Book Description
"John Stoye is the master of every aspect of his subject."-
Daily Telegraph
"A fine historical work. . . . Well worth reading."-Otto von Habsburg,
The Catholic Herald
"Worthy of the pen of a Herodotus. . . . It is a measure of the fascination of Mr. Stoye's subject that one should think of comparing his treatment of it with the work of the greatest historians."-
The Times Literary Supplement
The siege of Vienna in 1683 was one of the turning points in European history. It was the last serious threat to Western Christendom and so great was its impact that countries normally jealous and hostile sank their differences to throw back the armies of Islam and their savage Tartar allies.
The consequences of defeat were momentous: The Ottomans lost half of their European territories and began the long decline that led to the final collapse of their empire, and the Habsburgs turned their attention from France and the Rhine frontier to the rich pickings of the Balkans. That hot September day in 1683 witnessed the last great trial of strength between cross and crescent-and opened an epoch in European history that lasted until the cataclysm of the First World War.
Customer Reviews:
Exceedingly Tedious.......2007-09-25
If you're a generalist, or looking for a book that will help you to appreciate what the defenders of Vienna felt, thought, or endured, this book is not for you. Though undeniably informative, the great bulk of this work is devoted to extremely detailed descriptions of the dozens of political negotiations and troop conscriptions carried on by Hapsburg envoys and the political chess game between the Empire's foes and its myriad lukewarm allies. This is a valuable source for further research, and a great neutral description of the political climate and negotiations that led to Vienna's redemption, but of the siege itself, it will provide you with little insight as to what it was like to be in Vienna in 1683, and will not impart any of the stories, legends, or heroic deeds of the City's defenders - to which the author occasionally and tantalizingly alludes.
Meticulous and Tedious.......2007-07-29
The failure of the Turkish army to take Vienna in 1683 marks the beginning of the long decline of the Ottoman state but it was a close-run affair. Kara Mustafa's janissaries laid siege to the Austrian imperial capital while allied horsemen ravaged the surrounding countryside. Leopold III and his court had fled leaving the rescue of Vienna to Charles, Duke of Lorraine and John Sobieski of Poland. Had Mustafa been a little less reckless in failing to fortify his positions the outcome of the battle (and the history of Europe) might have been different.
Stoye has done an excellent job in painstakingly recounting each detail of the negotiations among the Christian princes and charting the march of the various armies. Where his sources have been unclear or lacking he is honest in not speculating too freely. However, if any battle cried out for a historian with a sense of colour and drama this was it. Massacres of prisoners, hand-to-hand fighting in trenches and tunnels, banners with crosses and crescents waving over blood-drenched salients, wild Tartars from the steppes duelling with hussars clad in armour and angel wings, vizirs strangled with bow-strings: the siege of Vienna had all this and more but Stoye is the not the man who can breathe life into such a story. Nor are the maps and illustrations much help.
This book is a noble effort and will certainly serve readers interested in the minutiae of central-European politics but the siege still awaits a better story-teller.
A very readable and informative history of an important event in the struggles between Islam and the West.......2007-03-19
What an interesting book! The present War on Terror does have certain overtones of the past struggles between Christianity and Islam. The Jihadists refer to the Western nations as Crusaders and while most in the West make a distinction between Islam per se and the Jihadists, they are not blind to the fact that the Jihadists (or Islamofacists or whatever you want to call them) are almost completely Muslim.
And certainly, the Christianity of Europe is nominal at best and is not a motivating factor in the West's approach to the current situation. There are other more overriding interests. If one went on Sunday to the Cathedrals and traditional Christian denominations and conscripted the congregants into an army, it would consist mostly of older women and some children. And it would be small.
It was not always so. This book recounts the time in the late seventeenth century (mostly in 1683 to be precise) when the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire (and ruler of the Muslim world) and his Grand Vizir took a hundred thousand men (or more) into and through the Hungarian territories into Austria on a quest for new lands to tax (more than for converts) and after conquering lesser cities on the way, laid siege to Vienna.
Europe was very much different than the Europe of the past two centuries. There were nations, but not so much nation states as the two great kingdoms of France ruled by Louis XIV and the Habsburg Holy Roman Empire ruled out of Austria and Spain. Both also had relationship with ancillary and related smaller states and territories. The complex web of treaties were often, but not always, related to whether the ruler and the population were primarily Roman Catholic or Protestant.
