The Eureka Stockade

In 1851, gold was discovered in Victoria, in southeast Australia. The result was a gold-rush that drew fortune-seekers from across the world; Australians, Englishmen, Scotsmen and Dutchmen brushed shoulders with Americans, Jews, black Africans, and Italians. The result, not unlike the gold-rushes of contemporary America, was the development of a rowdy, near-anarchic frontier sub-culture that quickly became a terror to the established government.

Heavy license fees were levied against the miners, by a Colonial government worried at their rapidly increasing numbers and wild lifestyle. These fees were collected by British soldiers as well as policemen - the former were unsympathetic to the miners' cause, while the latter were commonly ex-convicts who displayed brutality and rank corruption in their behavior.

The real or perceived injustices suffered by the Victoria miners - who styled themselves 'diggers' - led them to form the Miners' Reform League, which by the fall of 1854 was headed by Irish immigrant Peter Lalor. Open violence began to break out. On October 6th of 1854, the Scottish miner James Scobie was murdered at the Eureka Hotel, very probably by its owner, James Bentley. Bentley was acquitted by a corrupt magistrate and as a result, a mob of diggers, possibly numbering as many as 10,000, came out to protest.

Several more protests and riots took place, and a column of British soldiers was attacked. Supposedly, the drummer-boy John Egan was killed by the diggers, though surviving military paperwork indicates that he died six years after the event. The government responded to the influx of violence by sending two regiments, the 12th and the 40th Infantry, to the Ballarat gold-fields, their numbers supplemented by an unscruplous police force.

On December 1st of 1854, Lalor and the diggers began to construct a stockade on the Eureka Plateau, overlooking the road to Melbourne. No less than 500 of them were sworn in under his newly-designed flag, the 'Southern Cross'. Lalor set about organizing an army for his miniature rebel state. Two of the best-armed units in his makeshift army were made up of American adventurers - the 'Independent California Rangers Revolver Brigade' and the 'American First Rifle Brigade'. Among them were many veterans of the Mexican-American War, as well as several black Americans.

After a false alarm the previous day (which may have been deliberately engineered by the government forces), the stockade was attacked on the morning of December 3rd, 1854. 276 soldiers and policement attacked somewhere between 150 and 200 men in the stockade. Within ten minutes, the 'battle' was over, and the soldiers had taken the 'Southern Cross' as their prize. Lalor was shot in the arm and later had to have it amputated.

Six of the government forces - including one captain - were killed during the skirmish. There is no reliable estimate for how many of the rebels were killed; the official number known to have been killed is 27 but likely it was much higher than this, especially considering some of the wounded fled from the site and died alone in the bush. The government forces behaved with unbecoming savagery, shooting and bayoneting some wounded men; what could have turned into a horrendous massacre was only ended when some of the miners' women began to cover the wounded with their own bodies, and when a British captain threatened to shoot any policeman who fired on a man who was wounded or had surrendered.

Though their brief uprising was crushed, the diggers enjoyed great public sympathy. When the survivors were brought to trial they were acquitted. The men put on trial were a diverse crowd - they included Italian Raffaello Carboni, black Jamaican James M. Campbell, Dutchman Jan Vennick, black American John Joseph, and a Scottish Jew, Jacob Sorenson. All were pardoned and enjoyed the status of local celebrities - a crowd supposedly carrying Joseph through the streets of Melbourne in a chair.

The miners also triumphed in the political sphere - within one year of the revolt, all but one of the Reform League's demands had been granted, and Lalor was beginning a long and prosperous political career.

The Dragon Warriors of the Pontic Steppe

Nomad archer stringing
His bow.

Hardy nomads who roamed both Eastern Europe and Central Asia for the better part of a thousand years, it could be argued that the Sarmatians represented the ancient military legacy of Iran in its purest form.  Though they never conquered an empire of their own, Sarmatian warriors played a key role in the stories of many other ancient peoples – the Greeks, the Romans, the Dacians, the Vandals, the Parthians, the Huns, and the Sassanid Persians.

Peoples living as far apart as Wales, Poland, and Iran can, to this day, claim a measure of Sarmatian influence on their heritage, particularly its mythology.  Many knightly and chivalrous ideals of the high Middle Ages originally sprung from the Iranian warrior society that bred both the Persians and the Sarmatians, and many modern researchers contend that the legends of King Arthur and his knights were directly inspired by bands of Sarmatian auxiliaries sent to Britain by the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius.

