Murad II

(b. 1404–d. 1451) (r. 1421–1444; 1446–1451) Ottoman sultan The son of Mehmed I (r. 1413–21) and one of his concubines, Murad was born in June 1404 in Amasya. At the beginning of his reign he had to deal with two pretenders to the throne (“False” Mustafa, that is, his uncle, and his own younger brother Prince Mustafa) supported by the Byzantine Empire and Venice. He also had to confront the Anatolian emirates of Germiyan, Karaman, Menteşe, and Isfendiyaroğulları, which all rejected Ottoman suzerainty and occupied Ottoman territories. The most dangerous threat, however, came from European crusaders led by the Hungarians who in the winter of 1443–44, in response to Ottoman encroachments in the previous years, invaded Murad’s Balkan lands as far as Sofia, Bulgaria. After he had overcome these threats and concluded treaties with Hungary and Karaman (1444), in a hitherto unprecedented move Murad abdicated in favor of his 12-year-old son Mehmed II (r. 1444–46; 1451–81). However he was soon recalled by his trusted grand vizier Çandarlı Halil Pasha to command the Ottoman troops against the crusaders— who, despite the recently concluded truce, launched a new campaign in the autumn of 1444—and to quell the insurrection of the Janissaries, the sultan’s elite infantry. Eventually Murad assumed the throne for a second time (1446). The crises of 1444–46 were as dangerous as those of the interregnum and civil war of 1402–13, and threatened the very existence of the Ottoman state. Using sheer military force and a variety of political tools (diplomacy, appeasement, vassalage, marriage contracts), Murad not only saved the Ottoman state from possible collapse but during his second reign (1446–51) he also consolidated Ottoman rule in the Balkans and Asia Minor. Murad II left a stable and strong state to his son Mehmed II, who during his second reign (1451–81) transformed it into a major regional empire.

ACCESSION AND POLITICAL TURMOIL

When he was 12 years of age, Murad was sent to Amasya as prince-governor to administer the province of Rum (north-central Turkey). He helped to consolidate his father’s rule after the civil war (1402–13), and fought against the rebel Börklüce Mustafa. With his commanders he also conquered the Black Sea coastal town of Samsun from the Isfendiyaroğulları Turkish emirate. Murad was only 17 when his father died. Mehmed I’s viziers concealed the sultan’s death until Murad arrived in the old capital, Bursa, and was proclaimed sultan (June 1421).
Murad II’s viziers refused to comply with the agreement Mehmed I had made with the Byzantine emperor Manuel II Palaiologos (r. 1391–1425). According to that agreement, upon Mehmed I’s death Murad was to be acknowledged as Mehmed’s successor and was to rule from the capital Edirne in the European part of the empire while his brother Mustafa was to remain in Anatolia. Their younger brothers (Yusuf and Mahmud, aged eight and seven) were to be handed over to Manuel. The emperor was to keep them (along with Mehmed I’s brother Mustafa) in custody in Constantinople and receive an annual sum for their upkeep. Since the viziers refused to hand over princes Yusuf and Mahmud to the Byzantines, Emperor Manuel released from his custody Prince Mustafa (Mehmed’s brother) and Cüneyd (the former emir of Aydın who had rebelled against Mehmed I). “False” Mustafa, as Ottoman chroniclers dubbed Murad II’s uncle, soon defeated Murad II’s troops and captured the Ottoman capital, Edirne, where he proclaimed himself sultan. He also enjoyed the support of the Rumelian frontier lords, including the Evrenosoğulları and Turahanoğulları, who viewed Ottoman centralization attempts in the Balkans as detrimental to their own freedom of action. In January 1422, at the head of his troops (some 12,000 cavalry and 5,000 infantry), Mustafa crossed to Anatolia through the Straits of Gallipoli. However, Murad II’s troops stopped him before he could reach Bursa. Mustafa fled to the Balkans but was apprehended by Murad’s men near Edirne and hanged as an impostor (winter 1422). In view of Murad II’s strengthened position, the marcher-lords of the European provinces also acknowledged him.
Murad II’s troubles were far from over. His 13-yearold younger brother Mustafa, called “Little” Mustafa by Ottoman chroniclers, was used by Byzantium and the Anatolian emirates to challenge Murad’s rule. However, he too was defeated (due to the desertion of his vizier and troops) and executed (February 1423). In the following years Murad II annexed the emirates of Aydın, Menteşe, Germiyan and Teke, thus reconstituting Ottoman rule in southwestern Asia Minor. While Murad was unable to subjugate Karaman, the most powerful Anatolian emirate, he exploited the unexpected death of the Karaman emir, Mehmed Bey (1423), and the ensuing power struggle. Mehmed Bey’s son, Karamanoğlu Ibrahim Bey, surrendered the territories his father had occupied in 1421, including the lands of the former emirate of Hamid west of Karaman.

