Chapter 2 - The World's First Armies
The Armies of Sumer and Akkad, 3500-2200 BC
The area of present-day Iraq is the site of ancient Sumer and Akkad, two city-states that produced the most sophisticated armies of the Bronze Age.
The Greeks called the area Mesopotamia, literally the
"land between the two rivers,"
a reference to the Tigris and Euphrates basin. In the Bible, the area is called Shumer , the original Sumerian word for the southern part of Iraq, the site of Sumer with its capital at the city of Ur.
If the river is followed northward from Sumer for about 200 miles, the site of ancient Akkad can be found.
From here, in 2300 B.C., Sargon the Great launched a campaign of military conquest that united all of Mesopotamia.
Within a decade Sargon had extended his conquests from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean Sea and northeastward to the Taurus Mountains of Turkey (Map 1).
Sargon the Great provided the world with its first example of a military dictatorship.
Sumerian civilization was among the oldest urban civilizations on the planet.
In Sumer the first attempts at writing emerged to produce ancient cuneiform, a form of administrative language written as wedged strokes on clay tablets.
And in ancient Sumer the first detailed records, written or carved in stone, of military battles appeared.
No society of the Bronze Age was more advanced in the design and application of military weaponry and technique than was ancient Sumer, a legacy it sustained for two thousand years before bequeathing it to the rest of the Middle East.
The cities of Sumer, first evident in 4000 B.C., provide the world's first examples of genuine urban centers of considerable size.
In these early cities, especially in Eridu and Urak, people first manifested the high degree of cooperative effort necessary to make urban life possible.
Both cities reflected the evidence of this cooperation in the dikes, walls, irrigation canals, and temples which date from the fourth millennium.
An efficient agricultural system made it possible to free large numbers of people from the land, and the cities of ancient Sumer produced social structures comprised largely of freemen who met in concert to govern themselves.
The early Sumerian cities were characterized by a high degree of social and economic diversity, which gave rise to artisans, merchants, priests, bureaucrats and, for the first time in history, professional soldiers.
The ancient Sumerians were a polyglot of ethnic peoples, much like in the United States.
The period of interest for the student of military history is that from 3000 to 2316 B.C., the date that Sargon the Great united all of Sumer into a single state.
This period was marked by almost constant wars among the major city-states and against foreign enemies.
Among the more common foreign enemies of the southern city-states were the Elamites, the peoples of northern Iran.
The conflict between Sumerians and Elamites probably extended back to Neolithic times, but the first recorded instance of war between them appeared in 2700 B.C., when Mebaragesi, the first king on the Sumerian King List, undertook a war against the Elamites, and
"carried away as spoil the weapons of Elam."
This first
"Iran-Iraq war"
was fought in the same area around Basra and the salt marshes that have witnessed the modern conflict of the last decade between the same two states.
The almost constant occurrence of war among the city-states of Sumer for two thousand years spurred the development of military technology and technique far beyond that found elsewhere at the time.
The first war for which there is any detailed evidence occurred between the states of Lagash and Umma in 2525 B.C.
In this war Eannatum of Lagash defeated the king of Umma. The importance of this war to the military historian lies in a commemorative stele that Eannatum erected to celebrate his victory.
It is called the Stele of Vultures for its portrayal of birds of prey and lions tearing at the corpses of the defeated dead as they lay on the desert plain.
The stele represents the first important pictorial of war in the Sumerian period.
The Stele of Vultures portrays the king of Lagash leading an infantry phalanx of armored, helmeted warriors, armed with spears, trampling their enemies.
The king, with a socket axe, rides a chariot drawn by four onagers (wild asses.)
In a lower panel, Eannatum holds a sickle-sword. The information and implications of this stele are priceless.
The stele demonstrates that the Sumerian troops fought in phalanx formation, organized six files deep, with an eight-man front, somewhat similar to the formation used in Archaic Greece.
The authors report the first findings on the origins and evolution of war and politics in ancient China (Legendary, Xia [Hsia], Shang, and Western Zhou [Chou] periods), from ca.
2700 B.C. to 722 B.C.
The main findings are as follows:
(1) warfare in China began, at the latest, by 2193 B.C. (first historical Chinese civil war) or 2146 B.C. (first interstate war), more than 4,000 years ago, and has continued unabated;
(2) warfare patterns varied significantly across periods but in measurable ways, similar to earlier long-range findings for other regions;
(3) warfare onsets increased across periods, particularly during the Zhou period, reaching a peak frequency of approximately 10% of the modern world frequency (1816-1980 A.D.);
(4) war onset was mostly inhibited (opposite of contagious), symptomatic of stability and restraint;
and (5) the highest stability occurred during the Shang epoch and the lowest during the Xia and Western Zhou periods.
