Give War a Chance

A look back at the glory days... when war still paid

(Source: Getty Images)

Bill Bonner, reckoning today from Normandy, France...

The White House has asked for $106 billion so it can be a part of the futile stalemate in the Ukraine and the mass murders in Israel and Gaza. The Israelis don’t need the money – they are among the world’s richest peoples. The Ukrainians merely waste it…with billions skimmed by corrupt officials and much of the rest making its way back to America’s firepower industry.

But though this spending is considered essential to preserving the peace and happiness of the world, nobody seems very eager to pay for it – at least not with honest money. No ‘war tax’ has been levied, neither in the US, Israel or even the Ukraine. There are no crowd-funding efforts on the internet. No government is cutting back on its butter to pay for its guns.

Nor will there be any pay-off from victory.  

Making war used to be a profitable enterprise. You would steal land, gold, jewelry…and sell your victims into slavery. No more. Now, unless you are actually under attack, war is a losing proposition.

But let’s look back at those glory days…when war still paid.

Danegeld Tribute

The rich and fertile valleys of what is today Normandy must have been an appealing prize. Viking raiders must have thought they had found the promised land. The attacks began at the end of the 700s – pillaging, raping, stealing the treasuries of monasteries and killing, blinding or mutilating everyone who got in their way.

By 851, a Viking army…an organized army of Danes…camped on the banks of the Seine and used the river to raid far into the heart of France.  

The local ‘french’ were the Palestinians then. They were chased from their lands…or, if not killed, turned into slaves or serfs of their new “Norman” masters.

Once Normandy was fully under their control, the men from the North – mostly Danes and some Norwegians – built their castles, collected their ‘danegeld’ tribute…and soon began to fight with each other. They were warfighters, and thanks to a lot of practice, they were good at it.

In 1066, led by Duke William, they got together and attacked England.  Now, the English were the Palestinians. After their army was defeated at Hastings, some English nobles held out. Some made peace. Some resorted to ‘terrorism’ to try to hold the Normans at bay.

But the invaders were better organized, ruthless and relentless. Land, won by the sword, remained with its new owners. The native English were dispossessed, forced to submit, die or flee. Even to this day, some of England’s green and pleasant land is still in the hands of the descendants of fierce Norman warlords. 

Normans were a restless bunch. As William the Conqueror destroyed the English, a single Norman family – the Hautevilles – laid waste to much of Southern Italy.  Tancred de Hauteville had 12 sons by different wives. At least one, apparently, went to England with William and ended up in Somerset. Two others, returning from the crusades, through Apulia, found their services, as swords-for-hire, much in demand. They sent for more brothers, cousins and other Norman knights. After a few decades of fierce fighting – the native Italians were the Palestinians then – they were in control of all of Southern Italy and Sicily. By a remarkable quirk of history, in 1220, one of the Hauteville descendants ended up as Holy Roman Emperor, Frederick II. He was a Hohenstaufen…but a Norman too.

Primitive Peoples

Meanwhile, England pacified, the Anglo-Normans turned their attention to Ireland.  There was another prize…inhabited only by ‘primitive’ peoples.

“Oh…the history of Ireland is as misty as the Blackwater Valley,” says a neighbor…a fellow resident of the land along the Blackwater River.

As to both, he seems to be right. This time of year, even on a clear day, down in the valley, the mists take several hours each morning to dissipate. We live on “Church Hill” – where an ancient Church tower reminds us of the clouds of Irish history.  Only a few hundred yards from it are the ruins of an abbey – raided by Vikings in the 9^th century…(probably) destroyed by the English in the 17^th. In the other direction is a castle keep…heavy, with thick walls poking up from the morning fog. It is a relic of another part of Ireland’s history. This castle was built by the Earl of Pembroke, Richard (Strongbow) de Clare, or one of his group of Anglo-Norman invaders in the 12th century. It was fortified, protection against the native Irish and other Norman warlords.

Like Gaza in the 21^st century, Ireland in the 17^th century had the misfortune to be a long way from God and very close to a much more powerful and determined adversary. And like the people of Gaza, the Irish had little power…and few friends.  They were seen as barbarians – poor, dirty, uncivilized. If you had been able to check their DNA back then, you would have found them very similar to the English themselves. Both were fundamentally ‘celtic,’ with a generous admixture of Viking blood. But by the 1100s, the two groups were separated by a wide gulf of history, religion, language and culture. 

“Old English”

The first Anglo-Norman invasion began in 1166. One hundred years after William the Conqueror landed on the English coast, Norman fighters, led by Strongbow, came up this same Blackwater River…the same river used by Vikings 300 years earlier. They built their castles…imposed their laws and treated the locals like…well…Palestinians.

After a few hundred years, however, these conquerors had been assimilated into the local Irish culture. They became the “Old English,” who spoke Irish, married into the Irish clans, and were said to be “more Irish than the Irish.’   

These ‘English’ clung to the area around Dublin and enacted laws designed to prevent further assimilation. The Kilkenny Statues of 1366, for example, forbade intermarriage, speaking Irish or dressing in an Irish way.

Inevitably, the more the English tried to assert their authority, the more Irish ‘terrorists’ resisted. It was a chaotic time, with battles between the English settlers and the Irish chiefs…and between opposing Irish clans, as well.

Then, in the 16^th century, The Desmond Rebellions brought “the greatest exercise in ethnic cleansing in modern history.”

Tune in on Monday for Part II of ‘Give War a Chance’

Regards,

Bill Bonner