Titans of History

by Simon Sebag Montefiore

  As a master of dramatic art, Shakespeare has no peer. Many of his stories were not original—they were drawn, for example, from Boccaccio’s fables, or folk tales, or Plutarch’s Lives, or the Tudor chroniclers—but it is what he did with them that counts. He not only gave the two-dimensional figures in these tales fully rounded characters, he also knew how to build up tension, to create a mood of impending doom, and then to heighten that mood by interleaving an apparently incongruous comic scene (as he does, for example, in Macbeth). He was also a master of the coup de théâtre, such as the moment in Much Ado About Nothing when the hitherto lightweight, bantering world of the play is overthrown by Beatrice’s sudden injunction to Benedict: “Kill Claudio.” Thus none of Shakespeare’s tragedies are unremittingly tragic, nor are his comedies filled with nonstop laughter. At the end of Twelfth Night, for example, although all the lovers are paired off happily, the action closes with a melancholy song from the Clown, bringing us back to the quotidian world where “the rain it raineth every day.” Such simple, poignant touches are typical of Shakespeare and mark him out, just as much as his complexities, as a writer of genius.

  But there are many who have argued that an undistinguished provincial who never went to university could not have written some of the finest plays known to humankind. Despite considerable evidence to the contrary, claims have been made that either “William Shakespeare” was a fabricated pseudonym or his identity was simply used by someone else.

  The instigator of the trend was an American schoolteacher who claimed descent from Sir Francis Bacon, the lawyer, statesman and philosopher. The Baconian Theory insists that Bacon co-authored the plays with a coterie of courtly writers such as Edmund Spenser and Sir Walter Raleigh. Unable to reveal their identities because of the controversial content of the plays, they left clues hidden among the texts.

  Another candidate is the feisty and brilliant playwright Christopher Marlowe, a Cambridge-educated shoemaker’s son who dabbled in espionage, and who was suspected of atheism and homosexuality. Conspiracy theorists insist that he did not die in a bar-room brawl in 1593, as is widely believed, but that he went underground to avoid the authorities and continued to write plays, using “William Shakespeare” as a pseudonym.

  A third candidate is the earl of Derby, whose aristocratic status precluded him from dabbling in the theatrical world as a professional. He had a company of actors, and among his papers were found several poems authored by a “W.S.” His wedding may have been the first occasion on which A Midsummer Night’s Dream was performed.

  A final favorite in some quarters is the earl of Oxford, a poet, playwright (although no plays survive) and patron of an acting company. Oxford stopped producing poetry just before Shakespeare first went into print with the dramatic poem Venus and Adonis in 1593 (although his first plays had already been produced). The case for Oxford is, however, handicapped by the fact that the earl died in 1604, before at least a dozen of Shakespeare’s works were written. In 2011, Hollywood even produced a film—Anonymous—about the “real” Shakespeare. It was not a hit.

  Despite all these ingenious arguments, Shakespeare’s contemporaries seemed in no doubt that he was the author of his works, and in 1623 his former colleagues compiled the First Folio edition of his plays “to keep the memory of so worthy a friend and fellow alive as was our Shakespeare.” Modern textual analysis backs up the theory that all the poems and plays are by a single author whose name was William Shakespeare.

  ABBAS THE GREAT

  1571–1629

  I preferred the dust from the shoe soles of the lowest Christian to the highest Ottoman personage.

  Abbas the Great

  Abbas was the most successful shah of Iran in the period between the great kings of the ancient world and the modern era. He extended the kingdom both eastward and westward but importantly for understanding Iran today, it was the triumphant Abbas the Great who consolidated the Twelver Shiism that is so distinctive now; he and family offered themselves as the divinely chosen representatives of the Hidden Imam; and reassembled Iran as a great power for the first time since the Arab conquests. All of this is very relevant to understanding Iran in the twenty-first century.

