This edited article about espionage around the Spanish Armada originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 706 published on 26 July 1975.

The Spanish Armada (top) preoccuppied Elizabeth’s spymaster general, Sir Francis Walsingham (centre), but of all Britain’s spies, Christopher Marlowe, who was killed in a Deptford tavern (bottom), was the greatest loss. Pictures by Eric Parker

Who defeated the Spanish Armada? “Sir Francis Drake,” would be the universal answering chorus.

But as anyone who lived in the days of Good Queen Bess would have told you, Drake was only half the answer. Behind him lurked another Sir Francis – a knight named Walsingham, Britain’s super-spy of the sixteenth century.

He was tall, slender, dark and mysterious, like an Italian cavalier. His tread was soft and he spoke only when it was necessary, but his eyes were everywhere. “He is my Moor,” laughed Queen Elizabeth, likening him to a stealthy Arab servant, but she knew his value to her and to her realm.

Walsingham’s official title was Secretary of State, an office he gained after many years in Europe as diplomat and ambassador. At home, as England’s spy-master, he was never short of enemies, for these were the times when England and Spain were perpetually in an ugly mood with each other.

With war always on the cards, Walsingham concentrated his agents in Spain. The star among them was Antony Standen who, using the name of Pompeo Pelligrini, and his own great charm, ingratiated himself with the courtiers of Spain’s King Philip in Madrid.

Thus it was that three years before the mighty Spanish Armada sailed up the Channel to invade England, Standen and his fellow spies were reporting to Walsingham that the Spaniards were assembling a great fleet in Cadiz harbour, and their plan was to use it to attack England.

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This edited article about General Gordon originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 705 published on 19 July 1975.

General Gordon of Khartoum by Graham Coton

In London, the bells were ringing to celebrate the arrival of the New Year. In houses, great and small, glasses were being raised, and in the streets people were linking arms to join in the singing of Auld Lang Syne. It was a time for jollity, of optimism and hope for a better and more prosperous year than the last. A time when the future was something to celebrate.

But far away in the besieged city of Khartoum there was no cause to celebrate the New Year for the very good reason that it promised only suffering and probably death for everyone behind its walls. For nearly three hundred days, the men, women and children there had been surrounded and hemmed in by an evergrowing army of rebels under the control of the fanatical Mahdi, the self-styled Messiah of the Mohammedans.

Already the situation seemed hopeless. The streets swept by shell fire; rations down to the barest minimum for survival; hundreds already carried away by disease; troops continually deserting; the city held daily with the greatest difficulty and loss of life; communications with the outside world completely cut off: it was hardly surprising that those who still survived saw no reason to celebrate that first day of 1885.

It was, sadly, a situation which would not have occurred but for the stubborn pride of General Gordon, who had been sent to the Sudan charged with a commission to withdraw the British from the Egyptian garrisons of Suakin, Berber and Khartoum. Instead, on arriving at Khartoum, he had decided that its fall would inevitably lead to a widespread revolt and the eventual control of the whole of the Sudan by the Mahdi.

Fearing nothing, and convinced that he was an instrument in the hands of God, he had decided to hold Khartoum. After coming to this decision, he wrote cheerfully in his Journal: “I own to having been very insubordinate to Her Majesty’s Government and its officials, but it is my nature, and I cannot help it. I know if I was chief I would never employ myself, for I am incorrigible.” The possible fate of those under his care apparently did not seem to have worried him unduly.

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This edited article about espionage originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 705 published on 19 July 1975.

The famous World War Two spy, Violette Szabo, was trapped by an advance guard of the German army

The cinema and the spy thriller have given us a highly coloured picture of the secret agent at work. Armed with a veritable arsenal of fancy equipment, ranging from cameras in cigarette lighters to seemingly innocuous items which turn out to be something capable of blowing up a building, the secret agent of fiction wanders around the world, gaily taking everything in his stride. The truth is something rather different.

The secret agent, which is really a more polite term for a spy, has been with us for a long, long time, and for most of that time his work has been lonely and boring. But, of course, it was still not without its dangers, as we will show you in this new series.

