseen.
By the late thirteenth century, the Mongol Empire stretched from Korea to Hungary in eastern Europe, making it the largest contiguous empire the world has ever seen. The Mongols were also the only people in history ever to have successfully pulled off a winter invasion of Russia. So when it came time to invading tiny Japan, victory was assumed to be a formality.
Just to make sure there were no slip-ups, Kublai Khan’s counsellors advised him to bide his time until he had built an invincible armada of war ships, so he commissioned the construction of the greatest fleet in history and filled it with a conscripted Army of some 40,000 men.
Japan, meanwhile, could muster only about 10,000 fighting men from the ranks of the often-squabbling samurai clans. Japan’s warriors were seriously and hopelessly outmatched. Only one thing could stop a Mongol victory – a typhoon. So to make absolutely sure that the weather couldn’t wreck their plans, the Mongols planned their attack well after typhoon season.
In November 1274, Kublai Khan sent his mighty fleet of about 600 ships across the narrow strait between Korea and Japan, only to see it smashed by a typhoon. Dismayed but not defeated, Kublai Khan spent the next seven years regrouping for a bigger, even stronger attack.
In August 1281, the Mongols sent an estimated 900 ships across the narrow strait again – only to see their fleet destroyed by a second, even bigger typhoon of the type that is estimated to occur only once every few hundred years. Almost all of the invaders drowned in the storm; the few who made it to shore were hunted and killed without mercy by the samurai.
Convinced of a divine intervention, the Japanese called the two storms “kamikaze”, or divine winds. For once, Kublai Khan wasn’t arguing. The Mongols never attempted to invade Japan again.
Least Successful Tactical Withdrawal
There are not very many examples in history where an entire well-trained and well-equipped Army surrenders without a fight, even though they massively outnumber the forces they’re fighting against. The British Army’s retreat from Kabul in 1842 was called “the most disgraceful and humiliating episode in our history of war . . . up to that time.”9
It all began in the 1830s when Britain was preoccupied with protecting India and its role as “The Jewel in the Crown”. In 1838, the British Governor-General of India, Lord Auckland, decided to take down India’s troublesome Afghan neighbour the Emir of Kabul by force. British troops subsequently invaded Afghanistan with the intention of deposing the Emir and installing an unpopular former ruler, Shah Shuja. The first round of the conflict was an easy win for Britain as they routed the Emir and captured Kabul, but the British soon learned that beating the Afghans was not quite the same as controlling them.10 Enter Major-General William Elphinstone, the only general to have lost an entire British Army.
In 1841, Elphinstone took command of the British garrison in Kabul, numbering around 16,000 troops and support staff. Lord Auckland thought Elphinstone was the right man for the job because “he was of good repute, gentlemanly manners, and aristocratic connections”. His Lordship overlooked the fact that Elphinstone’s previous active service had been at Waterloo, twenty-five years earlier, and he was now a flatulent, incontinent sixty-year-old, so stricken with gout, rheumatoid arthritis and heart disease that he could
barely move.
Even Elphinstone recognized that he was too old for the job and was reluctant to go, but Lord Auckland would hear none of it; after all, the average age of your British general was such that you were considered fit for active service if you could remember your own name (see also Most Pointless Cavalry Charge).
When Elphinstone got to Kabul, he was told by the outgoing General Cotton, “You will have nothing to do here . . . all is peace.” But no sooner had he arrived that things started to go very badly indeed. Communications with India were severed by Afghans in the hills and he found himself besieged in Kabul. The predicament became a great deal worse when the nearest British fort fell to the rebels.
The Kabul garrison was built with little consideration for defence. It was located in a low, swampy area surrounded by hills and the stores were placed some 400 metres away outside its perimeter. It was an open invitation to the enemy to seize their supplies and starve the population inside, which is exactly what happened. Before long, bandits were looting the British stores and freely killing any Britons who strayed out of camp.
