Official Newsletter of the Michigan Company of Military Historians & Collectors
December 9, 2013
“War is the continuation of politics by other means. A war not fought for political ends is simply mindless
bloodshed.” Carl von Clausewitz from On War
“What we have now among the Army is a bunch shallow dilettantes who run from pillar to post trying to
punch their card serving minimum time at company level because the exposure…you can get in trouble
easily.” Col. David H. Hackworth, USA, 27 June, 1971
“There never was a time when, in my opinion, some way could not be found to prevent the drawing of the
sword.” General Ulysses S. Grant
Our speaker will be Tom Burr, a lieutenant with the 7th Cav in 1968 and a defense
attorney for soldiers charged under the Uniform Code of Military Justice.
MEETINGS take place the second Monday of every month at the Riverfront Hotel Grand Rapids
Riverfront 270 Ann St NW, Grand Rapids, MI 49504 (616) 363-9001. Socializing begins at 6:00
(1800), dinner at 7:00 (1900), business meeting 7:15 (1915), and program at 8:00 (2000).
GENERAL STAFF
OFFICERS OF THE COMPANY
Commandant - James Henningsen
Executive Officer - Richard O’Beshaw
Adjutant - Gary Brown
Judge Advocate - Boyd Conrad
Mess Officer - Mike Krushinsky
Sgt-at-Arms - Richard Foster
Editor Cannon Report - Kingman Davis
Editor Emeritus - Jose Amoros
Open Mess Chairman - Jay Stone
Membership Committee - Kingman Davis
Archivist - Richard O’Beshaw
Website:
http://www.thecannonreport.org/
Facebook:
Michigan Company of Military Historians and
Collectors
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Company Notes
1.Misty Goins is eligible for membership in the Company at
the December meeting. Any objection should be brought to
the Membership Chairman prior to the voice vote.
2. Dues of $40.00 (forty dollars) are due in January. Make
checks payable to MCMH&C and give or send to Mike
Krushinsky, 11748 24th Ave., Marne, MI 49435
3. My Year in Vietnam-Session Five: After Tet, 1968-1969
Dec. 3, 2013, Tuesday, Loosemore Auditorium, GVSU
Grand Rapids Campus, 7 PM. These sessions are
extraordinary and should not be missed.
4. New officer selections are needed. In the past officers
move up one position unless anyone else wishes to run for
an office. As it stands we need at least one volunteer to become the Adjutant for 2014. Step up
please. We will consider all candidates at the December meeting.
*The editorial opinions and articles in The Cannon Report do not represent any official position of the Michigan
Company of Military Historians and Collectors (MCMH&C) only the opinions of the editor. The MCMH&C is a
non-partisan, non-ideological association. All members are welcome to submit material, letters, “for the good of the
company items”, etc. Direct inquiries or comments to [email protected]
Mavis Batey, Allied Code Breaker in World War II,
Dies at 92 by Douglas Martin The New York Times 11/22/13
After Britain declared war on Germany in September 1939, Mavis Lever, an 18-year-old British
university student, volunteered to be an army nurse. Instead, because of her expertise in the German language,
she was referred to the intelligence services. “This is going to be an interesting job,” she recalled thinking,
“Mata Hari seducing Prussian officers.”
But playing the role of temptress was not what the military had in mind for her. She was assigned to one
of World War II’s most secret and important operations, an ambitious Allied effort to decipher secret codes used
by the Axis powers — chiefly Nazi Germany’s mind-boggling one, aptly given the name Enigma. She was
Mavis Batey with a German Enigma code-scrambling machine
ordered to report to the unit’s headquarters, at Bletchley Park, a Victorian estate in southeastern England.
