Battle scars

Eskişehir, Türkiye

Wednesday 12 February 2025

We tell ourselves war ends when the treaties are signed, when the guns fall silent.

But for those who bear its scars, war is never truly over.

The fight continues — not on the battlefield, but in the struggle to heal, to be seen, to be whole again.

And in that battle, no one walks away untouched.

Above: The Bayeux Tapestry

On February 12, 2025, a declaration is made – negotiations to end the Russo-Ukrainian War are set to begin immediately.

A world-weary sigh of relief follows.

Perhaps, at last, peace is within reach.

But is it?

Even if weapons are lowered, the war does not simply vanish.

Cities remain in ruins, families remain broken, and those who fought return home forever changed.

Peace may be a political agreement, but the battlefield lingers in the minds of those who endured its horrors.

President Donald Trump said negotiations to end the Ukraine war will start “immediately” after holding a “lengthy and highly productive” telephone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday morning.

Above: US President Donald Trump

Above: Russian President Vladimir Putin

The call, which is the first known conversation between the Presidents since Trump assumed office last month, came as as Trump makes clear to his advisers he wants to bring the Ukraine conflict to a swift end.

Trump administration officials said they hoped a prisoner “exchange” on Tuesday could portend renewed efforts to end the war, which is about to enter its fourth year.

Above: Scene from Bridge of Spies (2015)

Now, as the two leaders resume communication after a long period of silence between the White House and the Kremlin, the contours of Trump’s settlement plan are coming into clearer focus.

Above: The White House, Washington DC, USA

Above: The Kremlin, Moscow, Russia

In a readout of the conversation posted on Truth Social, Trump said:

“We discussed Ukraine, the Middle East, energy, Artificial Intelligence, the power of the dollar, and various other subjects.

Above: Flag of Ukraine

Above: (in green) The Middle East

“We agreed to work together, very closely, including visiting each other’s nations.

We have also agreed to have our respective teams start negotiations immediately.

We will begin by calling President Zelenskyy, of Ukraine, to inform him of the conversation, something which I will be doing right now,” Trump wrote.

Above: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy

Both Washington and Moscow, in their descriptions of the call, suggested the men assumed a conciliatory tone.

“President Putin even used my very strong campaign motto of ‘COMMON SENSE.’

We both believe very strongly in it,” Trump wrote, suggesting the former KGB agent on the other end of the line had chosen his words carefully to appeal to the US leader.

The Kremlin said Trump and Putin spoke for nearly 90 minutes.

Trump had been signaling for weeks his desire to speak with Putin as he works to resolve the Ukraine conflict.

As American officials travel in Europe this week, they have begun taking clearer positions on how the conclusion of the Ukraine war might look.

Speaking to a conference in Brussels, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Kyiv joining NATO is unrealistic and that the US will no longer prioritize European and Ukrainian security as the Trump administration shifts its attention to securing US borders and deterring war with China.

Above: Logo of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization

Above: Flag of the European Union

Above: Flag of China

Meanwhile, Trump has spoken of striking a deal with Ukraine’s Zelensky for American access to the country’s valuable rare earth minerals as payment for continued American assistance.

Trump spoke with Zelensky midday, shortly after getting off the phone with Putin.

Above: Flag of the United States of America

His predecessor, President Joe Biden, hadn’t spoken to his Russian counterpart in nearly three years, believing there was little to be gained in speaking to a leader he had deemed a war criminal.

Above: US President Joe Biden (r. 2021 – 2025)

The last US president to visit Russia was Barack Obama in 2013, when he attended a G20 summit.

Above: US President Barack Obama (r. 2009 – 2017)

Putin last visited in the United States in 2015 to attend United Nations talks.

Above: Flag of the United Nations

Later on Wednesday, Trump indicated that he could soon meet with Putin in Saudi Arabia but cautioned that no formal decision has been made on the matter.

“We think we’re going to probably meet in Saudi Arabia, the first meeting,” Trump said, hours after the two spoke by phone.

Above: Flag of Saudi Arabia

The President indicated that Saudi Arabian leader Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman would play a role in the discussions, saying, “We know the Crown Prince, and I think it’d be a very good place to be.”

A date for that meeting, Trump said, “hasn’t been set”, but he said it could be in the “not too distant future.

Above: Saudi Crown Prince/Prime Minister Mohammad bin Salman

Trump added he has not yet committed to go to Ukraine.

Asked whether Zelensky would be in attendance when he meets with Putin, Trump appeared to suggest he would not be present for the initial meeting:

“Probably we’ll have a first meeting and then we’ll see what we can do about the second meeting.”

“I would think about going, I’d think about it, no problem.”, he said.

Above: (in green) Ukraine

Steve Witkoff, who will be among Trump’s top negotiators on the conflict, pointed earlier Wednesday to the release of wrongfully detained American Marc Fogel as “an indication of what the possibilities are” for the future of Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Above: American schoolteacher Marc Fogel

Marc Hilliard Fogel was arrested in August 2021 by Russian authorities for trying to enter Russia with 0.6 ounces (17 g) of medical cannabis.

In June 2022, he was sentenced to 14 years in prison.

He was released from Russia on 11 February 2025.

“I think that’s maybe a sign about how that working relationship between President Trump and President Putin will be in the future, and what that may portend for the world at large, for conflict and so forth.

I think they had a great friendship, and I think now it’s going to continue, and it’s a really good thing for the world.”, he said.

Above: US Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff

Witkoff met privately with Putin while in Moscow on Tuesday, two sources familiar with the meeting told CNN.

Above: Logo of the Cable News Network (CNN)

US President Donald Trump has held separate phone calls in quick succession with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on potentially moving forward with peace talks.

In a post on social media platform Truth Social, Trump said he had a “lengthy and highly productive phone call‘ with Russian President Vladimir Putin regarding negotiations to end the war in Ukraine.

Above: Flag of Russia

In the same post, Trump wrote:

“I have asked Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Director of the CIA John Ratcliffe, National Security Advisor Michael Waltz, and Ambassador and Special Envoy Steve Witkoff, to lead the negotiations which, I feel strongly, will be successful.“

Above: US Secretary of State Marco Rubio

Above: CIA Director John Ratcliffe

Above: US National Security Advisor Michael Waltz

Trump said he and Putin also discussed other topics including the Middle East, energy, Artificial Intelligence and “the power of the dollar“, as well as reflected on the “great history of our nations“, and thanked him for the release of American school teacher Marc Fogel as part of a prisoner swap with Alexander Vinnik, a convicted Russian criminal.

Above: Russian computer expert Alexander Vinnik

On 25 July 2017, Vinnik was arrested in Ouranoupoli, Greece at the request of the US on suspicion of laundering $4 billion through the digital currency Bitcoin.

Above: Ouranoupoli, Greece

Above: Logo of Bitcoin

At the time, Vinnik denied the charges. 

In late July 2017, US officials requested Vinnik’s extradition from Greece. 

Above: Flag of Greece

In early October 2017, his extradition was requested by the Prosecutor General of Russia.

Above: Emblem of the Office of the Prosecutor General of Russia

In late June 2018, France requested his extradition, accusing him of fraud.

In early July 2018, Russia submitted a new extradition request, reportedly based on a confession to additional hacking offenses.

In November 2018, Vinnik went on a three-month hunger strike in protest of his detainment in Greece.

In January 2020, Vinnik was extradited to France.

Above: Flag of France

In June 2020, New Zealand Police announced the seizure of $90 million from WME Capital Management, a company in New Zealand registered to Vinnik. 

Above: Flag of the New Zealand Police

In December 2020, Vinnik was acquitted on involvement with the Locky ransomware charges, but was sentenced to five years in prison for money laundering.

(Locky is ransomware malware released in 2016.

It is delivered by email (that is allegedly an invoice requiring payment) with an attached Microsoft Word document that contains malicious macros.

When the user opens the document, it appears to be full of gibberish, and includes the phrase “Enable macro if data encoding is incorrect“, a social engineering technique.

If the user does enable macros, they save and run a binary file that downloads the actual encryption Trojan, which will encrypt all files that match particular extensions.

Filenames are converted to a unique 16 letter and number combination. Initially, only the .locky file extension was used for these encrypted files.

Subsequently, other file extensions have been used, including .zepto, .odin, .aesir, .thor, and .zzzzz.

After encryption, a message (displayed on the user’s desktop) instructs them to download the Tor browser and visit a specific criminal-operated Web site for further information.

The website contains instructions that demand a ransom payment between 0.5 and 1 bitcoin (as of November 2017, one bitcoin varies in value between $9,000 and $10,000 via a bitcoin exchange).

Since the criminals possess the private key and the remote servers are controlled by them, the victims are motivated to pay to decrypt their files. 

Cryptocurrencies are very difficult to trace and are highly portable.)

Above: Encrypted file

On 4 August 2022, Vinnik was extradited from Greece to the United States to face charges of money laundering and operation of an unlicensed money service business in the US.

On 5 August 2022, the United States Justice Department released a statement saying Vinnik’s first appearance for the 21-count superseding indictment from January 2017 had been that morning at a federal court in California. 

In May 2024, Vinnik pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit money laundering.

Vinnik’s lawyer, Arkady Bukh, stated that he pled guilty “on a restricted number of charges” and that as a result of the plea bargain Bukh now expected Vinnik to get a prison term of less than 10 years.

Above: Azerbaijani American lawyer Arkady Bukh

On 12 February 2025, the US government announced it was releasing Vinnik as part of an exchange with Russia for the imprisoned American schoolteacher Marc Fogel.

Vinnik arrived in Russia the next day aboard a US Air Force special flight via Poland.

Soon after his conversation with Putin, Trump spoke with Zelenskyy, who later posted on X saying the two talked “about opportunities to achieve peace, discussed our readiness to work together at the team level. I am grateful to President Trump for his interest in what we can accomplish together“.

“Together with the US, we are charting our next steps to stop Russian aggression and ensure a lasting, reliable peace.”, said Zelenskyy.

“As President Trump said, let’s get it done.”, he continued, adding that the two had “agreed to maintain further contact and plan upcoming meetings“.

Zelenskyy also mentioned discussions he had had with US Secretary of Treasury Scott Bessent on the “preparation of a new document on security, economic cooperation, and resource partnership“.

Above: US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent

Meanwhile, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Putin and Trump agreed in the telephone conversation to organize a meeting in person, and that the Russian President told Trump he is ready to receive Americans in the country.

“The Russian President supported one of the main theses of the head of the American state that the time has come for our countries to work together.”, the Kremlin spokesperson said.

Above: Kremlin Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov

Speaking about the war in Ukraine, Trump claimed that millions of people had died in a conflict that “would not have happened” if he were President when it began, and added that “it did happen, so it must end“.

Negotiations begin, but does that mean peace?

Wars do not simply end.

They leave scars, reshape borders, and rewrite lives.

Even if an agreement is reached, Ukrainians will still live with the destruction of cities, the loss of loved ones, and the psychological wounds of war.

Peace is more than laying down arms.

It is the fight to rebuild, to heal, to ensure that war does not return.

In the context of the Russo-Ukrainian War, various stakeholders have pursued distinct objectives:

Russia:

Aims to reassert its influence over Ukraine, prevent its integration into Western alliances like NATO and the EU, and secure access to valuable resources, including significant energy reserves in regions like Donbas.

Above: Coat of arms of Russia

Ukraine:

Seeks to preserve its sovereignty, territorial integrity, and political independence, striving for closer ties with Western nations to bolster security and economic development.

Above: Coat of arms of Ukraine

Western Countries (e.g., EU, USA):

Intend to support Ukraine’s sovereignty, counter Russian aggression, and maintain regional stability.

This involves imposing sanctions on Russia and providing military and economic aid to Ukraine.

Above: (in green) NATO members

Global Defense and Energy Sectors:

Defense industries have seen increased demand due to heightened security concerns, while energy markets have experienced volatility, affecting global oil and gas prices.

The civil war in Sudan has pushed a camp housing about 500,000 displaced people near the besieged Darfur city of El-Fasher into famine, an independent group of food security experts says.

Above: Aerial view of El-Fasir, North Dafur, Sudan

The 16-month conflict and restrictions on aid deliveries were to blame, the IPC’s Famine Review Committee (FRC) concluded after looking at new data.

“The scale of devastation brought by the escalating violence in el-Fasher is profound and harrowing.”, it said, explaining how Zamzam camp’s population had ballooned since April.

Above: Aerial view of the Zamzam refugee camp

The war – a power struggle between the Sudanese Army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) – has created the world’s largest humanitarian crisis forcing 10 million people from their homes.

It comes as US-mediated talks, scheduled to begin in two weeks, appear to be in jeopardy.

Above: Flag of Sudan

The RSF has accepted the invitation to Geneva, but it is unclear whether the army will go following Wednesday’s alleged assassination attempt on military leader General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan.

Above: Emblem of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF)

“The main drivers of famine in Zamzam camp are conflict and lack of humanitarian access, both of which can immediately be rectified with the necessary political will.”, the FRC said.

The committee, linked to the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) – a global initiative by UN agencies, aid groups and governments which identifies famine conditions – analyzed two reports:

• the IPC’s Sudan working group’s latest assessment, which says 25.6 million people, or 54% of the population, are in high levels of acute food insecurity with 14 areas at risk of famine

• data published on Thursday from a US agency, the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS Net)

FEWS Net said it was possible that famine was also ongoing in Abu Shouk and Al Salam camps, also near El-Fasher, but there was not enough evidence to conclusively say so.

The conditions for classifying an area to be in famine are that at least 20% of households must be facing an extreme lack of food, with 30% of children acutely malnourished and two people out of every 10,000 dying daily from starvation or from malnutrition and disease.

According to the FRC, around 320,000 people are believed to have fled the city, with around 150,000 to 200,000 moving to Zamzam camp “in search of security, basic services and food” in just a few weeks in May.

Above: Zamzam refugee camp

That month the UN expert on genocide prevention said many civilians in El-Fasher were being targeted based on their ethnicity – warning that there was a growing risk of genocide.

Above: Kids playing, El-Faser, Sudan

The violence in Darfur is similar to the ethnic cleansing unleashed by Arab Janjaweed militias on non-Arab communities two decades ago.

Above: Flag of Darfur

The main market in Zamzam camp was now only open intermittently and by June prices had rocketed – by 63% for cooking oil, 190% for sugar, 67% for millet and 75% for rice, the FRC said, giving a glimpse in its 47-page report into what conditions are like in the crowded camp.

Famine conditions prevailed in June and July and were likely to persist until October – the harvest season.

However, the experts fear that the hunger crisis will not ease much as war has prevented many farmers from planting.

Above: Zamzam refugee camp

The dire situation revealed by the reports about El-Fasher, particularly in Zamzam camp, was “merely the tip of the iceberg”, Barrett Alexander, from the aid agency Mercy Corps, warned.

“Drawing from our experience with previous famines, we know that widespread deaths have already occurred by the time a famine is officially declared.”

He added that a recent Mercy Corps assessment in Central and South Darfur had revealed that nine out of 10 children were suffering from life-threatening malnutrition.

Above: Logo of US NGO Mercy Corps

One of the last aid groups operating in El-Fasher, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), said things were likely to get worse if an apparent blockade on humanitarian aid was not lifted urgently.

“Our trucks left N’Djamena in Chad over six weeks ago and they should have reached el-Fasher by now, but we have no idea when they will be released.”, said MSF’s Stéphane Doyon, MSF’s head of emergencies in Sudan.

The warring sides have both been accused of blocking and looting aid.

Both deny the allegations.

The MSF lorries are carrying therapeutic food and medical supplies for children in Zamzam camp as well as surgical supplies for the last remaining hospital in El-Fasher that does surgery.

Above: Zamzam refugee camp

The Saudi hospital was hit by shelling on Monday that killed three staff and injured at least 25 people – the 10th attack in under three months, the charity said.

“We do not know if hospitals are being intentionally targeted, but the incident on Monday shows that the belligerents are not taking any precautions to spare them.” Doyon said.

Above: Saudi Hospital, El-Fashir, Sudan

A paramilitary force in Sudan has stormed the country’s largest displacement camp, looting and setting fire to the market and several homes, a local refugee group has said.

The Zamzam camp in North Darfur has been hit by intense artillery shelling since late last year, but this is the first time the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has been accused of sending in fighters.

An eyewitness told the BBC the situation at the camp was “extremely catastrophic“, and there were many casualties.

The nearby city of El-Fasher, one of the centres of the civil war that erupted in 2023, is already under siege by the RSF as it battles the army.

The military and RSF had been allies – coming to power together in a coup – but fell out over an internationally backed plan to move towards civilian rule.

The Sudanese IDPs and Refugees Bloc said Zamzam camp was invaded on Tuesday.

However, an RSF spokesman denied its fighters had penetrated it, saying they had seized a nearby military base belonging to an armed group that fights alongside the Sudanese military, after it had shelled RSF checkpoints for days.

BBC Verify has confirmed social media footage that shows men waving guns triumphantly with flames behind them and saying they are in the camp.

The insignia has been removed from their uniforms, but the man filming the video has RSF markings.

Asked about the damage to the market the RSF spokesman said the group had “circulated a message in which we committed to protect the camp residents and asked them to stay away from the fire exchange areas“.

Zamzam hosts about half a million displaced people who were already suffering from famine.

Reports said the attack forced thousands of them to flee again.

Above: Zamzam refugee camp

Medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), which runs a hospital in Zamzam, said it had received seven dead bodies and 21 injured people at the hospital it runs in Zamzam.

Most of them were in a serious condition, but the hospital lacked the ability to care for all of them, an MSF spokesperson added.

The eyewitness the BBC spoke to said the hospital no longer had a functioning surgery.

Above: Zamzam refugee camp

North Darfur’s Health Minister Ibrahim Abdullah Khater told the BBC that the wounded were not able to reach El-Fasher for treatment because the RSF was blocking the road and preventing access to the city.

“The ones suffering the most are the displaced people.”, he said.

Above: Flag of North Dafur

The humanitarian catastrophe worsened late last year when Zamzam came under heavy artillery fire, which aid organizations, including MSF, blamed on the RSF.

A group of international non-governmental organizations issued a statement in December, saying the attacks on Zamzam marked “an escalation in violence on a site which has previously been spared from active hostilities“, although it was “consistent with a pattern of attacks” on other camps for displaced people.

“This underscores the reality that there are now no safe places for people to flee to in North Darfur.”, it said.

Above: Zamzam refugee camp

The siege of El-Fasher began last April – a year into the conflict.

It is the only city still under army control in Darfur, where the RSF has been accused of carrying out ethnic cleansing against non-Arab communities.

Above: El-Fasher, Sudan

In April last year, Sudan was thrown into disarray when its army and a powerful paramilitary group began a vicious struggle for power.

The war, which continues to this day, has claimed more than 15,000 lives.

And in what the United Nations has called one of the world’s “largest displacement crises“, about nine million people have been forced to flee their homes.

There have been warnings of genocide regarding the western region of Darfur, where residents say they have been targeted by fighters based on their ethnicity.

Above: (in yellow) Darfur, Sudan

Here is what you need to know.

Sudan is in northeast Africa and is one of the largest countries on the continent, covering 1.9 million sq km (734,000 sq miles).

The population of Sudan is predominantly Muslim.

The country’s official languages are Arabic and English.

Above: (in green) Sudan

Even before the war started, Sudan was one the poorest countries in the world.

Its 46 million people were in 2022 living on an average annual income of $750 (£600) a head.

The conflict has made things much worse.

Last year, the economy shrunk by 40%, Sudan’s Finance Minister said.

After the 2021 coup, a council of generals ran Sudan, led by the two military men at the centre of this dispute:

• General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the head of the armed forces and in effect the country’s President

Above: Sudanese General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan

• His deputy and leader of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, better known as “Hemedti“

Above: Sudanese General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo

They disagreed on the direction the country was going in and the proposed move towards civilian rule.

The main sticking points were plans to include the 100,000-strong RSF into the army, and who would then lead the new force.

The suspicions were that both generals wanted to hang on to their positions of power, unwilling to lose wealth and influence.

Above: Insignia of the Sudanese Armed Forces

The RSF was formed in 2013 and has its origins in the notorious Janjaweed militia that brutally fought rebels in Darfur, where they were accused of ethnic cleansing against the region’s non-Arabic population.

Since then, General Dagalo has built a powerful force that has intervened in conflicts in Yemen and Libya.

He has also developed economic interests including controlling some of Sudan’s gold mines.

Before the current conflict erupted, the RSF had been accused of human rights abuses, including the massacre of more than 120 protesters in June 2019.

Such a strong force outside the army has been seen as a source of instability in the country.

Above: Flag of the Rapid Support Forces

Shooting between the two sides began on 15 April 2023 following days of tension as members of the RSF were redeployed around the country in a move that the army saw as a threat.

There had been some hope that talks could resolve the situation but these never happened.

It is disputed who fired the first shot but the fighting swiftly escalated in different parts of the country.

This fighting is the latest episode in bouts of tension that followed the 2019 ousting of long-serving President Omar al-Bashir, who came to power in a coup in 1989.

There were huge street protests calling for an end to his near-three decade rule and the army mounted a coup to get rid of him.

Above: Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir (r. 1993 – 2019)

But civilians continued to campaign for the introduction of democracy.

A joint military-civilian government was then established but that was overthrown in another coup in October 2021, when General Burhan took over.

And since then the rivalry between General Burhan and General Dagalo has intensified.

A framework deal to put power back in the hands of civilians was agreed in December 2022 but talks to finalize the details failed.

When it began, the conflict appeared to be around the control of key installations.

However, much of it is now happening in urban areas and civilians have become unwitting victims.

The RSF captured much of the capital Khartoum, as well as Darfur.

Above: Khartoum, Sudan

The military controls most of the north and the east, including the key Red Sea port of Port Sudan.

Above: Port Sudan, Sudan

In a major blow to the army, the RSF seized the strategic city of Wad Madani in December, along with much of the surrounding Gezira state.

Hundreds and thousands of civilians were forced to flee the city, which had become a hub for humanitarian services and a refuge for those who had escaped conflict in other parts of the country.

