^
Deaths which
occurred on a June 25:
1997 Jacques Ives
Cousteau, oceanógrafo francés y "padre" de la inmersión submarina.
1996 Nineteen US servicemen by a truck bomb at the Khobar
Towers US military residence in Dhahran. Hundreds are injured. The US military
initially linked Osama bin Laden to the attack but now believe a Saudi Shiite
group was responsible. US investigators still believe bin Laden was somehow
involved.
1995 Warren Burger, the 15th chief justice
of the United States, died in Washington at age 87.
1995 William
Layton, dramaturgo estadounidense.
1995 Ernest Thomas
Sinton Walton, físico irlandés
1988 American-born
Mildred Gillars, better known during World War II as "Axis Sally" for her
Nazi propaganda broadcasts, died in Columbus, Ohio, at age 87. (Gillars
had served 12 years in prison for treason.)
1984 Michel Foucault,
filósofo francés.
1978 Hsien
Chung Wang, Chinese US mathematician born on 18 April 1918.
In algebraic topology he discovered the Wang Sequence, an exact sequence
involving homology groups associated with fibre bundles over spheres.
1974 Kornél
Lánczos, Jewish Hungarian mathematician born Kornél
(=Cornelius) Löwy on 02 February 1893. He worked on relativity and
mathematical physics and invented what is now called the Fast Fourier Transform.
1959 Charles Starkwether executed.
1958
Charles Spencelayh, British artist born on 26 October 1865.
1956:: 51 die in collision of Andrea Doria and Stockholm
at 23:10 EDT (40º30' N, 69º53'W, off Cape Cod). The dead include
46 of the 1134 passengers of the Andrea Doria (none of its crew
of 571) and 5 of the 213 crew members of the Stockholm (none of
its 534 passengers). Norman Di Sandro and Alf Johansson died of head injuries
after being evacuated by helicopter. Carl Watres died of a heart attack
after being rescued by the Stockholm.
1955 Max Hermann
Pechstein, German Expressionist
painter born on 31 January 1881. — LINKS
— Bathers
— Flute
Playing in the Country
1952 Sveinn Björnsson,
primer presidente de la República de Islandia.
1941 Alfred
Pringsheim, German Jewish mathematician born on 02 September
1850.
1912 Lawrence Alma-Tadema, Dutch English Pre-Raphaelite
painter born on 08 January 1836. — MORE
ON ALMA~TADEMA AT ART “4” JUNE
—
LINKS — Death
of the Pharaoh's Firstborn Son — The
Phyrric Dance — Sappho
and Alcaeus — Anthony
and Cleopatra — The
Roses of Heliogabalus — A
Dedication to Bacchus — Caracalla
and Geta — A
Favourite Custom — Faust
and Marguerite — The
Education of the Children of Clovis — An
Egyptian Widow — A
Roman Family — An
Audience at Agrippa's — An
Apodyterium — Spring
— The
Coliseum — The
Baths of Caracalla — Silver
Favourites —The
Finding of Moses — A Sculptor's
Model
1909 Emilia Álvarez Mijares del Real,
escritora española.
1906 Architect Stanford White,
52, shot dead atop Madison Square Garden, which he designed, by Harry Thaw
jealous husband of Evelyn Nesbit.
1904 Anthony Frederick Augustus
Dandys, British artist born in the period 1829-1832.
1898
Nikolai Grigorevich Svertschkoff, Russian artist born on 06 March
1817.
1886 Friedrich Johannes Voltz, German artist
born on 31 October 1817.
^
1876 Custer, 264 soldiers
of his 7th Cavalry, and some Indian warriors
In the worst defeat of the US Army
in its long history of warfare with the Native Americans, Lieutenant
Colonel Armstrong Custer’s Seventh Calvary is annihilated by a larger
Sioux force at the Battle
of Little Bighorn.
