THE FIRST BATTLE

 

I might call Thutmose III a mummy’s boy. His official mother was his aunt, Hatshepsut (above), the second female Pharaoh (who we can be certain of).  She had been the Great Royal God Wife of Thutmose II until he died in 1479 B.C. E.  Thutmose III’s actual father was also Hatshepsut’s own half brother - Egyptian royal family trees tend to lean heavily on inbreeding. 

                

Hatshepsut ran the two Kingdoms of Upper and Lower Egypt (above) for twenty years as Pharaoh, while Thutmose III remained the Pharaoh-in-waiting, since his actual birth mother,  Iset,  had been a "lesser" wife.  And it seems likely Hatshepsut had been pretty distracted in her latter years.

Examination of her mummy (above) in the Cairo museum reveals that besides menopause (she was in her mid-fifties when she died) Hatshepsut suffered from arthritis, diabetes, liver and bone cancer, and really bad teeth. Of course most Egyptians had bad teeth, a by-product of chewing sand in every mouth full of food. 

And what finally put Hatshepsut in her Luxor Temple, on 10 March, 1459 B.C., was blood poisoning caused by an abscess in her gums. And then, finally, after all those years playing second fiddle to his aunt,  Thutmose, the new Pharaoh, a powerful young man with a strain of Nubian blood in his veins, felt the need to reassert Egypt's authority on his northern border. And quickly. 

Within days of ascending to the Throne of Horus, the 22  year old Thutmose III (above) ordered an  army to gather troops and supplies by the last week of August 1458 B.C, at the border fortress of Tjaru in the Nile Delta. 

The immediate threat facing Thutmose was the minor city state of Megiddo, which was flexing it's muscle. Now, this small city, was not a real military threat to the great Egyptian empire. But the crises of Megiddo was a matter of tenderness.  

The northwest border of Egypt was officially drawn where the coastal road crossed the Gaza Wadi. But  beyond that usually dry stream bed were the hills which formed the east bank of the river Jordan. And in those bare and barren hills were the copper mines of southern Canaan.

Stone age pottery kilns could produce temperatures above 1,000 degrees Celsius, which could melt copper.  And when naturally or artificially contaminated with tin or arsenic, copper made bronze.  And bronze tools had many advantages over stone. They were lighter. They held a point and an edge longer. They are easier to shape, easier to sharpen, they are durable and should they break, they can be heated until they softened, and then reformed. Or,  melted and cast into an entirely new tool. 

The Bronze Age had begun about 1,000 years before Thutmose became Pharaoh, and although copper was a relatively rare metal, it was heavily mined along the southern end of the narrow strip of arable land which connects Africa to Eurasia, called the Levantine Corridor,  Egypt had dominated the Levantine since about 1500 B.C.E., but had given up annexing the region because of resistance from the local Semitic population, called the Canaanites. It was the Canaanites who mined the copper and sold bronze to the Egyptians. But they also sold bronze to the kingdom of Mittani, at the northern end of the Levantine Corridor.

Mittani's (above) capital was the city of Aleppo, one of the oldest continuously occupied cities in the world. And Mittani was on the rise, having recently defeated the ancient power of Babylon. King Barattarna of Mittani had made a treaty with Meggido as a challenge to the Egyptians.  He supplied Meggido with bronze chain mail and hundreds of three man chariots. It seemed a low risk strategy as long as  Hatshepsut was sick.  After her death, Thutmose III decided to attend to his  wayward Canaanites, and ordered Meggido to surrender the Mittani chariots.  When they refused, Thutmose moved to reassert Egypt's authority.

There was a delay in gathering the army, and Thutmose did not leave Tjaru until February of 1457 B.C. His Egyptian army was mostly infantry, perhaps 10,000 men, divided into platoons of six to ten men each, consisting of a mix of bowmen and lancers. 

The smaller mobile force of two-horse chariots were not built for long distance travel, and on the march the chariots had to be light enough for each to be carried by their shield men. On this march across the Sinai (the Red Deseret) skirmishers advanced to the front while raiding parties ranged along the flanks, gathering sheep, goats, grain and water for each night’s camp. Behind came the baggage train of ox carts carrying supplies, repair tents and blacksmiths, soothsayers, priests and musicians.