There, Miss Lever — one of the few women in the operation — was critical to at least two major successes in
the war effort, including a British victory at sea in the Battle of Cape Matapan, off the coast of Greece, in
March 1941, when an Italian convoy was ambushed and three heavy cruisers and two destroyers carrying 3,000
sailors were sunk. When asked years later, after she had married and became Mavis Batey, she could hardly
say why she, while still a teenager, was chosen for such a top-secret enterprise. But she did know that Dillwyn
Knox, known as Dilly, a top code breaker at Bletchley Park, selected her for his team. In a largely masculine
environment, Mr. Knox, an eccentric classicist by training, liked to hire women, especially pretty ones, and give
them considerable responsibility.
Whatever the case, Mrs. Batey, who died on Nov. 12 at 92, more than justified her selection. The evening of the
Cape Matapan success, John Godfrey, director of naval intelligence, called Mr. Knox at home and left a
message: “Tell Dilly that we have won a great victory in the Mediterranean, and it is entirely due to him and his
girls.”
The team at Bletchley Park — 12,000 people, including Americans, worked there at one time or another
during the war — was composed, among others, of mathematicians, linguists, crossword mavens and an
assortment of acknowledged eccentrics. Its existence was kept secret until the mid-1970s. Sir Francis Harry
Hinsley, official historian of British intelligence during World War II, has said that the operation’s codecracking work shortened the war by two or more years.
One of its chief challenges was decoding messages scrambled by what the Allies called Enigma
machines. The device, used by the Germans and other Axis powers and resembling an oversize typewriter, used
a series of electrical rotors to scramble messages in an astronomical number of ways; each letter could appear
in more than 150 million million million permutations.
The messages, sent by radio using Morse code, were intercepted by spies and sent to Bletchley Park,
where code breakers had access to their own Enigma machines, originally obtained by Poles and given to the
British. A principal tool they used was a computerlike device, made by the genius mathematician Alan Turing,
connecting a series of Enigma machines. But Mr. Knox preferred to work through linguistic cues, which
required thinking in sometimes counterintuitive ways. In his book “Enigma: The Battle for the Code” (2000),
Hugh Sebag-Montefiore wrote that a question Mr. Knox asked potential recruits was which way the hands of a
clock go around. Everyone, of course, said clockwise. A delighted Mr. Knox would reply, “Not if you’re inside
the clock.” One of Mrs. Batey’s hunches that proved accurate in deciphering code allowed the British to read a
long, detailed message on Italian naval plans in the Mediterranean, paving the way for the Cape Matapan
victory. The plans, she recalled, revealed “how many cruisers there were, and how many submarines were to be
there, and where they were to be at such and such a time. Absolutely incredible that they should spell it all
out,” she said.
In December 1941, Mrs. Batey collaborated with her colleague Margaret Rock to decipher a small
segment of a message by the German secret service. Not until years later did they know the effect: It helped
British spies to learn that German generals believed that Allied forces would invade at Calais, France, not
Normandy, on D-Day in June 1944. Making a play on the names of his code breakers, Mr. Knox said, “Give
me a Lever and a Rock and I will move the universe.”
Mavis Lilian Lever was born on May 5, 1921, in South London to a postal worker and a seamstress.
Inspired by a vacation to Germany with her parents, she went on to study German Romanticism at University
College, London. But when the war broke out and she was assigned to intelligence duty, any thoughts of
working as a spy were quickly dispelled. “I don’t think my legs or my German were good enough,” she told the
British newspaper The Daily Telegraph in 2001, “because they sent me to the Government Code and Cipher
School,” the official name for the Bletchley Park operation. It was also called Ultra and Station X. At
Bletchley Park, she fell in love with another code breaker, Keith Batey. They married in 1942. Mr. Batey, who
died in 2010, went on to be the chief financial officer at Oxford. And Mrs. Batey went on to write books about
Mr. Knox and the experience of Ian Fleming, author of the James Bond novels, as a code breaker at Bletchley
Park. A longtime president of Britain’s Garden History Society, she also wrote books on the landscapes of Jane
Austen and the gardens of Oxford.
Her survivors include her daughters, Elizabeth and Deborah; her son, Christopher; and several
grandchildren. The children knew nothing of their mother’s wartime exploits until files about the Bletchley
Park operation were declassified. In the 2001 movie “Enigma,” Kate Winslet at least partly molded her
portrayal of the code breaker Hester Wallace as Mrs. Batey, with whom she had tea before shooting the film.