In 1868,
the US government signed the Fort Laramie Treaty with the Sioux, Cheyenne,
and Arapaho, granting the three tribes permanent possession of a large
region to the west of the northern Missouri River. However, in 1872,
gold was discovered in the Black Hills, located along the border of
South Dakota and Wyoming, and white prospectors began moving into
the Sioux territory. In 1874, Lieutenant Colonel Custer, who had distinguished
himself as the youngest Union general of the Civil War, led his Seventh
Calvary into the region and confirmed the gold strike. Over the next
few months, thousands of miners rushed into the Black Hills.
In September of 1875, representatives
of the US government met with Sioux and other tribal leaders, and
offered to purchase the land. The Indians refused, so in December,
US authorities ordered all Sioux raiding and hunting parties to report
to a reservation agency by January 31, 1876, or consider themselves
at war with the United States. In response, thousands of Sioux left
the reservations to join Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, and other war
leaders meeting along the Powder River in present-day Wyoming. They
were joined by the Arapaho, the northern Cheyenne, and warriors from
other scattered tribes.
Meanwhile,
US General Philip H. Sheridan organized three powerful Army columns
to suppress the Indians. In March, General George Crook’s column fought
an indecisive battle with the Sioux along the Powder River, and in
June, Crook defeated a Sioux force at the Battle of Rosebud Creek.
In the same month, the two other Army columns, under the command of
General Alfred H. Terry and Colonel John Gibbon, met up at the mouth
of Rosebud Creek and prepared to attack a large Sioux camp reported
on Little Bighorn River to the southwest. General Terry ordered Custer
to lead his Seventh Calvary down the valley and flush the Sioux out
toward the two Army columns, which were to block the Indians’ southern
retreat route. On June 22, Custer set out with some six hundred men
for Little
Bighorn.
On 25 June, at dawn,
his scouts spotted the Indian camp, and at noon, Custer commenced
his attack. As the village appeared to be only moderately sized, apparently
without a large force of defenders, he divided his command into four
parts, two of which were to attack the village, one of which was to
remain behind as a supply column, and another which was to scout to
the south. It was a fatal mistake. Across the river lay hidden a Sioux
and Cheyenne force of nearly 2000 warriors under Crazy Horse, Two
Moon, and Gall.
The 175-man detachment
under US Major Marcus Reno was the first to attack the village, but
encountering the large Indian force they retreated back across the
river with moderate loss of life. Meanwhile, Custer, who had intended
to attack the village from the north, was cut off in rough ground
with 210 men. Suddenly, Custer was assaulted by Indians pouring across
the river both north and south of him. What became known as “Custer’s
Last Stand” lasted less than an hour, and not one of his 210 men survived
the Indian attack.
Upstream,
the two scouting and supply detachments met up with Reno’s force,
and over the next twenty-four hours succeeded in holding off repeated
Indian assaults at the cost of forty-seven killed and fifty-three
wounded. On June 26, with the large Army columns of Terry and Gibbon
approaching, the villagers retreated, followed several hours later
by the warriors, who set the prairie grass afire to cover their retreat.
The Battle of Little Bighorn was one of the most infamous military
disasters in US history, and cost 265 members of the Seventh Cavalry.
With the exception of Custer, whose remains were later reinterred
at West Point, the bodies of the slain men are still buried on the
battlefield, now a national monument in Montana.
^
Le Chef sioux de la tribu Oglala, Ta-Sunko-Witko, que les soldats
des armées nord-américaines appelaient Crazy Horse, se fait remarquer
comme jeune chef dès 1865. Il refuse les plans établis par Washington
pour ménager aux pionniers une route d’accès aux champs de prospection
aurifère du Montana ; sa tribu vivait dans le nord des Grandes Plaines
(lui-même était probablement né dans l’actuel Dakota du Sud) et les
territoires de chasse devaient servir de lieu de passage aux Blancs
en route vers l’Ouest.