The Sarmatians as a distinct culture appear to have originated on the Pontic Steppes on the northern shores of the Black Sea, and from here they expanded at the expense of the Skythians as well as Greek colonies.  Our first written reference of them dates to about 507 BCE, when a tribe designated the “Sauromatae” are said by Herodotos to have aided the Skythians in opposing Emperor Darius I of Persia.  In the following centuries, however, the Sarmatians gradually displaced or assimilated the Skythians – this was a gradual process spanning from the 4^th to the 1^st Centuries BCE, and is a very poorly understood occurrence.  Indeed, the very distinction between “Skythian” and “Sarmatian” seems to be vague at best.  Nonetheless, by the lifetime of Christ those regions formally known as “Skythia” were now being called “Sarmatia”, and would remain under this name at least until the 5^th Century.

Sarmatian Society and Warriors

The Sarmatians appear to have been a combination of the Asian and Caucasian ethnic groups, based on surviving accounts of their physical appearance.  Archaeology attests to some Sarmatian groups practicing head-binding on their infants (resulting in a grotesquely elongated skull by adulthood), but contemporary sources attribute this not to Sarmatians but to the Huns.  Like the Skythians, the Sarmatians were distinct for wearing tight-fitting trousers and coats, and for wearing their hair very long – facial hair was also common though less unkempt.

Sarmatian-style
'spangenhelm'

The Sarmatians were divided into a number of mutually-hostile tribes that were led by figures variously occupying the role of warlord, tribal chieftain, or petty king.  Some tribes do seem to have formed alliances, for example the Iazgyes and Rhoxolani who were closely associated with one another.  Very little is known about their religion except that they regarded a sword thrust into the ground as a sacred emblem, over which they swore blood oaths; Classical sources attribute the sacrifice of prisoners to the Sarmatians though considering the behavior of other nomad groups slavery or even assimilation into the community were probably more likely fates for captives.

The Sarmatians were nomads who subsisted almost entirely by hunting and by raiding the farms and towns of settled peoples – they could be described as landlocked pirates.  Their livelihood depended on their sturdy steppe horses, with whom they were extremely skilled.  When hunting they primarily used spears and composite bows, but they also used lassoes to capture both human and animal prey.  They were fabulous metalworkers and jewelers – a common trait amongst those tribes the Romans considered “barbarians”.  Like the Skythians they used wagons called yurts to transport their children and their material possessions, but every adult was expected to ride a horse.  Even so, the equestrian nature of Sarmatian behavior is not stressed to the same degree as that of the Huns (who supposedly relieved themselves, made love, and were born and died in the saddle).  Sarmatian women seem to have enjoyed an equal position to that of the men, and archaeology strongly suggests that female warriors and hunters amongst the Sarmatians served as an inspiration to the Greek myth of the Amazons.

Like the Skythians, Sarmatian warriors dazzled their settled neighbors with their speed and accuracy as mounted archers.  But the Sarmatians had developed a form of heavy cavalry warfare that was seldom if ever seen amongst the Skythians.  A fully armed Sarmatian cavalrymen was attired, almost literally head to toe, in scale armor (made from horses’ hooves, or, according to legend, dragon scales) including a conical helmet.  The latter piece is known to modern archaeologists as the spangenhelm and was adopted by the Romans, Germanic tribes, and Persians due to Sarmatian influence.  Some Sarmatians also equipped their mounts with scale barding.  Sarmatian weaponry was diverse, including two-handed lances (called a kontos in Greek), the Skythian-style composite bow, lassoes, and straight swords and daggers that were conspicuous for having a ring-shaped pommel.

Early Contacts

Sarmatian warriors had served both as allies and enemies to Greek states on the Pontic shores, the Skythians, and the Kingdom of Pontus for several centuries by the lifetime of Augustus, but up to that point they had had no contact with Rome, and little or no contact with their Parthian cousins (themselves ultimately descended from the Parni, a Skythian tribe).  In 16 BCE, Roman and Sarmatian met for the first time – Sarmatian raiders crossed the Danube, only to be driven out by the Roman governor of Macedonia.  It was to be but the first of many such friendly meetings.

