*the month in snapshots* (not baby pics)

#babypics

the year in books [II]

Chloe's been asking a lot of great questions about the justifiability of the Christian faith. I don't think she's doubting what she believes so much as being inquisitive. At the same time, I couldn't fault her if the questions are prompted by doubt. I've been down that road and came out the other side stronger and better for it. Strobel's series of books detailing evidence for the Bible's trustworthiness and the validity of many Christian books are classic staples in mainstream apologetical literature, and it's been refreshing to go through them again. 

the year in books [I]

A horse-like alien bestows special powers upon five kids: Jake, Marco, Tobias, Rachel, and Cassie. They have the ability to acquire animal DNA and transform into animals of their choosing, for the purpose of fighting an invasion of alien Yeerks. The Yeerks are little slugs that crawl into your head through your ears and turn you into 'controllers,' who blend in with the population. The Yeerks are a parasitic alien spreading planet to planet, swelling their ranks with host slaves. Their main enemy is another alien race, the Andalites, who gave the 'Animorphs' their powers. 

I love the concept. I really do.

And though the books are geared for ten- and twelve-year olds, I like them.

(And they're short reads, only about 175 pages each)

I'll add that I don't mind the nostalgic 'Scholastic Fair' high.

These are the first six.

The Invasion, told from Jake's point-of-view, in which our five heroes stumble upon an Andalite alien who gives them power to morph into animals. They learn about the alien slugs invading earth and taking over peoples' bodies and take their first offensive action by infiltrating a Yeerk 'feeding' pool beneath the school. Tobias becomes permanently morphed as a hawk. 

The Visitor, told from Rachel's point-of-view, in which she spies on the vice principal of her school, Mr. Chapman, who's high up in the Yeerk hierarchy. She and Jake are captured and delivered to Visser Three, the highest-ranking controller in the land. Visser Three is an Andalite controller, the only one in existence. Rachel and Jake narrowly escape death at Visser Three's hands with the aid of Marco, Cassie, and Tobias. 

The Encounter, told from Tobias' point-of-view, in which Tobias struggles to retain his humanity in hawk morph; the four others morph into fish to infiltrate a flying Yeerk water tanker filling up at a nearby lake. Tobias brings down the ship, a show of humanity, and his friends escape the wreckage by morphing into birds of prey.

The Message, told from Cassie's point-of-view, in which she and Tobias receive 'visions' that are an S.O.S. call from a crashed Andalite ship. Our heroes morph into dolphins to find the wreckage beneath the sea before the Yeerks did; at the crashed ship they meet Ax, an Andalite, and they journey with him to safety. A pod of whales saves them from being eaten by Visser Three, who had morphed into a sea creature from one of the Andalite homeworld's moons.

The Predator, told from Marco's point-of-view, in which he, Jake, and Ax morph into lobsters to become incognito after Ax loses it in the food court (taste is a new thing to him) and gets Controllers onto him. Ax wants to build a Yeerk transponder to call an enemy ship to his position so he can seize it to make his escape. Our heroes infiltrate Mr. Chapman's basement as ants to steal a piece of alien equipment, then head to the rock quarry where they morph into their most powerful animals: Rachel an elephant, Jake a tiger, Cassie a wolf, and Marco a gorilla (and Tobias as a hawk as always). They call a Yeerk ship down but are captured and taken to the Mother Ship where Marco makes a gruesome discovery: his mother, 'lost at sea' and presumed to be dead, was Visser One, in charge of the invasion of earth and boss to Visser Three. Our heroes escape in an escape pod thanks to political machinations between Vissers aboard the Mother Ship, and Marco vows to fight to the death to rescue his mother.

The Capture, told from Jake's point-of-view, in which our heroes morph as cockroaches and sneak into a gathering of Yeerks where they learn that the enemy will be using the city hospital as an infestation pool or unvoluntary participants--including the governor, who was about to make a bid for the presidency. Our heroes infiltrate the hospital as flies, but Jake falls into a portable Yeerk pool and is infested. Ax recognizes the Yeerk's presence in him, and they isolate him for three days until the Yeerk inside his head dies. Before the Yeerk dies, Jake learns more about the Yeerk home-world, and there are some hints that the Andalites may not be the angels they seem.

#marriagememes

01/16/19

Naomi Loren Barnhart came into the world Wednesday morning at exactly 12:00PM. She arrived with little effort, and both Mommy and Baby are doing great! I wept the moment I set eyes on her, and my heart felt like it was going to overflow. A fierce love spread through me, warm and comforting, as we looked into each other's eyes for the first time. Ashley was able to capture it, and it's our first framed photograph of her. She weighed in at seven pounds eleven ounces (yes, just like the gas station of renown), and she's the sweetest baby I've ever seen. I'm not just saying that 'cause I'm her dad; she's literally adorable and only slightly temperamental (which, I'm assured, will change in the coming weeks). The poor thing has my double chin, and there's nothing she could do to escape the big noses both her parents have. She has blond hair and blue eyes. Everyone says she looks a lot like me, but I think babies generally look the same (is it just me or do they come out looking like frogs?); she looks like a cross between Chloe and Zoey as babies. My heart is full, and it's with deep gladness that I share some of the first pictures of my beautiful third daughter.

the Turkish Lake: from Constantinople to Lepanto

Bayezid II

MEHMED THE CONQUEROR WAS SUCCEEDED IN 1481 by his son Bayezid II, who reigned as Sultan of the Ottoman Empire until 1512. Bayezid would become known as ‘The Just’ because he ran the empire with smooth and efficient justice in domestic affairs, and that justice began the moment he ascended the throne. His brother Cem thought the throne should be his, and he curried support with the Mamluk Sultanate in Egypt. When Cem’s Mamluk supporters were defeated, he sought help from the Knights of St. John in Rhodes. The Knights weren’t exactly swooning over Cem, so it didn’t take much finagling for Bayezid to convince them—with a monetary payment, of course—to keep his brother prisoner. The Knights shipped Cem off to the Pope, who wanted to use him as a tool to drive the Turks out of Europe; but as the crusade failed to materialize, the Pope instead used Cem to extort money from Bayezid. So long as Bayezid paid, the Pope would keep Cem from driving a wedge into Bayezid’s empire. Cem was thus left to rot away and die imprisoned. 

