Written in History

by Simon Sebag Montefiore

  The letter that led to the tragic death of Russia’s sublime poet Pushkin. The great-grandson of Abram Hannibal, Peter the Great’s black aide, Pushkin found himself in trouble with the tsars as soon as he started writing his outrageous, passionate, and beautiful verses. Alexander I punished him by exiling him from Petersburg to south Russia, but even there Pushkin associated with liberals, seduced the wife of the tsar’s viceroy, and pursued many other love affairs until he was finally allowed home by the new tsar, the grandiloquent Nicholas I, who offered to be his personal censor.

  By this time Pushkin was writing his masterpiece, the verse-novel Eugene Onegin, and had married Natalia, a society beauty who immediately attracted the flirtatious attentions of the tsar himself (which Pushkin had to tolerate) and of a shallow French popinjay serving in the Russian Guards named Baron Charles d’Anthes. He was the adopted son and (probable) homosexual lover of the Dutch ambassador Baron Heeckeren, who paid all his expenses. Already tormented with jealousy, Pushkin, now aged thirty-seven, receives a malicious anonymous letter from “THE SUPREME COMMANDER AND KNIGHTS OF THE MOST SERENE ORDER OF CUCKOLDS.” The proud Pushkin immediately—and probably wrongly—suspects d’Anthes of cuckolding him. The tsar tries to prevent a duel, but Pushkin, determined on satisfaction, proceeds to make confrontation inevitable with this blisteringly rude letter to Heeckeren accusing him of acting as “the pimp of your son…like an obscene old woman.” His son had to defend his adopted father’s honor. In the subsequent duel, d’Anthes shot and killed Russia’s most beloved poet. D’Anthes had to leave Russia—but later rose to the rank of a senator in France.

  Baron!

  Allow me to sum up what has just taken place. Your son’s behavior had long been known to me and could not be a matter of indifference to me. I contented myself with the role of an observer, entitled to intervene when I judged it proper. An incident which at any other moment would have been very disagreeable, happily supervened to get me out of the difficulty: I received anonymous letters. You know the rest: I made your son play such a pitiable role that my wife, astonished at such cowardice and servility, could not refrain from laughing, and any emotion which she had perhaps come to feel for this great and sublime passion evaporated into the calmest and most merited disgust.

  I am obliged to admit, Baron, that your role has not been altogether seemly. You, the representative of a crowned head, have been paternally the pimp of your son. It appears that all his behavior (clumsy enough, moreover) has been directed by you. It was probably you who dictated to him the sorry witticisms he has been mouthing and the twaddle he has taken upon himself to write. Like an obscene old woman, you would go and spy on my wife from every corner to speak to her of the love of your bastard, or the one so-called; and when, ill with the pox, he was confined to his home, you would say that he was dying of love for her; you would mumble: give me back my son.

  You will be well aware, Baron, that after all this I cannot permit my family to have the least relation with yours. It was on this condition that I consented not to pursue this filthy affair and not to dishonor you in the eyes of our court and of yours, as I had the power and intention to do. I do not care for my wife to hear again your paternal exhortations. I cannot allow your son, after the despicable conduct he has shown, to dare to speak to my wife, still less to mouth to her these barrack-room calembours, and play devotion and unhappy passion whilst he is nothing but a coward and a scoundrel. I am thus obliged to address myself to you, to beg you to put an end to all these goings-on, if you wish to avoid a new scandal, from which I certainly shall not shrink.

  I have the honor to be, Baron

  Your most humble and obedient servant,

  Alexander Pushkin

  Power

  Stalin to Valery Mezhlauk, April 1930

  Gallows humor is Stalin’s favorite kind. Here at a meeting of the Politburo, he sends a note around the table suggesting an appropriate punishment for the sins of the People’s Commissar for Finance, Nikolai Bryukhanov, whom Stalin regarded as politically unreliable. His comrade Valery Mezhlauk, in charge of economic planning and a fine cartoonist, sketches this picture of the punishment—presumably to general amusement. The commissar was sacked and both Bryukhanov and Mezhlauk were later executed by Stalin.

