Rome Meets Queens

Every few years, somebody pops up to tell a city’s landlords, “Hey, maybe someone poor with two kids and a minimum wage job shouldn’t have to sell a kidney just to keep a roof over their heads.”  In 63 BCE, that somebody was Lucius Sergius Catilina — Catiline if you’re on casual terms.  In modern New York, it’s Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani.

Catiline wanted votes, so he promised to cancel debts, redistribute land, and hand out farms like Oprah hands out cars: “You get a farm! You get a farm! And you get a farm!”  This was easy to promise because the debts weren’t owed to him, he didn’t own the land he wanted to redistribute, nor did he own the farms he wanted to give away. 

Mamdani, on the other hand, in exchange for votes, is promising to stop your landlord from raising rent so high you need to start renting out your closet on Airbnb just to pay for your bedroom.  This is also easy to say, because Mamdani doesn’t own any of those apartments and doesn’t have to make any mortgage payments.  Mamdani doesn’t mention that one of the main reasons that rents are high is that the rent control policy the city has had in effect for 82 years stifles the creation of new housing.  The chief rule of everyone ignorant of simple economics seems to be that when you see an obstacle in the road, speed up.

It’s a matter of, “different centuries, same basic fight”: who gets to call the shots when it comes to property?  The property owners and mortgage holders?  Or the people who are just trying not to end up living under a bridge?

Picture Rome in the mid-first century BCE:  The Republic’s looking a little shaky, the Senate’s packed with old men clutching their togas, and everyone’s broke.  Small farmers had lost their land to the Roman equivalent of agribusiness—big estates run by slaves.  Aristocrats were mortgaging their futures to throw the ancient version of Super Bowl halftime shows (bread, circuses, and gladiators).  Veterans were wandering around muttering, “Wait, we fought all those wars and I don’t even get a cabbage patch?”  The political climate was hotter than a June bride in a feather bed.

Into this chaos strides Catiline, promising a tabula nova—a clean slate.  Translation:  burn the IOUs, cancel the debts, and start afresh.  To the desperate, this sounded like salvation.  To the Roman Senate, it sounded like arson—which was pretty accurate since Cataline was planning to burn the estates of his enemies.

Fast forward a couple of thousand years:  Instead of togas, it’s hoodies and instead of gladiators, it’s the New York Yankees and Knicks games…but the housing crisis is pretty much the same.  Enter Zohran Mamdani, representing Astoria, Queens.  His pitch: Housing is a human right, not a Monopoly board.  His weapons:

·      Good Cause Eviction:  No more landlords deciding rent should increase just because taxes and utilities go up… Or because they’ve bought a new yacht.

·      Rent caps:  Stop the annual ritual of tenants opening their lease renewal letters like they’re scratching off a lottery ticket.

·      Social housing:  City-owned apartments that are permanently affordable (because, as we all know, this has worked so well in the past exactly nowhere!).

Landlords scream that this is socialism, but tenants call it survival.  Politicians—absolutely certain that simply passing new legislation could repeal the law of gravity—call it sound politics.

Lets size up these two like a prize fight.

Catiline vs.  Mamdani:  The Tale of the Tape

 Let’s start with Catiline.

            Catiline (Rome, 63 BCE)                                

Big Idea           Cancel debts, hand out land

Enemies          Roman Senate, creditors, Cicero with a grudge

Supporters      Indebted elites, broke farmers, grumpy veterans

Methods         Conspiracy, maybe arson, an attempted military coup

Fate                 Died in battle, labeled a traitor forever

 

Versus Mamdani (Queens, 2020s)

Big Idea           Cap rents, protect tenants

Enemies          Real estate lobby, landlords, banks, and anyone who successfully passed Economics 101

Supporters      Tenants, immigrants, socialists, and Education majors.

Methods         Legislation, rallies, and lots of tweets

Fate                 Still in office and will probably be elected mayor.  After that, who knows?

Catiline believed that wiping out debts would restore equilibrium by freeing citizens to farm, serve, and consume.  Critics saw it as destabilizing credit markets.  Mamdani argues that capping rents and expanding tenant protections will stabilize communities, prevent displacement, and preserve affordable housing.  Critics warn it will deter construction and reduce supply while property owners convert apartments into individual condominiums.

Despite the 2,000-year gap, the similarities are hard to miss.  Romans feared debt slavery while New Yorkers fear rent hikes; this might be different shackles, but the anxiety is the same.  Catiline promised a bonfire of IOUs while Mamdani promises landlords will be put in their place.   Both got cheers from the impoverished struggling masses.  Cicero thundered about Catiline destroying civilization and landlords thunder that rent control will destroy the housing market. Spoiler: civilization and New York both still exist.