Much of Bayezid’s reign was spent warding off attacks from Shah Ismail of the Persian Empire; Ismail, a shi’ite, sought to undermine the Sunni Ottomans both by militaristic raids and shi’ite missionaries. While contending with Persia in the east, Bayezid followed in his father’s footsteps by extending Ottoman control deeper into the Mediterranean. He focused on the Venetian possessions in Morea (the name given to the Peloponnese peninsula during the Middle Ages and early modern period). He believed, correctly, that by acquiring the Peloponnese, the Ottoman navy would have a foothold with which to begin its dominance of the eastern Mediterranean. Bit by bit his armies chewed off pieces of southern Greece until the whole peninsula became an Ottoman possession in 1501. Though the conquest of Greece is a laurel in Bayezid’s crown, his renown has skyrocketed due to his benevolent acceptance of Jews and Muslims expelled from the newly-created Spain in 1492. When Ferdinand and Isabella expelled the Jews and Muslims from Spain as part of the Spanish Inquisition, Bayezid sent an Ottoman navy to the Iberian peninsula to evacuate the refugees safely to Ottoman lands. In preparation for their arrival, he issued proclamations throughout all Ottoman lands demanding that the refugees be welcomed and threatening death to any who persecuted the refugees. He granted the refugees permission to settle in Ottoman lands and to become Ottoman citizens, and he mocked Ferdinand and Isabella, saying, “You venture to call Ferdinand a wise ruler, he who has impoverished his own country and enriched mine!” His acceptance of the refugees led to a boom in Ottoman culture: the refugees introduced new ideas, methodology, and craftsmanship to the empire (e.g., the first printing press in Istanbul was established by Jewish refugees in 1493). 

Selim the Grim

Just as civil strife had marked the beginning of Bayezid’s reign, so it marked its end. When Bayezid named his son Ahmet heir apparent to the Ottoman throne, his other son Selim rebelled. He staged a revolt in Thrace but was defeated by Bayezid and forced to flee to the Crimean Peninsula. Meanwhile, Ahmet captured Karaman, an Ottoman city, and began marching to Istanbul to exploit his triumph; perhaps he didn’t care to wait for his father to die, given his fear of what the rebellious Selim might accomplish. Bayezid, fearful that Ahmet might depose him and seize the throne rather than waiting for his father to die of natural causes, refused him entry into the city. Selim soon returned from the Crimea, and with the support of the elite Janissaries forced his father to abdicate the throne in April 1512. Thus Selim became the Ottoman Sultan, and Bayezid was exiled to an Ottoman backwater. His exile didn’t last long, as he died (some say he was assassinated) just a month after relinquishing the throne to his turncoat son. Selim still had to deal with his brother Ahmet, so he dealt with him and his ilk in the most efficient way possible: he had them murdered. Ahmet, his other brothers, and all his nephews were put to death to quell any possible civil wars geared towards the throne. 

Selim would become known as ‘the Grim’ because he ruled the empire with an iron fist; it was nothing for him to execute citizens and soldiers en masse for the slightest offenses. Nevertheless, in his short reign of just eight years, he expanded the empire by leaps and bounds. He cowed Shah Ismail of Persia, that ever-present thorn in his late father’s side; he conquered the Mamluk Sultunate of Egypt; and he brought all the Islamic Holy Lands into his possession (though rumor has it that he was named the Muslim Caliph, most historians believe this to be a legend that developed after his death). By the time of his death in 1520, the Ottoman Empire covered nearly 600,000 square miles, a growth of seventy percent in his short, albeit remarkable, reign.

After getting rid of any potential rivals to the throne, Selim turned his attention upon Shah Ismail of Persia. By 1510 Ismail had conquered Iran and Azerbaijan, southern Dagestan, Mesopotamia, Armenia, Khorasan, Eastern Anatolia, and had made the Georgian kingdoms of Kartli and Kakheti his vassals. The Persian people were in awe of him; he was viewed as a god, impervious and invincible. Selim put that to the test: he attacked Persia to halt the spread of Shi’ism into his empire, and he defeated Ismail at the Battle of Chaldiran in 1514. Though Ismail’s men were more mobile and better prepared, Selim’s Ottoman army had been modernized with artillery, black powder, and muskets. Ismail was wounded and nearly captured in the battle, and Selim entered the Iranian capital of Tabriz in early September. Though the Sultan never seized Persia for the empire (he just wanted to teach them a lesson so that he could focus on more ambitious goals), he cowed Shah Islaim into stopping his belligerent activities. While Selim would soar into greatness, Ismail would plummet into pathetic obscurity. The Persian people had lost their confidence and awe in him, and he became a hermit in his palace, never again participating in a military campaign. He left the rule of Persia to his vizier and sloughed away his days as a drunkard. Selim spoke of Ismail after Chaldiran, saying he was “always drunk to the point of losing his mind and totally neglectful of the affairs of the [Persian] state.” 

Selim the Grim at the Battle of Chaldiran, 1514

After cowing Persia, Selim turned his armies on the Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt, defeating the Mamluk Egyptians in two major battles. The collapse of the Mamluk Sultunate led to the Ottoman annexation of the entire sultanate, everything from Syria and Palestine to the Arabian Peninsula and Egypt itself. The Ottomans now controlled the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, and Selim took the title ‘The Servant of the Two Holy Cities’ to curry the favor of the Arabian population. He died in 1520, just eight years into his glorious reign. Though the official records say he died of sirpence, a skin infection similar to anthrax that had developed during his long campaigns on horseback, some historians speculate that he died of cancer or was poisoned by a physician. Others point out that Selim’s death coincides with an outbreak of plague in the empire, and numerous primary sources seem to imply that Selim suffered from the disease. Regardless of the cause of his death, death it was, and the throne passed to his son Suleiman. Selim’s triumphs seemed unable to be matched, but Suleiman carried on the family legacy by bringing the Ottoman Empire to its economic, political, cultural, and militaristic apex.

Suleiman the Magnificent

Suleiman the Magnificent reigned from 1520 to 1566, and he carried the Ottoman Empire to its undeniable apex. He made major legislative reforms relating to society, education, taxation, and criminal law; he harmonized the relationship between the two forms of Ottoman law (the sultanic and religious); and he was a distinguished poet and goldsmith who favored the arts, bringing about the ‘Golden Age’ of the Ottoman Empire in artistic, literary, and architectural development. His greatness, however, isn’t relegated to the domestic sphere: he annexed much of the Middle East in his conflicts with the Persian Safavid dynasty, brought large swathes of North Africa under Ottoman control, and his fleet dominated the waterways from the Mediterranean to the Red Sea and through the Persian Gulf. And it was Suleiman who brought Ottoman armies into Europe’s back door.

