Infinite Wisdom

"We are not a military nation but without doubt we are the most warlike people on earth."

La Triviata

• So drastic was the reform of the Prussian Army following its defeat by Napoleon in 1806-1807, that only about half of the officers who were veterans of that campaign were still on duty during the War of Liberation in 1813-1815.
• During the winter of 1693–1694, in the midst of the Nine Years' War, the Spanish Viceroy of Milan dispatched an enormous shipment of grain to the neutral Swiss canton of the Grison, and promptly received permission to recruit troops on its territory and move an army across it.
• In 1698 the King of Denkiya, who ruled a fair spread along the Gold Coast, raped the wife of his vassal Osei Tutu, who promptly led a revolt that resulted in the overthrow of kingdom and the creation of the Asante Empire, which by 1800 ruled an area larger than Britain with some three or four million inhabitants.
• In 1826 Angel Vicente "El Chacho" Peñaloza (1796-1863), later caudillo of the Rioja district in northern Argentina, secured the rank of captain in the federalist army by capturing an enemy cannon with his lasso.
• Chnodomar, the German leader defeated by the Emperor Julian at Strasbourg in 357, reportedly was so large that upon falling off his horse he was unable to extract himself from the mud of the field due to his own weight and that of his armor, and thus was captured by the Romans.
• Accused by King Louis XII of France of having twice broken his word, King Ferdinand II of Aragon (Isabella’s husband), replied, “Twice only does the blockhead say I have broken my word with him?  He is an arrant liar, I have broken it more than ten times!”
• In 1901 about 5.4 percent of officers in the Italian Army were of the Hebrew faith, in a population that was only 0.1 percent Jewish.
• The Emperor Augustus (27 B.C.-A.D. 14), introduced a novel punishment for soldiers guilty of certain infractions, he deprived them of their swords and sword-belts for specific periods to symbolize their unmilitary behavior, making them the objects of humiliation.

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