Espionage, in war and in peace, is almost as old as man himself. Certainly it began much earlier than the times of the Old Testament in which it is recorded that Moses sent 12 spies into the land of Canaan. Four thousand years ago, the Egypt of the Pharaohs had a highly sophisticated espionage network in its conquered territories. And espionage has never lacked for its practitioners at any time in history, even though, when caught, the spy can always be certain of two things – that he will be disowned by his masters and that he will be imprisoned or executed.

Probably the most illustrious of all ancient spies was Mithridates, who became king of Pontus in Asia Minor when he was, only 11 years old. Later, he fled from his tempestuous mother and in his wanderings he was said to have learned 25 languages and made a special study of poisons. These attributes Mithridates turned to good account as a spy, a career he pursued while disguised as a caravan boy. He soon learned so much about the strength of tribes in Asia Minor that he was able to vanquish his mother and get back his throne, where he ruled as one of the greatest tyrants of all time.

The ancient Romans had a highly developed espionage service, although their methods were sometimes strangely crude. When a Roman delegation went to the camp of Syphax, king of Numidia, to arrange a peace treaty, the whole delegation were high ranking military spies. Only their leader, Lelius, wore uniform; all the rest were disguised as slaves.

To get information about the strength of the Numidian army, Lelius simply contrived to make one of the Roman horses break away from the delegation’s camp. The slaves then chased the animal through the Numidian army lines, making careful mental note of all they saw.

But one day, a Numidian army officer stopped one of the Roman “slaves” and declared that he had seen him before, in an officers’ training school in Greece, and that he was sure the slave was in fact a Roman officer.

At this, Lelius stepped forward and viciously slashed the “slave” with his horsewhip. The Numidian officer knew that, according to Roman law, it was forbidden under pain of death to strike a Roman officer. What would the “slave” do? Time and time again, Lelius lashed the man until, like a cringing animal, the “slave” crept away. The Numidian was then satisfied: the man could not be an officer or Lelius would never have struck him.

As old as the spy’s profession is his bag of tricks, repeated and permutated down all the centuries, but never losing its fascination. In the Franco-German War of 1870-1, spies disguised as priests walked out of Paris while it was under siege and found their way unmolested into the German lines. In the war between France and Austria in 1813, cryptic writing, which aims at disguising important information with harmless phrases, was widely used. Thus, “Your brother has recovered from his illness and is now in good health” meant, “The Austrian army is mobilised and ready to march.”

One of the papers found in the Austrian army headquarters after that war was the following “business” letter written by a spy from Trieste. Although the “business” seems harmless, the recipient’s knowledge of what the code meant gave the letter a new and vital significance:

“Dear Sir,

“I hope that you are already in receipt of my last letter. I arrived at 5 a.m. today in Trieste to look for the goods that you are particularly anxious to obtain here.

“I have secured the following.

1 cwt, of cinnamon (a fortress)

2 cases of lemons, average size (guns)

60 ditto, smaller size

“These are being stored meantime not far from the shore.

Within the next few days you may expect to receive the following:

4 cases of bitter oranges (earthworks)

2 casks of eels (magazines)

400 sacks of rice (hundredweights of powder)

450 sacks of almonds (light infantry)

1 small cask of figs (brigadier)

1 small cask of pure oil (lieutenant-general)

“For all these articles I have paid a deposit of 1,700 lire (infantry), debiting the amount to your account. Trusting this meets with your entire satisfaction and may prove extremely profitable to you . . .”

Sending such information by post was nothing new. In ancient times, when the “post” was simply a slave courier, the Persians inscribed their secret messages on clay tablets, then covered the tablets with wax, so that the words could not be seen. Then, if the courier was caught, he appeared to be carrying only a blank tablet.

Another favourite spy trick, used as late as the Second World War, was to insert cipher information in the personal advertisement columns of newspapers. When the Germans bombed Paris in the First World War, for instance, their intelligence service in Switzerland eagerly scanned the columns of a well-known French newspaper for days afterwards, until they saw an advertisement that read something like:

“19-22. Bien arrivee avec nos trois amis, mere malade. 3,160.”

The advertisement, placed by a spy, meant:

“Nineteenth district of Paris, Square No. 22 on the military map, bomb hit, three victims, tremendous effect on the population. Sent by agent number 3,160.”

