Forlorn Hopes, Lost Causes, Bitter Enders, and Gotterdammerung: The Romance of Pointless Defiance

Throughout history – or at least in the tales white European men tell themselves (which until recently was the same thing), there reoccurs stories of defiance, to be lauded and held up as an example of how to act. Often, a dispassionate review shows what happened (or was attempted) to be pointless: nothing was gained, much was lost to no advantage to anyone.

Forlorn Hope

Technically, a Forlorn Hope is a near-suicidal attack, ordered when more conventional approaches have failed, in the hope that the Forlorn Hope will make an overall victory possible, From the Dutch “Verloren Hoop” or Lost Troop. Colloquially, it is used in American English as a synonym for Last Stand. Compare with the word “Awful”, which should be the superlative for awesome, but has come to mean its opposite.

In 1861, France, the UK, and Spain decided that Mexico's unilateral two-year moratorium on paying interest on the state debt could and should be lifted – at the point of a bayonet or two. The UK and Spain left with their money, the French decided to expand the empire (thus, “Amerique latine or Latin America” a term devised in Colombia in 1856 but popularised by Napoleon III). This ultimately did not turn out so well for Emperor Napoleon III of France – and quite badly for erstwhile Archduke Maximilian of Austria: shot for his troubles (and posing as Emperor of Mexico) when the French were forced out in 1867. But I am getting ahead of my story. So, May 5, 1862 – nope, too far back. Keep this up, and I may sink my readers' interest.

On April 30, 1863, 65 Legionaires of the French Foreign Legion were sent to reinforce the escort of a convoy, itself in support of the French siege of the Mexican stronghold of Puebla, on the way to the capital of Mexico City. The Legionaires found themselves cut off by a stronger force – which kept getting bigger: 250, 600, 1400; by the end more than 3000. French Captain Danjou, surrounded, had his men swear – on Danjou's prosthetic hand! - to fight to the death rather than surrender, in (supposed) imitation of Napoleon's Guard at Waterloo. The Mexicans offered to let the French surrender. Non! Said Danjou, quickly meeting his own death. More Mexicans arrived; another offer to the hungry, thirsty Legionaires. Merde! Exclaimed the remaining sergeant. Late in the afternoon, the Mexicans again offered surrender, now to the last 12 men on their feet. Again no. Out of ammo, the last five (or six) fixed bayonets and charged. Then the final three at last surrendered. The Legionaires had, truly, “fought like demons.” and Danjou's hand is a central relic for the Legion to this day.

Glory without end. But to what effect? The French had early on halted the convoy when they saw the large interposing Mexican force. And ran the convoy through to the siege in prompt order over the next few days. The Legionaires taken prisoner were treated well, and exchanged to the French on Bastille Day, 14 July 1863. Puebla, then Mexico City, fell to the French. But by the end of 1866, France had withdrawn most of its troops, pressured by the United States that had won its own Civil War. Mid-May 1867 Mexico City was retaken by Mexican forces, Maximilian captured, court-martialed and shot on 19 June, a few days short of his 35^th birthday; and thousands of miles from his birthplace in Schloss Schönbrunn in Vienna. The Legionaires's sacrifice was glorious – but operationally pointless. The Legionaires had fought – and died – for Glory and Honor. Nothing less. And nothing more.

Lost Causes

Ah, The Lost Cause! The South Will Rise Again! No, not The Lost Cause. A lost cause. Partly because The Lost Cause is too well known. But mainly because pursuit of The Lost Cause hasn't been anywhere near as futile as one could hope, and certainly doesn't rank as pointless defiance.

Real lost causes did arise in the decades after Camarón. (I forgot to mention that, didn't I? The pointless encounter in 1863 is known as the Battle of Camarón, after the small town near Vera Cruz where it took place.) One such lost cause is The War of the Triple Alliance, or Paraguayan War, (1864-1870) begun by Paraguay against Brazil. Then Argentina and Uruguay weighed in – against Paraguay. While the weight of military force was slightly to Paraguay's advantage to start, in a long war, its isolated position and demographic inferiority led it to doom. Paraguay lost up to 1/3 of its territory, 1/2 or more of its population and nearly every adult male. Arguably, it has yet to recover.

Then there are Queen Victoria's Little Wars, in Africa, Asia, Canada (!), as small numbers of heavily armed soldiers wrack ruin and conquest in service of Her Majesty, glory, empire, and extension of Rudyard Kipling's “White Man's Burden” - that of “civilization” and “Christianity.” Result was – well, two good movies: “Zulu” (the 1964 one) and “The Man Who Would be King” (1975).