Under Rome’s Julio-Claudian Emperors, we most often hear of Sarmatians serving as mercenaries during civil wars or tribal conflicts on Rome’s borders.  Between 30 and 60 CE, Sarmatian horsemen aided both sides in a Parthian civil war, both sides in a Bosporan civil war, and also provided an unstoppable cavalry contingent for the Quadian chieftain Vannius, who was himself fighting his fellow Germans on behalf of Rome.  The latter event, occurring in and around 50 CE, seems to be the first time that Sarmatians fought for, rather than against, Rome and her clients.  It also marked the beginning of contact between the Sarmatians and the Germans, with the result that wealthy Germanic tribesmen began to adopt weaponry and armor from the steppe-lands.

The Climax of Sarmatian Raiding

Sarmatian incursions past Roman and Parthian borders had been common for the better part of a century, but the 69-73 CE period seems to be the high-water mark of Sarmatian ambitions in the settled world.  In 69 CE, the Rhoxolani took deliberate advantage of the Roman Empire’s preoccupation with its long neglected pastime of civil war, and crossed the Danube with a horde of some 10,000 riders.  They thoroughly pillaged Moesia, glutting themselves on the wealth and wine of Rome only to be intercepted by the Flavian general Marcus Antonius Primus, who attacked them while they were drunk in their camp and slaughtered them almost to a man.  This defeat revealed the specialized nature of Sarmatian warfare.  The Sarmatian was almost invincible while still firmly locked in his saddle; a legionary was barely able to reach him, let alone kill him.  But on his feet, the Sarmatian was just a man, and one whose weaponry – indeed, very body – was not as stable on solid ground as that of a Roman soldier.

Apparently the Alans, one of the largest and most sophisticated Sarmatian tribes, decided Parthia and Armenia would be easier pickings.  In 72 and 73 CE, they raged through the Caucasus and assaulted Armenia, Albania, Atropatene, and finally Parthia herself, leaving broken communities and shredded remnants of armies in their wake.  Such was Parthia’s desperation, her King Vologaeses the First actually sent messengers to Rome, begging for military aid against the Alans.  This aid was not forthcoming – likely enough the Romans were at worst neutral, at best supportive, in their stance towards the Alans.  The pillaging of Mesopotamia and central Asia petered away in the late 70s, with separate bands of Alans returning north – the Parthians do not seem to have ever inflicted any meaningful defeats on them.

The Dacian Wars

The last two decades of the 1^st Century and the first decade of the 2^nd Century saw the triumph of Roman arms on both sides of the Danube, culminating in the Second Dacian War and the destruction of the kingdom of Decebalus in 105-106.  This was an era of particularly ugly violence on the Danube frontier, however, and this violence did not have a pleasant beginning for Rome.

In 92 CE, a mixed force of Quadi, Marcomanni, and Iazyges invaded Pannonia.  They were confronted by the Roman legion XXI Rapax and several auxiliary cohorts, but responded by surrounding and completely butchering these units, before proceeding to ravish the province.  As usual, these “barbarians” had come only pillage, not to conquer, and returned home laden with spoils and slaves.  But the implications were frightening to Rome.  The Marcomanni and Quadi were Germanic tribes (the latter former allies of Rome), while the Iazyges were Sarmatian.  Militarily speaking, these two cultures balanced each other out nicely – the Germans provided both light and heavy infantry, but their general weakness in the realm of cavalry was more than negated by the thunderous charges of the Sarmatian lancers.

Rhoxolanian cataphracts fleeing from
Roman cavalry on the Traianic
Column, Rome, early 2nd Century CE

The alliance of barbarian infantry and nomad cavalry was even more apparent a decade later, during Trajan’s two Dacian Wars (101-102 and 105-106 CE).  The Rhoxolani had allied with the Dacian King Decebalus, and provided large contingents of horsemen for his armies.  Since the events of 92, however, the Iazyges had been pursuing a more peaceful relationship with Rome; they were thus apparently absent from the Dacian Wars.  This absence undoubtedly saved hundreds or thousands of their young men from a premature grave – the Dacians and Rhoxolani were defeated, and the Dacian kingdom was turned into a Roman province in 106.  It had nonetheless been a bloody and destructive war, and it served as further proof of the potency of Sarmatian lancers, especially when they had firm infantry support.

The borders of the new province of Dacia in fact divided the Iazyges and the Rhoxolani from one another, and this cause great upset amongst both peoples.  There had been much intermarriage between the two tribes, and their warbands saw one another as brothers – they were not fond to see miles of Roman forts separating them from each other.  In a remarkable, and apparently successful attempt to defuse this situation, Emperor Hadrian is said to have given both groups permission to travel across Dacia to meet with one another.  The King of the Rhoxolani, Rasparagnus, was also awarded Roman citizenship as a reward for his pursuit of peace with his new neighbors.