  It was not Abbas who brought this form of Shiism to Iran: he was the descendant of a line of Shia sheikhs backed by a fanatical following of Turkoman tribesmen known as Qizilbash—“redheads” after their red bonnets: these featured twelve folds to symbolize the twelve Imams of the Shia. They believed that after Muhammad, God gave the guidance of humanity to a line of his descendants beginning with Ali and continuing with his son Husain. The line ended with the murder by the Sunnis of the eleventh imam in 874. His son, the twelfth imam, disappeared having been “occulted”—hidden by God—ready to appear as the Madhi, the Chosen One, “to bring justice to the world.”

  In the meantime, other intermediaries—namely Abbas’s Safavid family—touched by this divinity would rule until the twelfth imam reappeared. Abbas’s great-grandfather Ismail had come to power in 1501, declaring himself shah and making this form of Shia the official religion. Ismail threatened the Ottoman sultans, who were Sunni, with his resurgent Shiite Iran, until Sultan Selim the Grim defeated Ismail in 1514. But this new Iran fell into disorder after Ismail’s death, putting both its future and that of its distinctive Shiism into doubt. The Ottomans regained their dominance over the Caucasus and reconquered Iraq

  Abbas was the grandson of the old reclusive Shah Tahmasp. Though his father was the eldest son, he was disqualified from the throne because he was blind. Abbas grew up amidst turbulence and vanished glory, dominated by powerful Qizilbash generals who behaved with unwise arrogance around the young prince. Abbas was lucky to survive the short and murderous reign of his demented uncle Ismail II, who actually ordered his execution but was found dead himself before it could be carried out. His mother was murdered by tribal rebels. Abbas’ blind father was then placed on the throne in spite of his handicap, but the kingdom was cursed by marauding over-mighty Qizilbash warlords, Ottoman and Uzbek invasions, Portuguese imperialism, and family civil wars.

  Abbas was the Shah’s middle son, but he became heir after his elder brother was assassinated. In 1588, the blind shah abdicated and placed the crown on Abbas’s head. Initially the seventeen-year-old found himself under the control of the Qizilbash potentate Murshid Quli Khan to whom he owed the throne: after enduring many humiliations, Abbas had him assassinated and then set about ruling in his own right.

  Abbas quickly showed his mettle: he reformed the army allowing him to defeat and diminish the powers of the Qizilbash tribes; then he re-conquered Khurasan, which had been lost to the Uzbeks, before turning on the Ottomans, defeating them in the Caucasus. In 1605 he decisively routed their army at Sufian near Tabriz then advanced into Azerbaijan and Georgia.

  In order to undermine the Ottomans, he opened relations with Europe, especially the English, granting privileges to the East India Company, which he also used to back his campaign to reduce Portuguese influence in the Persian Gulf. His artistic masterpiece was his creation of a splendid new capital at Isfahan, where many of his beautiful creations still survive—particularly the Royal Square and Royal Mosque. Both an aesthete and a man of violence, Abbas was an exceptional political and military leader—colorful, highly intelligent, curious, a fine conversationalist with a sense of humor and theater. Nevertheless he was ruthless in imposing royal power and punishing dissent, deploying a web of police spies to watch his enemies. Paranoiac and merciless, he had his own eldest son and heir Prince Safi murdered and blinded two of his other sons. Yet typically he regretted deeply his killing of Safi and sank into remorse and melancholy.

  The Ottomans were the dominant power of the Near East and they had never accepted Abbas’ resurgent Iran. In 1616, they again attacked him but the shah defeated them in 1618. A few years later, he used English backing to help defeat the Portuguese and take their island base of Hormuz. In 1622, he recaptured Kandahar in today’s Afghanistan from the
Mughal emperors of India. Taking advantage of court intrigues in Istanbul, Abbas was finally able in 1624 to retake Baghdad and Iraq, which had been lost to the Ottomans ten years earlier. At his death in 1629, this contemporary of James I of England left a vast and powerful Iran that included Afghanistan and Iraq and extended from the Caucasus to the borders of India, with Twelver Shiism established as its state religion. Iran remained stable and thriving for a century until the downfall of the dynasty in 1722. This was the work of Abbas.