These are lost causes. However, pointless and defiant don't really describe these lost causes.

But the Fenian Raids? Defiant? Check. Pointless? Check.

From 1845 to 1849, the Great Famine ravaged Ireland. Greedy English landlords, backed by the heartless government in London, allowed 1 million to starve to death, while another million fled abroad: to Canada, Australia, Mexico (!). And the United States, on both sides of the Mason-Dixon Line. After the Civil War, thousands of Irish men had military training, weapons, a bit of money, time, and national pride in their Irish homeland. Also a persistent grievance against the English.

Ireland remained an ocean away, strongly occupied by professional soldiers who were demonstrably capable of resisting uprising (1798), rebellion (1803, 1848) and planned insurrection (1865). But Canada? It – actually they (Canada was not a unified colony in 1865) – was near by; just across the border. And heck, the Americans almost took it. Twice (1775, 1812).

Not that the Irish in America wanted Canada. Nah. They'd take it – or at least key points and infrastructure – and TRADE it back to the English for Ireland.

The Fenians began this well thought out campaign in April 1866 with an attack on Campo Bello (now Campobello) New Brunswick. First assembling their men across the narrow strait in Maine … well, that's where it stopped. The British could see what the Fenians were up to and preempted the attack by moving 700 regular soldiers and warships over from Halifax.

In June 1866, the Fenians launched two raids, and this time both successfully got across the border. With the warship USS Michigan disabled by Fenian sympathisizers, something over 1000 Fenians crossed the Niagara River west from Buffalo toward Fort Erie. The next moming, they ambushed a large force of Canadian militia, inflicting numerous casualties and taking prisoners. But with the Michigan back in operation, cutting the Fenains off from supply and reinforcement, and British regulars and more Canadian militia approaching, the Fenians crossed back into the U.S. where they surrendered. U.S. President Andrew Johnson called the Fenians “evil-disposed persons” and said their actions were illegal under American and international law.

Which didn't stop the next raid, the day after Johnson's proclamation. This time just under 1000 Fenians set from St Albans Vermont and briefly took four Canadian villages before being chased off by Canadian cavalry. (To be fair, in 1864 a raid the other direction by Confederates who had escaped from Union POW camps robbed three banks in the selfsame St Albans, making off with at least $88,000 (about $1.5 million today).)

American public opinion favored the Fenians, and they were released and got their weapons back under executive orders signed by Johnson ahead of the November Congressional elections.

Raids resumed in 1870, two in late May. At Eccles Hill, essentially ON the Vermont-Canada border, a brief skirmish quickly dispersed the Fenians. Two days later and some miles west, another force of Fenians is fired upon by Canadian troops and “redeploy” back into New York, where their leader John O'Neill is promptly arrested by the US Marshal.

And one more – my favorite! O'Neill, recently released from prison after a pardon from President Grant, travels to St. Paul Minnesota (!) to plan a raid on Winnipeg. On October 5, 1871 he and three dozen Fenians capture the Hudson's Bay Company post in Pembina. Those of you who know your North Dakota-Manitoba geography well, or have just travelled by car between Winnipeg and St Paul, may be scratching your heads. Yes, Pembina is and was in North Dakota. In the United States.

At this point the Fenians in the United States decided these raids were a little worse than pointless, and started sending money to the Irish in Ireland – and England. Which while no longer pointless did lead to much violence and bloodshed. Another unified and ultimately independent country can however trace its origins to the Fenians raids. The Dominion of Canada began the unification of Canada on 1 July 1867, at least in part in response to the 1866 raids.

Bitter Enders

So, the 19^th Century Pax Brittanica was a facade in Canada. But surely elsewhere it held? The flag never sets on the British Empire and all that? Even before the defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo, Britain had “gone abroad in search of monsters to destroy” in the words of US Secretary of State John Quincy Adams. From 1815 to 1902, Britain was almost constantly at war, but rarely against anyone of white European stock. To the dismay of its settlers, the British made an exception of the Cape Colony in South Africa. A brief Boer (Dutch: “farmer”) rebellion in 1815, described by a partisan observer as "the most insane attempt ever made by a set of men to wage war against their sovereign" was brutually crushed. What followed was almost ninety years of a lethal Mad Hatter's Party, as the British repression and dislike of the Boers resulted in them moving further and further inland. For the Boers, this was the Great Trek. (For English speakers, we picked up a new word.) A partial status vivendi was reached in 1881, when the British lost the three-month-long First Boer War. Then, most unfortunately for the Boers, they found .. GOLD! “Outlanders” - mainly Brits – flooded into Boer lands. In October 1899, the Boers demanded that the Brits leave them alone. British sentiment was led by the likes of Cecil Rhodes (he of Rhodesia and the Rhodes Scholarship), who called for armed defense of “outlander” rights and better treatment for Black Africans (no, really).