En 1866,
Crazy Horse fait partie du groupe d’Indiens qui anéantit la compagnie
du capitaine William J. Fetterman, qui avait longtemps demandé qu’on
lui donne la possibilité de s’attaquer avec seulement quatre-vingts
hommes aux groupes de guerriers sioux et de démontrer l’efficacité
tactique des troupes régulières nord-américaines. Mais comme ses hommes
disposaient de fusils dont la recharge demandait plusieurs opérations
manuelles, ils furent anéantis par les flèches de leurs adversaires.
Refusant de se maintenir dans les réserves
imposées aux Sioux, Crazy Horse mène ses hommes dans les régions de
chasse des tribus sioux, guerroyant à l’occasion contre les détachements
de troupes régulières et leurs auxiliaires indiens. La découverte
d’or sur le territoire du Dakota en 1874 fit que les prospecteurs
ignorèrent les traités signés entre les Sioux et le gouvernement nord-américain
et envahirent leur réserve ; au lieu de contenir les chercheurs d’or,
le général Crook contraignit Crazy Horse à évacuer ses campements
d’hiver pour installer ceux-ci près des rivières au Montana.
Échappant au contrôle des troupes de
Washington, Crazy Horse et les siens se réfugièrent dans les collines,
joignirent les Cheyennes et, le 17 juin 1876, contraignirent le corps
d’armée de Crook à la retraite. Crazy Horse fit ensuite jonction avec
la plus grande partie de la nation sioux, réunie autour de Sitting
Bull sur les bords de la Little Bighorn River (25 juin 1876). La bataille
fut féroce. Les troupes de Custer subirent de nombreuses pertes.
Les tribus alors se séparèrent. Réfugiés
dans les collines, harcelés par les troupes américaines qui voulaient
les contraindre à s’établir dans les "agences" créées pour recevoir
les Indiens, les hommes de Crazy Horse succombèrent au froid et à
la faim ; en 1877, Crazy Horse et les siens se rendaient au général
Crook. Retenu au fort Robinson, le chef indien, torturé et humilié,
tenta quelques mois plus tard de s’échapper, mais il fut assassiné
par des agents du gouvernement fédéral dans la confusion générale
que provoqua son évasion
Argument
that the accepted story of Custer's Last Stand reflects a cover-up
by surviving officers in charge of sepate detachments. These would
have failed to support a theorized attack by Custer's unit on the
Indian tent village (where it would have been killing women and children).
^
From the Amerindians' point of view:
In 1874, George Armstrong Custer, who six years before had slaughtered
Black Kettle's Southern Cheyennes on the Washita River, brought all
the western Sioux face-to-face with another crisis. Ignoring the Treaty
of 1868, which guaranteed the Sioux the western half of present-day
South Dakota as a reservation for their perpetual and exclusive use,
General Sheridan sent Custer and a large reconnaissance expedition
into the Black Hills, in the heart of the reservation, to locate a
site for a new fort.
The intrusion was a violation of the treaty, which read, "No white
person or persons, shall be permitted to settle upon or occupy any
portion of the territory, without the consent of the Indians....
and to pass through the same." To the Sioux, the sacred Paha Sapa,
or Black Hills, were the spiritual center of their world, where
their people withdrew from the hot plains to fast and pray, to cry
for a vision, establish communion with the supernatural world, and,
at the springs and among the cool, pine-covered hills, renew their
strength and spiritual well-being. Compounding the affront to the
Indians, Custer turned the illegal invasion into a gold-seeking
expedition. When he found gold and trumpeted the news to the world,
the results were predictable. Thousands of miners, entrepreneurs,
and adventurers overran the Black Hills and the sacred sites of
the Sioux, throwing up mining camps and towns, cutting down the
woods, polluting the streams, and resisting successfully the army's
halfhearted attemps to eject them. United in their outrage, the
Sioux threatened war against the invaders, who, in turn, raised
an outcry for the removal of the Sioux from what, in fact, was still
the Indians' country.