This was not the first time that the Ottomans came out of Turkey to attack Vienna. In 1529 they came and laid siege to the city until disease forced them back. In 1683, they came and were making progress in undermining the walls of the city until the King of Poland, Jon Sobieski and came from the north and drove the Turks out. This led to a more extended war with the Ottomans that lasted until 1699 and captured Hungary for the Habsburgs.
John Toye has written a very concise telling of the second siege. There are nine chapters in just fewer than two hundred pages. The first chapter provides the origins of the Ottoman attack. Understanding the court politics and the names and titles of all the players is probably the most difficult part of the book. However, once the reader has that under control, all goes smoothly. The author provides a helpful list of key names and titles on pages x and xi. There are also some maps up front and provided within the text as needed.
The second chapter informs the reader about the situation in Austria and Vienna. We learn about the court of Leopold his character, talents, his key advisors, and I. The third chapter gives us a broader picture of the Habsburg Empire and its competitive relations with France and what its true condition was late in the seventeenth century.
The fourth chapter tells us about the move of the Ottomans through Hungary and how Vienna began its preparations. This involved getting some people out (including Leopold I) and other people in. It also involved getting as many supplies as possible (such as money, wood and food). In chapter five we get the description of how the siege began and what the techniques were for the attackers and the defenders.
Chapter six takes us outside of Vienna and what was going on between the city and its allies as well as the maneuvering of the Ottoman camps. In chapter seven the author gives us the movements of Sobieski and the others who would come to the aid of the beleaguered city.
All of this is prelude to the climax of the book in chapter eight when the armies come out of the north and sweep the Ottomans off the walls of Vienna and into a panicked rout. The last chapter ties up what happened in Europe after the battle. Like most victories, it leads to claims by many as the reason for the success. Offenses are taken at real, perceived, or manufactured slights, advantage is taken by those still strong over those weakened by the struggle (read Louis XIV trying to take advantage of the limited resources of the Hapsburgs now fighting in Hungary).
This was a very important event in the history of Europe, of the relations between the West and Islam (at the time the Ottomans were essentially synonymous with the faith - the Sultan held the key to the Kabah and flew what was believed to be Mohammed's banner). It is an event that everyone should understand better. The troubles didn't begin on 9/11 nor were the Crusades of the eleventh century the only armed struggle before that event. It is a long and rather aggressive history, from both sides.
While some claim history to be bunk, it is critical to learn the true history of what has happened in the past and how it has flowed into and created the world we inherited.
A superbly presented and accurately detailed account .......2007-01-06
The siege by the Islamic Turks of the Christian city of Vienna in 1683 was a watershed incident in European history. Had the Turks been successful, there well might have been no Christian Europe to dominate the world stage for the next 500 years. Facing that magnitude of threat, European powers that were normally jealous and hostile to one another suppressed their mutual antagonisms to defeat the armies of Islam and their brutal Tartar Allies. The Ottoman empire lost control of half of their European territories which led to the long, slow, decline and inevitable collapse, even as the Hapbsburgs were able to parley the Viennese victory into control of the Balkans and expand their influence into France and the Rhine country. An enthusiastic recommendation for inclusion into both academic and community library World History collections, "The Siege of Vienna: The Last Great Trial Between Cross & Crescent" by John Stoye (Fellow in Modern History, Magdalen College, Oxford, England) is a superbly presented and accurately detailed account of this pivotal incident between the forces of a militant Islam and the armies of a European Christendom.
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The Writings and Speeches of Edmund Burke: Volume VII: India: The Hastings Trial 1789-1794 (Writings and Speeches of Edmund Burke)
Edmund Burke
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
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ASIN: 019820809X |
Book Description
This key volume specifically completes the collection of Edmund Burke's Indian Writings and Speeches which is set within the series, and is both an exposition of Burke's views on India from his coverage of the Hastings trial, and his views on maintaining the rule of a universal justice. The texts for the items, which have appeared in previous editions of Burke's Works, have been reconstructed, largely by the use of manuscripts. Indeed many of the shorter speeches appear here in print for the first time. The volume includes a key speech which introduced one of the main charges in the trial of Warren Hastings on an impeachment from 1789-1794, and an important report on the conduct of the trial. It closes with the enormously lengthy and significant speech in which Burke summed up the prosecution's case over nine days. However, this volume is not only a full exposition of Burke's views on India but contains much of great interest about other aspects of his thought. In particular, Burke saw himself in these years as being engaged in a battle against the lawless disruption of society, both in Europe and in Asia, in order to maintain the rule of a universal justice, a main theme of this volume.
