History Questions Not Worth Their Own Thread VII

Via the wonderfully-named abacination - the holding of red-hot plates to the eyes so that your corneas are burnt off. Lovely!
 
Reminds me of Michael Strogoff. Somehow I doubt that tears will protect you by vaporising between you and the blade.
 
No more than we do.
 
How do you mean? Animals were certainly important - cattle, sheep, goats, poultry and pigs were a major food industry, and they quite regularly mummified animals, including cats, which were held up as sacred. It wasn't all that unusual to keep an animal as a pet - usually a dog, a cat or a monkey - with the obvious pest-control benefits that it brings.

EDIT: On reflection, if you mean 'did Ancient Egyptian farmers keep their entire herd/flock in the house?', the answer is 'probably not'.
 
We've had this one before, I'm sure. It's not true, and to be honest it's pretty unlikely that the Biblical idea of Hebrews living in Egypt as slaves is actually true. In other words, there's no good reason to believe the central assumption that the Ancient Egyptians actually had a particular dislike for Hebrews. Much better to take the stories as a way of seeing how later Hebrew people wanted to build an identity for themselves as people with an active patron god, who had already redeemed them from a terrible situation, generally contributed to the world in their favour, and directed them to a land that was theirs by divine command. With stories like that, whether they're 'true' in our sense isn't really the point.
 
Well, you know what to do about annoying people who keep asking silly questions, don't you?
 
And yet it's they that have been completely wrong about everything they've told you that you've shared with us. You'd do a lot better to just assume that they are wrong about everything they tell you.
 
I don't know, I think there could be some grain of truth to it owing to differences in how they kept herd animals. The Egyptians certainly kept pets and a lot of different animals, but Egyptian cattle were generally confined to small outer strips of land along the nile that was too dry to farm or parts of the nile delta that were too wet, and due to the confined spaces for grazing on the peripheries of the inhabited areas they had highly organized systems of marking to keep track of ownership. Nobles and temples would often be the owners of huge cattle herds, rather than it being the business of the small farmer family.

I imagine Hebrews would generally have lived in dispersed small villages and farms, and I don't know for sure about the Hebrews, but I know in the areas in Europe and such that were not very well suited for dense farming the typical way of keeping cattle and other farm animals safe and managed was keeping them right where you lived, often under the same roof at night even. This could have been one of the major cultural differences when they encountered eachother.

And I know when they do "Ancient/Viking/Medieval/Whatever Farmstead Reconstruction" museums and stuff, one of the most prominent things brought up is how they lived under the same roof as their farm animals, how uncivilized. The Egyptians might have had the same point of view when encountering Hebrews (not necessarily involving slavery in Egypt, rather Egyptian incursions into the levant).
 
You won't find any ancient Egyptian source confirming that they despised Hebrews more than any other Asiatic. And the biblical account seems to be more about the Hebrew justification of their dislike of Egypt than the other way around (and the ancient Hebrews seem to have disliked any people who were not Hebrew - which of course doesn't conform to historical reality). It's always good to keep in mind that any source primarily presents a certain view - and not to take that view as a literal reflection of historical reality.
 
Does anyone know what kind of cement/adhesive was used in ancient Egypt to secure pieces of stone and glass in the cloisons of metalworks, for example those found in the tomb of Tutankhamun?

In the book "Tutankhamun" by T.G.H. James, there are many up-close photographs of these objects. When the pieces of inlay (lapis, carnelian, etc) don't completely fill out the cells/cloisons, you can see a dark/black/sandy material that seems to be holding them in place. I'm guessing the inlaid pieces are not mechanically held in by the metal, since they don't exactly fit the cloisons. Are they held in by an adhesive substance, like a resin or mortar? If this isn't the appropriate forum, to whom I might direct these questions, or go to learn more about the ancient Egyptian process of inlay?

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The Formation of Germany (?)

Interesting question. I subscribe it.
 
Cutlass said:
What were the reasons for the Franco-Prussian War?
Click to expand...

Short answer: Bismarck was a master troll

Slightly longer answer: tensions were growing for a while between France and Prussia since Prussia kept growing and looking scary. Bismarck leaked a doctored telegram that made it sound like the King insulted the French ambassador and Napoleon III took it as an excuse for war. Bismarck for his part needed France to declare war to get the southern German states on the side of Prussia.
 
Cutlass said:
What were the reasons for the Franco-Prussian War?
Click to expand...
The diplomatic and military realignments in the middle of the 1860s had shaken French policy quite badly. While France's puppet state in Mexico was collapsing, Prussia was defeating its ancient rival Austria and creating a powerful new North German Confederation. At a stroke, Emperor Napoléon III's prime position in Germany was weakened dramatically; instead of being able to play Prussia and Austria off against each other, the French now had to reckon with a strong Prussia and an Austria that had retreated within its own borders.

