Tuareg - 1810s description by G. F. Lyon

 Salvete Omnes,

in the past I mentioned the Tuareg people of the Sahara/Sahel - Western and North Africa.

I am reading the a book by George Francis Lyon  (1796-1832) about his travels, 1818-1820,in African Sahel. 

Lyon left a description of the Tuareg, the nomads of the Sahel, who like the Tatars in the eastern Europe prior to their conquest by the Russians, were slavers and lived of  long distance trade across vastness of Sahara etc. 

while Project Gutenberg has a book - People of the Veil - to download and peruse - on the history and anthropology of the Tuareg of the Airs. 

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Valete

Saint Hubertus Day and a beautiful chapel

 Salvete Omnes,

Saint Hubertus Feast day and the iconography of the saint and his hunt are not new to my blog.

We will stay in the French kingdom, at the end of the XV century and early XVI century

From Gallica French National Library, digital division,  comes this illumination ( of the Hours of Anne de Bretagne)  by Jean Bourdichon  painted circa 1503-1508AD - 

a groom or servant with warhorse 

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Fantastic relief from the beautiful chapel, dedicated to saint Hubertus himself, built in the Amboise Castle in 1493AD . Incidentally Leonardo da Vinci is buried inside this beautiful chapel. 

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enjoy

Valete

Venezuela - slaves, pearls, Germans & La Conquista

 Salvete Omnes,

Venezuela has been much in the news - eg. Miami Herald, 

But let us go back to the very early XVI century, when the Spanish conquistadors, acting on behalf of their monarchs, were sailing from their ports in Santo Domingo and conquering other islands of the Caribbean See and slowly moving their settlements onto la Tierra Firme (the Mainland).

One of those regions of la Tierra Firme was the norther coast of South America, today's Venezuela & Atlantic coast of  Colombia. Columbus/Colon was the first to try to esbalish a permanent settlement in la Tierra Firme during his 4th voyage.  In 1499 sailing from Santa Maria, Spain, Alonso de Ojeda and his fleet sailed along the Columbus 4th voyage route, and entered the Gulf of Venezuela and the Lake Maracaibo.  There he saw houses built on stilts over the water and he christened the land - Venezuela (Little Venice). At the Gulf of Uraba our Alonso de Ojeda founded Villa de San Sebastian, end settlement after Columbus' one in la Tierra Firme.

Along the Venezuelean coasts the Spaniards (and others acting in their service) attempted to establish forts already in 1500AD, but the scarce resources and often fierce resistance from the natives derailed these plans.
However, the many thousands of gold hungry settlers who came to La Espanola/ Santo Domingo, later Cuba and other islands,  also started conducting naval slaving raids along the coast, looking for slaves, gold, pearls, Brazil wood; the island of Cubagua was attracting colonization attempts due to the rich pearl deposits. The attempts further east mapped the mouth of the Orinoco River 
... The Franciscan and Dominican monks, Bartolome de las Casas among them, voiced their desire to Christianize the natives in the peaceful manner and with the king's blessing and commendation also established missions sailing from the Caribean ports. But more often than not these missions failed, destroyed by the native warriors. Islands of Aruba and Margarita, very close to Venezuelan coast,  were taken by the Spanish conquistadors.
The warrior-like Carib people of the coast did not prevent of the establishment of  three settlements, Nueva Cadiz (famous for the oyster pearls, infamous for slave-diver  force labor, but destroyed by the tsunami in 1541) in 1515AD/1528AD,  Santa Ana de Coro in 1525AD , and Cumana (used to be called la Atenas venezolana) at the mouth of the Manzanares river in the east 1515AD. Cumana was established in the country of the Carib Indians (then the Cumanagoto tribes under el cacique  Maraguey) , and from the start punitive raids were led by the royal leaders, like capitan Gonzalo de Ocampo. Perhaps the first horses came with the entrada de Ocampo in 1515/1516AD.

In the summer of 1527AD incorruptible Juan de Ampies/Ampues, acting under orders from the Real Audiencia in Santo Domingo, landed in the dry scrubby coast of Paraguana Peninsula, where he founded said Coro. He made amicable and peaceable overtures and treaties with the natives, hence it was a short period of law and order and somewhat peaceful coexistence.  

