Tag: Europeans

Certainly the oldest military title that survives in most modern armies is that of captain, from the Latin caput, “head,” and thus the head man. It is notable that in the German army the word for captain is hauptmann, which means precisely “head man.” Almost all modern military titles are drawn from the period when feudalism was dying and when the power of central governments was crystallizing, forming in the process royal or regular armies for the service of the state.

At that time, the title of captain was usually given to the commander of a company, which was the largest and about the only recognized subdivision of these new armies and usually numbered 300 or 400 men, or about as many as could be controlled by one leader on the battlefields of that time. The title itself, however, was of feudal origin. In feudal times, it had been customary for each lord to retain a certain number of armed men to guard his castle; these gradually came to be commanded by a captain, who was not usually a knight or of noble blood but a hired mercenary, trained and experienced in war, who, in most cases, had fought his way up from the ranks. His men, the only trained soldiers of the feudal period, were used to drill the raw levies that were mustered whenever the lord’s suzerain called on him to take the field with his allotted quota of men for war. The complete quota was almost never kept under arms in time of peace. The trained soldiers were known as the lord’s servants, or serventes, which, in military parlance, became corrupted into sergentes, or sergeants. Thus, a feudal levy had not only a group of knights and squires at its head but a captain and several sergeants over a body of more or less raw recruits. The richer the lord, the larger the proportion of trained men at his disposal.

When the royal armies began to appear, the captain became a much more important person. He commanded a company of royal troops instead of the scratch castle guard of a baron or an earl. The jobs were better paid, and consequently were sought after by young men seeking both money and a chance for distinction. Sergeants were also a part of these troops and did much the same work that sergeants have done ever since. As the centralization of power in the king’s person grew, the new and noble captains found that their personal interests required them to spend more time at court and less in the field, and to accomplish this, they hired officers to take their place in the actual command of their companies. These were called placeholders, or, in the term derived from the French, lieutenants.

As the armies grew in size, the number of companies became greater and it was usual to find several companies marching together in column on the same road. The senior officer present commanded the whole column, called colonne in French, and from this source he came to be known as the colonel, or column commander. Later, these columns became permanent regiments, and the same thing happened as with companies; the colonels, to retain their lucrative jobs, frequented the court and secured the services of lieutenant colonels to command their regiments on active service.

Finally, the command of the whole army was given to an officer who originally was called the general captain, or captain general, in distinction to the company captain, who commanded just one company. He, too, had to have a lieutenant general to command for him, or at any rate to assist him, and to this end, the “captain” part of this title was dropped, and officers included generals and lieutenant generals, as well as colonels and lieutenant colonels and captains and lieutenants. At the lowest command level were the usual sergeants. This is the framework of the modern military order, although there have been some later additions, notably the ranks of major general and major.

In the time of Oliver Cromwell, the “new model” army was organized with just about the ranks noted above. In each regiment, however, the need was found for an administrative and supply officer to look after the accounts and the paper work, which Cromwell insisted be carefully kept. Cromwell was doubtless influenced by the example of the Swedish king, Gustavus Adolphus (1594-1632 [C.E.]), in whose army many English officers had served out of sympathy for the Protestant cause. Gustavus Adolphus provided his army with a complete administrative organization, which Cromwell adapted to English requirements. In each company a sergeant was appointed to perform the duties of both administration and supply, but at the regimental level an officer was so detailed, and was called the great sergeant, or sergeant major. He took rank next after the lieutenant colonel, being senior to all the captains. Then a corresponding appointment was made for the whole army, as the sergeant-major-general, but the “sergeant” part of both titles was dropped later because the officers concerned doubtless considered it somewhat belittling, and the designations became major and major general. These titles have persisted in the British and American armies to this day. This series of transitions explains, incidentally, why the modern major general ranks one grade below a lieutenant general, while a major is two grades higher than a lieutenant. The grade of sergeant major, in its actual meaning, was later revived for a senior sergeant, a noncommissioned officer.

The title of field marshal, as applied in the British and German armies, or marshal, in the French and [Russian] armies, comes from the old French mareschal, which originally meant a blacksmith or tarrier. In the French army a farrier still has the title of maréchal ferrant. As time went on, the king’s horseshoer, or farrier, rose in importance until the title became equivalent to “master of the horse” at the French court and gradually assumed great military importance. Later, in the French royal armies of the 18th century [C.E.], the need was felt for a rank of subordinate general officers, as in Cromwell’s army, to take charge of the camp, administration, the divisions of the army, and so forth. By that time, the original importance of the title had been lost, but it was revived as maréchal de camp, which was about the equivalent of the major general of the British Army in status, ranking below the lieutenant general but senior to all colonels. This title disappeared under Napoleon, who, however, created the higher title of marshal of the empire, for a senior general officer ranking all generals and serving generally as the commander of an army or an army corps. In the British Army, the title of field marshal as the highest ranking grade was first known in 1736.

