Havana Today

Note.  I haven’t been to Cuba.  The three main sources for the information here comes from Reuters, The New York Times, and the Miami Herald.  Any mistakes are solely mine.

People often ask what living conditions in Havana are like today.  The answer is that Havana remains a functioning capital city—one with electricity, water, food markets, buses, taxis, apartment buildings, schools, and all of the normal civic furniture one expects to find in a metropolis.  The trick is that many of these things operate on something closer to a suggestion than a guarantee.  In modern Havana, daily life tends to be organized less by the clock than by the moment: when the power happens to be on, when the water happens to be flowing, when the bus happens to appear, or when the bread truck happens to arrive.

This is not to say that Havana has descended into some cinematic wasteland where residents barter shotgun shells for canned beans.  The city still hums along.  People go to work, children go to school, and tourists still sip mojitos while admiring pastel facades and 1950s Chevrolets.  But behind that postcard image lies a city where infrastructure is aging, supplies are inconsistent, and the art of improvisation has become the chief civic virtue.

One quick note on tourism.  Yes, Cuba is still getting visitor (mostly Canadians and Europeans), proving once again that human optimism can survive almost anything—including airline schedules, food shortages, and municipal plumbing.  But the trade is running on four bald tires.  Tourist numbers are down roughly 60 percent from the pre-pandemic days and are off about 20 percent from last year alone, which is less a slump than a trapdoor.

Part of the problem is the broader economic collapse, which tends to put a damper on the whole “tropical getaway” pitch.  Part of it may also be the result of the Havana sewage system’s coming apart like a Soviet tractor during harvest.  The city is dumping some 48,000 cubic meters of raw sewage into the bay every day, with some of that cheerful brew making its way onto the beaches.  Add in the fact that over half of Havana is no longer properly connected to the sewer system, and suddenly, the tourism brochure’s promises of sun, surf, and Old World charm begin to sound less like a vacation and more like a gastrointestinal dare.

Let us begin the day.

Morning in Havana starts with a game of utilities roulette.  Residents wake up and check the two most important questions of the day: Is the electricity on? Is there water? These are not rhetorical questions because, although  city does have electrical and water systems, both operate with a degree of reliability that would make an American utility executive wake up screaming in the night.

If the power stayed on overnight, the refrigerator is still cold and the phone still has a charge.  If not, breakfast planning becomes an exercise in improvisation.  Electricity outages have become common enough that many households instinctively keep candles, battery lights, and portable chargers ready.  Fans stopping in a tropical climate is not a trivial inconvenience.

Closely related to electricity is the equally thrilling question: Is there water? Havana does have a municipal water system with pipes, pumps, and reservoirs.  The challenge is that pumping water requires electricity and fuel, both of which have been in short supply.  As a result, water sometimes arrives on a schedule best described as “when circumstances permit.” Experienced residents respond by keeping containers, buckets, and tanks ready.  When water appears in the pipes, it is greeted the way desert travelers greet an oasis—fill everything you own before it disappears again.

Breakfast in Havana is less about culinary inspiration and more about logistics.  Food exists in the city, and markets sell it, but acquiring it often involves patience, creativity, and a willingness to stand in line long enough to form friendships.  Bread lines are a common morning sight.  Prices have risen sharply, and certain items appear sporadically.  The result is that breakfast tends to be whatever combination of bread, fruit, eggs, or coffee happens to be obtainable that week.

Then comes the next great adventure: transportation.

Havana possesses buses, taxis, shared cars, bicycles, and the occasional heroic Soviet-era vehicle that refuses to retire.  In theory, these form a transportation network.  In practice, fuel shortages have turned movement around the city into something resembling an improvisational sport.  Bus routes run but may be crowded or delayed.  Taxi rides cost more than they once did.  And bicycles—long neglected relics of earlier decades—have returned to fashion not so much as recreation as a necessity. 

If a Havana resident once drove to work, he may now ride a bicycle.  If he once rode a bus, he may now share a taxi with strangers.  And if all else fails, he walks, because Havana is still a city where many destinations are reachable on foot—assuming the sidewalks cooperate.