Customer Reviews:
Beyond the voyages of Cook; examine the brushing of cultures.......2004-09-29
When an anthropologist writes history one expects a differant perspective. Still, I was stunned by the insight Ms. Salmond exhibited. Most surprising is how densely this book is filled with small, "throwaway" insights that reveal the nature of Georgian England, the impact of the Enlightenment and even the impact of a society, like our own, where the division of wealth has become so radical.
Most important though, is that this book reveals how the nation of New Zealand has remained a Polynesian country despite its population being overwhelmingly of European descent.
spanning the cultural divide.......2003-12-02
Salmond's superb account of Cook's Pacific exploration tells the story from the perspectives of both Europeans and Polynesians. It places Cook as a 'player' in the islands' internal intrigues and power struggles, especially of the Maori and the Taihitians, while beautifully delineating the various and changing responses of their 'discovers' to the Pacific 'paradise'. Cook's portrayal is highly convincing, and the book assembles a brilliant argument for its conclusions about his violent end. Salmond's work is informed by an impressive anthropological knowledge, but it reads also as a sensitive exploration of personality and as a compelling adventure narrative. I have read a good many historical treatments of this material, and Salmond's work is among the best.
Book Description
Many have told of the East India Company's extraordinary excesses in eighteenth-century India, of the plunder that made its directors fabulously wealthy and able to buy British land and titles, but this is only a fraction of the story. When one of these men--Warren Hastings--was put on trial by Edmund Burke, it brought the Company's exploits to the attention of the public. Through the trial and after, the British government transformed public understanding of the Company's corrupt actions by creating an image of a vulnerable India that needed British assistance. Intrusive behavior was recast as a civilizing mission. In this fascinating, and devastating, account of the scandal that laid the foundation of the British Empire, Nicholas Dirks explains how this substitution of imperial authority for Company rule helped erase the dirty origins of empire and justify the British presence in India.
The Scandal of Empire reveals that the conquests and exploitations of the East India Company were critical to England's development in the eighteenth century and beyond. We see how mercantile trade was inextricably linked with imperial venture and scandalous excess and how these three things provided the ideological basis for far-flung British expansion. In this powerfully written and trenchant critique, Dirks shows how the empire projected its own scandalous behavior onto India itself. By returning to the moment when the scandal of empire became acceptable we gain a new understanding of the modern culture of the colonizer and the colonized and the manifold implications for Britain, India, and the world.
Customer Reviews:
Birth pangs of british India.......2006-11-05
To a layman like me this book offers an interesting glimpse to a dark side of the birth of british India. At the same time it provides a vivid account of the battles engendered by indian affairs in british politics in the second half of eighteenth century.
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The Treason and Trial of Sir John Perrot
Roger Turvey
Manufacturer: University of Wales Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 0708319122 |
Book Description
The intriguing story behind the accusation and conviction of Sir John Perrot for treason is recounted in this study, together with the first fully edited transcript of his trial to appear in print since 1816. A compelling tale with a cast of dubious characters, a plot involving espionage, counterfeiting, double-dealing, lies, and betrayal, and combative courtroom drama, this absorbing history reveals how and why Perrot was framed for a crime he did not commit.
Book Description
Before Charles and Diana, before the impeachment of Bill Clinton, and long before the slogan "the personal is political," an astonishing British royal sex scandal threatened to trigger a revolution. Its lessons for leadership, popularity, and the impact of the absurd on history are fascinating.
In The Trial of Queen Caroline, Jane Robins tells the story of one of history's least happy marriages. The future George IV could not be bothered to meet Caroline, Princess of Brunswick, a woman "with indelicate manners...and not very inviting appearance," before she arrived for the wedding. He was immediately disgusted by her. He far preferred one of his mistresses, whom he had secretly married in a Catholic ceremony, knowing that the British state would not recognize the marriage if it ever came to light.