Like Mrs. Batey, the Hester character falls in love with another code breaker and marries him. Some Bletchley
Park veterans criticized the film as inauthentic. Mrs. Batey’s criticism was that its women appeared “scruffy”
compared with the originals. “We borrowed each other’s pearls, so we always looked nice.” Thanks to Jay
Stone for providing the link to this story.
The Failure of Abu Ghraib
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“When the world learned in the spring of 2004 that American soldiers had sadistically abused prisoners
at Abu Ghraib, Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, US commander of the Iraq War, treated the sandal as a
breakdown of discipline among a few enlisted soldiers, rather than a problem caused by a series of leadership
failures resulting from decisions made well above his level. The original sin was President Bush’s decision to
go to war preemptively on information that would prove false. The second major mistake was the failure of
the Joint Chiefs of Staff to point out the
fundamental contradiction between the civilian
view of the mission in Iraq and the military’s view.
The mission was never defined - a sin of omission
committed by both the military and the civilians.
The Bush Administration wanted to transform Iraq
into a beacon of free-market democracy for the
Middle East. The American military never said so
publicly, but in its actions it rejected that
revolutionary mission and instead stated that its
goal was to stabilize Iraq - which was almost the
opposite of the president’s intent. That was the
root cause of much of the friction between civil and
military authority in the first three years of the
American occupation.
Because this basic contradiction was left
unexamined, Sanchez really had no strategy to
implement. That lack manifested itself in the
radically different approaches taken by different
Army divisions in the war. Observers moving from
one part of Iraq to another were struck by how each
division was fighting its own war, with its own
assessment of the threat, its own solutions, and its
own rules of engagement. It was as if there were
four separate wars under way. In western Iraq’s
Anbar Province, the 82nd Airborne and the 3rd
Armored Cavalry Regiment got tough fast. The 4th
Infantry Division, based in Tikrit, in north-central Iraq, operated evenly more harshly, rounding up thousands
of “military age males” and probably turning many of them into insurgents in the process. Baghdad was its
own separate situation, exceedingly complex and changing from block to block. Meanwhile, in far northern
Iraq, Major General Petraeus and the 101st Airborne Division made a separate peace, to the extent of ignoring
many of the anti-Baathist rules coming out of Baghdad and conducting negotiations with the government of
Syria to provide energy to Mosul. One reason for such distinctly diverse approaches was that the conditions
were different in each of those areas. But another reason was that each division commander more or less went
his own way, with little guidance from the theater commander.
Yet Sanchez compounded the problem through smallness of mind and inflexibility in approach. He did
not seem willing to learn and adapt. Some commanders at the tactical level took effective approaches, but
these were ignored or even discouraged by Sanchez. But his biggest failure as commander was that on his
watch, some units acted in ways that were not only counterproductive but illegal. Not knowing how else to put
down an insurgency, some divisions indiscriminately detained thousands of Iraqis and shipped them off to Abu
Ghraib prison and other detention centers, where the Army lacked sufficient guards and interrogators to hold
and sort them. Another, less noticed reason for these big roundups was that American soldiers expected to
leave Iraq before long, either as part of a withdrawal or by way of troop rotation. Commanders just wanted all
the possible bad guys out of their neighborhoods until they left. Where those Iraqis wound up was someone
else’s problem.