In 1867, the French government had tried to gain 'compensation' for allowing Prussia to unite northern Germany by proposing the annexation of Belgium and Luxembourg. France's plan to facilitate this by purchasing extraordinary rights in Belgian railway companies fell afoul of the British, who were suspicious of anything happening near the Flanders coast. And the French effort to annex Luxembourg also collapsed; the Prussian chancellor, Bismarck, refused to provide the necessary Great Power support, while France's effort to force the issue by astroturfing a unification movement proved to be poorly managed. The pro-French gatherings didn't last any longer than the beer that fueled them, and the Dutch king, who was the actual ruler of Luxembourg at the time, got too nervous to sell. In the Luxembourg crisis of 1867, France's bid for territorial aggrandizement was denied, and Bismarck capped it off by revealing his secret alliance treaties with the south German states, reducing France's prestige even further.

The regime found itself in need of shoring up popular support, and over the next few years underwent a series of reforms intended to convert it into a 'Liberal Empire' - slightly more parliamentary government and rule by plebiscite were the primary features. Functionally, the reforms did weaken the Emperor's power, although it's probably just as important that Napoléon's health was rapidly weakening; the statesmen in his cabinet were increasingly able to make policy with minimal reference to the throne. It remained to be seen whether these initiatives would stave off the growing popular discontent with Napoléon III's government; judging by the plebiscites, the Emperor could command a vote among the French people, but events would show how fickle that support really was.

More problematic was that the Emperor's choice of politicians to run his cabinet was somewhat dubious. The architect of the Liberal Empire, Olivier Émile Ollivier, was the new premier; he wished to combine improved civil liberties at home with a firm stand against socialism and foreign aggression abroad, which in practice meant a defense of "French honor and French interests in the public forum". Ollivier's Foreign Minister, the duc de Gramont, was an even sketchier choice; he had been ambassador to Vienna, was violently anti-Prussian, and promised to make himself the "French Bismarck". But Ollivier and Napoléon felt that they had to include him as a sop to clerical and conservative interests, including Empress Eugénie.

On the Prussian side of the equation, policy was still made by King Wilhelm I and his chancellor, Otto von Bismarck. Prussia had fought two wars in three years, first against Denmark and then against Austria. These conflicts had upended the historic political situation in Germany, which had formerly been a collection of small states governed by a weak federal assembly, dominated by Prussia and a strong Austria which also helped keep each other in check. Napoléon, however, had started the ball rolling and fatally weakened Austria, first by separating it from its Russian ally in the Crimean War, then by driving it out of Italy in 1859. So while some Austrians in government, after their disastrous defeat in the Seven Weeks' War of 1866, were interested in a war of revenge, there were caveats. Many didn't trust the French; others felt that Germany was lost for good and wanted to focus on the Danubian provinces; others pointed out that the war had weakened Austria's army even more and that the compromise with Hungarian nationalists in 1867 had crippled it decisively.

Still, the Emperor worked at building up an informal coalition. Explicit alliances weren't his way, because he felt that they left little room to maneuver. This had backfired on him in 1866, because his 'informal' understanding with Bismarck had left him empty-handed at the end of the war, but in the aftermath of the Luxembourg crisis, French diplomats took up the thread again. They managed to convince Vienna to sign a purely defensive alliance. King Vittorio Emanuele II of Italy was hyperaggressive and desperate to prove Italy's worth on the world stage, and so was willing to fight Prussia for France; at the same time, he sounded out Bismarck on an anti-French alliance and suggested to the Austrians that they ally together against both France and Prussia. This was not the most promising matrix of like-minded powers, but with the new agreements in his back pocket, it seemed like the stage was set in early 1870 for the Emperor to make some kind of diplomatic comeback.

Bismarck, on the other hand, was mostly waiting to see what the French would do. In 1867, the German states north of the Main River had unified under Prussia's aegis into the North German Confederation, but those south of the Main remained unattached, albeit still tied to Berlin by secret defensive treaties of alliance. Bismarck wanted southern Germany to slowly assimilate into the north, rather than risking public and international opinion by forcing the issue. He denied a request by the government of Baden to join the Confederation and monitored the parliamentary shenanigans in Bavaria with some trepidation. One couldn't by any means say that Bismarck's slow-growth policy was in trouble in 1870, but if war broke out with the French, nobody was totally sure which direction the Bavarians' rifles would be pointing, alliance treaty or no.

Both sides were searching for an excuse, but not necessarily an excuse for war. Bismarck certainly had little need of one. Certain elements of the French government wanted one, but not everyone agreed on that point. Still, the way was more than open for unscrupulous individuals in either government to start a crisis, or worse.

The actual crisis that led to war was ostensibly over something extremely silly. What mattered was less the nature of the crisis and more the fact that people in the respective governments wished to treat it as one. States have avoided wars over things far more serious than the Hohenzollern candidacy; they have fought them over things far less serious.