VENICE, BYZANTIUM, AND HUNGARY

After consolidating his rule in Anatolia, Murad’s primary goal was to reestablish Ottoman rule in the Balkans by forcing the Balkan rulers to accept Ottoman vassalage and by capturing strategically important forts and towns. This, however, led to direct confrontation with Venice and Hungary, two neighboring states with vital interests in the region. Venice’s commercial interests in the Balkans were guarded by the republic’s colonies and port cities that dotted the Balkans’ Adriatic coast from Croatia in the north to Albania and the Morea (the Peloponnese peninsula in southern Greece) in the south. In addition to its bases in the Morea, in 1423 Venice also acquired Salonika from its ruler, the Byzantine despot (lord) of the Morea. Ottoman recovery of Thessaly—a territory in present-day central Greece once conquered by Bayezid I (r. 1389–1402) but ceded to the Byzantines by Prince Süleyman during the civil war of 1402–13—and the conquest of southern Albania by the early 1430s threatened the republic’s commercial bases in the Adriatic. Murad never acknowledged Venice’s possession of Salonika, which had been under Ottoman siege since 1422. The city succumbed to the Ottomans in 1430. Venice tried to block further Ottoman advance in the Balkans by supporting anti-Ottoman forces, whether in Albania or in Anatolia (such as the Karamanids). The republic also concluded treaties with Hungary and Byzantium against the Ottomans, both of which were now more eager than ever to confront the Ottomans.

After his defeat at the hands of the Ottomans at the Battle of Nikopol in 1396, the Hungarian king Sigismund of Luxembourg (r. 1387–1437, Holy Roman Emperor from 1433) developed a new defensive strategy to contain Ottoman expansion. He envisioned a multilayered defense system consisting of a ring of vassal or buffer states between Hungary and the Ottomans; a border defense line that relied on forts along the lower Danube; and a field army that could easily be mobilized. Forcing the Balkan countries such as Serbia, Wallachia, and Bosnia to accept Hungarian overlordship inevitably led to confrontation with the Ottomans who also wanted to make these countries their vassals. Desperate, the Balkan states often changed sides or accepted double vassalage. Serbia is a good example. Its ruler Stephen Lazarević (r. 1389–1427), known as Despot Lazarević by his Byzantine title, tried to be on good terms with Murad II. At the same time, he was Sigismund’s vassal after 1403 and one of Hungary’s greatest landlords after 1411. According to the Hungarian-Serbian Treaty concluded in May 1426 in Tata (present-day northwestern Hungary), Sigismund acknowledged Stephen’s nephew George (Djuradj) Branković as his heir, who would also keep his uncle’s possessions, except for Belgrade and Golubac, key fortresses for Hungary’s defense on the Danube River, which would pass to Sigismund. When Despot Stephen died in June 1427, Sigismund took possession of Belgrade, “the key to Hungary” in contemporary parlance. Golubac’s captain, however, sold his fort to the Ottomans, causing a major gap in the Hungarian defense line. Sigismund tried in vain to capture the fort in late 1428. By 1433, the Ottomans had occupied most of the Serbian lands south of the Morava River. Despite the fact that Despot George Branković married his daughter, Mara, to Sultan Murad in 1435, and sent his two sons as hostages to the Ottoman court, he was considered an unreliable vassal. Taking advantage of the death of Sigismund (1437) and the ensuing collapse of the central authority in Hungary, by 1439 Murad had subjugated Serbia, capturing its capital Smederevo on the Danube. With the capture of Salonika, Golubac, and Smederevo, Murad had reestablished the Balkan possessions of his grandfather, Bayezid I (r. 1389–1402). Although Murad failed to capture Belgrade in 1440, his five-month siege forced Hungary and her allies to act more forcefully against the Ottoman advance. They also were urged to do so by Byzantium and the papacy, which had just concluded their historic agreement regarding the Union of the Catholic and Orthodox Churches (Council of Ferrara-Florence, 1437–39). The Byzantine emperor John VIII Palaiologos (r. 1425–48) signed the accord in 1439 in the hope that his acknowledgement of papal supremacy would result in Western military and financial assistance against the Ottomans. Hungary, which suffered repeated Ottoman raids from 1438, led the anti-Ottoman coalition. The country’s new hero, János (John) Hunyadi, royal governor of the Hungarian province of Transylvania (1441–56) and commander of Belgrade, thwarted several Ottoman raids in the early 1440s, defeating the district governor (sancakbeyi) of Smederevo (1441) and the commander of the Ottoman forces in Europe, the beylerbeyi of Rumelia (September 1442).