Then in 1528 CarlosI/Charles V, king of Spanish realms, who was embroiled in the Italian wars  with France, needed money and his bankers, the Welsers, gave him a loan in echange for a indefinite lease in the newly established Coquivacoa (province of Venezuela), known to the Germans ad Klein-Venedig. 
King Carlos obligated the bankers to found two cities, forts and give him one fifth of all profits, but the sly bankers ignored those provisions, reasoning that the land was an ocean away. So begun the German episode of La Conquista in the XVI century. 

Their first governor was one Ambrosio Alfinger (Ehinger), who left Spain via the port of Sanlucar de Barrameda and reasonably quickly landed in 1529AD, took possession of Coro from de Ampues, who went on to protest to la Espanola. Alfinger founded Maracaibo,  and started campaigning against the natives in search of gold, pearls, slaves, and lands. Alfinger's troops massacred whole villages and razed the country from Coro, across the llanos y the Andean cordillera to Cucuta in present Colombia. Alfinger died from the wounds while fighting the Chitareros Indians in 1533AD.

The next Welsers' governor was Hans Seissenhofer, known as Juan Aleman to the Spanish,  then came George Hohermuth von Speyer (Jorge de Espira),  the first official searcher for El Dorado between 1535-1538AD. He died in Coro in 1539 or 1540AD.

Then his lieutenant Nicolas Federmann of Ulm represented the Weslers. We could note that for his transgressions against Alfinger  - the search with troops, including mounted troops, for the route to Asia in the Orinoco basin in 1530 - he was first banished to Augusburg,  where he wrote his Indian History. Back in Venezuela in 1535AD he led many expeditions across the lands, reaching Guajira Peninsula in 1535AD, and in 1538 marched his little army into what was the eastern Muisca Confederation in Colombia,  crossed into La Pampa de Bogota, and in 1539 re-founded the city of Bogota, along with Sebastian de Belalcazar and Gonzalo Jimenez de Quesada - all famous conquistadores. He was accused of being a Lutheran and recieved no posts from the king Carlos V. He returned to Europe, was sued by the Welsers and died in prison in Valladolid in  1542AD. Nota bene 64 soldiers from the Bogota expedition received their economiendas from the royal chancery. 

The final conquistador and German official or governor was  Philip von Hutten (Felipe de Utre). In search of riches and wealth he undertook large scale 'entrada' into the Amazon Basin searching for El Dorado  in 1541-45AD, and there during the El Dorado expedition he was wounded while fighting the Omagua tribal warriors. 

His long expedition for riches and wealth came to nothing and he returned much weaker in power and support, facing political challenges. His duties of governonr, like spreading Christianity among the native tribes neglected, settlements left to their own measures etc like Maracaibo and Coro.
He founded various settlements during his expeditions, but he was absent and the Council found his replacement, Juan de Carvajal who took some settlers from Coro and founded his one settlement of  El Tocuyo. There de Utre, along with younger Bartholomeus Welser (son of the king's banker of the same name), confronted his replacement Juan de Carvajal.  The Germans was ambushed, disarmed,  chained and finally killed on the spot by de Carvajal and his people. De Utre left a manuscript  titled ''News from the Indies from Junker Philipp Hutten" (German: Zeitung aus India Junkher Philipps von Hutten), published in Germany in 1785AD.

The last acting official of Welsers' governors was perhaps Melchior Gruber (he was a mayor of Coro in the 1550s),  but  in 1546 Carlos V proclaimed the end of the Welsers' grant. But in law the grant lasted until 1556AD, when Spanish king abdicated in favor of his son, Felipe II.  So ended the German participation in the Spanish Crown conquista of Venezuela.

There are many articles and books written about this Klein Vedig of the Germans in Venezuela. 

Giovanna Montenegro published a book, German Conquistadors in Venezuela ( University of Notre Dame PRess, 2022)

ps
one day I may write a bit about opening of the llanos and cattle and horse ranching in that Spanish America in the XVI century.

Valete

Maloyaroslavets - 24-25 October 1812

 Salvete Omnes,

Battle of Maloyaroslavets - 24-25th of October 1812AD.