The workday proceeds under similar conditions.  Offices open, shops operate, and the city continues to produce and sell goods.  But everything functions with a background awareness that the electricity might vanish, supplies might run out, and transportation might falter.

A shopkeeper may spend part of the day selling merchandise and the rest trying to locate more of it.  A mechanic might devote equal time to repairing engines and hunting spare parts.  The rhythm of work is therefore less about efficiency and more about adaptability.

Meanwhile, the city’s sanitation system is conducting its own experiment in endurance.  Havana still collects garbage, but fuel shortages have reduced the number of operating garbage trucks from over 200 to fewer than 50.  When fewer trucks run, trash piles accumulate in corners and along sidewalks.  It is not exactly the glamorous Havana of tourist posters.

Speaking of the city, itself, we must address the matter of buildings.

Havana’s architecture is beautiful—faded colonial mansions, art deco apartments, and ornate balconies that look like something from a film set.  Unfortunately, beauty does not guarantee structural stability.  Much of the housing stock is old and poorly maintained.  Cracked plaster, leaking roofs, moldy walls, and sagging staircases are not unusual.  The homes of Havana are a metaphor for life in Cuba:  beautiful façades hiding decay and corruption.

Every so often, a building collapses.  Sometimes it is a partial collapse, sometimes a total one.  Due to poor maintenance, the lack of building materials and amateur construction efforts to create new apartments by putting doorways through load bearing walls, building collapses happen often enough that residents view them with grim familiarity.  Living in certain older structures requires keeping a skeptical eye on the ceiling during heavy rainstorms.

Housing anxiety is, therefore, a quiet but constant part of life in some neighborhoods.  People patch walls, reinforce beams, and hope the next rainy season will be gentle.

Afternoons bring more of the same juggling act.  A Havana resident might spend the midday hours running errands—buying food if it appears, repairing a bicycle, or checking whether a store has received new supplies.  Lines form quickly whenever scarce goods arrive, and joining a line without quite knowing what is being sold is a time-honored tradition.

The economic landscape has shifted noticeably in recent years.  Private businesses and informal markets have become increasingly important sources of food and household goods.  Items may be easier to find in these markets, but they often come with higher prices.  In short, goods exist—but they sometimes require more money than many households would prefer to spend.

The city’s digital life adds another layer of complexity.

Yes, Havana has cell phone service.  People carry smartphones and use them regularly.  The entire system runs through the state telecommunications company, which provides voice service, text messaging, and mobile data.

Internet access also exists and is widely used.  People message friends, read news, and scroll social media like everyone else in the modern world.  The difference lies in cost and speed.  Mobile data plans can be expensive relative to average Cuban wages, and connectivity is sometimes slow or disrupted by the same infrastructure problems affecting electricity.

So, Havana residents do have internet—but they tend to use it carefully, stretching their data allowances the way previous generations stretched ration coupons.  Users also have to remember that both the internet and cell phones are run by the state and are both monitored and censored.

Television is simpler.  The city receives a modest lineup of state-run channels—roughly eight major ones.  These include national channels like Cubavisión and Tele Rebelde, educational channels, a news channel, and a local Havana station.  It is not exactly the American universe of hundreds of cable channels, but it provides official government news, sports, educational programming, and entertainment.

Then comes evening.

Dinner preparation again depends on the electrical grid.  If the lights remain on, families cook normally.  If the power disappears, dinner becomes an exercise in candlelight and creative cuisine.  Refrigerators warm, fans stop spinning, and people drift outside to balconies and sidewalks to escape the heat.

Oddly enough, blackouts sometimes produce the most social moments of the day.  Without televisions or internet, neighbors gather outdoors and talk.  Rumors about the electrical grid circulate like weather forecasts.  Someone inevitably predicts that power will return “in twenty minutes,” a statement delivered with absolute confidence and very little supporting evidence.

Night in Havana often reveals another contrast.  Tourist hotels and certain central districts sometimes run generators during blackouts.  Their windows glow while surrounding neighborhoods sit in darkness.  Visitors continue drinking cocktails under electric lights while residents a few blocks away wait for the grid to recover.

