{"id":22344,"date":"2023-03-16T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-03-15T23:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbchistory\/?post_type=purple_issue&p=22344"},"modified":"2023-04-24T16:47:04","modified_gmt":"2023-04-24T14:47:04","slug":"anniversaries-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbchistory\/2023\/03\/16\/anniversaries-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Anniversaries"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

ANNIVERSARIES<\/h1>\n\n

Helen Carr <\/strong>highlights events that took place in April in history<\/h5>\n\n
\n\n

23 APRIL 1349 <\/span><\/h4>\n\n

The prestigious Order of the Garter first gathers<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n\n

Edward III founds an elite club to celebrate war and encourage his nobles to fight in France <\/em><\/h5>\n\n
\"\"
A 15th-century manuscript illumination shows Edward III in the robes of the Order of the Garter, which he founded to promote chivalry and war <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n

Honi<\/em> soi qui mal y pense\u201d <\/em>\u2013 \u201cShame on him who thinks evil of it\u201d. Emblazoned on heraldry across the centuries since 1349, this is the motto of the Order of the Garter \u2013 the oldest and most prestigious order of knighthood in Britain. The first wave of members of this elitist fraternity established by Edward III included his eldest son, Edward of Woodstock, later known as the Black Prince, alongside major English nobles who had fought during the first phase of the Hundred Years\u2019 War. <\/p>\n\n

The fraternity met annually, with the first gathering held on St George\u2019s Day, 23 April 1349. The members each wore a blue robe with a golden garter on the left shoulder, and convened in St George\u2019s Chapel, the \u201ctemple of chivalry\u201d, at Windsor Castle. There the Knights of the Chapel were separated in two, with one faction led by the king and the other by the Black Prince, possibly representing teams in royal tournaments, or opposing sides in battle. <\/p>\n\n

The Order of the Garter was Edward III\u2019s contribution to the glorification of war, particularly recent victories at the battle of Cr\u00e8cy and the capture of Calais. Commemoration and pageantry became a major part of the Edwardian agenda, promoting his martial ambitions. His reign was steeped in Arthurianisms: he installed a \u201cRound Table\u201d at Windsor, and in 1344 some of his men swore an oath to search for the Holy Grail. <\/p>\n\n

Through the establishment of the Order, Edward also elevated Saint George as an icon of war and of Englishness. His creation of the Order \u2013 membership of which was highly desirable \u2013 aimed to promote chivalry and incentivise war for the leading nobility of the realm, with the mythical figures of Arthur and Saint George spurring them on. <\/p>\n\n

The tradition continues with the annual Garter Day procession each June, in which the king and the Order\u2019s Knights proceed to St George\u2019s Chapel, sporting velvet robes and plumed hats. <\/p>\n\n

\n\n
\"\"
The marble statue dubbed the Venus de Milo, carved in the second century BC and named after the island on which she was discovered in 1820 <\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n

8 APRIL 1820 <\/span><\/h4>\n\n

The Venus de Milo is discovered by a Greek farmer<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n\n

The marble figure of an idealised woman reappears two millennia after its creation <\/em><\/h5>\n\n

Apeasant farmer clearing stones from scrubby land, a rock removed to reveal a long-hidden wonder, an icon reborn. That\u2019s the most commonly told account of the discovery of the Venus de Milo, one of the most revered artworks in history \u2013 though, as with her identity, the truth is rather less than certain. <\/p>\n\n

In 1820, Milos \u2013 a small island in the Cyclades between Athens and Crete \u2013 was part of the Ottoman empire, though subject politically to the French. According to the most widely recounted version of the story, on 8 April, Yorgos Kentrotas uncovered a niche holding a statue carved from Parian marble. Seeking help to recover his find, Yorgos alerted French naval officer Olivier Voutier, whose ship was docked nearby and who himself was looking for antiquities. He recognised the fractured find \u2013 the armless torso of a woman, swathes of fabric draping her hips \u2013 as something special, and the French ambassador was persuaded to buy the statue for 1,000 francs. <\/p>\n\n

The following February, the so-called Venus de Milo reached the Louvre, where she was presented to Louis XVIII \u2013 though the king was so obese that he could not immediately access the room in which she was displayed. <\/p>\n\n

The identity of the figure, carved in the second century BC, is still debated. She may be the sea goddess Amphitrite, worshipped on Milos. However, a fragment of a hand holding an apple suggests that she depicts Aphrodite \u2013 or Venus, to the Romans. <\/p>\n\n

\n\n
\"\"
An artist\u2019s impression of the 1912 sinking of the Titanic<\/em>, in which two-thirds of its passengers and crew died <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n

15 APRIL 1912<\/h4>\n\n

In the early hours of the morning, as the band plays on, the \u201cunsinkable\u201d <\/strong>Titanic goes down off Newfoundland, <\/strong><\/em>having struck an iceberg just before midnight. Some 1,500 people will perish. <\/span><\/p>\n\n

\n\n
\"\"
Sir Joshua Reynolds\u2019 1775 portrait of Dr Samuel Johnson, painted 20 years after he published his dictionary <\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n