The first phase of the war went badly for the British. Famously, Lord Baden-Powell was besieged in Mafeking, with only Sunday cricket matches (and concerts) for light entertainment until relieved, with His Lordship going on to create the Boy Scouts. (Nevermind he had been ordered to NOT defend in Mafeking.) Nonetheless, less than a year after the conflict started, the Boer capitals of Bloemfontein and Pretoria had fallen. The regular, stand-up war was over.

But the Bittereinders among the Boers did not give up, their commandos (another new word for English!) turning to guerilla warfare. (Guerilla was not a new word, arising in 1809 from the [Iberian] Penisular War of Wellington against Napoleonic France.) About half of the orignal Boer force stayed in the field as combatants. Those 25 thousand or so commandos were opposed by up to 500,000 British, Canadians, Australians, and New Zealanders.Twenty-to-one odds did not suffice, so the British commander ordered a scorched earth policy, destroying Boer settlements and driving the old men, women and children – and Black “servants” – into concentration camps. (TWO new phrases: scorched earth and concentration camps.) 6,189 Boer commandoes died in the field, along with over 22,000 Brits. Over 25,000 Boer women and 22,000 children under age 16 (about 20% of those detained) died, along with uncounted thousands of Black Africans. (See British war aims, above.)

Also decimated was the British budget: “defence” spending skyrocketed from 35 million pounds annually to 120 million – over 6% of GDP. Cheap compared to World War One, but four times what the UK spends today.

Not so much pointless defiance as a bitter end.

Götterdämmerung

In April 1945, the Berlin Philharmonic played its last concerts in Nazi Germany. The musicians played the finale of Wagner's Götterdämmerung , Brahms' German Requiem (requiem: to honor the dead), and Strauss' Death and Transfiguration. For any concert-goers who missed the point, Hitler Youth reportedly passed out cyanide pills.

Eight months earlier, another major European capital was about to fall to an approaching army: Paris. Or would it? In the 1960's there was published a book, followed by a movie, both with the title, Is Paris Burning? - reportedly the words asked with no sense of ironic foreshadowing by Hitler on August 25, 1944 as French and American troops entered the City of Lights. We learned this first through the memoirs – indeed, apologia – of General Dietrich von Choltitz, the last German commander of Paris. There is solid documentary evidence that on the morning of August 23, Hitler had in fact ordered that “The Seine bridges will be prepared for demolition. Paris must not fall into the hands of the enemy except as a field of ruins.” Also known as the Trümmerfeld order. As recounted in the official US Army History Breakout and Pursuit, von Choltitz informed his superior headquarters later that same day:

that he had complied by placing three tons of explosive in the cathedral of Notre Dame, two tons in the Invalides, and one in the Palais Bourbon (the Chamber of Deputies), that he was ready to level the Arc de Triomphe to clear a field of fire, that he was prepared to destroy the Opéra and the Madeleine, and that he was planning to dynamite the Tour Eiffel and use it as a wire entanglement to block the Seine. Incidentally, he advised Speidel, he found it impossible to destroy the seventy-odd bridges.

Von Choltitz was likely being sarcastic, as he had begun the phone call “by thanking Speidel for the lovely order from Hitler.” Nevertheless, in the days and weeks after the surrender of Paris, many (still intact) bridges and monuments did have to be demined. Von Choltitz's motivations are unclear. Hitler's are not: he wanted vengeance. In the same order that he required the destruction of Paris, he stressed the need to hold onto Paris as long as possible, to defend the sites in the Pas de Calais, the base for the V-1 “Vengeance” weapons being launched almost haphazardly against London. When von Choltitz surrendered Paris to the Allies nearly intact on August 25, Hitler struck at Paris. Immediately, 120 Luftwaffe bombers dropped incendiary bombs, killing at least 50 people. The first lethal V-2 missiles are targeted, not on London, but Paris, with 22 rockets fired between September 7 and October 6, largely striking in the suburbs to no military effect whatsoever.

Intriguingly, General Eisenhower and the Allied high command had not wanted to take Paris. They realized – as any of their professional opponents could also see – that the need to control, feed, and otherwise supply a major city and its civilian population would place a major strain on their logistics, and impair the pursuit and destruction of German armed forces before they could reach relative safety back in Germany. A “field of ruins” would have been a warcrime of pointless defiance.