An Army intelligence expert later estimated that more than 85% of the detainees had no intelligence
value. And even if it had been the right approach Sanchez had failed to ensure that he had a back office
capable of processing what the frontline force had collected. Not only were more than ten thousand Iraqis
imprisoned, but, because prisoners were not sorted by political orientation, hard core insurgents and al-Qaeda
terrorists were able to use the prisons as recruiting and training centers. Worst of all, the Abu Ghraib prison
was run by a small, undertrained, poorly led Army Reserve military police unit (320th Military Police
Battalion) that amused itself by playing brutal games with prisoners. The revelation of their crimes was the
biggest setback of Sanchez’s year of command in Iraq, a black eye for the American military and the United
States, and a major boost for the insurgency.” The preceding text was taken from The Generals by Thomas E. Rick.
pp. 412-13. Worse of all was the revelation that the CIA and various private contractors were involved in the
more serious cases of abuse, torture, and deaths; and according to the administration could not be charged nor
tried under the Uniform Code of Military Justice.
Rick further comments that “in his farewell speech as Army chief of Staff in mid-2003, General Eric
Shinseki, who frequently had been at odds with (Defense Secretary) Rumsfeld, told the assembled crowd that
in Vietnam the American military had gone to war under the Johnson Administration’s unexamined and false
assumption that Hanoi and its forces had a breaking point that could be reached fairly quickly. In Iraq, the
military went to war under the Bush Administration’s unexamined and false assumption that occupation of the
country would be relatively easy. “Making the same mistake is a signal that our leaders were not thinking
strategically in either 1964, 1991 or 2003, and in particular they were not unearthing and dissecting differences
and assumptions.” We went to war in Iraq to make a regime change without any thoughts or consideration of
how to effect a regime replacement. The result of such policies led to a puzzling array of responses by the
American media. Several periodicals, including The New York Times and The Boston Globe, called for
Rumsfeld's resignation. The cover of The Economist, which had backed President Bush in the 2000 election,
carried a photo of the abuse with the words "Resign, Rumsfeld." An editorial in The Army Times wrote,
claiming that Rumsfeld's role in the scandal "amount(ed) to professional negligence, shame... on the chairman
(of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) and secretary (of defense).” Right-wing radio host Rush Limbaugh, on the other
hand, contended that "this is no different than what happens at the Skull and Bones initiation and we're going to
ruin people's lives over it and we're going to hamper our military effort, and then we are going to really
hammer them because they had a good time. You know, these people are being fired at every day. I'm talking
about people having a good time, these people, you ever heard of emotional release? You ever heard of
emotional release?” Conservative talk show host, Michael Savage said, "Instead of putting joysticks, I would
have liked to have seen dynamite put in their orifices", and that "we need more of the humiliation tactics, not
less.” He repeatedly referred to Abu Ghraib prison as "Grab-an-Arab" prison. These comments were directed
to a people who ostensibly we went to war to save and ended up treating them all as enemy combatants without
separating the hapless and unlucky from the truly guilty. The blame truly belongs on the military leadership at
the highest level and will be expounded upon in a future issue.
Regardless, eleven soldiers were convicted of various charges relating to the incidents, all including
dereliction of duty—most receiving relatively minor sentences. Three other soldiers were either cleared of
charges or were not charged. No one was convicted for murders of detainees. Colonel Thomas Pappas was
relieved of his command on May 13, 2005, after receiving non-judicial punishment, on May 9,2005, for two
instances of dereliction, including that of allowing dogs to be present during interrogations. He was fined
$8000 under the provisions of Article 15 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (non-judicial punishment).
He also received a General Officer Memorandum of Reprimand (GOMOR) which effectively ended his
military career.
Lieutenant Colonel Steven L. Jordan became the highest ranking officer to have charges brought against him
in connection with the Abu Ghraib abuse on April 29, 2006. Prior to his trial, eight of twelve charges against
him were dismissed, two of the most serious after Major General George Fay admitted that he did not read
Jordan his rights before interviewing him in reference to the abuses that had taken place. On August 28,
2007, Jordan was acquitted of all charges related to prisoner mistreatment and received a reprimand for
disobeying an order not to discuss a 2004 investigation into the allegations.
Specialist Charles Graner was found guilty on January 14, 2005 of conspiracy to maltreat detainees,
failing to protect detainees from abuse, cruelty, and maltreatment, as well as charges of assault, indecency,
adultery, and obstruction of justice. On January 15, 2005, he was sentenced to 10 years in prison,
dishonorable discharge and reduction in rank to private. Graner was paroled from the US military's Fort
Leavenworth prison on August 6, 2011 after serving six-and-a-half years.