On the French and Belgian battlefields in the First World War, windmills were a favourite means of communication for spies. Once, a Russian spy decided to make use of a windmill just in front of the Russian lines.

For an hour he pleaded with the miller and his wife, with a bribe of fifty roubles, to help the Allied cause by turning the arms of the windmill in a clockwise direction as a signal to the Russians if the Germans should arrive.

When the miller adamantly refused to have anything to do with such an idea, the spy stripped three of the sails, bound the miller’s wife hand and foot; then tied the helpless miller to the remaining sail of the windmill, which he turned upwards.

The spy’s plan, of course, was that if the Germans did arrive they would certainly release the miller by bringing him down to earth. As soon as they did that, one of the stripped sails would go upwards, signalling to the Russians that they were there. That, in fact, was exactly what did happen. As soon as the Germans made to release the miller, the Russians raked the mill with artillery fire, wiping out the enemy.

Today, with most of the world in an uneasy state of peace, there is still plenty of work for spies. The peacetime spy is an industrial spy, whose job is to steal one company’s secrets and sell them to others – or to use them for himself. During the years of the industrial revolution a British ironmaster and industrial spy named Foley played the part of a wandering minstrel by tramping from town to town in Europe with his violin. His real aim was to find out how the Continental method of treating iron and producing steel worked, for it was considered superior to the British method. Returning to England with his secret, “Fiddler” Foley developed his factory at Stourbridge in Worcestershire and became a millionaire.

“Bugs”, or listening devices, are the chief tools of the modern industrial spy. A bug invented by Emanuel Mittleman, of New York, can be planted in the base of the victim’s telephone, and the spy can then eavesdrop from anywhere.

What happens is that the spy dials the number of the bugged telephone and the moment before the telephone rings he blows a single special note with a tiny mouth organ that comes with the bug. The mouth organ note activates the microphone in the base of the telephone at the other end. Two things then happen – the telephone does not ring and the spy is able to hear every word in the room, even though the bugged telephone is still on the hook.

Followers of James Bond and other modern espionage heroes know how important is the miniature camera in the spy’s toolkit. The one most used is, strange to say, one that is on sale to the public – the German Minox miniature camera.

The Minox is only three inches long by an inch wide and weighs only four ounces when fully loaded. It can take sharp pictures down to a range of eight-inches, and with 36 pictures on a single film, it is the perfect instrument for photographing the enemy’s secret documents at close range.

The twelve spies who went into the land of Canaan for Moses had only their eyes with which to record information. Three and a half thousand years later the tools are different – but the basic job is still the same.

This edited article about St Domingue or Haiti originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 704 published on 12 July 1975.

Haitian military officer holding a printed copy of the Constitution

In 1791, the half million slaves on the French colony of St. Domingue (now Haiti) rebelled against their masters, te plantation owners. Under their leader, the former slave Toussaint Louverture, and to the astonishment of the world, the rebels defeated the French and British armies that were sent to suppress them. By 1798, Toussaint was ruler of St. Domingue. However, when Toussaint invited the white planters back to their lands to help restore the colony’s agriculture, the former slaves could not understand this apparent collaboration with their former masters. In September 1801, Toussaint’s nephew Moise raised a revolt against him. Toussaint suppressed it, and executed Moise, but three months later, there loomed an even greater threat to his rule and to the new-found liberty in St. Domingue.

The slaves’ plan was to play a waiting game. Instead of taking on the French in a straightforward fight they harassed their enemies by laying in ambush, obstructing roads and burning and destroying anything that might help the invaders . . .

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This edited article about the Rothschilds originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 704 published on 12 July 1975.

Baron Nathan de Rothschild

The news from the Continent in the summer of 1815 was bad. Napoleon had escaped from Elba. His old army had flocked to his banner and the French were on the march again. Then a flicker of alarm ruffled the already uneasy atmosphere in London: Field Marshal von Blucher, the Prussian commander, had been defeated by Napoleon’s troops at Ligny on June 16.

In the City of London, the Stock Exchange, international economic barometer, reactcd predictably. Share prices fell.

But in his office, Nathan Mayer Rothschild, 38, financial genius and opportunist supreme, was listening avidly to one of his agents, who had just arrived from the Low Countries. With obvious enjoyment, he heard the emissary disclose that the combined British and Prussian forces had vanquished Napoleon at Waterloo two days after Blucher’s set-back. The financial coup of the century was about to break.

