There are some things you take for granted that you would miss if they were gone. Like your knees. And other things whose absence you take for granted that you would really hate if they were here. Like invaders ravishing your country.

So tip your leather cap to Edward the Elder and Aethelred of Mercia, definitely not the Unready guy, because on August 5 of 910 AD in the Battle of Tettenhall they and their soldiers laid an old-time beating on Vikings invading western England from Northumbria. It was part of the gradual reestablishment of order that began with Alfred the Great’s pivotal victories over the Danes and continued under his son, which is Edward the Elder, and also his Alfred’s daughter Aethelflaed, Lady of the Mercians, wife of Aethelred and a formidable military and political leader in her own right.

Indeed, after Aethelred died in 911, she ruled Mercia until her own death in 918, winning battles and capturing kings. Do not suppose that women’s rights were invented in 1963, or that history is an unbroken story of progress from the dark and dismal past to our own bright and glorious time on earth. But I digress.

The victory at Tettenhall was not the end of England’s troubles. It was conquered by Danes, then a William, and faced threats from Spain to France to Germany to the Soviet Union. But August 5, 910 did see the defeat of the last army of marauding Vikings to ravish the land. After that it was a gradual process of restoring order and uniting the land.

Not that armies never marauded or ravished again, including both sides in the English Civil War. Indeed the Danes did come back a century later. But from the first ominous appearance of the longships recorded in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle in 787 (“And in his [King Bertric’s] days came first three ships of the Northmen from the land of robbers”) there was the very real prospect of the whole society foundering in bloodshed and chaos as Roman Britain had three centuries earlier when the Saxons were the bad guys. Tettenhall was pretty much the end of that threat.

The reappearance of the Danes in the late 10^th century, and Aethelred the Unready’s blunder in paying them “Danegeld” to go away… and come back next year… had a different character. It did involve plunder and the threat of devastation, and was ominous for the political stability of the realm. But the logical outcome of the eventual decision to fight rather than pay ever more tribute was a Danish conquest of England (under Sveyn Forkbeard, then Canute the Semi-Great, then Harold Harefoot and Harthacnut the dismal) and an effort to rule it peacefully, not the ongoing devastation of the 9^th century.

Now I know you don’t get up in the morning and peer anxiously round the lintel to see if the guys in fur and helmets are running up the walk with swords and torches. You don’t even wonder idly as you scramble eggs whether they might do so next week. You just assume they won’t. But they once did, and it’s only because of people like Edward, Aethelred and Aethelflaed that they stopped.

Now take care of your knees. Because they’re kind of the opposite of Viking invasions in being nice to have. But very similar in that life is very different depending whether you have them or not.

August 4 was a very bad day for Simon de Montfort. He died.

In some sense that was the end of his earthly troubles. But for what it’s worth, after he was killed by the forces of England’s future King Edward I in the Battle of Evesham in 1265 his body was dismembered and bits of it were carried off as trophies, his severed head apparently being sent by Roger Mortimer as a present to his wife. I do not think I would have wanted to be present at the Mortimer family Christmases and watch them open their gifts. Nor do I want to say what they did with other parts of him.

Now de Montfort is by no means the only person killed in a medieval battle and then dishonoured by being mutilated. But he’s an interesting case because he is a hero in the struggle for liberty. The bits of him they could find were interred at Evesham abbey, later demolished by Henry VIII’s thugs. And to his day a plaque there hails him, rightly, as a pioneer of representative government for having invited the commoners into his 1265 (pre-mutilation) Model Parliament, from which they were never again displaced.

He was also an anti-Semite.

I know, I know, pretty much everybody was in those days. As indeed it sometimes seems they are today. De Montfort is unusual and praiseworthy in many ways, and quite ordinary in this deplorable manner. Indeed, as King Edward I personally expelled the Jews from England. But do we excuse it because it was common?