Allies and Enemies of Rome

In the 2^nd and 3^rd Centuries CE, we find Sarmatians fighting both for and against Rome, while deeply influencing the development of the Empire’s cavalry arm.  In 135 CE, Alans who had just returned from pillaging Parthia (a second time) invaded the Roman province of Cappadocia, where they suffered a defeat at the hands of the Roman governor Flavius Arrianus.  Arrianus was so impressed at their fighting skills, he published a book describing the battle.  He tells of the terrifying power of the Sarmatian lance-charge in particular, claiming to have seen two and three of his legionaries impaled from a single blow.

Arrianus was far from alone in his respect for the heavy cavalry of Sarmatia.  It was during the reigns of Hadrian and Antoninus Pius (117 – 161 CE collectively) that we find clear evidence of Sarmatian influence on the Roman cavalry.  Inscriptions attest to units of both catafractarii and contarii operating across the Empire in the 2^nd Century.  The former, in truth, may have been based more closely upon the heavy cavalry of the Parthians rather than the Sarmatians.  But “contarius” is a Latin word implying “wielder of a kontos”, the kontos of course being the Greek word for the Sarmatian lance.  Tombstones and altar dedications raised for or by Roman soldiers first began to show the occasional Iranian personal name in this period, as well.  Perhaps some of the recruits into the contarii units already had some experience wielding a kontos on the other side of the Roman frontier.

During the Germanic Wars that raged on and off during the reign of Marcus Aurelius (161 – 180), the Sarmatian Iazyges appear as implacable foes of Rome, and allies of the Quadi and Marcomanni as they had been several generations before.  The climax of the Roman-Iazygian conflict came in the bitter winter of 173-174 CE, when the Iazyges were defeated by a Roman army in a battle apparently fought directly over the frozen Danube.  The Romans are said to have fought at this battle with a particularly ferocious energy – even biting their enemies in the face – while the Sarmatians were probably not at their best, nervous on their horses and clad in their weighty armor whilst standing on a sheet of ice.

As a result of this victory, the Iazyges sued for peace, and 8,000 of their warriors surrendered to Marcus Aurelius.  Respecting their quality and believing their promises of submission, the Emperor put them to work – no less than 5,500 of them were supposedly sent to Britain, where many must have ridden down Caledonian warriors during the violence of Commodus’ reign (180 – 192).  Inscriptions attest to Iranian warriors worshipping Iranian gods present throughout Roman Britain in the late 2^nd and 3^rd Centuries.

The Third Century and After

Marcus Aurelius was hardly the last Roman emperor to campaign against Sarmatians, or have to repel them from Roman territory.  Maximinus Thrax, likely Gallienus, Aurelian, Probus, and Carus and his sons can be added to that list, along with at least some members of the Tetrarchy of 284 – 313.  The poor historical sources for this period, as well as the intensified Germanic and Persian threats (not to mention the increased civil strife), mean that we have little precise information on violent interactions between Roman and Sarmatian in the 3^rd Century.  We know that Emperor Carus had to put some effort into driving Iazyges out of Pannonia, and that a decade later the junior Tetrarch Galerius put an allied warband of Sarmatians to good use countering the heavy cavalry of Persia.

Vandal or Sarmatian horseman on a
North African mosaic, 5th-6th Century CE

In the 4^th Century many Sarmatian tribes had become so closely associated with their Germanic neighbors they may have even begun to lose their separate identity.  Constantine’s son Constantius is known to have inflicted defeats on several Sarmatian peoples in the 350s, including the Limingantes – descendants of a group of slaves who had revolted against their Sarmatian masters and set up their own tribe.  Twenty years later the Alans shared in the fortunes of the Goths, fleeing the Huns into Roman territory and providing a strong cavalry wing for the Goths much like how the Rhoxolani did for the Dacians nearly three-hundred years before.  The Alan horsemen played a key role in the Gothic victory at Adrianople in 378, and joined them in their wanderings afterwards.  In the late 4^th and early 5^th Centuries, however, many Sarmatian peoples still living in Sarmatia seem to have been destroyed or assimilated by the Huns.  The Sarmatian heyday was at its close.