Finally the electricity returns, at least most days, sometimes late at night.  Phones charge, refrigerators hum back to life, and fans resume their gentle rotation.

And tomorrow morning, the cycle begins again: check the lights, check the water, check the market, check the bus schedule.

Havana today is not a city without utilities, food, or transportation.  All those things exist.  The difference is that they operate intermittently and unpredictably.  But, every week, the services seem to decline just a little, forcing people to adapt just a little more, compromise again, with the certain knowledge that circumstances are unlikely to improve.

The result is a culture built on patience, ingenuity, and humor.  People repair appliances that would be thrown away elsewhere, ride bicycles through streets lined with vintage cars, and keep spare buckets ready for the next water interruption.

In short, Havana remains very much alive—colorful, chaotic, and stubbornly resilient.  The city is neither the tropical paradise sometimes imagined by tourists nor the apocalyptic ruin sometimes portrayed by critics.  It is something more complicated: a capital where infrastructure creaks, shortages appear and vanish, and ordinary citizens navigate daily life with a mixture of patience, ingenuity, and dark humor.  Somehow.

And tomorrow morning, when the alarm clock doesn’t ring (the electricity never came back on overnight) the whole adventure begins again.

Static, Dynamic, and Other Fairy Tales from New York City

Zohran Mamdani’s latest fiscal sales pitch rests on a familiar political miracle: tax the rich, tax big business, tax a few luxury transactions, and the money will appear as obediently as my cat Charlie at dinnertime. 

The Mayor says that unless the city and state governments enact his sweeping tax plan called Path One, he will be forced to enact a more draconian Path Two, a 9.5 percent property-tax increase that would hit more than 3 million residential units and over 100,000 commercial buildings.  That is less a policy option than a budget memo written with a revolver on the desk. 

Now, on a static model, this all looks delightfully tidy.  Mamdani’s Path One, as reported March 6, includes about $3.0 billion from a two-point income-tax increase on filers earning over $1 million, about $1.75 billion from narrower corporate and unincorporated business tax changes, about $700 million from trimming the city’s pass-through entity tax credit, about $1.2 billion from new or expanded taxes on pricey real estate, and about $300 million from ending the sales-tax exemption on gold bars and other precious metals.  Add the pile together and you get roughly $6.95 billion a year.  On paper, that is the sort of number that causes politicians to speak in soft, reverent tones about “shared prosperity,” while taxpayers consider taking up drinking before lunch. 

But a dynamic model is what happens when we admit, reluctantly, that taxpayers are not decorative turnips with deep roots.  Dynamic analysis asks how policy changes affect economic behavior, employment, income, output, prices, investment, and therefore the actual tax haul.  In other words, it does not merely ask, “What is the tax rate?” It asks, “What will people do when you change it?” The Tax Policy Center explains that dynamic analysis accounts for those broader macroeconomic effects, and that those feedback effects can either soften or worsen the budget impact of a proposal.  So, the difference between static and dynamic is the difference between counting the fish in the pond and asking whether the fish can swim away. 

A great example is the $300 million that Mamdani hopes to raise from the sale of gold.  It is hard to imagine an investor who doesn’t already know that gold is available to purchase everywhere.  New York City knows this, and says that if you purchase gold someplace else, when you bring it into the city, you will have to pay that tax.  Unless they inspect the baggage of everyone entering the metropolis….

Let’s take the millionaire tax next.  Static scoring treats the tax base (otherwise known as people) as though it were bolted to the pavement.  Dynamic scoring asks whether some of those high earners will rearrange compensation, realize income in different years, move certain activities, change residency, or pay clever people in expensive suits to make taxable income appear less taxable.  That matters in New York because the tax base is already unusually top-heavy.  The Citizens Budget Commission (CBC) notes that in 2023, filers earning over $1 million paid 37 percent of New York City’s personal income taxes and that New York City residents already face a 14.8% combined top marginal personal income tax rate.  CBC also says Mamdani’s proposed two-point increase would push that to 16.8%.  When that much of the city’s tax revenue rests on so few shoulders, you do not need a full-blown stampede to shake the budget foundations; a brisk, offended jog will do.

