September 5


11 Israeli athletes, and 6 others, killed by Palestinian terrorists at the Olympic Games in Munich, today in 1972






Amber pages
Three birthdays.


The first, in 1638, at St Germain-en-Laye, a son to Anne of Austria and Louis XIII of France, also yclept Louis, though history recalls him by his epithet - the Sun King. Twenty years old when Cromwell died across the Channel - and what a contrast of rich velvets with bare, black bones! The selfsame despotism though, however differently they dressed themselves and dressed it up. Where Cromwell tantrumed, Louis offered his ringed fingers for a tongue-manicure.  Some nine thousand "lettres de cachet" ensured justice for his supporters. The revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685 did for Protestants what Cromwell had done for Catholics in England. We learn best about our rulers from their legacies. After Cromwell, the restoration of the monarchy; after Louis its downfall. Both mere reactions against tyranny, not truthfully ideologies unto themselves.

Yet Louis’ reign, unlike Cromwell’s, did have its vindications - even Voltaire could not deny them. Corneille, Racine and Molière all flourished under Louis (but then so did Solzhenitsyn and Shostakovitch under Stalin, and Thomas Wyatt under Henry VIII).

 

The second birthday? A different sort of criminal, the sort that didn't get legitimised by obtaining power: Jesse Woodson James, in 1847, in Clay County, Missouri. Son of a preacherman, as Dusty Springfield might have sung it!


And speaking of Solzhenitsyn and the prisoners of Communism, Arthur Koestler, Hungarian author of "Darkness At Noon", born today in 1905

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