The origin of the title of corporal is somewhat obscure. The word seems to have an Italian source, corporale, from the Latin corpo, meaning body, and hence the person in charge of a small body of troops. It appeared in Cromwell’s time in the British cavalry, who, feeling superior to the infantry, wanted a title of their own for noncommissioned officers; they called them corporals instead of sergeants, and, in the British household cavalry regiments, the sergeants are still officially called corporals of horse. Later the title was used to fill the need for an inferior grade of noncommissioned officer….

The ranks of first and second lieutenant developed as companies grew in size and weapons in range and power, so that a company needed three officers instead of two for proper control. Originally, the third officer of an infantry company was called ensign, because part of his duty was to carry the company flag; for the same reason the third officer of a troop of cavalry was the cornet, because he carried a little pennon known then by that name. Later, the flags were laid aside, and these junior officers became known as second lieutenants.

The British titles of lance corporal and lance sergeant, which mean “acting corporal” and “acting sergeant,” were derived from the old lance-pesade, a term used during the 17th century [C.E.] for a full-trained soldier of a grade superior to the common men, or private men, as they came to be called.

— [undocumented encyclopedia entry]

Emphasis mine.

See also Origin of the Rank and Grades of General.

We can dimly make out what seems to have been an agricultural revolution in al-Andalus during this period [circa 1000 C.E.]. An increase in productivity was made possible by more intense exploitation of the land. Irrigation, in particular, enlarged the growing season of the year—you can raise four vegetable crops a year on well-tended irrigated land in Mediterranean Spain—and eased dependence on unpredictables such as the weather. Higher and more stable incomes were the result, and with greater prosperity came greater confidence….

More varied crops did more than just diversify gastronomy. (Think of the bleakness of a world without lemons or spinach.) A better, more varied diet means a healthier population. Hard wheat, the main constituent of pasta, grows in drier conditions than soft (bread) wheat and stores for a prodigiously long time because of the low water content of the grain. Al-Razi (d. 955) tells us that around Toledo it would keep in store without decay for upwards of sixty years; it was transmitted in inheritance from father to son like other property. Crops such as this helped to stave off the threat of famine. Prosperity meant earlier marriage, larger families, diversification, opportunity, leisure.

— The Quest for El Cid, pp. 19-20

Medieval strategy does indeed appear to have been dominated by two general principles: fear of the pitched battle, of the confrontation in open country, and what one could call the ‘siege mentality’, in other words ‘an automatic reaction which consisted in replying to an attack by shutting oneself up in the most easily defensible strongholds of the country’. From this emerged the shape which the majority of medieval conflicts assumed—the very slow progress of the attackers, the obstinate defense of those attacked, limited operations both in time and distance, a war of attrition (guerre d’usure), ‘a strategy of accessories’ where each combatant or group of combatants, often in an incoherent and discontinuous fashion, fought primarily for immediate material profit. Contemporaries had an expression to describe this kind of warlike activity on a reduced scale. It was the guerre guerroyante, made up of losses and recaptures, surprises, incursions, ambushes and sallies. ‘War is…above all made up of pillaging, often of sieges, sometimes of battles.’ Moreover, because of a lack of money, men, supplies and provisions, many plans failed to mature: ‘A campaign brought to a conclusion constitutes an exception, an enterprise which defies the rule.’

— War in the Middle Ages, p. 219

Emphasis mine.

Following tradition tracing back to the Roman title of imperator, a European monarch was always the general of his country’s army. His principal military assistant, in peace and war, was usually called a constable, a member of the nobility renowned for military prowess. Other outstanding noble warriors, particularly in France, frequently carried the honorific title of marshal. When a ruler was present in the field, he automatically exercised command as general. His second in command, who might or might not be the constable or one of the marshals, exercised his military functions as the lieutenant general. In the absence of the monarch, the lieutenant general commanded in the king’s name.