Staff Sergeant Ivan Frederick pled guilty on October 20, 2004 to conspiracy, dereliction of duty,
maltreatment of detainees, assault and committing an indecent act in exchange for other charges being
dropped. His abuses included forcing three prisoners to masturbate. He also punched one prisoner so hard in
the chest that he needed resuscitation. He was sentenced to eight years in prison, forfeiture of pay, a
dishonorable discharge and a reduction in rank to private.
Sergeant Javal Davis pled guilty February 4, 2005 to dereliction of duty, making false official
statements and battery. He was sentenced to six months in prison, a reduction in rank to private, and a bad
conduct discharge.
Specialist Jeremy Sivits was sentenced on May 19, 2004 by a special court-martial to the maximum
one-year sentence, in addition to a bad conduct discharge and a reduction of rank to private, upon his guilty
plea.
Specialist Armin Cruz was sentenced on September 11, 2004, to eight months confinement, reduction
in rank to private and a bad conduct discharge in exchange for his testimony against other soldiers.
Specialist Sabrina Harman was sentenced on May 17, 2005, to six months in prison and a bad conduct
discharge after being convicted on six of the seven counts. She had faced a maximum sentence of five years.
Harman served her sentence at Naval Consolidated Brig, Miramar, California.
Specialist Megan Ambuhl was convicted on October 30, 2004, of dereliction of duty and sentenced to
reduction in rank to private and loss of a half-month’s pay.
Private First Class Lynndie England was convicted on September 26, 2005, of one count of
conspiracy, four counts of maltreating detainees and one count of committing an indecent act. She was
acquitted on a second conspiracy count. England had faced a maximum sentence of ten years. She was
sentenced on September 27, 2005, to three years confinement, forfeiture of all pay and allowances, reduction
to Private (E-1) and received a dishonorable discharge. England had served her sentence at Naval
Consolidated Brig, Miramar, California.
Sergeant Santos Cardona was convicted of dereliction of duty and aggravated assault, the equivalent
of a felony in the US civilian justice system. He served 90 days of hard labor at Fort Bragg, North Carolina.
He was then transferred to a new unit where he trained Iraqi police. Cardona was unable to re-enlist due to
the conviction, and left the army in 2007. In 2009, he was killed in action while working as a government
contractor in Afghanistan.
Specialist Roman Krol pled guilty on February 1, 2005 to conspiracy and maltreatment of detainees at
Abu Ghraib. He was sentenced to ten months confinement, reduction in rank to private, and a bad conduct
discharge.
Specialist Israel Rivera, who was present during abuse on October 25, was under investigation but
was never charged and testified against other soldiers.
PFC England at work
Sergeant Michael Smith was found guilty on March 21, 2006 of two counts of prisoner maltreatment,
one count of simple assault, one count of conspiracy to maltreat, one count of dereliction of duty and a final
charge of an indecent act, and sentenced to 179 days in prison, a fine of $2,250, a demotion to private, and a
bad conduct discharge.
And finally, on April 8, 2005, Brigadier General Janis Karpinski, commander of the Abu Ghraib prison
was formally relieved of command of the 800th Military Police Brigade. On May 5, 2005, President Bush
approved Karpinski's demotion to Colonel from the rank of Brigadier General. Her demotion was not
officially related to the abuse at Abu Ghraib prison. The allegations against her were for dereliction of duty,
making a material misrepresentation to investigators, failure to obey a lawful order and shoplifting. In a BBC
interview, Janis Karpinski said she was made a scapegoat, and that the top U.S. commander for Iraq, General
Ricardo Sanchez, should be asked what he knew about the abuse, as according to her, he said that prisoners are
"like dogs”.
