Titans of History

by Simon Sebag Montefiore

  Elizabeth deployed a cautious approach to matters of religion. The Church of England that she created, although technically Protestant, blended both Protestant and Catholic elements. She expected people to conform outwardly, and to respect her position as head of the Church, but was not concerned about their inner beliefs: “I would not open windows into men’s souls,” she said.

  Such tolerance was not on the agenda at the Vatican, and in 1570 Pope Pius V excommunicated Elizabeth, denying her right to sit upon the throne of England. For some Catholics, the rightful queen of England was Mary, Queen of Scots, Elizabeth’s Catholic cousin, who had been ousted from the throne of Scotland and taken refuge in England, where she was effectively put under house arrest. Mary became the focus of numerous Catholic plots against Elizabeth’s life. After years of conspiracies, and numerous warnings by her counselors as to the threat Mary represented, Elizabeth had finally had enough, and in 1587 Mary was tried and executed.

  By now, religious tensions across western Europe were reaching boiling point. Outraged by the execution of Mary and by the raids of English privateers on Spanish ships and possessions in the New World—not to mention the support Elizabeth was lending to the Protestant rebels in the Spanish Netherlands—Philip II of Spain, the champion of Catholic Europe, sent a massive Armada against England. The plan was for the fleet of 130 ships to sail from Spain to the Spanish Netherlands, where they would pick up a Spanish army under the duke of Parma and head for England.

  As the invasion fleet was spotted in the Channel in July 1588, beacon fires flared across England. The English navy, under the command of such men as Lord Howard of Effingham and Sir Francis Drake, made ready, while in Tilbury the queen herself addressed her troops with one of the most inspiring speeches in English history:

  I am come amongst you all, as you see at this time, not for my recreation and disport, but being resolved, in the midst and heat of the battle, to live or die amongst you all; to lay down for my God, and for my kingdom, and for my people, my honor and my blood even in the dust. I know I have the body of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and a king of England too. And think foul scorn that Parma or Spain, or any Prince of Europe, should dare to invade the borders of my realm!

  The English navy and the weather scattered the invasion fleet, to the eternal ignominy of Spain and the glory of Elizabeth.

  A superb politician (and Latin scholar), Elizabeth ruled personally with astonishing intelligence, cunning, moderation and tolerance for forty-five years until her death, keeping absolute control except in her dotage, when she overindulged a vain young favorite, Robert, earl of Essex, who was executed for treason. No one except Winston Churchill so symbolizes the defiant, patriotic liberty of the English.

  AKBAR THE GREAT

  1542–1605

  As in the wide expanse of the Divine compassion there is room for all classes and the followers of all creeds, so in his dominions, there was room for the professors of opposite religions, and for beliefs good and bad, and the road to altercation was closed. Sunnis and Shias met in one mosque, and Franks and Jews in one church, and observed their own forms of worship.

  Jahangir

  Babur’s grandson inherited a tottering throne when his good-natured but inept father Humayun died after falling off a ladder in his library. The family had lost many of Babur’s Indian territories, but the boy-emperor was fortunate that his Turkoman minister-general managed at the Battle of Paniput to reconquer Delhi and Agra.

  When he started to rule in his own right in 1560, Akbar soon emerged as a remarkably gifted and original emperor, soldier and visionary. He continued to conquer new provinces throughout his long reign, leaving an empire that included much but not all of modern India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, from Kashmir to Ahmedabad, Kabul to Dacca.

  Finding himself ruling a multi-faith, multinational, polyglot realm, he brilliantly adapted Islam to create a faith for all, consulting Muslims, Christians, Jews, Parsis and Hindus. The result borrowed from all these faiths and built around Akbar’s authority, recognized by Islam jurists as “infallible.” His creed was centered on the formula: “There is One God and his Caliph is Akbar.”

  He promoted talented men of all religions, banned slavery, abolished the Islamic tax on infidels, prohibited early marriage and allowed Hindu widows to refuse suttee and remarry.