In 1797, just three years after George and Caroline wed, the couple separated. George wrote to her that "our inclinations are not in our power, nor should either of us be held answerable to the other. "As Robins relates, Caroline took him at his word and proceeded to live exactly as she pleased, departing for Europe and a life of scandalous associations and debauched parties. Rumors of Caroline's lifestyle soon reached George, still Prince of Wales, who determined that she would never become Queen. To the shock of the nation, he demanded that the popular Caroline face a trial for adultery. The potential consequences included a death sentence at worst, and certain divorce and disgrace. The voice of the popular press, raised in anger for the first time in Britain, roared in disapproval. Riots spread in the countryside. The mother of a single, deceased child, Caroline became the public's favorite martyr.
Jane Robins combines prodigious archival research with a sharp eye for telling detail. She shows how the rise of the partisan press helped magnify the story, until, at its peak, Caroline's trial became the story of a bad marriage that brought England to the very brink of revolution.
Customer Reviews:
Interesting Book of a Strange Time.......2006-11-04
What a story! In a time when love had nothing to do with marriage, Caroline, Princess of Brunswick had an arranged marriage with George, Prince of Wales. They met only after they were engaged, and immediately hated each other. Still they went through with their marriage, and even produced one offspring - Charlotte ('an immense girl').
Charlotte's early death (Age 21, in childbirth) paved the way for George to finally decide to get rid of Caroline. And the way to do that required a proof of adultry. (Neither George nor Caroline seemed to live a life of piety). But proof at a trial was another matter, especially when Caroline was more popular than George.
It is an interesting book, a description of times that were different than ours. It probably should have come out during the Bill and Monica circus. Well, maybe the times weren't so different after all.
Less than scandal.......2006-11-04
The story is absoutely fascinating. The book is poorly written, chronologically insecure(what year are we in now?)and far too long!
Superb.......2006-09-02
Popular history at its very best. Thorough without being tedious; smoothly readable without being condescending; fascinating without being narcissistic. Oddly reminiscent of media and popular firestorms over the Clarence Thomas/Anita Hill and Bill Clinton/Monica Lewinsky, and makes us ponder how close we still are to 1820 -- it is easy to imagine CNN covering this story. Buy it even if you think you have no interest in the subject; within a few pages, you will. I have read other books on this subject but none that connect the controversy so well to other political and social developments in the UK at the time of Queen Caroline's trial.
Customer Reviews:
How History Should be Written.......2005-07-30
Trial By Battle is a magnificent achievement. Though daunting to look at, the 600+ page narrative sweeps by with the excitement and suspense of a great novel. Sumption fails to give any real background details (the marriage of a king will be mentioned in passing without so much as a clue as to his wife's name!). We learn nothing of castle construction, arms and armour, architecture, geography, or anything else of the spectacle of life in 14th century Europe. But the step-by-step analysis of the intricacies of medieval politics more than compensates, throwing the reader headlong into the meeting rooms of the royal courts. The narrative, for all its complexity, never ceases to be anything but fascinating. The reader is able to see all the seemingly small and random details, the mistakes and misunderstandings and mistimings, and how they build to create a situation in which all out war is the only option.
Trial by Battle isn't simply the best book I've read about The 100 Years War, but the best I've read about the challenges faced by the medieval politician, and the strategic maneuvering required to achieve an acceptable outcome. Brilliant.
A Sterling Effort: I Bought Vol. II.......2002-05-08
Sumption's history of this sordid and bloody conflict will be the defining opus of this era. In this first volume of 600 pages he covers intimately all aspects of the war's first 10 years. He is mostly skilled at both the economic and diplomatic machinations of the conflict, emphasising how armies were fielded and then supported.
His scope is grand and he covers events as far away as Scotland, Flanders, Britany, and the Popes involvement from the Avignon palaces.
His strategic interpretation is superb, without equal. He has an ability to get into the head of participants and show their ultimate motivation in fighting. Why particular courses were decided upon are also fittingly reviewed; why a campaign in Flanders? Why get involved in Britany? How did England ultimately expand and prevail in Aquitaine when their foothold was so tenuous? Why were the French completely unable to exploint a fundamental postion of strength by working with their internal lines of communication? All of these questions are answered in good detail.
There are no real weaknesses in this work but there are a few things that readers should be prepared for:
1) Sumption is not writing a biography of any of the characters and although we understand a lot of their emotions in the heat of dimplomacy and battle, we hear little about the individual idiosyncracies of both Edward III and Philip VI. We learn almost nothing about their respective sons in this volume, which is amazing considering the future role they played.
