90. A war fought for no good reason

90. A war fought for no good reason

Although Britain was in the closing stages of a long and desperate struggle with France, it somehow managed to get itself sucked into a separate war with the United States. Called the War of 1812, accurately for the start, hopeless for its end – in 1815 – it was unnecessary and avoidable. As a Canadian historian, Pierre Berton, put it when talking about the final accord, the Treaty of Ghent, “It was as if no war had been fought, or to put it more bluntly, as if the war that was fought was fought for no good reason”. For all that, it cost quite a few lives, and a lot of treasure and, as a by. Product, it ended for ever the capacity of Native American to resist further US encroachment on their lands.

It also taught a lot of lessons about how not to fight wars at a time when firepower had become far more devastating than in earlier times. Lessons that weren’t, unfortunately, learned. To the cost of a lot of dead or maimed soldiers from future wars.

Illustration: Battle of Lake Erie in the war of 1812 in Erie, Pennsylvania. Photo by William Henry Powell, from https://www.goodfreephotos.com

Music: Bach Partita #2c by J Bu licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives (aka Music Sharing) 3.0 International License

Jaksot(274)

145. Ireland denied, Conservatism dominant

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144. The storm breaks: first squall

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143. The 86 of 86

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142. The storm clouds gather

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141. Success at last

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As the second Gladstone government approached its end, it had little enough to point to as major successes. Some measures had been passed to try to pacify Ireland, but that sad country was still far f...

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140. From Grand Old Man to Murderer of Gordon

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139. Of Love and Death, Prison and Murder

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138. Pacifying Ireland (again)

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