  WALLENSTEIN

  1583–1634

  The Duke of Friedland [Wallenstein] has up to now disgusted and offended to the utmost nearly every territorial ruler in the empire …

  Anselm Casimir von Wambold, Elector of Mainz, in 1629

  Albrecht von Wallenstein was a brutally ambitious mercenary captain who became so extraordinarily powerful and rich that he held emperors to ransom, mastered colossal estates, was raised to his own dukedom and principality, and almost joined the ranks of kings himself. But he overreached himself—his rise and fall was a tragedy of greed and megalomania.

  Wallenstein was born in Hefimanice, Bohemia, into a family of minor Protestant aristocrats. His military career began in 1604 when he joined the forces of the Habsburg Holy Roman Emperor, Rudolph II. Two years later he converted to Catholicism—the religion of his new master—and this paved the way for his marriage in 1609 to an extremely wealthy widow from Moravia.

  Wallenstein put the riches and estates he had gained by his marriage toward the furtherance of his own career in the service of the Habsburgs. In 1617 he came to the aid of the future emperor Ferdinand II by raising a force for the latter’s war against Venice. When the Protestant nobles of Bohemia came out in revolt in 1618 at the start of the Thirty Years’ War, and proceeded to confiscate Wallenstein’s estates, the warlord raised a force to fight under the imperial standard. In the Thirty Years War, a vicious religious conflict between the Catholic emperor and the Protestant princes of Germany and central Europe, much of the continent was ravaged; vast numbers perished in battle and from famine—but amoral warlords like Wallenstein thrived on this tragedy. He went on to earn distinction on the battlefield, and not only reclaimed his estates but also took over the lands of the Protestant nobles he defeated. He went on to incorporate these into a new entity called Friedland, over which he was made count palatine and in 1625 a duke.

  With the onset of the Danish War in 1625, Wallenstein raised an army of over 30,000 men to fight for the imperial Catholic League against the Protestant Northern League. A grateful Ferdinand—now emperor—immediately appointed him commander-in-chief. Wallenstein went on to achieve a series of brilliant victories, and Ferdinand rewarded him with the principality of Sagan and the duchy of Mecklenburg.

  Power and success now seem to have gone to Wallenstein’s head. He was no longer satisfied to remain the emperor’s most dependable lieutenant; he wanted to be master of his own destiny. And to this end he opened negotiations with his erstwhile enemies—the Protestant Hanseatic ports of northern Germany. The growing cleavage between Wallenstein—who now styled himself Admiral of the North and the Baltic Seas—and the emperor was confirmed by the latter’s Edict of Restitution in 1629. This declared that all Catholic lands that had, since 1552, fallen under Protestant control were to be restored to their former owners. For a man keen to build his own personal empire by means of deals with the Protestant nobles of northern Germany, the edict was a threat, and Wallenstein opted to disregard Ferdinand’s orders. He had already aroused the jealousy of much of the imperial aristocracy, and they now took the opportunity to press for his dismissal—which came about in 1630. Wallenstein retired to Friedland and plotted his revenge.

  With King Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden, a leading Protestant enemy of the emperor, Wallenstein hatched a plot that would have given him control of all Habsburg dominions. Ferdinand discovered Wallenstein’s treachery, but his military reversals made him so desperate that he asked Wallenstein to return to his service—for a suitably high price—to help him fight the Swedes and their Saxon allies. Wallenstein agreed, and in 1632 gave battle to the Swedes at Lützen. Although Gustavus Adolphus was killed, the Swedes won the day.

  Having revealed his military fallibility, Wallenstein was aware that his position was vulnerable. Determined to avoid a second dismissal, he refused to disband his army, and, worse, he did nothing to stop the Swedes securing further victories in Germany. At the same time, he attempted to negotiate with the emperor’s enemies—Saxony, Sweden and France. Such double-dealing proved inconclusive, however, and Wallenstein resumed the offensive against these powers in late 1633.