In 1868, a revolution broke out in Spain and Queen Isabella II was chased off her throne. Since nobody could amass enough support for a republic, and since more or less everybody hated the Carlists, the revolutionaries went shopping around the great houses of Europe for a suitable monarch. He had to have some tie to Iberia and he had to be Catholic, he had to have sons, and he had to be an okay guy; beyond those considerations, the government of General Juan Prim wasn't picky. The House of Hohenzollern, to which King Wilhelm I of Prussia belonged, was not Catholic, but one of its cadet branches in southern Germany was, and the Spanish duly asked Prince Leopold von Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen to be their new divinely appointed monarch. Leopold had military credentials, having served in the Prussian military in the war of 1866, and he was married to a Portuguese princess, which held out the slim hope that his sons (and he had several) might inherit both thrones. He was even distantly related to the Bonaparte family, which might forestall any complaints from Paris.

Leopold's father wasn't interested in pushing the claim without a great deal of support, though, and initially King Wilhelm didn't want to give it. He thought that Spain was an ungovernable hellhole, especially for a foreigner, and didn't want to waste the family's time on it. Bismarck, on the other hand, pushed in its favor, emphasizing the prestige for the dynasty and the potential for Spain to develop into Germany's ally; in June 1870, after months of back-and-forth, Wilhelm changed his mind, and the Spanish ministers were informed that Leopold would agree. The Spanish ministry duly sent a coded message back to Madrid, but, in one of those events that would be hilarious after a few years and a few beers, the Spanish diplomatic service made an error in decoding the message. Instead of electing Leopold, the Cortes went home for the summer; once the grandees found out, the election was rescheduled for November.

On 2 July, the Paris press broke the story, and by all accounts French public opinion went berserk.

There were several elements to the issue. A Hohenzollern on the Spanish throne raised the specter of encirclement, or even personal union, and France had fought centuries of wars against the Habsburg dynasty to prevent that from happening. The whole thing had been done secretly, so the French felt slighted at having not been consulted. The Prussians looked to be scoring a diplomatic success, and in the wake of the Luxembourg fiasco that was intolerable. Opposed to these concerns, however, one could raise a few reasonable objections. 1870 was not the same as 1570; Spain's government would make policy for the Spanish, regardless of who sat on the throne. Leopold would not be able to propel his adopted country into a war purely to aid his familial relations up north. A personal union was simply out of the question. And even if Spain somehow miraculously found its way onto the Germans' side in a war with France, it was freaking Spain. The Spanish military hadn't been a serious opponent in almost a century.

Nevertheless, with the candidacy out in the open, the ball was in the Empire's court. Perhaps ten years before, Napoléon would have done some personal diplomacy and spun this to his advantage like he'd done before so many times, but he was weak, old, beset by kidney stones, and sharing power. Ollivier and Gramont were determined to "stand up to Prussia". They demanded an answer from the Prussian foreign ministry, conveniently enough while Bismarck was away at his estate; the flunky he left to manage things in his place claimed that the Prussian government officially knew nothing about the matter and called the question "insolent" and a purely dynastic matter. In response, Gramont went to the corps législatif and announced that he sought "peace if that is possible; war if that is inevitable".

This was, to put it lightly, a gigantic escalation.

Gramont followed that up by dispatching the ambassador to Prussia, Count Vincent Benedetti, to the resort at Bad Ems, where King Wilhelm was taking the cure, to get a straight answer from the head of the House of Hohenzollern. Gramont told Benedetti to get a firm commitment from Wilhelm to end the candidacy, otherwise the next dispatch to Prussia would be a declaration of war. Personally going to Ems to seek out the King was, for the nineteenth century, the equivalent of barging into his bathroom. Wilhelm, however, was nursing a serious case of "I told you so" over the project and was gracious enough when meeting Benedetti. He said that the candidacy wasn't a mistake, but it certainly wasn't intended as a push for war, and that the King never thought it was that good of an idea anyway. Benedetti apparently left convinced that Wilhelm would squash the candidacy, but when he fired off a telegram to Paris he added the boilerplate comment that the King might be delaying in order to prepare for war. This was nonsense on the face of it, especially next to the more conciliatory material, but Gramont and the firebrands at Paris paid more attention to that line than to the entire rest of the telegram. Benedetti was ordered to go back to the King and get a definitive answer.

As much as Wilhelm was willing to help, he was not interested in backing off of his vacation purely because the French government and French media had gotten butthurt over what he considered to be a non-issue. At the same time, he was not interested in keeping the candidacy alive, either, despite Bismarck's pleas to stand firm. Instead, he wired the Prussian embassy in Paris directly, ordering the Prussian ambassador to personally convince Napoléon of his desire for peace; at the same time, he nudged Leopold's father, Prince Carl Albrecht von Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, into withdrawing the candidacy himself, to make it seem like less of an issue between states and more of a family affair. On 12 July, Carl Albrecht officially terminated his son's candidacy.