The Battle of Mohacs, 1526

Building upon the successes of his predecessors, he personally led the Ottoman military to victory against the Christian stronghold of Belgrade. His seizure of Belgrade sent ripples of fear throughout Europe; the Holy Roman Empire’s ambassador to Istanbul noted, “The capture of Belgrade was at the origin of the dramatic events which engulfed Hungary. It led to the death of King Louis [of Hungary], the capture of Buda, the occupation of Transylvania, the ruin of a flourishing kingdom and the fear of neighboring nations that they would suffer the same fate.” In 1522 Suleiman besieged the island of Rhodes, the home base for the Knights Hospitaller. After a brutal five-month siege in which the Ottomans lost fifty to sixty thousand men from battle and sickness, Rhodes capitulated, and Suleiman allowed the surviving Knights to safely depart. He then turned his attention back to central Europe, defeating King Louis II of Hungary at the Battle of Mohacs in 1526. Hungarian resistance collapsed, and the Ottoman Empire became the preeminent power in central Europe. The Habsburg King Ferdinand of neighboring Austria had previously agreed to take the Hungarian throne if Louis II died absent an heir, and numerous Hungarian nobles vouched their support if he came and ousted the Ottomans from their nation. Other Hungarian nobles, however, supported an Ottoman-backed pretender to the throne. King Ferdinand, with the backing of the powerful Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V, marched on Ottoman-occupied Hungary and repossessed Buda and snatched Hungary for the Austrians. Suleiman responded in 1529 by marching through the valley of the Danube and reclaiming Buda; the following autumn he sought revenge against the Habsburgs by marching into Austria and laying siege to Vienna. Vienna, however, had been reinforced, and the garrison inflicted upon Suleiman his first defeat. The Sultan scheduled another siege in 1532, but it never materialized—the Ottomans were hampered by bad weather, were unable to bring their siege equipment to bear on the city, and their supply lines were stretched thin and ragged. After a brief hiatus in hostilities, Suleiman tangled with Ferdinand and Charles V yet again in the early 1540s. The Habsburgs laid siege to Ottoman-occupied Buda but were repulsed, and the Ottomans retaliated by seizing a number of Habsburg fortresses. Ferdinand and Charles V concluded a humiliating five-year treaty with Suleiman, in which Ferdinand renounced his claim to the Kingdom of Hungary and was forced to pay a fixed yearly sum to the Sultan for the Hungarian lands he had retained. In a symbolic gesture, the treaty referred to Charles V not as ‘Emperor’ but as the ‘King of Spain,’ so that Suleiman could identify himself as Europe’s true ‘Caesar.’ Hostilities with the Habsburgs resumed after the treaty ran its course, and Suleiman set out from Istanbul in command of a military expedition to Hungary. Though the Ottomans won a pyrrhic victory at the Battle of Szigetvar, Suleiman didn’t see it: he died en route. His Grand Vizier kept his death a secret during the Ottomans’ retreat from Hungary (despite winning the battle, they had suffered grievous losses and lacked the manpower to keep up the expedition). 

The Ottoman Empire: from Beginning to Apex

Suleiman’s son Selim II (known as ‘Selim the Blond’) succeeded his father. Suleiman had broken with Turkish tradition by marrying Hurrem Sultan, a woman from his harem. Hurrem had been a Christian before converting to Islam, and she was known in the West as Roxelana due to her Russian lineage. Selim hadn’t been the only son capable of taking the throne, but his brother Mehmed had died of smallpox, and another brother Mustafa had been strangled on Suleiman’s order, along with his four sons (Suleiman’s grandsons) after they rebelled against his rule. In the decades after Suleiman, the empire would begin to experience major political, institutional, and economic changes that have, in the past, been interpreted as Ottoman decline; modern historians, however, interpret them simply as transformations within the Ottoman fabric. The Ottoman Empire wasn’t in decline, though it would begin to see setbacks with Suleiman’s son.

Selim II

Selim the Blond reigned from 1566 to 1574. Two years after ascending the throne, the Ottomans concluded a treaty with the Habsburg Holy Roman Emperor, now Maximilian II. The Emperor agreed to pay an ‘annual’ present of thirty thousand ducats (gold or silver coins) and granted the Ottomans authority in Moldavia and Walachia. While Suleiman had focused his attentions on westward expansion, Selim first looked to the north to curb Russian expansion towards the empire’s northern frontier. Selim planned on uniting the Volga and Don rivers by a canal, and to this end he dispatched a large force of Janissaries and cavalry to lay siege to Astrakhan in southern Russia along with a fleet to besiege the Russians on the Don River. A sortie of Russians from the besieged Astrakhan repulsed the besiegers, and a Russian relief force of fifteen thousand scattered the canal’s workmen and their protectors. As if on cue, the Ottoman fleet was destroyed in a storm. The Russians had pretext enough to begin nibbling away at Selim’s northern frontier, but in early 1570, ambassadors of Ivan IV of Russia concluded a treaty restoring friendly relations between the Sultan and the Tsar. 

With peace concluded between Russia and the Ottomans, Selim turned his eye on further conquest in the Mediterranean. The island of Cyprus became his next target. Cyprus had belonged to the Republic of Venice since 1489, and the Turks had raided Cyprus time and again, to the point that the Venetians reengineered the island’s cities and coastal defenses to better thwart Ottoman raids. In the summer of 1570 the Turks returned, but this time they weren’t raiding: this was a full-scale invasion. Nearly sixty thousand Ottoman troops, including cavalry and artillery under the command of a general named Mustafa, landed unopposed in early July and besieged the city of Nicosia. The city fell two months later, and twenty thousand Nicosian citizens were put to death; those not killed, mainly women and young boys, were enslaved to be sold in the eastern slave markets. Every church, public building, and palace was looted. News of the massacre spread, and five days later Mustafa took Kyrenia without firing a shot. The Ottomans laid siege to the city of Famagusta in September; by this time Venetian losses, including civilians, numbered around fifty-six thousand killed or enslaved, most of whom were casualties from five major engagements. The Venetian defenders at Famagusta numbered only 8500 men with ninety artillery pieces, but they managed to hold out for eleven months against the Ottoman besieging army numbering around 200,000 with 145 guns. Their resilience in the face of the Ottomans gave Pope Pius V time to throw together an anti-Ottoman league from reluctant Christian European states. In July 1571 the Ottomans managed to breach Famagusta’s walls but were repulsed in a pyrrhic Venetian victory. The Venetian defenders were reduced to about seven hundred with no relief in sight; given their situation, the Venetian commander requested terms from Mustafa. Mustafa agreed to let the Venetian survivors sail safely to Crete, and the Venetian commander surrendered. Mustafa, however, didn’t keep his word: he had lost fifty thousand men in the relentless attacks on the city walls, and among the dead was his beloved son whom must be avenged. He massacred the city’s Christian inhabitants, flayed the Venetian commander alive, and hung his corpse on his galley along with the heads of three of the commander’s top men.  

