A Brief Overview of the Wives of Henry VIII-- Anne Boleyn, the Face that Launched a Reformation

Anne Boleyn was ambitious and smart, could probably have run England all by herself, and she knew it (But more about that later). Is it really a surprise that she was the first of the egomaniac Henry's wives to be executed? Anne was beautiful, refined, and skilled at political maneuvering. She played a major part in ushering in the English Reformation. If anyone can say that they were 'born in the wrong time', Anne Boleyn certainly could. Had she been born in an era where women could hold office and run a country, she would have been the Hilary Clinton of her age, except sexier. She's a sexy Hilary Clinton. Keep that image in your mind as you read the rest of this. ;)

Anne was born sometime between 1501 and 1507 to Thomas and Elizabeth Boleyn. Thomas was a favored and talented diplomat, and because of that Anne received her formal education in the court of Margaret of Austria, and her not-so-formal education in the court of Queen Claude of France. She served as a maid of honor to both of those women, spending nearly eight years in Europe before returning to England.

Following her stay on the continent, Anne went through two engagements, which were later broken off. She was sent to the English court to be a maid of honor to Queen Catherine, and this is where she met Henry.

From there the story plays out just as how you remember. Boy meets girl. Boy falls madly in love with girl. Boy is already married, and embarks on a seven year journey to divorce his wife. Boy divorces his wife and marries girl. Girl had a baby. Boy becomes disillusioned. Boy comes up with reasons to behead girl. It's all terribly romantic, no?

No, it's really not romantic at all. Even if it didn't end with Anne being beheaded, there's several reasons why her and Henry's relationship was cringe worthy:

• Henry was somewhere between nine and fifteen years older than Anne.

• Henry had done the do with Anne's sister, Mary Carey nee Boleyn. Most historians agree that they even had a child together, Henry Carey, though King Henry never acknowledged his legitimacy.  
• Both Anne and Henry's treatment of the respected Catherine of Aragon from the time they first became an item until Catherine's death was absolutely terrible. Catherine was slowly forced from her place of prominence, as Anne eclipsed her. Both Henry and Anne were cruel to Catherine, and Catherine was, once again, forced into poverty and cut off from her friends and family.
• Anne used her position at court to secure political positions for her family and friends, to the point where the Boleyns were practically running the country. The Boleyns were not particularly magnanimous about this turn of events. 

Between her treatment of Catherine, quick temper, and open support for Evangelical ideas, Anne made a lot of enemies. And when Henry started to get irritated with Anne, those enemies pounced on the opportunity to discredit and replace her. Enter Jane Seymour, homewrecker. The Boleyn faction was slowly replaced by the Seymour faction, and Anne was put on trial and beheaded.

Anne's real legacy survives in not only the reign of her daughter, the famous Glorianna, but in the formation of the Anglican church. There's a big chance that Henry would have stayed a devout Catholic had he never met Anne Boleyn. Anne placed pressure on Henry to marry her, and, it is said, placed pamphlets in his hands that promoted reformation ideals. She and her family schemed and maneuvered until she was queen, and unintentionally brought in a reformation that would change England forever.  

Part One     Part Two     Part Three    Part Four  Part Five   Part Six   Part Seven   Part Eight

Sources
A Tudor Treasury by Elizabeth Norton

Henry VIII by Kathy Elgin

The Six Wives of Henry VIII by Alison Weir

The Six Wives of Henry VIII by Antonia Fraser

Six Wives: The Queens of Henry VIII by David Starkey
The Other Tudors by Philippa Jones

A Brief Overview of the Wives of Henry VIII- Catherine 'The Badass' of Aragon

Catherine, or Katherine, Kathryn, Katerine, of Aragon was Henry's first wife, as well as the wife of his elder brother Arthur. She was also one helluva queen of England.

Fun fact, Catherine was a ginger. This is
probably a painting of her.

Catherine was born to the illustrious monarchs of Spain-Ferdinand and Isabella of Christopher Columbus and Moorish Genocide fame. At age three she was betrothed to Arthur, the crown prince of England, and at age sixteen she married him. Unfortunately, after only a year of marriage, he died.