These people were used to walking, and never rode on horseback, so the army did not reach the Philistine fortress of Gaza (“The key to Syria”) until mid-March.  After another 11 days marching up the coastal plain Thutmose’s army entered the port of Jamnia, near present day Tel Aviv. Here they rested while scouts brought word that the Meggido army was awaiting him on the Plain of Esdraelon, in front of the hill fortress of Megiddo. So in early May, with his communications back to Egypt secured by his navy, Thutmose swung inland, toward the small village of Yaham.

In front of Thutmose now rose a line of low hills, stretching from the northwest (Mt. Carmel at 1,740 feet) to the southeast (Mts Tabor & Gilboa, 1,929 feet). Megiddo and the Canaanite army were on the northern flank of these hills, and his generals told Thutmose there were two possible routes to attack Megiddo. 

The most direct route headed due north from Yaham and then turned northwestward on the Via Maris (sea route) to the village of Taanach, before reaching Megiddo. The longer path headed northwest from Yaham along the flank of the mountains before crossing the hills to reach the valley at the village of Yokneam. From there it was an easy backtrack southeastward to Megiddo. 

The Canaanite army had divided their infantry, with almost half guarding Taanach and the other half Yokneam. Stationed at Megiddo (in the center) were the Canaanite chariots with some infantry support, ready to fall upon either approach the Egyptians made.

However there was also a third choice. On the road north toward Yokneam there was a cutoff, a path less traveled, which  ran through the village of Aruna (above, center) and then through a narrow defile, the Musmus Pass, so tight that the army could pass through only single file, before debauching onto the valley directly in front of Megiddo. It was the most direct route, but Thutmose’s men would arrive piecemeal, where they could be destroyed “in detail”, one unit or even one man at a time. But this route also offered the opportunity of surprise. 

It seems that Thanuny feinted toward the two main roads, using perhaps two thirds of the army. But before dawn Thutmose lead his spear and shield men through the pass, single file; perhaps 3,000 men in all. They stepped out of the pass it was about 1:00 p.m., 9 May , 1457 B.C. 

The Canaanite's new chariot were surprised by the Egyptian's sudden appearance, hastily charged at the Egyptian spearmen, and let loose a barrage of arrows. But defended by their shield men, the Egyptian infantry stood firm. And then, the Egyptian ranks opened, and from the defile appeared Egyptian chariots, carried through the pass and reassembled, Like a unanticipated whirlwind they fell upon the fewer Canaanite chariots.

“Even when moving at a slow pace, …(the Egyptian war chariot) shook terribly, and when driven at full speed it was only by a miracle of skill that the occupants could maintain their equilibrium…the charioteer would stand astride the front panels, keeping his right foot only inside the vehicle…the reins tied around his body so he could by throwing his weight either to the right or left…pull up or start his horses by a simple movement of the loins…he went into battle with bent bow, the string drawn back to his ear…while the shield-bearer, clinging to the body of the chariot with one hand, held out his buckler with the other to shelter his comrade.” (History of Egypt Chakdea, etc. G. Maspero. Groilier Society) 

The Canaanites panicked at the sudden Egyptian charge, and their causalities tell the story; just 83 killed, but 240 taken prisoner and 924 chariots and 2,132 horses captured. 

The Canaanite infantry on the wings, now divided by the Egyptian chariots in the center, abandoned Megiddo and scattered in retreat. 

And although the fortress held out for seven months before finally surrendering, from the moment Thutmose III reached the valley  he had ensured his capture of the hill fort of Megiddo, or, in the Canaanite language, Armageddon. And thus ended the first battle recorded in detail in history.

No one came to Meggido's rescue (above). All of northern Canaan and many Syrian princes as well now sent Thutmose III tribute, and even their sons to serves as hostages, all to avoid an Egyptian invasion.

This was just the first of 17 campaigns for Thutmose III. The following year he conquered Mittani, even crossing the Eurphates River.  Now the Assyrians, the Babylonians and Hittite Kings sent him tribute. During his entire fifty-three year reign, Thutmose III captured 350 cities, subjected many peoples, and dominated the middle east from the Euphrates River to the fourth cataract of the Nile. Under his reign, the Egyptian Empire reached it's greatest expanse. He rebuilt much of Karnak, along with 50 other temples up and down the Nile.  