The government's solution, overlooking the sacred nature of the
Black Hills and regarding them as just another piece of real estate,
was to try to buy them from the Indians. Red Cloud and a number
of agency chiefs were summoned to Washington and, although bullied
and threatened, insisted that all of the Sioux would have to be
consulted. In September 1875, a special government commission finally
met at the Red Cloud agency with some twenty thousand Sioux, most
of them were from the agencies, but others representing the different
"hostile" bands in the north. One after another, tribal spokesmen
condemned the government. Typical were the remarks of a Lower Yanktonai
chief, Wanigi Ska (White Ghost): You have driven away our
game and our means of livelihood out of the country, until now we
have nothing left that is valuable except the hills that you ask
us to give up..... The earth is full of minerals of all kinds, and
on the earth the ground is covered with forests of heavy pine, and
when we give these up to the Great Father we know that we give up
the last thing that is valuable either to us or the white people.
Tatanka Yotanka, or Sitting Bull, a great warrior and also a spritiual
leader with strong powers, was not there, but Hunkpapas conveyed
his warning: We want no white men here. The Black Hills
belong to me. If the whites try to take them, I WILL fight..
Red Cloud, trying to reassert his authority to speak for all,
demanded six hundred million dollars for the Black Hills. The commisioners
offered six hundred million dollars, and the council broke up without
accomplishing anything. In November, at the instigation of President
Grant, the government ordered all "hostile" bands to come into the
Sioux agencies by January 31 or be driven in by troops. The belief
was that once the militant Indians had been brought under control
at the agencies, they could be induced to sell the Black Hills on
the government's terms. But January 31 came and went, and the "hostile"
hunting bands in the north either would not or could not come in,
on such short notice in the dead or the Great Plains winter. In
February 1876, as Uniter States prepared to celebrate the contennial
of it's own freedom, General Sheridan set plans in motion for a
three-pronged spring campaign to force the free bands to come to
the agencies. But the Sioux nations would not be bullied. As the
weather warmed, hundreds of warriors left the agencies and swelled
the ranks of the fighting bands in the north. On June 17, at Montana's
Rosebud River, a thousand Sioux warriors, led by Crazy Horse, stopped
the first prong of thirteen hundred troops, commanded by General
George Cook and accomplished by Crow and Shoshoni scouts, and forced
their withdrawal to a base camp in the south. From the Rosebud,
Crazy Horse's force crossed to the valley of the Little Bighorn
River, known to the Indians as the Greasy Grass, and joined an enormous
village of seven to ten thousand Lakotasm Yanktonais, Santees, Northern
Arapaho, and Northern Cheyennes, whose camp circles stretched for
almost three miles along the river. Farther north, the other two
prongs of the ary's campaign-one coming from the west in Montana,
the other from the Missouri River in the east-met and turned south,
hoping to trap the "hostile" bands. Advancing ahead of the main
body, the 7th Calvary, led by Custer-the man who had massacred Black
Kettle's Cheyennes and had thought nothing of starting a gold rush
into the Sioux's sacred country, sighted and prepared to attack
the huge camp on the Little BigHorn. Feeling secure in their own
country, the Sioux and their allies had taken no precautions to
guard against a surprise attack, and it was not until the dust of
the approaching cavalrymen rose from the ridges east of the river
that they were aware of danger. Wooden Leg, a young Northern Cheyenne
warrior, recalled the scene among the Cheyenne tipis, the northenmost
in the line of camps:
Women were screaming and men were letting out war cries. Through
it all we could hear old men calling," Soldiers are here! Young
men, go out and fight them." On the hills above the
river, Custer divided his command, Some of the soldiers crossed
the Little Bighorn south of the camps, turned north and opened battle
by charging toward the Hunkpapa village, the southernmost of the
Indian camps. As the soldiers came toward them, Sitting Bull rallied
his men to protect the women and children. Runs-the-Enemy, a Cut
Head Yanktonai Sioux with the Hunkpapas, remembered hearing him:
Sitting Bull....said..."A bird, when it is on it's nest, spreads
it's wings over the nest and eggs and protests them.... We are here
to protect our wives and children, and we must not let the soldiers
get them." He was on a buckskin horse, and he rode from one end
of the line to the other, calling out: "Make a brave fight!"