Now, the differences matter too:  While Catiline tried to storm Rome, Mamdani tries to storm Albany committee meetings.  One ended with a bloody battlefield, the other has a bill in legislative limbo—one that, in the unlikely event it ever passes, will probably be doomed to die  in a Federal Court.

While Catiline wanted to erase debts outright, Mamdani wants to freeze rents without offering a solution to how the property owners can keep paying their mortgages.  The first would have triggered a civil war in Rome, while the other would trigger capital flight and economic turmoil.

While Catiline got swords, Mamdani gets subpoenas. Cicero shouted, “How long, O Catiline, will you abuse our patience?” Today, it’s landlords muttering, “How long, O Mamdani, will you abuse our patience?”  Catiline’s reforms died with him.  Mamdani’s ideas are still duking it out in statehouses and at the ballot box. 

The two politicians, 2000 years apart, offer us a little more than a history lesson.  Every society eventually has to answer the same awkward question:  “Is property sacred, or is housing a right?”  Rome decided that property was sacred, and though the Republic keeled over within a generation, the Empire lasted hundreds of years.  New York hasn’t decided yet.

Catiline’s ghost might whisper to Mamdani: “Careful, kid — they’ll call you a traitor to property, too.”  Mamdani might whisper back: “Yeah, but at least they won’t execute me in the Forum.”

The fight goes on, whether in marble forums or in rent-stabilized walk-ups.  And as long as people need somewhere to sleep that isn’t the street, somebody will always step up to poke the bear and say, “Maybe property rights aren’t the only rights worth protecting.”

Rain Follows the Plow

The plow has stood as a symbol of agriculture for centuries, dating back to ancient civilizations when humans first cultivated the land.  It is more than just a tool:  it represents hard work, perseverance, and the eternal hope for a bountiful harvest.  As farmers till the soil, they prepare the earth for seeds to be sown, breaking ground and creating an environment where crops can flourish.  

In many ways, the act of plowing is a dance with nature.  Farmers have a unique rhythm: plow, plant, water, weed, and wait.  Each motion is a step toward achieving that delectable harvest.  The anticipation builds as they watch the first tender shoots break through the soil—a vivid confirmation of their labor’s bearing fruit.

The story of America is the story of farmers’ inexorable push west, bending nature to their will, turning the endless prairie into fertile farms.  As we all learned watching Little House on the Prairie—Rain Follows the Plow.  Agricultural life on the prairie was idyllic.

“Horse Hockey,” says Pa Ingalls.  “The only thing my daughter Laura got right in that damn book was that dinky little shack was on a prairie.  We worked our asses off and the damn farm failed after only two years, and we moved back to Minnesota.”

If you’ve ever spent time with farmers, you know they can be stubbornly optimistic.  After all, farming is basically betting your year’s work on what the sky decides to do.  Maybe that’s why one of the most famous sayings of the 19th-century frontier was the cheery promise: “Rain follows the plow.”

At first glance, it sounds like a nice bumper sticker…maybe even a hymn to human effort: till the soil and the heavens will reward you.  But behind this simple phrase was a grand story—part pep talk, part science experiment, part sales pitch, and a smidge of religion—that helped drive settlers westward, reshape whole ecosystems, and eventually teach Americans a hard lesson about respecting the limits of the land.

The idea that farming could coax water from the sky wasn’t new when Americans started repeating it.  Ancient agricultural societies like the Sumerians along the Tigris and Euphrates, or the Egyptians on the Nile, knew that cultivation and irrigation transformed dry landscapes into fertile breadbaskets.  Their success helped cement the belief that human effort could literally bend nature to our will.

Fast-forward a couple of thousand years and European farmers carried the same assumption with them.  Wherever the plow went, crops followed, so why not the rain, too?  By the time American settlers were eyeing the Great Plains, this belief was ripe for a revival.

In the mid-1800s, the United States was in the throes of Manifest Destiny—that heady conviction that Americans were meant to spread across the continent.  Railroads were pushing tracks westward, land companies were printing glossy pamphlets, and homesteaders were itching for their slice of farmland.

But there was a problem:  west of the 100th meridian (that invisible north-south line running through the middle of Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas) pthe climate got a lot drier.  Rainfall dropped below 20 inches a year and the grass grew in tough, wiry clumps instead of lush meadows.  To settlers from wetter eastern states, the land looked suspiciously like desert.

Enter the slogan.  “Rain follows the plow” became the marketing pitch of the century.  Railroad promoters and government boosters assured would-be pioneers that simply breaking the soil would literally improve the weather.  Each furrow, they claimed, released moisture into the air, invited rainfall, and proved that the West could be as fertile as Ohio or Illinois.  Even digging holes for fence posts or setting up a line of telegraph poles would improve the climate of the plains.