ABDICATION AND THE CRUSADE OF VARNA

In October 1443 the Hungarian army led by King Wladislas (r. 1440–44) and Hunyadi invaded the Balkan provinces of the Ottoman Empire as far as Sofia. Although they did not conquer any territory, the campaign forced Murad II to seek peace. Through the mediation of Murad’s Serbian wife Mara and his father-in-law George Branković, the Hungarian-Ottoman Treaty was concluded in the Ottoman capital Edirne on June 12, 1444, and was ratified by the Hungarians on August 15 the same year in Nagyvárad (Oredea, Transylvania). Having concluded a truce with the Hungarians and the Karamanids, who had coordinated their attack on the Ottomans in Asia Minor with the Hungarian invasion, Murad abdicated in favor of his 12-year-old son Mehmed II and left for Bursa (August 1444). However, Hunyadi’s victories prompted the papacy to forge a new anti-Ottoman Christian coalition with the aim of expelling the Ottomans from the Balkans. Despite the Hungarian-Ottoman truce, preparations for the Crusade went on, for the papal legate declared the peace made with the “infidels” void. These were dangerous times for the Ottomans. In Albania, Iskender Bey (known in the West as Skanderbeg), alias Georg Kastriota—a local Christian who had been brought up a Muslim in Murad II’s court and sent back to Albania to represent Ottoman authority there— rose up against the Ottomans in 1443. By spring 1444 the Byzantine despot of the Morea, Constantine, had rebuilt the Hexamilion (six-mile) wall that had defended the Corinth isthmus and thus the Peloponnese against attacks from the north since the early fifth century C.E. In the summer of 1444, the Byzantine emperor released another pretender against Murad and, most dangerously, on September 22, 1444 the crusading army crossed the Ottoman border into the Balkans. At this critical moment, on the insistence of Çandarlı Halil Pasha, Murad was recalled from Bursa and, arriving in Edirne, assumed the command of the Ottoman troops, while his son Mehmed II remained sultan. The Ottomans met the crusading army at Varna on November 10, 1444. Outnumbered by 40,000 to 18,000, the crusaders were defeated; Hungarian king Wladislas died in battle; and Hunyadi, the hero of the Turkish wars, barely escaped with his life. Despot Branković remained neutral throughout the campaign, as the Ottomans had kept their end of the treaty of Edirne by returning Smederevo and all the other forts stipulated in the agreement on August 22.

MURAD’S SECOND REIGN

While the Ottomans were victorious at Varna, the 1444 campaign revealed the vulnerability of the Ottoman state that had been brought back from the brink of extinction just a generation ago. It also revealed the friction between the viziers of Murad II and Mehmed II. Murad’s trusted grand vizier Halil Pasha, the scion of the famous Turkish Çandarlı family that had served the House of Osman since Murad I (r. 1362–89) in the highest positions, wanted to avoid open confrontation with the Ottomans’ European enemies. Mehmed II’s Christian-born viziers belonged to a new cast of Ottoman statesmen who were either recent Muslim converts or recruited through the Ottoman child-levy (devşirme) system and pursued a more belligerent foreign policy. In order to avoid a possible disaster such aggressive policy might cause, Halil Pasha decided to recall Murad for the second time from his retirement in Manisa, using as pretext the 1446 Janissary rebellion in Edirne, which erupted partly because of Mehmed’s debasement of the Ottoman silver coinage in which the Janissaries received their salaries. Upon assuming his throne for the second time, Murad returned to the Balkans. In a swift campaign in 1446, Ottoman troops breached the Hexamilion wall (December 1446). Other Ottoman troops were fighting, with limited results, against Skanderbeg in Albania. Murad achieved his last great victory at the second Battle of Kosovo Polje in Serbia (October 16–18, 1448) against another crusading army, again consisting primarily of Hungarians led by Hunyadi. When he died in 1451, his son Mehmed II, by then 19 years of age, was poised to revenge his humiliation and to assert his authority by pursuing an aggressive foreign policy against his Christian rivals.