Above: Wad Madani, Sudan

In February, the army recaptured the centre of Omdurman, one of three cities along the River Nile that form Sudan’s wider capital, Khartoum.

It regained control of the state broadcaster there – a symbolic breakthrough for the army.

Above: Market, Omdurman, Sudan

Attention is now on El-Fasher, the last major urban centre in Darfur that is still held by the army.

The RSF has laid siege to the city, causing hundreds of casualties, overwhelming hospitals and blocking food supplies.

There are wars that never make headlines.

Or they make headlines for as long as it takes until something else somewhere else happens.

When the cameras are turned off and the crews have left does not mean that the death and destruction departed with them.

The violence continues whether the world is watching or not.

The people of Zamzam — many of them displaced, their lives shattered— were attacked in a place that was supposed to be a refuge.

For them, there is no “after” the war.

There is only survival.

Whether they once held weapons or were merely caught in the fire, their war is not over.

Above: Zamzam refugee camp

The Rapid Support Forces stormed the Zamzam Refugee Camp in North Darfur, attacking those who had already lost everything.

Where can one flee when war does not recognize safe havens?

The people of Zamzam did not sign up for battle, yet they live and die by its brutal terms.

Some may have once been soldiers, but many were simply caught in the crossfire.

Their war is not fought with weapons — it is fought in the struggle to survive, to find shelter, to hold on to the last remnants of humanity.

Above: Zamzam camp near el-Fasher is hosting an estimated 500,000 people, who are living in famine conditions

Red Hand Day, or the International Day against the Use of Child Soldiers, has been observed on February 12 annually since 2002, where pleas are made to political leaders and events are staged around the world to draw attention to child soldiers:

Children under the age of 18 who participate in military organizations of all kinds.

Red Hand Day aims to call for action to stop this practice, and support children affected by it.

Above: Red Hand Day logo

Children in the military, including state armed forces, non-state armed groups, and other military organizations, may be trained for combat, assigned to support roles, such as cooks, porters/couriers, or messengers, or used for tactical advantage such as for human shields, or for political advantage in propaganda. 

Children (defined by the Convention on the Rights of the Child as people under the age of 18) have been recruited for participation in military operations and campaigns throughout history and in many cultures.

Children are targeted for their susceptibility to influence, which renders them easier to recruit and control. 

Relative to adults, the neurological underdevelopment of children, including adolescent children, renders them more susceptible to recruitment and also more likely to make consequential decisions without due regard to the risks.

Once recruited, children are easier than adults to indoctrinate and control, and are more motivated than adults to fight for non-monetary incentives such as religion, honor, prestige, revenge and duty.

While some are recruited by force, others choose to join up, often to escape poverty or because they expect military life to offer a rite of passage to maturity.

Child soldiers who survive armed conflict frequently develop psychiatric illness, poor literacy and numeracy, and behavioral problems such as heightened aggression, which together lead to an increased risk of unemployment and poverty in adulthood.

Research in the United Kingdom has found that the enlistment and training of adolescent children, even when they are not sent to war, is often accompanied by a higher risk of suicide, stress-related mental disorders, alcohol abuse and violent behavior.

Since the 1960s, a number of treaties have successfully reduced the recruitment and use of children worldwide. 

Nonetheless, around a quarter of armed forces worldwide, particularly those of Third World nations, still train adolescent children for military service, while elsewhere, the use of children in armed conflict and insurgencies has increased in recent years.

Above: Child Soldier in the Ivory Coast, Gilbert G. Groud (2007)

As of 2022, the United Nations (UN) verified that nine state armed forces were using children in hostilities: 

• Central African Republic

Above: Flag of the Central African Republic

As many as 10,000 children were used by armed groups in the armed conflict in the Central African Republic (CAR) between 2012 and 2015, and as of 2024 the problem persists nationwide with a most likely greater amount fighting now.

The mainly Muslim “Séléka” coalition of armed groups and the predominantly Christian, “Anti-Balaka” militias have both used children in this way; some are as young as eight.

Above: (in green) Central African Republic

• Democratic Republic of the Congo

Above: Flag of the Democratic Republic of the Congo

During the first (1996 – 1997) and second (1998 – 2003) civil conflicts which took place in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), all sides involved in the war actively recruited or conscripted child soldiers, known locally as Kadogos which is a Swahili term meaning “little ones“.

In 2011 it was estimated that 30,000 children were still operating with armed groups. 

The United Nations Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUSCO), released a report in 2013 which stated that between 1 January 2012 and August 2013 up to 1,000 children had been recruited by armed groups, and described the recruitment of child soldiers as “endemic“.

Above: Emblem of the United Nations

Former President Laurent-Désiré Kabila used children in the Second Congo War from 1996 onwards.

It is estimated that up to 10,000 children, some aged only seven years old, served under him. 

Kabila was assassinated by one of these child soldiers during the Second Congo War in 2001.

Above: Congolese President Laurent Désiré Kabila (1939 – 2001)

The International Criminal Court (ICC), in the first trials held on human rights violations in the DRC, led to the first indictments, the first trials and the first convictions, in national jurisprudence for the use of children in combat.

Above: Logo of the International Criminal Court, Den Haag, Netherlands

Above: (in green) Democratic Republic of the Congo

• Mali

Above: Flag of Mali

Above: (in green) Mali

• Somalia

Above: Flag of Somalia

The use of child soldiers in Somalia has been an ongoing issue.

In the battles for Mogadishu, all parties involved in the conflict such as the Union of Islamic Courts, the Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Counter-Terrorism, and the Transitional Federal Government (TFG)(2004 – 2012) forces recruited children for use in combat.

Above: Images of Mogadishu, Somalia

The TFG is listed by the United Nations (UN) as one of the greatest offenders in recruiting children into their armed forces.

The militant rebel group al-Shabaab who are fighting to establish an Islamic state is another major recruiter of children.

Above: Flag of Al-Shabaab

The European Union (EU) and the United States (US) were the primary supporters of the TFG, with the US having paid wages to the TFG armed forces, in violation of the US Child Soldiers Protection Act.

In 2010, Human Rights Watch reported that Al-Shabaab was recruiting children as young as ten to bolster their forces.

Children are abducted from their homes and schools with entire classes at times being abducted. 

In 2012 Michelle Kagari, Amnesty International’s deputy director for Africa, stated that:

“Somalia is not only a humanitarian crisis:

It is a human rights crisis and a children’s rights crisis.

Children in Somalia risk death constantly.

They can be killed, recruited, and sent to the frontline, punished by al-Shabab because they are caught listening to music or ‘wearing the wrong clothes’, be forced to fend for themselves because they have lost their parents or even die because they don’t have access to adequate medical care.“

In 2017, UN Secretary-General António Guterres commented on a report from the UN Security Council, which estimated that over 50% of Al-Shabaab’s fighting strength was made up of children, with some as young as nine being sent to the front.

The report verified that 6,163 children had been recruited between 1 April 2010 and 31 July 2016, of which 230 were girls.

According to the report, a task force in Somalia verified the recruitment and use of 6,163 children – 5,993 boys and 230 girls – during the period from 2010, to 2016, with more than 30% of the cases in 2012, with the Somali National Army accounted for 920 children serving.

Al-Shabaab accounted for 70% of verified cases.

Above: UN Secretary-General António Guterres

Above: (in green) Somalia

• South Sudan 

Above: Flag of South Sudan

Above: (in green) South Sudan

• Palestine

Above: Flag of Palestine

Above: (in green) Palestine

• Syria 

Above: Flag of Syria

Above: (in green) Syria

• Yemen 

Above: Flag of Yemen

Above: (in green) Yemen

• Afghanistan 

Above: Flag of Afghanistan

Above: (in green) Afghanistan

• Myanmar

Above: Flag of Myanmar

Above: (in green) Myanmar

The United Nations (UN) Committee on the Rights of the Child and others have called for an end to the recruitment of children by state armed forces, arguing that military training, the military environment, and a binding contract of service are not compatible with children’s rights and jeopardize healthy development.

In 2003, one estimate calculated that child soldiers participated in about three-quarters of ongoing conflicts.

In the same year, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) estimated that most of these children were aged over 15, although some were younger.

Due to the widespread military use of children in areas where armed conflict and insecurity prevent access by UN officials and other observers, it is difficult to estimate how many children are affected.

In 2003, UNICEF estimated that some 300,000 children are involved in more than 30 conflicts worldwide.

Above: Logo of the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund

In 2017, Child Soldiers International (1998 – 2019) estimated that several tens of thousands of children, possibly more than 100,000, were in state and non-state military organizations around the world. 

In 2018 the organization reported that children were being used to participate in at least 18 armed conflicts.

In 2023, the UN Secretary General report presented 7,622 verified cases of children being recruited and used in armed conflicts in 23 countries.

Above: The Secretariat Building is a 154-metre-tall (505 ft) skyscraper and the centerpiece of the Headquarters of the United Nations, New York City, USA

More than 12,460 children formerly associated with armed forces or groups received protection or reintegration support during 2022.

Child soldiers who survive armed conflict face a markedly elevated risk of debilitating psychiatric illness, poor literacy and numeracy, and behavioral problems.

Above: Child soldier, Yemen

Research in Palestine and Uganda, for example, has found that more than half of former child soldiers showed symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder and nearly nine in ten in Uganda screened positive for depressed mood.

Above: Child soldier, Uganda

Above: Flag of Uganda

Above: (in green) Uganda

Researchers in Palestine also found that children exposed to high levels of violence in armed conflict were substantially more likely than other children to exhibit aggression and anti-social behavior.

Above: Child soldier, Palestine

The combined impact of these effects typically includes a high risk of poverty and lasting unemployment in adulthood.

Further harm is caused when armed forces and groups detain child recruits. 

Above: Child soldier, Yemen

Children are often detained without sufficient food, medical care, or under other inhumane conditions.

Some experience physical and sexual torture. 

Some are captured with their families, or detained due to one of their family members’ activity.

Lawyers and relatives are frequently banned from any court hearing.

Above: Child soldier, South Sudan

While the use of children in armed conflict has attracted most attention, other research has found that military settings present several serious risks before child recruits are deployed to war zones, particularly during training.

Research from several countries finds that military enlistment, even before recruits are sent to war, is accompanied by a higher risk of attempted suicide in the US, higher risk of mental disorders in the US and the UK, higher risk of alcohol misuse and higher risk of violent behavior, relative to recruits’ pre-military experience.

Military academics in the US have characterized military training as “intense indoctrination” in conditions of sustained stress, the primary purpose of which is to establish the unconditional and immediate obedience of recruits.

The research literature has found that adolescents are more vulnerable than adults to a high-stress environment, particularly those from a background of childhood adversity. 

It finds in particular that the prolonged stressors of military training are likely to aggravate pre-existing mental health problems and hamper healthy neurological development.

Military settings are characterized by elevated rates of bullying, particularly by instructors.

In the UK between 2014 and 2020, for example, the Army recorded 62 formal complaints of violence committed by staff against recruits at the military training centre for 16- and 17-year-old trainee soldiers, the Army Foundation College.

Joe Turton, who joined up aged 17 in 2014, recalls bullying by staff throughout his training.

For example:

The corporals come into the hangar where we sleep and they’re wild-eyed, screaming, shoving people out.

A massive sergeant lifts a recruit in the air and literally throws him into the wall.

A corporal smacks me full-force around the head — I’ve got my helmet on but he hits me so hard that I’m knocked right over, I mean this man’s about 40 and I’m maybe 17 by then.

A bit later, we’re crawling through mud and a corporal grabs me and drags me along the ground, half-way across a field.

When he lets go I’m in that much pain that I’m whimpering on the ground.

When the other corporal, the one who hit me, sees me crying on the ground, he just points at me and laughs.”

Above: Logo of the Army Foundation College, Harrogate, England

In many countries growing populations of young people relative to older generations have made children a cheap and accessible resource for military organizations. 

Some leaders of armed groups have claimed that children, despite their underdevelopment, bring their own qualities as combatants to a fighting unit, often being remarkably fearless, agile and hardy.

The global proliferation of light automatic weapons, which children can easily handle, has also made the use of children as direct combatants more viable.

Above: Child soldier, South Sudan

In a 2004 study of children in military organizations around the world, Rachel Brett and Irma Specht pointed to a complex of factors that incentivize children to join military organizations, particularly:

• Background poverty including a lack of civilian education or employment opportunities
• The cultural normalization of war
• Seeking new friends
• Revenge (for example, after seeing friends and relatives killed)
• Expectations that a “warrior” role provides a rite of passage to maturity

Above: Child soldiers, South Sudan

The following testimony from a child recruited by the Cambodian armed forces in the 1990s is typical of many children’s motivations for joining up:

I joined because my parents lacked food and I had no school.

I was worried about mines but what can we do — it’s an order to go to the front line.

Once somebody stepped on a mine in front of me — he was wounded and died.

I was with the radio at the time, about 60 metres away.

I was sitting in my hammock and saw him die.

I see young children in every unit.

I’m sure I’ll be a soldier for at least a couple of more years.

If I stop being a soldier, I won’t have a job to do because I don’t have any skills.

I don’t know what I’ll do.”

Above: Flag of Cambodia

Above: (in red) Cambodia

Above: Emblem of the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces

February 12 marks Red Hand Day, a reminder of the thousands of children forced into war.

They do not get the chance to be soldiers who come home.

They do not get a choice at all.

Given rifles instead of toys, taught to kill before they learn to dream, they are robbed of innocence and thrust into nightmares they can never escape.

Even if they are freed, what remains of them?

How does a child unlearn war?

There is no choice in their war.

Above: Warsaw’s (Poland) Little Insurgent monument commemorates all child soldiers who fought in World War II and earlier conflicts.

Child soldiers are born into conflict, ripped from their families, and forced to kill before they can understand what life should be.

And even if they escape, how do they return to a world they never knew?

For them, war is not just a battle.

It is their stolen childhood, their stolen peace, their stolen humanity.

Does struggle shape our humanity?

Or does our humanity make struggle inevitable?

Perhaps the answer is both.

Above: French Emperor Napoleon I’s (1769 – 1821) retreat from Moscow, Russia (1812)

Throughout history, adversity has been a catalyst for growth, resilience, and ingenuity.

Whether through war, hardship or inner turmoil, humans are often refined by their struggles.

Great art, literature, philosophy, and even technological progress have often emerged from conflict — whether external or internal.

In this sense, struggle defines us, forcing us to confront our limitations and, in doing so, transcend them.

Above: D-Day Landing, Normandy, France – 6 June 1944

Would we appreciate peace, love, or freedom if we had never known war, loss, or oppression?

Would we strive for greatness if not for the obstacles in our path?

At the same time, human nature — driven by desire, fear, ambition, and ego — creates struggle where none might have existed.

Even when resources are plentiful, we find reasons to compete.

Even when peace is possible, we distrust it.

Even when we have enough, we want more.

Above: War, Gari Melchers (1896)

Our ability to dream, to desire, to push beyond what we have been given is what makes us human.

But it also makes struggle inevitable.

Above: American tanks moving in formation during the Gulf War (1990 – 1991)

We wage wars not only over land and power, but also over ideas, identity and belief.

We struggle against nature, against each other, and, most of all, against ourselves.

If struggle is what shapes us, but our humanity ensures we will always struggle, then peace — true, lasting peace — becomes almost unnatural.

And yet, we long for it.

Above: US Army soldiers engaged in a firefight with Taliban insurgents during the War in Afghanistan (2009)

Perhaps, then, the most human thing of all is the desire for peace, even as we are trapped in the cycle of struggle.

To seek peace, knowing we may never truly achieve it, is the ultimate act of defiance against our own nature.

Would we ever be willing to let go of the struggle?

Or is it the striving, the constant reaching, that gives our lives meaning?

Above: The remains of dead Crow Indians killed and scalped by Sioux (1874)

Thomas Millman, physician to the North American Boundary Commission, kept a diary of his experiences while in the West.

On 31 July 1874, he wrote:

“We met with Boswell & Dawson & the photographers.

They were getting the photo of some dead Indians.

They appear to be Crow Indians killed last winter by the Pegans.

About 20 altogether were riddled with bullet holes & every one scalped.

Most of them had their shirts & every one had a gash in their side.

Bodies were shriveled up but skin pretty sound.”

That line — between necessary struggle and unwarranted violence — is one of the most difficult to define.

It shifts with time, perspective and circumstance.

Yet, if we are to strive for a more just world, we must attempt to draw it.

Above: Ruins of Warsaw’s Napoleon Square in the aftermath of World War II (1939 – 1945)

Some struggles are essential to human dignity and progress:

• The Struggle for Freedom and Rights

History shows that without struggle, oppression persists.

From the abolition of slavery to civil rights movements, people have fought for justice, often at great cost.

These struggles are not about destruction but about dismantling systems of injustice so that all can live with dignity.

Above: March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, 28 August 1963.

Martin Luther King Jr. (1929 – 1968) grew up in a time of extreme segregation, but he did not let that stop him from being a dreamer.

He had a dream that would resonate with his country, and he became a major leader of the civil rights movement.

• The Struggle for Survival and Progress

Whether in personal growth, scientific discovery, or overcoming hardship, struggle can be a source of resilience and innovation.

Struggling to learn, to build, to heal — these are the struggles that elevate humanity.

• Defensive Struggle

There are times when force is used to protect rather than conquer.

Defending oneself, one’s home, or the vulnerable against aggression is not the same as initiating violence.

Above: Battle of Stalingrad, Russia

Violence becomes unwarranted when:

• It is motivated by greed, power or hate.

Wars fought for conquest, genocide, ethnic cleansing and acts of terror stem from a place of destruction rather than progress.

For example:

The Conquests of Timur (Tamerlane) (14th Century)

Timur waged brutal campaigns across Persia, India, the Middle East, and Central Asia, not to build a stable empire, but to plunder, destroy and assert dominance.

His conquests resulted in the deaths of an estimated 17 million people, often leaving entire cities in ruins.

Unlike empire-builders such as Genghis Khan, Timur seemed less interested in governance and more in demonstrating sheer military might.

Above: Mongol conqueror Timur (1320 – 1405)

The Armenian Genocide (1915-1917)

The Armenian genocide was the systematic destruction of the Armenian people and identity in the Ottoman Empire during World War I.

Above: Flag of the Ottoman Empire (1299 – 1922)

Spearheaded by the ruling Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), it was implemented primarily through the mass murder of around one million Armenians during death marches to the Syrian Desert and the forced Islamization of others, primarily women and children.

Above: Emblem of the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) (1889 – 1918)

Before World War I, Armenians occupied a somewhat protected, but subordinate, place in Ottoman society.

Above: A LONG LINE THAT SWIFTLY GREW SHORTER – Column of Armenian deportees guarded by gendarmes in Harput vilayet

31 December 1917

One of the most striking photographs of the deportations that have come out of Armenia.

Here is shown a column of Christians on the path across the great plains of the Mamuret-ul-Aziz.

The zaptieths are shown walking along at one side.

Large-scale massacres of Armenians had occurred in the 1890s and 1909.

Above: The massacre at Erzeroum. The Graphic, 7 December 1895.

A photograph, taken by the American W. L. Sachtleben, depicting the victims of a massacre of Armenians in Erzerum on 30 October 1895, being gathered for burial at the town’s Armenian cemetery. 

“What I myself saw this Friday afternoon 1 November is forever engraved on my mind as the most horrible sight a man can see.

I went with one of the cavasses of the English Legation, a soldier, my interpreter, and a photographer (Armenian) to the Armenian Gregorian cemetery.

The municipality had sent down a number of bodies, friends had brought more, and a horrible sight met my eyes.

Along the wall on the north …. lay 321 dead bodies of the massacred Armenians.

Many were fearfully mangled and mutilated.

I saw one with his face completely smashed in with a blow of some heavy weapon after he was killed.

I saw some with their necks almost severed by a sword cut.

One I saw whose whole chest had been skinned, his forearms were cut off, while the upper arm was skinned of flesh.

I asked if the dogs had done this.

‘No, the Turks did it with their knives‘.

A dozen bodies were half burned.

A crowd of a thousand people, mostly Armenians, watched me taking photographs of their dead.

Many were weeping beside their dead fathers or husbands.“ 

W. L. Sachtleben (1866 – 1953), London Times, 14 December 1895

The Hamidian massacres also called the Armenian massacres, were massacres of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire in the mid-1890s.

Estimated casualties ranged from 100,000 to 300,000, resulting in 50,000 orphaned children. 

Above: Armenian victims of the massacres being buried in a mass grave at Erzerum cemetery, Harpers Weekly, 14 December 1895

The massacres are named after Sultan Abdul Hamid II, who, in his efforts to maintain the imperial domain of the declining Ottoman Empire, reasserted pan-Islamism as a state ideology. 

Above: Ottoman Sultan Abdul Hamid II (1842 – 1918)

Although the massacres were aimed mainly at the Armenians, in some cases they turned into indiscriminate anti-Christian pogroms, including the Diyarbekır massacres, where, at least according to one contemporary source, up to 25,000 Assyrians were also killed.

Above: Diyarbakır Armenians

Especially in Diyarbakır, Armenian people had very serious influence on urban life and culture.

Their number was also high.

The Armenian population comprised 30% of the whole population in the city, which is not an insignificant statistic.

Above: Diyarbekır, Türkiye

In his travelogue the Seyâhatnâme, Evliya Çelebi said that Diyarbakır is also an Armenian city.

Above: Statue of Ottoman explorer Evliya Celebi (1611 – 1682)

According to him, as plenty of Armenians were settled there and left their mark on the culture, art, music, life styles and commerce of the city.

It is an Armenian city.

An important center of the Armenian genocide was Diyarbakır.

Both the urban Armenian population and the convoys passing through the city were massacred.

In their study “One Hundred Years of Sorrow – On the Track of Social Memory: 1915 Diyarbakır”, (“Yüzyıllık Ah! – Toplumsal Hafızanın İzinde: 1915 Diyarbekir”) published by the İsmail Beşikçi Foundation, Adnan Çelik and Namık Kemal Dinç searched for the specter of genocide haunting the city by drawing on intergenerational transmissions, political facts and the reflections of the genocide in Kurdish literature.