With such valuable knowledge, most speculators would have bought government shares by the armful. Nathan Rothschild decided to sell and even encouraged other business houses to do the same. The already depressed shares became even cheaper.

It was literally minutes before the great news of Waterloo was officially announced, that Nathan Rothschild produced his master-stroke. He began buying back the low-priced shares in immense quantities. When the victory of Waterloo burst upon London, share prices soared. So Nathan Rothschild counted his profits in millions of pounds.

Bankers, stockbrokers and dealers gasped; more with admiration than astonishment at his nerve and audacity, for they were quickly becoming accustomed to the rising eminence of the family that sprang from a Jewish ghetto in Frankfurt in the mid-1700s. The Rothschilds rivalled royalty in opulence and splendour, financed governments by their strength as the veritable economic backbone of Europe, bought palaces and rare paintings, established quality vineyards and influenced almost every branch of public life for more than 200 years. Bourbons, Hapsburgs. Bonapartes and Hohenzollerns all came under the Rothschild spell.

In the turbulent Europe of the 18th and 19th centuries, they pulled the political strings in every capital. The art of money-making with its dynamic influence, seemed to come easily to the Rothschilds. Just as it did to the man who started it all: Mayer Anselm Rothschild, who was born in 1744 and lived in the “House of the Saucepan” in Frankfurt. Though a modest dwelling, it sported a red shield which was later to become the family coat of arms emblazoned with five arrows – Mayer’s sons – in the grip of a strong arm.

Mayer, once a bank apprentice, started on the road to fortune by selling old coins to the Prince of Hesse, arguing that they would increase in value and offset inflation. For 36 years, he traded coins and trinkets with the prince who rewarded him with a loan that led to business contracts, percentages, discounts and all the paraphernalia of money-making. During this time, he married and his wife, Gudule, had ten children and lived to the advanced age of ninety-six.

After his marriage, Mayer seized opportunities to expand. He settled four of his sons in London, Paris, Vienna and Naples where they set up money-lending businesses. The eldest son, Anselm Mayer Rothschild, stayed with his father and subsequently took over the Frankfurt establishment, became a member of the Prussian Privy Council of Commerce and, in 1820, Bavarian consul and court banker.

Solomon went to Vienna where he was known as a confidante of Klemen Furst von Metternich, the diplomat behind Austria’s rise to power; Karl operated from Naples; Jacob established himself in Paris where he later negotiated loans for the Bourbons; and Nathan embarked on his career in London.

The sons and their father built up an unrivalled news service in European financial and political centres and, by using its “scoops” to buy stocks and shares at the right time, they rose to dominate governments and treasuries throughout the Continent.

Perhaps the height of respectability arrived in 1875 when the London bank of Baron Nathan Mayer, the first Jew to be raised to the British peerage, learned that the controlling shares of the Suez Canal were for sale. The asking price was £4 million.

Parliament was in recess. Prime Minister Disraeli had no means for raising such a sum; even the Bank of England could not produce it. So once again, the Rothschilds seized the chance and put up the money to give Britain the control over the vital lifeline to the Red Sea and beyond.

Yet the Rothschilds knew misfortune as well as success. Through decades of financial battles with rival finance houses, they were equally capable of meeting adversity. When an employee embezzled cash worth c.£4 million at today’s values, one brother alone was able to bear the loss. And as recently as 1938, the entire family estates in Austria were ransomed to the Nazi Gestapo to free Baron Louis Rothschild who had been held for 13 months.

Yet curiously enough, Lord Rothschild, current head of the British family, a Cambridge don, Socialist and holder of the George Cross for bomb disposal work, became an eminent scientist instead of a banker. His sister, Miriam, is an acknowledged expert on nature study and an authority on fleas, taking years to produce a huge reference book cataloguing the habits of 4,000 species.

Lord Rothschild’s continental counterpart is Baron Guy de Rothschild, businessman and industrialist, who turns over companies at c. £400 million a time and snaps up race horses for as much as c. £60,000 each. When the Baron wanted to build three holes for his private golf course at his chateau, Henry Cotton, the famous British golfer, flew over to lay them out for him.