Ottoman assaults against the walled city of Famagusta

News of Famagusta’s fall, and the subsequent treatment of its commander and garrison, aroused both horror and rage among the European states. They thirsted for vengeance, and it would come two months later when the naval forces of the Holy League—raised to combat Mustafa in Cyprus and comprised mainly of Venetian, Spanish, and Papal ships under the command of Don John of Austria—met the Ottomans at the legendary Battle of Lepanto. This naval battle would be the last major engagement in the western world to be fought almost entirely between rowing vessels that were the descendents of the classical trireme warships. It would also be the largest naval battle in the west since ancient times, and in its wake would arise the Age of Sail.

1453: the Fall of Constantinople

AS EARLY AS 1354 THE OTTOMANS HAD SETTLED AT GALLIPOLI, on the eastern side of the Bosporus, directly across the strait from Constantinople, and in time they surrounded Byzantine territory. Ensnared in a noose, the panicked Byzantine emperors sought military help from the west. Byzantine Emperor John VII, sensing the direness of the situation, was even willing to give up autonomy and embrace reunification with Rome in order to receive aid, but such a move was unpopular with the Byzantines. The Catholic Church had split into Roman and Eastern factions in 1054, and the hostility between the two was so great that even the most devoted Eastern Orthodox Christians favored Muslim rule over being under the heel of the Roman Church. By 1450 the Byzantine Empire had shrunk to the city of Constantinople and a few miles outside the city walls, and in 1452 Mehmed II began building a fortress on the European side of the Bosporus, just a few miles north of Constantinople and directly across the straits from the Gallipoli fortress that had been built by his great-grandfather. Coupled together, these two fortresses ensured control of the traffic in the Bosporus and defended against European attacks from the Genoese colonies on the Black Sea coast to the north. Mehmed named his new fortress ‘throat-cutter,’ and in October he ordered a garrison of soldiers to be established in the Peloponnese to block Byzantine’s allies from helping him in the coming siege.

Constantine XI, who could trace his lineage all the way back to Constantine the Great from the 4th century A.D., knew what was coming. Like John VII he was willing to acquiesce to the demands of Rome in order to receive assistance, but Rome couldn’t help: she lacked the power to pull the strings (and purses) of western rulers, and even if she did have that power, France and England were exhausted after the Hundred Years War, a recently reunified Spain was in the throes of the Reconquista, and the German Principalities were squabbling as was their time-honored custom. Constantine received meager help from the Italian states, but nowhere near enough to stem the tide of the coming Ottoman onslaught. Though a European fleet departed Rome in February 1453, it was too late. A number of Byzantine soldiers could read the writing on the wall and fled the city, and Constantine’s attempts to placate Mehmed with gifts ended with his ambassadors being executed. 

Constantine wagered that Mehmed’s attack on Constantinople would come from the sea; after all, the city’s landward fortifications, known as the Theodosian Walls, stretched twenty kilometers and were the strongest fortifications in existence. They’d proved their worth time again, preventing numerous besiegers from cracking their way into the city. In addition to the walls, there was a sixty-foot-wide moat that fronted inner and outer crenellated walls laced with towers every one hundred fifty feet. Feeling somewhat secure from a landward attack, Constantine ordered a chain of obstacles to be constructed along the Golden Horn (the primary inlet of the Bosporus) to prevent Ottoman ships from closing in on Constantinople’s seaward side. Constantine, lacking significant defenders, had to put his hope in the city’s fortifications. Modern estimates give him seven thousand fighting men, two thousand of which were foreigners. While some were well-trained and well-armed, most were nothing more than armed civilians and sailors, volunteer forces, and even a spattering of monks. These men, and a fleet of twenty-six ships, were tasked with protecting the fifty thousand civilians behind the city walls, a number that included numerous refugees who had fled to the city as the Ottoman forces marched ever-nearer the capital. 

The twenty-one-year-old Mehmed II began his siege on 6 April 1453, and his forces made Constantine’s look like a paltry handful. Modern estimates put his numbers at around fifty to eighty thousand soldiers, including up to ten thousand Janissaries (elite Ottoman infantry, and the first modern standing army in Europe), seventy cannons, and thousands of Christian troops, including fifteen hundred Serbian cavalry supplied by a Serbian lord who’d been forced to kneel before Mehmed (and who had, ironically, paid for the upkeep and repairs of some of Constantinople’s walls just months before). While besieging the city, Mehmed ordered his soldiers to wipe out Byzantine bastions and castles outside the walls, and he turned his attention to the Golden Horn. Mehmed brought his cannon to bear on the walls, pounding them day after day, and he ordered his fleet to try and penetrate the Golden Horn.  The chained obstacles prevented their ships from closing in on the city, and on 20 April a fleet of Christian ships battled with the Ottomans and managed to slip into the harbor. Their reinforcement of the city’s garrison humiliated Mehmed, and the naval commander responsible for their slippage through the Ottoman cordon was brought before the sultan to answer charges. The commander’s companions testified to his bravery during their tangle with the Christian ships, and Mehmed chose to spare his life. 

Since the Golden Horn couldn’t be penetrated, Mehmed played with the idea of bringing his ships into the harbor by crossing a stretch of undefended land. He ordered a road of greased logs built across the finger of land, and Ottoman ships were ferried across and guided into the Horn behind the obstacles. A week later, on 28 April, the Byzantines tried to destroy the enemy vessels using fire ships, but the Ottomans had been warned of their plans and repulsed their attackers. Forty Italians escaped sinking ships and managed to swim to the northern shore where they were apprehended by the Ottomans; Mehmed ordered them impaled on stakes in sight of the city’s defenders. The Byzantines responded by bringing their Ottoman prisoners, numbering around two hundred sixty, up onto the walls. There they executed them before the eyes of the besieging army. 

the Basilica

Mehmed couldn’t assault Constantinople from the seaward side, so he was forced to try and overcome the city’s legendary walls. To this end he launched waves of vicious attacks against the walls, and he coupled this with overwhelming firepower. Legend has it that his siege of Constantinople is the first time gunpowder cannons were brought to bear on city walls, but this is inaccurate; at the same time, however, it was his overwhelming use of cannon that serves as a prelude to the type of siege warfare that would become endemic throughout the early modern era. Mehmed’s artillery train consisted of seventy medium-sized cannons, and he even casted bombards outside the walls. His most famous cannon was the ‘Basilica,’ which was twenty-seven feet long and capable of firing a six-hundred-pound stone ball over a mile. The Basilica was the work of a man by the name of Urban; he was either Hungarian or German, and he brought cannon foundry to the next level. He’d tried to sell his skills to the Byzantines, but as they were unable to afford him, he approached Mehmed with the claim that his Basilica design could blast ‘the walls of Babylon itself.’ Mehmed had money whereas the Byzantines did not, and he hired his services. In three months Urban constructed the gun at Edirne, the Ottoman capital, and from there it was dragged by sixty oxen and four hundred men to throw its weight against Constantinople. The Basilica, however, wasn’t without its drawbacks: six-hundred-pound cannonballs weren’t easy to find, it took three hours to reload, and it likely collapsed under its own recoil after six weeks. 