This scandal produced two interesting results. The first being that four former Iraqi prisoners sued a
private contractor alleging that CACI (a private contractor) employees directed the torture of prisoners at Abu
Ghraib. The suit was dismissed in June, 2008 when U.S. District Judge Gerald Bruce Lee ruled that because
the alleged acts took place on foreign soil, CACI was "immune from suit" in U.S. court. A little over a month
after winning the dismissal that summer, CACI requested that the former prisoners be ordered to pay $15,580
to cover the company's legal expenses. Attorneys for the Iraqi prisoners have said they plan to file an appeal of
the June dismissal. As of this writing the suit is still pending.
Probably the most important result of the abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib was that on April 12, 2006,
the United States Army activated the 201st Military Intelligence Battalion, the first of four joint interrogation
battalions. Hopefully this will stop the practice of hiring civilians, employed by private contractors, who so
far, operate outside any laws. Their behaviors have proved embarrassing to our country and inimical to the
purpose and ideals we has a nation purport to represent. Only time and a free press will tell.
The First Special Forces
The word mamluk means ‘owned’ and the original Mamluks were not native to Egypt, where the practice
originated, but were always slave soldiers, mainly Turks from Central Asia. The term Mamluk describes a
condition for they were purchased. Their status was above ordinary slaves, who were not allowed to carry
weapons or perform certain tasks. In principle (though not always in practice) Mamluks could not pass their
property or title to any sons, indeed sons were in theory denied the opportunity to serve in Mamluk regiments, so
the group had to be constantly replenished from outside sources. This Mamluk phenomenon, a specific warrior
class, was of great political importance and was extraordinarily long-lived, lasting from the 9th to the 19th
century AD. Over time, Mamluks became a powerful military caste in various Muslim societies. Particularly in
Egypt, but also in the Levant, Mesopotamia, and India. Mamluks held political and military power. In some
cases, they attained the rank of sultan, while in others they held regional power as amirs or beys. Most notably,
Mamluk factions seized the sultanate for themselves in Egypt and Syria in a period known as the Mamluk
Sultanate (1250-1517). The Bahri Mamluks were mainly natives of southern Russia and the Burgi comprised
chiefly of Circassians from the Caucasus. As steppe people, they had more in common with the Mongols than
with the peoples of Syria and Egypt among whom they lived. And they kept their garrisons distinct, not mixing
with the populace in the territories.
Boys of about thirteen would be captured from areas to the north of the Persian empire, and trained to
become an elite force for the personal use of the sultan or higher lords. The Arabic word Ghulam (boy) was
sometimes employed for the bodyguards they would become. The boys would be sent by the caliph or sultan to
enforce his rule as far afield as Spain (Venice and Genoa were major players in their transportation despite Papal
interdictions) and sold to the commanders of the Islamic governments of the region. Under their new masters
they were manumitted, converted to Islam, and underwent intensive military training.
Islamic society, like that of medieval Christendom, took the form of a theoretical pyramid of fealty with
the king or sultan at the top and numerous petty lords at its base with each lord above them holding rights of
loyalty over them. In the military societies of the thirteenth century higher lords or amirs maintained a large
number of Mamluks, and the sultan held the most. During the Mamluk Sultanate, succession and the power
struggles to dispute succession were based chiefly on the size of a candidate’s power base, in terms of numbers
of men in arms and client lords, that he could muster.
The Mamluks, kidnapped from their families in their youth had no ties of kin in their new homelands and
were personally dependent on their master. This gave the Mamluk state, divorced as it was from its parent
society, a solidity that allowed it to survive the tensions of tribalism and personal ambition. But the within the
Mamluks politics was bloody and brutal. Mamluks were not supposed to be able to inherit wealth or power
beyond their own generation but attempts to create lineage did occur and every succession was announced by
internecine struggles. Purges of higher lords and rivals were common and sultans commonly used impalement
and crucifixion to punish those suspected of acts of lèse majesté or intrigue.