Further reading: Caroline Finkel, Osman’s Dream: The Story of the Ottoman Empire, 1300–1923 (New York: Basic Books, 2005); Oskar Halecki, The Crusade of Varna: A Discussion of Controversial Problems (New York: Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences in America, 1943); Joseph Held, Hunyadi: Legend and Reality (Boulder, Co.: East European Monographs, 1985); Colin Imber, ed., The Crusade of Varna, 1443–45 (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2006); Camil Mureşanu, John Hunyadi: Defender of Christendom (Portland, Or.: Center for Romanian Studies, 2001)

http://travelvisitturkey.travel.blog/2020/03/23/murad-ii/

Battle of Montemaggiore 1041

During a fresh offensive in southern Italy, Norman and Lombard forces beat a Byzantine army at the Olivento (17 March). The Norman William d’Hauteville then attacked again at Montemaggiore, on the Ofanto river, near Cannae. Though the catepan Michael Doukeianus had called up a large Varangian force from Bari, the battle was a rout and many of Michael's soldiers drowned in the Ofanto on the retreat. After the defeat, Michael Doukeianus was relieved of his duties and sent to Sicily. He was replaced by Exaugustus Boioannes, who was also beaten later the same year at Monte Siricolo.

Background

The battle was fought on 4 May 1041, less than two months after the Battle of Olivento, the first battle of a renewed revolt of Lombard-Norman forces against the Byzantine Empire instigated by Arduin the Lombard. The battle at Olivento was the first battle between Normans and Byzantines since the Battle of Cannae in 1018, but the outcome shifted this time from Byzantine victory to defeat.

While the Normans originally only fought as mercenaries in Italy, they took increasing control during the 1041 revolt, and started to carve out territory for themselves after the Battle of Montemaggiore. The site of the battle was the river Ofanto near Cannae, but the name of the mountain Montemaggiore is usually used to refer to the 1041 battle.

USRC Wolcott (1831)

A Revenue Cutter Service name. Oliver Wolcott, son of Oliver Wolcott who served in the Continental Congress and signed the Declaration of Independence, was born in 1760; succeeded Alexander Hamilton as Secretary of the Treasury, serving from 1795 to 1800 ; and was Governor of Connecticut 1817 to 1827. He died in 1833.

Wolcott, named for Oliver Wolcott, the second Secretary of the Treasury of the United States, served in Newport, Rhode Island; New Haven, Connecticut; New London, Connecticut; and Wilmington, Delaware. Ordered to Mobile, Alabama, in December 1844, she was driven ashore in Pensacola Bay on the coast of Florida during a storm. After repairs, she was attached to the United States Navy for service during the Mexican War to carry dispatches in the Gulf of Mexico. In September 1846, she was stricken from the commissioned list of the U.S. Revenue-Marine.

In June 1849, Wolcott was laid up in Mobile for repairs, and on 3 July 1849 she was transferred to the United States Coast Survey. The United States Government sold Wolcott at Mobile on 8 January 1851.

Pearl Harbor Remembered

Dec. 7, 1941—at 7:55 a.m., 183 Japanese warplanes ruined a perfectly fine Sunday morning on the island of Oahu in Hawaii. The first attack wave had reached the U.S. Pacific Fleet stationed at Oahu's Pearl Harbor and for all intents and purposes, World War II began for the United States.

Although the U.S. military forces in Pearl Harbor had been recently strengthened, the base was not at a state of high alert. Many people were just waking when the first bombs were dropped. No one was prepared to do battle.

Japanese aircraft had flown 230 miles from the north, originating from an attack force comprising six aircraft carriers and 423 planes.

The assault was the complete surprise the Japanese wanted, even though at 7:02 a.m., almost an hour before the first wave of planes arrived, two Army radar men on Oahu's northern shore had detected the attack approaching. They contacted a junior officer, who disregarded their reports, assuming they had instead spotted American B-17 bombers expected in from the West Coast of the U.S.

The first wave of Japanese planes, made up of 51 Val dive bombers, 50 high level bombers, 43 Zero fighters and 40 Kate torpedo bombers, attacked when flight commander Mitsuo Fuchida gave the now infamous battle cry "Tora! Tora! Tora!" ("Tiger! Tiger! Tiger!") The second wave arrived shortly thereafter. Almost simultaneously, five Japanese "minisubs" began their attack from underwater, but were able to do little damage.