  For all new, existing and future sins, to be hung by the balls, and if the balls are strong and don’t break, to forgive him and think correct but if they break, then to throw him into a river.

  Winston Churchill to Franklin D. Roosevelt, 20 May 1940

  An appeal for help at the supreme crisis of the Second World War. Churchill has been prime minister for just ten days. France is defeated. Britain stands alone against Nazi Europe, awaiting Hitler’s invasion—and America is still neutral. Churchill asks the American president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, to sell him fifty warships to aid in defending the country, but then hears that the US ambassador to London, Joseph Kennedy, a notorious appeaser, has advised against this because Britain is about to collapse. This provokes one of Churchill’s most defiant letters of British resolve:

  Our intention is, whatever happens, to fight on to the end in this Island and provided we can get the help for which we ask, we hope to run them very close in the air battles in view of individual superiority. Members of the present administration would likely go down during the process should it result adversely, but in no conceivable circumstances will we consent to surrender. If members of the present administration were finished and others came to parlay amid the ruins, you must not be blind to the fact that the sole remaining bargaining counter would be the fleet, and if this country was left by the United States to its fate, no one would have the right to blame those responsible if they made the best terms they could for the surviving inhabitants. Excuse me, Mr. President, putting this nightmare bluntly. I could not answer for my successors who in utter despair and hopelessness might well have to accommodate themselves to the German will. However there is no need at present to dwell upon such ideas. Once more thanking you for your good will.

  Between Richard I and Saladin, October–November 1191

  Here is an attempt to negotiate a peace process by partition of the Holy Land in the late twelfth century. At this time Saladin, the Kurdish-born Islamic sultan of Syria and Egypt, has defeated the Crusader kingdom of Jerusalem and retaken the Holy City. But he has failed to retake the city of Acre where a new crusade has landed, led by the formidable Christian warrior King Richard I of England—the Lionheart. Fighting themselves to a stalemate, the two now propose to share the present state of Israel.

  The climax of their negotiations? Richard proposes that his sister Joanna should marry Saladin’s brother Safadin and that they rule an Islamic-Christian kingdom—together in Jerusalem under Saladin’s crown. Amazingly, Saladin agrees in principle, calling Richard’s bluff: unsurprisingly, his sister Joanna refuses to marry a Muslim, even a king of Jerusalem. There is something very modern in their letters—in today’s peace process, this time between Israel and the Palestinians, Jerusalem remains the thorniest issue. Unsurprisingly, the plan fails—as have many other plans to make peace in the Middle East.

  Richard to Saladin

  Men of ours and of yours have died, the country is in ruins, and events have entirely escaped anyone’s control. Do you not believe that it is enough? As far as we are concerned, there are only three subjects of discord: Jerusalem, the True Cross, and territory. As for Jerusalem, it is our place of worship and we will never agree to renounce it, even if we have to fight to the last man. As territory, all we want is that the land west of the Jordan be ceded to us. As for the Cross, for you it is merely a piece of wood, whereas for us its value is inestimable. Let the Sultan give it to us, and let us put an end to this exhausting struggle.

  Saladin to Richard

  Jerusalem is holy to us as well as to you, and more so, seeing it is the scene of our Prophet’s journey, and the pl
ace where our people must assemble at the Last Day. Think not that we shall go back therefrom, or that we can be compliant in this matter. And as for the land, it was ours to begin with, and you invaded it: nor [would you have taken it] but for the feebleness of the Muslims who then had it; and so long as this war lasts God will not permit you to set up a stone in it. And as for the Cross, our holding it is a point of vantage, nor can we surrender it except for some benefit of Islam.

