Liquid Courage

On April 6, 1199, Richard I of England (also known as Richard the Lionheart, also known as Duke, Lord or Count of a variety of places in Europe, also known as the English king who was born in Oxford but didn’t speak English) died.  Richard the Lionheart remains one of the most celebrated figures of old English history, and considering that he’s basically French, he must have been quite the King.

You can bury my heart in Rouen, send my brain to Charroux...

Richard was tall, handsome, courageous, and had a knack for the dramatic.  On the way to the Third Crusade he conquered Cyprus and sold it to his knight vassal (making Richard the first corporate raider).*  He fought Saladin in the Middle East.  On his way back home Richard was captured and imprisoned by Leopold V of Austria, who passed him to Roman Emperor Henry VI.  Imprisoning a Crusader King carried the penalty of Pope-delivered excommunication, making Richard a kind of purgatory hot potato (Henry balmed his damned soul with Richard’s enormous ransom sum).  Richard coined the phrase Dieu et mon Droit, which became the motto of the British monarchy.  (Why the British monarchy’s motto is in French is another question entirely.)

Yet Richard’s record isn’t flawless.  He spent only six months of his reign actually in England.  Richard’s role as good absentee king in the Robin Hood story has grown over time, emphasizing the good over the absenteeism.  The Third Crusade was something less than a success, creating future demand for what became the infamous Fourth Crusade.  And while besieging a two-bit, no-name French castle in 1199, Richard got himself killed by a boy with a crossbow.

Richard summoned the boy to his tent, pardoned him for his impertinent castle defense, and sent him away with one hundred shillings ($32 billion dollars in today’s currency).  Richard died two weeks later of gangrenous complications from the arrow wound, and a mercenary captain had the boy flayed alive and hanged.

Still, you have to respect a king whose reputation would allow England to take a French saying as its monarchial motto.  So pour a red lion cocktail out for Richard the Lionheart, a king famous enough to be portrayed by both James Bond and Professor X.

Great actors envision Richard with a sharp goatee

*This incident included binding the former ruler of Cyprus in silver chains, because Richard had promised him that he would not be clasped in irons.  Classic Richard the Lionheart, am I right?

Hereeeeeeee's Hernán!

On March 4th, 1519, Hernán Cortés landed on the Yucatán Peninsula.  It was a bold move.  Cortés had been given command of a Spanish expedition to the Mexican interior by Diego Velázquez, the Spanish governor of Cuba.  Velázquez and Cortés were colonialism drinking buddies, but when it became clear to Velázquez that Mexican glory > Cuban glory, Velázquez tried to revoke Cortés’ command.  Cortés killed the messenger (literally), and when Velázquez arrived personally to stop him, Cortés waved adios to Velázquez from the helm of a ship.

Cortés sailed off to the mainland with 11 ships, 100 sailors and 530 soldiers.  On the Yucatán Peninsula he met the two people who would allow him to whisper silky words into the ears of the Aztecs: Geronimo de Aguilar, a shipwrecked sailor who had been living with the Maya, and La Malinche, a native woman given as a slave to the Spanish.  Aguilar spoke Spanish and Mayan, and La Malinche spoke Mayan and the Aztec language Nahuatl.  An effective game of New World Telephone ensued, and the rest, as they say, is lamentable.

Moctezuma II greeting Cortés

Cortés was a talented and persuasive military leader, and proved adept at manipulating alliances and social power structures he encountered in the native civilizations.  A massacre here, a hostage taking there, sprinkle with smallpox, and within two and a half years the Aztec Empire was in ruins.  On August 13, 1521, the city of Tenochtitlan surrendered to Cortés’ besieging forces, and that was that.

So pour out a splash of mezcal for the Aztec Empire.  Say what you will about their penchant for human sacrifice and oppression of surrounding peoples; the Aztecs were no match for the wildly successful combination of Spanish colonialism, New World Telephone, and smallpox.

On this date in 1820, Thomas Cochrane, 10th Earl of Dundonald, completed the daring capture of Valdivia during the Chilean War of Independence.  Using subterfuge and audacity, Lord Cochrane led 250 men and two ships in a nighttime assault on seven forts bristling with 110 guns, 700 soldiers, and 800 nearby reinforcements.  Cochrane and his men routed the forts on the southern shore of the bay in the night, and the troops guarding the northern shore fled in the morning.

The Chilean capture of Valdivia

Lord Cochrane was invited to the Chilean cause by the (terrifically-named) Bernardo O’Higgins, and became instrumental in securing Chile’s independence from Spain.  Yet the capture of Valdivia on February 3-4, 1820 was only one of Lord Cochrane’s many exploits on or near the High Seas.

Lord Cochrane

Nicknamed ‘The Sea Wolf’ by his French adversaries, Cochrane served the British Navy with great flair and distinction.  Cochrane commanded the HMS Speedy’s14 guns and 54 men in the audacious capturing of the Spanish frigate El Gamo (32 guns and 319 men) on May 6th, 1801.  He was captured during the French Revolutionary Wars by a French admiral who sought the advice of his prisoner.  Lord Cochrane got into a duel at a Maltese fancy dress party because a fellow officer mistook Cochrane’s common-sailor-costume for the real thing.  He was kicked out of British politics and the navy after being found (dubiously) guilty in the Great Stock Exchange Fraud of 1814.  Not one to sit on his hands, Cochrane aided the Chilean, Brazilian, and Greek wars of independence until he was reinstated into the British Navy in 1832.  Considered a brilliant practitioner of coastal warfare, Lord Cochrane planned his missions meticulously and frequently bluffed or disguised his way into victories over numerically superior opponents.  Lord Cochrane is buried in Westminster Abbey, and has served as inspiration for C.S. Forester’s Horatio Hornblower and Patrick O’Brian’s Jack Aubrey.
 
So if you find yourself drinking gin in a coastal port, watching the sun set beyond an old harbor fortress and imagining leading an assault on that position, pour one out for Lord Thomas Cochrane.  He would know how to capture that fort, and with fewer troops than you would think were required.