In theory a Mamluk’s life prepared him for little else but war and loyalty to his lord. The use of Mamluk
soldiers gave rulers troops who had no link to any established power structure. Local non-Mamluk warriors were
often more loyal to their tribal sheikhs, their families, or nobles than to the sultan or caliph. If a commander
conspired against the ruler, it was often not possible to deal with the conspiracy without causing unrest among
the nobility. The Mamluk slave-troops were foreigners of the lowest possible status who could not conspire
against the ruler and who could easily be punished if they caused trouble, making them a great military asset.
Great emphasis was placed upon the Furusiyya – a word made up of the three elements: the ‘ulum
(science), funun (arts) and adab (literature) – of cavalry skills. The Furusiyya was not dissimilar to the chivalric
code of the Christian knight insofar as it included a moral code embracing virtues such as courage, valor,
magnanimity and generosity; but it also addressed the management, training and care of the horses that carried
the warrior into battle and provided him with leisure time sporting activities. It also included cavalry tactics,
!
techniques, armor and mounted archery. Some texts even discussed military tactics: the formation of armies,
the use of fire and smoke screens. Even the treatment of wounds was addressed.
The Mamluks, living almost entirely within their garrisons, led a life that showed a striking similarity
to a comment made by the military writer Vegetius that the Romans’ drills were bloodless battles and their
battles were bloody drills. Polo was the chief among these for the Mamluks; with its need for control of the
horse, tight turns and bursts of speed, it mimicked the skills required on the battlefield. Mounted archery
competitions, horseback acrobatics and mounted combat shows similar to European jousting often took place
up to twice a week. They were accomplished mounted, warriors. While they were no longer actually slaves
after training, they were still obliged to serve the sultan. The sultan kept them as an outsider force, under his
direct command, to use in the event of local tribal frictions. The sultan could also send them as far as the
Muslim regions of Iberia.
In June 1249, the Seventh Crusade under Louis IX of France landed in Egypt and took Damietta. The
French king dallied, delayed his retreat too long and was captured by the Mamluks in March 1250, and
agreed to a ransom of 400,000 livres (150,000 of which were never paid). The slave troops had proved
themselves in combat and their training showed other Islamic leader the value of such a force.
When the Mongol Empire's troops of Hulagu Khan sacked Baghdad in 1258 and advanced towards
Syria, Mamluk Emir Baibars (Turkish: Baybars) left Damascus for Cairo where he was welcomed by Sultan
Qutuz. After taking Damascus, Hulagu demanded that Qutuz surrender Egypt but Qutuz had Hulagu's
envoys killed and, with Baibars' help, mobilized his troops. Although Hulagu pulled the majority of his forces
out of Syria to attend the Kuraltai when great Khan Möngke died in action against the Southern Song, he left
his lieutenant, the Christian Kitbuqa, in charge with a token force of about 18,000 men as a garrison. Qutuz
drew the Mongol army into an ambush near the Orontes River, routed them at the Battle of Ain Jalut in 1260
and captured and executed Kitbuqa. After this great triumph, Qutuz was assassinated by conspiring
Mamluks. It was said that Baibars, who seized power, was involved in the assassination. In the following
centuries the rule of mamluks was discontinuous, with an average span of seven years.
¸Mamluks also defeated new Mongol attacks in Syria in 1271 and 1281 (Second Battle of Homs).
They were defeated by the Mongols and their Christian allies at the Battle of Wadi al-Khazandar in 1299, but
soon after that the Mamluks defeated the Mongols in 1303/1304 and 1312. Finally, the Mongols and the
Mamluks signed a treaty of peace in 1323.
In 1497 Vasco da Gama sailed around the Cape of Good Hope into the Indian Ocean and attacked the
ships that carried freight and Muslim pilgrims from India into the Red Sea. The rulers of the various
sultanates and Yemen turned for help to the Mamluk Sultan of Egypt. As Mamluks had little expertise in
naval warfare, the naval enterprise was carried out with the help of the Ottomans. In 1508 at the Battle of
Chaul the Mamluk fleet won over the Portuguese viceroy's son Lourenço de Almeida, but in the following
year the Portuguese won the Battle of Diu in which the Port city of Diu was wrested from the Gujarat
Sultanate. Later,Egypt lost her sovereignty, and the Red Sea with Mecca and all its Arabian interests passed
into the hands of the Ottoman Empire.