In the camps, the Indian women, and children and old people could
hear sounds of battle among the hills and coulees across the river,
but in the smoke and dust they could not see which side was winning.
Led by Gall, the Hunkpapas broke off the fight on top of the bluffs
where they had chased the first troops that had attacked them and,
turning north, fell on the soldiers with Custer. At the same time,
other Indians plunged across the river to attack Custer's men from
the west. Among them were the Cheyennes under Two Moons. "We circled
all around them swirling like water round a stone," He said later...
Meanwhile, in the Oglala camp, Crazy Horse mounted his horse and
called for his Oglala warriors to follow him. "Come on, Lakotas!
It's a good day to die," He yelled. Crossing the river, they flanked
Custer's men on the north and east, tightening the Indian circle
around the soliers. Black Elk, a thirteen year old girl Oglala,
watched the fighting village, "A big dust was whirling on the hill,
and then the horses began coming out of it with empty saddles."
he said. The fight against the men with Custer was all over in less
than half an hour. "The shots quit coming from the soliders," Wooden
leg recalled.. Sitting Bull's nephew, White Bull, was one of the
several who thought he had killed Custer:
On the hill top, I met my uncle....He had been around Fort Abraham
Lincoln and knew Custer by sight. When he came to the tall soldier
lying on his back... he pointed him out and said,"Long hair thought
he was the greatest man in the world. Now he lies there."
Throughout the rest of the day and that night, the Indians besieged
the first troops who had attacked the Hunkpapa camp and whom they
had chased back across the river and the bluffs. On the following
day, Sitting Bulls scouts sighted a second army coming up the valley
of the Little Bighorn. Firing the grass as a smoke screen, the Indian
forces broke camp and headed toward the Big Horn Mountains. News
of the battle reached the outside world on July 4th, 1876, casting
a pall over the nation's celebration of it's hundredth anniversary
of Independence. |
1853 Richard Hume Lancaster, British painter born in 1774.
— LINKS
— Landscape,
with a View of Oxford — A
View at Southampton
1667 Joris Georg van Son,
Dutch artist born on 24 September 1623.
1218
Simon de Montfort,
67 ans, chef de la Croisade contre les Albigeois,
tué d’une pierre (la fronde était une arme de jet fréquemment employée
à l’époque), au cours d’un siège de Toulouse.
Il semble que l'hérésie Cathare
a fourni à la monarchie Capétienne les motifs et les moyens nécessaires
pour rattacher à la couronne ces riches territoires du Sud et du Sud-ouest.
Comme dans toutes les Croisades, et comme dans toute oeuvre humaine,
les motivations sont complexes. La question religieuse fut importante,
mais certainement pas unique. A une époque où les Croisés mourraient
en Orient pour "délivrer le tombeau du Christ du joug des infidèles",
il était anormal de laisser se développer une hérésie en terre Chrétienne.
Très tôt, l'Eglise officielle
a combattu l'hérésie. Le mot "cathare" apparaît dans un texte de Nicolas,
évêque de Cambrai (1164 - 1167) où il cite des condamnations enregistrées
par les évêques de Tongres et de Liège vers 1151 et 1152, contre un
certain "Jonas" accusé de cette hérésie. Bernard de Clairvaux, le
plus célèbre et le plus actif des Cisterciens médiévaux, (qui s'opposa
notamment au fameux philosophe Abélard) s'inquiétera des progrès de
l'hérésie dans le sud et réfutera les doctrines erronées (manichéisme,
catharisme). Il accompagnera même le cardinal-légat Albéric, vers
1145, pour poursuivre les hérétiques à Poitiers, Bergerac, Albi, Sarlat
etc.
Mais si l'Eglise a pris
nettement parti contre le Catharisme, elle n'a pas pu apporter de
réponse spirituelle aux élans, aux besoins religieux de tout un peuple
qui à travers le monde occidental recherche une plus grande pureté,
une plus grande justice, plus de vérité, un idéal semblable à l'idéal
de l'Eglise primitive, et qui réclame une réforme spirituelle en profondeur.