Mehmed’s cannons fired on the city’s walls for weeks, but the Byzantines were able to repair most of the damage. The city would have to be taken by force, and to this end Mehmed ordered assault after assault upon the walls. A Venetian surgeon Niccolo Barbaro gives us a glimpse of what these assaults looked like, writing, ‘[The defenders] found the Turks coming right up under the walls and seeking battle, particularly the Janissaries… and when one or two of them were killed, at once more Turks came and took away the dead ones… without caring how near they came to the city walls. Our men shot at them with guns and crossbows, aiming at the Turk who was carrying away his dead countryman, and both of them would fall to the ground dead, and then there came other Turks and took them away, none fearing death, but being willing to let ten of themselves be killed rather than suffer the shame of leaving a single Turkish corpse by the walls.” When the assaults failed, Mehmed ordered sappers to dig beneath the walls and place explosives to bring them down. The defenders counter-mined, breaching the Ottoman tunnels with their own and pushing the miners back in hot-and-heavy hand-to-hand combat in the dimly lit tunnels, often using ‘Byzantine fire’—an incendiary weapon developed sometime in the mid-600s—to push them back out the way they came. When the Byzantines captured two Turkish officers, they tortured them until they gave up the locations of all the sapping tunnels, enabling the defenders to countermine and destroy each one. Below are some artistic representations of the siege of Constantinople:

Mehmed, frustrated that his cannons, assaults on the walls, and sapping tunnels were getting him nowhere, sent an ambassador to the city on 21 May and offered to lift the siege if the Byzantines surrendered. He promised to allow Constantine and the civilians to leave the city with their possessions, and he’d recognize the emperor as the governor of the Peloponnese. He also guaranteed the safety of anyone who decided to remain in the city after it changed hands. The emperor countered by offering to pay higher tributes to Mehmed and to recognize the status of all conquered castles and lands in the hands of the Turks as Ottoman possessions. He would absolutely not, however, relinquish the city. The negotiations came to nothing, and an irritated—and desperate—Mehmed decided to throw at the walls everything he had in one last gambit to bring Constantinople to its knees. 

On 28 May, as the Ottomans prepared for their final assault, Christian religious processions were held in the city. Come evening a last ceremony was held in the Hagia Sophia, in which the emperor and representatives of both the Latin and Greek churches partook. Mehmed’s assault began shortly after midnight on the 29th: his Christian troops attacked first, followed by waves of the irregular azaps (ill-equipped and ill-trained peasant militias). Cannon fire had weakened the walls in the city’s northwest quadrant, and Anatolian soldiers managed to breach their way through, though the Byzantine defenders expelled them. Mehmed then launched his elite Janissaries into the fray. When the Genoese general in charge of the Byzantine troops was gravely wounded, he was evacuated from the melee, much to the consternation of the defenders. Panic infected their ranks, and the Genoese soldiers began to break from the fight and flee for the harbor. The emperor and his troops were left to defend against the Ottomans alone, and when Ottoman flags were seen flying above a small city gate, the panic became infection and resistance crumbled. The Janissaries took advantage of the break in morale; Greek soldiers ran home to protect their families; the Venetians ran to their ships; and several Genoese ships put out from the Horn and managed to escape through the Ottoman blockade. Many soldiers committed suicide by jumping off the city walls, or surrendered to the Ottomans in hope of mercy. Barbaro describes blood flowing in the city ‘like rainwater in the gutters after a sudden storm,’ and the bodies of Turks and Christians floating in the sea ‘like melons along a canal.’ Legend tells us that Constantine, throwing aside his purple royal regalia, led the final charge against the Janissaries, and perished in the battle in the streets; however, the Venetian surgeon quoted earlier reports in his diary that the emperor hanged himself the moment the Turks broke through the city. In whatever way death came, the demise of Emperor Constantine XI Palaeologus, whose imperial lineage stretched back more than 1400 years to Augustus Caesar, marked the end of the Empire that Augustus had inaugurated. 

Mehmed II enters Constantinople

Once the Ottomans were firmly inside the city, they fanned out along the city’s main thoroughfare and marched past the great forums and the Church of the Holy Apostles. Mehmed had sent an advance guard to protect these buildings so as not to arouse the anger of the Christian citizens. The Ottomans converged upon the Augusteum, the vast square that fronted the Hagia Sophia. The church’s bronze gates were barred by a throng of civilians bunkering down in the sanctuary in hope of divine protection. Once the doors were breached, the troops separated the congregants according to what price they might bring in the eastern slave markets. By the end of the battle, four thousand Byzantines, both soldiers and civilians, had died, and thirty thousand inhabitants were enslaved. 

In political terms, the fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans didn’t amount to much. The skeletal remnants of the Byzantine Empire had been an ineffective barrier to Ottoman expansion, and over time the city had declined to the point that it was commercially and politically unimportant. Ottoman dominion didn’t affect east-west trade to any great degree, and it didn’t result in an exodus of Byzantine scholars and manuscripts to Italy. The impact was largely psychological: it shocked the Christian world. As historian Kevin Kiley writes, ‘For more than one thousand years, this Christian Roman Empire played a huge political and cultural role in the histories of both the East and West; in some ways, the years of its existence mark the span of the Middle Ages, and its passing symbolizes the End of an Era.’ He continues, ‘It can be argued that perhaps the most enduring legacy of the eastern Roman Empire was that, not by design or long term strategy, they succeeded in keeping the Muslim or Turkish enemies in the east out of central and western Europe until those regions could properly defend themselves. Ultimately the Byzantine emperors acted as the bulwark against an aggressive Islam that was bent on ever-expanding western conquest. By the time the Ottomans finally took Constantinople, however, and ended the eastern Roman Empire in fire and rubble, the nations of the west were ready to take on the Muslim onslaught.’