It sounded almost magical—plow hard enough and clouds would appear like friendly neighbors bringing a casserole.

And you know what?  For a while, it seemed to work.  The 1870s and early 1880s brought a stretch of unusually wet years to the Great Plains.  Farmers who took the plunge and staked their claims often harvested bumper crops of wheat and corn.  Newspapers crowed about the miracle.  Scientists with shaky barometers nodded approvingly.  And boosters pointed to every green field as proof that the climate had indeed changed.

In Kansas, promoters even set up “demonstration farms” to showcase the miracle.  Visitors would arrive, see lush fields waving in the breeze, and sign up for land on the spot.  The Ingalls family — yes, the same one immortalized in Little House on the Prairie — joined the westward migration to Kansas around this time.  While their short-lived homestead near Independence, Kansas was just east of the 100th meridian, they were swept up in the same current of optimism that fueled the “rain follows the plow” craze.

But prairie weather has a way of humbling human optimism.  By the late 1880s, the wet cycle ended.  Rainfall plummeted back to its long-term averages.  Crops shriveled.  Wells ran dry.  Suddenly those lush “proof” fields turned into parched reminders that slogans don’t change climate.  Countless farms failed and families who had staked everything on a patch of Kansas or Nebraska soil packed up wagons and left in despair.

One stark historical example comes from Garden City, Kansas, where a demonstration farm once showcased shockingly good harvests during the wet years.  Settlers poured in, encouraged by glowing reports.  But when the drought hit in the late 1880s, the very same fields became dust.  Many of the surrounding homesteads collapsed, and the boosters who had promised endless fertility were left red-faced.

And of course, the ultimate verdict came in the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, when decades of over-plowing met a decade of drought.  The land itself seemed to revolt.  Dust storms blackened skies, crops failed, and thousands of families fled the Plains—a grim reminder that rain doesn’t follow anything except atmospheric pressure and jet streams.

Not everyone was fooled.  Some scientists raised red flags early.  John Wesley Powell, the one-armed Civil War veteran turned geologist, warned Congress in 1878 that the Plains west of the 100th meridian were too dry for farming without serious irrigation.  He argued that settlements should be based on watersheds, not survey grids, and that small farms would fail in arid regions.

His advice? Don’t assume the sky will change just because you’ve sharpened your plow.  Naturally, Congress ignored him.  After all, optimism sells; caution doesn’t.  But history proved Powell right.

So why bother with this old frontier motto today? Because its lesson is timeless.  “Rain follows the plow” is a cautionary tale about the dangers of believing that human effort alone can rewrite natural laws.  It’s also a reminder of how badly we want to believe we’re in control of the elements.

Modern farmers face their own version of the same dilemma.  Climate change is reshaping rainfall patterns and turning once-predictable seasons into nail-biters.  The difference is that now, instead of repeating catchy slogans, we have meteorological models, satellite data, and sustainable practices like crop rotation and no-till farming.  The wisdom we’ve gained — painfully — is that the land will treat us better if we treat it with respect.

Still, there’s something almost charming about the old phrase.  It speaks to the boundless optimism of settlers who looked at a windswept plain and thought, “Sure, we can make it rain if we just work harder.”  Were they wrong? Absolutely.  But also a little inspiring.  It’s a reminder that human beings are endlessly hopeful — even if that hope sometimes plows us straight into a dust storm.

Maybe the modern version should be: “Rain doesn’t follow the plow, but wisdom should.” It doesn’t rhyme, but it might keep our topsoil where it belongs.

The Failure of French Gunpowder

For any student of military history, it frequently seems that more ink has been spilled over French failures in the Napoleonic Wars than the blood spilled on the battlefield.  This will not stop me, however, from pointing out that the centrally planned economy of revolutionary France resulted in the production of inferior gunpowder that seriously hampered both the French Army and the French Navy,

Gunpowder began as a happy accident in medieval China, when alchemists chasing immortality mixed charcoal, sulfur, and saltpeter, discovering the recipe for very mortal fireworks.  By the 900s, the stuff powered fire lances, bombs, and rockets; by 1044, writers of Chinese manuals were jotting down secret formulas like proud cookbook authors.  The idea zipped along trade routes to the Islamic world, where engineers refined siege craft, and then to Europe in the 1200s, where monks and monarchs promptly asked, “Does it make castles go away?”