Why this essay? Why now?

As part of my interest in history is my focus on military history, which inevitably leads to accounts of military disasters. Within that are the “what the heck” moments? Just how did the instigators of this monumental FUBAR think it was going to turn out? The classic FUBAR occurred almost 100 years before the first use of the word, with The Charge of the Light Brigade in the Crimean War. (1854)

To which poesied Tennyson:

Someone had blundered.

Theirs not to make reply,

Theirs not to reason why,

Theirs but to do and die.

And then there was the poster, way back in Spencer's Gifts, under the black lights (ultraviolet). A mouse gives the finger to an eagle swooping down it. “Defiance” is defined in words next to the depiction. Pretty cool poster when you're 16. But over the years, I've spared a thought or two for the poster. And concluded the mouse is an idiot. Not brave. Not even foolhardy. Just stupid. Not only by getting himself into a situation he can't escape. But by just standing there, finger out, not running, he is making the eagle's job just that much easier. A pointless gesture. Heck, even in “Animal House” the Deltas' “futile and stupid gesture” is more productive than this. And there, of course, is the rub: our culture, and notably American culture, has enthroned and enobled the “futile and stupid gesture”, made pointless defiance a virtue. When faced with a host of options, many bad, some worse, why reject the one that gives the best possible outcome? Even if that best outcome sucks, why choose instead the worst result just for some non-tangible, transitory self-gratification? The answer is that culture has transformed pointless defiance, enshrouded it with the myth that, “Hey, maybe you'll win. In spite of everything, even though this act of defiance is misguided and stupid and almost 100% guaranteed not to succeed, you never know if you don't roll the dice.”

Of course we also have Samson: vain, vengeful, homicidal. His act of suicidal vengeance is praised, however, as the result of God hearing and answering Samson's prayers, incidentally beginning the deliverance of Samson's people from his enemies. A hero in spite of himself.

In these four vignettes, at least one actor decided for pointless defiance, for the futile and stupid gesture. In Mexico, the French Foreign Legionaires mimicked Napoleon's Guard - "La Garde meurt mais ne se rend pas!" ("The Guard dies but does not surrender!") but in so doing had no effect whatsoever on the French siege then underway. Had they accepted the quarter that was offered to them not once, not twice, but three times they would have lived with no impairment of French Imperial designs. Their commander forfeited his life and that of his men for a legend.

To the north a few years later, the Irish Americans Fenian dreams are something out of Gilbert & Sullivan, a light opera with cannons and rifle fire for percussion and woodwinds. One can talk lightly of the raids, which led to less than five dozen dead (both killed in action and mortally wounded) of 40,000 men engaged in total, and the brief nature of the scattered engagements over five years. The concept of exchanging a kidnapped Canada for a free Ireland was rankest fantasy. But the issues were dead serious, and were not solved or extinguished by the defeat of the raids but returned to their home in Hibernia, with American support, money and latterly weapons.

The Second Boer War (or Boer War to the British, as who wished to forget that they lost the first so quickly and decisively) was fought for notions of liberty on the one side, and imperial domination and gold on the other. For the Boers, the guerilla war was in the near term more tragic than pointless after the British responded with uncommon brutality. When the Union of South Africa was formed in 1910, just eight years after the Boer war, Afrikaner/Boer generals from that war became Prime Minister and War Minister. For the British, the gold gained was oddly tarnished with not just excessive military deaths but civilian blood as well, and pale in comparision to the overshadowing financial cost of the war.

Paris did not burn, but Berlin, Hamburg, Dresden, Warsaw and so many other cities did, without even considering the devastation wrought elsewhere, notably in Europe and Asia. But Hitler's object in Paris late August 1944 was naked, unadulterated vengeance, unexcused and in fact contrary to any military objective. We have only General von Choltitz's own words for why he did not carry out his orders for pointless destruction and defiance, and his words are sometimes contradictory, often unclear, and always self-serving. We must remain content with the result without false heroism and unwarranted praise.

So, that's why this subject. Why now? The events of November 3, 2020, to January 20, 2021 are too fresh to be proper subjects for history. For now, we must be satisfied with journalism. But they will lend themselves to history, soon. And when that time comes, it will be good to reflect on past follies and the trusim that while history does not repeat itself, it does rhyme.

© 2021 Alan J. Carlson Reproduction of this work for personal use permitted as long as the work is not modified and the source of the work is cited.