Thutmose III  (above) died in the 54th year of his reign, some 3,500 years ago. He was entombed at Luxor (below).  He is remembered, for good reason, as "The Napoleon of Egypt".

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TERNAL TRIANGLE Pt Three

 

I can’t think of a single love triangle that turned out productively for the participants, from King David who did not let morality preventing him from separating Bathsheba from her Hittite husband, Uriah,....

...through King Arthur, who did let morality prevent him from separating his beloved Guinevere from her lusted after Lancelot.  And the “ménage-a-fools” between “Big” Jim Fisk, Josie Mansfield and Edward Stokes repeated the familiar sad story, with the standard final twist.

These self destructive convergences usually leave the participants exhausted and mumbling some absurd self justification, like “The heart wants what the heart wants”, when, in truth, the more apt description might be, “Stupid is as stupid does.” It needs to be noted that none of these disasters, which we all are suffer from, from time to time, could occur without the active participation of all members. The truth is the participants may be helpless, but they are never blameless.

“Big” Jim’s friends, who knew his love letters to Josie to be harmless drivel, urged him to publish them first, and thereby remove their threat. But this “Prince of the Erie Railroad”, this master of Wall Street, this robber baron supreme, refused to do so. Instead he bemoaned his fate, “By the Lord, this is my heart that you want me to make a show of, and I won't.” 

He was, however, willing to make a lesser show of it, slower and more deliciously painful, and far more dramatically detailed, by not paying the $200,000 demanded by Stokes (which "Big Jim" could easily afford) or by publishing the letters himself, which might even have turned a profit.  So, the curtain went up on the Third Act of this melodrama.

About one on the afternoon of Saturday,  6 January, 1872, “Big” James Fisk got the word that a grand jury had indicted Josie and Edward Stokes for attempting to blackmail him. He was in the offices of the Erie Railroad, on the second floor of his own Grand Opera House.  

At about 3:30 pm, a visiting friend, gambler John Chamberlain, was leaving the Opera House, when he saw a carriage crossing the intersection of 8th Avenue and 23rd Street.  As the carriage clipped past him, Chamberlain saw, peeking out from the passenger compartment, and staring bitterly up at the Erie Corporate offices, Edward Stokes.

Ten minutes later “Big” Jim Fisk was in his own carriage, heading uptown, to 44th and Amity Street, later to be renamed 3rd Avenue, to the Grand Central Hotel, around the corner from “Commodore” Vanderbilt’s brand new Grand Central Railroad Station (above).  

As he entered the hotel “Big” Jim recognized a porter by the name of John Redmond, and asked him to contact one of the guests, a daughter of Samuel B. Morse, inventor of the telegraph. The lady was living at the hotel, and had recently suffered a death in her family. Big Jim wanted to inquire as to her condition.  Redmond followed “Big” Jim up to the stairs toward the second floor lobby.

As they turned the corner at the base of the stairwell they were confronted by Edward Stokes, waiting at the top of the stairs (above) . Arm outstretched, he was pointing a handgun down the stairs - at them. “Big” Jim Fisk stopped, halfway up. Edward said firmly, “I’ve got you now,” and fired twice. Bang! Bang! 

Both shots hit Fisk, who cried out, “For God’s sake, will anybody save me?” The answer was "no".

Redmond, the porter, dove for cover.  Fisk staggered back to the foot of the stairs, where, out of the field of fire,  he collapsed.

Once they were sure the shooter had fled, Redmond and other employees carried Big Jim Fisk back up the stairs and into an empty room. He never left it.

A bellboy had followed Edward (above), and the shooter was arrested trying to leave the hotel a few minutes later. As the police were transporting Edward to jail, he asked if he could go into a bar for a drink. The answer was “no”. He later asked his jailer, “What do you think, is the man seriously injured?”

The man was. To one visitor, “Big” Jim explained he felt as if he had just eaten green apples. “I've got a belly-ache,”  he said. The gambler, John Chamberlain, did not believe it when he was told of the shooting. “I’ll lay $500 against $100 that it's false.” He would have lost that bet.