  Arthur James Balfour to Lord Rothschild, 2 November 1917

  The letter that changed the Middle East. Ever since the Jewish Temple was destroyed by Titus Caesar in AD 70, Jews had revered Zion and dreamed of a return to Jerusalem. In the late nineteenth century vicious persecutions in Russia—home to six million Jews—and anti-Semitic attacks spanning France to Austria, inspired a modern Zionist movement. Even before the First World War, many leading British statesmen were sympathetic to the history and the plight of the Jews, but the circumstances of the war made it possible. In 1917 British troops were poised to invade Palestine, which had been ruled by the Ottoman sultans for four centuries, but the British were also desperate, after years of bloody stalemate on the western front, to keep both Russia and the United States in the war. Both contained large Jewish populations.

  Foreign Secretary Balfour writes a letter—“the Balfour Declaration”—which promises the creation of a Jewish national home in the Holy Land without prejudicing the rights of the Arab population already living there. It takes the form of a public letter to one of the leaders of the Jewish community, Walter Rothschild, 2nd Baron, head of the Zionist Federation. In 1948, the state of Israel was created.

  Dear Lord Rothschild,

  I have much pleasure in conveying to you, on behalf of His Majesty’s Government, the following declaration of sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations which has been submitted to, and approved by, the Cabinet:

  His Majesty’s Government view with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.

  I should be grateful if you would bring this declaration to the knowledge of the Zionist Federation.

  Yours,

  Arthur James Balfour

  George H. W. Bush to Bill Clinton, 20 January 1993

  Here’s a letter that defines big-hearted statesmanship in our mean-spirited era. George H. W. Bush was one of the best-qualified US presidents of modern times and the very definition of an American upper-class gentleman. A war-hero pilot who had been shot down in the Second World War, he made a fortune in oil, then was elected to the House of Representatives before serving as ambassador to the UN, envoy to China, and director of the CIA. He then became Ronald Reagan’s vice president and succeeded him as the forty-first president. Neither a brilliant statesman nor a charismatic visionary, he was a somewhat uninspiring if steady servant of the nation. He was bemused and alarmed by the fall of the Soviet Union and rather late to adapt to the reality of newly independent states like Russia and Ukraine. But he reacted to the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait by putting together a coalition that liberated the country and hobbled the tyrant while leaving him in power. Faced with the brash energy of the young governor of Arkansas, Bill Clinton, he looked old-fashioned and out of touch in a bruising campaign.

  Yet, upon losing his beloved presidency, he sits and writes this charming and magnanimous letter, which he leaves on his desk in the Oval Office for his rival, Clinton. From the last of the old-fashioned war-generation leaders, here is a master class in dutiful service, personal decency, and respect for your opponents. This is how power should change hands in a liberal democracy.

  Dear Bill,

  When I walked into this office just now I felt the same sense of wonder and respect that I felt four years ago. I know you will feel that, too.

  I wish you great happiness here. I never felt the loneliness some Presidents have described.

  There will be very tough times, made even more difficult by criticism you may not think is fair. I’m not a very good one to give advice; but just don’t let the critics discourage you or push you off course.

  You will be our President when you read this note. I wish you well. I wish your family well.

  Your success is now our country’s success. I am rooting hard for you.

  Good luck—

  George

  Niccolò Machiavelli to Francesco Vettori, 3 August 1514

  The Italian politician Niccolò Machiavelli was also a wry observer of human nature. He was at the peak of his professional powers between 1498 and 1512, when he served as secretary to the Second Chancery of the Republic of Florence. Losing favor after a coup the following year, he was arrested and tortured, finally being released to his estate where he relaxed, walked, read poetry, and wrote his most famous work, The Prince, which, using the rise and fall of his contemporary Cesare Borgia, analyzed the conduct of politicians with amoral realism: “Whether it be better to be loved than feared or feared than loved? One should wish to be both not because it is difficult to unite them in one person, it is much safer to be feared than loved.” His letters, often to his friend Francesco Vettori, Florentine ambassador in Rome, are not always political. In this one, dated 5 January 1514, he recommends the pleasures of love in all its varieties, straight or gay—a charming definition of rather unMachiavellian tolerance: “He who is deemed wise during the day will never be considered crazy at night, and he who is esteemed a respectable man, and is worthy, whatever he does to lighten his heart and live happily renders him honour, not blame. Rather being called a bugger or a whoremonger, one says he is a man of broad interests, easygoing, and a good fellow.”