It is an issue thoughtful people wrestle with constantly in pondering the past, while shallow ones haughtily proclaim themselves unimaginable superior to the grubby parade of humans who went before them. It’s remarkable to hear and read condescending remarks by 20^th-century politicians and commentators about the Middle Ages as though Auschwitz and the Gulag had happened in the 14^th century not in our own time. Moreover, as I’ve written before, we all think we’d have been vocal abolitionists if we’d lived in the early 19^th century. But statistically we would not. We were not born with superior enlightenment because it was recently 2015. And we couldn’t take it backwards in time with us even if we had been.

So we cannot blithely relegate people to the rubbish heap of history because they shared the failings of their times. We may well do so ourselves. But for precisely that same reason we cannot entirely excuse them for sharing the failings of our times because we do not wish to do so ourselves. Montfort and Edward I would, I suspect, gape in horror at much that we do today including widespread casual abortion. As would many 18^th or 19^th century slaveowners. And just because there’s a beam in their eye doesn’t mean there isn’t one in ours as well.

We desperately need to learn from history because we have no other guide going forward. We want to identify mistakes, enormous and catastrophic as well as small and annoying, so that we don’t repeat them. And yet we must also absorb from history the lesson that people have a great deal of trouble avoiding the mistakes of their ancestors without plunging into new ones.

We cannot excuse Montfort’s anti-Semitism, which was part of his political appeal, any more than we can excuse resurgent anti-Semitism today. But we also cannot be smug about those past errors from which we ourselves are now free, lest we should condescendingly make a horrifying new set. The lesson here is that in addition to studying history carefully, we must be vigilant over our own hearts.

Montfort is a legitimate hero of the struggle for liberty. But he is also a reminder that we are all fallible. Which makes his memory doubly useful.

How we used to laugh at snail mail. Why, it took days to carry a letter thousands of miles. Har dee har har. Of course we don’t laugh any more because it’s so 2005 even to admit you know the stuff exists. Back when Yahoo was actually valuable instead of just being worth a few billion dollars. (Postal strike? What’s a postal strike?)

Still, spare a thought for the mail service on August 3. Because this is the date on which the first known letter was sent from North America, specifically from St. John’s, Newfoundland by a certain John Rut in 1527. Back when it still was a new found land.

Rut was sent by Henry VIII to find, wait for it, the Northwest Passage. So he set off in command of two ships, the Mary Guilford and the Samson, which promptly vanished in a storm and according to Wikipedia “it is assumed” was lost. Yes. I think if it hasn’t emerged from the fog in the last 499 years it’s probably not going to. Rut’s letter did, though.

It somehow got back to England to inform Henry that Rut’s own ship hadn’t sunk yet, the crew hadn’t died of scurvy or been massacred, that there were a bunch of foreign ships in “a good harbour called St. John” and that the letter was “written in hast”. Which is a bit odd given that before email there weren’t always 700 items in your inbox that you couldn’t swat away fast enough. You’d think this one would be worth spending a bit of time over especially as you never knew when you sailed off over the horizon whether your first letter from North America might be your last. So let us again remember the courage, verging on foolhardiness, that it took to create the things we now cheerfully sneer.

As it happens we know that Rut made it safely back to England the next year. At which point he vanishes from the historical record as completely as the Samson did from the face of the Earth. But possibly he lived out his days in contentment, unaware that he’d one day enjoy a few seconds of something vaguely resembling fame as a footnote to a footnote about a once-cherished form of communication called the “letter”.

On August 2 of 1610 Henry Hudson sailed into the bay now named for him believing he had traversed the fabled Northwest Passage and reached the Pacific Ocean. Which might sound like one more of those Canadian heritage moments a la Alexander Mackenzie when courage, enterprise and perseverance led to a snowy dead end.

Literally in Hudson’s case. Fed up with his determination to press on west through this frozen wasteland after wintering on the shore of James Bay, his crew mutinied the next spring and cast Hudson, his son and seven others adrift and he vanished from history if not geography. Mind you the enormous land mass that became the Hudson’s Bay Company was very beneficial to the development of Canada. And in a significant and inspiring way rather than as part of cold random futility.