Under the operational command of the monarch or his lieutenant general was a senior administrative officer known as the sergeant major general. An experienced soldier, not necessarily a nobleman, the sergeant major general was in effect the chief of staff. He was responsible for supply, for organization, and for forming up the heterogeneous units of a 16th-century [C.E.] army for battle—a long, complicated process, with much shouting and confusion, considerably helped if the sergeant major general had a stentorian voice. In his administrative functions he was assisted in the subordinate units—national and mercenary—by administrative officers known as sergeants major and sergeants.

There was no permanent military hierarchy or chain of command below king and constable. Lieutenant generals and sergeant major generals were appointed for a campaign only.

— The Encyclopedia of Military History, p. 459

See also Origins of European Army Ranks.

…The Roman Empire had a well-formulated ideology and institutions of monarchy, and by the late Empire this was an absolute monarchy. Emperors could not always do just what they wanted to do, of course, but the system operated as though the imperial will were all-powerful; no constitutitional mechanism existed to frustrate or modify it. In any premodern absolute monarchy, effective limitations were set by primitive communications networks and by the small size of the civil service, which frequently made it impossible to implement the royal will even when it was accepted as law. The ideology of absolute monarchy was developed out of a Roman law, based on Hellenistic and Oriental traditions, that held that the people had surrendered the natural powers to the monarch and could never revoke the surrender.

— Norman F. Cantor, Inventing the Middle Ages, pp. 104-105

The king’s armiger was originally just what the Latin world literally means, the bearer of the king’s arms. On ceremonial occasions in the eleventh and later centuries [C.E.] the armiger continued to be the royal servant whose duty and privilege it was to carry the king’s sword, lance and shield. But by [King] Sancho II’s [d. 1072] day the responsibilities of this officer were far wider than the merely domestic or ceremonial. The armiger was responsible for overseeing the king’s household militia, the body of troops who formed the king’s escort and were the nucleus of the royal army. While we do not possess any contemporary description of the duties of the armiger, it is likely that he was responsible for recruiting, training and keeping order among these often unruly young men; perhaps for supervising the arrangements for their payment too. He had to have an eye for potential talent, to be demanding in his appraisal of mounts and equipment, to be firm and tactful in sorting out the scrapes his subordinates landed themselves in. He was also one of the king’s principal military advisors. Thus the armiger had to be at once staff-officer, adjutant, regimental sergeant-major—and something of a counselor. It was a demanding job. Usually held by fairly young men, it equipped them for independent command.

— The Quest for El Cid, p. 114

Horsemanship was the first prerequisite for a military career. [A boy] would have had his first riding lessons almost as soon as he could walk. Under the strict gaze of his father’s grooms he would have progressed from donkey to pony, from pony to horse, learning by practice how to keep his seat, how to govern a fractious beast or calm a nervous one, how to ride for long hours over rough country without tiring, and all the other skills that would go to preserve his life in the melee of combat. Hunting and hawking, the nobleman’s pastimes, developed further skills: an eye for country—surface and slope, vantage point and dead ground; the habit of moving on horseback in company, if necessary swiftly and silently; the difficult art of shooting from horseback with bow and arrow at a moving quarry; the courage needed to dismount and face the charge of a boar with only a spear to protect the hunter from its tusks; endurance of heat and cold, hunger and thirst; care of weapons and tack, where a loose knife-haft or girth worn to breaking could cost limb or even life.

— The Quest for El Cid, pp. 109-10

The military system of a state is explained by its resources, principally financial, the structure of its government and administration, the level of its technology, the organization of its society and the nature of its economy, but one must also take into account its objectives and strictly military imperatives. Every state in effect seeks to raise armed forces adapted to its ambitions and to its own fears. This was the case in England at the end of the Middle Ages when military institutions were founded as a result of the interaction of several factors. First, it was a society where the feudal regime had changed almost completely into a system of land tenures, creating the need to establish new personal ties between those who governed and the men who were capable of serving them in war—’bastard feudalism’. Secondly, the fact that the principal English strength lay in the massive use of the longbow, a weapon which was popular rather than aristocratic, led to the need to draw on the resources of every level of society, independent of juridical status, in order to recruit a sufficient number of highly qualified archers. Finally, the adoption of a deliberately aggressive and expansive foreign policy implied the sending of forces against Scotland, Wales and Ireland, but above all across the sea. These expeditionary corps had to be capable of waging war away from their base for six months, a year, two years or even more. Garrison troops, intended to hold permanently a certain number of places on the continent and also, if the need arose, capable of turning themselves into a proper army of occupation, were vital.