By the 5^th Century the Sarmatians had largely disappeared from history with one solitary, glaring exception – the Alans.  They joined the Vandals in their invasion of Spain in 409 CE, and twenty years later accompanied them into north Africa, where the “Kingdom of the Vandals and Alans” was set up.  This Kingdom was to last until 533, when conquered by Belisarius, and saw a unique blending of Germanic and Sarmatian societies – we find Alan lords with Germanic personal names, and Vandal warriors equipped like Sarmatian cavalrymen, all marrying each other’s daughters.  Not all the Alans went into Africa, however – some under the leadership of a warlord named Sangiban fought for the Huns at Catalaunian Fields and at Nedao River. 

Alans were still fighting as sometimes allies, sometime enemies of the Roman Empire in the east as late as the 14^th Century, and they are considered the ancestors of the modern-day Ossetians.  Sarmatian influence is detected in the language and culture of Poland, Serbia, and Croatia, and many researchers argue for a direct connection between the legend of King Arthur, and the Sarmatians Marcus Aurelius shipped to Britain.

Even if they never formed their own kingdom, and never came close to conquering the world as the Mongols did a thousand years later, the Sarmatian horsemen definitely left their mark on human history, from their hero-obsessed mythology to their equestrian tradition, the finest in the ancient world.

The Fenian Brotherhood and the Irish Invasions of Canada

Victims of the 1845-1852
Potato Famine.  Those who
could emigrated from Ireland,
often to America.

During the an Gorta Mor of 1845-1852, the population of Ireland fell by as much as 25%.  Thousands of poor, starving Irishmen fled the country, some going no further than Britain or Continental Europe, while thousands of others fled across the Atlantic.  The result was an enormous influx of the Irish presence in the United States, particularly in the North as well as the major coastal cities of the South.

These Irishmen brought their distinctive culture - including their staunch Roman Catholicism, and their sometimes crude grasping of the English language - and were common victims of native xenophobia.  But despite the stereotypes of the Irish immmigrants being a race of bumbling, lazy drinkers and thugs, they proved to be an industrious and colorful addition to the American family.  Many fought in the Mexican-American War of 1846-1848, and many others were caught up in the Western gold rushes.  Far more found less glamorous employment in the factories of the northeast.

In addition to newly-liberated slaves, many immigrant populations sought to prove their value to their new nation by going to war.  Germans, Italians, Jews, and most conspicuously Irishmen flocked to the Union banner, sometimes forming volunteer regiments of freshly-arrived Gaelic immigrants who were still learning English.  No less than 200,000 Irishmen served in the Union Army 1861-1865, many marching in 'ethnic' companies or regiments; some units, like New York's famous Irish Brigade, were regarded as nothing less than shock troops - and soaked up glory and casualties accordingly.

This is not to say Irishmen could not be found in the Confederate Army.  Possibly close to 200,000 sons of the Emerald Isle also fought for the South, whether due to coincidence of location or due to sympathy with the secessionist cause.  Foremost of the Gaelic Rebels was undoubtedly General Patrick Cleburne; a veteran of the British Army who had seen decorated service during the Indian Mutiny of 1857-1858, he had immigrated to the American South just in time to find himself on the other side in a new rebellion.

But even as the carnage and tragedy of war overtook the nation, the Irish serving in both armies never forgot who their real enemy was.  Many Irishmen nursed a dream of returning to Ireland and freeing her from the hated British rulers, who were widely blamed for the Potato Famine.  Over the course of the 1850s, as conditions in Ireland became more desperate and as war looked more and more inevitable in America, many Irish-Americans imagined they would gain military experience from the coming conflict that they would then use to overwhelm the British in the motherland.

Many guilds and organizations were formed by the Irish-American community; most militant of these was the Fenian Brotherhood, founded in 1858.  Over the course of the War, officers and soldiers with Fenian sympathies actively recruited more men for the organization, even fraternizing with enemy combatants and POW's.  The differences between Johnny Reb and Billy Yank were of scant importance to the Fenians, whose Brotherhood established chapters in every major city in the continental US, and who had representatives in every army fighting under either flag.

Late in 1864, General Cleburne received an invitation to join the militant Fenians from a Union officer, but he declined, stating that both of them would have seen enough fighting to last a lifetime when the Civil War ended.  It did end, only half a year later, but Cleburne was one of the tens of thousands of Irish Americans who went to an early grave because of it.