Early European “serpentine” powder was a fussy, dusty blend that separated into useless components at the worst moments—think salad dressing with a temper.  Around 1500, makers started “corning” it into grains, giving a more predictable bang for the buck, and handheld guns and big bombards multiplied.  The 1600s brought flintlocks, paper cartridges, and generals who standardized calibers so that cannonballs finally fit the cannon.  In the 1700s, European chemists like Lavoisier tidied French production, while Britain built Waltham Abbey into a gunpowder campus and imported ultra-pure Indian saltpeter by the shipload.  By the time the Napoleonic Wars rolled around, Europe had turned black powder into an industrial science—equal parts chemistry, logistics, and earplugs—setting the stage for continent-wide warfare that flashed—and boomed—from Portugal to Moscow.

From the very beginning of the war in the late 18^th century, the British had an advantage: they imported high quality saltpeter from India.  The French, on the other hand, created a huge domestic program to make and gather salpêtre—building nitre beds (nitrières) per official manuals, and ordering citizens to scrape “nitrous earth” from cellars, stables, barns and rubble for sale to the gunpowder administration. Chemists like Lavoisier/Guyton de Morveau helped standardize and teach the process and authorities used requisitions to keep supplies flowing—so wartime French saltpeter was largely home-produced rather than imported.  The poor-quality homemade saltpeter was hygroscopic—it literally pulled moisture out of the air—not only making the powder less effective but leaving a residue fowled the barrels of the weapons.

To produce the gunpowder, the three ingredients are combined in a process called corning.  In broad strokes, English corning in the Napoleonic era was a tidy, factory-forward affair: mills like Waltham Abbey first compressed the damp “mill cake” into dense press-cakes, then broke and sieved those cakes into consistent grain sizes—an assembly line for bang that prized uniform density and repeatable burn from batch to batch.  The British then polished the powder by tumbling it in a wooden barrel with a small amount of graphite.  This glazing helped prevent clumping and made the powder even more resistant to moisture, while at the same time preventing the buildup of static electricity that could spontaneously detonate the gunpowder.

By contrast, French corning was carried out across a patchwork of state poudreries, but with techniques that varied more between sites: the official instructions emphasize milling and granulation steps, and in the Revolutionary/Napoleonic scramble some works pressed before granulating while others effectively corned from damp cake as equipment and throughput allowed—producing fairly good powder, but with more variability in grain density than Britain’s heavily standardized press-then-corn routine.

There was a significant difference in how the gunpowder was stored.  The British standardized in 25-, 50-, and 100-pound barrels equipped with copper hoops.  The French had a wide variety of barrels, some weighing more than 200 pounds and all them made with iron hoops.  If two barrel hoops bumped together, the resulting spark could ignite all the powder in the magazine.  Perhaps this is why French powder works blew up at least four times during the war.

By the 1790s, plenty of French powder men could see why British stuff went “boom” so politely while French powder frequently either didn’t blow up or blew up prematurely, but the obstacle wasn’t brains…it was bureaucracy.  In France’s centrally-run system, every tweak to grain size, press pressure, or glazing seemed to require a memo to Paris, two committees, and a stamp the size of a wagon wheel.  Nitre inspectors had quotas, poudreries had fixed procedures, and purchasing officers couldn’t just splash out on new presses or hire extra coopers because a clever foreman had an idea: they needed approvals, inventories, and—oops—another approval. Add wartime scarcities and blockade headaches, and even sensible changes moved at the speed of a courier on a muddy road.  Meanwhile the British, who sunk capital into a factory model earlier, could swap dies, retool, and standardize faster than you could say “pass the priming flask.”  The French knew where they wanted to go, but the central planning machinery kept tapping the brakes.  So they made lots of perfectly serviceable powder—sometimes very good indeed—but catching up to Britain’s consistency and scale meant loosening paperwork, freeing procurement, and investing mid-war—none of which a bureaucracy excels at.

The results of this difference in quality were evident in the field.  The French army used a 12-pound field gun.  Due to the increased power of British gunpowder, they achieved nearly the same result with a 9-pound cannon.  Since the British gunpowder produced less fouling, the British army could fire the cannon more frequently than their enemy, while using fewer horses to maneuver the guns. 

For the British Navy, there was an even bigger advantage.  After the Battle of Trafalgar, French captains estimated that because of the difference in powder strength, the British guns could hit targets 15-20% farther than French guns, with a corresponding effect on hull penetration.  The British could score hits while still out of range from return fire.  And when those shells hit, they did more damage than the French shells.  Due to a combination of cleaner barrels and better discipline, British ships fired 50% faster that their French counterparts.

Britain decisively won the Napoleonic Wars.  Better gunpowder wasn’t the only reason, but it contributed.  And the French centrally-planned economy, as it usually does, created more problems than solutions.

