289
After its prime minister signed the Maratha Confederacy over to the East India Company, the member states rose up in a body.
In 1796, Baji Rao II became Peshwa (prime Minister) of the Maratha Confederacy. When Holkar, Maharajah of Indore, one of the Confederacy’s four kingdoms, learnt that Baji Rao was behind the murder of a relative, he thrashed him at the Battle of Poona in 1802; but Baji Rao exacted spectacular retribution by signing the whole Maratha territory over to the East India Company. Holkar did not leave it there.
Posted February 5 2022
290
A ‘slight and delicate’ Canadian woman defied twenty miles of rugged terrain in sweltering heat to warn of an impending attack by American invaders.
In 1813, US President James Madison seized the opportunity afforded by Napoleon’s rampage across Europe to order his troops into the British colony of Upper Canada, where they sacked York (Toronto). Monday 21st June found US General Henry Dearborn in Queenston readying a nasty surprise for Lieutenant James Fitzgibbon, garrisoned in a country home at Beaver Dams near Thorold, Ontario.
Posted February 2 2022
291
While on tour in Austria, Irish tenor Michael Kelly was introduced to Mozart, and discovered a man of many talents and much kindness.
In 1783, young Irish tenor Michael Kelly embarked upon a tour of Austria. One of his early engagements was a piano recital and supper-party also attended by none other than Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, now twenty-seven, and the two became friendly. Mozart spoke touchingly of his English friend Thomas Linley, a gifted violist who had drowned in a boating accident some five years earlier, aged just twenty-two.
Posted January 31 2022
292
Man had proved spiritually unprepared for the discovery of coal, said Robert Bruère, and was poised to squander the next energy revolution too.
In 1922, Robert W. Bruère gave thanks for the enormous social and economic benefits brought by the Coal Age. Yet the benefits could have been far greater. Despite so much plenty, mankind went on living as if life were still a desperate scramble for survival in which might is right and the weakest go to the wall. When we finally realise our dream of solar energy, will we be any better prepared?
Posted January 30 2022
293
Sir Bernard Pares warned that after the Great War, Western powers must not assume Germany’s role as supercilious bully.
In 1916, Sir Bernard Pares looked ahead cautiously to the end of the Great War, and to the prospect of an end to Germany’s high-handed economic domination over Russia. Knowing the Russian Emperor Nicholas’s goodwill towards England, Pares urged Prime Minister Herbert Asquith’s government to set an example of restraint, liberty and understanding, and not simply to take the German Empire’s ignoble place.
Posted January 29 2022
294
Thomas Telford told the parish council of St Chad’s Church in Shrewsbury that their leaky roof was the last thing they should worry about.
In July 1788, rising surveyor Thomas Telford was living in Shrewsbury Castle as a guest of the local MP, Sir William Pulteney, who had acquired the historic fortress through his wife Frances and wanted Telford to make it habitable. News of his residence nearby reached the parish council of St Chad’s Church, who thought he might be just the man to mend their leaky roof.
Posted January 27 2022