— War in the Middle Ages, p. 150

Nothing epitomized the outlook and performance of the [nineteenth-century C.E.] German General Staff, and of the German Army which it coordinated, more than this concept of mission tactics: the responsibility of each German officer and noncommissioned officer—and even Moltke‘s ‘youngest soldier’—to do without question or doubt whatever the situation required, as he saw it. This meant that he should act without awaiting orders, if action seemed necessary. It also meant that he should act contrary to orders, if these did not seem to be consistent with the situation.

To make perfectly clear that action contrary to orders was not considered either as disobedience or lack of discipline, German commanders began to repeat one of Moltke’s favorite stories, of an incident observed while visiting the headquarters of Prince Frederick Charles. A major, receiving a tongue-lashing from the Prince for a tactical blunder, offered the excuse that he had been obeying orders, and reminded the Prince that a Prussian officer was taught that an order from a superior was tantamount to an order from the King. Frederick Charles promptly responded: “His Majesty made you a major because he believed you would know when not to obey his orders.” This simple story became guidance for all following generations of German officers.

— A Genius For War, p. 116

Emphasis mine.

In the years immediately following foundation, a [Christian] military order [like the Knights Templar] consisted of a small group of brethren under the leadership of a master. At this stage little governmental machinery was needed. As property and recruits were gained, it became the norm to establish subordinate convents, both in frontier regions and elsewhere. If expansion was considerable, an intermediate tier of government between convents and the order’s headquarters was soon needed, as it became difficult for masters to supervise distant convents. Also, a system was needed by which resources and recruits could easily be channelled to frontier regions from other convents. Orders which fought on several fronts also required a military leader in each district. They adopted the practice of grouping the convents of a region into what were called provinces or priories. Although there were variations in detail, the leading orders adopted a three-tier system of administration.

— The Oxford Illustrated History of the Crusades, p. 204

Henry, Duke of Lancaster, called the “Father of Soldiers,” was England’s most distinguished warrior, who had not missed a battle in his 45 years. He was a veteran of the Scottish wars, of Sluys, of Calais and all the campaigns in France, and when his country was quiescent he rode forth in knightly tradition to carry his sword elsewhere. He had joined the King of Castile in a crusade against the Moors of Algeciras and journeyed to Prussia to join the Teutonic Knights in one of their annual “crusades” to extend Christianity over the lands of Lithuanian heathen. In 1352 [C.E.], while the truce still held between England and France, he was the star of a remarkable event in Paris. On returning from a season in Prussia, he had quarreled with Duke Otto of Brunswick and accepted his challenge to combat, which was arranged under French auspices. Given a safe-conduct, escorted by a noble company to Paris, magnificently entertained by King Jean, the Duke of Lancaster rode into the lists before a splendid audience of French nobility; but his mere reputation proved too much for his opponent. Otto of Brunswick trembled so violently on his warhorse that he could not put on his helmet or wield his spear and had to be removed by his friends and retract his challenge.

— A Distant Mirror, Chapter 6

The role of cavalry had declined in the Spanish army because the Spaniards had increased their infantry partly at the expense of it. Since a properly armored heavy cavalryman could cost four times as much as a pikeman or arquebusier, a small decrease in heavy cavalry could finance a huge addition to the infantry and bring about a dramatic alteration in the proportions between infantry and cavalry. Though a large part of their cavalry consisted of traditional full-armored lancers, the Spanish did have cavalry that performed a light cavalry’s strategic duties of reconnaissance and attack on the enemy’s stragglers, foragers, convoys, and logistic installations. Usually mounted arquebusiers filled this role. Because of the difficulties involved in using the arquebus while mounted, these horse arquebusiers were really mounted infantry. They usually dismounted to use their weapons. But on at least one occasion, after the battle of Ceresole in 1544 [C.E.], mounted arquebusiers pursued retreating heavy infantry and, by dismounting to shoot and remounting to continue the pursuit, managed effectively to simulate the traditional Parthian or Turkish tactics of light cavalry.

— The Art of War in the Western World, p. 192

The rest of western Europe copied this change from the Spanish, leading to the permanent decline of “pure” cavalry in warfare there.