Going Bananas

Back in 1964, Roy Drusky released a song with the unlikely title of “Peel Me a Nanner”.  The song, a minor hit, is a playful, tongue-in-cheek take on a heartbroken narrator who is lamenting a failed romance, using the whimsical imagery of bananas, peanuts, and a coconut tree to add humor. The full chorus goes:

Peel me a 'nanner, toss me a peanut, I'll come swingin' from a coconut tree
Peel me a 'nanner, toss me a peanut, you sure made a monkey out of me. 

 

I mention this because this week I’m going to talk about bananas, and I can’t stop humming the damn tune.  This is probably an early warning sign for the onset of dementia.

 

With apologies to both Edgar Rice Burroughs and Chiquita Banana Lady, bananas are not native to either Africa or Central America.  Bananas originated in Indonesia and quickly spread across Asia and Africa along trade routes.  By the 16^th century, the Portuguese had introduced the fruit to Central and South America, where bananas became an important food source since the fruit grows year-round and is easy to spread.

Bananas were not available in the United States until the last decades of the 19^th century because even if the fruit was picked before it was ripe, it would ripen and spoil before it could reach the consumer.  Finally, by the 1870s, with the use of railroads and steamships, green bananas could be picked and rapidly shipped to American ports, the fruit ripening during the trip.  It didn’t take long before the entire process had been  standardized into a well-oiled machine that was controlled by large corporations like United Fruit and Standard Fruit (which later became Chiquita and Dole).

 

Since Americans almost exclusively consume only one variety of yellow banana, it might come as a shock for you to learn that there are approximately a thousand varieties of bananas and that bananas come in almost every color from red to gold and from blue-green to black.  Long ago, the banana importing companies decided to specialize in one variety—the yellow Big Mike (Gros Michel) banana—because it ripened relatively slowly, and had a thick resilient peel, which protected it from bruising during long sea voyages to Europe and North America.  Its dense, large bunches facilitated efficient shipping, and its sweet, creamy flavor and firm texture made it appealing to consumers.  To consumers on both continents, the Big Mike was the banana.  

 

Plantations specialized in the Big Mike, and shipping boxes were built to accommodate their size.  Cargo ships were built to precise specifications to accommodate those boxes and to keep the cargo holds at precisely 55 °F—the temperature that keeps a green Big Mike from ripening from three to four weeks.  After the bananas were unloaded, special processing warehouses would expose the still green bananas to a mild amount of ethylene gas at 63 °F that would rapidly ripen them, turning them into the yellow color consumers expected.  (If your banana is still too green to eat, you can ripen it overnight by putting it in a paper bag with an apple or a tomato.)

 

Everything was perfect…until in the 1950s, when a soil fungus called, “Panama disease” (technically Fusarium oxysporum, Race 1) began devastating Big Mike plantations in Central America.  When a disease shows up in most plants, the answer is to search for the few plants in the plantation that are resistant, then replant the field with the offspring of the resistant plants.

 

You can’t do that with bananas.  You see, all of the bananas you have eaten in your life were clones.  You may have noticed that the bananas you eat are “seedless” (those little black specs you see are undeveloped seeds that can’t germinate); all the banana plants are cuttings—technically pups—from another banana plant.  Genetically, all the Big Mike banana trees are the same plant, so if one of the plants is susceptible to the fungus, they all are.

 

You can imagine the panic in the boardrooms of Chiquita and Dole.  Stopping the spread of the fungus across Central and South America was (and still is) impossible.  The companies spent a small fortune convincing us that their long yellow fruit was the perfect thing to slice up and put on our cornflakes, so it was going to be a little difficult to now convince the public to switch to a short red fruit that they claim is a banana.

 

Fortunately, there was a similar variety of banana, the Cavendish.  It was about 10% smaller, and the bunches were about a third smaller, but it would fit in the boxes, ripen the same, and most importantly—it was yellow.  If you didn’t know better, you could mistake a Cavendish banana for a Big Mike…At least until you ate it.  The Cavendish banana is not as sweet as or as creamy in texture as Big Mike and it is much milder in flavor.  Anyone who has eaten both will tell you that the Big Mike is a much better banana.

 

Unfortunately, grocery stores in the United States stopped selling the Big Mike by 1960.  I know I ate bananas in the 1950’s, but I don’t remember it.  But, in the 1990’s, I found a specialty shop in San Pedro Sula, Honduras that sold long fat Big Mike bananas.  Boy, is there a difference.