In 1798, the ruling Directory of the Republic of France authorized a campaign in "The Orient" to
protect French trade interests and undermine Britain's access to India. To this end, Napoleon Bonaparte led an
Armée d'Orient to Egypt. The French defeated a Mamluk army in the Battle of the Pyramids and drove the
survivors out to Upper Egypt. The Mamluks relied on massed cavalry charges, changed only by the addition
of musket. The French infantry formed square and held firm. Despite multiple victories and an initially
successful expedition into Syria, mounting conflict in Europe and the earlier defeat of the supporting French
fleet by the British Royal Navy at the Battle of the Nile decided the issue. Napoleon left with his personal
guard in late 1799. His successor in Egypt, General Jean Baptiste Kléber, was assassinated on 14 June 1800.
Command of the Army in Egypt fell to Jacques-François Menou. Isolated and out of supplies, Menou
surrendered to the British in 1801.
After the departure of French troops in 1801 Mamluks continued their struggle for independence, this
time against the Ottoman Empire and Great Britain. In 1805, the population of Cairo rebelled. This was an
excellent opportunity for the Mamluks to seize power, but internal tension and betrayal prevented them from
exploiting this opportunity. In 1806, the Mamluks defeated the Turkish forces several times, and in June the
rival parties concluded a peace treaty by which Muhammad Ali, who had been appointed as governor of Egypt
on 26 March 1806, was to be removed and the state authority in Egypt returned to the Mamluks. However,
they were again unable to capitalize on the opportunity due to conflicts between the clans; Muhammad Ali
kept his authority. Muhammed Ali knew that eventually he would have to deal with the Mamluks if he ever
wanted to control Egypt. They were still the feudal owners of Egypt and their land was still the source of
wealth and power. The constant strain on sustaining the military manpower necessary to defend the Mamluks's
system from the Europeans and the Mamluk's would eventually weaken them to the point of collapse.
On 1 March 1811, Muhammad Ali invited all of the leading Mamluks to his palace to celebrate the
declaration of war against the Wahhabis in Arabia. Between 600 and 700 Mamluks paraded in Cairo. Near the
Al-Azab gates, in a narrow road down from Mukatam Hill, Muhammad Ali's forces ambushed and killed
almost all in what came to be known as the Massacre of the Citadel. During the following week, hundreds of
Mamluks were killed throughout Egypt; in the citadel of Cairo alone more than 1,000 were killed. Throughout
Egypt an estimated 3,000 Mamluks and their relatives were killed. Despite Muhammad Ali's destruction of the
Mamluks in Egypt, a party of them escaped and fled south into what is now Sudan and established a state at
Dunqulah in the Sennar as a base for their slave trading.
Interestingly, throughout the Napoleonic era there was a special Mamluk corps in the French army.
Napoleon formed his own Mamluk corps, the last known Mamluk force, in the early years of the 19th century,
and used Mamluks in a number of his campaigns. Even his Imperial Guard had Mamluk soldiers during the
Belgian campaign, including one of his personal servants. Napoleon's famous bodyguard Roustam Raza was a
Mamluk who had been sold in Egypt. Mamluks fought well at the Battle of Austerlitz on 2 December 1805,
and the regiment was granted a standard and its roster increased to accommodate a standard-bearer and a
trumpet. A decree of 15 April 1806 defined the strength of the squadron as 13 officers and 147 privates. A
famous painting by Francisco Goya shows a charge of Mamluks against the Madrilene on 2 May 1808.
Eventually the Mamluks were incorporated in the Corps Royal des Chasseurs de France, thus ending the
period of the slave soldier.
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Make check out to MCMH&C and bring to our next meeting or mail to:!
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Mike Krushinsky!
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Marne, MI 49435