2) Although this is a story of battle and slaughter, we are largely spared the details of the minutea of battle, who fought whom, the real intricacies of the weapons involved and the fate of those who were turned to bones. Sumption leaves that to other military historians who have written hundreds of pages on individual battles. There are however amazing revalations here about Crecy which deserve to be noted; Sumption notes that the repeat regrouping and charging of the English lines was not characterisitic of a disorganised French attack. As such this contracdicts the traditional version of the French falling over themselves in the battle. In the end the longbow won the battle. No new surpises here.
3) There is little actual focus on how the war effected the peasant. Perhaps because we know so little of them, but Sumption's research is so exhaustive that he purposefully concentrates on the diplomatic, military alliance structures and their respective figures.
This was a major project to get through. I had to admit that times I did wander in my attention span. But the detail in the text is rich and his coverage of the impact of the war in Britany and the northern English Marches against the Scots, is something largely ignored by other historians of this war.
I have already bought volume II and determined read all future volumes as he finishes.... although at this rate it will be a total of at least 10 volumes to get throught this particularly depressing interval in human history.
Readable, knowledgeable and intelligent history.......2000-09-19
The Middle Ages in Europe, a time of poor sanitation and brutal men terrifying local communities into submission; where the rule of law may have been as tenuous as the mortality people might expect to achieve. The Middle Ages in Europe is as near as one might get to the post apocalyptic nightmare depicted in the movie Mad Max 2 the Road Warrior where decisions are terrible and give very short shrift to our political correct world of today. This is the world Jonathan Sumption evokes in his Trial by Battle. It's a time of shortages of food and resources, the golden age of the plentiful thirteenth century is drawing to a close and the economy of Europe is coming under strain. Thrust into this crisis are the rulers of the lands of those times. Principally the Kings of England and France. But theres a host of other lesser nobles, of Dukes, Earls and Counts in north west Europe effected and effecting the politics of the times. In this book, Mr. Sumption gives a crash course in the organisation of the various kingdoms, principalities, counties and dukedoms as they become involved in the story of the Hundred Years War. Its not necessary to know in depth about the running of a kingdom though it might help to have a little background knowledge. The pace of the book carries this history at a good rate of knots. My only criticism is while Mr Sumption produces a suitable statistic here and there to back up the picture he paints in words, there can be a lack of colour, the description of an event or cultural or technological details, is lacking in places. This left me at a loss for an image to anchor my understanding (after all I am a product of an age addicted to visualisation), That said it is only a small detraction from a really interesting work. The battle descriptions are spot on and the developments in between give the theme a sense of continuity. This volume brings the history from the origins of the war to ten years into its execution. You'll have to buy the next volume (which I did) to find out what happens but Trial by Battle is good in itself if you like the at times bizarrely mystical and nonsensical Middle Ages and at times utterly no nonsense people of those hard times
Sumption makes it work..........2000-09-08
Reading about the Middle Ages is like treading upstream sometimes. Its so easy to get bogged down and lose your path and eventually your interest. A lot of times reading history is exactly like that.
This book is very good at keeping the story of this period on its path and is extremely, even remarkably, readable. I actually managed to get wrapped up in the story (which I've read many times already) the way one does with good novels. The author is obviously very familiar with the primary sources but he quotes from them with care and only when his point is well-made. Otherwise he tells the story in clear, simple language - amazing for any of us who study or write history! And he has a fine sense of when the chroniclers were playing to their audience's prejudices and when they probably were right on point. Its difficult to read about the early period of the wars between England and France without getting mired in the problems the various powers faced -- and continued to toil over every year -- like constant bankruptcy, local rebellion, personality disorders and prejudices, and so forth. The author gives you these things -- the Middle Ages would not be the Middle Ages without them -- but in the right doses to make the fuller picture clear, not lose it in the haze.
I have not yet read the sequel but I'm confident it is as well written. I would recommend these volumes to anyone interested in the Middle Ages period in Europe.
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Defining A British State: Treason and National Identity, 1608-1820 (Studies in Modern History)
Lisa Steffen
Manufacturer: Palgrave Macmillan
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 0333920341 |
Book Description
This book explores the formation of the British state and national identity from 1603-1832 by examining the definitions of sovereignty and allegiance presented in treason trials. The king remained central to national identity and the state until Republican challenges forced prosecutors in treason trials to innovate and redefine sovereign authority. Although jurors resisted the change, by the 1790s parliament and prosecutors accepted that treason law protected all Britons and the general safety of the state.