Then come the business taxes, which in campaign rhetoric are always aimed at “the most profitable corporations,” a phrase designed to make the target sound like a dragon sleeping on a mattress of gold.  In practice, the latest plan would raise city corporate taxes by 1.8 percentage points for finance firms, 1.77 points for other corporations, and 0.4 points for large, unincorporated businesses, while also cutting back the PTET credit to 75 cents on the dollar.  Dynamic analysis here asks whether firms absorb the hit, pass it on in prices, reduce hiring, delay expansion, shift activity elsewhere, or simply get extremely creative with the legal geography of profits.  And because the package also leans on taxes tied to luxury property and cash real-estate deals, dynamic scoring would ask the obvious rude question: what happens when fewer people decide to buy the penthouse quite so urgently?

CBC argues that New York’s tax burden is already the nation’s heaviest, that the state’s share of the nation’s millionaires fell from 12.7 percent to 8.7 percent between 2010 and 2022, and that the number of publicly traded company headquarters in New York shrank between 2020 and 2025 while Texas and Florida gained.  That does not prove that every additional tax increase causes a U-Haul parade at dawn, but it does suggest that competitiveness is not an imaginary concept invented by hedge-fund lobbyists while they sipped champagne and ate canapés. 

If Mamdani’s Path One tax plan were passed, New York City’s business taxes would be 8.73% higher than New Jersey’s, 14.73% higher than Florida’s, and 19.48% higher than the business tax in Texas.  To put that in dollars and (common) sense, if Mamdani is successful in raising business taxes, J. P. Morgan can save $14 billion by moving to Fort Worth.  And that’s each and every year.

So what would a plain-English dynamic model look like? Something like this: the static total is about $6.95 billion, because that is what you get when you assume the tax base salutes smartly and remains where it is told.  But public documents I found list those revenue claims as straightforward amounts; they do not provide a published macroeconomic feedback score.  So, the next step is necessarily an illustration rather than revealed scripture from City Hall. 

Suppose the behavioral and economic effects of the tax increase shave 10 percent off the static forecast.  That leaves a shortfall of about $740 million.  Suppose the haircut is a more noticeable 17 percent.  Then you are at about $1.25 billion.  Suppose the reaction is fairly strong and knocks off 29 percent.  Then the haul falls to about $2 billion.  Same taxes, same press conference, same righteous language, but very different money. 

Painfully, New York Mayor Mamdani is learning that proposing lavish new government programs is the easy part; prying the money loose to fund them is where the parade runs into the brick wall.  Remember the promised government grocery stores?  While they are still in the planning stage, the mayor’s latest proposals are more than $10 million a year more expensive.

All of this reminds me of an old joke.  A politician dies and arrives at the Pearly Gates. St. Peter tells him that, by special arrangement, he may spend one day in Heaven and one day in Hell before deciding where he wants to spend eternity.

First, he visits Heaven. It is lovely enough: soft music, puffy clouds, pleasant people in flowing robes, and an endless supply of calm conversation.  Nice, certainly, though a bit quiet for his taste.

The next day, he is taken down to Hell. To his astonishment, it is magnificent.  The sun is shining, the fairways are perfect, and all his old political friends are there, laughing, slapping him on the back, and calling him by his first name.  They spend the morning playing golf, the afternoon drinking excellent whiskey, and the evening at a splendid banquet with steak, lobster, champagne, and a cabaret floor show.  The devil himself is charming, witty, and a magnificent host.

The following day, the politician is returned to Heaven and asked for his choice.  "Well," he says, "Heaven is pleasant, of course.  But Hell is clearly more suited to my temperament.  I choose Hell."

So down he goes.

This time, when the doors open, he finds not green fairways and fine liquor, but a blasted wasteland of smoke, fire, filth, shrieking, and misery. His friends are nowhere to be seen. Demons are whipping the damned, the air stinks of sulfur, and the banquet appears to have been replaced by something boiling in a dented bucket.

The politician stares at the devil in outrage. "What happened?  Yesterday this place was a country club.  Today it looks like Newark during a sanitation strike."

The devil smiles.  "Yesterday," he says, "we were campaigning. Today, you voted."