  This eccentric, tolerant and eclectic policy was made possible by Akbar’s political-military success. This contemporary of Queen Elizabeth of England and the Ottoman Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent was probably the greatest ruler India has ever known; his prestige helped establish his Mughal Empire for the next two and a half centuries, its glories symbolized by his father’s tomb and his descendant Shah Jahan’s monumental Taj Mahal.

  Tragically his successors failed to pursue his admirable tolerance, worsening the ethnic relations of India to this day. His dynasty ended less with a roar than a whimper with the deposition by the British of the tragic last Mughal in 1857.

  TOKUGAWA IEYASU

  1543–1616

  The study of literature and the practice of the military arts must be pursued side by side.

  Tokugawa Ieyasu, Rules for the Military Houses (1615)

  The tenacity and patience of Tokugawa Ieyasu, Japan’s ultimate shogun, laid the foundations for two and a half centuries of stable rule by his dynasty. Tokugawa transformed his family from an undistinguished warrior clan into the undisputed rulers of Japan, ending decades of anarchy and civil war. As capable a governor as he was a soldier, Ieyasu’s flair for both administration and commerce ushered in a long period in which Japan could flourish in peace.

  A legend tells how once Ieyasu was asked what he would do to a caged songbird that would not sing. “I’d wait until it does,” the general replied. The story encapsulates Ieyasu’s extraordinary patience, which was doubtless honed during his childhood years spent as the hostage of powerful neighboring clans. He was well cared for, trained to be a soldier and a governor, and encouraged in his love of falconry. But he was powerless. He could only listen helplessly to the news of his father’s murder and impotently look on as his family’s fortunes disintegrated.

  When the leader of the clan that held him captive was killed in battle, Ieyasu seized the chance to return home. Deftly exploiting Japan’s precarious political balance, he restored order to his family and persuaded his former captors to release his wife and children. In his family’s small domain, Ieyasu consolidated his rule, demonstrating the administrative and legislative skill that would later secure his grip over the whole of Japan.

  Ieyasu’s network of control spread outward. His canny governance, disciplined armies and ability to spot the weaknesses of others made him one of Japan’s most influential daimyos (feudal barons). He never overreached himself, however. Realizing after a few minor skirmishes that he was not yet strong enough to triumph on his own, he vowed fealty to Japan’s dominant warlord, Toyotomi Hideyoshi. He also avoided involvement in the disastrous military expeditions to Korea that incapacitated so many of his rival daimyos.

  Ieyasu’s domain became the most prosperous in Japan. He encouraged artisans, businessmen and traders to come to Edo, the fishing village he chose as his base. Edo flourished, growing into the bustling town and port that was later to be renamed Tokyo.

  Ieyasu’s willingness to bide his time secured him an unassailable power base. Finally, in 1600, at the Battle of Sekigahara, Ieyasu emerged triumphant over his rivals as the undisputed master of Japan. Three years later the imperial court appointed him shogun—the title borne since the 12th century by those warrior-governors who are the real power in Japan, the powerless emperors having only a ceremonial role as figureheads.

  Ieyasu consolidated his clan’s claim to the shogunate as diligently as he had consolidated his authority over his territory. After only two years as shogun he passed the title on to his son, thus establishing a hereditary claim that endured for 250 years. He made sure that
no daimyo could become as powerful as he had by obliging all daimyos to spend long periods at court, thus undermining their ability to build up a local power base. When they were allowed to return to their own domains, Ieyasu kept their families as virtual hostages in Edo.

  The small, stout Ieyasu trusted his maverick judgment to see him through. He appointed a falconer as a diplomat, and made an actor the director of mines. His enthusiasm for trading with the Europeans filled his vast warehouses with rice and gold. Will Adams, a Kentish shipbuilder who was shipwrecked by a typhoon on Japanese shores, became one of Ieyasu’s most valued commercial advisers.