An alternative title for this article was 'Catherine 'Deserved Better Than This' of Aragon', and here's why. If Catherine returned to Spain, her dowry, a substantial 200,000 ducats, which was only half paid, would have to be returned as well, and Henry VII, the King, just wasn't down for that. He wanted to keep the Spanish money, and by extension the Spanish princess, in the family, so finding a suitable second husband for Catherine was a must. Initially, Henry proposed that he marry Catherine, given that Elizabeth of York had died, but seeing as how that was a bit skeevy, he decided to bestow her on Junior, despite the fact that she was five years older than him, and had been married to his brother, which is only slightly less skeevy than marrying her father in law.

It took a while for Catherine to get married for the second time. Her father, King Ferdinand, was being difficult about paying the rest of her dowry, her mother died (meaning that half of her father's kingdom went to her debateably insane sister Juana), and she ended up virtually imprisoned in some English countryside hell hole (a recurring theme throughout poor Catherine's life.)

Eventually though, Papa Henry died, and Junior got to have his way. He married Catherine, and they had a double coronation shortly before Henry's eighteenth birthday. By all accounts, they were happy, and Henry loved his wife.

From here you might know the story. Time passed. Catherine couldn't have sons, only one daughter, Mary. Enter homewrecker Anne Boleyn. Divorce. Reformation. Banishment. Death by poison. (She actually died, most likely, from cancer. But cancer wasn't really a known quantity in renaissance England.)

Catherine in her later years.

It's a sad ending to a promising story. This is also my first piece of evidence in my arguments that Henry VIII was an asshole. Catherine wasn't just a victim and a martyr though. Like I mentioned, she was one helluva queen. The middle parts of her story, the parts we don't usually focus on, are pretty badass, leaving me with no doubt that she was quite the lady. Thomas Cromwell, a contemporary of hers, said "If not for her sex, she could have defied all the heroes of History", which is the exact sort of backhanded, misogynistic compliment that you would expect from a Renaissance dude. That being said, Cromwell wasn't wrong. Catherine accomplished quite a bit as Queen, far more than most of Henry's other wives. She did a lot for England and the English people in her own right. You could probably write a book about the 'middle years', but I don't have time, so here's a brief, in no particular order, list.

Badass things that Catherine did

• Acted as Spanish ambassador to the English Court. She was the first female ambassador in Europe.
• Rode to the front of her armies in the Battle of Flodden in full armor to deliver a rousing speech Tilbury style, while pregnant. (this raises a lot of questions about what sort of armor one wears while pregnant. Did she just borrow some really big armor? Did they make special pregnancy armor for her?)
• Nominated for the title of 'Defender of the Faith' for tearing apart Luther's arguments (ironically, her husband later got the title.)
• Was a member of the Third Order of St. Francis, and Queen. At the same time. She esteemed her faith more than power, and was motivated personally and politically by it.
• But not like, in a expel and kill Jews and Muslims way like her mother. I feel that is important to mention.
• Continued to insist upon the validity of her marriage, her virginity upon her marriage to Henry, and called herself queen until the day she died, despite significant pressures from Henry and other members of court. 
• Openly defied the King and Ecclesiastical Court on several occasions.
• Raised armies to suppress rebellion while acting as Queen Regent when Henry was out of the country.
• Fought for and popularized education for women. She also helped fund universities.
• Survived the physical horrors of six pregnancies.
• Survived the emotional trauma of having five of her children predecease her.
• Pleaded for the lives of rebels to spare their families.
• Created welfare programs to benefit the poor. 

What a lady, right? The only problem with Catherine (as far as we can really tell), is that she couldn't have the son that Henry so desperately wanted. Also, she was stubborn, which may not be a problem depending on how you look at it.

Part One     Part Two     Part Three     Part Four    Part Five    Part Six    Part Seven   Part Eight

Sources

True Stories From English History by Maria Elizabeth Budden

History on the Net

The Six Wives of Henry VIII by Alison Weir

The Six Wives of Henry VIII by Antonia Fraser

Six Wives: The Queens of Henry VIII by David Starkey

The Great Australian Emu War

In 1932, Australia decided to solve it's Emu problem for good.

Who would want to solve this cute guy?

After WWI, Australia was left with a bunch of veterans with nowhere to go. The Australian government decided that farming would be a great profession for all these fine young men; and since the interior of Australia was pretty much just a barren wasteland, where better to go farm? So, the government sent a bunch of dudes who had no idea how to farm out to inhospitable land, and told them to grow wheat, because the Great Depression was happening, and grain prices were plummeting (the Australian tactics to combat the Great Depression still baffle me.).