There are stories about children seized or hidden by others, but it is impossible to talk about families or men continuing their lives.

After the retreat of the Russian army, conflicts were experienced with the remaining Armenians, which led to mutual massacres.

Physically speaking, perhaps it was impossible to speak of Armenians in Diyarbakır anymore, but Islamized Armenians continued their existence considerably.

There are some church remnants, some properties left over by Armenians, yet Armenians themselves do not exist there anymore.

Why do people of Diyarbakır and Kurds remember the Armenian genocide so vividly?

Extreme forms of violence were implemented during the genocide.

This violence has been inscribed into the bodies, hearts and memories of people.

It is still traumatic that people have not been able to forget these violence narratives.

it is difficult to talk about it, but it is perhaps something inexpressible.

However, when one refers to the past practices of violence, the seriousness and the scale of the situation becomes apparent.

The majority of Armenian convoys brought from the north during the genocide passed through Diyarbakır and Mardin.

Many killings were perpetrated in the province of Diyarbakır.

Some places where people were killed are now associated with this slaughter.

The memories of these places had a great impact upon people.

These are desolate places.

These are places out of sight.

Places where it is possible to rapidly and easily make the bodies of killed people disappear.

Chasms, caves, pits, straits, cisterns…

There were many Armenians in Diyarbakır who were able to survive.

Some of them were Islamized and some of them continued their daily existence in their own religion. 

Above: Diyarbekır Vilayet (1867 – 1922)

The massacres began in the Ottoman interior in 1894, before they became more widespread in the following years.

The majority of the murders took place between 1894 and 1896.

The massacres began to taper off in 1897, following international condemnation of Abdul Hamid.

The harshest measures were directed against the long persecuted Armenian community as its calls for civil reform and better treatment were ignored by the government.

The Ottomans made no allowances for the victims on account of their age or gender.

As a result, they massacred all of the victims with brutal force.

The telegraph spread news of the massacres around the world, leading to a significant amount of coverage of them in the media of Western Europe, Russia and North America.

Above: Morse telegraph

The Adana massacres occurred in the Adana Vilayet of the Ottoman Empire in April of 1909.

Many Armenians were slain by Ottoman Muslims in the city of Adana as the Ottoman countercoup of 1909 triggered a series of pogroms throughout the province.

Around 20,000 to 25,000 ethnic Armenians were killed and tortured in Adana and surrounding towns, it was reported that about 1,300 Assyrians were also killed during the massacres.

Unlike the previous Hamidian massacres, the events were not officially organized by the central government, but culturally instigated via local officials, Islamic clerics, and supporters of the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP).

After the Hamidian massacres, the Great Powers (Britain, France, Russia) forced Hamid to sign a new reform package designed to curtail the powers of the Hamidiye in October 1895 which, like the Berlin treaty, was never implemented.

On 1 October 1895, two thousand Armenians assembled in Constantinople (Istanbul) to petition for the implementation of the reforms, but Ottoman police units converged on the rally and violently broke it up. 

Upon receiving the reform package, the Sultan is said to have remarked:

“This business will end in blood.“

After revolutionary groups had secured the deposition of Sultan Abdul Hamid II and the restoration of the Second Constitutional Era (Ottoman Empire) in 1908, a military revolt directed against the Committee of Union and Progress seized Constantinople.

While the revolt lasted only ten days, it reignited anti-Armenian sentiment in the region and precipitated the mass destruction of Armenian businesses and farms, public hangings, sexual violence, and executions rooted in political, economic and religious prejudice.

These massacres continued for more than one month. 

The Armenian quarter of Adana was described as the “richest and most prosperous“.

The violence included destruction of “tractors and other kinds of mechanized equipment“.

Above: Adana – Christian Quarter, 1 June 1909

The Ottoman Empire suffered a series of military defeats and territorial losses — especially during the 1912–1913 Balkan Wars —leading to fear among CUP leaders that the Armenians would seek independence.

Above: A Bulgarian postcard depicting the Battle of Lule Burgas

28 October – 2 November 1912

During their invasion of Russian and Persian territory in 1914, Ottoman paramilitaries massacred local Armenians.

Ottoman leaders took isolated instances of Armenian resistance as evidence of a widespread rebellion, though no such rebellion existed.

Mass deportation was intended to permanently forestall the possibility of Armenian autonomy or independence.

Above: A poor, widowed Armenian woman and her children, Makarid (on her back) and Nuvart (standing next to her).

In 1899, after the murder of her husband in the aftermath of the Armenian Massacres of 1894 – 1896, the family walked from their home in the Geghi region to Kharpert (Harput), eastern Anatolia (Turkey) seeking help from missionaries.

On 24 April 1915, the Ottoman authorities arrested and deported hundreds of Armenian intellectuals and leaders from Constantinople (Istanbul).

At the orders of Talaat Pasha, an estimated 800,000 to 1.2 million Armenians were sent on death marches to the Syrian Desert in 1915 and 1916.

Above: Grand Vizier Mehmet Tâlat (1874 – 1921)

Driven forward by paramilitary escorts, the deportees were deprived of food and water and subjected to robbery, rape and massacres.

In the Syrian Desert, the survivors were dispersed into concentration camps.

In 1916, another wave of massacres was ordered, leaving about 200,000 deportees alive by the end of the year.

Around 100,000 to 200,000 Armenian women and children were forcibly converted to Islam and integrated into Muslim households.

Massacres and ethnic cleansing of Armenian survivors continued through the Turkish War of Independence (1919 – 1923) after World War I (1914 – 1918), carried out by Turkish nationalists.

Above: Armenians gathered in a city prior to deportation.

They were murdered outside the city.

This genocide put an end to more than 2,000 years of Armenian civilization in eastern Anatolia.

Together with the mass murder and expulsion of Assyrian/Syriac and Greek Orthodox Christians, it enabled the creation of an ethnonationalist Turkish state, the Republic of Turkey.

Above: The corpses of Armenians beside a road, a common sight along deportation routes – 31 December 1917

Image taken from Ambassador Morgenthau’s Story, written by Henry Morgenthau, Sr. and published in 1918. 

Original description:

“THOSE WHO FELL BY THE WAYSIDE.

Scenes like this were common all over the Armenian provinces, in the spring and summer months of 1915.

Death in its several forms — massacre, starvation, exhaustion —destroyed the larger part of the refugees.

The Turkish policy was that of extermination under the guise of deportation”

The Ottoman Empire tried to prevent journalists and photographers from documenting the atrocities, threatening them with arrest.

Nevertheless, substantiated reports of mass killings were widely covered in Western newspapers.

On 24 May 1915, the Triple Entente (Russia, Britain, and France) formally condemned the Ottoman Empire for “crimes against humanity and civilization“, and threatened to hold the perpetrators accountable.

Witness testimony was published in books such as The Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire (1916) and Ambassador Morgenthau’s Story (1918), raising public awareness of the genocide.

The German Empire was a military ally of the Ottoman Empire during World War I.

German diplomats approved limited removals of Armenians in early 1915, and took no action against the genocide, which has been a source of controversy.

Above: Flag of Germany (1867 – 1918)

Relief efforts were organized in dozens of countries to raise money for Armenian survivors.

By 1925, people in 49 countries were organizing “Golden Rule Sundays” during which they consumed the diet of Armenian refugees, to raise money for humanitarian efforts.

Between 1915 and 1930, Near East Relief raised $110 million ($2 billion adjusted for inflation) for refugees from the Ottoman Empire.

The Turkish government maintains that the deportation of Armenians was a legitimate action that cannot be described as genocide.

The Turkish state perceives open discussion of the genocide as a threat to national security because of its connection with the foundation of the Republic, and for decades strictly censored it.

In 2002, the AK Party came to power and relaxed censorship to a certain extent.

Above: Justice and Development Party logo

The profile of the issue was raised by the 2007 assassination of Hrant Dink, a Turkish-Armenian journalist known for his advocacy of reconciliation. 

Above: Hrant Dink (1954 – 2007)

Although the AK Party softened the state denial rhetoric, describing Armenians as part of the Ottoman Empire’s war losses, during the 2010s political repression and censorship increased again.

Turkey’s century-long effort to prevent any recognition or mention of the genocide in foreign countries has included millions of dollars in lobbying, as well as intimidation and threats.

As of 2025, 34 countries have recognized the events as genocide, concurring with the academic consensus.

The genocide is extensively documented in the archives of Germany, Austria, the United States, Russia, France, and the United Kingdom, as well as the Ottoman archives, despite systematic purges of incriminating documents by Turkey. 

There are also thousands of eyewitness accounts from Western missionaries and Armenian survivors.

Above: Monument to Humanity, Kars, Türkiye, commemorating the Armenian Genocide was demolished one month after it was constructed.

Polish-Jewish lawyer Raphael Lemkin, who coined the term genocide in 1944, became interested in war crimes after reading about the 1921 trial of Soghomon Tehlirian for the assassination of Talaat Pasha.

Lemkin recognized the fate of the Armenians as one of the most significant genocides in the 20th century. 

Above: Raphael Lemkin (1900 – 1959)

Almost all historians and scholars outside Turkey, and an increasing number of Turkish scholars, recognize the destruction of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire as genocide.

The Ottoman Empire systematically exterminated 1.5 million Armenians through mass killings, forced marches, and starvation.

This was not a war for territory but a deliberate attempt to erase an ethnic group.

The genocide was driven by nationalist paranoia, not strategic necessity.

Above: Coat of arms of the Ottoman Empire

A country facing up to its historical wrongs isn’t about self-flagellation but about growth, reconciliation, and setting the moral foundations for the future.

A nation’s strength lies in its ability to confront the truth.

Denial distorts history and weakens moral authority.

Germany has gained global respect for facing its past.

Japan’s refusal to fully acknowledge its wartime atrocities has hindered relations with its neighbors.

Acknowledging past wrongs allows for reconciliation.

When Germany accepted responsibility, it fostered better relations with former adversaries, including France, Israel, and Poland.

Türkiye, by acknowledging the Armenian Genocide, could improve diplomatic ties with Armenia and other nations.

Denial creates internal and external divisions.

Recognition can help unite people by acknowledging shared pain and fostering a collective sense of justice.

Admitting past crimes ensures that history is not forgotten or repeated.

Germany’s commitment to Holocaust education has made it a leader in human rights advocacy.

Rather than framing it as guilt or blame, Türkiye could present recognition as a step toward healing a shared history of suffering.

A narrative like:

“In the chaos of war, terrible things happened to many, including Armenians, and we acknowledge this pain and loss.“

Without necessarily using the word “genocide” (if politically impossible), Türkiye could hold ceremonies or build memorials honoring Armenian victims — similar to Japan’s partial apologies to Korea and China.

Rather than a sudden declaration, Türkiye could slowly shift its stance, beginning with humanitarian recognition of suffering and gradually adopting stronger statements over time.

Recognition shouldn’t be about weakness or shame but about Türkiye’s maturity and strength as a modern nation, unafraid of truth and committed to justice.

Would this approach work in Türkiye’s current political climate?

That’s another challenge entirely, but history shows that nations that face their past with honesty often emerge stronger.

The Holocaust (1941 – 1945)

Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe.

The Holocaust saw the murder of 90% of Polish Jews and two-thirds of the Jewish population of Europe.

The murders were carried out primarily through mass shootings and poison gas in extermination camps, chiefly Auschwitz -Birkenau, Treblinka, Belzec, Sobibor and Chełmno in occupied Poland.

Above: “Selection” of Hungarian Jews on the ramp at Auschwitz II -Birkenau in German-occupied Poland, May/June 1944, during the final phase of the Holocaust.

Jews were sent either to work or to the gas chamber.

The photograph is part of the collection known as the Auschwitz Album, which was donated to Yad Vashem by Lili Jacob, a survivor, who found it in the Mittelbau – Dora concentration camp in 1945.

Yad Vashem:

“The Auschwitz Album is the only surviving visual evidence of the process leading to mass murder at Auschwitz-Birkenau.”

The collection was first published as The Auschwitz Album in 1980 in the United States, Canada and elsewhere, by the Nazi hunter Serge Klarsfeld, but individual images had been published before that — for example, during the 1947 Auschwitz trial in Poland and the 1963–1965 Frankfurt Auschwitz trials.

It is not known when this particular image was first published.

Separate Nazi persecutions killed a similar or larger number of non-Jewish civilians and prisoners of war (POWs).

The Nazis developed their ideology based on racism and pursuit of “living space“, and seized power in early 1933.

Above: German dictator Adolf Hitler (1889 – 1945)

Meant to force all German Jews to emigrate, regardless of means, the regime passed anti-Jewish laws, encouraged harassment, and orchestrated a nationwide pogrom in November 1938.

Above: Members of the Sturmabteilung installing a sign on the front window of a Jewish-owned store in Berlin on 1 April 1933, as part of the Nazi boycott of Jewish businesses, which the Nazi Party claimed was in response to the 1933 anti-Nazi boycott.

The sign reads:

“Germans! Defend yourselves, do not buy from the Jews!“

After Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, occupation authorities began to establish ghettos to segregate Jews.

Above: Images of the German invasion of Poland (1 September – 6 October 1939)

Above: Warsaw Ghetto (1940 – 1943) during the German occupation of Poland: Construction of Ghetto wall across Świętokrzyska Street near intersection with Marszałkowska Street – August 1940

Following the June 1941 invasion of the Soviet Union, 1.5 to 2 million Jews were shot by German forces and local collaborators.

Above: Images of the German invasion of Russia – Operation Barbarossa (22 June – 5 December 1941)

By early 1942, the Nazis decided to murder all Jews in Europe.

Above: Hitler’s prophecy speech – 30 January 1939

Hitler accused Jews of having “nothing of their own, except for political and sanitary diseases” and being parasites on the German nation, turning Germans into “beggars in their own country“.

He asserted there had to be an end to the misconception that “the good Lord had meant the Jewish nation to live off the body and productive work of other nations“, or else the Jews would “succumb to a crisis of unimaginable severity“.

Hitler claimed that the Jews were trying to incite “millions among the masses of people into a conflict that is utterly senseless for them and serves only Jewish interests“.

Hitler then arrived at his main point:

I have very often in my lifetime been a prophet and have been mostly derided.

At the time of my struggle for power it was in the first instance the Jewish people who only greeted with laughter my prophecies that I would someday take over the leadership of the state and of the entire people of Germany and then, among other things, also bring the Jewish problem to its solution.

I believe that this hollow laughter of Jewry in Germany has already stuck in its throat.

I want today to be a prophet again:

If international finance Jewry inside and outside Europe should succeed in plunging the nations once more into a world war, the result will be not the Bolshevization of the earth and thereby the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe.”

The term “Final Solution” was a euphemism used by the Nazis to refer to their plan for the annihilation of the Jewish people.

Broadly speaking, the extermination of Jews was carried out in two major operations.

With the onset of Operation Barbarossa, mobile killing units of the SS, the Einsatzgruppen, and Order Police battalions were dispatched to the occupied Soviet Union for the express purpose of murdering all Jews.

During the early stages of the invasion, Himmler himself visited Białystok at the beginning of July 1941, and requested that, “as a matter of principle, any Jew” behind the German-Soviet frontier was to be “regarded as a partisan“.

His new orders gave the SS and police leaders full authority for the mass murder behind the front lines.

By August 1941, all Jewish men, women and children were shot. 

Above: Heinrich Himmler (1900 – 1945)

 

In the second phase of annihilation, the Jewish inhabitants of central, western, and southeastern Europe were transported by Holocaust trains to camps with newly built gassing facilities. 

Raul Hilberg wrote:

“In essence, the killers of the occupied USSR moved to the victims, whereas outside this arena, the victims were brought to the killers.

The two operations constitute an evolution not only chronologically, but also in complexity.“

Massacres of about one million Jews occurred before plans for the Final Solution were fully implemented in 1942, but it was only with the decision to annihilate the entire Jewish population that extermination camps such as Auschwitz II Birkenau and Treblinka were fitted with permanent gas chambers to murder large numbers of Jews in a relatively short period of time.

Above: Gas chamber at Majdanek concentration camp, Lublin, Poland

The plans to exterminate all the Jews of Europe were formalized at the Wannsee Conference, held at an SS guesthouse near Berlin, on 20 January 1942.

The conference was chaired by Heydrich and attended by 15 senior officials of the Nazi Party and the German government.

Above: Reinhard Heydrich (1904 – 1942)

Most of those attending were representatives of the Interior Ministry, the Foreign Ministry and the Justice Ministry, including Ministers for the Eastern Territories.

At the conference, Heydrich indicated that approximately 11,000,000 Jews in Europe would fall under the provisions of the “Final Solution“.

This figure included not only Jews residing in Axis-controlled Europe, but also the Jewish populations of the United Kingdom and of neutral nations (Switzerland, Ireland, Sweden, Spain, Portugal, and European Turkey). 

Above: Original annotated map from Franz Walter Stahlecker’s (1900 – 1942) report, summarizing murders committed by Einsatzgruppen in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Belarus and Russia until January 1942

Eichmann’s biographer David Cesarani wrote that Heydrich’s main purpose in convening the conference was to assert his authority over the various agencies dealing with Jewish issues.

“The simplest, most decisive way that Heydrich could ensure the smooth flow of deportations” to death camps, according to Cesarani, “was by asserting his total control over the fate of the Jews in the Reich and the east” under the single authority of the RSHA (Reich Security Main Office / “Reichssicherheitshauptamt“) .

Above: Adolf Eichmann (1906 – 1962)

A copy of the minutes of this meeting (later called the Wannsee Conference Protocol) was found by the Allies in March 1947. 

It was too late to serve as evidence during the first Nuremberg Trial, but was used by prosecutor General Telford Taylor (1908 – 1998) in the subsequent Nuremberg Trials (1945 – 1946).

Above: The villa at 56–58 Am Großen Wannsee, where the Wannsee Conference (20 January 1942) was held, is now a memorial and museum.

Victims were deported to extermination camps where those who had survived the trip were killed with poisonous gas, while others were sent to forced labor camps where many died from starvation, abuse, exhaustion, or being used as test subjects in experiments.

Above: Original Nazi propaganda caption: – “A 14-year-old youth from Ukraine repairs damaged motor vehicles in a Berlin workshop of the German Wehrmacht. January 1945.”

Property belonging to murdered Jews was redistributed to the German occupiers and other non-Jews.

Above: Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp, 23 April 1945

Dr Fritz Klein, the camp doctor, standing in a mass grave at Belsen.

Klein was an early member of the Nazi Party and joined the SS in 1943.

He worked in Auschwitz-Birkenau for a year from December 1943 where he assisted in the selection of prisoners to be sent to the gas chambers.

After a brief period at Neungamme, Klein moved to Belsen in January 1945.

Klein was subsequently convicted of two counts of war crimes and executed in December 1945.

Although the majority of Holocaust victims died in 1942, the killing continued until the end of the war in May 1945.

Many Jewish survivors emigrated out of Europe after the war.

A few Holocaust perpetrators faced criminal trials.

Billions of dollars in reparations have been paid, although falling short of the Jews’ losses.

The Holocaust has also been commemorated in museums, memorials and culture.

Above: Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin, Germany

It has become central to Western historical consciousness as a symbol of the ultimate human evil.

Above: Flag of Nazi Germany (1935 – 1945)

The Cambodian Genocide (1975 – 1979)

The Cambodian genocide was the systematic persecution and killing of Cambodian citizens by the Khmer Rouge under the leadership of Prime Minister of Democratic Kampuchea, Pol Pot.

Above: Flag of Democratic Kampuchea (1975 – 1979)

Above: Cambodian dictator Pol Pot (1925 – 1998)

It resulted in the deaths of 1.5 to 2 million people from 1975 to 1979, nearly 25% of Cambodia’s population in 1975 (c. 7.8 million).

Above: Skulls at the Choeung Ek memorial in Cambodia

Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge were supported for many years by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and its chairman, Mao Zedong.

Above: Chinese leader Mao Zedong (1893 – 1976)

It is estimated that at least 90% of the foreign aid which the Khmer Rouge received came from China, including at least US$1 billion in interest-free economic and military aid in 1975 alone. 

Above: Flag of China

After it seized power in April 1975, the Khmer Rouge wanted to turn the country into an agrarian socialist republic, founded on the policies of ultra-Maoism and influenced by the Cultural Revolution.

(The Cultural Revolution, formally known as the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, was a sociopolitical movement in the People’s Republic of China (PRC).

It was launched by Mao Zedong in 1966 and lasted until 1976. Its stated goal was to preserve Chinese socialism by purging remnants of capitalist and traditional elements from Chinese society.

The Cultural Revolution was characterized by violence and chaos across Chinese society.

Estimates of the death toll vary widely, typically ranging from 1–2 million.  

Red Guards sought to destroy the Four Olds (old ideas, old culture, old customs, and old habits), which often took the form of destroying historical artifacts, cultural and religious sites.

Tens of millions were persecuted.

The country’s schools and universities were closed.

Over 10 million youth from urban areas were relocated under the Down to the Countryside Movement.

In 1981, the Communist Party publicly acknowledged numerous failures of the Cultural Revolution, declaring it “responsible for the most severe setback and the heaviest losses suffered by the people, the country, and the party since the founding of the People’s Republic“.

Given its broad scope and social impact, memories and perspectives of the Cultural Revolution are varied and complex in contemporary China.

It is often referred to as the “ten years of chaos” or “ten years of havoc“.

Above: The Chinese People’s Liberation Army is the great school of Mao Zedong Thought, 1969 – A poster from the Cultural Revolution, featuring an image of Chairman Mao, and published by the government of the People’s Republic of China

Pol Pot and other Khmer Rouge officials met with Mao in Beijing in June 1975, receiving approval and advice, while high-ranking CCP officials such as Politburo Standing Committee member Zhang Chunqiao later visited Cambodia to offer help. 

Above: Chinese Vice Premier Zhang Chunqiao (1917 – 2005)

To fulfill its goals, the Khmer Rouge emptied the cities and frog marched Cambodians to labor camps in the countryside, where mass executions, forced labor, physical abuse, torture, malnutrition and disease were rampant.