 

Now that the Cavendish is literally the top banana—there is a bit of a problem.  These bright yellow beauties, which we’ve all munched for decades, are now facing their own extinction, under assault by a new strain of Panama disease, (Fusarium oxysporum Tropical Race 4)—a fungus with a flair for drama.  It’s like a bad comedy plot where the star keeps tripping over the same banana peel!  This soil-dwelling troublemaker clogs the banana plant’s roots, turning lush green leaves into sad, wilted props, and it’s spreading faster than gossip at a garden party.  And once again, since Cavendish bananas are clones that are all genetically identical, they’re like one big, unhappy family with zero immune system variety.

 

Scientists are scratching their heads as they race to save the day.  They’ve tried everything from funky soil treatments to breeding new banana buddies, but the Cavendish just pouts and says, “I’m too pretty to change!”  Some suggest a wild banana remix—think funky flavors and colors—but good luck convincing the world to swap its morning smoothie staple.  It could happen, all the bananas shown at left are real.  Meanwhile, farmers are doing a hilarious dance, rotating crops and praying for a miracle, and banana companies, like Chiquita and Dole, are probably sweating bullets behind their corporate smiles.

 Barring a scientific breakthrough, it is likely that, in the next few years, we will see an extensive advertising campaign trying to convince us that a banana doesn’t have to be yellow.  Or alternatively, that the new and improved yellow banana that tastes like wet cardboard is better for you. 

Lord Cardigan: The Model of a Modern Major General

Lieutenant-General James Thomas Brudenell, 7th Earl of Cardigan KCB is one of those improbable characters more likely to be found in a Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoon than in a history book.  Lord Cardigan was a hot-tempered, duel-happy brain-damage snob of an aristocrat who blundered into history by leading a disastrous cavalry charge—yet somehow left his name forever stitched into the cozy cardigan sweater.

James Brudenell was born in a “modest home” in Buckinghamshire in 1797.  In this case, modest means several stories, a dozen or so bedrooms—a manor just barely large enough that King Charles I once visited it.  Thankfully, for young James, his father soon inherited the earldom of Cardigan, which besides the title came with huge estates, a large income, and a house large enough to befit the lifestyle that the now Lord Cardigan, the son of the Earl of Cardigan, would grow to consider his due.

Though James had suffered a bad fall from a horse in childhood that resulted in brain damage, he was sent to Harrow for an education that was cut short after a violent fistfight with another student.  Educated at home with his seven sisters, James became something of a bully, who was used to getting his own way.  To further his education, where else could such an obvious rising star be sent, but to Oxford, where aristocrats were automatically accepted without examination.  Furthermore, it won’t surprise you to learn that he left Oxford after 3 years, without completing a degree.

During his first year at Oxford, the Earl thought his son should gain some experience in Parliament, since as the only male heir, James would eventually become a member of the House of Lords.  Luckily, his cousin owned a pocket borough, a parliamentary constituency where the few voters either worked for an aristocrat or lived at his pleasure, on his land.  Effectively, the voters were in his pocket.  As a member of the House of Commons, Brudenell was chiefly noted for his defense of the rights of the aristocracy.  When he voted against the wishes of his cousin, his safe seat was withdrawn, so with his father’s funds, he bought a rotten district, a constituency with so few voters that they could be easily bribed.  When this district was abolished in a reform movement, Lord Cardigan spent £20,000 (equivalent to £2,000,000 in 2023) to bribe the voters in a third district. 

All of this was not exactly legal, but as a Galveston policeman once told me, “You can’t break the law when you is the law.”

By now, you may have the impression—utterly correct—that Lord Cardigan was constantly fighting with everyone.  In the 1820s, he began courting Elizabeth Tollemache Johnstone, despite the fact that she was married to his childhood friend, Lt.-Col. Christian Johnstone.  Eventually, his friend divorced his wife, calling her "the most damned bad-tempered and extravagant bitch in the kingdom".  Cardigan married Elizabeth, paying Johnstone £1,000 in damages.  After 11 years, they separated and Brudenell openly began a notorious relationship with Adeline de Horsey (I swear I did not make up her name!), whom he eventually married after his first wife’s death.  Adeline was evidently an agreeable soul, even remaining friends with the Lord’s many mistresses.

More than anything else, Lord Cardigan is remembered for his military career.  His extraordinary, rapid rise through the officer ranks was not due to merit, but the result', of the practice of aristocrats’ purchasing positions in the army.  In just five years, he was a lieutenant, a captain, a major, and finally a lieutenant-colonel of the Hussars (a form of cavalry).  Despite his youth and lack of experience, this put him in command of officers who had fought at Waterloo and who had been serving in the Army from before Cardigan had acquired his first mistress.