  Ieyasu allowed nothing to threaten Japan’s new-found unity and stability, and to this end in 1614 he suppressed Christianity and imprisoned all foreign missionaries. Long tolerant of Christianity, Ieyasu did not initiate the religious killings that his descendants practiced—his motive was purely to prevent sectarian divisions among his countrymen. A stream of new laws established stringent control over every stratum of society, curtailing people’s freedom of movement but ensuring a stability that Japan had not seen for a century. In 1615, in his most ruthless act, Ieyasu secured Tokugawa pre-eminence by destroying his family’s last rivals to the shogunate, the Toyotomi. Among those put to death was his own grandson by marriage.

  The shogun died a year later, from wounds sustained in the battle that finally extinguished the threat of the Toyotomi.

  GALILEO

  1564–1642

  I do not feel obliged to believe that that same God who has endowed us with senses, reason and intellect has intended to forgo their use and by some other means to give us knowledge which we can attain by them.

  Galileo Galilei, “Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina” (1615)

  Galileo Galilei helped to transform the way that people looked at the world—and the universe beyond. A physicist, mathematician and astronomer, Galileo made fundamental discoveries about the nature of motion and the movement of the planets. He realized the importance of experimentation and held that the physical world was best understood through mathematics. His insistence that the universe should be analyzed via reason and evidence brought him into conflict with the Church, but his discoveries long outlasted the Inquisition that sought to suppress them.

  Galileo’s father was a musician, and the young man may well have helped with paternal experiments into the tension and pitch of strings. His formal education took place at Pisa University, where he matriculated in 1581, initially to study medicine. To his father’s disapproval, Galileo spent most of his time on mathematics and left the university without a degree in 1585.

  Galileo continued to study mathematics for the next four years, earning money through private tuition until he was appointed to a chair at the university in 1589. It was during this time that he supposedly demonstrated his theory of the speed of falling objects by dropping weights from Pisa’s leaning tower.

  His unorthodox views earned him the disapproval of the university authorities, and in 1592 Galileo was forced to move to Padua, where he taught until 1610. Crippled by his family’s financial demands after his father died, Galileo earned extra money by selling home-made mathematical compasses and continuing to tutor private pupils.

  In 1609 Galileo heard of a strange device invented in the Netherlands that could make distant objects appear close. It was the telescope, and Galileo immediately set about building his own. Within a year he was investigating the heavens with a device that provided 20x magnification. It was a turning point in his career.

  With his telescope Galileo discovered Jupiter’s four moons and noted that their phases indicated that they orbited Jupiter. This evidence dented the Church-approved Ptolemaic model of the universe, in which all heavenly bodies orbit the earth. Galileo also saw stars that were invisible to the naked eye. He immediately published his findings in a short book dedicated to one of his illustrious pupils, Cosimo II de Medici, grand duke of Florence. As a reward, Cosimo brought him back to Tuscany in triumph.

  With greater financial freedom, Galileo was able to move his investigations on apace. He studied the rings of Saturn and discovered that Venus, like the moon, went through phases—an indication that it moved around the sun. These discoveries committed him to the theory—proposed by Nicolaus Copernicus a century before—that it was the sun, and not the earth, that was at the center of the universe.

  Copernicanism was a dangerous concept for Galileo to flirt with, and around 1613 it earned him the attention of the Inquisition. He traveled to Rome to defend Copernicus’ heliocentric model but was silenced, and in 1616 he was warned explicitly not to promulgate such ideas any further.

  By 1632 Galileo felt unable to keep silent on Copernicanism any longer and published his Dialogue, which drew together all of the major strands of thought about the nature of the universe and discussed them through the mouths of several fictitious characters.

  When he was dragged to Rome the next year and asked to explain himself to the Inquisition, Galileo argued that he had obtained ecclesiastical permission to discuss Copernicanism in a hypothetical way. Unfortunately, he had not obtained permission to ridicule the papal attachment to older arguments, which he had done quite unashamedly. The Inquisition sentenced him to life imprisonment.

  Fortunately for Galileo, his imprisonment amounted to little more than enforced internal exile to the Tuscan hills, where he was free to continue his work in a more muted form. Though he was going blind, he continued to study, concentrating on the nature and strength of materials and smuggling another book out of Italy to be published in the Netherlands in 1638. He died four years later, at age seventy-seven.