It was almost exactly a year after the Civil War ended, in May of 1866, that the Fenian Brotherhood launched their first attack on the British Empire.  But curiously, the attack had nothing to do with Ireland directly - their target was Ontario.  Their precise motive remains a mystery.  Were they attempting to create an independent Irish enclave in western Canada?  Or were they trying to provoke a war between America and Britain - who had been viewing each other with mutual suspicion during and immediately after the Civil War?



Fenians trade shots with British
regulars at the Battle of Ridgway,
June 2nd, 1866.  Note the Harp of
Erin battle-flags based on those used
by Irish-American regiments in the
Civil War.

 The Fenians planned a three-pronged assault on Canada, though only two of the three attacks took place.  They must have made a bizarre sight - a contemporary lithograph shows them dressed in blue uniforms and carrying a green Harp of Erin flag, while contemporary photographs show a combination of military and civilian dress.  Most carried rifles and bayonets retained from their Civil War service, and were apparently expecting to engage in combat similar to that they had experienced in the War Between the States.

Over the night of May 31^st/June 1^st of 1866, John O’Neill, who had attained the rank of colonel in the Union Army, led a column of 800 Fenians across the Niagara River at Buffalo, and then occupied the town of Fort Erie.  The Fenians, despite making the crossing at night had been clumsy in their attempts at masking their presence, and the Canadian government immediately raised a force of 1700 local militia.  On June 2^nd, at Ridgway, the Fenians had their first clash with elements of this militia, killing 47 of them and driving the rest back.

O’Neill, finding that the expected reinforcements had not arrived, pulled his men back into Fort Erie.  More militiamen followed the Fenians as they retreated, and the two forces fought a running battle through the streets of the town.  Around 23 Fenians were killed or severely wounded, and the rest fled across the River.  During this flight, many of them were intercepted and arrested by the USS Michigan, including O’Neill himself.  O’Neill was later ransomed by sympathetic Irish citizens of Nashville, Tennessee, in a typical display of the unity common Irish identity could birth even between the Civil War-era North and South.  The first Fenian raid, however, was a clumsy and poorly coordinated attack, and an embarrassment for their cause.

The second raid was longer but only slightly more successful.  Samuel Spiers, a ‘brigadier general’ of the Fenians, guided a force of slightly less than 1000 Fenians into Canada via Lake Champlain.  He fought two small battles not only with Canadian militia but also with British regulars on the 9^th and 22^nd of June, before running out of ammunition and surrendering.  Why Spier neglected to support O’Neill’s initial assault, as had apparently been the original plan, is a mystery.

Prince Arthur (1850-1942).
The seventh child of Queen
Victoria, he was pesent at the
Battle of Eccle's Hill at the age
of twenty.  He is seen here
in Highlander costume.

In the late 1860s, O’Neill settled in Vermont, where he styled himself the ‘general’ of the Fenian Brotherhood and prepared for another raid.  In 1870 he launched his newest assault, this time targeting Quebec.  He had under his command Spiers and around 400 Fenians as well as a solitary cannon; he was unaware, however, that his command had been infiltrated by the British and included the double agent William Billis Beach.

O’Neill was arrested by American police at the Canadian border, but Spiers led the Fenians into Canada, where they were almost immediately confronted by a mixed force of regulars and militia – partly commanded by Prince Arthur, son of Queen Victoria.  The result was the Battle of Eccle’s Hill on May 25^th.  Beach disabled the Fenians’ only gun while the Fenians themselves were scattered by the Canadian forces, which included cavalry.  Five Fenians were killed and 18 were wounded – not a single Canadian was wounded or killed.

The relentless O’Neill attempted another, even more comical raid in October of 1871; his plot to invade Canada via Minnesota and join forces with the French-Indian Metis under Louis Riel (at that time, a more serious threat to Canadian security) resulted in himself and his 35 loyal followers being arrested by American soldiers.  This was to be the last of O’Neill’s schemes – he died in 1878.

The Kitos War - the Forgotten Jewish Revolt against Rome

After the 1^st Century CE, our contemporary sources on the Roman Empire become fragmented and tantalizingly incomplete.  Inscriptions found by archaeologists in recent decades attest to wars across the Empire, from the Alps to Egypt, that went totally unrecorded in the writings of Cassius Dio, Herodian, and other historians of the 2^nd, 3^rd, and 4^th Centuries.