Mehmed II changed the name of Constantinople to Istanbul (though the name change didn’t become official until as recently as 1930) and made it, rather than Edirne, his Ottoman capital. Through the latter days of his reign he subjugated Morea, Serbia, Bosnia, and parts of Herzegovina. He drove the Genoese from their Black Sea colonies, forced the Khan of Crimea to become his vassal, and engaged in a naval war with the Venetians. By his death in 1481, the Ottomans had acquired massive power on land and sea, and the Black Sea had become a ‘Turkish Lake.’ The Ottomans, however, weren’t finished: in the 1500s, Mehmed’s successor Suleiman II ‘The Magnificent’ would carry the Ottoman Empire to the height of its power.

The Byzantine Empire: a Sketch

In AD 284 a powerful Roman general named Diocletian seized control of the Roman Empire and split it in two. Diocletian’s compatriot Maximian took the reigns over the western part of the Empire (consisting of Italy, Gaul, Britain, the Iberian peninsula, and Africa), and Diocletian made himself emperor over the eastern half (which was also the wealthiest part and consisted of Greece, Anatolia [Asia Minor], Syria, Palestine, and Egypt). From this point on, Rome was split into the Western Roman Empire and the Eastern Roman Empire. Though the western Roman Empire disintegrated into a patchwork of feudal kingdoms after AD 476, it’s incorrect to say that the days of the Roman Empire were over, as the Eastern Roman Empire remained intact and would continue for a millennium, from the 5th century until the 15th, before being overwhelmed by the Ottoman Turks.

Most historians refer to the eastern part of the Roman Empire post-AD 476 as the “Byzantine Empire,” but this is a misnomer: her citizens saw themselves as Romaioi, or “Romans,” and up until the back half of the 6th century, they still lived, breathed, and operated as traditional Romans. They spoke a common Latin language, used Roman coinage, fought in the manner of the Roman legions, and patterned their cities off Roman urban networks, judged by Roman laws, and praised Roman civic culture. However, the end of the 6th and beginning of the 7th century saw many of these traditional Roman values and modes of operation fall by the wayside in favor of more ‘eastern’ ways of doing things: Greek supplanted Latin as the predominant language, and Greek culture began to seep into the empire’s skeletal supports. This new culture, which developed sometime around the beginning of the Middle Ages, has been called ‘Byzantine.’

The name ‘Byzantine’ is derived from ‘Byzantium’, the ancient Greek city on the western side of the Bosporus Straits, midway between the Mediterranean and Black Sea. The city’s prime location made it a natural transit point between Europe and Anatolia (Asia Minor), and thus whoever controlled the city had access to immeasurable trade from both water and land. Emperor Constantine re-founded Byzantium as the ‘new Rome’ in AD 330; at the time it was the most populated and wealthiest city in Roman territory, and it came to be called ‘Constantinople’ (or ‘the city of Constantine’) in contemporaneous language. As the western Roman Empire collapsed in the mid-late 5th century, Byzantine emperors lacked the funds and manpower to prevent its collapse. Their best hope to survive the western scourge was to focus on defending their eastern boundaries via a policy of warfare against the barbarians and paying tribute to foreign nations. While the western Roman Empire battled against barbarians, the Eastern Empire’s biggest threat was Persians from the east and Muslims from the south.

The Byzantine Empire reached its height under Emperor Justinian the Great (r. 527-565). The western Roman Empire was overcome by barbarians—the Vandals, the Visigoths, and the Ostrogoths—but these peoples met their match in Justinian. By 554 Justinian’s armies had annihilated the Vandal Kingdom in North Africa and brought it under Byzantine rule; he forced the Visigoths in Spain to hand over the southern tip of the Iberian peninsula; and he was victorious over the Ostrogoths in Italy (but, sadly, he couldn’t defend the Italian territories, and they fell to subsequent invaders). To the east Justinian managed a rough peace with the Persians. Within the Byzantine Empire, Justinian promoted law and order; in 528 he ordered a systematic codification of Roman law. The result—the Corpus Iuris Civilis, known down history as ‘Justinian’s Code’—consisted of four compilations: the Codex, an arrangement of imperial edicts by topic; the Digest (or Pandects), a summary of legal opinions; the Institutes, a textbook to familiarize students with the reformed system; and the Novellae, a collection of imperial edicts issued after 534. Justinian’s triumphant work lasted through the Middle Ages and was the basis for international, commercial, and Church law; and to this day most western legal systems are roughly based around the principles preserved in Justinian’s Code.

Justinian’s successors couldn’t keep up with his expansionist policies, and the Byzantine Empire began to suffer constriction from eastern enemies, notably the Persians and the Muslims in their various dynasties and emergent nations. Bit by bit the Byzantine Empire shrunk, whittled away by foreign enemies from outside and from corruption within. Arab peoples, energized by an Islamic faith intent on world domination, pushed Byzantine emperors to their limits. When the Seljuk Turks occupied Nicaea, just a few miles from Constantinople, Byzantium called for aid from the west, initiating the Crusades of the Middle Ages. While Byzantium was able, with western assistance, to withstand the Muslim onslaughts, she suffered cruelly at the hands of an Italian-based enemy: the Venetians. The Venetians sacked Constantinople in the Fourth Crusade and turned it into a Latin empire, but the Byzantines retook the city in the early 13th century. Nonetheless, the Byzantine Empire was but an echo of its former glory; in the mid-1400s its power was restricted to Greece, the Aegean Sea, and the city of Constantinople and its environs. The Turks, who had come close to wiping Byzantium off the political map, managed to weather the Crusades but were crushed by the Mongols in the 1400s. The Mongols became the greatest threat facing Byzantium, but they, too, tasted defeat. Their destruction came at the hands of an emergent Middle Eastern empire, that of the Ottomans. The Ottomans would succeed where the Persians, Arabs, and Turks had failed: they would bring down Byzantium and spell the end for the last vestiges of the ancient Roman Empire.