Less than two hours later, 2,280 American servicemen and 68 civilians were dead, 1,109 were wounded, eight battleships were damaged and five sunk. Three light cruisers, three destroyers, and three smaller boats were lost, along with 188 aircraft.

The biggest loss that day was the USS Arizona, on which 1,177 crewmen were killed when a 1,760 pound bomb smashed through her decks and ignited her forward ammo magazine causing a terrible explosion. Fewer than nine minutes later she was underwater.

Pearl Harbor was the principal but not sole target of the Japanese attack that day. Other military installations on Oahu were hit. Hickam, Wheeler, and Bellows airfields, Ewa Marine Corps Air Station, Kaneohe Bay Naval Air Station, and Schofield Barracks suffered varying degrees of damage, with hundreds of planes destroyed on the ground and hundreds of men killed or wounded.

While the attack that day was a huge blow to the U.S. military presence in the Pacific, it was not a total victory for the Japanese. Not only were the attack's biggest targets, the American aircraft carriers, out of port at the time and therefore saved, but the attack galvanized the nation's support for involvement in the war, ultimately contributing to the defeat of the Axis powers.

Today, more than 70 years later, more than 1.5 million people a year visit the memorial that floats over the sunken Arizona to pay respects to the loss of life that occurred on what President Franklin D. Roosevelt would call "a date which will live in infamy."

Article cite at infoplease.com

Tyrtaeus

*Turtai=os, (or Τύρταιος), son of Archembrotus, the celebrated poet, who assisted the Spartans in the Second Messenian War, was the second in order of time of the Greek elegiac poets, Callinus being the first. At the time when his name first appears in history, he is represented, according to the prevalent account, as living at Aphidnae in Attica; but the whole tradition, of which this statement forms a part, has the same mythical complexion by which all the accounts of the early Greek poets are more or less pervaded. In attempting to trace the tradition to its source, we find in Plato the brief statement, that Tyrtaeus was by birth an Athenian, but became a citizen of Lacedaemon (De Legg. i. p. 629). The orator Lycurgus tells the story more fully; that, when the Spartans were at war with the Messenians, they were commanded by an oracle to take a leader from among the Athenians, and thus to conquer their enemies; and that the leader they so chose from Athens was Tyrtaeus. (Lycurg. c. Leocr. p. 211, ed. Reiske.) We learn also from Strabo (viii. p.362) and Athenaeus (xiv. p. 630. f.) that Philochorus and Callisthenes and many other historians gave a similar account, and made Tyrtaeus an Athenian of Aphidnae (εἰποῦσιν ἐξ Ἀθηνῶν καὶ Ἀφιδνῶν ἀφικέσθαι). The tradition appears in a still more enlarged form in Pausanias (4.15.3), Diodorus (15.66), the Scholia, to Plato (p. 448, ed. Bekker), Themistius (xv. p. 242, s. 197, 198), Justin (3.5), the scholiast on Horace (Art. Poet.  402), and other writers (see Clinton, F. H. vol. i. s. a. 683). Of these writers, however, only Pausanias, Justin, the Scholiast on Horace, and Suidas, give us the well-known embellishment of the story which represents Tyrtaeus as a lame schoolmaster, of low family and reputation, whom the Athenians, when applied to by the Lacedaemonians in accordance with the oracle, purposely sent as the most inefficient leader they could select, being unwilling to assist the Lacedaemonians in extending their dominion in the Peloponnesus, but little thinking that the poetry of Tyrtaeus would achieve that victory, which his physical constitution seemed to forbid his aspiring to. Now to accept the details of this tradition as historical facts would be to reject all the principles of criticism, and to fall back on the literal interpretation of mythical accounts; but, on the other hand, we are equally forbidden by sound criticism to reject altogether that element of the tradition, which represents Tyrtaeus as, in some way or other, connected with the Attic town of Aphidnae. Perhaps the explanation may be found in the comparison of the tradition with the facts, that Tyrtaeus was an elegiac poet. and that the elegy had its origin in Ionia, and also with another tradition, preserved by Suidas (s. v.), which made the poet a native of Miletas; from which results the probability that either Tyrtaeus himself, or his immediate ancestors, migrated from Ionia to Sparta, either directly, or by way of Attica, carrying with them a knowledge of the principles of the elegy. Aphidnae, the town of Attica to which the tradition assigns him. was connected with Laconia, from a very early period, by the legends about the Dioscuri; but it is hard to say whether this circumstance renders the story more probable or more suspicious; for, on the supposition that the story is an invention, we have in the connection of Aphidnae with Laconia a reason why that town, above all others in Attica, should have been fixed upon as the abode of Tyrtaeus. On the same supposition the motive for the fabrication of the tradition is to be found in the desire which Athenian writers so often displayed, and which is the leading idea in the passage of Lycurgus referred to above, to claim for Athens the greatest possible share of all the greatness and goodness which illustrated the Hellenic race : --