Other wars were not forgotten in our written sources, but even these are not documented in the same detail as the civil wars of the late Republic and early Empire.  One such war has gone down in Jewish history as the Kitos War, and if Cassius Dio’s account is even partially true, it was a war of almost unparalleled destruction and human tragedy.

Another Jewish Revolt

Imperial Rome fought three wars over the course of the 1^st and 2^nd Centuries that were termed bellum iudaicum – Jewish Wars.  All three constituted the revolts of Jewish communities within the Eastern provinces (the first and third revolts centered on Judea itself), who were aspiring to set up an independent Jewish state totally free of Roman control.  The First (or “Great”) Revolt spanned from 68 to 73 CE, and was the backdrop for such dramatic encounters as the sieges of Jerusalem in 70, and of Masada in 73. 

Emperor Hadrian,
whose generals
were tasked with
putting down the
revolt.

The Roman occupation of Jerusalem in 70 resulted in the thorough destruction of the Herodian Temple.  Titus Flavius Vespasianus the Younger, the Roman general commanding the siege, recognized the Temple as a focal point for Jewish nationalistic aspirations, and reacted accordingly.  Their Temple destroyed, their rebel armies butchered or driven into the hill country, thousands of Jews were sold into slavery.  Many consecrated the newly-constructed Flavian Amphitheater – otherwise known as the Colusseum – with their blood and sweat.

The Jews were not banned from Jerusalem in the aftermath of the First Revolt, but their catastrophic losses – both human and spiritual – had made them a deeply embittered people.  They still made up the bulk of Judea’s population; very large Jewish minorities also resided in Syria, Cyprus, and both the urban and rural areas of northern Egypt.  Egypt’s greatest metropolis, Alexandria, was home to an estimated 150,000 Jews, who lived in a constant state of friction with the city’s larger Greek population.

The Second Jewish War – the Kitos Wars – broke out in 115 CE.  Exactly what caused the revolt is unknown.  Its outbreak during the Emperor Trajan’s Parthian War has led some modern scholars to suggest Parthian meddling was the catalyst, the latter making deliberate attempts to stir up the already discontented Jewish community’s passions against Rome.  Its spontaneous nature, its diverse and apparently uncoordinated leaders, and the appalling ill-discipline and brutality of the revolt would suggest that it was not a pre-planned event.  Passions that had been simmering for a generation boiled over.  Men who, as children, had heard tearful recountings of the Roman barbarities in Judea a generation before were now old enough to avenge the crime committed against their people.

As apparent evidence of its lack of organization, the Kitos War in fact broke out in two locations simultaneously.  In Mesopotamia – modern Iraq – bands of armed Jewish men surrounded and butchered Roman garrisons left behind by Trajan, who was now marching on the Parthian capital of Ctesiphon.  Mesopotamia was home to a large Jewish population who had received no ill-treatment at the hands of the Parthians; they were loathe to trade these gentler masters for Rome’s heavy hand.

It was in the African province of Cyrenaica, however, that the revolt broke out in its most horrific intensity.  Angry Jewish mobs in the streets of the provincial capital of Cyrene were welded into a ragtag army of sorts by a rabble-rouser named Lukuas, also known as Andreas.  Cassius Dio tells us that this Lukuas took the title “King of the Jews” – perhaps he was claiming to be the long-awaited Maschiach?  Lukuas definitely appears to have been grinding an axe of a religious nature – he is credited with destroying the temples and cult-buildings of every Graeco-Roman god worshipped in Cyrene.  For good measure, Lukuas’ followers also destroyed Roman government buildings and burnt down the Roman bath-houses of the city, apparently viewing these as symbols of government oppression and gentile influence, respectively.

Cyrene had been home to a very large Jewish community since pre-Roman times; readers of the Gospels will recall a certain Simon of Cyrene, staying in Jerusalem for the Seder feast when he was tasked with helping Jesus Christ carry his cross.  As a result, Lukuas’ following grew into an unwieldy mob, predominately of lower-class young men, which proved impossible to control.  Dio blames them for a long list of atrocities, even accusing them of cannibalism and using the internal organs of murdered Romans and Greeks as belts.  Somewhat more plausibly, the rebel Jews are also accused of forcing Romans to fight as gladiators.  Jews were common victims of Roman brutality in the arenas, and inscriptions attest to the existence of Jewish gladiators (including some with stereotypical names such as Yeshua – Jesus).  This would suggest that, like Spartacus’ rebel gladiators two centuries before, the Cyrenaic Jews were taking sadistic pleasure from enforcing a brutal role-reversal on the hated Romans.