Galveston, Cannons, and a Boat Wearing a Bale Suit

Galveston has always been a place where commerce, weather, and human judgment wrestle in public, and none of them likes to lose.  Even in the Civil War, Galveston could not simply be “captured” like a polite chess piece.  It had to be negotiated with, argued over, accidentally surrendered, loudly reclaimed, and then remembered—sometimes in brick, sometimes in splinters, and sometimes in the soggy afterlife of a sandbar.

When people talk about “the Battle of Galveston,” they usually mean the New Year’s Day brawl of January 1, 1863.  But Galveston got two bites at that apple, because there was an earlier, oddly diplomatic showdown in October 1862, that set the stage for the main event.  If you like your history with a dash of irony, consider it a two-act play: Act I consists of a naval squadron arriving with an ultimatum and a timetable, and Act II involves two of the weirdest warships of the Civil War.

Then, hovering behind it all—because Galveston never misses an opportunity to turn chaos into valuable real estate—is the Hendley Building, that still stands on the Strand, like a witness who refuses to be cross-examined without a docent present. 

Act I (October 1862): The Battle That Began with a “Surrender,” and Ended with Everyone Leaving.  On October 4, 1862, Union forces, under Commander William B. Renshaw, sailed into Galveston Harbor to demand surrender of what was (inconveniently for everyone involved) the most important port in Texas.  The Confederate commander in the district, Paul O.  Hébert, had already judged Galveston essentially indefensible and had removed much of the heavy artillery from the island—one of those decisions that makes perfect sense right up until your enemy arrives and asks politely—though heavily armed—for your keys.  The Fort Point garrison did fire on the Union ships, and the Union replied by dismounting Confederate cannon with return fire. 

Now, in a more orderly universe, this is where the city either falls or it does not.  But Galveston is always different.  Colonel Joseph J.  Cook arranged a four-day truce, which he used to quietly evacuate his men to the mainland, which was technically a violation of the truce, but there wasn’t a referee, so he got away with it.  The Union ships held the harbor, but the onshore occupation force was thin, delayed, and not exactly brimming with “we own this place now” energy.

Meanwhile, the Stars and Stripes briefly went up over the city, then came down again, because Renshaw had the awkward problem of possessing a navy but not possessing a town-sized garrison.  In other words, Galveston was “captured” in the same way you “capture” a cat: you declare success, and the cat continues doing whatever it wants.  Eventually, enough Union troops arrived to occupy the city.

Intermission: The Confederacy Invents “Armor,” Texas style.  After October, the Confederacy did what it often did best: it improvised.  When Major General John Bankhead Magruder took over the district, he began organizing a recapture.  The land side would be a push across the railroad bridge with infantry, cavalry, and guns.  The water side would be—how shall we put this—less traditional.

For the naval attack, Magruder placed artillery and dismounted cavalry aboard two river steamers, CS Bayou City and CS Neptune, under Captain Leon Smith.  These were not purpose-built warships, but the naval equivalent of repurposing a delivery van into an armored personnel carrier because it was available, and because nobody nearby was operating an iron mill.  This was going to be an example of good ol’ boys improvising.

Enter the cottonclad: a wooden steamer with 500 lb. bales of cotton used as protective layering, because iron plating was scarce, expensive, and generally not sitting around in coastal Texas waiting to be stapled onto a boat.  Cotton bales could absorb a surprising amount of punishment—right up until they caught fire, at which point your “armor” became an enthusiastic bonfire with strong opinions.  Still, it was an emergency and when all you have is a hammer, the whole world looks like a nail.

Meet the star of our show: the CS Bayou City, a Commercial Steamer with Military Aspirations.  Bayou City began life as a 165-foot side-wheel steamer, built for commercial use at Jeffersonville, Indiana, in 1859.  She was chartered in 1861 for service in the Texas Marine Department, operated as a freighter in the Galveston area, until taken over by the Confederate Army in October 1862—because nothing says “wartime efficiency” like reassigning a working boat from freight to combat and hoping the paperwork catches up later. 

