The March of Folly_ From Troy to Vietnam - Barbara Wertheim Tuchman [129]
It was not until four months after Lexington and Concord, and a month after news of the battle of Bunker Hill, that America was declared in “open and avowed rebellion,” the interim being consumed by ambivalent policies, quarrels over office and customary absences for the grouse and salmon season. The King, during this time, had been pressing for a declaration of rebellion and of determination to prosecute “with vigor every measure that may tend to force those deluded people into submission.” Lord Dartmouth as Secretary for the Colonies was still seeking any opening for a non-violent settlement; moderates outside the Cabinet and the experienced under-secretaries hoped to avert a break; the Bedfords were hot for action; Lord Barrington was insisting that the colonies could be subdued by naval action alone through blockade and interruption of trade; the brothers Howe—General Sir William and Admiral Lord Richard—named Commanders-in-Chief respectively of the land and sea forces in America, believed a negotiated settlement preferable to a fight and were seeking joint appointment as peace commissioners to accomplish this purpose; Lord North, averse to the definitive, was trying to delay anything irreversible.
THE TROJANS TAKE THE WOODEN HORSE WITHIN THEIR WALLS
I. Terracotta relief from a large (4-foot-high) amphora of the 7th century B.C., showing the Wooden Horse with wheels attached to its feet and Greek wariors emerging. Found in Mykonos in 1961.
2. Roman wall painting from Pompeii, c. 1st century B.C., showing the Wooden Horse being dragged into the city of Troy. At upper left, a woman, possibly Cassandra, appears brandishing a torch, while at lower left, she (or another) is seen hurrying forward as if to intercept the Horse. Although badly faded, this picture is unusual at Pompeii for its tragic grandeur and dramatic effect.
3. Bas-relief depicting an Assyrian siege engine of a period about half a century before Homer. The structure consists of a wheeled battering ram and mobile tower, from the reign of Ashurnasipal II, 884–860 B.C.
4. Laocoön, Roman, c. A.D. 50
THE RENAISSANCE POPES PROVOKE THE PROTESTANT SECESSION
1. Sixtus IV, by Melozzo da Forli. The Pope is shown appointing the prefect of the Vatican Library (kneeling figure). The central standing figure in red is Sixtus’s nephew Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere, the future Pope Julius II The two figures on the left are the dissolute nephews, Pietro and Girolamo Riario, the latter a prime mover in the Pazzi conspiracy who was assassinated in 14–88.
2. Innocent VIII, tomb monument by Antonio del Poliamolo in St. Peter’s.
3. Alexander VI, by Pinturicchio, in a fresco of the Resurrection of Christ, in the Borgia Apartments of the Vatican.
4. Julius II, by Raphael. Detail from The Mass of Bolsena, a fresco in one of the stanze by Raphael in the Vatican. The two figures immediately to the right of the Pope’s robes portray Cardinal Raffaele Riario and the Swiss Cardinal Matthäus Schinner.
5. Leo X, by Raphael.
6. Clement VII, by Sebastiano del Piombo.
7. The Battle of Pavia, 1525, Brussels tapestry.
8. The traffic in indulgences, woodcut by Hans Holbein the Younger.
9. Lutheran satire on papal reform, woodcut in Ratschlag von den Kirchen, 1538.
THE BRITISH LOSE AMERICA
1. The House of Commons in the reign of George III, by Karl Anton Hickel, 1793, showing the younger William Pitt addressing the House.
2. “I know I can save this country and that I alone can” William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham, by Richard Brompton, 1772.
3. “George, be a King!” George III, from the studio of Allait Ramsay, c. 1767.
4. “He passes for the cleverest fellow in England” Charles Townshend, British School, painter unknown.
5. His mistress took England’s mind off America. Augustus Henry Fitzroy, 3rd Duke of Grafton, by Pompeo Baioni, 1762.