So the intrepid ex-soldiers go out into the middle of Australia, contending with harsh weather, feral camels, and other Australian bullshit to grow grain. Things are going...well, not exactly okay, but they're certainly going, until the emu's attack.

The emu is a large, ugly, flightless bird that have no sense of personal space. These birds migrate inland every year after mating in coastal regions, and boy were they happy when they got back inland to find that their homes had been improved. The emus were drawn to the nice, cultivated land, and the grain that grew thereon. Emus went pretty hard on the crops, and farmers were able to hold them off for a while, but eventually Emu numbers grew too great, and the cavalry was called in.

It wasn't literally a cavalry, it was more like a sizable chunk of the army armed with machine guns. The machine guns were the important bit, that's what the farmers really wanted. The farmers had seen machine guns at work in WWI, and figured that they would be just the tool for getting rid of their feathery nemesis'. The Australian government wasn't so keen on giving a bunch of civilians machine guns though, so they sent the army with them. And so the seemingly unequal fight began.

This is why they needed solving. Holy shit.

The soldiers were pretty confident they could take the birds. George Pearce, the Australian Minister of Defense, even described the war as 'target practice'. However, upon first contact with the birds, they discovered that the mighty emu does not take extinction lying down. The soldiers started shooting, and the birds went nuts, running away in a disorganized chaos that makes the end of the chandelier scene from Phantom of the Opera look tame.

There were two major conflicts in this war, the first and the second. I guess when you're fighting birds you don't really need to name your battles. The first conflict went well for the Australians. They managed to kill a few emus without any loss of dignity (besides the inherent loss of dignity when you wage war on avians), it was the second conflict that was noteworthy.

Minutes into the conflict, the prized machine guns jammed, and the birds scattered, then went back to eating crops. The army tried mounting their guns on trucks, but, quite frankly, they shot like Stormtroopers, and couldn't hit a single emu. Except with their car. One emu did get tangled into the wheels of a truck, and, in a moment of final defiance, the bird corpse sufficiently messed up the truck enough that it veered off the road, taking down an innocent by-standing fence. The first collateral damage in what was turning out to be a bloody conflict.

By now the Army has killed maybe 200 emus, tops, and used up a quarter of their ammunition. When they started there was a grand total of 20,000 emus, so, as you might imagine, they're not looking so good, especially not to the government back home. What's better, is that they took a camera crew along with them, so everyone could see in stunning black and white how they were thoroughly humiliated by a group of birds. Unsurprisingly, the Australian government recalled the army, and admitted defeat. Emus: 1, Australia: 0.

Sources

Atlas Obscura
Scientific America
Emu War

The Capitol of Australia

Quick, without referencing a map or looking it up, tell me what the capitol of Australia is. Is it Sydney? Melbourne? Perth?

Canberra. Not too bad, eh?

Nope, it's Canberra. Which is somewhat surprising given that those cities are much larger and popular cities. Additionally, in 1820, when Canberra was picked for the Australian capitol, the area was already occupied by sheep farmer John Moore, who was basically squatting on the ancestral lands of the Ngunnawal people. Of course, the latter didn't matter, because, as anyone who has every studied history knows, white people just don't give a shit about native people and their rights. It's a terrible tradition that continues all around the world today.

Why was Canberra chosen then? Was it for it's spectacular views and room to grow? In a way, yes, but one of the main motivators in the selection of Canberra was that Canberra was equally far from both Melbourne and Sydney--the two largest Australian cities who just couldn't get along.

Sydney and Melbourne had been contending for the rights to be the young nation's capitol for quite some time. These cities were 443 miles (878 kilometers) apart, and both were booming metropolises, or at least as booming as it got in 1800s Australia. There was quite a distance between the two, which fostered a healthy rivalry, but not a lot of interaction. The two cities were in heavy competition, and it was giving the Australian government a headache.


Eventually, like a mother with two squabbling children, the government told both cities that neither of them could have the capitol, and sent them off to their rooms to sulk. However, to appease Sydney and Melbourne they added another criteria for the capitol-it had to be equidistant from the two cities.

So, instead of using a city with already existing infrastructure and population, the Australian government built an entirely new city. They went to the massive expense and inconvenience, all because Sydney and Melbourne couldn't get along.

Sources
Australia.gov
Local Histories
Canberra National Website
Australia, A Very Short Introduction by Kenneth Morgan