Lord Cardigan’s career in the army was not trouble free, either:  He was involved in frequent duels, arguments and newspaper scandals.  Known for having his men flogged for the slightest infractions, he also brought spurious charges against his junior officers.  The “Black Bottle Affair” was one of those gloriously absurd Victorian military squabbles, in which Lord Cardigan, ever the stickler for appearances, discovered that an officer of his beloved 11th Hussars had dared to bring a bottle of wine in a black glass decanter to the mess table—an unthinkable breach of regimental etiquette, since only brown bottles were deemed suitably distinguished.  Outraged, Cardigan treated this vinous misdemeanor as though it were high treason, summoning courts-martial and blackening reputations over nothing more sinister than the shade of the glass.  The public roared with laughter, Punch had a field day, and “the Black Bottle Affair” became shorthand for Cardigan’s ability to turn a dinner-table trifle into a scandal fit for Parliament.

After Lieutenant Tuckett repeated some of the criticism in the London papers, Cardigan challenged him to yet another duel, in which he wounded the lieutenant and for which he was tried in the House of Lords.  He was found not guilty on a dubious technicality; (the House of Lords being unwilling to convict one of their own).

All of the above made Lord Cardigan a colorful character, but there is one more story that will secure his place in British history books.

When history hands out its memorable moments, few are as gloriously doomed as Lord Cardigan’s gallop into legend at the Charge of the Light Brigade.  Cardigan was not famous for brilliance, for warmth, or even for good humor.  What he had, however, was impeccable tailoring, an impressive set of whiskers, and a talent for quarreling with just about everyone—including his own brother-in-law, Lord Lucan.  In October 1854, at the Battle of Balaclava, those traits were not especially helpful when he was ordered (through a muddled chain of command) to lead his 600-member light cavalry straight down a valley bristling with Russian cannon.

Since Cardigan and Lucan were furious at each other and would only communicate through a third and junior officer, we are still uncertain exactly who misinterpreted the orders that day…But everyone in the Light Brigade (even Lord Cardigan) knew that cavalry is never launched in a frontal charge into artillery.  Well, that day it was.

With all the certainty of a man who never doubted his own correctness, Cardigan rode at the head of his brigade, scarlet jacket gleaming, sword flashing, mustache blowing dramatically in the Crimean wind.  His men, knowing perfectly well the order was madness, followed because that’s what cavalrymen did.  The result was predictable: cannon roared, horses fell, sabers clashed, and by the time it was over, half the brigade was dead, wounded, or horseless.  Cardigan, himself, was the first to reach the enemy cannon, then he immediately turned around and trotted back, alive and entirely unruffled, as though he’d just been on a brisk morning ride.  He was one of the lucky 107 still fit for duty after the battle.

After the battle, Cardigan retired to his private yacht in the bay and had dinner.  The next day, he declared himself medically unfit for further service and returned to England aboard his yacht.  As one of the first high ranking officers to return to London, his version of the battle was the first to be widely printed in the papers.  Welcomed by cheering crowds, he was presented to Queen Victoria.

Back in Britain, the disaster was miraculously transformed into a stirring tale of duty and gallantry, thanks in no small part to Alfred Tennyson’s thunderous verse.  The Light Brigade became immortal, and Cardigan—despite his highly questionable leadership—soaked up the applause like a man convinced it had all been his idea.  Even though the charge was the most hopeless cavalry action in British history, it was also one of the most heroic, and Cardigan’s place in memory is forever astride that doomed ride: half a legend, half a punchline, and wholly unforgettable.

In the months that followed, a better understanding of the battle was eventually reported.  To much of the press, Cardigan became the symbol of aristocratic military buffoon, a walking caricature.  The truth didn’t  really matter:  the Earl of Cardigan remained in royal favor, he was promoted to Lieutenant General, he became a Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath, he published his self-serving memoir, and then he retired back to his grand estate. 

In 1868, at the age of 70, the man who led the Charge of the Light Brigade without receiving so much as a scratch, fell off his horse while riding across his estate and died.

Dances With Witches

The late medieval and early modern world was never short on drama and violence, but few episodes conjure up as much fascination—or horror—as the witchcraft trials.  Picture a Europe of the 16th and 17th centuries, where long winters dragged on endlessly, crops frequently failed, and neighbors kept a wary eye on one another. Into this anxious mix came the belief that witches were not only real, but lurking behind every bad harvest, sick cow, spoiled milk or stubbed toe. 

If your bread didn’t rise or your butter refused to churn, it was entirely reasonable, in the popular imagination, to suspect the woman across the lane had been consorting with the Devil.  If your husband no longer loved you, he must be under a spell.  Courts across Germany, Switzerland, and France dutifully obliged, staging some of the most notorious witch hunts in history—often with tragic consequences.

