Infinite Wisdom

"Defeated generals should not speak of battles."

La Triviata

• Shortly after World War II, learning that many books and documents saved from the fire bombing of Dresden had been taken to safety in Wiesbaden, Winston S. Churchill inquired specifically as to whether the rescued items included the original manuscript of Giacomo Casanova's salacious memoirs.
• During the early stages of the Mexican-American War (1846-1848), the Mexican Army paid American officer prisoners-of-war a daily stipend toward expenses that was equal to about half their regular pay, which permitted them to maintain a rather higher standard of living than when in the U.S., since prices were so much lower in Mexico.
• Captured by the British in 1779, the 18-gun Connecticut corvette Oliver Cromwell, named after the man who overthrew the English crown in 1649, was taken into the Royal Navy as HMS Restoration, reminding everyone that while Cromwell had ended the British monarch in 1649, it had returned little more than a decade later.
• Under the terms of the Franco-German armistice of June 25, 1940, France was required to underwrite the German occupation to the tune of 20 million marks a day, a sum that was reduced to 15 million on May 10, 1941.
• During the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905), Japan took 67,701 Russians prisoner, but Russia only captured 646 Japanese troops.
• Attacking Numantia, in Spain, in 153 BC, the Roman commander Marcus Fulvius Nobilior deployed ten elephants to literally push down the city wall, which met with initial success, until a heavy piece of masonry crashed down on one beast’s head, causing him to panic, which infected the other nine pachyderms, who promptly stampeded over the very troops whom they were supposed to be supporting.
• During World War I, some 7.7 percent of the regular Italian Army officers were killed in action or died of wounds, in contrast to 24.8 percent of German Army regular officers.
• Confronted with the threat of a French invasion, by 1805 Britain had raised volunteer, militia, and yeomanry forces in excess of 350,000 men, many essentially on permanent active duty, to supplement some 65,000 regulars.

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