Josie, the self-centered center of this melodramatic triangle affair, had no such doubts. Shocked when a newspaperman told her of the shooting, she blurted out, “Edward must have been insane!” Then she immediately added, “I wish you to understand that I am in no way connected with this sad affair.” And finally she insisted, “I have only my reputation to maintain.”  Well, it was a little late for Josie's reputation. But she still had hopes. Josie always had hopes.

Big Jim Fisk held on long enough to identify his attacker when Edward Stokes was brought to his room. The identification was, of course, melodrama, The pair had been business partners for years, and had even shared the physical affections of Josie for a time. At best it seems to have proved neither the doctors nor the cops thought Big Jim was going to live to see any trial.  

And he didn't. Fisk died that very evening, at 10:54pm, surrounded by a chorus of women who had depended on the "Big Jim" for financial support.

They took his body back to his childhood home, in Brattleboro, Vermont, for burial.

The newspapers were endless in their praise of the man, as unrelenting as they had been, just days before, in their ridicule of him. His love letters, published a week after his death, were so banal, that they created barely a ripple.

As writer Edmund Stedman noted, “"Had Stokes been an illiterate laborer, he would have dangled in a noose two months later.” But Edmund's family was still wealthy enough that it took three trials to convict him of manslaughter. 

And even then he was sentenced to only six years in Sing Sing prison. He was a popular and entitled inmate, and served only four actual years. 

Once out he operated restaurants, and ended his life locked in lawsuits with the very people who had rescued him financially after prison. He died in 1901, at the age of 61.on 2 November, 1901.

For Josie Mansfield (above), the loss of “Big” Jim and Edward Stokes meant not just the loss of financial security, but, more importantly, the loss of drama in her life. Not that she didn't go looking for it. She testified at Edmund’s first trial, but was unavailable for the two that followed. She sued “Big” Jim’s widow, Lucy, for that $50,000 she still alleged "Big" Jim had invested for her, but that case was thrown out of court. 

She moved to Paris, where in 1891 she married a rich alcoholic, only to divorce him six years later. In 1897 she moved to Boston to live with a sister, then to Philadelphia to live with another sister. In 1899 she moved to Watertown, South Dakota to live with her brother. She died, back in Paris at the American Hospital, in 1931, having out lived her sugar daddy James, “Big” Jim Fisk, by a lifetime - 60 years. She even outlived the man she had overthrown a fortune for, Edmund Stokes – by 20 years.

At times the three had been a national laughingstock, a pubic delinquency and a media soap opera on a par with any modern day oversized love nest fest.  It  will not be long before another trio of thespians feels compelled to raise the curtain on another performance of the same play, and carry the character arcs to their illogical and inevitable dramatic conclusion, again. And again. And again. To quote Charley Harper, from "Two and a-Half Men"; Love is not blind. It's retarded."

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ETERNAL TRIANGLE Pt Two

  

I submit that Edward Stokes had a chance to break free from this  "triangle of stupid love".  Spending a weekend in the dreaded Tombs jail - precursor to the hell hole of Rikers Island -  was his wake up call.  And then unfortunately, for him, early in 1871, a judge threw out his arrest for embezzlement. Released from criminal restrictions on his behavior, Edward Stokes went full stupid.

The judge ruled the Greenpoint Refinery (above) was not a corporation but a partnership between Edward and “Big” Jim Fisk.  As a partner Edward could not steal money owed to the refinery, since he would have been stealing from himself.   And if Edward had just left it there, he might have stayed a winner. But being Edward, it was in his nature to carry things too far. That was one of the things that made Josie fall in love with him. Except Josies' other attraction to Edward was his money, and thanks to Big Jim cutting the profits from the refinery, Edward was now broke.

So Edward sued “Big” Jim  (above) for slander, asking again for that $200,000. “Big” Jim counter sued, demanding that his love letters be returned. 

Why Josie (above) had given the letters to Edward passes beyond common sense. In any case,  Edward's lawyers argued that the letters might provide evidence of Erie railroad stock fraud, and might be needed in some future criminal trial, and so should not be released. 