Fast-forward across the Atlantic to colonial New England, and you’ll find a community every bit as excitable.  In 1692, the quiet village of Salem, Massachusetts, suddenly found itself center stage in what felt like a supernatural courtroom drama.  A cluster of young girls began twitching, shrieking, and blaming local townsfolk for afflicting them with unseen forces.  Ministers thundered, magistrates scribbled, and soon half the community was accused of flying through the night sky or signing Satan’s ledger in blood.  Salem’s brief but intense hysteria left an indelible mark on American history, providing fodder for plays, novels, and more than a few Halloween movies.  (Sadly, Practical Magic 2 with Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman is scheduled for release next fall.)

From the forests of Germany to the meetinghouses of New England, the story of the witch trials is a tale of fear, faith, religious zealotry, and the very human urge to explain the inexplicable.  Why people were so ready to see broomsticks and black cats at every corner is a mystery we’ll soon explore—one strange loaf at a time.

So, what sent otherwise sensible villagers into a frenzy of pointing fingers and shouting “Witch!”?  The usual suspects of politics, religion, lack of education, and old grudges certainly played their part, but there’s another, stranger candidate waiting in the wings: a humble grain of rye.  More specifically, what sometimes grew on that rye.

Ergot is a pesky little fungus that thrives in cool, damp fields.  It doesn’t look like much—just dark, shriveled kernels hiding in the harvest—but its effects can be spectacularly weird.  Baked into bread, it can make people twitch, convulse, and see things that aren’t there.  Imagine having a perfectly ordinary breakfast and then suddenly deciding your neighbor has a pet demon besides that ugly child that won’t stay off your lawn.  That was the kind of day ergot could deliver.

Some historians have pointed out that the timing is awfully suspicious.  The great waves of witch trials in Central Europe happened during the “Little Ice Age”—a long period of years of poor weather and soggy harvests.  Salem, too, had endured a string of damp summers just before its own outbreak.  In both cases, rye bread was a staple food, which means the fungus had every chance to sneak onto dinner tables.

Back in the day, folks didn’t know it by its modern, clinical name—ergot poisoning was more colorfully called St. Anthony’s Fire.  The title sounds saintly, but the experience was anything but divine.  Imagine nibbling on your daily rye bread and suddenly feeling as if your limbs were aflame, your fingers tingling like they’d fallen asleep, and your legs determined to dance the Charleston centuries before it was invented.  Some unlucky souls endured spasms and visions so vivid that heaven and hell seemed to be hosting a joint carnival right in their kitchens.  Others, in the grimmer cases, watched their toes or fingers blacken and drop away as if the Devil himself were claiming a tithe.  St. Anthony’s Fire was the ultimate party crasher: half delirium, half horror show, and fully guaranteed to set tongues wagging about witches, demons, and dark forces lurking in the rye.

While city leaders scratched their heads and hired musicians to “play it out” (possibly the worst prescription ever), later scholars suggested a fungal culprit.  If rye bread laced with ergot was on the menu, those convulsions and trancelike states start to look less like a supernatural dance plague and more like a very bad bake-off.  Add in a dash of mass hysteria, and you’ve got a medieval flash mob powered not by music, but by mold.

In Salem, the devil seemed to have a suspicious preference for housewives, widows, and spinsters.  While a few men did end up in the dock (poor Giles Corey got the worst of it, pressed to death under a pile of stones), most of the accusations landed squarely on women’s shoulders.  Why? Because Puritan culture already imagined women as more “temptable,” neighbors found quarrelsome widows easier to blame than landowning men, and the young (mostly female) accusers pictured witches in the form of cranky old ladies rather than cranky old farmers.  In short, witch-hunting followed the path of least resistance: accuse the people who were least likely to fight back, and who were most likely to fit the part.

Now, does this mean every cackling witch trial was really just a case of bad baking?  Not exactly.  Human fear, social tensions, and a taste for drama carried plenty of weight.  But it does raise the deliciously odd possibility that behind the bonnets, broomsticks, and burning stakes lurked something far more mundane: moldy bread.

So, perhaps, the great witch panics and curious outbreaks of old remind us of something bigger than broomsticks and bonfires..or ought to, anyway.  Communities in crisis often reach for the most obvious explanation, especially when fear is already in the air, and the result can be disastrous—or at least wildly misguided.  What looks like possession, a curse, or a devil’s dance may, with calmer eyes, be nothing more than bad luck, or bad harvests, (or…yes, bad bread).  The real cautionary tale isn’t just about moldy rye, but about how quickly people leap to blame the neighbor, the stranger, or the outsider when strange things happen. 

History’s lesson?  Before we kindle torches and rally the mob, it’s worth taking a breath—and maybe a second look at what’s really on the table.  The quick, popular fix is rarely correct.