The results support the comparative, universal properties of warfare, both cross-polity and cross-temporally.
It was between Sumer (in modern Iraq) and Elam (a region that is now part of Iran), and was fought in the area around Basra (just like the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s).
Of course, tribes, cities, etc., had been fighting each other for thousands of years before that, but there are no records of these earlier conflicts as writing wasn't invented until a little before 3000 BC.
The first detailed account of a war dates from c. 2525 BC.
It is a pictorial record carved on a stone monument erected by Eannatum, ruler of Lagash (a Sumerian city-state), to commemorate his victory over the ruler of Umma (another Sumerian state).
This monument is known as the Stele of Vultures, because it shows birds feeding on the enemy corpses.
More importantly, it also shows Eannatum and his army in full war gear, giving a good idea of their equipment and battle formations.
***** A useful site on Sumerian warfare can be found here.
It includes excellent illustrations of scenes from the Stele of Vultures, the "Standard" of Ur, and various weapons, chariots, etc.
They are planning to suppress
America and then Abandon her,
leaving the citizens of America
SLAVES
to their
new
Country that they take OVER
The Founding Fathers of the United States
were the political leaders who signed the Declaration of Independence in 1776 or otherwise took part in the American Revolution in winning American independence from Great Britain, or who participated in framing and adopting the United States Constitution in 1787-1788, or in putting the new government under the Constitution into effect.
Within the large group known as
"the founding fathers,"
there are two key subsets, the Signers
(who signed the Declaration of Independence in 1776)
and
the Framers
(who were delegates to the Federal Convention and took part in framing or drafting the proposed Constitution of the United States).
Most historians define the
"founding fathers"
to mean a larger group, including not only the Signers and the Framers but also all those who, whether as politicians or jurists or statesmen or soldiers or diplomats or ordinary citizens, took part in winning American independence and creating the United States of America.
American historian Richard B. Morris, in his 1973 book Seven Who Shaped Our Destiny:
The Founding Fathers as Revolutionaries, identified the following seven figures as the key founding fathers: Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, John Jay, James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton.
Warren G. Harding, then a Republican Senator from Ohio, coined the phrase
"Founding Fathers"
in his keynote address to the 1916 Republican National Convention.
He used it several times thereafter, most prominently in his 1921 inaugural address as President of the United States.
Gunpowder Plot
The Gunpowder Plot of 1605, in earlier centuries often called the Gunpowder Treason Plot, was a failed assassination attempt against King James I of England and VI of Scotland by a group of provincial English Catholics led by Sir Robert Catesby.
The plan was to blow up the House of Lords during the State Opening of Parliament on 5 November 1605, as the prelude to a popular revolt in the Midlands during which James's nine-year-old daughter, Princess Elizabeth, was to be installed as the Catholic head of state.
Catesby may have embarked on the scheme after hopes of securing greater religious tolerance under King James had faded, leaving many English Catholics disappointed.
His fellow plotters were John Wright, Thomas Wintour, Thomas Percy, Guy Fawkes, Robert Keyes, Thomas Bates, Robert Wintour, Christopher Wright, John Grant, Sir Ambrose Rookwood, Sir Everard Digby and Francis Tresham.
Fawkes, who had 10 years of military experience fighting in the Spanish Netherlands in suppression of the Dutch Revolt, was given charge of the explosives.
The plot was revealed to the authorities in an anonymous letter sent to William Parker, 4th Baron Monteagle, on 26 October 1605.
During a search of the House of Lords at about midnight on 4 November 1605, Fawkes was discovered guarding 36 barrels of gunpowder – enough to reduce the House of Lords to rubble – and arrested.
Most of the conspirators fled from London as they learned of the plot's discovery, trying to enlist support along the way.
Several made a stand against the pursuing Sheriff of Worcester and his men at Holbeche House;
in the ensuing battle Catesby was one of those shot and killed.
At their trial on 27 January 1606, eight of the survivors, including Fawkes, were convicted and sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered.
Details of the assassination attempt were allegedly known by the principal Jesuit of England, Father Henry Garnet.
Although Garnet was convicted and sentenced to death, doubt has since been cast on how much he really knew of the plot.
As its existence was revealed to him through confession, Garnet was prevented from informing the authorities by the absolute confidentiality of the confessional.
Although anti-Catholic legislation was introduced soon after the plot's discovery, many important and loyal Catholics retained high office during King James I's reign.
The thwarting of the Gunpowder Plot was commemorated for many years afterwards by special sermons and other public events such as the ringing of church bells, which have evolved into the Bonfire Night of today.