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- A detailed history of witch-hunting and persecution in Scotland from approximately 1658-1662
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An Abundance of Witches: The Great Scottish Witch-Hunt
P. G. Maxwell-Stuart
Manufacturer: Tempus Publishing, Limited
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Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 0752433296 |
Book Description
Scotland, as with the rest of Europe, was troubled from time to time by outbreaks of witchcraft which the authorities sought to contain and then to suppress, and the outbreak of 1658-1662 is generally agreed to represent the high water mark of Scottish persecution. These were peculiar years for Scotland. For 9 years Scotland was effectively an English province with largely English officials in charge, but in 1660 this suddenly changed. The tension between imported official English attitudes to witchcraft and the revived fervor of Calvinist religion combined to produce a peculiar atmosphere in which the activities of witches drew hostile attention to an unprecedented degree.
Customer Reviews:
A detailed history of witch-hunting and persecution in Scotland from approximately 1658-1662.......2006-01-07
An Abundance Of Witches: The Great Scottish Witch-Hunt is a detailed history of witch-hunting and persecution in Scotland from approximately 1658-1662, an era generally thought to be the high point of a turbulent history of violence and hatred for accused witches. The turmoil of political history, Scotland's previous time as an English province, and the revived fervor of Calvinist religion in the Scottish Church accentuated the internal conflict. An Abundance Of Witches does not shy from sometimes horrifying details, including calculated tallies of men and women strangled or burned alive at the stake, fees paid to those involved in hunting, capturing, and executing witches; materials, components, and implements of torture used for such purposes, a search for the psychological motivations behind the slaughter, and more. An excellent and scholarly contribution to Scottish and European history shelves.
Book Description
In 1604, 20-year-old Anne Gunter was bewitched: she foamed at the mouth, contorted wildly in her bedchamber, went into trances. Her garters and bodices were perpetually unlacing themselves. Her signature symptom was to vomit pins and "she voided some pins downwards as well by her water or otherwise.". Popular history at its best, The Bewitching of Anne Gunter opens a fascinating window onto the past. It's a tale of controlling fathers, willful daughters, nosy neighbors, power relations between peasants and gentry, and village life in early-modern Europe. Above all it's an original and revealing story of one young woman's experience with the greatly misunderstood phenomenon of witchcraft.
James Sharpe is Professor of History at York University and the author of Instruments of Darkness: Witchcraft in Early Modern History and other works of social history.
Customer Reviews:
Anne's sad story.......2004-01-27
The book of James Sharpe "The Bewitching of Anne Gunther" contains the story of,I quote :"The best-documented English witchcraft case ever".
The book tells us the story of a girl named Anne Gunther who was "bewitched" by three women,"witches", and whose names I will not mention, because if you decide to read the book you have to be aware of the fact that you will have to cope with LOTS of names.
Although the subject metter discussed in the book is familiar to everyone, it is surprising that the girl actually did not act and simulated fits by her own will. The most familiar case of, so to say, witchcraft and "bewitching" is the one of Salem witches in America, and it is well known that those girls from Salem did not do it against their will.
Anne was forced by her father to act as if she was bewitched, and by doing that she had to suffer a great deal of pain, physical as well as psychological. The sad thing is that she was not a little girl, ( which would explain her obedience to her father), she was a twenty year old woman. So, this book also gives us a clue what was the position of women in that society. Brian Gunther, her father, drogged her, and forced her to do all kinds of "sick" things, to make the bewitchment more authentical. Later on, she was trialed at the Star Chamber court ( the most notorious court in English history) and I will leave it up to you to find what happened to Anne.
The story is rather interesting, and it really shows us what are some people caoable of doing just for the revenge. However, the book contains a lot of facts that are rather boring and that could be left out.