Osman I, the founder of the Ottoman Dynasty

The name ‘Ottoman’ comes from its founding ruler, Osman, who ruled from 1290 to 1326. The Seljuk Turks had wrenched Anatolia from Byzantine control, and these Anatolian territories were turned into the ‘Sultanate of Rum’ (Rum was a Turkish synonym for ‘Greek’). As the Sultanate declined in the 14th century, it was divided into a hodgepodge patchwork of independent Turkish principalities known as the Anatolian Beyliks. One of these beyliks, situated in Bithynia on the frontier of the Byzantine Empire, was led by a Turkish leader known as Osman. Osman founded a dynasty that would last six hundred years, but historians have no idea how Osman was able to get his empire started. The outdated Gaza Thesis states that he rallied religious warriors to fight in the name of Islam, but this theory is no longer supported by historians. In its place we have nothing; how Osman managed to do it is unknown, but do it he did. His early followers consisted of Turkish tribal groups and Byzantine defectors (most of whom converted to Islam). Osman conquered Byzantine towns along the Sakarya River and subjugated his Turkish neighbors. In the century after his death, his successors began spreading their rule across Anatolia and the Balkans. Osman’s son Orhan captured Bursa in northwest Anatolia in 1326 and made it his capital, supplanting Byzantine control in the region. In 1387 the Ottomans captured the Venetian port city of Thessaloniki; in 1389 they were victorious at Kosovo, ending Serbian dominance in the region and opening the door to advancements into Europe; and in 1396, at the Battle of Nicopolis, the Ottomans decisively defeated a coalition of western armies intent on checking Muslim expansion into Europe.

All of Europe knew that Constantinople, the capital city of the Byzantine Empire, was the last great bastion against the Ottomans; the Ottomans knew this, too, and began making plans to make it theirs. Byzantine hopes soared in 1402 when Timur, founder of the Timurid Empire, bested the Ottomans at the Battle of Ankara. Timur took the Ottoman sultan captive, and the Ottoman Empire imploded into civil war as the imprisoned sultan’s sons squabbled over the refuse. His son Mehmed emerged from the civil war victorious, and he restored Ottoman power in 1413. The Byzantine emperors hoped that the incessant wars between the Timurids and Ottomans would keep the eastern threat to a minimum, but in the 1430s the Ottoman sultan Murad II began retaking lost territories from the Timurids. Thessaloniki, Macedonia, and Kosovo returned to Ottoman control. Polish and Hungarian armies set their teeth against the waxing Ottomans, but Murad repelled them. The Europeans were soundly defeated at the Battle of Varna in 1444 and again at the Second Battle of Kosovo in 1448. Murad II’s son, Mehmed II (who would be known to history as Mehmed the Conqueror) reorganized the Ottoman state and military and set his sights on Constantinople. By taking Constantinople, the Ottomans would seize control of the Bosporus straits and have an open door to the Mediterranean—and to Europe.

books read: 2018

this year I read just over 100 books (106 to be exact)

~ Science & Spirituality ~

SPIRITUALITY   (23)
  Holiness (JC Ryle, 1877)
  Marriage God's Way (Scott LaPierre, 2016)
  All Things New (John Eldredge, 2017)
  Walking with God (Eldredge, 2016)
  Alien Intrusions (Gary Bates, 2010)
  The All-or-Nothing Marriage (Eli J. Finkel, 2017)
  Easy Chairs, Hard Words (Douglas Wilson, 1997)
  No More Christian Nice Guy (Paul Coughlin, 2016)
  How to be Free from Bitterness (Jim Wilson, 2016)
  Christianity vs. Liberalism (J. Gresham Machen, 1923)
  Fidelity: How to be a One-Woman Man (Wilson, 1999)
  Books on Spiritual Warfare
    The Adversary: The Christian Versus Demon Activity (Mark Bubeck, 2013)
    Reclaiming Surrendered Ground (Jim Logan, 2016)
    Victory over the Darkness (Neil Anderson, 2000)
    The Bondage Breaker (Anderson, 2006)
    Freedom in Christ (Anderson, 2017)
SCIENCE
  An Atlas of Life on Earth (Windmill Books, 2014)
  The History of Life (Michael J. Benton, 2008)
  Dinosaurs of the Triassic Period (Explore Series, 2013)
  Dinosaurs of the Jurassic Period (Explore Series, 2013)
  Dinosaurs of the Cretaceous Period (Explore Series, 2013)
  The Bird Dinosaurs (Explore Series, 2013)
  A Survival Guide to the Jurassic (Dougal Dixon, 2009)

~ Histories of the Early Modern World ~

Early Modern Europe: An Oxford History (Euan Cameron, 2001)
Warfare in the Era of Pike and Shot (Sean McLachlan, 2013)
Pike and Shot Tactics, 1590-1660 (Keith Roberts, 2010)
The Advent of Early Modern Warfare (McLachlan, 2017)
The French Religious Wars, 1562-1598 (Robert Knecht, 2014)
French Musketeer, 1622-1775 (Chartrand & Turner, 2013)
A Brief History of the Thirty Years' War (Israel Smith Clare, 2012)
The English Civil Wars, 1642-1651 (Peter Gaunt, 2014)
Warfare in the Eighteenth Century (Jeremy Black, 1999)
The Redcoats: The History of the British Army in the 18th Century
   (Charles River, 2018)
Redcoat: The British Soldier in the Age of Horse and Musket (Richard Holmes, 2011)
The War of the Spanish Succession (Wilbur Cortez Abbott, 2015)
The War of the Spanish Succession (Jesse Braun, 2018)
The War of the Austrian Succession (Atkinson & Daniels, 2014)
French and Indian Wars (Francis Russell, 2015)  
The French & Indian War, 1756-1763
  The Seven Years' War (Henry Dyer, 2018)
  The Seven Years War & Its Aftermath (Olga Wawer, 2018)
  The French & Indian War (Hourly History, 2017)
  The French & Indian War (i60education, 2018)
  The French & Indian War (Christopher & James Collier, 2012)
The American War of Rebellion, 1775 - 1783
  The American Revolution, 1774-1783 (Daniel Marston, 2002)
  Whirlwind: the American Revolution and the War That Won It (John Ferling, 2015)
  Patriot Battles: How the War of Independence Was Fought
    (Michael Stephenson, 2008)
  Rebels and Redcoats (George Scheer, 1987)
  British Soldiers, American War: Voices of the American Revolution
    (Don N. Hagist, 2014)
The French Revolution
  The French Revolution (Peter Davies, 2011)
  The French Revolution (Jon Oldham, 2017)
  The French Revolution (Hourly History, 2017)
  The French Revolution & Napoleon (Charles Hazen, 1917)
  The French Revolutionary Wars (Gregory Fremont-Barnes, 2001)

~ Fiction and Literature ~

HISTORICAL FICTION OF THE NAPOLEONIC WARS*
  Compendiums

    The Sharpe Companion: The Early Years (Mark Adkin, 2005)
    The Sharpe Companion (Adkin, 2000)

    Patrick O'Brian's Navy (Richard O'Neill, 2003)

    The World of Jack Aubrey (David Miller, 2008)
    A Sea of Words (Dean King, et. al., 2012)
    Harbors and High Seas (King, 2012)