The arquebusiers, belonging to the same unit as the pikemen, did not operate completely independently…. In the absence of obstructed terrain, the square of pikemen provided the only place of safety where the light infantry might take refuge from the enemy’s heavy cavalry. They could take a position on the flank of or behind the square, or, should the cavalry attack in flank or rear, many could find safety in the front ranks where the wall of pikes would protect them. In turn, the arquebusiers’ fire could support the pikemen’s defense, and the masses of the enemy’s heavy infantry or the horses and men of the attacking heavy cavalry would provide fine targets for arquebus balls. The Spaniards gradually increased the proportion of arquebusiers to pikemen until, by the end of the 16th century [C.E.], their regiments approached equal numbers of light and heavy infantry.

— The Art of War in the Western World, p. 191

Chivalry’s finest military expression in contemporary eyes was the famous Combat of the Thirty in 1351 [C.E.]. An action of the perennial conflict in Brittany [part of the Hundred Years War], it began with a challenge to single combat issued by Robert de Beaumanoir, a noble Breton on the French side, to his opponent Bramborough of the Anglo-Breton party. When their partisans clamored to join, a combat of thirty on each side was agreed upon. Terms were arranged, the site was chosen, and after participants heard mass and exchanged courtesies, the fight commenced. With swords, bear-spears, daggers, and axes, they fought savagely until four on the French side and two on the English were slain and a recess was called. Bleeding and exhausted, Beaumanoir called for a drink, eliciting the era’s most memorable reply: “Drink thy blood, Beaumanoir, and thy thirst will pass!” Resuming, the combatants fought until the French side prevailed and every one of the survivors on either side was wounded. Bramborough and eight of his party were killed, the rest taken prisoner and held for ransom.

In the wide discussion the affair aroused, ‘some held it as a very poor thing and others as a very swaggering business,’ with the admirers dominating. The combat was celebrated in verse, painting, tapestry, and in a memorial stone erected on the site. More than twenty years later Froissart noticed a scarred survivor at the table of Charles V, where he was honored above all others. He told the ever-inquiring chronicler that he owed his great favor with the King to his having been one of the Thirty. The renown and honor the fight earned reflected the knight’s nostalgic vision of what battle should be. While he practiced the warfare of havoc and pillage, he clung to the image of himself as Sir Lancelot.

— A Distant Mirror, Chapter 6

Emphasis mine.

With heavy infantry specialized to resist heavy cavalry and light infantry indispensable in sieges and finding its most effective employment in the field against light cavalry, the art of war about the year 1200 [C.E.] had these clearly distinguishable capabilities (using the symbol → to mean was superior to):

heavy infantry → heavy cavalry
heavy cavalry → light infantry
light infantry → light cavalry
light cavalry → both heavy infantry and heavy cavalry.

These relationships are conveniently summarized in schematic [above], in which A means ability to attack successfully in the direction of the arrow and D means ability to defend successfully in the direction of the arrow. Attack includes the capability to compel the attacked to fight; defend implies only the capacity for successful resistance but no ability to force action. The schematic assumes a flat surface.

The ability of the cavalry to dismount modifies this diagram. When the heavy cavalry dismounted it became heavy infantry, and confirmed the generalizations that the man on foot is superior to the mounted man and [that] the defensive is stronger when the same weapon systems confront one another. Light cavalry could gain comparable advantages by dismounting, and in each case the dismounted cavalry in the defense could easily take advantage of terrain or artificial obstacles, something more difficult to do mounted. Medieval soldiers grasped and often exploited the value of dismounting heavy cavalry but, lacking light cavalry, could never make use of this transformation. They did occasionally mount bowmen, giving them the strategic mobility of the light cavalry. They more rarely resorted to a similar mounting of heavy infantry, probably because of their ample supply of heavy cavalry. Yet to have mounted heavy infantry on nags would have been a far more economical solution had knights customarily fought on foot. It would have saved the considerable cost of a robust war horse and the expensive, but unused, skill in fighting mounted.

— The Art of War in the Western World, p. 145-46

…All the Princedoms of which we have record have been governed in one of two ways: Either by a sole Prince, all others being his servants permitted by his grace and favor to assist in governing the kingdom as his ministers; Or else, by a Prince with his Barons who hold their rank, not by the favor of a superior Lord, but by antiquity of blood, and who have States and subjects of their own who recognize them as their rulers and entertain for them a natural affection. States governed by a sole Prince and by his servants vest in him a more complete authority; because throughout the land none but he is recognized as sovereign, and if obedience be yielded to any others, it is yielded as to his ministers and officers for whom personally no special love is felt.