You see Hudson, despite or possibly because of his annoying personality, was a remarkable explorer. The Hudson river in New York is also named for him, because he explored that region too in its New Amsterdam days in the service of the East India Company. It is more than a little surprising that a nation as small as the Netherlands could have been a major colonial player, if not quite equal to Britain which, in turn, would be an astonishing candidate for dominant world power if we didn’t know it had happened.

Britain was less populous and wealthy than France or even China, a damp foggy set of islands off the north coast of mighty Europe. But it had something even nations like France and Spain didn’t. It had liberty. Its people were free to explore, to experiment, to dare and dream in constructive ways, not merely as conquistadors but as founders of new societies. Where explorers for tyrannical or autocratic regimes were expected to serve the crown as the crown bid them, those working for England were given genuine entrepreneurial leeway.

Within limits, obviously. The state expected service in return for patronage. But it’s very revealing that the fabled French explorers Radisson and Groseilliers had their furs confiscated by the authorities in New France over improper paperwork, whereupon the English welcomed them into their far more dynamic because less bureaucratic empire. And Hudson was sponsored in his voyages by Dutch and English companies (the Virginia Company and the British East India Company on his final voyage) not the monarch directly.

As far as I know Hudson was an annoying git. If I’d been there in 1611 I might well have joined the mutiny and maybe so would you. It does seem the surviving mutineers were deliberately not punished. They were tried for murder of which they were innocent rather than mutiny for which they would have been convicted. And while it may have been for reasons of state, because their information was too valuable, there may also have been at least some element of sympathy for their conduct. But however obnoxious Hudson was, the fact remains that a free society could use the talents of such a man far more constructively than a closed regime could.

Thus his failure to find the Pacific was turned to enormous social advantage even if it ended even more badly for him than it seemed on that dismal day when he realized this blasted sea of ice he’d found was once again not the Pacific.

Imperialism has a bad name. Just ask the Egyptians. But while you’re at it, ask them about being conquered by Rome.

I know, I know. It seems a long time ago now that Octavian, the future Augustus, walloped Mark Antony, deposed Cleopatra (actually Cleopatra VII, but who remembers the other six who were never played by Elizabeth Taylor) and then incorporated the Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt into the Roman Empire on August 1 of 30 BC. Much water has passed down the Nile since then, including the coming of Islam. Still, here’s my question.

Does anyone seriously maintain that Egypt wasn’t better off under Rome? Obviously not everybody. Life is full of variety and some people will fare poorly through bad luck, stupidity or a toxic mix of the two no matter what’s going on. But Roman Egypt was spectacularly prosperous, secure and governed according to the Roman version of the rule of law that was a heck of a lot better than the Egyptian one. (Can I just mention here that Egypt, and North Africa more generally, were the breadbasket of the Empire? It seems subsequent climate change went and changed it to a desert. Too bad Alus Gor wasn’t there to warn them of whatever evil thing mankind did to cause that one.)

Some Ptolemaic nationalists, if any can be found, might say yes, sure, Roman Egypt secure against being attacked by Rome. But only because we were conquered by Rome which is cheating. They were the big threat to everybody in those days. But only because they’d beaten down all the other threats and delivered better rule once they did it. The world is a messy place and the Mediterranean had seen its share of trouble from the sack of Troy to Alexander the “Great” to pirates to, later, the coming of Islam out of the desert with fire and sword. Under Rome such disorder was largely suppressed.

Loyalists of the 18^th dynasty might say things were better under Rameses II. But that regime had long since collapsed and Egypt was dwindling. I mean if I say Ptolemaic you’re likely to remember the geocentric astronomical system if indeed the word triggers associations at all. Can you name one Ptolemaic ruler other than Cleopatra who, as far as I can tell, was mad, bad and dangerous to know… or be? Oh, and another thing. The Ptolemies were Greek anyway. The original Ptolemy, not the astronomer (who incidentally did his work in Roman Egypt, a centre of learning as well), showed up in the wake of Alexander’s conquest and death. Plus Alexander had conquered Egypt from the Persians not the Egyptians. At least the Romans kept it until the Muslim conquest of 646 that ended almost a millennium of Greek and Roman rule and didn’t exactly set Egypt on the path back to the glories of Rameses.

