The Copybook
Short passages for reading, drawn from history, legend, poetry and fiction.
Short passages for reading, drawn from history, legend, poetry and fiction.
Frederick Ponsonby’s involvement in the Battle of Waterloo began early, and it seemed to him that it went on for ever.
Early in the Battle of Waterloo on June 18th, 1815, the Union Brigade inflicted heavy losses on the French guns and then withdrew, shielded by Colonel William Ponsonby’s 12th Light Dragoons. But then 300 Polish lancers, French allies, rode up. There was a crush. The French fired indiscriminately. In minutes, Ponsonby had lost the use of his arms, his sword and his reins. Then with the flash of a sabre he was down.
Magnus had just reasserted Norway’s authority over The Isles and Man, when he stumbled into a party of Normans harassing the King of Gwynedd.
In 1098, Magnus III ‘Barelegs’, King of Norway, boldly reasserted Norway’s authority over the Isles and Man, a realm of islands around Scotland’s coastline which the Vikings had dominated for over two centuries. Pleased with his progress, Magnus sailed on south to Anglesey, where he stumbled upon a party of Normans celebrating victory over Gruffudd ap Cynan, King of Gwynedd.
Barely a generation after Harald Hardrada narrowly missed out on taking the English crown, his grandson Magnus re-asserted Norway’s authority over The Isles and Man.
Vikings increasingly dominated the northern coasts of the British Isles after King Harald Fairhair united Norway’s petty kingdoms in 872, at the Battle of Hafrsfjord. After Godred Crovan, lord of The Isles and Man, died in 1095 his successor Ingimundr was assassinated, and King Magnus III ‘Barelegs’, who had chosen him, was not pleased. In 1098, Magnus set out from Trondheim with a large fleet.
Walter Map was so tired of being on the road in the entourage of King Henry II, that he began to wonder if the whole court was under a spell.
King Henry II (r. 1154-1189) spent much of his reign on the road, in England and his estates in France. This gruelling schedule of marches took its toll on his retinue, among whom was Walter Map, a churchman and lawyer. It was as if Henry, he complained, had been laden with the burden of King Herla. What follows here is a summary of the tale that Walter then told.
A bee asks a blessing of the king of the gods, but what she gets from him is not quite what she had in mind.
This Fable is a reprimand to those who go beyond protecting themselves from attack, which is very reasonable, and take to visiting harm on everyone whom their fears inflate into a threat. It is not only unjust, but self-defeating: after all, where would bees be without beekeepers, and beekeepers without bees?
In 1756, the Nawab of Bengal allowed his frustration with British merchants in Calcutta to get the better of him.
With the Seven Years’ War brewing in Europe, no one was more pleased than Louis XV of France when in June 1756 the Nawab of Bengal, Siraj ud-Daulah, grew frustrated with the British in Calcutta and seized Fort William and all its wealth. The horrific sequel has been told in many ways: what mattered then was how it was told the following December to Admiral Watson, the man whose job it was to respond.