But anyway, the book should be read. At least, do it for the sake of your knowledge!
history vs. entertainment.......2004-01-12
Anne Gunter, a 20 year old woman, lived in the Oxfordshire village of North Moreton. In the summer of 1604 she fell ill. Yet witchcraft was not being discussed, but it was when the illness recurred on the 23rd of October and continued over the following weeks that people began to make more note of the symptoms. Doctors could not find natural reasons for her illness. The inevitable was thought and assumed - that she was bewitched. Anne vomited pins and other unnatural things, she had fits and trances and one time during a trance she named three women as witches that bewitched her: Agnes Pepwell, her daughter Mary Pepwell and Elizabeth Gregory. Agnes Pepwell managed to run away, but the other two women were tried for witchcraft, but both were found not guilty. Anne's father Brian Gunter took the case in front of the court of King James I. He was known as a witch-hunter, but during the trial Anne confessed that her father forced her to act as bewitched and also forced her to accuse the three women as witches. He made her drink strange things and she had to hide pins in her mouth in order to vomit them up whenever people were there to visit her. Brian Gunter and the Gregory family had a feud, which was the result of a football game some years ago. Anne's father killed two members of the Gunter family and got away with it. He orchestrated Anne's fits to have the family branded as witches. The King's churchmen were not fooled or amused and brought Brian and Anne Gunter before the Court of the Star Chamber in 1606 for perjury and false accusation.
"The Bewitching of Anne Gunter - A horrible and true story of deception, witchcraft, murder, and the King of England" is highly recommendable. But it depends on what you want to do with the book. If you expect a novel on witchcraft that is exciting, entertaining and full of suspense until the end - than this book might be the wrong one for you. James Sharpe, a professor of history at York University, took a very interesting historical events and narrates it in three pages. The other 227 pages are background information. The historian goes back to the Oxford connection of Brian Gunter, he explains very detailed what happened at that football match were the feud between the Gunter's and the Gregory's started. Other chapters explain terms like possession or exorcism. Everything that is essential for this case is investigated. The facts of the story are taken apart in it's component parts and the many names of people are a little confusing. There is also a lot of repetition, some things are explained more than two times. However, if you are interested in a historical book, if you are interested in witchcraft this book might be the right thing for you. If you are looking for an exciting novel on witchcraft you better should keep on searching.....
212 pages of pure historical information.......2004-01-11
The Bewitching of Anne Gunter by James Sharpe tells the true story of 20-year-old Anne from North Moreton near Oxford, who in the summer of 1604 fell sick with symptoms that the age considered indicative of demonic possession or witchcraft: She had fits during which she writhed and contorted, she fell into trances or comas and vomited foreign bodies, particularly pins. As she suffered her fits she called out against her supposed tormenters before an ever expanding audience of fascinated spectators and named three women from her village as having bewitched her: Agnes Pepwell, her illegitimate daughter Mary and Elizabeth Gregory. In March 1605, when one of the accused women had escaped and the two others were acquitted in a trial, the case was still not over for Anne's father Brian Gunter. He decided to gain sympathy at the highest level, by arranging a meeting between his daughter and King James I, who was well known as a witch hunter. The plan misfired badly, though. The king, as well as the archbishop of Canterbury, Richard Bancroft, was rather sceptical and by October Anne had confessed to the king that she had simulated bewitchment under parental pressure. Her father had made her swallow a mixture of "sack", or sherry, and "sallet", or salad oil, in order to make her fits more believable. Brian Gunter's motive was some bad blood between him and the family of the chief of the accused witches, Elizabeth Gregory. The feud had begun some years before when Gunter had inflicted fatal injuries on two of the Gregorys at a football match. Proceedings were initiated against Brian Gunter and his daughter Anne for falsely accusing the three women.
Although the story itself is a fascinating one, it unfortunately gets spoiled by the author's unnecessary repeating of names, dates and side-events, which make it hard to stick to the story without losing interest. Sharpe is without a doubt an excellent historian, which he proofs in giving such a thoroughly detailed reconstruction of this English witchcraft case, but still, I think, this is not what most people would expect from this book. Especially the promising subtitle A HORRIBLE AND TRUE STORY OF DECEPTION, WITCHCRAFT, MURDER, AND THE KING OF ENGLAND may lead the reader to the wrong assumption that this might be a sensational, gripping novel, which it obviously is not. It is rather a historical account of a true witchcraft case, embroidered with detailed background information.
What comes clearly out, are the reasons why people might have participated in the so-called witch craze.
Not exactly thrilling, but still informative.