The massacres ended when the Vietnamese military invaded in 1978 and toppled the Khmer Rouge regime.

Above: Vietnamese soldiers entering Phnom Penh, 7 January 1979

By January 1979, 1.5 to 2 million people had died due to the Khmer Rouge’s policies, including 200,000 – 300,000 Chinese Cambodians, 90,000 – 500,000 Cambodian Cham (who are mostly Muslim) and 20,000 Vietnamese Cambodians.

Above: Sino-Khmers at a wedding celebration in Kampong Thom, Cambodia

Above: Cham women performing a traditional dance in Nha Trang, Vietnam

Above: A Vietnamese floating village in Siem Reap, Cambodia

20,000 people passed through Security Prison 21, one of the 196 prisons the Khmer Rouge operated. 

Only seven adults survived.

Above: Tuol Sleng is the former Tuol Svay Prey high school which was taken over by the Rode Khmer in 1975 and used by the special security service of Pol Pot.

The building was used as a prison (S-21) and torture chamber.

The prisoners were “interrogated” (tortured) in the building to the left.

The large building is one of the prison cell complexes.

Now it is the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum.

Above: S-21 Cells

The prisoners were taken to the Killing Fields, where they were executed (often with pickaxes, to save bullets) and buried in mass graves.

Above: Mass graves at the Killing Fields of Choeung Ek, Cambodia

The Killing Fields are sites in Cambodia where collectively more than 1.3 million people were killed and buried by the Communist Party of Kampuchea during Khmer Rouge rule from 1975 to 1979, immediately after the end of the Cambodian Civil War (1970 – 1975).

The mass killings were part of the broad, state-sponsored Cambodian genocide.

The Cambodian journalist Dith Pran coined the term “killing fields” after his escape from the regime.

Above: Cambodian photojournalist Dith Pran (1942 – 2008)

Abduction and indoctrination of children was widespread.

Many were persuaded or forced to commit atrocities.

As of 2009, the Documentation Center of Cambodia has mapped 23,745 mass graves containing approximately 1.3 million suspected victims of execution.

Direct execution is believed to account for up to 60% of the genocide’s death toll, with other victims succumbing to starvation, exhaustion or disease.

The genocide triggered a second outflow of refugees, many of whom escaped to neighboring Thailand and, to a lesser extent, Vietnam. 

Above: Flag of Thailand

Above: Flag of Vietnam

In 2003, by agreement between the Cambodian government and the United Nations, the Extraordinary Chambers in the Court of Cambodia (Khmer Rouge Tribunal) were established to try the members of the Khmer Rouge leadership responsible for the Cambodian genocide.

Above: Emblem of the Khmer Rouge Tribunal

Trials began in 2009.

 On 26 July 2010, the Trial Chamber convicted Kang Kek Iew for crimes against humanity and grave breaches of the 1949 Geneva Conventions.

The Supreme Court Chamber increased his sentence to life imprisonment. 

Above: Cambodian war criminal Kang Kek Iew (1942 – 2020)

Nuon Chea and Khieu Samphan were tried and convicted in 2014 of crimes against humanity and grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions.

On 28 March 2019, the Trial Chamber found Nuon Chea and Khieu Samphan guilty of crimes against humanity, grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions, and genocide of the Vietnamese ethnic, national and racial group.

The Chamber additionally convicted Nuon Chea of genocide of the Cham ethnic and religious group under the doctrine of superior responsibility.

Above: Cambodian Prime Minister Nuon Chea (1926 – 2019)

Both Nuon Chea and Khieu Samphan were sentenced to terms of life imprisonment.

Above: Cambodian Prime Minister Khieu Samphan

The Khmer Rouge, led by Pol Pot, didn’t just target specific groups.

They aimed to destroy all existing institutions and intellectual life in Cambodia.

Teachers, doctors and even people who wore glasses were executed as “bourgeois threats”.

Cities were emptied.

Millions were forced into brutal labor camps, leading to the deaths of nearly 2 million people — almost a quarter of Cambodia’s population.

This wasn’t about progress but about wiping the slate clean through destruction.

Above: Genocide Museum, Cambodia

The Bosnian War (1992 – 1995)

The Bosnian War was an international armed conflict that took place in Bosnia and Herzegovina between 1992 and 1995.

Above: Flag of Bosnia and Herzegovina (1992 – 1995)

The war is commonly seen as having started on 6 April 1992, following several earlier violent incidents.

It ended on 14 December 1995 when the Dayton Accords were signed.

Above: President Slobodan Milosevic (1941 – 2006) of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, President Alija Izetbegovic (1925 – 2003) of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and President Franjo Tudjman (1922 – 1999) of the Republic of Croatia initial the draft of the Dayton Peace Accords.

The Balkan Proximity Peace Talks were conducted at the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base – 1 – 21 November 1995.

The talks ended the conflict arising from the breakup of the Republic of Yugoslavia.

The Dayton Accords paved the way for the signing of the final “General Framework Agreement for Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina” on 14 December at the Elysée Palace in Paris.

The main belligerents were the forces of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Republic of Herzeg-Bosnia, and the Republika Srpska, the latter two entities being proto-states led and supplied by Croatia and Serbia, respectively.

Above: Coat of arms of Bosnia and Herzegovina (1992 – 1995)

Above: Flag of the Croatian Republic of Herzeg – Bosnia

Above: Flag of the Serbian Republic (1992 – 1995)

The war was part of the breakup of Yugoslavia.

Above: Flag of Yugoslavia (1946 – 1992)

Following the Slovenian and Croatian secessions from the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in 1991, the multi-ethnic Socialist Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina – which was inhabited by mainly Muslim Bosniaks (44%), Orthodox Serbs (32.5%) and Catholic Croats (17%) – passed a referendum for independence on 29 February 1992.

Above: Flag of Slovenia

Above: Flag of Croatia

Above: Flag of Bosnia and Herzegovina (1943 – 1992)

Political representatives of the Bosnian Serbs boycotted the referendum and rejected its outcome.

Anticipating the outcome of the referendum, the Assembly of the Serb People in Bosnia and Herzegovina adopted the Constitution of the Serbian Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina on 28 February 1992.

Above: Seal of the National Assembly of Republika Srpska

Following Bosnia and Herzegovina’s declaration of independence (which gained international recognition) and following the withdrawal of Alija Izetbegović from the previously signed Cutileiro Plan (which proposed a division of Bosnia into ethnic cantons), the Bosnian Serbs, led by Radovan Karadžić and supported by the government of Slobodan Milošević and the Yugoslav People’s Army (JNA), mobilised their forces inside Bosnia and Herzegovina to secure ethnic Serb territory.

Above: Bosnian President Alija Izetbegović (1925 – 2003)

Above: Republika Srpska President Radovan Karadzic

Above: Serbian President Slobodan Milošević (1941 − 2006)

Above: Logo of the Yugoslav People’s Army (1945 – 1992)

The war soon spread across the country, accompanied by ethnic cleansing.

The conflict was initially between Yugoslav Army units in Bosnia which later transformed into the Army of Republika Srpska (VRS) on the one side, and the Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina (ARBiH), largely composed of Bosniaks, and the Croat forces in the Croatian Defence Council (HVO) on the other side.

Above: Emblem of the Army of Republika Srpska (1992 – 2006)

Above: Logo of the Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina (1992 – 1997)

Above: Logo of the Croatian Defence Council (1992 – 1996)

Tensions between Croats and Bosniaks increased throughout late 1992, resulting in the escalation of the Croat – Bosniak War (1992 – 1994) in early 1993.

Above: Images of the Croat – Bosniak War

The Bosnian War was characterized by bitter fighting, indiscriminate shelling of cities and towns, ethnic cleansing, and systematic mass rape, mainly perpetrated by Serb, and to a lesser extent, Croat and Bosniak forces.

Events such as the Siege of Sarajevo and the July 1995 Srebrenica massacre later became iconic of the conflict.

Above: Images of the Siege of Sarajevo (1992 – 1996)

The massacre of over 8,000 Bosniak males by Serb forces in Srebrenica is the only incident in Europe to have been recognized as a genocide since World War II.

Above: Gravestones at the Potočari genocide memorial near Srebrenica

The Serbs, although initially militarily superior due to the weapons and resources provided by the JNA, eventually lost momentum as the Bosniaks and Croats allied against the Republika Srpska in 1994 with the creation of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina following the Washington Agreement. 

Above: 18 March 1994: Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic and Croatian President Franjo Tudjman sign the Croat-Muslim Federation Peace Agreement, Old Executive Office Building, Washington DC

Pakistan ignored the UN’s ban on the supply of arms and airlifted anti-tank missiles to the Bosnian Muslims, while after the Srebrenica and Markale massacres, NATO intervened in 1995 with Operation Deliberate Force, targeting the positions of the Army of the Republika Srpska, which proved key in ending the war.

Above: Flag of Pakistan

Above: Markale Market, Sarajevo

The Markale market shelling or Markale massacres were two separate bombardments, with at least one of them confirmed to have been carried out by the Army of Republika Srpska, targeting civilians during the siege of Sarajevo in the Bosnian War.

They occurred at the Markale (marketplace) located in the historic core of Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The first occurred on 5 February 1994; 68 people were killed and 144 more were wounded by a 120-millimetre (4.7 in) mortar.

The second occurred on 28 August 1995 when five mortar shells launched by Army of Republika Srpska killed 43 people and wounded 75 others.

The latter attack was the alleged reason for NATO air strikes against Bosnian Serb forces that would eventually lead to the Dayton Peace Accords and the end of the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The war ended after the signing of the General Framework Agreement for Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina in Paris on 14 December 1995.

Peace negotiations were held in Dayton, Ohio, and were finalized on 21 November 1995.

By early 2008, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia had convicted forty-five Serbs, twelve Croats, and four Bosniaks of war crimes in connection with the war in Bosnia.

Above: International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia logo

Estimates suggest over 100,000 people were killed during the war.

Over 2.2 million people were displaced, making it, at the time, the most violent conflict in Europe since the end of World War II.

In addition, an estimated 12,000–50,000 women were raped, mainly carried out by Serb forces, with most of the victims being Bosniak women.

Above: Norwegian UN troops on their way up Sniper Alley in Sarajevo, November 1995

Serbian forces, under Slobodan Milošević and Radovan Karadžić, carried out ethnic cleansing against Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims) and Croats.

The most infamous massacre occurred in Srebrenica, where over 8,000 Bosniak men and boys were murdered.

The war was fueled by a vision of a “Greater Serbia” where non-Serbs had no place.

• It is disproportionate.

When the response to a conflict far exceeds the provocation, it ceases to be about justice and becomes about domination.

For example:

The Sack of Baghdad:

The Siege of Baghdad took place in early 1258.

A large army commanded by Hulegu, a prince of the Mongol Empire, attacked the historic capital of the Abbasid Caliphate after a series of provocations from its ruler, Caliph Al-Musta’sim.

Within a few weeks, Baghdad fell and was sacked by the Mongol army — Al-Musta’sim was killed alongside hundreds of thousands of his subjects.

The city’s fall has traditionally been seen as marking the end of the Islamic Golden Age.

In reality, its ramifications are uncertain.

Above: Dinar minted under al-Musta’sim’s rule

After the accession of his brother Möngke Khan (1209 – 1259) to the Mongol throne in 1251, Hulegu, a grandson of Genghis Khan, was dispatched westwards to Persia to secure the region.

Above: “Audience with Möngke Khan“, Ata-Malik Juvayni (1226 – 1283), Tārīkh-i Jahāngushāy (“The History of The World Conqueror“)

Above: Mongol ruler Hulagu Khan (1217 – 1265), Rashīd al-Dīn Hamadānī (1350)

Above: Mongol Emperor Genghis Khan (1162 – 1227)

Although Mongol rule was secured elsewhere in the Near East, Baghdad remained unconquered, and even defeated a Mongol force in 1245. 

Another problem was the secretive Nizari Ismaili state, also known as the Order of Assassins, in the Elburz Mountains.

Above: Flag of Nizari Ismaili state (1162 – 1256)

They had killed Mongol commanders during the 1240s, and had allegedly dispatched 400 Assassins to the Mongol capital Karakorum (1220 – 1380) to kill the Khan himself.

Above: Erdene Zuu Monastery, Kharkhorin, Mongolia (near the ruins of Karakorum)

Möngke Khan was proclaimed Khan in 1251 as part of the Toluid Revolution, which established the family of Genghis’ youngest son Tolui (1191 – 1232) as the most powerful figures in the Mongol Empire. 

Above: Tolui Khan, Rashīd al-Dīn Ṭabīb, Jāmiʿ al-Tawārīkh (“the Compendium of Chronicles“) – “the first world history” (14th c.)

Möngke resolved to send his younger brothers Kublai and Hulegu on massive military expeditions to subdue rebellious vassals and problematic enemies.

Above: Mongol Emperor Kublai Khan (1215 – 1294)

While Kublai was sent to vassalize the Dali Kingdom and resume the war against the Southern Song, Hulegu was dispatched westwards to destroy the Ismaili Assassins and to ensure the submission of the Abbasid caliphs. 

Above: Dali Kingdom (937 – 1253)

Above: China (1142)

For this task, he was assigned one fifth of the Empire’s manpower, a figure which has been variously calculated by modern scholars as between 138,000, nearly 200,000, or 300,000 men. 

The force contained troops from vassalized Armenia, including its King Hetoum I, a thousand-strong corps of military engineers led by General Guo Kan (1217 – 1277), auxiliaries from all over the Empire, and generals from all the branches of the Mongol imperial family, including three princes from the Golden Horde (1225 – 1502), the Chagatayid (1227 – 1347) Prince Teguder, and possibly one of Genghis Khan’s grandsons through his daughter Checheikhen (1186 – 1253).

Above: Coinage of Armenian King Hetoum I (1213 – 1270) and Queen Zabel (1216 – 1252)

Above: Hethum I (seated) in the Mongol court of Karakorum, “receiving the homage of the Mongols“. Miniature from Histoire des Tartars, Hayton of Corycus (1307)

Above: Territory of the Golden Horde (1300)

Because of the size of his force, Hulegu’s progress from Karakorum was extremely leisurely by Mongol standards.

Setting out in October 1253, he spent the next years passing through Transoxiana and received homage from local rulers, including Arghun Aqa at Kish (now Shahrisabz, Uzbekistan) in November 1255.

Above: Arghun in Tārīkh-i Jahān-Gushā – The History of The World Conqueror (1290)

Above: Ak-Saray Palace, Shahrisabz, Uzbekistan with the monument to Timur (Tamerlane) in the middle

Early the following year, Hulegu entered the Assassins’ heartland of Kohistan.

An advanced vanguard under General Kitbuqa (d. 1260) had taken numerous Ismaili fortresses, unsuccessfully besieged the stronghold at Gerdkuh, and sacked the city of Tun (Ferdows) between 1253 and 1256.

Above: Ruins of Gerdkuh, Damghan, Qumis, Iran

Above: Ferdows, Iran

The Grand Master of the Assassins, Ala ad-Din Muhammad, had died in December 1255.

Above: Coinage of Muhammad III of Alamut (1211 – 1255)

Hulegu sent ambassadors to his young successor, Rukn al-Din Khurshah (1230 – 1256).

The new Grand Master attempted to stall for time, but his fortresses steadily fell to the Mongols.

He surrendered from Maymun-Diz on 19 November 1256.

Rukn al-Din persuaded the stronghold of Alamut to surrender on 15 December 1256.

Above: Siege of Alamut, Kohistan (Persia)

Hulegu had expected the Abbasid Caliph al-Musta’sim to provide troops for the campaign against the Assassins.

The Caliph had initially assented, but his ministers argued that the real purpose of the request was to empty Baghdad of potential defenders, and so he refused. 

Later Sunni writers accused Baghdad’s Vizier, a Shi’ite named Muhammad ibn al-Alqami, of having betrayed the Caliph by opening secret negotiations with Hulegu.

In 1256, sectarian violence between Sunnis and Shi’a had broken out after a devastating flood, placing Baghdad in a difficult position.

However, al-Musta’sim and his ministers were still quite delusional concerning their chances of success.

Hulegu spent the summer of 1257 on or near the Hamadan plain, where he was rejoined by Baiju, who had been subduing restless vassals in the northwest.

Above: Hamadan, Iran

Baiju brought Seljuk, Georgian and Armenian vassals, including the Prince Pŕosh Khaghbakian (1223 – 1283) and Prince Zak‘arē, to join the Mongol army.

Above: Mausoleum of Prince Prosh Khaghbakian, Geghard Monastery, Armenia

Above: Prince Zakare III fresco, Kobayr Monastery, Armenia

In September, Hulegu began a correspondence with al-Musta’sim, described by the historian René Grousset as “one of the most magnificent dialogues in history“.

Above: French historian René Grousset (1885 – 1952)

His first message demanded that the Caliph peacefully submit and send his three principal ministers — the vizier, the commander of the soldiers, and the dawatdar (keeper of the inkpot) — to the Mongols.

All three likely refused.

Three less important officials were sent instead.

I will bring you crashing down from the summit of the sky,
Like a lion I will throw you down to the lowest depths.
I will not leave a single person alive in your country,
I will turn your city, lands and empire into flames.

If you have the heart to save your head and your ancient family,
Listen carefully to my advice.
If you refuse to accept it, I will show you the meaning of the will of God.”

End of the first letter from Hulegu to al-Musta’sim, September 1257

Al-Musta’sim’s reply to Hulegu’s letter called the Mongol leader young and ignorant, and presented himself as able to summon armies from all of Islam.

Accompanied by disrespectful behaviour towards Hulegu’s envoys, who were exposed to taunting and mockery from mobs on Baghdad’s streets, this was just antagonistic bombast:

The Mamluk Sultanate in Egypt was hostile towards the Caliph.

Above: Flag of the Mamluk Sultanate (1250 – 1517)

The Ayyubid minor rulers in Syria were focusing on their own survival.

Above: Ayyubid Sultanate of Egypt (in pink)(1171 – 1260) at the death of Saladin in 1193

A further exchange of letters brought no progress save the Caliph’s concession of a small amount of tribute — al-Alqami had argued for sending large amounts, but the dawatdar argued that al-Alqami was trying to empty the treasury and win Hulegu’s favour.

Losing patience, Hulegu consulted his advisors on the practicalities of attacking Baghdad.

The astronomer Husam al-Din prophesied doom, stating that all rulers who had attacked Baghdad had afterwards lost their kingdom.

Hulegu then turned to the polymath Nasir al-Din al-Tusi, who simply replied that none of these disasters would happen.

Hulegu would rule in place of the Caliph.

Above: Iranian stamp for the 700th anniversary of the death of Nasir al-Din al-Tusi (1201 – 1274)

Invading Mesopotamia from all sides, the Mongol army soon approached Baghdad, routing a sortie on 17 January 1258 by flooding their opponents’ camp.

They then invested Baghdad, which was left with around 30,000 troops.

The assault began at the end of January.

Mongol siege engines breached Baghdad’s fortifications within a couple of days, and Hulegu’s highly-trained troops controlled the eastern wall by 4 February.

The increasingly desperate al-Musta’sim frantically tried to negotiate, but Hulegu was intent on total victory, even killing soldiers who attempted to surrender.

The Caliph eventually surrendered the city on 10 February, and the Mongols began looting three days later.

The total number of people who died is unknown, as it was likely increased by subsequent epidemics.

Hulegu later estimated the total at around 200,000.

After calling an amnesty for the pillaging on 20 February, Hulegu executed the Caliph.

In contrast to the exaggerations of later Muslim historians, Baghdad prospered under Hulegu’s Ilkhanate.

Above: The Fall of Baghdad, 10 February 1258

In response to the murder of Mongol envoys by the Abbasid Caliphate, Hulagu Khan led the Mongols in an invasion of Baghdad.

The attack was not merely about punishment — it was a catastrophic display of disproportionate force.

The Mongols slaughtered an estimated 200,000 to 1,000,000 people, destroyed the House of Wisdom (one of the greatest centers of learning at the time), and devastated the city.

The Caliph was executed, and the cultural and intellectual heart of the Islamic world was shattered.

The response far outweighed the initial provocation, making it an infamous example of unwarranted violence.

Above: Mongols besieging Baghdad in 1258

• It is cyclical and self-perpetuating

When violence is pursued not to an end but as an end in itself —when warlords, politicians, and factions sustain conflict to maintain power — it loses all justification.

For example:

The Reign of Terror (1793 – 1794)

The Reign of Terror (la Terreur) was a period of the French Revolution (1789- 1799) when, following the creation of the First Republic (1792 – 1804), a series of massacres and numerous public executions took place in response to the Federalist revolts (1793), revolutionary fervor, anticlerical sentiment, and accusations of treason by the Committee of Public Safety (1793 – 1795).

Above: Emblem of the Committee of Public Safety

While terror was never formally instituted as a legal policy by the National Convention (1792 – 1795), it was more often employed as a concept.

Historians disagree when exactly “the Terror” began.

Some consider it to have begun in 1793 when the Revolutionary Tribunal (1792 – 1795) came into existence.

Above: The Revolutionary Tribunal, La Démagogie en 1793 à Paris, Charles-Aimé Dauban (1850)

Others cite the earlier September Massacres (2 – 6 September 1792), or even July 1789 when the first killing of the Revolution occurred.

Above: Depiction of the September Massacres, where priests and noble prisoners were killed in Paris on 2 September 1792. Subtitles with poems condemning the action in French and German.

Above: The storming of the Bastille Prison, Paris (14 July 1789)

The Terror concluded with the fall of Maximilien Robespierre and his alleged allies in July 1794, in what is known as the Thermidorian Reaction.

Above: The fall of Maximilien Robespierre (27 July 1794 / 8 Thermidor Year 2 of the Revolutionary Calendar)

By then, 16,594 official death sentences had been dispensed throughout France since June 1793, of which 2,639 were in Paris alone.

An additional 10,000 to 12,000 people had been executed without trial.

10,000 had died in prison.

Above: The execution of nine immigrants, 1 October 1793

In the summer of 1793, leading politicians in France felt a sense of emergency between the widespread civil war and counter-revolution. 