  SHAKESPEARE

  1564–1616

  He was not of an age, but for all time!

  Ben Jonson, “To the Memory of My Beloved, the Author, Mr. William Shakespeare” (1623)

  It is almost universally acknowledged—and not just in the English-speaking world—that William Shakespeare was the greatest writer ever to have lived. He was a peerless poet, playwright and storyteller, and his understanding of human emotions, and the complexities and ambivalences of the human condition, are unparalleled in literature.

  Famously, little is known about Shakespeare’s life. He was born in Stratford-upon-Avon in 1564, the son of John Shakespeare, a burgess of fluctuating fortunes, and his wife, Mary Arden. William attended the local grammar school, and at the age of eighteen he married Anne Hathaway, who was some years his senior and already pregnant. At some point in the ensuing decade, Shakespeare moved to London. He was probably a jobbing actor but began to make a mark as a poet and a playwright. By 1594 he was the established dramatist for the theater company known as the Lord Chamberlain’s Men (which renamed itself the King’s Men after James I’s accession).

  For the next twenty years Shakespeare wrote play after dazzling play—comedies, tragedies, histories—which brought audiences flocking to the Globe Theatre on the south bank of the Thames. Shakespeare’s fortunes flourished. He probably supported his father’s application for a coat of arms and bought one of Stratford’s largest houses, New Place. On his death in 1616, he was buried in the chancel of Stratford’s parish church. There is little more that we know about Shakespeare’s life.

  But Shakespeare’s works tell us all we need to know about the man. He has an extraordinary sympathy with men and women of all ages, from all strata of society, demonstrating a deep understanding of their faults and frailties, their kindnesses and cruelties, their loves and hates, their vanities and self-delusions. Joy and despair, anger and resignation, jealousy and lust, vigor and weakness are all depicted with searing honesty. There is the dangerous infatuation of first love in Romeo and Juliet, the destructiveness of middle-aged passion in Antony and Cleopatra, the heart-rending follies of old age in King Lear. Shakespeare also subjects the nature of power to his unflinching gaze: the burdens of kingship in Henry IV, the nature of tyranny in Richard III, the abuse of trust in Measure for Measure. At its heart, Shakespeare’s wor
k asks: what is a man? What makes a man? What makes a king?

  Shakespeare’s characters are multifaceted, complex, ambiguous. Hamlet, faced with his father’s apparent murder, is beset by moral qualms and indecision as to whether he should take revenge. Macbeth and Lady Macbeth seize the throne by violence and then become mired in bloodshed, guilt and madness. In Twelfth Night, the jolly, roistering characters play a trick upon the pompous, puritanical steward Malvolio, but the trick goes beyond a joke and plunges into cruelty. In The Tempest, possibly Shakespeare’s last play, Prospero, having used his magic powers to bring those who have wronged him into his power, decides “the rarer action is / In virtue than in vengeance.” And then, in what is often taken to be an autobiographical touch on Shakespeare’s part, Prospero, the magus, abandons his magical arts: “deeper than did ever plummet sound / I’ll drown my book.”

  All this wealth of human experience Shakespeare embodies in language of astounding power and precision, from soaring passages of poetic intensity, through quick-fire witty dialogue, to the earthy prose of the common people who crowded into the pits of London’s theaters. Shakespeare’s richness of vocabulary is astonishing, drawing imagery from a range of fields and activities, from flora and fauna to warfare and heraldry, from astrology and astronomy to seafaring and horticulture. Puns and double entendres abound throughout his work, and virtually every line has layers of meanings. Not content with the vast vocabulary at his command, Shakespeare introduced many new words into English, from “meditate” and “tranquil” to “alligator” and “apostrophe.” He also gave us myriad phrases that have entered everyday speech: “Discretion is the better part of valor,” “At one fell swoop,” “In one’s heart of hearts,” “Seen better days,” and many, many more.