As autumn turned to winter and fighting intensified, the British camp came under daily attack from snipers on the heights above them, an area Elphinstone had failed to secure. When the British formed squares to repel Afghan light cavalry, their sharpshooters found the obligingly bright red uniforms impossible to miss, even at a distance.
At this point, Elphinstone was permanently bedridden and had to be carried everywhere on a litter. He was also fatally indecisive. Completely ignorant of Afghanistan or its people, he was inclined to consult widely with men of all ranks then agree with whoever he spoke with last – everyone, that is, except his second-in-command, Brigadier Shelton, whom he hated and refused to include in any discussions. Shelton, meanwhile, didn’t even attempt to disguise his contempt for Elphinstone and took his bed roll into meetings with his superior and pretended to fall asleep.
With supplies gone and casualties mounting, Elphinstone continued to vaccilate. The British envoy in Kabul, Sir William McNaughton, unable to stand Elphinstone’s dithering any longer, took it on himself to try to negotiate some kind of truce and arranged a meeting with the Afghan leader outside the British camp. McNaughton was promptly cut to pieces within sight of the camp; his hands, feet and torso were paraded victoriously through the streets of Kabul while his head was placed in a horse’s nosebag and displayed in the bazaar. Elphinstone, who had no stomach for a fight, refused to order reprisals, much to the disgust of his junior officers.
The farce descended further when Elphinstone got himself shot in the buttocks. This seems to have spurred him to make a decision, even though it turned out to be the worst of his life. He cut a deal with the Afghans. In exchange for handing over all of his gunpowder reserves, his newest muskets and most of his cannon to the Afghan rebels, the British troops and civilians were promised a safe passage to India, through the infamous Khyber Pass.
After abandoning a fortified position in Kabul, Elphinstone was now attempting to march his 4,500 men to the garrison of Jalalabad, ninety miles away, in winter, with 12,000 civilians in tow. To reach their destination, Elphinstone’s column of 16,500 men, women and children would have to cross Afghan mountain passes, marching through snow a foot deep in terrible wather conditions and with little food. Most knew from the outset the crossing would be deadly.
Despite assurances of protection, as Elphinstone’s Army staggered through the mountains, their numbers were very quickly whittled down by disease and freezing weather. Their passage through the snow was also marked by a trail of the blood of slaughtered stragglers, picked off by Afghan raiders. After three days, around 3,000 had died, frozen to death or shot, or in some cases having committed suicide.11
On the fifth day, the Afghans attacked in force near Gandamak and the rest of the party were massacred, many with their throats cut as they lay defenceless in the snow. Only a handful survived, including one regular soldier, albeit with part of his skull missing, but the Afghans took a dozen highranking prisoners including Elphinstone and Shelton, who had agreed to become hostages. It was the most cowardly act in British military history – a commanding officer and his senior aide surrendering to save their lives while their soldiers died around them.
The loss of 16,500 people was a shocking and humiliating defeat for Britain and India. Upon hearing the news, Lord Auckland, Governor-General of India, had a stroke. Major-General William Elphinstone did not survive to face the furious indignation of Victorian Britain. Wounded and suffering from dysentery, he avoided a court martial by dying in captivity a few months later.
Elphinstone was later depicted by George MacDonald Fraser in his book Flashman: “Only he could have permitted the First Afghan War and let it develop to such a ruinous defeat. It was not easy – he started with a good Army, a secure position, some excellent officers, a disorganized enemy, and repeated opportunities to save the situation. But Elphy, with a touch of true genius, swept aside these obstacles with unerring precision, and out of order wrought complete chaos. We shall not, with luck, look upon his like again.”
Quickest Surrender
On 27 August 1896, Britain and Zanzibar fought the shortest war in history. The catalyst for the conflict was the sudden death by poisoning of Zanzibar’s Sultan Hamad bin Thuwaini at the hand of his twenty-nine-year-old nephew, Khalid bin Bargash, who declared himself successor. The move displeased the local British consul, from whom Bargash had neglected to seek approval for his action, which he was obliged to do in accordance with a treaty signed ten years earlier. Moreover, the old sultan was basically a loyal figurehead for a British-run government, unlike Bargash who was a supporter of the Germans who were trying to establish colonies and build rival trading stations in Africa.