Bertrand Barère exclaimed on 5 September 1793 in the National Convention:

“Let’s make terror the order of the day!“

This quote has frequently been interpreted as the beginning of a supposed “system of terror“, an interpretation no longer retained by historians today.

Above: French politician Bertrand Barère (1755 – 1841)

Under the pressure of the radical sans-culottes (urban workers), the Convention agreed to institute a revolutionary army but refused to make terror the order of the day.

According to French historian Jean-Clément Martin, there was no “system of terror” instated by the Convention between 1793 and 1794, despite the pressure from some of its members and the sans-culottes. 

Above: French historian Jean-Clément Martin

The members of the Convention were determined to avoid street violence such as the September Massacres of 1792 by taking violence into their own hands as an instrument of government.

The monarchist Jacques Cazotte who predicted the Terror was guillotined at the end of the month.

Above: French author Jacques Cazotte (1719 – 1792)

What Maximilien Robespierre called “terror” was the fear that the “justice of exception” would inspire the enemies of the French First Republic.

He opposed the idea of terror as the order of the day, defending instead “justice” as the order of the day.

In February 1794 in a speech he explains why this “terror” was necessary as a form of exceptional justice in the context of the revolutionary government:

If the basis of popular government in peacetime is virtue, the basis of popular government during a revolution is both virtue and terror.

Virtue, without which terror is baneful.

Terror, without which virtue is powerless.

Terror is nothing more than speedy, severe and inflexible justice; it is thus an emanation of virtue.

It is less a principle in itself, than a consequence of the general principle of democracy, applied to the most pressing needs of the patrie (homeland).”

Above: French statesman Maximilien Robespierre (1758 – 1794)

Marxist historian Albert Mathiez argues that such terror was a necessary reaction to the circumstances.

Others suggest there were additional causes, including ideological and emotional.

Above: French historian Albert Mathiez (1874 – 1932)

On 10 March 1793 the National Convention set up the Revolutionary Tribunal. 

Among those charged by the Tribunal, initially, about half of those arrested were acquitted, but the number dropped to about a quarter after the enactment of the Law of 22 Prairial on 10 June 1794.

Above: Contemporary cartoon showing Robespierre executing the executioner. The monument in the background carries the inscription ‘Here Lies All Of France‘ (1750)

In March, rebellion broke out in the Vendée (Western France on the Atlantic coast) in response to mass conscription, which developed into a civil war.

Above: Henri de La Rochejaquelein, Battle of Cholet, March 1793, Paul-Émile Boutigny, 31 December 1898

Discontent in the Vendée lasted — according to some accounts —until after the Terror.

Above: Le Bataillon Carré, a painting depicting an ambush in the War of Vendée, Julien Le Blant (1880)

On 6 April 1793, the National Convention established the Committee of Public Safety, which gradually became the de facto war-time government of France. 

The Committee oversaw the Reign of Terror.

“During the Reign of Terror, at least 300,000 suspects were arrested, 17,000 were officially executed, and perhaps 10,000 died in prison or without trial.“

On 2 June the Parisian sans-culottes surrounded the National Convention, calling for administrative and political purges, a fixed low price for bread, and a limitation of the electoral franchise to sans-culottes alone.

Above: Simon Chenard as a Sans-Culotte, Louis-Léopold Boilly (1792)

(The name sans-culottes refers to their clothing, and through that to their lower-class status: culottes were the fashionable silk knee-breeches of the 18th-century nobility and bourgeoisie, and the working class sans-culottes wore pantaloons (long trousers) instead.

The sans-culottes, most of them urban laborers, served as the driving popular force behind the Revolution.

They were judged by the other revolutionaries as “radicals” because they advocated a direct democracy, that is to say, without intermediaries, such as Members of Parliament.

Though ill-clad and ill-equipped, with little or no support from the middle and upper classes, they made up the bulk of the Revolutionary Army and were responsible for many executions during the early years of the French Revolutionary Wars.

During the Reign of Terror, the sans-culottes — the urban workers of France —  put pressure on the National Convention delegates and contributed to the overall instability of France.

Moreover, the sans-culottes agitated leaders to inflict punishments on those who opposed the interests of the poor.

The sans-culottes violently demonstrated, pushing their demands and creating constant pressure for the Montagnards to enact reform. 

They fed the frenzy of instability and chaos by utilizing popular pressure during the Revolution.

For example, they sent letters and petitions to the Committee of Public Safety urging them to protect their interests and rights with measures, such as taxation of foodstuffs that favored workers over the rich.

They advocated for arrests of those deemed to oppose reforms against those with privilege, and the more militant members would advocate pillage in order to achieve the desired equality.

The resulting instability caused problems that made forming the new Republic and achieving full political support critical.)

With the backing of the National Guard, they persuaded the Convention to arrest 29 Girondist leaders. 

In reaction to the imprisonment of the Girondin deputies, some 13 departments started the Federalist revolts against the Convention, which were ultimately crushed.

Above: La Force Prison, Paris

(The Girondins were a group of loosely affiliated individuals rather than an organized political party.

From 1791 to 1793, the Girondins were active in the Legislative Assembly and the National Convention.

Together with the Montagnards (a left-leaning radical group), they initially were part of the Jacobin (the most influential political club of anti-Royalist Republicans during the French Revolution) movement.

Above: Seal of the Jacobins

They campaigned for the end of the Monarchy, but then resisted the spiraling momentum of the Revolution, which caused a conflict with the more radical Montagnards.

Above: La Montaigne (The Mountain), the Montagnard organization

They dominated the movement until their fall in the insurrection of 31 May – 2 June 1793, which resulted in the domination of the Montagnards and the purge and eventual mass execution of the Girondins.

This event is considered to mark the beginning of the Reign of Terror.)

Above: Girondins in the La Force Prison (Paris) after their arrest

On 24 June, the Convention adopted the first republican constitution of France, the French Constitution of 1793.

It was ratified by public referendum, but never put into force.

Above: The French Constitution of 1793

On 13 July, the assassination of Jean-Paul Marat — a Jacobin leader and journalist — resulted in a further increase in Jacobin political influence. 

Above: French journalist Jean-Paul Marat (1743 – 1793)

Jean-Paul Marat was a French political theorist, physician, and scientist. A journalist and politician during the French Revolution, he was a vigorous defender of the sans-culottes, a radical voice, and published his views in pamphlets, placards and newspapers.

His periodical L’Ami du peuple (The Friend of the People) made him an unofficial link with the radical Jacobin group that came to power after June 1793.

His journalism was known for its fierce tone and uncompromising stance toward the new leaders and institutions of the Revolution.

Responsibility for the September massacres has been attributed to him, given his position of renown at the time, and a paper trail of decisions leading up to the massacres. 

Others posit that the collective mentality which made them possible resulted from circumstances and not from the will of any particular individual. 

Marat was assassinated by Charlotte Corday, a Girondin sympathizer, while taking a medicinal bath for his debilitating skin condition.

Above: French assassin Charlotte Corday (1768 – 1793), painted at her request by Jean-Jacques Hauer, a few hours before her execution

Corday was executed four days later for his assassination, on 17 July 1793.

Above: The death of Marat, Jacques-Louis David (1793)

Georges Danton, the leader of the August 1792 uprising against the King, was removed from the Committee of Public Safety on 10 July.

Above: French orator Georges Danton (1759 – 1794)

Above: Storming of Tuileries Palace, 10 August 1792

On 10 August, the National Guard of the Paris Commune and fédérés from Marseille and Brittany stormed the King’s residence in the Tuileries Palace in Paris, which was defended by the Swiss Guards.

Hundreds of Swiss guardsmen and 400 revolutionaries were killed in the battle.

Louis and the royal family took shelter with the Legislative Assembly.

The formal end of the monarchy occurred six weeks later on 21 September as one of the first acts of the new National Convention, which established a Republic on the next day.

On 27 July, Robespierre became part of the Committee of Public Safety.

On 23 August the National Convention decreed the levée en masse (mass national conscription):

The young men shall fight.

The married man shall forge arms and transport provisions.

The women shall make tents and clothes and shall serve in the hospitals.

The children shall pick rags to lint for bandages.

The old men shall betake themselves to the public square in order to arouse the courage of the warriors and preach hatred of kings and the unity of the Republic.”

Above: Departure of the Conscripts in 1807, Louis-Léopold Boilly

On 5 September, on the proposal of Barère, the Convention was supposed to have declared by vote that “terror is the order of the day“.

On that day’s session, the Convention, upon a proposal by Pierre Gaspard Chaumette and supported by Billaud and Danton, decided to form a revolutionary army of 6,000 men in Paris.

Above: French politician Pierre Gaspard Chaumette (1763 – 1794)

Pierre Gaspard Anaxagore Chaumette was a French politician of the Revolutionary period who served as the president of the Paris Commune and played a leading role in the establishment of the Reign of Terror.

He was a leader of the radical Hébertistes of the Revolution, an ardent critic of Christianity who was one of the leaders of the dechristianization of France.

His radical positions resulted in his alienation from Maximilien Robespierre.

Chaumette was arrested and executed.

Barère, representing the Committee of Public Safety, introduced a decree that was promptly passed, establishing a paid armed force of 6,000 men and 1,200 gunners “tasked with crushing counter-revolutionaries, enforcing revolutionary laws and public safety measures decreed by the National Convention, and safeguarding provisions“. 

This allowed the government to form “revolutionary armies” designed to force French citizens into compliance with Maximilian rule.

These armies were also used to enforce “the law of the General Maximum“, which controlled the distribution and pricing of food.

Addressing the Convention, Robespierre claimed that the “weight and willpower” of the people loyal to the Republic would be used to oppress those who would turn “political gatherings into gladiatorial arenas“.

The policy change unleashed a newfound military power in France, which was used to defend against the future coalitions formed by rival nations.

The event also solidified Robespierre’s rise to power as President of the Committee of Public Safety earlier in July.

On 8 September, banks and exchange offices were shuttered to curb the circulation of counterfeit assignats and the outflow of capital, with investments in foreign countries punishable by death.

The following day, the extremists Jean-Marie Collot d’Herbois and Jacques-Nicolas Billaud-Varenne were elected in the Committee of Public Safety. 

Above: Jean Marie Collot d’Herbois (1749 – 1796)

Jean-Marie Collot d’Herbois was a French actor, dramatist, essayist, and revolutionary.

He was a member of the Committee of Public Safety during the Reign of Terror and administered the execution of more than 2,000 people in the city of Lyon.

There, he introduced the Reign of Terror in its most violent form, with mass executions, including more than a hundred priests and nuns.

He began the dismantling of the city itself. 

His excessive behavior led the Committee of Public Safety to have Collot return to Paris as a suspect.

The month of May 1794 saw assassination attempts on Collot on the 23rd and fellow Committee member Maximilien Robespierre on the 25th.

As Collot was accused of excessive slaughter and destruction, and suspected his own arrest and execution, he opposed Robespierre during the Thermidorian Reaction in July 1794 while presiding over the Convention during the initial session.

Despite this change of heart, Collot d’Herbois was accused of complicity with Robespierre, the two having previously been colleagues on the Committee of Public Safety, but was acquitted.

Denounced a second time, he defended himself by pleading that he had acted for the Revolution, but, in March 1795, he was condemned with Bertrand Barère and Billaud-Varenne to transportation to  Cayenne, French Guiana, where he exerted a brief revolutionary influence before dying of yellow fever in 1796.

Above: Cayenne, French Guiana

Above: Jacques Nicolas Billaud-Varenne (1756 – 1819)

Jacques-Nicolas Billaud-Varenne was a French lawyer and a major figure in the French Revolution.

A close associate of Georges Danton and Maximilien Robespierre, he was one of the most militant members of the Committee of Public Safety.

He is often considered a key architect of the Reign of Terror.

Billaud-Varenne subsequently broke with Robespierre, partly due to their ideological conflicts relating to the centralization of power.

Ultimately he played a major role in Robespierre’s downfall on 9 Thermidor, an act for which he later expressed remorse.

After Thermidor, Billaud-Varenne was part of the Crêtois, the last group of Montagnard deputies.

He presided over the persecution of Louis-Marie Turreau and Jean-Baptiste Carrier for their massacres during the War in the Vendée, which ended by their execution.

Billaud-Varenne was later arrested during the Thermidorian Reaction.

Deported to Cayenne without trial, he married a black ex-slave named Brigitte, refused Napoleon’s pardon there and finally died in Port-au-Prince in 1819.

Billaud-Varenne was one of the central figures of the first part of the French Revolution, but he remains little studied or little understood.

Above: Port-au-Prince, Haiti

On 9 September, the Convention established paramilitary forces, the “revolutionary armies“, to force farmers to surrender grain demanded by the government.

On 17 September, the Law of Suspects was passed, which authorized the imprisonment of vaguely defined “suspects“.

This created a mass overflow in the prison systems.

On 29 September, the Convention extended price fixing from grain and bread to other essential goods and also fixed wages.

On 10 October, the Convention decreed “the provisional government shall be revolutionary until peace“.

On 16 October, Marie Antoinette was executed.

Above: French Queen Marie Antoinette (1755 – 1793)

Marie Antoinette was the last Queen of France before the French Revolution and the establishment of the French First Republic.

She was the wife of Louis XVI, whom she married in May 1770 at the age of 14.

On 10 May 1774, her husband ascended the throne and she became Queen.

Above: French King Louis XVI (1754 – 1793)

As Queen, Marie Antoinette became increasingly a target of criticism by opponents of the domestic and foreign policies of Louis XVI, and those opposed to the monarchy in general.

The French libelles (political pamphlets) accused her of being profligate, promiscuous, having illegitimate children, and harboring sympathies for France’s perceived enemies, including her native Austria.

She was falsely accused of defrauding the Crown’s jewelers in the Affair of the Diamond Necklace, but the accusations damaged her reputation further.

Above: The diamond necklace was commissioned by Louis XV of France (1710 – 1774) for his mistress, Madame du Barry (1744 – 1793). At the death of the King, the necklace was unpaid for, which almost bankrupted the jewelers and then led to various unsuccessful schemes to secure a sale to Queen Marie Antoinette.

The Queen’s reputation, already tarnished by gossip, was further sullied by the false accusation that she had participated in a crime to defraud the Crown’s jewelers in acquiring a very expensive diamond necklace she then refused to pay for.

In reality, she rejected the idea of buying it only to have her signature forged by Jeanne de Valois-Saint-Rémy.

Although Valois-Saint-Rémy was later convicted, the event remains historically significant as one of many that led to the French disillusionment with the Monarchy, in that it was one of the contemporary scandals that gave moral weight and popular support for the French Revolution.

Above: French noblewoman Jeanne Lamotte de la Valois – St. Remy (1756 – 1791)

During the French Revolution, the Queen became known as Madame Déficit, because the country’s financial crisis was blamed on her lavish spending and her opposition to social and financial reforms.

Several events were linked to Marie Antoinette during the Revolution after the government placed the royal family under house arrest in the Tuileries Palace in October 1789.

The June 1791 attempted flight to Varennes and her role in the War of the First Coalition (1792 – 1797) were immensely damaging to her image among French citizens.

On 10 August 1792, the attack on the Tuileries forced the royal family to take refuge at the Assembly.

They were imprisoned in the Temple Prison on 13 August 1792.

On 21 September 1792, France was declared a republic and the Monarchy was abolished. 

Louis XVI was executed by guillotine on 21 January 1793.

Above: Execution of King Louis XVI (21 January 1793)

Marie Antoinette’s trial began on 14 October 1793.

Two days later, she was convicted by the Revolutionary Tribunal of high treason and executed by beheading by guillotine on 16 October 1793 at the Place de la Révolution.

Above: The execution of Marie Antoinette, 16 October 1793

The trial of the Girondins started on the same day.

They were executed on 31 October in just over half an hour by Charles-Henri Sanson. 

Above: The execution of the Girondins

Joseph Fouché and Collot d’Herbois suppressed the revolt of Lyon against the National Convention, while Jean-Baptiste Carrier ordered the drownings at Nantes. 

Above: French Duke Joseph Fouché (1759 – 1820)

Joseph Fouché, 1st Duc d’Otrante, 1st Comte Fouché was a French statesman, revolutionary, and Minister of Police under First Consul Napoleon Bonaparte, who later became a subordinate of Emperor Napoleon.

He was particularly known for the ferocity with which he suppressed the Lyon insurrection during the Revolution in 1793.

Above: Fouché’s repression of Lyons Insurgency (January 1794)

Fouché’s conduct was marked by the utmost savagery.

On his return to Paris early in April 1794, he thus characterized his policy:

“The blood of criminals fertilizes the soil of liberty and establishes power on sure foundations.”

He was respected for being a highly competent Minister of Police under the Directory (1795 – 1799), the Consulate (1799 – 1804) and the Empire (1808 – 1815).

In 1815, he served as President of the Executive Commission, which was the provisional government of France installed after the abdication of Napoleon (22 June 1815).

Above: Napoleon on Board the Bellerophon, the morning of 23 July 1815, as he watches the French shoreline recede, Sir William Quiller Orchardson (1880)

Fouché, once a revolutionary using extreme terror against the Bourbon supporters, now initiated a campaign of terror against real and imagined enemies of the Royalist restoration (officially directed against those who had plotted and supported Napoléon’s return to power).

Even Prime Minister Talleyrand disapproved of such practices, including the execution of Michel Ney and compiling proscription lists of other military men and former republican politicians.

Above: French statesman Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgold (1754 – 1838)

Above: French Marechal Michel Ney (1769 – 1815)

Famous, or rather infamous, is the conversation between Fouché and Lazare Carnot, who had been Interior Minister during the Hundred Days:

Carnot: “Where should I go then, traitor?“

Fouché: “Go where you want, imbecile!“

Above: French politician Lazare Carnot (1753 – 1823)

Fouché was soon relegated to the post of French ambassador in Saxony.

Talleyrand himself lost his portfolio soon after, having been Prime Minister from 9 July to 26 September 1815.

In 1816, the royalist authorities found Fouché’s further services useless.

Fouché settled first in Prague, then in Linz and finally in Trieste, his considerable wealth allowed him to live comfortably and he spent his time writing his memoirs and seeing to the upbringing and education of his children.

He died in 1820 and is now buried in Ferrières-en-Brie.

Above: Saint Remy Church, Ferrières-en-Brie, France

Above: French politician Jean-Baptiste Carrier (1756 – 1794)

Jean-Baptiste Carrier was a French Revolutionary and politician most notable for his actions in the War in the Vendée during the Reign of Terror.

While under orders to suppress a Royalist counter-revolution, he commanded the execution of 4,000 civilians, mainly priests, women and children in Nantes, some by drowning in the river Loire, which Carrier himself described as “the National Bathtub“.

After the fall of the Robespierre government, Carrier was tried for war crimes by the Revolutionary Tribunal, found guilty, and executed.

Above: The drownings at Nantes

Jean-Lambert Tallien ensured the operation of the guillotine in Bordeaux, while Barras and Fréron addressed issues in Marseille and Toulon. 

Above: French politician Jean Lambert Tallien (1767 – 1820)

Joseph Le Bon was sent to the Somme and Pas-de-Calais regions.

Above: French politician Joseph Le Bon (1765 – 1795)

He was sent as a representative on missions into the departments of the Somme and Pas-de-Calais, where he showed great severity in dealing with offences against revolutionaries. During his stay in the north he chased many nobles, most of them condemned for treason and executed by guillotine.

In consequence, during the reaction which followed the 9th Thermidor (27 July 1794) he was arrested on the 22nd Messidor, year III. (10 July 1795).

He was tried before the criminal tribunal of the Somme, condemned to death for abuse of his power during his mission, and executed at Amiens on the 24th Vendémiaire in the year IV. (10 October 1795).

On 8 November, the director of the assignats manufacture, and Manon Roland were executed.

Above: French writer Madame Manon Roland (1754 – 1793)

Marie-Jeanne “Manon” Roland de la Platière was a French revolutionary, salonnière and writer.

Her letters and memoirs became famous for recording the state of mind that conditioned the events leading to the Revolution.

From a young age Roland was interested in philosophy and political theory and studied a broad range of writers and thinkers.

At the same time she was aware that, as a woman, she was predestined to play another role in society than a man.

After marrying the economist Jean-Marie Roland de la Platière, she did develop with him a husband and wife team which made it possible for her to engage in public politics.

She moved from Paris to Lyon, where she initially led a quiet and unremarkable life as a provincial intellectual with her husband.

She became actively involved in politics when the French Revolution broke out in 1789.

She spent the first years of the revolution in Lyon, where her husband was elected to the city council.

During this period she developed a network of contacts with politicians and journalists.

Her reports on developments in Lyon in letters to people in her network were published in national revolutionary newspapers.

In 1791, the couple settled in Paris, where Madame Roland soon established herself as a leading figure within the political group the Girondins, one of the more moderate revolutionary factions.

She was known for her intelligence, astute political analyses and her tenacity.

She was a good lobbyist and negotiator.

The salon she hosted in her home several times a week was an important meeting place for politicians.

However, she was also convinced of her own intellectual and moral superiority and alienated important political leaders like Robespierre and Danton.

Madame Roland was not an advocate for political rights for women.

She accepted that women should play a very modest role in public and political life.

Even during her lifetime, many found this position difficult to reconcile with her own active involvement in politics and her important role within the Girondins.

When her husband unexpectedly became Minister of the Interior in 1792, her political influence grew.

She had control over the content of ministerial letters, memorandums and speeches, was involved in decisions about political appointments, and was in charge of a bureau set up to influence public opinion in France.

She was both admired and reviled, and particularly hated by the sans-culottes of Paris.

The publicists Marat and Hébert conducted a smear campaign against Madame Roland as part of the power struggle between the Girondins and the more radical Jacobins and Montagnards.

In June 1793, she was the first Girondin to be arrested during the Terror and was guillotined a few months later.

Madame Roland wrote her memoirs while she was imprisoned in the months before her execution.

They are – like her letters – a valuable source of information about the first years of the French Revolution.