Sunt quibus unum opus est, intactae Palladis urbem

Carmine perpetuo celebrare, et

Undique discerptam fronti praeponere

Bronze Spartan shield captured by Athenian soldiers at the Battle of Pylos in 425 BC and now stored in the Ancient Agora Museum.
Tyrtaeus's poetry often advises Spartans how to handle their weapons and armour but, like the shield here, only a small portion survives today. Ancient Athenians claimed that Tyrtaeus was actually Athenian by birth. Some modern scholars also believe the poetry was composed by Athenians, probably in the 5th or 4th century BC.

Credit:

 http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.04.0104:entry=tyrtaeus-bio-1

Jorge Rafael Videla

Jorge Rafael Videla (August 2nd, 1925 - May 17th, 2013) was an Argentine military officer and dictator of Argentina from his coup de'tat in 1976 to 1981. His dictatorship was one of the many military dictatorships in South America established by Operation Condor during the Cold War.

Background

Videla first came to power after deposing President Isabel Perón in a successful military coup on March 24, 1976.

The chaotic rule of the Videla regime was known as the Dirty War. Like many other South American dictators like (such as Augusto Pinochet in Chile and Hugo Banzer in Bolivia) Videla had thousands arrested, killed, tortured  or kidnapped. He also had babies of mothers born in detention centers adopted by supporters of the regime. Particularly targeted by Videla's regime were leftist politicians or anyone who was believed to have left-wing sympathies. A death squad called the Argentine Anticommunist Alliance was formed specially to eliminate them.

Argentine Jews also served as prime targets of the Videla regime; between 1,900 and as high as 3,000 Jews were among the 30,000 who were targeted by the Argentine military junta. It is a disproportionate number, as Jews comprised between 5–12% of those targeted but only 1% of the population. Though the official reason given by the government (and some historians) was that there were many Jews that were members of the Leftist and Marxist rebel groups that opposed the dictatorship, but it has been widely accepted that the real reason was because of Anti-Semitism. Many torture victims were said to have seen pictures of Adolf Hitler  and swastikas on walls of torture chambers and interrogators uttering anti-Semitic epithets.

During a human rights investigation in September 1979, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights denounced Videla's government, citing many disappearances and instances of abuse. In response, the junta hired the Burson-Marsteller ad agency to formulate a pithy comeback: Los argentinos somos derechos y humanos (Literally, "We the Argentines are righteous and humane"). The slogan was printed on 250,000 bumper stickers and distributed to motorists throughout Buenos Aires to create the appearance of a spontaneous support of pro-junta sentiment, at a cost of approximately $16,117.

prominent Russians:Aleksandr Kolchak November 16, 1874 – February 7, 1920

A Russian naval commander, polar explorer and head of the anti-Bolshevik fight during the Russian Civil War, Aleksandr Kolchak is undoubtedly one of the most controversial figures of Russian history.

Aleksandr Kolchak was born in the village of Aleksandrovskoye, near Saint Petersburg. He received his primary education at home, and then studied in a gymnasium. In 1894 Kolchak graduated from the Sea Cadet Corps in Saint Petersburg. After that he started his navy service, first as assistant watch officer on the cruiser Ryurik, stationed in the Far East, and then as watch officer of the clipper Cruiser, having spent a few years working in the Pacific Ocean. In 1898 Aleksandr Kolchak received the rank of lieutenant. The years spent at sea were also the time of Kolchak’s self-education. He became interested in oceanography and hydrology, and published an article about his scientific observations during cruises.