A story drowned in facts, figures and dates.......2003-12-31
In the summer of 1604, a 20-year-old woman called Anne Gunter, daughter of Brian and Anne Gunter in North Moreton, fell ill. Her illness was first ascribed to "the disease called the mother", which is hysteria. But the symptoms returned in October. Doctors were called in and all agreed that the fits from which Anne suffered could not be due to illness but must have some supernatural cause. In her fits she contorted and writhed, fell into trances and vomited foreign bodies, especially pins. These symptoms were at that time considered to be signs of demonic possession or witchcraft. And indeed, Anne named three women, Elizabeth Gregory, Agnes and Mary Pepwell, as her supposed tormentors and said they had bewitched her. At the Abingdon witch-trial of 1605, though, the judges did not find the evidences convincing and decided against her father's accusation: two of the three alleged witches (one had fled by that time) were not found guilty and acquitted. However, Brian Gunter did not want to leave it at that and took his daughter's case to a higher instance, namely that of King James I of England. The king, who was known to be a witch hunter, though, was sceptical and passed Anne to the care of Archbishop Bancroft and then to his chaplain. It was at then, when Anne was away from the influence of her father for the first time, that she confessed that she had simulated bewitchment. Consequently, a story of deception became uncovered which began with a game of football some years ago. This game turned violent, Anne's father intervened and beat two young men of the neighbouring Gregory family, who both died from their injuries (apparently). The result of this incidence was a feud between the two families. When Anne became ill with "the mother" hysteria, Brian Gunter had obviously found a convenient way to discredit the Gregorys and accused Elizabeth Gregory of having bewitched his daughter. He forced his daughter Anne to play the role of the bewitched and made her swallow "sack and sallet oil" and a "green mixture" to make her fits more convincing. This physical and mental pressure nearly drove her into suicide. But Brian Gunter's plan failed and in 1606 a Star Chamber interrogation was initiated against him and his daughter for falsely accusing the three women.
In "The Bewitching of Anne Gunter" James Sharpe closely investigates a case of witch-hunt of the early 17th century with the thorough methods of a historian. He looks at witchcraft as a social, political and economic phenomenon by bringing to the surface all the factors which seemed to have pushed people to accuse fellow citizens of witchcraft or demonic possession. He does so by giving detailed accounts of parish and other registers of that time, records of trials and further authentic material. However, as a reader (and more or less layperson in the field of historical research) I sometime had problems keeping track of the story itself. Although the book is written in a light and easily accessible style, the endless listings of names, dates and figures very often hinder comprehension and distract from the more significant issues. These facts, which they doubtless are, may trigger off a feeling of boredom and at some point or the other, I really had to force myself not to skip entire pages in order to keep up my attention. The case of Anne Gunter surely is an interesting one, because it provides us with an insight into the credulous (and hypocritical) world of the Jacobean age and depicts the culturally rooted forces behind the witch-crazes of that time. So on the whole I would say it is a passable read. However, reduced to its essentials by, for example, avoiding unnecessary repetitions of details, descriptions and explanations, it would be an even better one (at least for people who do not want to engage themselves too much with, for instance, genealogy)!
Informative, but not Bewitching.......2003-11-18
If you're looking for something sensational and dramatic like THE EXORCIST, you're looking in the wrong place in reading THE BEWITCHING OF ANNE GUNTER: A HORRIBLE AND TRUE STORY OF DECEPTION, WITCHCRAFT, MURDER, AND THE KING OF ENGLAND. Despite its lurid subtitle this is not a sensationalistic novel, nor is it a biographical narrative. It is, however, very informative. It's really a cultural history about witchcraft centered on the alleged bewitching/possession of a nineteen-year-old girl in early Jacobean (17th century) England. It tells use about what people believed about witchcraft at that time and place and proves that there wasn't a monolithic belief in killing witches. Different segments of society held different ideas about witchcraft.
The important thing to remember is the girl, Anne Gunter, withdrew her allegations of witchcraft. Now what caused her to assert them in the first place? Her father. What were the social, economic, and religious ideas of the day that caused people to believe her? There are many surprising revelations in book. None more surprising to me than the different picture I got of James I of England (James VI of Scotland), who is usually portrayed as a rabid Bible-thumping witchhunter.
So not a thrilling biography, but well worth reading if you are interested in the general milieu of the witchcraft hunts. This slim book of 238 pages has 9 chapters, Notes and References, and an Index.
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