April 6 | Richard I

September 8, 1157 – April 6, 1199: Age 41

Remember Thomas Becket? Richard I is the son of the guy who accidentally ordered him killed. He's also the same good King Richard who appears at the end of Robin Hood stories in his Crusader's outfit to save the day and restore order to England.

Although Richard the Lionheart, as he is known, enjoys great popularity in our imaginations today, the truth is he spent little time in England and could hardly speak English. He grew up in France and, a professional Crusader, used his English holdings to finance his very expensive armies in the Middle East.

He was indeed a great military leader and did wonderful things against Saladin. He also revolted against his own father on a regular basis, attempting on more than one occasion to seize his throne. When he was finally crowned King of England, after his father's death, he barred all Jews and women from the coronation ceremony. When some Jewish community leaders arrived with gifts, he had them stripped and flogged and then flung out into the street. A rumour then spread that Richard had ordered all Jews killed, and the people of London dutifully started a massacre. At this point Richard woke up to the fact that allowing leading Jewish citizens to be murdered and their property destroyed and stolen was a bad idea, had the perpetrators hung, and ordered that Jews be left alone.

He went on Crusade again a year later. When raising funds for this, he remarked "I would have sold London if I could find a buyer." He left the country in the hands of various family members and officials and divided his time over the next ten years between waging war in warmer, bloodier climes, and protecting his interests in France.

In March 1199 Richard was besieging a castle in the region of Limousin, suppressing a revolt in his holdings there. He was walking around the castle walls one evening, inspecting the progress of some sappers. Archers would shoot arrows from the castle from time to time but rarely hit anything important, and Richard felt confident enough to be making his inspection without armour. One archer in particular was standing on the walls holding a crossbow and a frying pan, which he had been using as a shield all day to ward off stones and other flying objects. When he aimed an arrow at Richard, the king laughed and applauded — until the arrow struck him on the left shoulder. Richard returned to his tent and tried to pull the arrow out, but could not, so he called a doctor. The doctor also had difficulty, removing the arrow but damaging Richard's arm.

The would became infected and it became clear he would die. Richard asked that the archer who shot him be found and brought before him. This was done, and the culprit turned out to be a mere boy, who announced that he had shot Richard in revenge as the king had killed his father and two brothers. With egotistic flair, Richard forgave the lad, giving him a sum of money and saying, "Live on, and by my bounty behold the light of day".

Richard made his will, leaving his throne to his brother John, and died on April 6 in the arms of his mother, Eleanor of Aquitaine. The young archer was recaptured, skinned alive, and hanged as soon as Richard died. So much for medieval chivalry.

Source: Wikipedia

Bum Rap | Herod the Great

73 BCE - 4BCE: Age 69

Herod the Great, forever remembered for ordering the massacre of all male children in Bethlehem in order to avoid have to deal with a newborn "King of the Jews", probably didn't. In fact it probably didn't happen. It appears in the Gospel of Matthew and is believed by most modern scholars to be a product of creative mythmaking rather than actual fact.

Not that he wasn't cruel enough to do such a thing. Like most kings, he was looking out for number one and didn't get to where he was in life by being a nice guy. Where he was, was service as King of Judea, through the good offices of Rome, who needed somebody tame and local in there to keep good order. His father was a high-ranking official who was murdered in a power skirmish; Herod managed to get the backing of the Roman army to help him avenge the murder and, eventually, take the throne. Herod was officially a Jew, but most actual Jews didn't take him seriously as such.

He lived to what was a ripe old age for the day: 69. His suffering was intense; the historian Josephus, writing just a few decades later, reports:

His entrails were also ex-ulcerated, and the chief violence of his pain lay on his colon; an aqueous and transparent liquor also had settled itself about his feet, and a like matter afflicted him at the bottom of his belly. Nay, further, his privy-member was putrefied, and produced worms; and when he sat upright, he had a difficulty of breathing, which was very loathsome, on account of the stench of his breath, and the quickness of its returns; he had also convulsions in all parts of his body, which increased his strength to an insufferable degree.

The modern diagnosis is that he had chronic kidney disease as well as Fournier's gangrene, which is a type of necrotizing fasciitis that attacks the genitals.

He was buried in a tomb whose location was unknown until 2007, when an Israeli team of archaeologists discovered it (after 35 years of painstaking research) about 12 kilometres south of Jerusalem, on the side of the vast hill he had constructed for his palace.

Source: Wikipedia

March 22 | Jean-Baptiste de Lully

November 28, 1632 - March 22, 1687: Age 54

Giovanni Battista di Lulli was the son of a miller in Florence with no education, but a natural musical talent and good looks. One of these attracted the attention of a French duke, who took him to France at the age of 14 to work for a powerful French princess. Here he frenchified his name and cultivated his musical ability under the princess's patronage — until, that is, she discovered an insulting poem he wrote about her. Then he was fired.