So go ahead and sneer at imperialism. But if you pick the right empire to be absorbed by it can work out pretty well. And I didn’t even get to Britain and its eventual informal conquest of Egypt.

It is surely an established fact that the human race is prone to folly. Yet it seems to escape many of its members that they might themselves therefore be vulnerable. Even when the warning signs are fairly obvious.

For example there’s the attempted coup by John the Fat. You don’t need to know the time or place, though it was in fact July 31 of 1201 in Constantinople. You just need to know he was called “the Fat” to guess that he was a figurehead, it failed ignominiously and he was executed.

I could go into the details. But they would make dreary reading. It was a short-lived mob driven affair and ended badly.

Now it could be pointed out that it isn’t always that way. People with bad nicknames sometimes do triumph. For instance William the Bastard (Normandy, but later William the Conqueror, England). Mind you, when they called a certain Ivan “the terrible” it was more in the sense of the awe-inspiring than the completely lousy, though actually Ivan was completely terrible, just in a formidable rather than feeble way. Even Charles the Bald (France) isn’t a great moniker though he may not actually have been bald. But John “Lackland” (England) wasn’t meant kindly, nor was “Softsword.”

Also, people with cool handles sometimes fail badly. Philip the Fair (France) was reasonably successful but not remotely fair. It was a reference to his good looks not his good conduct. John the Good (France) was a weak, violent and generally unsuccessful ruler who didn’t do anything worthwhile that I know of. Catherine the Great (Russia) wasn’t that great. Harthacnut (Denmark and England) means Canute the Hardy but he was in generally feeble health and died young, upon which his English dynasty collapsed, and the crown passed to Edward the Confessor (England) which is a much better name than he was a king. Edmund the Deed-Doer (England again) is a good and appropriate name but it didn’t keep him from being murdered by a thief at a banquet (or possibly assassinated). While Edmund Ironside (yes, England once more), named for his great strength, died from having iron thrust into his side. Irony can be pretty ironic sometimes.

To be fair, not in Philip’s sense, being overweight isn’t necessarily an obstacle to greatness; Chesterton suffered from it to a remarkable degree yet was a great man. And late in life William the Conqueror was evidently seriously large. But nobody started calling him “the fat” as he remained, um, vigorous. Whereas France once had a king who was called “Charles the Fat” and he was generally considered lethargic and inept, mostly because he was.

So my advice is that if people are insulting you openly, don’t try to stage a coup or really much of anything else in the realm of grand politics. It’s like the rule that if you’ve been playing poker for half an hour and haven’t spotted the patsy, you’re it. Except in this case you’re nicknamed “the patsy” so you should fold now and get out with whatever cash you have left.

I know they say nothing ventured nothing gained. But if everyone’s calling you “the Fat” then maybe the fact that they also say discretion is the better part of valour is worth noting.

It’s not all battles. For instance July 30 saw the first ascent, in 1859, of Grand Combin, which is one of the highest mountains in the Alps. Thus securing immortality for whosit, whatsisname, thingamy and some other guys.

I do know. It was Charles Sainte-Claire Deville along with three Balleys (Daniel, Emmanuel and Gaspard Balleys) and Basile Dorsaz. But I did have to look it up. Which might have you wishing I’d get back to the battles including that of the Crater and of Warsaw (which one, you might ask). But I’m sticking with Grand Combin, and not only because I personally never mountain climbed.

I didn’t. I rock climbed a bit, badly. But mountain climbing was always too dangerous for my taste. And I had the latest late 20^th century gear, not the hemp ropes and hobnail boots with which European amateurs began scaling peaks in earnest in the 19^th century just because they were there.