The consul fired off a telegram to Prime Minister Lord Salisbury asking for clarification of their position. Meanwhile, the Royal Navy lined up five warships in the harbour in front of Bargash’s palace. The reply from Salisbury came: “You are authorized to adopt whatever measures you may consider necessary, and will be supported in your action by Her Majesty’s Government. Do not, however, attempt to take any action which you are not certain of being able to accomplish successfully.”
In other words, attack . . . but if it doesn’t work out, you’re on your own.
At 8 a.m., Britain delivered an ultimatum through a loudhailer ordering Bargash to vacate the palace within one hour or else. Bargash refused, defying the Royal Navy, the most powerful maritime power the world had ever seen, to defeat Zanzibar, whose entire military arsenal comprised a single medieval cannon and an armed luxury yacht, the Glasgow.
British ships opened fire on the palace at 9.02 a.m. The shelling stopped thirty-eight minutes later – the time it took Zanzibar to run up the white flag of surrender.12
About 500 Zanzibaris were dead or wounded while just one British sailor was reported injured. As a final act of humiliation, Britain forced the Zanzibar Government to pay for the 500 shells and 5,000 rounds of machine-gun ammunition fired on their country.
Most Pointless Cavalry Charge
“English is full of battle-poems, but it is worth noticing that the ones that have won for themselves a kind of popularity are always a tale of disasters and retreats. The most stirring battle-poem in English is about a brigade of cavalry which charged in the wrong direction.”
George Orwell
The Battle of Balaclava was a relatively minor military engagement with a predictable outcome. The number of dead was not even exceptional. But thanks to a solitary newspaper reporter, it has become the ultimate tale of senseless slaughter, military incompetence, blind obedience and hopeless heroism.
In 1853, Britain’s ongoing power struggle with Russia erupted into war in the Crimea, a small peninsula in the Black Sea. It was a fiasco from the outset. The British Army had changed little since the Napoleonic Wars forty years earlier and was badly in need of reform. The tactics they were using were basically still the s
ame used by Wellington at Waterloo and hadn’t kept pace with the new and much greater firepower available to both infantry and cavalry.
The supply line was also fatally flawed. The Crimean campaign got off on the wrong foot, literally, when the Army was sent 5,000 left boots. The Britain had arrogantly presumed that the war would be over by Christmas so they weren’t equipped with adequate clothing for the Russian winter. British soldiers tried to keep warm by pulling woollen socks over their heads and cutting eye holes in them. When news reached Britain that their troops were freezing to death, a large quantity of warm clothing was shipped out to the Crimea, but the ship carrying the consignment, the Prince, sank without trace, taking 40,000 greatcoats and pairs of new boots down with it. By the end of November, another 12,000 greatcoats had safely arrived at Balaclava to replace the lost consignment, but more than 9,000 remained locked in store because there was an army regulation that said that soldiers couldn’t be issued more than one new greatcoat every three years. Men were dying of exposure because of red tape.
There was even a shortage of good maps. One officer wrote home to his mother: “Will you also be kind enough to send me a map of the Crimea with the forts etc., well marked out in Sebastopol. You can chose which you think best and send it by post.”
Then there was the diet. While the officers sat in their heated tents (or in Lord Cardigan’s case, on his private luxury yacht in the harbour) dining on chicken and champagne, the ordinary soldiers lived on half rations or no food at all. Their rations – salt beef and biscuits – were largely inedible, didn’t supply nearly enough nutritional value and increased the risk of scurvy. Most of the soldiers found they couldn’t eat the salt beef because it gave them diarrhoea, so they threw it away and got by on a diet of rum and biscuits instead. In November 1854, 150 tons of vegetables were shipped to the Crimea on board the Harbinger. But the ship arrived without the correct papers and the captain couldn’t get anyone to unload his cargo. While officials argued over procedure, the food rotted and eventually had to be thrown overboard.