Act II (January 1, 1863): New Year’s Day Celebration, complete with Boarding Parties.  The January battle is sometimes called the “Second Battle of Galveston,” because historians enjoy numbering things almost as much as generals enjoy naming them after themselves.  What matters is that it was a combined operation: a land attack against the Union-held waterfront and a naval strike against the Union squadron in the bay.  The Union had multiple ships mounting heavy artillery; the Confederacy’s floating punchline consisted of surprise, two improvised cottonclads, and a great deal of confidence. 

At dawn, the cottonclads moved in.  Neptune took a beating and was badly damaged; Bayou City pushed through and closed with Harriet Lane.  Accounts emphasize the chaotic intimacy of the fighting—ramming, locking ships together, and then boarding, because once you have a river steamer wrapped in cotton, the obvious next step is to treat it as a medieval siege tower with a paddle wheel. 

The land forces quickly moved into the center of Galveston, taking over the Hendley Building as an artillery position.  Sharpshooters manned the windows while light artillery was positioned on the roof, quickly engaging the gunboat USS Owasco in the harbor.  You can still spot cannonball or shell damage on the building’s 20th Street-facing side.

Meanwhile, the Union flagship Westfield managed to get grounded on a sandbar, which is the maritime equivalent of tripping over your own shoelaces during a duel.  With capture looming, Renshaw ordered the Westfield blown up to prevent her falling into Confederate hands.  Unfortunately, this task was done so speedily, that Renshaw perished along with his ship.  Since the two largest Union ships were lost, the rest of the fleet decided to retreat.

When news of the loss of the Westfield reached Washington, Assistant Secretary of the Navy Gustavus V. Fox called it “the most melancholy affair ever recorded in the history of our gallant navy.”  That is a remarkably dramatic sentence for a bureaucracy, and you can practically hear the desk drawers being slammed in Washington.  When US Naval ships perform well, the name of the ship is recycled on later ships.  Not surprisingly, the Navy never named another ship “Whitfield”.

Why the Cottonclads Worked (This Time).  The trick was not that cottonclads were “better” ships.  They were not.  The trick was that they were good enough, at the right moment, in the right water, with the right blend of surprise, sandbars, and audacity. 

Galveston Bay is not a featureless arena; it is a place with channels, shoals, and the sort of geography that punishes anyone who assumes the map is merely decorative.  The Confederates exploited the fact that close action—boarding range—neutralizes some of the Union advantage in heavier guns.  Cotton bales helped keep a charging steamer intact long enough to arrive at the part of the battle where muskets, pistols, and boarding parties could matter. 

And then, of course, there is morale.  Cottonclads look ridiculous right up until they are next to you, at speed, with angry armed men leaping onto your deck.  Military history is full of bad ideas that work once, largely because the other side did not expect anyone to try them. 

There is something perfectly Galvestonian about Bayou City: a commercial steamer repurposed into a warship by literally strapping prosperity to the sides and charging into a superior fleet.  It is industrial improvisation, regional economics, and pure nerve, all stitched together with the confidence that, if you cannot outgun the other fellow, you can at least get close enough that the argument becomes a wrestling match.

The two Galveston battles also make a tidy paired lesson.  October 1862 shows how a port can be “taken” in theory while remaining contested in practice.  January 1863 shows how a desperate, improvised strike—cotton bales and all—can flip the board when timing, terrain, and surprise cooperate.

And the next time you are on the Strand, near the Hendley Building, look at the brick and imagine the view toward the bay: the smoke, the confusion, the sandbar humiliations, and, sliding into history on paddle wheels, a cottonclad steamer doing its best impression of an ironclad.  History likes ironclads, but Galveston should be remembered for the cottonclad that made the Union Navy learn, the hard way, that geography, grit, and bales can all be weapons.

Three Centuries of Royal Scandals

Andrew, the royal reprobate formerly known as Prince, is the first senior member of the royal family to be arrested since Oliver Cromwell caused Charles I to get an extremely low haircut.  After the all-but-deadly-dull reign, at least morally, of the last two English monarchs, it is easy to forget that sexual scandals and assorted peccadillos are associated with almost every branch of the noble family tree. 

Let’s review:  The current royal family started about 300 years ago when Parliament ignored 50-odd closer (although Catholic) relatives of Queen Anne and imported a distant (but Protestant) German-speaking George I.  (technically, it was 312 years ago, but 300 is close enough for conversational warfare.)