He surfaces again at 20, getting a job as a dancer for Louis XIV. He began composing ballet music and that, combined with his looks and wit, secured him royal favour and an appointment as the composer of instrumental music to the king. Thus was launched a great career as courtier-composer that put all his talents to good use. These included a voracious (bi)sexual appetite as well as the canny wits of a former Italian street kid, who understood perfectly the need to defend his own turf against other rival composers, dancers, and musicians. In other words, much of his considerable energy was expended ensuring that other artists never got an even break. That said, his musical abilities were certainly at least as considerable as his sexual and political talents, and his instrumental music, operas, and ballets are still performed and enjoyed today.

In early January, 1687, he was conducting a Te Deum, beating time on the floor with a long staff. He struck his toe. The wound abscessed and eventually turned gangrenous. He refused to have his toe amputated and, with the spread of the gangrene, he died on March 22.

This entry is dedicated to my cousin George Lloyd, a professional classical musician. Like many of his colleagues, he frequently entertains a not-so-secret desire that all conductors should suffer the same fate.

Source: Wikipedia

September 25 | Oliver Loving

December 4, 1812 - September 25, 1867: Age 54

In 1866 the Civil War had all but destroyed the US cattle industry. Although both armies needed to be supplied with beef, the overall disruption in supply lines had meant a population explosion in the Texas herds. Moreover, those who supplied the Confederate army were left with a lot of worthless IOUs at the end of the war.

Oliver Loving was one of those men: the Confederate Army owed him more than $100,000 which he had no hope of collecting. Originally a farmer born in Kentucky, Loving was a cowman who considered himself a Texan. He is thought to be the first man to trail cattle out of Texas. In 1866 he and his partner Charles Goodnight began driving cattle northwest, to the new Indian reservations, mining camps, and railway crews working their way across the country. These new markets were further west than ever before, and Loving and Goodnight were able to earn $12,000 in gold for their efforts that year.

The following year they set out again. In June, Goodnight stayed with the herd while Loving went ahead with one companion to get to Denver in time to bid on the lucrative government contracts that were to be offered in July. Although Loving promised Goodnight that he would not travel by day (the territory was full of hostile Indians) he got impatient after a couple of days and struck out in daylight. By the afternoon they were being chased by a band of several hundred Comanches. They made for a nearby river where the banks were more than 100 feet high, left their horses, and hid themselves among sand dunes and reeds.

The Indians had them pinned, but it is extremely difficult to deal with two well-armed men in a strong position. During an attempt at a parley Loving was wounded in the side and sustained a broken arm. Thinking that he would die from his wounds, he asked his companion to sneak away.

The companion, leaving most of the guns and ammunition with Loving, managed to slip away by swimming down the river with no supplies, wearing only his underwear. He holed up in a cave a day's journey back toward the herd and waited for the herd to arrive. Within three days they found him, starving, and heard his tale. Goodnight took a party of men to the spot where Loving was last seen, but he could not be found and they supposed the Indians had killed him and thrown his body into the river. In fact Loving, when the wound in his side hadn't killed him after a day, managed to slip out the same way his companion did and made it to a road. After five days with no food, he was picked up by a party of Mexicans and taken to Fort Sumner for medical attention.

The broken arm had to be amputated, but the doctor there was reluctant to do so. When Goodnight and his men found him there the mortification was clearly gaining and they sent to Santa Fe for a doctor to do it. The arm was amputated, but the gangrene had already reached his body. Loving died September 25.

Before he died he expressed sadness at being buried in a "foreign country". Goodnight promised to take the body back to Texas. He had the body temporarily buried while he completed the drive, then returned, had it exhumed, and put his wooden coffin into a casket made of flattened tins. The long journey back to Texas inspired the story, Lonesome Dove.

Sources: PBS — The West, Trail Drivers of Texas, Wikipedia

September 1 | Louis XIV

September 5, 1638 - September 1, 1715: Age 66

Louis XIV of France, also known as The Sun King, began feeling unwell in early 1715. As King of France, a great superpower, at 66 he was arguably the most powerful man in the world. Various diagnoses and treatments didn't improve the situation and by early August he began to experience severe pain in his leg. By late August he was diagnosed with gangrene and ordered to bathe his leg in burgundy and ass's milk. Two days later the doctors were recommending incisions but, knowing he was going to die anyway, Louis refused. He asked how much time he had: it was a Monday, and the doctor replied "Sire, we may hope until Wednesday." In fact Louis lived until the following Sunday.

Needless to say his last days were not pleasant, but they were made worse by the intrigues that flowed around him. In the previous few years, Louis XIV lost nearly all of his legitimate heirs: his son, two grandsons, his brother, and two great-grandsons. He was succeeded by his youngest great-grandson, Louis XV, who was 5 when he died, and whoever served as Regent would have many years to mold the new young King and place his friends and relations in positions of importance. (His wife, Madame de Maintenon, bullied him into naming her favourite as Regent.)

He spent his last days saying goodbye and giving last minute advice. In response to the weeping and wailing going on around him, at one point he said, "Why do you weep — did you imagine that I was immortal?" At the end, he was left to the priests and his room was filled with religious music and prayers. On 1 September he died.

Source: Mitford, Nancy, The Sun King, 1966.