On 13 November, the Convention shut down the Paris Bourse and banned all commerce in precious metals, under penalties.

Above: Palais Brongniart, the former Paris Bourse (now Euronext) building

Anti-clerical sentiments increased and a campaign of dechristianization occurred at the end of 1793.

Eventually, Robespierre denounced the “de-Christianisers” as foreign enemies.

Above: Looting of a church during the Revolution, Jacques Swebach-Desfontaines (1793)

In early December, Robespierre accused Danton in the Jacobin Club of “too often showing his vices and not his virtue“. 

Camille Desmoulins defended Danton and warned Robespierre not to exaggerate the Revolution.

Above: French politician Camille Desmoulins (1760 – 1794)

Lucie-Simplice-Camille-Benoît Desmoulins was a French journalist, politician and a prominent figure of the French Revolution.

He is best known for playing an instrumental role in the events that led to the Storming of the Bastille.

Desmoulins was also noted for his radical criticism of the Reign of Terror as the editor of the journal Le Vieux Cordelier.

He was a schoolmate and close friend of Maximilien Robespierre and a close friend and political ally of Georges Danton, who were the leading figures in the French Revolution.

A lawyer by training, Desmoulins was enthralled by the Revolution from its outbreak.

On 12 July 1789, shortly after Louis XVI dismissed his popular finance minister Jacques Necker, Desmoulins delivered an impassioned call to arms to a crowd before the Palais-Royal.

His agitation sparked widespread unrest in Paris, which culminated in the Storming of the Bastille two days later.

Through his newfound fame, Desmoulins quickly established himself as a prominent radical pamphleteer.

He advocated explicitly in favor of republicanism and revolutionary violence.

He mounted relentless attacks on not only the Ancien Régime, but also once-sympathetic revolutionary figures.

His campaigns ultimately contributed to the fall of the Girondist faction and the beginning of the Reign of Terror.

During the Terror, Desmoulins and his close friend and political ally Georges Danton distanced themselves from Maximilien Robespierre’s radical Montagnards.

Through his new journal Le Vieux Cordelier, he criticized the excesses of the Revolutionary Government and made pleas for clemency, which enraged Robespierre and eventually led to his downfall.

In April 1794, Desmoulins was sentenced to death by the Revolutionary Tribunal and guillotined alongside Danton and other accused Dantonists.

Above: Desmoulins and Danton before the Revolutionary Tribunal

On 5 December, the National Convention passed the Law of 14 Frimaire, which gave the central government more control over the actions of the representatives on mission.

The Commune of Paris and the revolutionary committees in the sections had to obey the law, the two Committees, and the Convention. 

Desmoulins argued that the Revolution should return to its original ideas en vogue around 10 August 1792. 

A Committee of Grace had to be established.

Above: Flag of France

On 8 December, Madame du Barry was guillotined.

Above: French Countess Madame du Barry

Jeanne Bécu, Comtesse du Barry was the last maîtresse-en-titre (official mistress) of King Louis XV of France.

She was executed by guillotine during the French Revolution on accusations of treason — particularly being suspected of assisting émigrés to flee from the Revolution.

She is also known as “Mademoiselle Vaubernier“.

In 1768, when the King wished to make Jeanne maîtresse-en-titre, etiquette required her to be the wife of a high courtier, so she was hastily married on 1 September 1768 to Comte Guillaume du Barry.

The wedding ceremony was accompanied by a false birth certificate created by Jean-Baptiste du Barry, the Comte’s older brother.

The certificate made Jeanne appear younger by three years and obscured her poor background.

Henceforth, she was recognized as the King’s official paramour.

Her arrival at the French royal court scandalized some, as she had been a courtesan (prostitute) and came from humble beginnings.

She was shunned by many including Marie Antoinette, whose contempt for Jeanne caused alarm and dissension at court.

On New Year’s Day 1772, Marie Antoinette deigned to speak to Jeanne.

Her remark, “There are many people at Versailles today.“, was enough to take the edge off the dispute, though many still disapproved of Jeanne.

Decades later, during the Reign of Terror in the French Revolution, Jeanne was imprisoned over accusations of treason by her servant Zamor.

She was executed by guillotine on 8 December 1793.

Her body was buried in the Madeleine cemetery.

The fabulous gems which she had smuggled to London were sold at auction in 1795.

Above: Madame du Barry taken to be executed, Tighe Hopkins: The Dungeons of Old Paris (1897)

On receiving notice that he was to appear on the next day before the Revolutionary Tribunal, Étienne Clavière committed suicide.

Above: Étienne Clavière (1735 – 1793), Swiss-born French financier and politician of the French Revolution

American Thomas Paine lost his seat in the Convention, was arrested, and locked up for his association with the Girondins, as well as being a foreign national.

Above: English-American philosopher Thomas Paine (1737 – 1809)

Thomas Paine (né Thomas Pain) was an English-born American Founding Father, French Revolutionary, inventor, and political philosopher.

He authored Common Sense (1776) and The American Crisis (1776–1783), two of the most influential pamphlets at the start of the American Revolution (1765 – 1783).

He helped to inspire the colonial era patriots in 1776 to declare independence from Great Britain. 

His ideas reflected Enlightenment-era ideals of human rights.

Paine was born in Thetford, Norfolk, England.

Above: King Street, Thetford, England

Paine immigrated to the British American colonies in 1774 with the help of Benjamin Franklin, arriving just in time to participate in the American Revolution.

Above: American polymath Benjamin Franklin (1706 – 1790)

Virtually every American Patriot read his 47-page pamphlet Common Sense, which catalyzed the call for independence from Great Britain. 

The American Crisis was a pro-independence pamphlet series.

Paine lived in France for most of the 1790s, becoming deeply involved in the French Revolution.

While in England, he wrote Rights of Man (1791), in part a defense of the French Revolution against its critics, particularly the Anglo-Irish conservative writer Edmund Burke.

Above: Edmund Burke (1729 – 1797)

Paine’s authorship of the tract led to a trial and conviction in absentia in England in 1792 for the crime of seditious libel.

The British government of William Pitt the Younger was worried by the possibility that the French Revolution might spread to Britain and had begun suppressing works that espoused radical philosophies.

Above: British Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger (1759 – 1806)

Paine’s work advocated the right of the people to overthrow their government and was therefore targeted with a writ for his arrest issued in early 1792.

Paine fled to France in September, despite not being able to speak French, but he was quickly elected to the French National Convention.

The Girondins regarded him as an ally.

Consequently, the Montagnards regarded him as an enemy, especially Marc-Guillaume Alexis Vadier, the powerful president of the Committee of General Security.

In December 1793, Vadier arrested Paine and took him to Luxembourg Prison in Paris.

Above: French politician Marc-Guillaume Alexis Vadier (1736 – 1828)

Paine completed the first part of The Age of Reason just before he was arrested.

Mark Philp notes that:

“In prison Paine managed to produce (and to convey to Daniel Isaac Eaton, the radical London publisher) a dedication for The Age of Reason and a new edition of the Rights of Man with a new preface“. 

James Monroe used his diplomatic connections to get Paine released in November 1794.

Above: US President James Monroe (1758 – 1831)

Paine became notorious because of his pamphlets and attacks on his former allies, who he felt had betrayed him.

In The Age of Reason and other writings, he advocated Deism, promoted reason and freethought.

He argued against religion in general and Christian doctrine in particular. 

(Deism is the philosophical position and rationalistic theology that generally rejects revelation as a source of divine knowledge and asserts that empirical reason and observation of the natural world are exclusively logical, reliable, and sufficient to determine the existence of a Supreme Being as the creator of the Universe.

More simply stated, Deism is the belief in the existence of God —often, but not necessarily, an impersonal and incomprehensible God who does not intervene in the Universe after creating it, solely based on rational thought without any reliance on revealed religions or religious authority.

Deism emphasizes the concept of natural theology — that is, God’s existence is revealed through nature.)

Above: English philosopher Edward Herbert (1583 – 1648) wrote the first major statement of Deism in English De Veritate (On Truth)(1624)

(A freethinker holds that beliefs should not be formed on the basis of authority, tradition, revelation or dogma, and should instead be reached by other methods such as logic, reason and empirical observation.

According to the Collins English Dictionary, a freethinker is:

“One who is mentally free from the conventional bonds of tradition or dogma, and thinks independently.”

In some contemporary thought in particular, free thought is strongly tied with rejection of traditional social or religious belief systems.

The cognitive application of free thought is known as “freethinking“, and practitioners of free thought are known as “freethinkers“.

Modern freethinkers consider free thought to be a natural freedom from all negative and illusive thoughts acquired from society.)

Above: Tombstone of a freethinker, Cemetery of Cullera, Spain

In 1796, Paine published a bitter open letter to George Washington, whom he denounced as an incompetent general and a hypocrite.

Above: US President George Washington (1732 – 1799)

Paine published the pamphlet Agrarian Justice (1797), discussing the origins of property and introducing the concept of a guaranteed minimum income through a one-time inheritance tax on landowners.

In 1802, Paine returned to the US.

He died on 8 June 1809.

Only six people attended his funeral, as he had been ostracized for his ridicule of Christianity and his attacks on the nation’s leaders.

Above: This plaque hangs on the site where Thomas Paine died, on Grove Street in Greenwich Village, New York City

By the end of 1793, two major factions had emerged, both threatening the revolutionary government:

• the Hébertists, who called for an intensification of the Terror and threatened insurrection

Above: French journalist Jacques Réne Hébert (1757 – 1794)

Jacques René Hébert was a French journalist and leader of the French Revolution.

As the founder and editor of the radical newspaper Le Père Duchesne, he had thousands of followers known as the Hébertists (Hébertistes).

A proponent of the Reign of Terror, he was eventually guillotined.

Above: Jacques-René Hébert, Pierre-Gaspard Chaumette, François-Nicolas Vincent (1767 – 1794) and Jean-Baptiste Gobel (1727 – 1794) are led by cart to the guillotine on 24 Ventôse Year II (14 March 1794)

• the Dantonists, led by Danton, who demanded moderation and clemency

The Committee of Public Safety took actions against both.

In Robespierre’s speech to the National Convention on 5 February 1794, he regards virtue as being the “fundamental principle of popular or democratic government“. 

Robespierre believed the virtue needed for any democratic government was extremely lacking in the French people.

As a result, he decided to weed out those he believed could never possess this virtue.

The result was a continual push towards Terror.

The Convention used this as justification for the course of action to:

“Crush the enemies of the revolution.

Let the laws be executed and let liberty be saved.“

On 8 February 1794, Carrier was recalled from Nantes after a member of the Committee of Public Safety wrote to Robespierre with information about the atrocities being carried out, although Carrier was not put on trial.

On 26 February and 3 March, Louis Antoine de Saint-Just proposed decrees to confiscate the property of exiles and opponents of the revolution, known as the Ventôse Decrees.

Above: French politician Louis Antoine de Saint-Just (1767 – 1794)

Louis Antoine Léon de Saint-Just, sometimes nicknamed the Archangel of Terror, was a French revolutionary, political philosopher, member and president of the French National Convention, a Jacobin club leader, and a major figure of the French Revolution.

As the youngest member elected to the National Convention, Saint-Just belonged to the Mountain faction.

A steadfast supporter and close friend of Robespierre, he was swept away in his downfall on 9 Thermidor, Year II.

Renowned for his eloquence, he stood out for the uncompromising nature and inflexibility of his principles advocating equality and virtue, as well as for the effectiveness of his missions during which he rectified the situation of the Army of the Rhine and contributed to the victory of the Republican armies at Fleurus.

Above: Battle of Fleurus, 26 June 1794

Politically combating the Girondins, the Hebertists, and then the Indulgents, he pushed for the confiscation of the property of the enemies of the Republic for the benefit of poor patriots.

He was the designated speaker for the Robespierrists in their conflicts with other political parties in the National Convention, launching accusations and requisitions against figures like Danton or Hébert.

To prevent the massacres for which the sans-culottes were responsible in the departments, particularly in Vendée, or to centralize repression (a point still unclear), he had the departmental revolutionary tribunals abolished and consolidated all procedures at the Revolutionary Tribunal of Paris.

He was also a political theorist, and notably inspired the Constitution of Year I and the attached Declaration of the Rights of the Man and of the Citizen of 1793.

Above: Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen (“Declaration des droits de l’homme“), 10 August 1793

He also authored works on the principles of the French Revolution.

On the 9th Thermidor, he defended Robespierre against accusations made by Barère and Tallien.

Arrested alongside him, he remained silent until his death the following day, when he was guillotined on the Place de la Révolution with the 104 Robespierrists executed, at the age of 26.

His body and head were then thrown into a mass grave.

The dark legend surrounding this figure, and Robespierrists in general, persisted in historical research until the second half of the 20th century, before gradually being reassessed from that period onward by more recent historians.

Until then, he was perceived as cruel, bloodthirsty, and having a wild and violent sexuality.

Above: Saint-Just and Robespierre at the Hôtel de Ville on the night of 9 to 10 Thermidor Year II, Jean-Joseph Weerts (1897)

In March, the major Hébertists were tried before the Revolutionary Tribunal and executed on 24 March.

On 30 March, the two committees decided to arrest Danton and Desmoulins after Saint-Just became uncharacteristically angry.

The Dantonists were tried on 3 to 5 April and executed on 5 April.

In mid-April it was decreed to centralize the investigation of court records and to bring all the political suspects in France to the Revolutionary Tribunal to Paris.

Saint-Just and Philippe-François-Joseph Le Bas journeyed the Rhine Army to oversee the generals and punish officers for perceived treasonous timidity or lack of initiative. 

Above: French politician Philippe Francois Joseph Le Bas (1764 – 1794)

Above: Army of the Rhine (1791 – 1795) fusilier

The two committees received the power to interrogate them immediately.

A special police bureau inside the Comité de salut public was created, whose task was to monitor public servants, competing with both the Committee of General Security and the Committee of Public Safety.

Foreigners were no longer allowed to travel through France or visit a Jacobin club. 

Above: Coat of arms of the First French Republic

Dutch patriots who had fled to France before 1790 were excluded.

The Patriottentijd (‘Time of the Patriots‘) was a period of political instability in the Dutch Republic between approximately 1780 and 1787.

Its name derives from the Patriots (Patriotten) faction who opposed the rule of the Stadtholder, William V, Prince of Orange, and his supporters who were known as Orangists (Orangisten).

Above: William V, Prince of Orange (1748 – 1806)

In 1781, one of the leaders of the Patriots, Joan Derk van der Capellen tot den Pol, influenced by the reformer Richard Price and the dissenter Joseph Priestley, anonymously published a pamphlet, entitled Aan het Volk van Nederland (“To the People of the Netherlands“), in which he advocated the formation of civic militias to help restore the republican constitution.

Such militias were subsequently organized in many localities and formed, together with Patriot political clubs, the core of the Patriot movement.

From 1785 on, the Patriots managed to gain power in a number of Dutch cities, where they replaced the old system of co-option of regenten with a system of democratically elected representatives.

This enabled them to replace the representatives of these cities in several provinces, gaining Patriot majorities in Holland, Groningen and Utrecht, and frequently also in the States General.

This helped to emasculate the Stadtholder’s power as he was deprived of his command over a large part of the Dutch States Army.

A low-key civil war ensued that resulted in a military stalemate, until in September – October 1787 the Patriots were defeated by a Prussian army and many were forced into exile.

Above: Looting of the home of Patriot doctor Lucas van Steveninck, Middelburg, Zeeland, the Netherlands (1 July 1787)

On 22 April, Guillaume-Chrétien de Lamoignon de Malesherbes, Isaac René Guy le Chapelier, Jacques Guillaume Thouret were taken to be executed.

Above: French statesman Guillaume-Chrétien de Malesherbes (1721 – 1794)

Guillaume-Chrétien de Lamoignon de Malesherbes was a French statesman and minister in the Ancien Régime, and later counsel for the defense of Louis XVI.

He is known for his vigorous criticism of royal abuses as President of the Cour des aides and his role, as director of censorship, in helping with the publication of the Encyclopédie.

Despite his committed monarchism, his writings contributed to the development of liberalism during the French Age of Enlightenment.

In December 1792, with the King imprisoned and facing trial, Malesherbes volunteered to undertake his legal defense.

He argued for the King’s life and it was his painful task to break the news of his condemnation.

After the King’s execution, Malesherbes, hostile to emigration, refused to join the princes in exile and dared to question the future Louis XVIII on the passage in Louis XVI ‘s will, which mentions “those who have great reproaches to make themselves“.

By remaining in France, Malesherbes also planned to ensure the defense of the Queen in the event of her trial.

Later in the same year, Prince Henry of Prussia had a monument erected to Malesherbes at Rheinsberg , with this inscription:

“He was growing old peacefully in the midst of the storm,

Distracted from his misfortunes by those of his country,

Suddenly he rises up, and his pious courage

Dares to offer an aegis to the virtues of Louis.

It is no longer for his King that he signals his zeal;

But he knows the heart of this unfortunate King;

It is the man he defends, and from faithful subject

He becomes a generous friend”

After this effort, Malesherbes returned once more to the country, but in December 1793 he was arrested with his daughter, his son-in-law M. de Rosanbo, and his grandchildren.

He was brought back to Paris and imprisoned with his family for “conspiracy with the emigrants“.

The family was imprisoned in the Prison Portes-Libres.

In April 1794 they were guillotined in Paris.

Above: Malherbes Monument, Rheinsberg, Germany

Above: French jurist Isaac René Guy le Chapelier (1754 – 1794)

Like many radical deputies, Le Chapelier wished for the central role played by such popular societies early in the French Revolution to come to an end with the settling of the state and the pending promulgation of a new constitution.

This conviction was increased by the Champs de Mars Massacre of 17 July 1791.

Above: Champs de Mars massacre, 17 July 1791

(The Champ de Mars massacre took place on 17 July 1791 in Paris at the Champ de Mars against a crowd of republican protesters amid the French Revolution.

Two days before, the National Constituent Assembly issued a decree that King Louis XVI would retain his throne under a constitutional monarchy.

This decision came after Louis and his family had unsuccessfully tried to flee France in the Flight to Varennes the month before.

Later that day, leaders of the republicans in France rallied against this decision.

Jacques Pierre Brissot was the editor and main writer of Le Patriote français and president of the Comité des Recherches of Paris.

He drew up a petition demanding the removal of the King.

Above: French journalist Jacques-Pierre Brissot de Warville (1754-1793)

A crowd of 50,000 people gathered at the Champ de Mars on 17 July to sign the petition and about 6,000 signed it.

However, two suspicious people had been found hiding at the Champ de Mars earlier that day, “possibly with the intention of getting a better view of the ladies’ ankles“.

They were hanged by those who found them.

Paris Mayor Jean Sylvain Bailly used this incident to declare martial law.

Above: Paris Mayor Jean Sylvain Bailly (1736 – 1793)

Jean Sylvain Bailly was a French astronomer, mathematician, freemason and political leader of the early part of the French Revolution.

He presided over the Tennis Court Oath.

He served as the Mayor of Paris from 1789 to 1791.

The Champ de Mars Massacre was taken by the revolutionaries as an exemplar for oppression by the government. 

Having thereby become extremely unpopular, Bailly resigned on 12 November and was replaced four days later.

Bailly moved to Nantes, where he composed his Mémoires d’un Témoin, an incomplete narrative of the extraordinary events of his public life.

In July 1793, Bailly left Nantes to join his friend Pierre-Simon Laplace at Melun, but was recognized there and arrested.

On 14 October, he was pressed to testify against Marie Antoinette but refused.

On 10 November 1793, he was brought before the Revolutionary Tribunal in Paris, speedily tried, and sentenced to death the next day.

On 12 November 1793, he was guillotined at the Champ de Mars, a site selected symbolically as the location of his betrayal of the Republican movement.

The little red flag he had used to give the order to fire on the crowds on the Champs de Mars was tied to the cart that took him to his death, and burned in front of him before he was executed. 

It was the revival of this event as a part of Republican heritage after 10 August 1792, as well as a campaign of municipal persecution led by Marat, that ultimately resulted in Bailly’s execution, as well as that of “many of his colleagues“. 

Before his death, he was forced to endure the freezing rain and the insults of a howling mob.

When a scoffer shouted: 

“Tu trembles, Bailly?“ (“Do you tremble, Bailly?“).

He responded: 

“Oui, mais c’est seulement de froid“ (“Yes, but it is only the cold.“)

Above: The execution of Bailly – 12 November 1793

Lafayette and the National Guard under his command were able to disperse that crowd.

Georges Danton and Camille Desmoulins had led the crowd.

They returned in even higher numbers that afternoon.

The larger crowd was also more determined than the first.

Lafayette again tried to disperse it.

In retaliation, they threw stones at the National Guard.

After firing unsuccessful warning shots, the National Guard opened fire directly on the crowd.

The exact numbers of dead and wounded are unknown; estimates range from a dozen to 50 dead.)

Above: Marie-Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier de La Fayette (1757 – 1834)

Within days, Le Chapelier joined the mass exodus of moderate deputies abandoning the Jacobin club in favour of a new organization, the Patriotic Society of 1789 and later the Feuillant club.

Above: Feuillant seal

Le Chapelier, in his capacity as chairman of the Constitutional Committee, presented to the National Assembly in its final sessions a law restricting the rights of popular societies to undertake concerted political action, including the right to correspond with one another.

It passed 30 September 1791.

By the virtue of obeying this law, the moderate Feuillants embraced obsolescence.

The radical Jacobins, by ignoring it, emerged as the most vital political force of the French Revolution.

The popular society movement, largely founded by Le Chapelier, was thus inadvertently radicalized contrary to his original intentions.

During the Reign of Terror, as a suspect for having had links with the Feuillants, he temporarily emigrated to Great Britain, but returned to France in 1794, in an unsuccessful effort to prevent the confiscation of his assets.

He was arrested and guillotined in Paris on the same day as Guillaume-Chrétien de Lamoignon de Malesherbes.