George I (r.  1714–1727): “I came for the crown; I stayed for the mistress”

George I arrived from Hanover with two main hobbies: being king and not being married in any meaningful emotional sense.  His wife, Sophia Dorothea, became the star of one of the era’s grimmest “relationship outcomes”: separation, scandal, and long confinement.  

George’s marriage to Sophia Dorothea of Celle was a dynastic arrangement that curdled into open hostility.  By the early 1690s, the story goes, she’d fallen into a dangerous romance with Philip Christoph von Königsmarck, and the pair began plotting the one thing a court hates more than infidelity: escape.  Then, in early July 1694—after a late meeting in Hanover—Königsmarck vanished as neatly as a secret dropped into a river.  (Sources bicker over the exact date, but they agree on the result: Königsmarck was professionally disappeared.)

What followed was less romance novel and more administrative cruelty.  George pushed through a divorce that assigned Sophia Dorothea all the blame, stripped her of status, barred her from remarrying, and—most viciously—cut her off from her children.  She was sent into lifelong confinement at Ahlden House, effectively a “respectable” prison, where she remained until her death decades later.

If you’re keeping score, this reign sets the tone: the monarchy is now British, but the marital peace is… multinational.

George II (r.  1727–1760): “The mistress is a job, and it comes with a pension”

George II and Queen Caroline were, by royal standards, a functional partnership: she supplied the brains, the charm, and (when he wandered off to Hanover) the competent adult supervision as regent, while he supplied the temper, the uniforms, and the firm conviction that fidelity was a charming folk custom practiced by lesser people.

And yes, he kept mistresses—because in that court, a mistress wasn’t always “a scandal” so much as a semi-official office, complete with access, allies, and enemies. One of his earlier favorites, Henrietta Howard, even served in Caroline’s household, which is the sort of arrangement that makes you suspect the Georgian court ran on powdered wigs, port, and spite.

His most famous late-career “department head” was Amalie von Wallmoden, Countess of Yarmouth—a Hanoverian import who didn’t just get the king, but got a life peerage in 1740, neatly converting adultery into a title you could print on calling cards.  In a world where access was currency, that made her a gravitational body: politicians orbited, rivals hissed, and pamphleteers sharpened their quills with the usual insinuation that patronage, policy, and pillow talk all lived in the same suite of rooms.  Rumor even assigned her an illegitimate son by the king—exactly the kind of story that doesn’t need to be proven to be useful, profitable, and repeatable.

Think of it as an early form of government: the Crown, the Cabinet, and the Side Piece.

George III (r.  1760–1820): “A domestic man trapped in a family business”

George III is the palate cleanser in this menu.  He was known for being comparatively devoted to Queen Charlotte, producing an impressive number of legitimate children, and generally giving the nation fewer bedroom bulletins than it had come to expect.

His greatest “scandal,” if you must call it that, was the painful fact that the King frequently talked to trees and was barking mad.  At one point, he believed that he was George Washington leading an army against himself.  In short: less randy, more tragic, and arguably the last time Britain said, “Ah, finally, a normal one.”

George IV (r.  1820–1830): “The Regency: now with extra Regency”

If George III was the calm, George IV was the compensatory storm.  As Prince Regent, he specialized in overpriced luxury, drama, and romantic chaos.

George IV (a.k.a. “Prinny” when the knives were out) managed to turn the monarchy into a traveling show of appetite, debt, and romantic arson.  Before he was even king, he secretly married Maria Fitzherbert—an officially unacceptable match—then watched his allies publicly swat down the rumor when it became inconvenient while begging Parliament to cover his exorbitant debts.  From there he lurched into the spectacularly unhappy marriage to Caroline of Brunswick and when he wanted out, he effectively tried to weaponize Parliament of the United Kingdom into a divorce court, sparking a public circus of accusation and counteraccusation so lurid it came with paperwork.