Lukuas and his rebels did not stop at Cyrene – advancing eastwards into Egypt, they found Alexandria had been abandoned by the Roman governor Marcus Rutilius Lupus and his soldiers.  Here they joined forces with the local Jewish communities, which were deeply embittered by prejudice they had endured at the hands of Alexandria’s Greek majority.  The result was an orgy of bloodshed and arson similar to that which had taken place in Cyrene – it culminated in the destruction of Pompey the Great’s tomb, and of the partial burning of Alexandria herself.

In response to this news, the Jews of the island of Cyprus also broke out into a bloody revolt, with almost identical results.  These Jews, under the leadership of a man named Artemio, burned the provincial capital of Salamis to the ground.  Simultaneously, the fires of rebellion spread into Judea herself.  Here two Jews, Julianus and Pappos, gathered their own force of rebels and took the city of Lydda by storm, making it their makeshift capital.  All of this also apparently occurred in 115 CE, while Trajan was pursuing his dream of Eastern conquest.

The End of the Revolt

The Eastern
Mediterranean provinces
of the Roman Empire, the
area most effected by
the Kitos War.

The Roman army was stretched very thin.  Trajan’s immediate forces were spread across Mesopotamia, where they were clashing with Parthians, Jews, and others.  The Praetorian Prefect Quintus Marcius Turbo was nonetheless dispatched at the head of several legions, tasked with putting down the revolt in Egypt and Cyrene.  Only after two years of bitter fighting did he quash these revolts, and Lukuas and his remaining followers fled to Judea, perhaps in an attempt to join forces with Pappos and Julianus.  In Mesopotamia herself, Lusius Quietus was given command of a predominately mounted force that was tasked with silencing the rebels.  Quietus was a Moorish prince who had enjoyed a somewhat controversial career in the Roman army.  Dashing, arrogant, and sadistic, Quietus displayed both ferocious energy and a total lack of human pity in destroying or driving out very nearly all the Jews of Mesopotamia.

By the fall of 117 Turbo and Quietus had both entered Judea, which had become the focal point of the revolt under the joint leadership of Lukuas, Julianus, and Pappos.  They put Lydda up to siege, forcing great hardship upon the rebels.  Trapped within the city was the Rabbi Gamaliel II, who famously gave the defenders permission to fast even during Chanukkah, for such was the desperate situation of their rations.  Gamaliel had already died at the end of the year, when Lydda fell to an assault and all of her defenders were killed – many were crucified after the fall of the city.  When and how the revolt in Cyprus was extinguished has not been recorded by history.

The amount of destruction caused by the Kitos War (so called from the Hebrew form of Lusius Quietus’ name) was titanic.  Supposedly 220,000 Greeks and Romans were murdered in Egypt and Cyrene, and another 240,000 perished in Cyprus.  Papyri found in Egypt attest to the murderous fighting between Jewish and gentile gangs in the desert, and the state of fear in which the common people of the province lived.  How many Jews were killed, Cassius Dio does not bother to record.  But he does tell us that such was the bitterness of the people of Cyprus towards the Jews, that a law was passed banning any person of Jewish descent or faith from ever setting foot on Cyprus, under pain of death.  This law was still in effect a century later under the Severan emperors, and was even applicable if the offender had been shipwrecked on Cyprus or had been blown to its shores by unforeseen winds.

Fate did not reward Lusius Quietus for his cruelty.  Just one year after his victories in Mesopotamia and Judea, he fell out of favor with the new Emperor Hadrian and was executed.  The War that Jewish tradition named after him, however, gave the entire Empire, both its Jewish and gentile populations, reason to mourn.

Wars of Empire

The purpose of this blog will to chronicle wars of Imperial conquest throughout history, as well as native resistance to colonial empires in the numerous 'small wars' of the 18th and 19th Centuries.  My specialities are the Roman Empire in the 1st-3rd Centuries CE, and the European and North American powers in the 19th Century.

'Wars of Empire' can certainly embrace a wide range of topics - from the Jewish Revolts against ancient Rome, to the American Revolution, to the Crimean War.  The focus of this blog will be on smaller wars, however, or on specific individuals or incidents (battles, treaties, causes of war, native cultures, etc.) to be described in detail, and, hopefully, provide any potential readers with a deeper and easily-accessible source for understanding the subject.