Short Rounds

Caepio's Gold

Quintus Servilius Caepio (c. 145-post 95 BC) was the scion of a great Roman family, his father and two uncles all having served as consul, as had his grandfather, great-grandfather, and great-great-grandfather.  Naturally, with such an aristocratic background, he too did well in politics, serving as praetor about 110 BC, and then governor of Further Spain for two years, winning a triumph in 108 BC for the defeat of the Lusitanians.

Elected consul for 106 BC, at a time when massive hordes of barbaric Cimbri and Teutones were threatening to descend upon Italy from both sides of the Alps, Caepio was given an army and sent to command in Narbonnensis, what is now Provence.  Now just north of Narbonnensis, in Aquitania, lived the Gallic Tectosagae, who had allied themselves with the invading Cimbri.  Caepio conducted a successful campaign against them, in the process capturing their capital, Tolosa (modern Toulouse).  The plunder from Tolosa was impressive, given –probably exaggeratedly – as over 50,000 ingots of gold and 10,000 of silver, each of 15 pounds.  Naturally, the loot belonged to the Roman people, and Caepio duly had it shipped to the capital in two convoys.  Oddly, only the convoy carrying the silver made it to Rome, that moving the gold having been set upon by bandits; at the time the bandits were generally regarded as having been in the employ of none other than Caepio himself, a belief that persists.

Meanwhile, of course, the danger from the Cimbri remained.  Although his consulship expired at the end of 106 BC, Caepio's command was prorogued as proconsul, while the Senate dispatched one of the newly elected consuls, Gnaeus Mallius Maximus, with a second army.  Unfortunately, Mallius's very existence irked Caepio's aristocratic blood, for the consul was a so-called "New Man," that is one who had no consuls in his ancestry, a jumped-up commoner as it were.  So Caepio refused to cooperate with Mallius against the invaders, despite being urged to do so by his subordinates and even his troops.  The outcome was predictable; at Arausio (Orange) on October 5, 105 BC, the Cimbri defeated both Roman armies, one at a time.  The blow to the Republic was horrific, with reports that as many as 80,000 troops perished, among them two sons of Mallius, and 40,000 camp-followers, with just ten men escaping.  Although the numbers are certainly greatly inflated, it was a critical blow to Roman power.

Caepio survived the battle.  But he was deprived of his command by the people's assembly and forcibly retired to private life, while the great Gaius Marius cleaned up the mess.  Ten years later, in 95 BC, Caepio was finally brought to trial for his misconduct by one of the people's Tribunes.  Although the aristocratic faction rallied to his side, he was convicted, and a ruinous fine was imposed, apparently in the hope of unearthing all that missing gold.  On top of that, Caepio was imprisoned for a time.  Later escaping, he fled to Smyrna, in Asia, where he lived out his life in great luxury, as befitted the man who had swiped all that gold.

Always a Bridesmaid . . . .

Wilhelm of Urach (1869-1928), scion of a junior branch of the Royal House of Wurttemberg, has a unique distinction -- he probably holds the world's record for the most thrones that he almost held.

Typical of his family, Wilhelm was a soldier.  In the early 1890s he was commissioned in the Wurttemberg Army, one of the four branches of the Imperial German Army.  By the outbreak of World War I, in August of 1914, he was a generalmajor in command of the 26th Infantry Division, of the XIII (Royal Wurttemberg) Army Corps.  Wilhelm campaigned at the head of his division in the West in the summer and autumn of 1914, taking part in the invasion of France and Belgium, of which his sister-in-law was queen.  Transferred east in November, over the next year Wilhelm and his division took part in the German capture of Poland.  In October and November of 1915, they helped overrun Serbia, before being sent West again.  By December they were ensconced on the Western Front again, at first in the Ypres Sector, but later transferred south.  During the Battle of the Somme in 1916, Wilhelm's division was largely destroyed holding the Schwaben Redoubt.

Although the division had done well in some notably fierce fighting, on January 5, 1917, shortly after it was had been pulled out of the line to be rebuilt, Wilhelm retired from the army.  As he was only 48 at the time, and had performed well under fire, this seems curious.  Perhaps he had decided the war was no longer worth fighting, or, perhaps his performance was not considered optimal by the Chief of the Great General Staff, Paul von Hindenburg, himself no spring chicken, having been born in 1847!   Or perhaps Wilhelm had decided that he might want to pursue other career opportunities.  Whatever the case, his retirement effectively ended his military career, but some opportunities did indeed open up..

Like most aristos, Wilhelm held a number of titles.  He was born Prince of Urach and Count of Wurttemberg, and succeeded to the title Duke of Urach when he was only 4, upon the untimely death of his father.  In addition, on five separate occasions Wilhelm might have ended up with a real throne.

• 1911:  The reigning prince of Monaco, Albert I (r. 1889-1922), had one son, Louis (r.  1922-1949) who would naturally assume the title upon his father's death.  But Louis, who served as an officer in the French Army and eventually rose to general of brigade,  had no legitimate children.  His closest legitimate male relative was a cousin,  none other than Duke Wilhelm, who was the son of Prince Albert's paternal aunt.  Although Wilhelm had actually been raised mostly in Monaco, the notion of a German officer as prince there was hardly pleasing to France.  Under French pressure, Monaco enacted a law in 1911 legitimating Prince Louis' only child, Charlotte, his daughter by a cabaret singer with a past whom he'd had an affair with while serving in North Africa.  Then, in 1918, when the validity of the act of legitimization was challenged, Prince Albert adopted Charlotte, his granddaughter, under terms of a different law.  In addition, France and Monaco concluded a treaty requiring that future princes of Monaco be Monegasque or French citizens, and have approval of the French government.  Barred from inheriting, Wilhelm shortly renounced his rights in favor of some distantly-related French cousins.
• 1913:  Wilhelm was one of several princes considered for the throne of Albania, being supported by Roman Catholic tribes in the north of the new country, but the honor went to Prince William of Wied, who served as Prince of Albania from March 7, 1914 to September 3, 1914, before fleeing to safety abroad.
• 1917:  Despite the fact that the Great War was not going quite Germany's way, the extraordinarily ambitions Kaiser sounded out Duke Wilhelm about the possibility becoming Duke of Lorraine after the war was over.
• 1918:  Delegates to Lithuania's constituent assembly elected Duke Wilhelm king of the newly independent country under the name Mindaugas II on July 11th.  Although he accepted the honor, he was never actually crowned, as the German Emperor, legally his overlord, declared the election invalid, and the offer was eventually withdrawn. 
• 1921:  King Wilhelm II of Wurttemberg died without a direct male heir.  Although Duke Wilhelm was the senior male member of the House of Wurttemberg, because his great-grandmother had not been of sufficiently blue blood (she was only a baroness), he was barred from succeeding, not that it mattered, since Wurttemberg had become a state of the Weimar Republic in 1918.