Infinite Wisdom

"O commanders, officials, and people! Know ye that Heaven has given me the Empire of the earth, both the east and the west of it. Those who submit will be spared; woe to those who resist, they will be slaughtered with their children and wives and dependants."

La Triviata

• During the French Wars of 1793-1815, the titled nobility or landed gentry provided about 39 percent of officers in the Royal Navy, but nearly 53 percent of the frigate captains, which were the most profitable commands.
• In the mid-1850s three U.S. Army officers, among them Capt. George B. McClellan, spent two years traveling through Europe to study military developments in various countries, and upon their return published a number of reports, but not once did any of them mention the newly developed Prussian General Staff, nor did they say much about rifled muskets, just then entering into service.
• During the period of the Naval Arms Limitation Treaties (1922-1934), the cost-cutting United States built 16 new major combatants (i.e., destroyers on up) while a nearly as parsimonious Britain built 37, and spendthrift Japan 116, so that by 1934 the Imperial Navy, which was supposed to have 60-percent of the tonnage of the U.S. Navy, actually had about 80-percent.
• En route to South Africa to cover the Boer War for the Morning Post, young Winston Churchill took with him 30 bottles of wine, six of port, 18 of ten-year-old scotch, and six of brandy, so that he could “rough it” in style.
• So precipitous was the flight of the defeated Mamluks after being trounced by the Turks under Selim the Grim at Marj Dabiq near Aleppo on August 24, 1516, that 80-year old Sultan Ghowir of Syria was actually trampled to death by his panic-stricken troops.
• In July of 1918, 30 mechanics at Britain’s Barr & Stroud machine shop were conscripted, which led to a prompt fall in aircraft engine production for the month from the planned 1,132 to 688, since the men were irreplaceable.
• While viewing the body of Alexander the Great in Alexandria following his capture of the city in 30 B.C., Octavian, later the Emperor Augustus, accidentally damaged the dead king’s nose.
• The earliest use of the word “logistics” in the sense of managing the housekeeping and supply of an army seems to have been by the Byzantine Emperor Leo the Wise (r. 886-912) in his book Tactica.

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