Bismarck was on his way back from his own vacation when he stopped off in Berlin and read through the dispatches surrounding the end of the candidacy. He immediately went into spin control mode, by taking personal charge of the narrative to establish a proper first impression. He broke the news to the Berlin press himself, and contacted Prince A. M. Gorchakov, the Russian foreign minister (who was coincidentally passing through Berlin at the time) to make it seem like a Prussian initiative. At the same time, he ordered the Prussian ambassador to France to get an official explanation of recent French conduct, which appeared like trumping up a war scare and violating the privacy of the King of Prussia purely to gain a cheap prestige victory.

Gramont indeed thought that he had secured a victory when he presented the renunciation to the corps législatif on 13 July, but instead he was met with a barrage of questions and declarations to the effect that it was all "too little, too late". He was already half convinced of that himself, so with the help of Empress Eugénie he set to work on convincing Napoléon to authorize an even more aggressive stance. The instructions that Napoléon ended up approving ordered Benedetti to return to Ems and obtain a guarantee from Wilhelm that he would never again permit a Hohenzollern to seek the throne of Spain.

Benedetti was unable to secure this guarantee. Wilhelm was no one's fool, and knew that Gramont's hand had been pushed to the limit; the only reason for him to give the guarantee was to assuage the frothing nationalism of France's government. He also felt that he had more than done his share of preventing war. When Benedetti confronted him in the Ems Kurgarten, he refused to grant Benedetti an audience on the matter but told him to conduct any further discussions through Bismarck; after Benedetti pressed him again, the King, standing at some distance, had his adjutant dismiss him, and departed when a public scene appeared to be in the making.

The King dictated an account of the meeting to his secretary, who wired it to Bismarck. The account made the incident seem slightly more confrontational than it actually was - which was still more confrontational than the etiquette of the time would have been comfortable with, at least on Benedetti's part - and Bismarck promptly redacted parts of the telegram to make it seem even more confrontational before presenting it to the press. Demonstrations erupted in front of the French embassy in Berlin, and when the so-called Ems Dispatch was translated and printed in France it caused a similar outcry. What apparently made the whole thing so insulting to the French was that Wilhelm's adjutant, his personal aide-de-camp, was translated as an NCO, so it appeared that the King was using a common soldier to push away the representative of the French people. When Benedetti's version of the meeting came in, it was clear that this hadn't been the case, but the Paris press had already published the first version, and of course it came out on Bastille Day for extra spice.

Ollivier, Gramont, and the Emperor knew that there had been no insult to France. But the Paris public and the corps législatif either did not know or did not care, and the Prussians had resisted giving that guarantee anyway. Ollivier was convinced that nothing but a declaration of war would succeed with the elected representatives of the people; he convinced Napoléon that to back down now would be an admission that the Liberal Empire was a sham. Furthermore, the War Minister, Edmund Leboeuf, projected confidence. Whether he actually said that the army was ready "down to the last gaiter-button" or not is incidental to the point. He was the only person in Paris who seemed like he had a plan, so the cabinet approved mobilization, and the next day successfully secured war credits from the corps législatif.

Fundamentally, the war broke out because of a crisis of leadership and confidence at the top of the French Empire that led to the imperial government escalating a run-of-the-mill diplomatic crisis into war. For several decades, it was fashionable to blame the war on Bismarck, apparently because he deliberately provoked the French into war. This explanation falls flat fairly easily. Bismarck was not necessarily opposed to war, but at each stage of the crisis it was structured so that the French government was the side that escalated things. War was certainly a plausible outcome, but one that relied on the French government acting like infants; an alternative outcome of the crisis was some sort of horse-trading over Spain. Even less credible are the claims that public opinion, on either side, forced the governments into a crisis. In fact, in both Berlin and Paris, the situation was a strange mix, with some nationalists accounting for a small number of demonstrations and the vast majority of the people apathetic. The French weren't even concerned enough to alert the city prefects to keep order; the Paris press didn't even manage to speak with one voice on the topic. Furthermore, even the demonstrations that did happen, happened in response to government initiatives. Even Ollivier's claim that he could not get anything but a declaration of war through the assembly is suspect - not that he was lying, but that he may very well have simply been wrong.
 
What a mess.
 
JohannaK said:
What a mess.
Click to expand...

:yup: Lots of that in international politics. Thanks for the explanation.

On Alsace and Lorraine, what were the ethnic makeups of the people there at the time? Were they more German or more French? Also, I read that part of the war was so one sided because the Germans had much better arms than the French. But doesn't seem like that could be the whole of it. Why was the outcome so one sided?
 
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