In truth, the only crime the letters were proof of was blackmail, which Edward and Josie were attempting to commit against Jim Fisk. And now, Big Jim's lawyers argued,  they were using the courts to carry out this crime.  So a judge ordered the letters be read by an arbiter, to determine just what they proved, if anything. 

The arbiter came to the conclusion that the love letters were maudlin, melodramatic, meretricious and – surprisingly – mundane, and contained no evidence of stock fraud. Given that the letters had only prurient value, the judge issued a restraining order preventing anyone, including the newspapers, from publishing them as long as the various slander cases continued. And with that their value as blackmail material against “Big” Jim, evaporated. After all, as James Gordon Bennet, Jr., publisher of the New York Herald, used to say, “The purpose of a newspaper is not to instruct but to startle.” 

It was at about this point that Edward’s wife took their daughter and fled to Paris. And "Big" Jim's wife, and her female lover, living in far off Boston, did the same. Clearly the married women in this case were smarter than their husbands, because they thus escaped being tainted with what that blue-nosed blue-blooded lawyer George Templeton Strong described as this “special stinkpot”.  

All of New York was snickering about the tri-cornered stench.  The newspapers kept fanning the stink, even without the letters, and day after day they mocked the participants’ peccadilloes. Now, “Big” Jim had long ago chosen to ignore the opinions of others, and Josie never had even the pretense of valuing virtue or reputation. 

So the only member of the triumphant with any sense of public pride left, and with a super abundance of that, and thus the only individual wounded by the continued public mocking, was Edward  Stokes (above). And he had been the one who had pushed the letters into court.

Having lost the letters as a weapon, Edward was forced to settle his lawsuit.  “Big Jim" allowed him to keep the $27,500 he had filched from the refinery,  plus $10,000 compensation for the weekend he had spent in jail, and $5,000 for his legal fees. Edward exchanged all of that for his half of the refinery. 

Edward was now freed from his immediate financial difficulty. Of course he was also now $38,000 in debt to five different attorneys, for all his lawsuits against “Big:” Jim Fisk (above).  And Edward had yet to win a single one. So he urged Josie to push ahead with her lawsuit against “Big” Jim.  Not that he could have stopped her.

In her lawsuit Josie was claiming that during their multi-year affair, James Fisk had invested $25,000 for her, and now she wanted it back. With interest.  “Big” Jim’s lawyers argued that the money had never been hers, just a wooing point, and that Josie’s entire life had been one scam after another.  On the witness stand Jose began with another lie. “I will be twenty-four years of age on the 11th of December next.” She was actually 28. 

It was perfectly predictable that under cross examination, Josie's sordid past would be used to impeach her. She was asked if, in California “a pistol was pointed in your presence at a man's head?” Reluctantly Josie replied, “There was a circumstance of that kind happened.” “Was it a man by the name of D. W. Perley…Was (the gun) pointed at him by (Josie's stepfather)? (And) did (Perley) sign a check before he went out?” All of this, Josie was forced to admit, was the truth. The jury, and the press, knew a badger game when they heard one described to them.

During over three hours on the stand,  Josie was also forced to admit that Fisk had bought her the house on 23rd Street, from the knocker on Josie's front door to the curtains in the parlor and the commode in the bedroom. She was even forced to admit that she had handed over her love letters from Fisk because Edward thought they “would benefit him in the case…pending between him and Mr. Fisk.”  All of this was predictable, as her lawyer must have predicted. But Josie had insisted on proceeding. Thus she was three times stupid; she was in love, she was in love with Edward, and she was greedy. 

And then, on 6 January, 1872, Edward took the stand in Josie’s case. Even under friendly direct examination, the spectators could not suppress a giggle when Edward insisted he and Josie were “just friends”.  When court broke for lunch at 1:00 p.m. Edward stormed out, infuriated. He was willing to be thought a liar, and a cad. But he was deeply offended at being laughed at. 

He lunched at Delmonico’s on the corner of South Hill  and 14th Street, and it was there that he learned from "a friend" that he and Josie had just been indicted for blackmailing “Big” Jim Fisk. It was the last straw.

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