With Grand Combin, where that was was even a challenge. Mountains are always more topologically complex than they appear from a distance, as Mountaineering: Freedom of the Hills warns. So it took rather a while and a few attempts just to figure out where the big peak and the big problem was. But then they did it.

It can’t have been easy. I presume the best part of climbing a mountain is stopping because you’re safely back down, though being on the peak is probably also exhilarating in a terrifying way. But maybe that’s because I never climbed them… or perhaps it’s why. The point is, it’s an amazing feat.

To climb mountains is to challenge the unknown, and to respect nature even while “conquering” it because if you don’t do it the mountain’s way, you die. Even if you do, you might die. Did I mention that it’s dangerous? And not everyone can be the first man on the moon (Neil Armstrong, as neither of us had to Google) or even the last (Eugene Cernan, possessor of an odd distinction) or the first man up Everest (Edmund Hillary, unless it was Tenzing Norgay (again, I didn’t have to Google). But you can still do something remarkable even if you say “I climbed Grand Combin” and they say “Huh?” And I’d rather people were climbing mountains than fighting battles except that regrettably many battles have to be fought whereas it’s not obvious that most mountains have to be climbed.

Thus there is one melancholy note. And that is that only one person or group can be the first up any given mountain, or on a celestial body, and afterward a little bit of the mystery is gone. I’m content that there should be some wild peaks on which the hand of man has not set foot. And I’m doing my bit. I’ve never pioneered the ascent of any mountain, nor indeed stood on the summit of anything that was a “real” mountain rather than just something named Mount Royal or what have you.

On July 29 a very long time ago as we now reckon these matters, in 1014, Byzantine emperor Basil II crushed a Bulgarian army at the Battle of Kleidon. It would be just one more dang thing in the depressingly long list of things that can’t end well. The entire concept of a cycle of Byzantine–Bulgarian wars, I mean. Except for one curious grimly almost uplifting note to this episode that deserves discussion.

After winning the battle the emperor, possibly in a fit of rage or possibly just because he was a cruel and evil man, had 15,000 Bulgarian prisoners of war blinded, with the exception of every 100^th man who was left with one eye to lead the others home. That’s not the noteworthy episode, though. It’s just more of our all-too-typical savagery that makes you wonder who coined the word “humane” and why.

Here’s the thing that’s almost uplifting. When the blinded men returned home, Tsar Samuil of Bulgaria evidently suffered a heart attack that led to his death within months. And I wonder why more leaders are not similarly afflicted personally by the misery that results from their decisions.

I’m not blaming Samuil, mind you. He is widely remembered as a hero in Bulgaria and apparently with reason, though mostly for his efforts to defend its independence (which collapsed ignominiously amid intrigue and murder four years after he died) because war kept him too busy to have much of a domestic record. It was an unequal struggle in which he did a great deal better than one could expect before finally succumbing. And while I value Byzantium as a long-standing barrier to Ottoman expansion into Europe I don’t have much good to say about its government otherwise. I think Samuil was right to fight even knowing that it exposed his men to injury, death and even deliberate mutilation. (And for what it’s worth, he had personally suffered a crippling injury in an earlier battle, in 996.)

So what I really want to know is why Basil II didn’t die of remorse at what he had done, instead of strutting about proud of his new nickname “Bulgar-slayer”. I’m all for understanding that war is hell. But we wouldn’t be safer, or better off morally, if good men and women collapsed in horrified remorse at the savagery and loss of war or even shrank from contemplating it, while bad men and women reveled in it. Or more exactly, we aren’t better off because they do, as is so often the case.

Still, the fact that Samuil keeled over in shock at the sight of his mutilated troops even though he was right to send them into battle speaks well of his character. That’s the almost uplifting part. The fact that Basil didn’t, and rolled over Bulgaria with a smirk in the aftermath, is the grim part. And regrettably it’s also the familiar one.