  But word of Wallenstein’s latest treachery had reached the imperial court at Vienna. At this point Wallenstein resolved on one last throw of the dice, and in January 1634 prepared to come out in open revolt against the emperor. However, as he found the support of his subordinates ebbing away, he tried to cut one final deal: he would resign in return for a substantial pay-off. This offer was rejected, and Wallenstein fled to the Saxons and Swedes in a fresh effort to link up with them against the Habsburgs. That enterprise was doomed to failure, however, and in February 1634 Wallenstein was assassinated by troops from within his own army.

  CROMWELL

  1599–1658

  A man of a great, robust, massive mind, and an honest, stout English heart.

  Thomas Carlyle, describing Cromwell in his edition Oliver Cromwell’s Letters and Speeches (1845)

  Oliver Cromwell took just twenty years to rise from obscure country gentleman to lord protector of England, Scotland and Ireland. His military genius was vital to Parliament’s victory over Charles I in the Civil Wars. His political management—sometimes cajoling—of Parliament and the respect he engendered in the army helped to stabilize the fragile country after the king was beheaded. As head of state in the new Commonwealth, he enforced rigid puritanism, tempered with toleration for Jews and intolerance for Catholics: his foreign policy was successful and prestigious. He turned down the crown, but his burning commitment to God and the English people, rather than any personal ambition, marks him as the greatest king that England never had.

  Cromwell was by birth a relatively lowly gentleman farmer from Huntingdon, now in Cambridgeshire. Both his own family and that of his wife were connected to various networks of puritans, and throughout his life he was deeply and sincerely devoted to carrying out the will of God as he saw it.

  Cromwell first sat as an MP in the Parliament of 1628–9, making little impact. Charles I ruled without Parliament for the next 11 years, and Cromwell did not sit as an MP again until 1640. As tensions between Charles and the so-called Long Parliament began to build toward violent crisis, Cromwell’s puritan and oppositionist credentials began to come to the fore. But he showed his real worth as the Civil War broke out, first captaining a troop of cavalry at the Battle of Edgehill (October 23, 1642) and the next year forming his regiment of “Ironsides,” who were victorious at the Battle of Gainsborough (July 28, 1643). His handling of the cavalry at the Parliamentary victory of Marston Moor (July 2, 1644) secured his reputation nationally—though Cromwell was not interested in fame, regarding military success as an expression of God’s will in the struggle for English liberties. By now he was leader of Parliament’s Independent faction, determined not to compromise with the Royalists.

  Cromwell and Parliament’s supreme military leader Thomas Fairfax created a disciplined new force, the New Model Army, which in the mid-1640s changed the course of the war in Parliament’s favor. The victorious Battle of Naseby (June 14, 1645) determined the outcome of the First Civil War.

  Cromwell’s political centrality emerged in the years 1646–9, when he became power-broker between army, Parliament and the now-captive Charles in an attempt to restore a constitutional basis for government. But dealing with the slippery and inflexible Stuart monarch, who at root would brook no compromise to (as he saw it) his divinely inspired kingship, exhausted Cromwell. When Charles tempor
arily escaped in 1647 and sought to restart the war with the Scottish Presbyterians in support, Cromwell’s attitude hardened. Defeating the Royalist, Welsh and Scottish rebels in 1648, he backed the trial for treason of the king, a show trial that ended, predictably enough, in the execution of Charles. On the cold morning of Tuesday January 30, 1649, after a last walk in St. James’s Park, King Charles I, wearing two shirts lest his shivering against the cold be misinterpreted as fear, mounted the scaffold erected outside the Banqueting Hall in Whitehall. He had been condemned to death as “a tyrant, traitor, murderer and public enemy to the good of the nation.”

  Charles, unrepentant and convinced that his death would make him a martyr for the Royalist cause, addressed the crowd. If his life was disastrous, his leaving it was heroic:

  I think it is my duty to God first and to my country for to clear myself both as an honest man and a good King, and a good Christian. I shall begin first with my innocence.

  In troth I think it not very needful for me to insist long upon this, for all the world knows that I never did begin a War with the two Houses of Parliament … they began upon me …

  I have forgiven all the world, and even those in particular that have been the chief causes of my death. Who they are, God knows, I do not desire to know, God forgive them …