Eugene de Beauharnais

I was going to commemorate this battle of the Napoleon's invasion of Russian of 1812, but did not get to it in  time. So here it comes today - 

On the 19th of October Napoleon's army, occupying whatever was left of Moscow, was to begin marching in the direction of Kaluga, on the so called Kaluga Road, the highway that had not been subjected to ravages of the invading French and allied corps. Officers and soldiers acquired between 15 to 20,000 wagons and carriages pulled by horse and perhaps oxen, those vehicles full of war trophies, useless things and pillage. Individual soldiers also carried loot and trophies, of questionable military value, in their sacks and  backpacks. Napoleon tried to impose order and rule of law, eg each wagon or carriage was to transport at least one French wounded, but this was a lost cause. Also the civilian contingent was not small and compromised the military order some more.

Thus the Grand Army looked more like a Tatar horde after a successful raid. The weather was of the mid-autumn variety in the Eastern Europe- little sun, cloudy, humid, rainy atmosphere  and wet ground, wet clay and sandy roads, wet clothes and little dry kindling to light campfires at night.  Last French units under marshal Mortier withdrew from Moscow on the 22nd of October,  the Grand Army seemingly committed to march towards the Kaluga Road, with de Beauharnais in the vanguard. During the abandonment of  Moscow Mortier had the Kremlin set on fire, his sappers blowing some old towers and walls. The French left many wounded in the ruined city, and they were subject of some assaults and violence  by the Russian peasants who inundated the city on the 23rd. The city was ruined as a logistic base for anyone, whereas the Kaluga direction taken by the French would offer new return road and fine supplies in the pillaged towns and villages.  

French marched onward towards the Kaluga Road direction, aiming to take the town of Malojarslavetz on the Luzha river. Russian high command did not know that the French left Moscow and that Napoleon was with his main forces marching toward Kaluga Road.

The Grand Army's Italian Corps under de Beauharnais  marched to the outskirts of the town  on the northern bank while the Russians corps commanded  by by general Dokhturov et al was ordered by  Kutuzov himself, albeit hovering in the background,  to capture the bridges and fords and stop the enemy from taking the town.

Robert Wilson's writing about the battle

 General Delzons' units of the Italian corps were  to cross the river onto the southern bank and hold the road, with the remainder of the corps would push the Russians off the Kaluga Road and force them to withdraw towards Moscow etc. Delzons was slow in fortifying his position in the evening of 23rd , and when he moved his infantry battalions in the morning of 24th, the Russians were stronger and their artillery positioned to dominate the filed of battle. 

British volunteer on the Russian side  Robert Wilson was with the Russian horse battery and he says in his memoirs that he commanded their fire against the French battalions, decimating the French infantry with the grapeshot fire. 

General Delzons was killed along with his many brave officers and soldiers.  

More and more Italian divisions came into combat - like general Pino's division and Italian guard. French and Italian artillery came into play too, forcing the Russian s to abandon Maloyaroslavetz by the evening . On the Russian side Kutuzov's main forces appeared on the horizon,  not entering the fray but forcing a stand off  or a temporary stalemate. The French-Italians captured the town and the river crossings and held it but the following day the new phase of battle had to take place in order to capture the Kaluga Road direction. The fighting was very heavy and each side lost thousands of men. 

Thus in effect on the following day more numerous than the  French army  albeit  inexperienced Russian army blockaded the southward road to Kaluga, and Napoelon had to make a decision whether to continue the battle or return to the Smolensk Road. He also heard the  cannons and gunfire of fighting taking place where his right flank's cavalry-artillery-infantry forward detachment of Poles under  general Charles Lefebvre-Desnouettes was moving toward Medyn, the potential  alternative route of withdrawal.  By the nightfall his marshals wanted to retreat, they say, and he was not convinced yet, and then after sleeping in a peasant cottage at a village of Horodnya, along with his small cavalry escort started riding towards the Maloyaroslavets battlefront. 
Then  the cossack regiments of the Russian army commanded  by general Ilovaisky  appeared. And general Lefebre's command marched  into a fight at Medyn.

but that will be the subject of my next post. 

Valete