Another Rothschild – Philippe – owns the Chateau Mouton vineyard. It was bought more than a century ago for c. £250,000 and today produces some of the finest wines in the world.

Socialists by political persuasion, the Rothschilds are essentially Jewish, revering the family and its remarkable history. It was appropriate, therefore, that the Balfour Declaration of November 2, 1917, stating that the British Government viewed with favour “the establishment of a national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine should be addressed to the reigning head of the British House of Rothschild. So while remaining fervently patriotic to the country of their adoption, the Rothschilds’ hearts and sympathies are with Israel. Somehow they symbolise the indomitable Jewish determination to survive.

This edited article about Toussaint Louverture originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 703 published on 5 July 1975.

Toussaint Louverture and his forces fought back against the British when they invaded St Domingue, by C L Doughty

Toussaint Louverture’s dark eyes flamed with fury as he wheeled his horse around the Place d’Armes at Le Cap on a late September day in 1801. Transfixed, the rebel soldiers quailed. For several minutes, Toussaint circled the Place, a small skinny figure, his protruding jaw giving his gaunt face a look of menace. Then, he spoke, his voice tearing through the silence that pervaded the square.

“Look at me!” Toussaint shricked. “I unshackle you from slavery to the French planters here in St. Domingue. I led you to victory over our French, Spanish and English enemies. And how do you repay me? With treachery! You will be punished, as Moise, your leader, will be punished!”

Toussaint reined in his horse and fixed one of the rebel officers with a malevolent gaze. “Traitor! Brigand!” Toussaint yelled. “Draw your pistol and shoot yourself!”

As if spellbound, the officer raised his pistol to his head and pulled the trigger. As he fell lifeless to the ground, Toussaint moved on. He stopped again. “You, too!” he roared at another rebel officer. “You don’t deserve to live!” A second pistol shot rang out. A second body slumped onto the stones of the square. Minute by minute, it went on, with Toussaint screaming out the command for suicide and his victims obliging without demur. Corpses lay scattered all over the square before Toussaint was finished. Not once had any of the rebels attempted to save himself by shooting Toussaint instead.

No man can have greater power over other men than to order them to kill themselves and be obeyed. Yet Toussaint Louverture was the most unlikely of candidates for such a role. For Toussaint, an Afro-Caribbean, was born that basest, most degraded of creatures, a slave, one of the millions whom white men put to ceaseless toil on the sugar, cotton, coffee, indigo and other plantations of the New World two centuries ago.

However, unlike the great majority of slaves in St. Domingue, the French Caribbean colony now known as Haiti, Toussaint and his family were lucky. Their master did not beat, torture and starve them as other French planters did. Instead, he treated them humanely, and when he saw that Toussaint was unusually intelligent and capable, he gave him responsible work to do, as steward of his livestock.

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This edited article about airmail in wartime originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 703 published on 5 July 1975.

French balloonists defied the Prussian blockade and delivered airmail during the Siege of Paris by Pat Nicolle

Parisians besieged in their city for 142 days by the Prussians from 1870 to 1871 were not denied contact with the outside world. They enjoyed the first airmail in the history of flight – by balloon.

The first flight out of Paris was made by Jules Durouf, a professional balloonist. He took off with his leaky old balloon, Le Neptune, at 11 a.m. on 23rd September, 1870, and sailed high over the Prussain lines at 1,800 metres. With him he carried mail from people in the besieged city to their friends outside.

Shells whined through the air around him when the Prussians opened fire with a special mobile gun built by the arms firm of Krupp. This was the first known anti-aircraft gun in history.

The shells missed Durouf, who replied by showering the Prussians with visiting cards that advertised his services as a balloonist.

A few letters had earlier been lifted out of the French fortress town of Metz, which was besieged in 1870. But these went by unmanned balloon and most were shot down by German sharpshooters.

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This edited article about Waterloo originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 703 published on 5 July 1975.

The Duke of Wellington astride his horse, ‘Copenhagen’, shouts encouragement to his troops at the Battle of Waterloo, by Peter Jackson

Everyone assumed that Napoleon, the Imperial Eagle, was safely caged on the island of Elba. But the eagle would shortly leave its prison to wave its warlike wings over France and destroy a precarious peace.