Of these two forms of government we have examples in our own days in the Turk and the King of France. The whole Turkish empire is governed by a sole Prince, all others being his slaves. Dividing his kingdom into sandjaks, he sends thither different governors whom his shifts and changes at his pleasure. The King of France, on the other hand, is surrounded by a multitude of nobles of ancient descent, each acknowledged and loved by subjects of his own, and each asserting a precedence in rank of which the King can deprive him only at his peril.

He, therefore, who considers the different character of these two States, will perceive that it would be difficult to gain possession of that of the Turk, but that once won it might be easily held. The obstacles to its conquest are that the invader cannot be called in by a native nobility, nor expect his enterprise to be aided by the defection of those whom the sovereign has around him. And this for the various reasons already given, namely, that all being slaves and under obligations they are not easily corrupted, or if corrupted can render little assistance, being unable, as I have already explained, to carry the people with them. Whoever, therefore, attacks the Turk must reckon on finding a unite people, and must trust rather to his own strength than to divisions on the other side. But were his adversary once overcome and defeated in the field, so that he could not repair his armies, no cause for anxiety would remain, except in the family of the Prince; which being extirpated, there would be none else to fear; for since all beside are without credit with the people, the invader, as before his victory he had nothing to hope from them, so after he has nothing to dread.

— The Prince, p. 16

The monasteries of 10th and 11th century Europe [C.E.] were not simply communities of devout men and women living a life given over to corporate prayer and worship. Envisaged by monastic teachers as arks of salvation in a flood of worldly perils, they remained an integral part of the society which brought them into being. The Castilian monasteries were repositories of dynastic tradition, mausoleums, powerhouses of loyalty to the comital family. Links between the landed aristocracy and the monasteries were thus extremely close. Noblemen looked to the monastic houses of which they were the often very generous patrons for diverse reciprocal services and expressions of gratitude. The provision of hospitality was one of these. A patron would expect to be put up (with all his human and animal retinue), and probably in some style, in “his” monastery as in some sort of private hotel. The hospitality sought might be permanent. The active career of an aristocratic warrior might be as short as that of a 20th century footballer, and he had to have somewhere to spend what might be a long retirement. It is probably correct to envisage the monasteries of this period as containing more than a few incapacitated or elderly knights among the community. Assured of comfort and security, surrounded by fellows of their social rank to some of whom they might be related, ideally placed to receive news and gossip, they must have spent their declining years in an agreeable way.

— The Quest for El Cid, pp. 66-67

Emphasis mine.

Right up to and through the Renaissance, magicians were classed among what we today would call intellectuals. They were learned men, familiar with ancient lore and languages, with the obscure symbolism of signs and numbers. They read the stars and dabbled in the mysticism that surrounded alchemy. They were respected. In the early centuries of Christianity, magic was not considered an evil thing. In a world thought to be inhabited by men and angels and devils, men also believed in spirits neither good or bad; spirits of the air, of fire, of the sea, of the mountains, of the woods, of the winds. It was believed that if a person was sufficiently learned in the art of magic, he could summon and control these powers; make them do his bidding. It was only at the very end of the Middle Ages, and particularly in the Renaissance enlightenment, that animism lost its hold on men’s minds.

— The Wonderful World of Magic and Witchcraft, p. 2

So gorgeous was the spectacle on the May morning of 1910 [C.E.] when nine kings rode in the funeral of Edward VII of England that the crowd, waiting in hushed and black-clad awe, could not keep back gasps of admiration. In scarlet and blue and green and purple, three by three the sovereigns rode through the palace gates, with plumed helmets, gold braid, crimson sashes, and jeweled orders flashing in the sun. After them came five heirs apparent, forty more imperial or royal highnesses, seven queens—four dowager and three regnant—and a scattering of special ambassadors from uncrowned countries. Together they represented seventy nations in the greatest assemblage of royalty and rank ever gathered in one place and, of its kind, the last. The muffled tongue of Big Ben tolled nine by the clock as the cortège left the palace, but on history’s clock it was sunset, and the sun of the old world was setting in a dying blaze of splendor never to be seen again.

— The Guns of August, p. 1

Standing, from left to right: King Haakan VII of Norway, King Ferdinand of Bulgaria, King Manoel of Portugal, Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany, King George I of Greece, King Albert of the Belgians. Seated, from left to right: King Alfonso XIII of Spain, King George V of England, King Frederik VIII of Denmark.

The photograph is not from The Guns of August. I failed to record what book I found it in. Imagine if it was a color photograph.