La civilisation raffinée, courtoise
qui s'étendait sur l'Occitanie (où s'est aussi développé le catharisme),
règnait également en Catalogne. Elle n'est pas étrangère à l'influence
de la civilisation musulmane très présente dans la péninsule ibérique
et dans le sud-ouest de la France, mais le catharisme s'est peu développé
en Espagne même; il y a été combattu vigoureusement et sans pouvoir
s’y étendre par Pierre II d’Aragon notamment.
Il s’est beaucoup plus développé dans le nord de l'Italie (Lombardie)
parce que c'était une des routes naturelles de ceux qui venaient d'orient
et qui ont importé en occident les doctrines hérétiques à l'occasion
des croisades d'une part, mais aussi des mouvements commerciaux d'autre
part.
L'on peut étudier les
aspects politiques de la lutte contre les cathares, mais il est impossible
d'omettre ou d’en séparer les aspects religieux ; ou même de les minimiser,
ce serait nier un des caractères essentiels du Moyen-Âge. La société
est chrétienne. L'homme y est chrétien de sa naissance à sa mort.
Il n'y a pas d'autre possibilité. Le pouvoir religieux et le pouvoir
civil se complètent mutuellement. L'unité de croyance fait la cohésion,
l'équilibre de la Chrétienté. L'hérésie en est le plus grand danger
qu'il faut combattre par tous les moyens.
Certes le roi de France qui n'était guère que le roi d'une "petite"
France au nord de la Loire, profitera de l'événement pour agrandir
ses territoires, mais il n'aurait pas pu à cette époque mener une
guerre sainte sans le soutien complet du Pape. Mais Philippe-Auguste
était trop occupé par ses luttes dans le nord et l’ouest contre les
Anglais pour ouvrir un deuxième front dans le sud. Le pape demande
d'abord au comte Raymond VI de Toulouse de participer à la Croisade
contre les Albigeois. Celui-ci est intéresssé car il pourrait ainsi
"regagner" les terres de Roger Trencavel, vicomte d'Albi et de Béziers,
qui "coupent" les siennes. Mais comme l'hérésie est très développée
dans ses propres fiefs, Raymond refuse de participer à la Ligue (ce
qui lui vaudra l'excommunication).
Le Pape, Innocent
III, devra alors faire appel à tous les chrétiens pour participer
à la lutte armée. Il promet, en récompense, les terres confisquées.
Philippe-Auguste se joint alors au mouvement général et fait nommer
un jeune seigneur ambitieux d'Ile de France, Simon de Montfort à la
tête de la Croisade. Plus tard, devant les succès des "Croisés" sous
la conduite de Simon de Montfort, Raymond VI de Toulouse fera amende
honorable et se joindra à eux (1209). Il ne recevra pas les terres
de Trencavel, c'est Simon de Montfort, vassal direct du roi de France,
qui les obtiendra en récompense de son activité.
Pierre II d’Aragon, pourfendeur d’hérétiques et vainqueur des Maures
à Las Navas de Tolosa (1212), quant à lui espérait certainement s’approprier
une partie des territoires en jeu. Il a joué un rôle modérateur, essayant
de faire condamner les "exactions" des Croisés du Nord (beaucoup de
gueux, de sans terre qui ne venaient prêter main forte à leur seigneur
pendant les 40 jours de prestation); mais comme le Pape donne raison
aux Croisés, Pierre II devra les affronter à la bataille de Muret
où il périra.
Le Languedoc bascule
vers la France. Même si par la suite Raymond VI puis son fils Raymond
VII parviennent à reprendre toutes leurs terres à la famille des Montfort,
l’orientation est donnée et le sud, qui avait longtemps échappé aux
influences des Francs, se rattache désormais à la France. L’aspect
politique est donc important au niveau des conséquences, mais il ne
peut s’expliquer que par sa liaison intime aux aspects économiques,
sociaux et religieux. |
|
On
a June 25:
