WAR AS EDUCATION

I hate to admit it but that the effete, arrogant, pompous, intellectual, asthmatic and snobbish Frenchman Marcel Proust (above)  was right about two things - first, when he observed that “We learn from history that we do not learn anything from history”, and second that “A change in the weather is sufficient to recreate the world and ourselves.” 

Both of those profound insights struck me again recently when I stumbled upon an article in the  archeology magazine "Antiquity", which illuminated a forgotten memory of the work of a quiet rock hound  named Gerald Clark Bond. It may seem a complicated train of events, but please bare with me, while I try to explain how my mind works. I hope you enjoy the ride.

Professor Bond collected and cataloged rocks from the floor of the Atlantic Ocean between North America and Bermuda. This may have once seemed an esoteric pursuit, but in that seemingly meaningless me'lange of bottom cores, Professor Bond drilled through were thin layers of limestone pebbles,  which had nothing to do with the ocean floor nor the rivers which dumped their detritus onto the Continental Shelf in that region.

How did they get thousands of miles south and hundreds of miles off shore into of the Atlantic Ocean?  Professor Bond concluded the only delivery method that made sense was that an ancient glacier had ground against limestone cliffs, scrapping off pebbles and holding them trapped in its grip.

When the glacier then calved icebergs into the Atlantic, these floated south until they melted, and then dropped their limestone pebbles into the abyss. With extraordinary perseverance, Professor Bond matched those pebbles with a specific limestone cliff along the Canadian coast. And when other rocks from the same drill cores were identified as coming from nearby areas, the professor's suspicions were confirmed, and with it a way to measure climate change. 

More pebbles in a given core layer indicated more melting ice bergs, which hinted at warmer temperatures and rising sea levels.  Fewer pebbles thus meant cooling seas, and more water locked up as ice in glaciers.  What was amazing to Professor Bond was that there have been eight cooling periods, now called Bond Events, since the last ice age ended 11,000 years ago. 

Bond Events come in 1,500 year intervals, giving an almost respiratory aspect to our planet's atmosphere. And like a smoker who develops a cough, the deposits on the sea floor, as well as ice cores drilled in Greenland and the Antarctic have recorded the increasing impact of humans burning fossil fuels on our planet's health. But they also record something else, equally as ominous.

See, when the weather cooled for Bond Event Seven -ten thousand years ago - humans responded with the invention of agriculture.

Bond Event Four occurred about six thousand years ago, and humans responded with the domestication of sheep and the invention of bronze. 

And Bond Event Three, which came four thousand years ago, brought on the collapse of great empires in Asia and Egypt, and, of more interest to this story,  in an act of war at a crossing of a slow, meandering river about 80 miles northeast of Berlin, Germany.

The river is the somnambulist Tollense (above). For more than ten thousand years, beginning in its namesake lake, the Tollense  has followed a sinuous 58 mile course through forests and bogs, winding this way and twisting that, as it hesitantly approaches the Peene River, which winds another 30 miles to the Baltic Sea just below the island of Usedom. 

In the peat bogs lining its banks and the mud of it's bottom, the Tollense has preserved for the last 3,200 years a record of one day, an example of humanity and inhumanity, and a desperate battle for survival in the high summer of  about 1250 BC.

The invaders were from the forests and mountains to the south, and were members of the Unetice culture. They were armed with bronze daggers, spear heads and hand axes. They were adorned with engraved bronze bracelets and wooden shields, and their robes were held together with bronze pins. They came mounted on horses, which ate millet, which did not grow this far north. That suggests rations, which suggests an organized raiding party, perhaps what would one day be called an army.

The Frisian villages close to the Baltic coast were the likely target. These peoples buried their dead in stone crypts, and prayed to the earth god Inguz, who drove his chariot across the sky as easily as he dived beneath the sea. The villagers enjoyed probably the best diet in Europe, with plenty of surf and turf. They fished in the lakes and the sea from long plank canoes and hunted with curved bows. They raised cattle corralled behind their village palisades. But their weapons and tools were stone axes and baseball bat like wooden clubs. 

The bronze age had been late in coming to the Frisian Baltic coast. Copper and tin had to be heated to 1,700 degrees Fahrenheit before they would form bronze, and that takes a lot of wood, and a knowledge of ceramics. A culture cannot afford that technology unless it has something to sell. And it was not until recently that these proto-Scandinavian tribes had improved the production of their “metallum sudaticum”, amber. 

With each successive Bond Event, with each successive glacier pulse, the Baltic Sea rose and then fell, Over and over great coastal pine forests grew, matured and were then drowned in the Baltic basin.  And with each storm tide more fossilized pine tree sap from those long dead forests washed up on the sandy Baltic beaches as amber.

Villagers gathered the amber in hand held nets, then carved it into beads, rings, bracelets or even Venus religious figures (above), and then traded them up  the "Amber Road" that reached all the way to Rome and Egypt.  On the return trip traders brought ceramics, bonze rings and gold pins. But few weapons.

By 3,400 years ago the Amber Road was a well established trade route, increasing the wealth of the villages on the namesake lake of the Tollense river, where Baltic amber could pause, be collected and worked, before moving on.  And the wealth of these artisans, fishermen, farmers and herders, 

attracted the interest of the Unetice forest peoples to the south and east. 

After a generation or two of escalating raids , about 4,125 years ago, shortly after the summer solstice, perhaps a thousand occupants of the scattered Frisian villages along the Tollense valley decided to gather their tools and their children and flee north, beyond the reach of the raiders. 

The logical place to rally the farmers was on the western bank of the Tollense, where a 10 foot wide causeway (above), had been built and maintained for over some 300 years,  about 7 miles north from the Tollense' joining with the Peene. 

For a causeway to have been maintained for so long (above), the western bank must have been a traditional gathering place, perhaps with religious connotations.  

It seems likely the Frisians waited for the indecisive or the cautious to join up. Perhaps the old were too slow.  But it seems the farmers and herders were slow in discovering the causeway  across the river and bogs represented a bottleneck in their line of retreat.  Because it was here the raiders with their bronze axes fell upon the famers and herders with their stone arrow heads and wooden clubs.

The first indication of the death along the Tollense saw daylight in 1996, when a human femur  surfaced. Jutting from the base of its ball joint was a stone arrow head.  Rarely does archeology find such conclusive proof of a murder. Early excavations uncovered more human bones and wooden clubs. 

When the raiders were seen approaching, the livestock, the elderly, the women and children were sent downstream, with a small escort of the best fighters. But the majority of the Frisian men stayed behind, sacrificed to delay the attackers at the bridge.   

In 2007 massive excavations were begun, and have continue up and down the valley.  By 2018, after the bones of at least 100 individuals had been uncovered, it was estimated at least 5,000 men were caught in this battle, mostly young men of draft age - between 20 and 40 years old. The estimated death toll ranges from 750 to a thousand souls.   

Most carry injuries inflicted shortly before death; broken faces, damaged skulls, arrow heads embedded in arm and leg bones , even one penetrating a skull (above).  One fractured thigh bone was discovered displaying an injury still commonly suffered by horseback riders. 

A genetic sample of the bones uncovered so far show that none of the adults possessed the thymine nucleotide which would have allowed them to digest the lactose in cows' milk, something which only developed in European humans some 2,000 to 3,000 years ago. In addition, five horse skeletons have been found, with bronze bridle fittings, hinting at an officer class among the invaders.  

The fighting at the causeway was desperate, with bodies left along the riverbank, and no quarter given.  The Frisians stone daggers and wooden clubs killed some of the first attackers, but the heavier bronze swords allowed the Unetice warriors to maim from a greater distance, and for longer.  Gradually the invaders cut down the outnumbered defenders. 

As with all battles before firearms, once the shield wall was broken the slaughter truly began. Running for their lives, the Frisians were struck down from behind, or, if they turned to fight, they were overwhelmed. Many of the bones show the cutting slices of bronze swords - although none were left on the field. The bodies lay were they fell, later being stripped of any metal of value, as the pursuers murdered their way up the valley toward the Peene.

Using ground penetrating radar to locate likely dig sites (above),  a mass of human bones were found  downstream a mile north of the causeway site. It seems the bodies were left unclaimed and unattended until a storm washed them downstream to a bend in the Tollense, where the current buried and preserved about 140 bodies in the mud and peat (above), "... like an ancient memento left between the pages of a forgotten diary". 

The wounded and crippled Frisians left behind were dispatched, often with a quick and brutal club blow to the head (above). We do not know yet how far up the valley the slaughter continued.  Nor do we have any accounts of the battle. Written history of this region would not begin until the old high German runic inscriptions carved 800 years later. 

But we can safely assume the Uentice and Frisian story tellers (above) sang about the honor and courage of those who fought, and the sacrifices of the brave men who died along the ancient banks of the Tollense. And we know the battle of the Tollense Valley had a major impact on the lives of people in the region. But, why in God's name were these young men murdering each other? Was it amber or gold? Was it slavery or freedom? Was it fish or faith? 

We have known for a hundred years that shortly after this battle, that we did not know about until recently, the people of northern Europe no longer lived in scattered settlements. Within a generation they began building fortified settlements (above), living safely behind walls with their animals and commuting daily to and from their farms outside.  And it seems logical to believe this change was all because of a 3,000 year old battle which we were ignorant of until 25 years ago.

Marcel Proust (above) began his most famous work, with the following words; "I feel that there is much to be said for the Celtic belief that the souls of those whom we have lost are held captive... in some inanimate object...until the day...when we happen to pass by the tree or to obtain possession of the object which forms their prison. Then they start and tremble, they call us by our name, and as soon as we have recognized their voice...We have delivered them: they have overcome death and return to share our life. "

But Proust wrote something else, while confined and working for three years in what would become in 1922 his death bed (above). "Remembrance of things past", he wrote, "is not necessarily the remembrance of things as they were.”  The same can be said of the warriors of the Tollense valley. 

The latest thinking by the archeologists digging along the banks of the Tollense is that the battle was not a war but a robbery on a large party of traders.  Academics will likely argue the issue for decades, But to call it a war or a robbery is a game of semantics. Three thousand years after the event such definitions have little meaning.

Whatever the reality along the Tollense 3,000 years ago, we can be certain the elders of the Uentice and the Frisians both sang of the honor and courage displayed by the participants. But their religion, their nations, their cultures, their languages, their  homes, their hatred and their love, all they murdered and died for has long since turned to dust. They no longer matter. They are all dead and gone. Until we dig them up.

Excavated, they live again,  because we choose to make them live. We choose to resurrect their bones and recreate their world in our minds and our hearts. And in doing so, we recreate our own world. As Proust put it, "A change in the weather is sufficient to recreate the world and ourselves.” 

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GREED

I cannot conceive of a worst possible moment for the young man to deliver his lie. Two weeks before, the 3 day battle of the Wilderness had killed 2,246 men and wounded some 12,000 more.  Three days ago,  in the Shenandoah Valley yet another Federal Army had been ambushed at the Battle of New Market, where 96 federal soldiers were killed, 520 were wounded and 225 were captured - 13% of the Federal troops committed. 

And this very morning, 18 May, 1864, General Grant was leading his weary army into battle at Spotsylvania Courthouse, which would kill 2,725 men, including legendary General John Sedgwick,  and wound another 13,400 men. It seemed as if everything the Federal government attempted in this third spring of Civil War, was producing only blood letting. And then at 3:30am a young men arrived with a missive, to seemingly drop the other shoe. 

It purported to be a bulletin from the Associated Press, which had been in business since 1848, and contained the text of a White House Proclamation. The operative passage began in the third paragraph. “In view, however, of the situation in Virginia...and the general state of the country, I, Abraham Lincoln...by virtue of the power vested in me by the Constitution...call forth the citizens of the United States, between the ages of eighteen and forty-five years, to the aggregate number of four hundred thousand, in order to suppress the existing rebellious combinations...”

The reaction to news of a new half million man draft, in the city which the year before had produced three days of rioting (above) in response to Lincoln's first draft call, was expected to be even more violence. One hundred twenty had died in the summer of 1863, at least eleven African-Americans had been lynched, untold numbers beaten, and fifty large buildings had been burned down. Many on Wall Street took this as a sign the Federal government was losing the war, and they expected investors  to dump their stocks for gold.

At first glance the notice seemed legitimate. It was written on the same cheap oily tissue paper used by the Associated Press. But it had not arrived in the usual fashion. Several editors were suspicious, but with only moments before the deadline to start the presses, and fearing hesitation would mean their papers would be scooped by the competition,  three Democratic leaning papers rushed the story into the print – The World, the Journal of Commerce, and the Brooklyn Eagle. But the night editor of the New York Times, a Republican paper, did not recognize the handwriting, and found it had not been delivered in an AP envelope. The editor held his own presses while he dispatched a messenger for confirmation from the Associated Press. The AP editor promptly replied , “The 'Proclamation' is false as hell and not promulgated through this office. The handwriting is not familiar.”

By 9:00am Wall Street was in an uproar, with investors and brokers crowding all the newspaper offices (above), demanding an answer. Was the proclamation real or not? When the markets opened, the price of gold rose about 10%, but quickly fell back after Secretary of State William Seward, and Secretary-of-War Edward Stanton,  both telegraphed to all the New York papers that the report was  “an absolute forgery.” 

And if the Lincoln administration had stopped there everything would have been all right. But Lincoln himself ordered the Military commander in New York City,  General John Adams Dix (above), to seize the offices of the Journal of Commerce and the New York World, and to ”arrest and imprison...the Editors, proprietors, and publishers.” It seemed the bloody mess in Virginia was making everybody a little jumpy.

The Journal of Commerce was a small anti-slavery newspaper founded by Arthur Tappan and Samuel Morse, inventor of the telegraph and founder of the anti-Catholic "Know Nothing" party. The paper opposed using force to put down the rebellion. So the Postmaster General had refused to deliver the JOC via the mail, crippling the paper outside New York City, where most of its 35,000 readers lived. 

William Cowper Prime, business manager of the JOC, wrote to his wife that afternoon, “Found on coming down town that we, in common with the World...had been hoaxed by a most ingenious scoundrel.” That evening Federal soldiers arrived to close down the paper and arrest the guiltless Mr. Prime.

Considerably less innocent was the two cent per copy, “New York World”. The paper was owned by the Democratic National Committee, and directed by the DNC chairman, August Belmont. In its pages anything with a whiff of Lincoln or Republicanism about it was opposed. Every day the paper was filled with articles warning of the threat of the ballooning war debt, and criticism of the administration's military strategy. Its editorials called for repeal of the emancipation proclamation, and a negotiated peace with the Confederacy. It was the platform of the Democratic Party in 1864. But these were not  the position of the World's editor, Mr. Manton Malone Marble.

Marble  (above) was a newspaperman with printer's ink in his veins. Employed as the Night Editor, he had bought the bankrupt World in 1861, dreaming of a non-partisan fact based style of journalism. But after just six months he had been forced to seek new backers, and the Democratic Party had eagerly stepped in. Marble lost friends and staff members when he signed the deal, and the joke among journalists in the city was that Marble was now little more than a conductor for the stories Belmont wanted in the paper day in and day out. But there was still a spark of independence in the man, and when he learned from an alert staffer, before dawn on the morning of 18 May, 1864, that his paper had published the proclamation, he ordered all copies still unsold to be withdrawn from street vendors, and dispatched a fast ship to stop and board the steamer “Nova Scotia”, carrying bundles of the newspaper bound for England. Marble even ordered the ship's captain to buy back the free copy provided to the Nova Scotia's purser. It made no difference. Marble was arrested the evening of 18 May, and the offices of “The World” padlocked shut.

That very night the member papers of the Associated Press telegraphed the President, strongly defending Prime and Marble. The next day several of the editors, including Horace Greeley, of the Republican leaning Tribune, joined the chorus of demands that Marble and Prime be released. And it began to occur to Lincoln, that he had stepped into something unpleasant. He also had the calming influence of General Dix, who seems to have quickly suspected, along with the members of the AP, that this was not a rebel plot, nor even a Democratic one.

 

At the same time he arrested Prime and Marble, Dix also ordered the arrest of Joseph Howard, night editor of the Brooklyn Eagle, the only other paper to actually publish and distribute the false proclamation. Within a day Howard confessed. He assumed the false proclamation would drive up the price of gold, in preparation for which he had bought gold futures “short”, on credit. As one historian has noted, “Nothing worse was ever done for the purpose of speculation.” Two days later, on Saturday morning, 21 May,  police detectives stopped and arrested Francis Mallson, a reporter for the Eagle, who had actually authored the fake telegram.  Francis had just been drafted into the army. He hoped prophets from the scam would provide for his family while he was away at war. The next day, Sunday 22 May, military authorities released both Prime and Marble. But the damage had been done.

Marble was in a rage. He clearly felt betrayed and laid the blame for his arrest directly on Lincoln's head - where it belonged. On Monday, 23 May he unleashed his pen, in a letter that took up several columns of "The World".  “Not until today,” Marble wrote, “has The World been free to speak. But to those who have ears to hear, its absence has been more eloquent than its columns could ever be.” Lincoln had acted, wrote Marble, “for the purpose of gratifying an ignoble partisan resentment”  He wondered “would you, Sir, have suppressed the Tribune and the Times as you suppressed the World and the Journal of Commerce?” He then answered the question for Mr. Lincoln. “You know you would not... Can you, whose eyes discern equality under every complexion, be blinded by the hue of partisanship.” George Templeton Strong, a diarist and observer of politics in New York, noted, “The martyred newspaper...vomits acid bile most copious.”

Marble now became the publicist for the Democratic Party, and its champion, General McClellan (above, center). He spent the next six months retelling and even creating every lie conceivable about Lincoln, charging him with wanting to force race mixing on the public, and ignoring the pain and sacrifices of Union soldiers on the battlefield. 

And it might have cost Lincoln the election that November , excerpt that on 2 September, 1864,  Union General William Tecumseh Sherman captured Atlanta, Georgia, the rail and industrial heart of the Confederacy. In that instant it was clear Lincoln was winning the war, and the Democrats were revealed as defeatists, with no answers, only protests. That November Lincoln received only 33% of the vote in New York City.  Despite that, he won the state, if barely, on his way to re-election, 55% of the popular vote, and 212 electoral votes to Democrat General George McClellan's 21

The World did not accept defeat, disparaging Lincoln's speech the day after Lee had surrendered, on the night of 13 April, 1865.  It described the President as groping “like a traveler in an unknown country, without a map.” The following night John Wilkes Booth murdered the President, transforming Lincoln into a martyr, and the The New York World and it's editor into a petty, vindictive and racist party mouthpiece.  History does that every once in awhile.

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