  In this letter, written a few months later, he writes beautifully about falling in love at the age of fifty:

  My friend…I have encountered a creature so gracious, so delicate…that I cannot praise her so much or love her so much that she would not deserve more. I ought to tell you with what nets of gold, spread among flowers, woven by Venus, so pleasant and easy that a villainous heart might have broken….You should not believe that Love in order to take me has used ordinary methods, because knowing they would not have been enough for him, he used extraordinary ones of which I knew nothing and from which I could not protect myself. May it be enough for you that already near fifty years neither do these suns harm me, nor do rough, roads tire me, nor dark hours of night frighten me. Everything seems to me level and all her desires….I adapt myself….I feel in it such sweetness both through what that face so soft and wonderful brings me, and also through having laid aside the memory of all my troubles, that for anything in the world, being able to free myself I would not wish it. I have abandoned then the thoughts of affairs great and serious…they are all turned into soft conversations for which I thank Venus. So if it occurs to you to write anything about the lady write it….Farewell.

  Henry VII to his “good friends,” July 1485

  It looks like a crazy adventure. On 7 August 1485, Henry Tudor and a small army of two thousand French mercenaries land in Wales, determined to seize the kingdom of England from King Richard III. Henry’s claim to the throne is through his mother, Lady Margaret Beaufort, the great-granddaughter of John of Gaunt, fourth son of Edward III; he is also descended from a minor Welsh soldier, Owen Tudor, who had married Henry V’s widow. However tenuous this connection may be, many better claimants are dead, and everyone knows that Richard III has usurped the throne from his own nephews: the two young princes have vanished, in the summer of 1483, murdered on Richard’s orders. The taint of regicide and infanticide is pungent.

  A year earlier, Henry Tudor had attempted an invasion that had
failed. Now he issues this open letter to potential followers among the noble magnates. The timing is perfect—rarely has a political letter been so successful. As he marches into England, more and more grandees support him.

  At the Battle of Bosworth Field on 22 August, various key magnates, above all the Stanleys, switch sides. Richard loses the battle, killed in the field. The penniless half-Welsh claimant, who lacks even the proper clothes to wear at his own court, has founded the Tudor dynasty.

  Right trusty, worshipful and honorable good friends, and our allies, I greet you well. Being given to understand your good devoir and intent to advance me to the furtherance of my rightful claim due and lineal inheritance of the crown, and for the just depriving of that homicide and unnatural tyrant which now unjustly bears dominion over you, I give you to understand that no Christian heart can be more full of joy upon the instance of your sure advertise what powers ye will make ready and what captains and leaders you get to conduct, be prepared to pass over the sea with such forces as my friends are preparing for me. And if you have such good speed and success as I wish, according to your desire, I shall be ever most forward to remember and wholly to requite this your great and most loving kindness in my just quarrel.

  Given under our signet,

  HR

  John Adams to Thomas Jefferson, 20 February 1801

  The handover of power is a test of every system—but even when it runs smoothly it is often extremely awkward. John Adams was the second US president, whose administration had been something of a mess. He was also the first president to live in the White House. His vice president had been his old comrade Thomas Jefferson, with whom he enjoyed a close and long but touchy relationship. After the 1800 election, when Adams sees his party wiped out, he unworthily tries to stack governmental appointments against the incoming President Jefferson, who denounces this perfidy. Hence Adams’s letter is frostily concerned not with the handover of the sacred altar of democracy but with the correct number of horses. After a long sulk on Adams’s part and two successful terms of the Jeffersonian presidency, they became friends again in 1811.