In 1899 Aleksandr Kolchak received an invitation to participate in an expedition around the Arctic Ocean. Together with Eduard von Toll, a Baltic German geologist and Arctic explorer in Russian service, Kolchak sailed around the Baltic Sea, the Northern Sea and the Norwegian Sea, spending some time on Taimyr Lake. Throughout this period he continued his scientific research. In 1901 Toll ensured the memory of Kolchak by naming an island in the Kara Sea and a cape, discovered during the expedition, after him.

      Image from www.coldarea.ru

In 1902 Eduard von Toll, together with three others, decided to continue on foot further to the north, while Kolchak was sent back to Saint Petersburg to deliver already gathered scientific information. After a year, when there was still no news about Toll’s group, Kolchak organized a new expedition in order to find the lost scientists. Seventeen people on twelve sledges pulled by 160 dogs took an exhausting three-month trip up to Bennet Island, where they found the diaries and the expedition collections, which shed light on the tragic fate of Baron Eduard Von Toll and his companions.

In 1903 Aleksandr Kolchak, worn out by this long adventure, headed to Saint Petersburg, where he hoped to marry Sofia Omirova.

    Image from www.k-p.net.ua

However, on his way home he received news about the outbreak of the Russo-Japanese War. Kolchak’s fiancée soon traveled to meet him in Siberia and right after the wedding he left to Port Arthur, where the first battles took place. Aleksandr Kolchak served on different warships, and then, suffering from rheumatism acquired during polar expeditions, he was put in charge of a littoral artillery battery. He was wounded and became a prisoner in Nagasaki for four months.

Upon his return home, Aleksandr Kolchak became a Captain Second Rank. He devoted himself to a revival of the Russian Navy and took part in the work of the Naval General Staff, formed in 1906. Kolchak, together with other officers, actively lobbied a shipbuilding program in the State Duma (the lower chamber of the parliament), and received some funding. He was involved in the construction of the two ice-breakers Taimyr and Vaygach, and then used one of these ships for a cartographic expedition from Vladivostok to the Bering Strait and Cape Dezhnev. In 1909 Kolchak published a scientific study on glaciology (the study of ice). In a few years’ time he started his service with the Baltic Fleet and soon became a Captain First Rank.

During World War I Aleksandr Kolchak was virtually in charge of military sea operations in the Baltic: he personally took part in developing a mine

blockade of German navy bases and organized attacks against trade ships. In 1916 Kolchak was promoted to Rear Admiral, and was appointed as Admiral-in-Chief of the Black Sea Fleet.

After the February Revolution in 1917, which resulted in the downfall of the Russian Empire and declaration of the republic.

Kolchak was among those who promptly swore loyalty to the newly formed Russian Provisional Government. Admiral Kolchak did his best to save the Black Sea Fleet from a chaotic breakdown, and managed to keep it whole for a while. Eventually mass unrest engaged working people, soldiers and sailors, who decided to disarm officers. As a sign of protest, Aleksandr Kolchak threw his golden saber, the award for serving in the Russo-Japanese War, in the water. Then Kolchak left for Petrograd (Saint Petersburg) and resigned from his post (either voluntarily or by force, depending on which version of historical records is preferred). Having taken part in a session of the Russian Provisional Government, Aleksandr Kolchak blamed the government of breaking the army and fleet down. By that time Kolchak had already been considered as a potential candidate to be the new leader of Russia.

In August 1917, having been invited by the command of the US Fleet, Admiral Kolchak went to America to share the experience of the Russian Navy and to learn about American achievements. In San-Francisco Kolchak was offered to stay permanently and head the department of mining in the best naval war college, but he declined this opportunity and went back to Russia. On his way home, having arrived in Japan, the Admiral learned about the October Revolution of 1917, which overthrew the short-lived Russian Provisional Government and gave power to the Soviets, dominated by Bolsheviks (revolutionaries, led by Vladimir Lenin). Having heard about the beginning of peace negotiations between the Bolsheviks and Germany (which later resulted in the signing of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk), Kolchak uttered his strong objection against it. He asked the English command to let him serve in the British army, and in December 1917 Kolchak received endorsement and was sent to the Mesopotamian Front, where Russian and English troops were fighting against Turks. However, on his way to the site, Aleksandr Kolchak was redirected to work in Manchuria and Siberia, where he then became a member of the board of the Chinese Eastern Railway. He made an attempt to gather troops for a fight with theBolsheviks, but this idea failed, and in October 1918 Kolchak headed back to Russia, to Omsk.

Article cite: https://russiapedia.rt.com/prominent-russians/military/aleksandr-kolchak/