Above: Anonymous caricature of Isaac Le Chapelier 

Caption: “Legislator of Biribi: you who first attacked the frankness of the press, and mercilessly castrated the Constitution, the sign of reprobation is on your forehead, everywhere you go people will point the finger at you, saying: here is Chapelier, this Breton deputy, who placed the cap of liberty at his feet.“

Above: French politician Jacques-Guillaume Thouret (1746 – 1794)

Jacques Guillaume Thouret was a French Girondin revolutionary, lawyer, president of the National Constituent Assembly and victim of the guillotine.

In 1788 he participated in the agitation that contributed to the recall of the Estates-General.

Thouret was elected deputy to the Estates-General and was instrumental in composing the local cahiers de doléances (lists of grievances).

Above: The opening of the Estates General on 5 May 1789 in the Salle des Menus Plaisirs in Versailles Palace

In the Constituent Assembly (beginning 17 June 1789) his eloquence gained him great influence.

Like so many lawyers of his time, he was violently opposed to the clergy, and strongly supported the secularization of church property.

He also advocated the suppression of the religious orders and of all ecclesiastical privileges.

He actively contributed to the change of the judiciary and administrative system.

In particular, he demanded the writing of a uniform civil code.

He was four times elected President of the Constituent Assembly, more times than anyone else.

Above: Emblem of the French National Assembly (1789 – 1792)

Thouret joined the Constitutional Committee late in September 1789.

Article five of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen was adopted on his initiative, but his most important efforts surrounded the process by which France was divided into départements though 1790.

Above: France départementale (96 domestic / 5 overseas)

On 3 September 1791, a deputation of 60 members of the Constituent Assembly under the presidency of Thouret presented the 1791 Constitution to Louis XVI.

On 13 September, the King addressed the Assembly, declaring that he accepted the Constitution.

After the Assembly’s dissolution, Thouret became a member, and then, in 1793, President, of the Court of Cassation.

Thouret was included in the proscription of the Girondists, whose political opinions he shared, and was guillotined in Paris, the same day as fellow Constitutional Committee member Isaac René Guy le Chapelier, and defense attorney for Louis XVI, Guillaume-Chrétien de Lamoignon de Malesherbes.

Above: Cour de Cassation, Paris – one of France’s courts of last resort

Saint-Just and Le Bas left Paris at the end of the month for the army in the North. 

On 21 May, the revolutionary government decided that the Terror would be centralized, with almost all the tribunals in the provinces closed and all the trials held in Paris. 

On 20 May, Robespierre signed Theresa Cabarrus’s arrest warrant.

Above: Thérésa Cabarrus, Madame Tallien (1773 – 1835)

Thérésa Cabarrus, Madame Tallien  was a Spanish-born French noblewoman and socialite who became Princess of Chimay (Belgium).

From 1778 to 1783, Thérésa was raised by nuns in France.

She was a student of the painter Jean-Baptiste Isabey.

Above: French painter Jean-Baptiste Isabey (1767 – 1855)

She returned home to the family castle briefly in 1785, and then her father sent her back to France at 12 years old to complete her education and get married.

The first of her many love affairs was with Alexandre de Laborde.

However, the young couple was forced to separate as de Laborde’s powerful father, Jean-Joseph de Laborde, disapproved of her.

Above: French writer Alexandre de Laborde (1773 – 1842)

Cabarrus then arranged for his “very beautiful” daughter to marry a rich, powerful Frenchman in order to strengthen his position in France.

On 21 February 1788, Thérésa was married to Jean Jacques Devin Fontenay (1762 – 1817), the last Marquis de Fontenay, a wealthy aristocrat described as “small, red and ugly“.

The bride was 14 years old.

Even though in the 1780s Thérésa had begun to take an interest in Liberalism and the principles of the Revolution, she was presented at the court of King Louis XVI.

The newlyweds visited the royal court of Spain as well.

On 2 May 1789, Thérésa had a son, Devin Théodore de Fontenay (1789 – 1815), whose father was perhaps Felix le Peletier de Saint-Fargeau, brother of Louis-Michel le Peletier de Saint-Fargeau.

When her husband fled at the outbreak of the Revolution in 1789, she resumed her maiden name and obtained a divorce in 1791.

She took refuge in Bordeaux, where she was supported by her uncle and his family.

While in Bordeaux she met Jean Lambert Tallien, Commissioner of the National Convention at the theatre.

Some time later she began an affair with him.

Above: French politician Jean Lambert Tallien (1767 – 1820)

In December 1793, Thérésa appeared as the Goddess of Reason at a large parade organized in Bordeaux by Tallien and his fellow-Commissioner Ysabeau to celebrate the Feast of Reason.

The Cult of Reason (Culte de la Raison) was France’s first established state-sponsored atheistic religion, intended as a replacement for Roman Catholicism during the French Revolution.

The official nationwide Fête de la Raison, supervised by Hébert and Momoro on 20 Brumaire, Year II (10 November 1793) came to epitomize the new republican way of religion.

In ceremonies devised and organised by Chaumette, churches across France were transformed into modern Temples of Reason.

The largest ceremony of all was at the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris.

The Christian altar was dismantled, an altar to Liberty was installed and the inscription “To Philosophy” was carved in stone over the Cathedral’s doors. 

Festive girls in white Roman dress and tricolor sashes milled around a costumed Goddess of Reason who “impersonated Liberty“.

A flame burned on the altar which was symbolic of truth.

To avoid statuary and idolatry, the Goddess figures were portrayed by living women. 

After holding sway for barely a year, in 1794 it was officially replaced by the rival deistic Cult of the Supreme Being, promoted by Robespierre.

Both cults were officially banned in 1802 by Napoleon Bonaparte with his Law on Cults of 18 Germinal, Year X.

In February 1794, Tallien was denounced by Maximilien Robespierre for moderation and the easing of repression.

Robespierre also reproached him for his liaison with ‘one Cabarrus, an ex-noble, who gets him to pardon many enemies of the Republic‘. 

She accompanied Tallien when he went to Paris to justify his conduct, only to be imprisoned on Robespierre’s orders first in La Force prison, then in Carmes prison where she met Joséphine de Beauharnais.

Above: Tallien in a cell in La Force Prison, Jean-Louis Laneuville (1796) Her hair has been cut short and she is holding her locks in her hands.

Tallien was one of the chief organisers of the Thermidorian Reaction which overthrew Robespierre.

On the same day, 27 July 1794 (9 Thermidor), Tallien had Theresa and Joséphine de Beauharnais freed from prison and became one of the leading figures in French political life.

Above: Joséphine de Beauharnais, future 1st wife of Napoléon Bonaparte (1763 – 1814)

Thérésa was a moderating influence on her husband:

After the outbreak of the Thermidorian Reaction, she earned the moniker ‘Our Lady of Thermidor‘ (Notre-Dame de Thermidor) as the person who was most likely to intervene in favor of the detained.

Pregnant with their daughter, she married Tallien on 26 December 1794. 

Their marriage was relatively short-lived however as Theresa began divorce proceedings against Tallien in February 1797.

Tallien accompanied Napoleon to Egypt, but was captured by the British on his voyage back to France and held prisoner.

On his release in 1802, the divorce was finalized.

Above: Battle of the Pyramids, 21 July 1798

Thérésa became one of the leaders of Parisian social life.

Her salon was famous and she was one of the originators of the Greek Revival Directoire style women’s fashions of the French Directory period.

She was a very colorful figure.

One story is that she was said to bathe in the juice of strawberries for their healing properties. 

She once arrived at the Tuileries Palace, then the chief residence of Napoleon Bonaparte, supported by a black page, with eight sapphire rings and six toe rings, a gold bracelet on each ankle and nine bracelets on each arm.

To top the look off Theresa had a head band covered in rubies.

Above: Tuileries Palace, Paris

On another occasion she appeared at the Paris Opera wearing a white silk dress without sleeves and not wearing any underwear. 

Talleyrand commented:

“Il n’est pas possible de s’exposer plus somptueusement!” (“One could not be more sumptuously unclothed!”).

Above: Paris Opera

After her divorce from Tallien, Theresa had a brief flirtation with Napoleon.

Above: Coronation of Napoleon, 2 December 1804

She then moved first to the powerful Paul Barras (1755 – 1829), whose former mistress was Napoleon’s first wife Joséphine….

Above: Caricature of Napoleon I. (British political cartoon); Madame Tallien and Josephine Beauharnais dance naked in front of Barras. Napoleon watches Josephine from behind a curtain. A satire on the advancement of his career through his appointment to command the Army of Italy in 1796, granted by Barras supposedly on the condition that he marry Josephine.

Then to the millionaire speculator Gabriel-Julien Ouvrard (with whom she had five children)…. 

Above: French financier Gabriel-Julien Ouvrard (1770 – 1846)

And finally, attempting to regain respectability and to get away from Paris, she married François-Joseph-Philippe de Riquet, Comte de Caraman, on 22 August 1805 – he had become the 16th Prince of Chimay after the death of his childless uncle in 1804.

Above: French aristocrat François-Joseph-Philippe de Riquet, Prince of Chimay (1771 – 1843)

She spent the rest of her life first in Paris, then on the Chimay estates (now in Belgium).

After the Battle of Waterloo in 1815, these became part of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands.

She had become one of the most famous women of her age.

She resented this role.

Once when she appeared at the Louvre accompanied by her children, so many spectators flocked to see her up close, that she had to escape down a staircase to save herself.

The marriage to the Prince meant that she returned to the class in which she had been born – and educated.

Thérésa died in Chimay, where she was interred with François-Joseph de Riquet under the sacristy of the local church where a memorial stands to her memory. 

Above: Princess Thérésa of Chimay

On 23 May, following an attempted assassination on Collot d’Herbois, Cécile Renault was arrested near Robespierre’s residence with two penknives and a change of underwear claiming the fresh linen was for her execution.

She was executed on 17 June.

Above: French alleged assassin Cécile Renault (1774 – 1794)

Born in 1774 in Paris, Renault was the daughter of a paper maker, and Robespierre’s name was frequently printed upon his products and a frequent part of her early life.

Renault approached the home of Robespierre on the evening of 22 May 1794, carrying a parcel, a basket, and extra clothing under her arm that hid her weapons.

She was able to successfully enter Robespierre’s home due to her young countenance and age, being only about 20 years old at the time.

Robespierre’s guards initially allowed Renault to see him but required her to wait for several hours inside the deputy’s antechamber.

Upon waiting for several hours and becoming impatient, Renault demanded her hosts have Robespierre meet with her immediately, arguing that “a public man ought to receive at all times those who have occasion to approach him“. 

When arrested she said she had been merely curious to see “what a tyrant looks like“. 

She also claimed to her captors that she would “rather have one king than fifty thousand“.

Other sources vary in, some quoting that Renault “preferred to have one king than sixty“.

Robespierre’s guards searched Renault’s clothing and basket and found the knives purposed to kill Robespierre, miscellaneous papers, and her fresh change of clothing.

After placing her under arrest, Robespierre and his guards correlated this assassination attempt to recent attempts during Reign of Terror.

This included most notably the assassination of Jean-Paul Marat by Charlotte Corday in 1793.

Renault’s interrogators also suggested that her assassination plot was a retaliation effort.

Her lover had recently been sentenced to death via guillotine by the Committee of Public Safety.

On 10 June, the National Convention passed a law proposed by Georges Couthon, known as the Law of 22 Prairial, which simplified the judicial process and greatly accelerated the work of the Revolutionary Tribunal.

With the enactment of the law, the number of executions greatly increased, and the period became known as “The Great Terror” (la Grande Terreur).

Between 10 June and 27 July, another 1,366 were executed, causing fear among d’Herbois, Fouché and Tallien due to their past actions.

Like Brissot, Madame Roland, Pétion, Hébert and Danton, Tallien was accused of participating in conspicuous dinners.

On 18 June, Pétion de Villeneuve and François Buzot committed suicide.

Above: French politician Jérôme Petion de Villeneuve (1756 – 1794)

Jérôme Pétion de Villeneuve was a French writer and politician who served as the second Mayor of Paris, from 1791 to 1792, and the first regular President of the National Convention in 1792. 

During the French Revolution, he was associated with the moderate Girondins, and voted against the immediate execution of Louis XVI at the King’s trial in January 1793, though he supported a suspended sentence.

This led to Pétion’s proscription by the Convention alongside other Girondin deputies following the radical insurrection of 31 May – 2 June 1793, and ultimately his suicide together with fellow-Girondin François Buzot while evading arrest during the Terror.

Above: French politician François Léonard Buzot (1760 – 1794)

François Nicolas Léonard Buzot was a French politician and leader of the French Revolution.

In 1792, Buzot was elected deputy to the National Convention, and joined the Girondists under the influence of his friend Madame Roland.

Buzot entered a polemic with the main rival of the Girondists, Jean-Paul Marat and demanded the formation of a National Guard from the départements to defend the Convention against the Paris crowds of sans-culottes.

His proposal was carried, but never put into force – the Parisians subsequently singled him out as a target of their hatred.

In the trial of King Louis XVI, Buzot voted in favor of the capital punishment death, but with appeal to the people and postponement of sentence (sursis).

He had a sentence of death passed against the Royalist émigrés who did not return to France, and against anyone who should demand the re-establishment of the monarchy. 

At the same time, he opposed Georges Danton and The Mountain, and rejected the creation of a Committee of Public Safety and Revolutionary Tribunal (but abstained when the question of Marat’s trial before the Tribunal was brought up by the Girondists).

On 5 May 1793, his servant was arrested in the Jardin du Luxembourg.

Proscribed with the Girondists on 2 June 1793, Buzot escaped, and took refuge to Calvados in Normandy, where he contributed to organize a Girondist insurrection against the Convention, which was suppressed soon after.

The Convention prosecuted him, and decreed “that the house occupied by Buzot be demolished, and never to be rebuilt on this plot.

Instead, a column shall be raised, on which there shall be written:

“Here was the sanctuary of the villain Buzot who, while a representative of the people, conspired for the overthrow of the French Republic”“.

Above: Calvado – Bayeaux historic centre

He fled, together with Jérôme Pétion de Villeneuve, to Saint-Émilion, near Bordeaux and remained in hiding.

Both of them most likely committed suicide.

Their bodies were found in a field a week later, half-eaten by dogs. 

It is unclear whether the men used poison or shot themselves with a pistol, which is likely due to the decomposed state in which their bodies were found.

Above: Saint Emilion

Buzot’s house in Evreux was purposefully burnt to the ground, plus an effigy of Buzot, by a crowd on 27 July 1793.

Buzot left behind his Memoirs, first published in 1823.

Joachim Vilate was arrested on 21 June.

Above: French politician Joachim Vilate (1767 – 1795)

Joachim Vilate, also known as Sempronius-Gracchus Vilate was a French revolutionary figure.

The Committee of Public Safety appointed him as member of the jury (juror) of the Revolutionary Tribunal.

An issue of a bourgeoise family, he was the son of François Vilate, a surgeon juror of Ahun, and Marie Decourteix.

In March 1792 he arrived in Paris to study medicine.

He lived in Rue du Bac.

Above: Pont Royal and the Pavillon de Flore, Paris (1814) – The Pavillon de Flore was the seat of the Committee of Public Safety and General Police Bureau.

Also, Joachim Vilate, a dandy (a man who places particular importance upon physical appearance and personal grooming, refined language and leisurely hobbies, a self-made man both in person and persona, who emulated an aristocratic style of life regardless of his middle class origin, birth, and background), lived there in an apartment.

Joachim Vilate is described as having “regular features, a fine profile, an elegant, sophisticated appearance like a muscadin, a severe, impenetrable mask“.

In September 1793, Vilate was appointed as a juror of the Revolutionary Trıbunal.

On 12 October 1793, when Hébert accused Marie-Antoinette during her trial of incest with her son, Vilate had dinner with Barère, Saint-Just and Robespierre.

Discussing the matter, Robespierre broke his plate with his fork and called Hébert an “imbécile“.

According to Vilate, Robespierre then had already two or three bodyguards.

On the morning of 8 June, before the Festival of the Supreme Being, Vilate invited Robespierre for lunch.

Above: French politician Maximilien Robespierre

Vilate was arrested on 20 July 1794 (3 Thermidor, year II) on orders of Billaud-Varenne for the crime of having invited Johann David Hermann, the piano-forte teacher of the Royal Family, to the sessions of the Tribunal.

He was released from La Force Prison on 9 Thermidor.

Vilate was the author of The Secret Causes of the Revolution of 9th and 10th Thermidor and its two sequels, published during the Thermidorian Reaction, while he was in prison.

He accused Barère, Billaud-Varenne and Robespierre of trying to decimate the Convention.

Exaggerating the numbers, raged against Robespierre keeping 300,000 people in prison and trying to guillotine two or three hundred people every day. 

Sentenced to death, he was guillotined, with 14 other defendants on 18 Floreal, Year III (May 7, 1795), in the Place de Grève, Paris at about eleven o’clock in the morning.

On 26 June, the French army won the Battle of Fleurus, which marked a turning point in France’s military campaign and undermined the necessity of wartime measures and the legitimacy of the revolutionary government. 

The battle of Fleurus was the first battle in history that incorporated aerial reconnaissance and observation of an enemy force.

This was provided by a French reconnaissance balloon, l’Entreprenant, operated by a crew under Captain Coutelle of the Aerostatic Corps, which continuously informed Jourdan of Austrian movements.

During the battle, l’Entreprenant was deployed on the 190-metre (620 ft) tall hill where the Jumet windmill was located (modern Bellevue, a Charleroi suburb), as it was the highest location in the area.

For much of the morning, Jourdan based himself on the hill to receive and better understand the reports from the aeronauts in real time.

Representative of the People Guyton, one of the three attached to Jourdan’s army, also mentioned in his reports to the Committee of Public Safety that Morlot, whose headquarters was located in Gosselies, spent two hours airborne in the balloon in the morning observing the enemy.

Despite the presence of the balloon, its intelligence value was questionable due to its altitude limitations and instability as a platform, and it apparently had no appreciable influence over the course of the battle.

Soult, in his memoirs written after the fall of Napoleon, declared that the balloon was useless:

“I will not say anything about the balloon that we put up during the battle over the heads of the combatants, and this ridiculous innovation would not even deserve to be mentioned, if it hadn’t been made out to be something important.

The truth is, this balloon was just plain embarrassing.

At the beginning of the action, a general and an engineer entered the gondola to observe, it was said, the enemy movements, but at the height where we let them go up, the details escaped their view and everything was confused.

We were no better informed, and no one paid any attention to it, neither the enemy nor ourselves.”

Championnet likewise said in his memoirs about the balloon that “nothing of importance came from this post“.

In early July about 60 individuals were arrested as “enemies of the people” and accused of conspiring against liberty.

The total of death sentences in Paris in July was more than double the number in June, with two new mass graves dug at Picpus Cemetery by mid-July. 

Above: Plaque at Picpus Cemetery dedicated to the victims of the Terror

There was widespread agreement among deputies that their parliamentary immunity, in place since 1 April 1793, had become perilous. 

On 14 July, Robespierre had Fouché expelled.

To evade arrest about 50 deputies avoided staying at home.

The fall of Robespierre was brought about by a combination of those who wanted more power for the Committee of Public Safety (and a more radical policy than he was willing to allow) and the moderates who completely opposed the revolutionary government.

They had, between them, made the Law of 22 Prairial one of the charges against him, so that after his fall, to advocate terror would be seen as adopting the policy of a convicted enemy of the republic, putting the advocate’s own head at risk.

Between his arrest and his execution, Robespierre may have tried to commit suicide by shooting himself, although the bullet wound he sustained, whatever its origin, only shattered his jaw.

Alternatively, he may have been shot by the gendarme Charles-André Merda.

A change in orientation might explain how Robespierre, sitting in a chair, got wounded from the upper right in the lower left jaw.

Above: The arrest of Robespierre, 27 July 1794

According to Bourdon, Méda then hit Couthon’s adjutant in his leg.

Couthon was found lying at the bottom of a staircase in a corner, having fallen from the back of his adjutant.

Saint-Just gave himself up without a word.

According to Méda, Hanriot tried to escape by a concealed staircase to the third floor and his apartment.

The great confusion that arose during the storming of the municipal Hall of Paris, where Robespierre and his friends had found refuge, makes it impossible to be sure of the wound’s origin.

A group of 15 to 20 conspirators were locked up in a room inside the Hôtel de Ville. 

In any case, Robespierre was guillotined the next day, together with Saint-Just, Couthon and his brother Augustin Robespierre.

The day following his demise, approximately half of the Paris Commune (70 members) met their fate at the guillotine.

According to Barère, who just like Robespierre never went on mission:

“We did not deceive ourselves that Saint-Just, cut out as a more dictatorial boss, would have finished by overthrowing Robespierre to put himself in his place.

We also knew that we who stood in the way of his projects, he would have us guillotined.

We overthrew him.“

Above: 9 Thermidor attack

During the French Revolution, the Jacobins, led by Robespierre, unleashed the Reign of Terror, ostensibly to protect the Revolution from its enemies.

However, the guillotine soon became an instrument of purging anyone deemed counter-revolutionary, including former allies.

(I admit that I have greatly digressed from the theme of this blogpost, but I have done so because I want the reader to get a genuine feel for the Reign of Terror through the lıves of its victims.

And, I admit it, despite the horror of the time, it was also quite a fascinating time.)

The violence escalated beyond necessity — trials became show trials, executions were often arbitrary, and paranoia fueled further bloodshed.

The terror continued not as a means to an end but as a self-perpetuating cycle of violence, until Robespierre himself was executed.

When violence is pursued not to an end but as an end in itself —when warlords, politicians, and factions sustain conflict to maintain power — it loses all justification.

Above: Historical caricature of the Reign of Terror

How do we know the difference?

The test is this:

Does the struggle build or destroy?

Necessary struggle seeks a better future, even if it requires sacrifice.

Unwarranted violence only feeds the past, ensuring more suffering.

But in the heat of battle — whether literal or ideological — this line is often blurred.

Those who commit atrocities often believe themselves to be fighting a righteous struggle.

That is why history is riddled with tragedies where justice and vengeance became indistinguishable.

So perhaps, wisdom lies not in whether we struggle, but in how we struggle.

Do we fight to create or to conquer?