  Novels from 1799 to 1812
    Sharpe's Tiger: The Siege of Seringapatam, 1799 (Cornwell, 1996)
    Master and Commander, 1800 (O'Brian, 1969)
    Post Captain, 1802 (O'Brian, 1972)
    Sharpe's Triumph: The Battle of Assaye, 1803 (Cornwell, 1998)
    Sharpe's Fortress: The Siege of Gawilghur, 1803 (Cornwell, 1998)
    Sharpe's Trafalgar: The Battle of Trafalgar, 1805 (Cornwell, 2000)
    HMS Surprise, 1804-1806 (O'Brian, 1973)
    Sharpe's Prey: The Siege of Copenhagen, 1807 (Cornwell, 2001)

    Sharpe's Rifles: The French Invasion of Galica, 1809 (Cornwell, 1988)
    Sharpe's Havoc: The Campaign in Northern Portugal, 1809 (Cornwell, 2003)
    Sharpe's Eagle: The Talavera Campaign, 1809 (Cornwell, 1981)
    Sharpe's Gold: The Destruction of Almeida, 1810 (Cornwell, 1981)
    Sharpe's Escape: The Battle of Bussaco, 1810  (Cornwell, 2004)
    The Mauritius Command, 1810 (O'Brian, 1977) 
    Sharpe's Fury: The Battle of Barrosa, 1811 (Cornwell, 2006)
    Desolation Island, 1811-1812 (O'Brian, 1978)

    Sharpe's Battle: The Battle of Fuentes de Onoro, 1811 (Cornwell, 1995)
    Sharpe's Company: The Siege of Badajoz, 1812 (Cornwell, 1982)

    The Fortune of War, 1812-1813 (Patrick O'Brian, 1979)

    Sharpe's Sword: The Salamanca Campaign, 1812 (Bernard Cornwell, 1983)
    Sharpe's Skirmish: The Defence of the Tormes, 1812 (Cornwell, 2002)
    The Surgeon's Mate, 1813 (O'Brian, 1980)
A HODGEPODGE OF FICTION

  The Mysterious Affair at Styles (Agatha Christie, 1920)

  Mr. Mercedes (Stephen King, 2015)
  Just After Sunset (King, 2008)
  2001: A Space Odyssey (Arthur C. Clarke, 1968)

  Rendezvous with Rama (Clarke, 1990)
  The Mars Trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson
    Red Mars (1993)
    Green Mars (1995)
    Blue Mars (1997)
  J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter Saga

    Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (1999)
    Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (1999)
    Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (1999)
WESTERNS
  The Virginian (Owen Winster, 1920)
  Desperadoes (Ron Hansen, 1997)
  Deadwood (Pete Dexter, 2005)
  Dead Man's Walk (Larry McMurtry, ??)
  Welcome to Hard Times (El Doctorow, 2007)
  Under the Sweetwater Rim (Louis L'Amour, 1971)
  The Iron Marshal (L'Amour, 1969)
  The Branch and the Scaffold (Loren D. Estleman, 2009)
  The Master Executioner (Estleman, 2001)
STAR WARS NOVELS
  A.C. Crispin's Han Solo Trilogy
    The Paradise Snare (1997)
    The Hutt Gambit  (1997)
    Rebel Dawn (1997)
  Roger Allen's The Corellian Trilogy
    Ambush at Corellia (1995)
    Assault at Selonia (1995)
    Showdown at Centerpoint (1995)


*Patrick O'Brien's Aubrey-Maturin series and Bernard Cornwell's Richard Sharpe series come together in relative chronological order during the course of the Napoleonic Wars.

2019: looking forward

As I began reflecting on the highs and lows of 2018, it became apparent that the last three years have been a whirlwind of momentous events. In 2016 Ashley and I were married; in 2017 I adopted the girls; last year we bought a house; and this year (within the next few weeks!) we'll have our third daughter: Naomi Loren! Words cannot express the joy and excitement I have for her coming into this world.

For 2018 I came up with three resolutions, and I did pretty good: read or write for an hour a day (check!), buy a house (check!), and continue living healthier (a halfhearted check, as it went in fits and starts). Here are 2019's resolutions:

Resolved, to finish writing a book. Last year I finished a three-hundred-fifty page short history of medieval England. Easy, readable histories are all the rage on Amazon, and I'm planning on hacking the book into shorter books and publish primarily for kindle and e-readers. This year I'm continuing my studies in English history with a 200-page book on Tudor England. The original plan was to follow up my medieval history with a general history of early modern England up to the American Revolution, serving as a 'bridge' between last year's project and my ongoing 'History of the American War of Independence,' a three-volume ambition (it'll take a hot minute); but when sketching out the book, it became apparent that early modern England was rife with so much war and upheaval that the attempt would produce something closer to 600 pages. There's A LOT of English history smacked into the three hundred years between 1500 and 1800: the Tudors, the Stuarts, the English Civil War, the Commonwealth and Restoration, The Glorious Revolution, and not to mention all the New World warfare between England, France, Spain, and their allies. That's a lot of ground to cover, but a proper study of early modern England includes a study of Europe as a whole: in the Middle Ages, England operated primarily within a sphere encompassing Ireland, Scotland, and France; but in the early modern age, England's reach--thanks to advances in trade, communication, and sailing--stretched around the world, and even distant neighbors such as the Ottoman Empire had an effect on her. All this to say, I've decided to try and encompass the Tudor Era with interlocking events in Europe.

Resolved, to remain in the rhythm of healthy living. This past year has been up-and-down when it comes to living healthier, but Ash and I have gotten back on track with eating right and exercise, and we're starting to see some big changes. My aim for 2019 is to keep it up and increase the amount of weight I can lift by at least fifteen percent. That's a pretty modest goal, easily attainable so long as I stay steady on the track. I think one of the biggest difficulties I face in eating right is the fact that we're still making the girls traditional "kids meals," and though I'm an adult, I still love some macaroni and cheese with fish sticks and dinosaur-shaped nuggets.

Resolved, to read less but more. Last year I read 110 books, and the year before that 185. Those are pretty big numbers, but this year my goal is far more modest - just one hundred books - but the focus is going to be on longer and more profitable books. This year's reading queue includes nearly fifty books on history, a slurry of historical fiction from the Napoleonic and American Civil War years, and Terry Johnston's fantastic Titus Bass series set in the early days of American western expansion. I'm also aiming to begin George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series. As delightful add-ons are a six-book journey through some of the most popular horrors, old and new, and a nostalgic journey through Scholastic fiction. Maybe this is the manifestation of a mid-life crisis? Instead of trying to buy nice cars and fancy clothes, I'm going to try and recapture the childhood euphoria of twenty bucks in my pocket and a Scholastic book fair in the school library.