At long last it seemed that the triumphant career of Napoleon Bonaparte, the Great Imperial Eagle of France, was at an end. After the crushing reverses of the French Army, Napoleon had abdicated and retired to Elba, which his victorious enemies had given him to govern. After close on twenty-five years of storm and tumult. Europe was once more at peace. It was a peace, however, which was not to last for very long.

For an active and proud man like Napoleon, the lonely and boring life he had been condemned to live on that little Mediterranean island, was an insufferable one. Fretting and fuming in his exile, he finally decided to make one last try for power. He had heard that the new King of France, Louis XVIII, was not a man whom France liked. He knew, too, that his own soldiers still loved and admired him, and he remembered with emotion how the men of his own Imperial Guard had wept when he had bade them farewell. With such soldiers as these, surely he could win France back again.

In the February of 1815, he left Elba and made his way to Paris, collecting troops to his standard on the way. On arriving in Paris, he was carried up the grand staircase of the Tuileries on the shoulders of his officers. From that moment until the middle of June, he worked tirelessly to produce a new army to take into the field against the Allies, who had declared him an outlaw, five days after he had entered Paris.

The man chosen to save Europe from Napoleon was his old enemy. Wellington, who had driven the French out of Spain in 1813. Supported by Austria, Russia, and the Prussian army under Blucher, he made a formidable enemy who was already threatening France’s north-eastern frontiers along the Belgian border. Realising that he was greatly outnumbered, Napoleon decided to try and drive a swift wedge between the British and Prussian forces, which would force them both back to their respective lines of communication, where he would crush each army separately.

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This edited article about the Black Prince originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 702 published on 28 June 1975.

The Black Prince’s effigy in Canterbury Cathedral with (inset) his ‘achievements’which are hung over his tomb, by Dan Escott

The man who was to become famous throughout Europe as the Black Prince was born at Woodstock on June 15th 1330, the eldest son of King Edward III of England.

Christened with the same name as his father, Edward was made the Earl of Chester in 1333; four years later, Duke of Cornwall, and in 1343 Prince of Wales.

He accompanied his father on his French campaign and distinguished himself at the battle of Crecy on August 26th, 1346.

Edward was also at the capture of Calais and in 1350, in the sea fight off Winchelsea against the Spaniards.

In 1355, he was sent to Gascony when he led the English armies in a series of raids over French territory. A similar expedition culminated in the famous battle of Poitiers on September 19th, 1356. A year later, he returned to England and later married his cousin Joan, known as the Fair Maid of Kent.

In 1362, his father granted him Gascony and Aquitaine, but soon many dissatisfied lords rose against him. The Black Prince besieged the town of Limoges and ordered a general massacre of its inhabitants.

In 1371, he returned to England in very poor health and died five years later on June 8th, 1376, one year before the death of his father.

Edward was given the name ‘Black Prince’ by the French, who described him as “the prince of darkness” because of the terror of his campaign in the Hundred Years’ War. For many years, it was believed that he was called the Black Prince because of his black armour, but in fact, he usually wore gilt armour.

The Black Prince’s son, became Richard II, King of England.

This edited article about aerial warfare originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 702 published on 28 June 1975.

A Voisin downs a German Aviatik and becomes the first winner of an aerial dogfight, by Wilf Hardy

It’s hard to say who first fired a gun from an aeroplane, who was the first to hit anything, or who was the first to try shooting down an enemy plane with a machine-gun.

Certainly all the infant air forces involved in that first year of the 1914-1918 War were experimenting around the same time. Their main difficulty lay in the planes themselves. These just weren’t powerful enough to be converted into real fighting machines.

Pilots had been taking pot-shots at each other for some time. The first such duel among the clouds must have been over Neco in Mexico in 1913. There two American pilots, one flying for the Mexican Government, the other for a rebel General, exchanged a dozen or so pistol shots – without hitting anything.

The Great War had been raging for only a few weeks when, on August 25th, 1914, a British crew forced down a German Taube near Le Quesnoy by potting at it with a rifle.

October 6th that year saw the French chalk up their first victory when the crew of a Voisin shot down a German Aviatik – then landed to collect the enemy pilot’s helmet as proof of their success!

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