To protect or to punish?

To liberate or to dominate?

That, perhaps, is where the line is drawn.

Above: The Apotheosis of War (1871) by Vasily Vereshchagin

Abraham Lincoln (February 12, 1809 – April 15, 1865) was the 16th President of the United States, serving from 1861 until his assassination in 1865.

He led the United States through the American Civil War, defeating the Confederacy, playing a major role in the abolition of slavery, expanding the power of the federal government, and modernizing the US economy.

Above: Abraham Lincoln

Lincoln was born into poverty in a log cabin in Kentucky, and was raised on the frontier.

Above: Abraham Lincoln Birthplace National Historic Park, Hodgenville, Kentucky

He was self-educated and became a lawyer, Whig Party leader, Illinois state legislator, and US Representative.

Above: Whig Party banner (1833 – 1856)

Above: State flag of Illinoıs

Angered by the Kansas–Nebraska Act, which opened the territories to slavery, he became a leader of the new Republican Party.

Above: Logo of the US Republican Party

He reached a national audience in the 1858 Senate campaign debates against Stephen A. Douglas (1813 – 1861).

Lincoln ran for President in 1860, sweeping the North to gain victory.

Pro-slavery elements in the South viewed his election as a threat to slavery, and Southern states began seceding from the nation.

They formed the Confederate States of America, which began seizing federal military bases in the South.

Above: Confederate flag

A little over one month after Lincoln assumed the Presidency, Confederate forces attacked Fort Sumter, a US fort in South Carolina.

Following the bombardment, Lincoln mobilized forces to suppress the rebellion and restore the Union.

Above: Bombardment of Fort Sumter

Lincoln, a moderate Republican, had to navigate a contentious array of factions with friends and opponents from both the Democratic and Republican parties.

Above: Logo of the US Democratic Party

His allies, the War Democrats (1860 – 1868) and the Radical Republicans (1854 – 1877), demanded harsh treatment of the Southern Confederates.

He managed the factions by exploiting their mutual enmity, carefully distributing political patronage, and by appealing to the American people.

Above: Flag of the United States of America

Anti-war Democrats (called “Copperheads“) despised Lincoln, and some irreconcilable pro-Confederate elements went so far as to plot his assassination.

Above: Copperhead badge

His Gettysburg Address became one of the most famous speeches in American history.

Above: Gettysburg Address, 19 November 1863

Lincoln closely supervised the strategy and tactics in the war effort, including the selection of generals, and implemented a naval blockade of the South’s trade.

Above: Scott’s great snake. Cartoon map illustrating Gen. Winfield Scott’s plan to crush the Confederacy, economically.

He suspended habeas corpus in Maryland and elsewhere.

He averted war with Britain by defusing the Trent Affair.

Above: The Trent affair – The Trent Affair was a diplomatic incident in 1861 during the American Civil War that threatened a war between the United States and the United Kingdom.

The US Navy captured two Confederate envoys from a British Royal Mail steamer.

The British government protested vigorously.

American public and elite opinion strongly supported the seizure, but it worsened the economy and was ruining relations with the world’s strongest economy and strongest navy. 

President Abraham Lincoln ended the crisis by releasing the envoys.

Above: Sailors of San Jacinto board Trent

In 1863, he issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which declared the slaves in the states “in rebellion” to be free.

It also directed the Army and Navy to “recognize and maintain the freedom of said persons” and to receive them “into the armed service of the United States“.

Lincoln pressured border states to outlaw slavery.

He promoted the Thirteenth Amendment to the US Constitution, which abolished slavery, except as punishment for a crime.

Lincoln managed his own successful re-election campaign.

He sought to heal the war-torn nation through reconciliation.

Above: Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrenders to Union General Ulysses S. Grant at the Courthouse of Appomattox, Virginia – 9 April 1865

On 14 April 1865, just five days after the Confederate surrender at Appomattox, he was attending a play at Ford’s Theatre in Washington DC, with his wife, Mary, when he was fatally shot by Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth.

Above: Assassination of Abraham Lincoln

Lincoln is remembered as a martyr and a national hero for his wartime leadership and for his efforts to preserve the Union and abolish slavery. 

He is often ranked in both popular and scholarly polls as the greatest president in American history.

Above: Abraham Lincoln Monument, Hodgenville, Kentucky

Isaac Woodard Jr. (1919 – 1992) was an American soldier.

Woodard was born in Fairfield County, South Carolina, and grew up in Goldsboro, North Carolina.

Above: Center Street, Goldsboro, North Carolina

He attended local segregated schools, often underfunded for African Americans during the Jim Crow years.

(The Jim Crow laws were state and local laws introduced in the Southern United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries that enforced racial segregation, “Jim Crow” being a pejorative term for an African American.)

On 14 October 1942, 23-year-old Woodard enlisted in the US Army at Fort Jackson in Columbia, South Carolina.

Above: Logo of US Army Training Camp Fort Jackson

He served in the Pacific Theater in a labor battalion as a longshoreman and was promoted to sergeant.

He earned a battle star for his Asiatic–Pacific Campaign Medal by unloading ships under enemy fire in New Guinea.

He received the Good Conduct Medal as well as the Service medal and World War II Victory Medal awarded to all American participants. 

He received an honorable discharge.

On February 12, 1946, the 133rd anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s birthday, Woodard was on a Greyhound Lines bus traveling from Camp Gordon in Augusta, Georgia, where he had been discharged, en route to rejoin his family in North Carolina.

When the bus reached a rest stop just outside Augusta, Woodard asked the bus driver if there was time for him to use a restroom.

The driver grudgingly acceded to the request after an argument.

Woodard returned to his seat from the rest stop without incident, and the bus departed.

The bus stopped in Batesburg (now Batesburg-Leesville, South Carolina), near Aiken.

Though Woodard had caused no disruption nor did he start another argument, the driver contacted the local police (including Chief Lynwood Shull), who forcibly removed Woodard from the bus.

After demanding to see his discharge papers, a number of Batesburg policemen, including Shull, took Woodard to a nearby alleyway, where they beat him repeatedly with nightsticks.

They then took Woodard to the town jail and arrested him for disorderly conduct, accusing him of drinking beer in the back of the bus with other soldiers.

Above: Oak Street, Batesburg, South Carolina

Newspaper accounts vary on what happened next, but author and attorney Michael R. Gardner said in 2003:

In none of the papers is there any suggestion there was verbal or physical violence on the part of Sergeant Woodard.

It’s quite unclear what really happened.

What did happen with certainty is the next morning when the sun came up, Sergeant Isaac Woodard was blind for life.”

During the course of the night in jail, Shull beat and blinded Woodard, who later stated in court that he was beaten for saying “Yes” instead of “Yes, sir“. 

He also had partial amnesia as a result of his injuries.

Woodard further testified that he was punched in the eyes by police several times on the way to the jail, and later repeatedly jabbed in his eyes with a billy club. 

Newspaper accounts indicate that Woodard’s eyes had been “gouged out“.

Historical documents indicate that each globe was ruptured irreparably in the socket.

Above: Isaac Woodward

The following morning, the Batesburg police sent Woodard before the local judge, who found him guilty and fined him $50.

The soldier requested medical assistance, but it took two more days for a doctor to be sent to him.

Not knowing where he was and still experiencing amnesia, Woodard ended up in a hospital in Aiken, receiving substandard medical care.

Three weeks after he was reported missing by his relatives, Woodard was discovered in the hospital.

Above: Aiken County Courthouse, Aiken, South Carolina

He was immediately rushed to an Army hospital in Spartanburg.

Though his memory had begun to recover by that time, doctors found both eyes were damaged beyond repair.

Above: Images of Spartanburg, South Carolina

Although the case was not widely reported at first, it was soon extensively covered in major national newspapers.

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) worked to publicize Woodard’s plight. 

It also lobbied the state government of South Carolina to address the incident, which it dismissed.

Above: State flag of South Carolina

On his ABC radio show Orson Welles Commentaries, actor and filmmaker Orson Welles crusaded for the punishment of Shull and his accomplices.

On the broadcast which was made on 28 July 1946, Welles read an affidavit which was sent to him by the NAACP and signed by Woodard.

He criticized the lack of action by the South Carolina government as intolerable and shameful. 

Woodard was the focus of Welles’s four subsequent broadcasts. 

“The NAACP felt that these broadcasts did more than anything else to prompt the Justice Department to act on the case.”, wrote the Museum of Broadcasting in a 1988 exhibit on Welles.

Above: American broadcaster Orson Welles (1915 – 1985)

Musicians wrote songs about Woodard and the attack.

A month after the beating, the calypso artist Lord Invader recorded an anti-racism song for his album Calypso at Midnight. 

It was entitled “God Made Us All“, with the last line of the song directly referring to the incident.

Above: Trinidadian musician Rupert Westmore Grant (aka Lord Invader) (1914 – 1961)

Later that year, folk artist Woody Guthrie recorded “The Blinding of Isaac Woodard“, which he wrote for his album The Great Dust Storm. 

He said that he wrote the song:

“…so’s you wouldn’t be forgetting what happened to this famous Negro soldier less than three hours after he got his Honorable Discharge down in Atlanta….“

Above: American musician Woody Guthrie (1912 – 1967)

On 19 September 1946, seven months after the incident, NAACP Executive Secretary Walter Francis White met with President Harry S. Truman in the Oval Office to discuss the Woodard case.

Above: American activist Walter Francis White (1893 – 1955)

Gardner writes that when Truman “heard this story in the context of the state authorities of South Carolina doing nothing for seven months, he exploded.“

Above: US President Harry S. Truman (1884 – 1972)

The following day, Truman wrote a letter to Attorney General Tom C. Clark demanding that action be taken to address South Carolina’s reluctance to try the case.

Above: US Supreme Court Justice Tom C. Clark (1899 – 1977)

Six days later, on 26 September, Truman directed the Justice Department to open an investigation.

A short investigation followed.

On 2 October, Shull and several of his officers were indicted in US District Court in Columbia.

It was within federal jurisdiction because the beating had occurred at a bus stop on federal property and at the time Woodard was in uniform of the armed services.

The case was presided over by Judge Julius Waties Waring.

Above: Columbia, South Carolina

By all accounts, the trial was a travesty.

The local US Attorney charged with handling the case failed to interview anyone except the bus driver, a decision that Waring, a civil rights proponent, believed was a gross dereliction of duty.

Waring later wrote of being disgusted at the way the case was handled at the local level, commenting:

“I was shocked by the hypocrisy of my government in submitting that disgraceful case.”

Above: Judge Julius Waties Waring (1880 – 1968)

The defense did not perform better.

When the defense attorney began to shout racial epithets at Woodard, Waring stopped him immediately.

During the trial, the defense attorney stated to the all-white jury (blacks were excluded from juries due to disfranchisement of blacks in the South) that:

“If you rule against Shull, then let this South Carolina secede again.“

After Woodard gave his account of the events, Shull firmly denied it.

He claimed that Woodard had threatened him with a gun and that Shull had used his nightclub in self-defense.

During this testimony, Shull admitted that he repeatedly struck Woodard in the eyes.

On 5 November, after 30 minutes of deliberation, the jury found Shull not guilty on all charges, despite his admission that he had blinded Woodard.

The courtroom broke into applause upon hearing the verdict. 

The failure to convict Shull was perceived as a political failure by the Truman administration.

Above: Court drawing of Sheriff Lynwood Shull (1905 – 1997)

Truman made a strong speech on civil rights on 29 June 1947, to the NAACP, the first American president to speak to their meeting, which was broadcast by radio from where they met on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

The President said that civil rights are a moral priority.

It was his priority for the federal government.

He had seen by Woodard’s and other cases that the issue could not be left to state and local governments.

He said:

It is my deep conviction that we have reached a turning point in our country’s efforts to guarantee freedom and equality to all our citizens.

Recent events in the United States and abroad have made us realize that it is more important today than ever before to ensure that all Americans enjoy these rights.

When I say all Americans — I mean ALL Americans.”

Above: Lincoln Memorial, Washington DC

On 2 February 1948, Truman sent the first comprehensive civil rights bill to Congress. 

It incorporated many of the 35 recommendations of his commission.

In July 1948, over the objection of senior military officers, Truman issued Executive Order 9981, banning racial discrimination in the US Armed Forces, and Executive Order 9980 to integrate the federal government. 

Above: Executive Order 9981

This was in response to a number of incidents against black veterans, most notably the Woodard case.

The armed forces and federal agencies led the way in the United States for integration of the workplace, public facilities, and schools.

Over the decades, the decision meant that both institutions benefited from the contributions of minorities.

Nevertheless, polls showed opposition to Truman’s civil rights efforts.

They likely cost him some support in his 1948 reelection bid against Thomas Dewey. 

Above: New York Governor Thomas Dewey (1902 – 1971)

Although Truman narrowly won, Gardner believes that his continued championing of civil rights as a federal priority cost him much support, especially in the Solid South. 

Southern Democrats had long exercised outsize political power in Congress, having disfranchised most blacks there since the turn of the 20th century, but benefiting by apportionment based on total population.

Truman’s efforts threatened other changes since numerous communities across the country had restrictive covenants that were racially discriminatory.

Because of his low approval ratings and because of a bad showing in early primaries, Truman chose not to seek re-election in 1952, though he could have done so.

He had been exempted from the term limitations which are imposed by the 22nd Amendment.

Above: United States Constitution

Woodard moved north after the trial during the Second Great Migration and lived in the New York City area for the rest of his life.

(In the context of the 20th-century history of the US, the Second Great Migration was the migration of more than 5 million African Americans from the South to the Northeast, Midwest and West.

It began in 1940, through World War II, and lasted until 1970. 

It was much larger and of a different character than the first Great Migration (1916 – 1940), where the migrants were mainly rural farmers from the South and only came to the Northeast and Midwest.

In the Second Great Migration, not only the Northeast and Midwest continued to be the destination of more than 5 million African Americans, but also the West as well, where cities like Los Angeles, Oakland, Phoenix, Portland, and Seattle offered skilled jobs in the defense industry.

Most of these migrants were already urban laborers who came from the cities of the South.

In addition, African Americans were still treated with discrimination in parts of the country, and many sought to escape this.)

Woodward died, aged 73, in the Veterans Administration hospital in the Bronx on 23 September 1992.

Above: James J. Peters Veterans Administration Medical Center, The Bronx, New York

He was buried with military honors at the Calverton National Cemetery in Calverton, New York.

Above: Calverton National Cemetery, Calverton, Long Island, New York

A group of veterans which was led by Don North, a retired Army major from Carrollton, Georgia, received permission to erect a historical marker in honor of Woodard in Batesburg-Leesville in South Carolina. 

In 2019, the marker was unveiled.

The bottom part of the marker was written in Braille.

The war had ended for Isaac Woodard.

Honorably discharged from the US Army in 1946, he stepped onto a bus, a soldier returning home.

Yet, before he could reach the peace he had fought for, war found him again — not in a distant trench, but on American soil.

Beaten and blinded by police officers, Woodard was stripped of his sight, a casualty of the very country he had served.

For him, the battlefield had never truly ended.

His wounds were not from war abroad, but from injustice at home.

Above: (center) Isaac Woodward

Honorably discharged.

Uniform still on his back.

A man who had fought for his country, only to be beaten and blinded on his way home.

The war he fought on distant shores was not the war that nearly killed him.

It was racism, injustice and brutality — not a foreign enemy but his own country — that took his sight.

His battle did not end when he stepped off the battlefield.

It only changed forms.

Even when the battlefield grows silent, the fight for justice, dignity and peace continues.

Above: (center) Isaac Woodward

Ronald Frederick Delderfield (12 February 1912 – 24 June 1972) was an English novelist and dramatist, some of whose works have been adapted for television and film.

Above: R. F. Delderfield

In Delderfield’s 1972 novel To Serve Them All My Days, David Powlett-Jones, a coal miner’s son from South Wales, has risen from the ranks of the South Wales Borderers and been commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in World War I after serving three years in the front-line trenches.

In 1918, after being injured and shell-shocked, he is employed to teach history at Bamfylde School, a fictional public school in North Devon.

Under the tutelage of Headmaster Algy Herries, who views him as a possible successor, David discovers a vocation in teaching.

He swiftly earns the respect of many of his colleagues and forms a close friendship with the curmudgeonly English master, Ian Howarth, and with several students of unique personality and talents.

He clashes with Carter, an ambitious science master and Commanding Officer of the school’s Officer Training Corps (OTC), whose actual military service was embarrassingly brief, cut short for medical reasons.

Following the Armistice, the two men disagree on whether or not the school should erect a war memorial.

David loses the argument but wins the respect of Brigadier Cooper, one of the school governors.

In 1919 David marries a young nurse, Beth Marwood.

Shortly afterwards, they have twin daughters, Joan and Grace.

Five years later, Beth and Joan are killed in a road accident.

Grace is badly injured and requires many months of rehabilitation before returning home.

After encouragement from one of his pupils, a distraught David contemplates life without Beth.

He carries on for the sake of Grace.

David remains concerned about life in Wales, particularly among the miners, and is politically affected by the General Strike of 1926.

He returns to writing a scholarly biography of Margaret of Anjou, which he had put to one side after Beth’s death.

Whilst researching the book in London, he once again meets Julia Darbyshire, a teacher who had worked briefly at Bamfylde, and strikes up a romance with her.

In 1927 Herries retires.

David and Carter apply for the headship, but the governors, unable to decide between them, appoint a South African named Alcock.

His authoritarian management of the school makes him highly unpopular among the staff and the boys.

David and Carter, faced with a common enemy, settle their differences, but Carter resigns to take over a school of his own, and several other masters also resign.

In 1931, Alcock petitions the Board of Governors to dismiss David, whom he regards as the ringleader of the opposition.

After being told that the Board’s report will back David, Alcock dies of a heart attack while writing out his resignation.

David is appointed as his successor and moves the school forward.

David’s relationship with Julia ends when she travels to the USA with her boss, whom she marries.

David becomes romantically involved with Christine Forster.

She is determined to build a career as a Labour politician, but is unable to break into this male-dominated world.

They later marry.

After initial difficulty adjusting to life at Bamfylde, Christine accepts a teaching position at the school.

They have a son.

Julia Darbyshire’s son, born soon after she moved to the USA, becomes a pupil at Bamfylde.

At the end of the book Julia informs David in a letter, shortly before her death from breast cancer, that he is the boy’s real father.

As the book ends, World War II has begun.

David is facing the prospect of losing many of his former pupils in another war.

Some wars are fought with guns.

Others are fought with words.

R.F. Delderfield, the English novelist, made it his mission to write about soldiers — not the glorified heroes of history, but the ordinary men who returned home only to find that the world had moved on without them.

He understood that war never truly leaves those who fight it.

His characters echo the fate of Woodard, of the refugees, of the child soldiers.

War shapes them, whether they wanted it to or not.

R.F. Delderfield wrote of men who returned from war only to fight a different kind of battle — one of reintegration, of lost purpose, of a world that moved on without them.

His characters, like Woodard, like Ukrainian soldiers, like those forced to fight in Sudan, show us that the end of war is never truly the end.

In war, there are no true victors.

Only those who lose less.

The battle scars remain, whether they are visible wounds, or the unseen burdens carried within.

• Woodard lost his sight.
• The refugees of Zamzam lost their homes, their safety.
• The children forced into war lost their innocence.
• The people of Ukraine, even if peace comes, have lost years, lives and a sense of certainty.
• Delderfield reminds us that even those who survive war carry it with them forever.

The soldier, the civilian, the displaced, the child — everyone loses.

Some lose their lives.

Others lose their peace.

And even those who return whole are never quite the same.

Everyone loses in war.

Some lose their lives.

Others lose their homes, their innocence, their sight.

Some, like Woodard, are betrayed by the very nations they defended.

Some, like the people of Ukraine, fight not just for their land but for the right to live without fear.

Some, like the children of war, will never know a world without it.

The real battle is not won with weapons, but with justice, with remembrance, with the will to fight for what is right long after the last shot has been fired.

Lowering weapons is not surrender — it is choosing to fight in a different way.

Until war itself is no longer the legacy we leave behind, the fight continues.

February 12 forces us to ask:

When does war truly end?

The guns may be lowered, treaties may be signed, but war lingers in the minds of those who fought, in the scars on their bodies, in the rubble of their cities, in the stolen lives of child soldiers, in the blindness of Isaac Woodard.

The true fight, the one for dignity, justice, peace — never ends.

And perhaps, it shouldn’t.

Not until war itself is it a relic of history.

We tell ourselves war ends when the treaties are signed, when the guns fall silent.

But for those who bear its scars, war is never truly over.

The fight continues — not on the battlefield, but in the struggle to heal, to be seen, to be whole again.

And in that battle, no one walks away untouched.

War does not end.

It only changes form.

And in that battle, no one walks away untouched.

René and Georgette Magritte
With their dog after the war
Returned to their hotel suite
And they unlocked the door

Above: René and Georgette Margritte with their dog after the war

Easily losing their evening clothes
They dance by the light of the moon
To the Penguins
The Moonglows
The Orioles
And The Five Satins
The deep, forbidden music
They’d been longing for
René and Georgette Magritte
With their dog after the war

René and Georgette Magritte
With their dog after the war
Were strolling down Christopher Street
When they stopped in a men’s store
With all the mannequins
Dressed in style
That brought tears to their
Immigrant eyes

Above: Christopher Street, New York City

Just like The Penguins
The Moonglows
The Orioles
And The Five Satins
The easy stream of laughter
Flowing through the air
René and Georgette Magritte
With their dog après la guerre

Above: René and Georgette Magritte

Side by side
They fell asleep
Decades gliding by like Indians
Time is cheap
When they wake up they will find
All their personal belongings
Have intertwined

Above: René and Georgette Magritte with their dog after the war

René and Georgette Magritte
With their dog after the war
Were dining with the power èlite
And they looked in their bedroom drawer
And what do you think
They have hidden away
In the cabinet cold of their hearts?

René and Georgette Magritte

The Penguins
The Moonglows
The Orioles
and The Five Satins
For now and ever after
As it was before
René and Georgette Magritte
With their dog
After the war