15 APRIL 1755 <\/h4>\n\n

Dr Samuel Johnson publishes his magnum opus, <\/strong> the result of eight years\u2019 diligent work: A Dictionary of the English Language. <\/em><\/span><\/p>\n\n

\n\n

14 APRIL 1775 <\/h4>\n\n

The first abolition society in North America is established in Philadelphia. <\/strong> Membership of the Society for the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage is dominated by Quakers. <\/span><\/p>\n\n

\n\n

13 APRIL 1598 <\/span><\/h4>\n\n

The Edict of Nantes ends France\u2019s wars of religion<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n\n

Promises of religious freedoms bring to a close almost four decades of bloodshed <\/em><\/h5>\n\n
\"\"
ILLUSTRATION BY HUGH COWLING<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n

The second half of the 16th century was a bloody period in France. For decades, tension had been building between the country\u2019s dominant Roman Catholics and Huguenots. Those adherents to a Calvinist brand of Protestantism had grown in influence, particularly in southern and western France. In 1562, this friction sparked an outbreak of violence, launching nearly four decades of religious conflict that divided the nation and quickly descended into civil war. Covert murders and daylight massacres were committed by both sides \u2013 most infamously in the form of the horrific St Bartholomew\u2019s Day Massacre in Paris in 1572, when thousands of Huguenots were slaughtered by Catholics. <\/p>\n\n

The dynamic changed fundamentally with the accession in 1589 of the first Bourbon monarch, Henry of Navarre. He was, though, crowned Henry IV of France only in 1594 \u2013 after he converted to Catholicism, having been raised as a Protestant. By then, a more tolerant and amiable approach to religious differences had been diplomatically formulated in an effort to end the conflict. And on 13 April 1598, Henry signed the Edict of Nantes, in that city of the Loire region. The 92-article edict, which decreed civil unity and religious toleration on both sides, succeeded at least partly in restoring religious harmony and bringing an end to the bloodshed. By its terms, Huguenots would be free to worship publicly, but only in 200 specifically named towns and on land owned by Huguenots. They were, though, allowed to worship in their own homes nationally, were given the right to education, hospitals and inheritance, and could own property and trade freely.<\/span><\/p>\n\n

Even after Henry\u2019s conversion to Catholicism, some people continued to harbour doubts about his true faith. Sceptics suggested that his efforts to promote freedom of worship were indications of residual Protestant leanings, and continued to object to the edict\u2019s terms. This simmering resentment had dire consequences for the monarch. In 1610, Henry was assassinated by Fran\u00e7ois Ravaillac, a Catholic zealot. <\/p>\n\n

\n\n

16 APRIL 1853 <\/span><\/h4>\n\n

The first passenger train in India chugs out of Bombay<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n\n

Three steam locomotives haul 500 passengers on the inaugural 21-mile journey <\/em><\/h5>\n\n
\"\"
A steam locomotive of the Great Indian Peninsula Railway, first launched in 1853 to great fanfare <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n

A powerful wind blew across the 100-metre-long platform at Bori Bunder train station in Bombay (now Mumbai). Clouds of dust whipped through the air, stinging the eyes of the throng of \u201cEuropean ladies and European and native gentlemen\u201d who had gathered on the platform in the early afternoon of 16 April 1853. They had come to witness the departure of the first passenger steam train on the Great Indian Peninsula Railway \u2013 and, as it would later transpire, the birth of what became one of the world\u2019s largest railway networks. <\/p>\n\n

At 2pm, those 500 lucky passengers invited to embark on the momentous journey were ushered into the 14 stationary carriages, and three huge black locomotives named Sultan, Sind and Sahib began to build up steam. At 3.35pm, as a 21-gun salute was fired from the ramparts of Fort George, the train chugged away on the first passenger railway journey in India \u2013 indeed, in all of Asia. Along the entire 21-mile journey to Tannah (now Thane), taking just under an hour, the train and its excited passengers were cheered by thousands of spectators lining the route. <\/p>\n\n

The event caused quite a stir, and not only in India, where Britain\u2019s empire was at its peak. That pioneering train journey made headlines in the broadsheets of the imperial capital, too. A newspaper report claimed that the inauguration of the first passenger railway on the subcontinent was even more significant than British \u201cvictories in the east, which seem tame and commonplace\u201d. It went on to assert that \u201cthe opening of the Great Indian Peninsula Railway will be remembered by the natives of India when the battlefields of Plessey, Assaye and Gujarath have become the mere landmarks of history\u201d. <\/p>\n\n

Today, this seems a tasteless comparison, measuring industrial development against acts of violence committed during Britain\u2019s colonisation of India. Nonetheless, the advent of this Great Indian Peninsula Railway paved the way for one of the most extensive and successful railway networks in the world. <\/p>\n\n

\n\n

Helen Carr <\/strong>is a historian and writer. Her latest book is The Red Prince <\/em>(Oneworld, 2021) <\/p>\n\n

ALAMY\/TOPFOTO\/GETTY IMAGES\/UNIVERSITY OF CANADA<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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