Meanwhile, the popular press and caricaturists treated him like a walking moral lesson.  Cartoonists didn’t just draw him as bloated—they helpfully surrounded him with the sort of “medical” clutter that screamed venereal panic (the Georgian-era visual equivalent of yelling “pox!” in a crowded theatre).  And the “madness” angle wasn’t just a cheap jibe: he became Prince Regent because George III was incapacitated by severe mental illness.  By the end, the punchline turned grimly physical—corsets, dropsy, gout, and enormous doses of laudanum and opium to blunt the pain—less “divine right” than “medicated decline.”  This is the era that convinces people the monarchy is a soap opera with better furniture.

William IV (r.  1830–1837): “Ten kids, one actress, and then—surprise—respectability”

Before he became king, William IV lived for years with the actor Dorothea Jordan and had ten children with her.  Ten!  If you’ve ever wondered how royals manage “spares,” William took a… generous interpretation of the concept.

Then he became king and, like a man who suddenly realized the portrait painter had arrived, he pivoted into legitimacy and public duty.  Not exactly a scandal machine during his short reign—but the prequel season was a doozy.

Victoria (r.  1837–1901): “Make it moral, make it domestic, make it an empire”

Victoria is the monarch most associated with respectability—partly because she and Albert made a persuasive brand out of family life.  If the Georgians felt like a champagne spill, Victoria felt like a starched tablecloth.

That said, the Victorian era did have its murmurs: intense grief, intense attachments (Hello, John Brown), and a public image so carefully stage-managed that it practically invented modern monarchy PR.  If Victoria had a scandal, it was the quiet kind: feelings that were not filed in triplicate.

Edward VII (r.  1901–1910): “When your coronation follows your social calendar”

Edward VII spent most of his long apprenticeship as Prince of Wales treating the throne like a distant inheritance and London society like an all-you-can-eat buffet with a dress code. His “Marlborough House set” ran on racing, cards, weekend house parties, and adultery so routine a schedule might as well have been printed on the invitations.

In September 1890, Bertie turned up at a country-house party at Tranby Croft and did what he loved best: played baccarat, a game that was, inconveniently, technically illegal, especially when played for stakes by the glitterati.  When a guest, Sir William Gordon-Cumming, was accused of cheating, the solution was pure high-society logic: don’t investigate too hard—stage a hush deal.  Gordon-Cumming was pressured into signing a written pledge that he’d never play cards again, and the Prince of Wales obligingly signed, too, as if the heir to the throne were endorsing a royal non-disclosure agreement on a tapestry-covered card table.

Naturally, this secrecy popped like a champagne cork.  Gordon-Cumming sued, and in 1891, the heir to the throne was hauled into court as a witness—an event that generated exactly the kind of “fashionable matinée” atmosphere that screams useless monarchy.  Gordon-Cumming lost, his life was effectively socially and professionally detonated, and Bertie walked away with a fresh layer of public disgust, because nothing says “future national figurehead” like getting caught in the blast radius of a rigged secrecy pact.

This was not a man who dabbled. He acquired official mistresses with the kind of regularity with which other people acquired umbrellas. Lillie Langtry became his first publicly acknowledged mistress in the late 1870s, and society treated this as news, not a shock. Daisy Greville, Countess of Warwick, later became his “official” mistress (and she was eventually replaced by Alice Keppel), as though the position came with a job description, and a handover memo.

And when the gossip columns needed a courtroom sequel, they got one: in 1870, the Prince of Wales was dragged into the Mordaunt divorce scandal, subpoenaed to testify, and forced to deny—on the record—that anything “improper” had happened. The court applauded, which is a very Victorian way of saying, “We absolutely came for the mess.”

Queen Victoria, meanwhile, regarded Bertie’s appetites as a personal affront to both morality and monarchy.  The distress caused by his affairs hit the family hard, and Victoria’s grief after Albert’s death curdled into lasting bitterness toward her heir.  She wrote, memorably, that much as she pitied him, she could not look at him “without a shudder”—which is about as close as you get to a royal parenting review in one line.

George V (r.  1910–1936): “The serious one, starring in a family of chaos”

George V is often remembered as dutiful, conventional, and sturdily monogamous—the monarchy’s answer to, “Can we please just run the country without a subplot?”

Unfortunately, the universe heard this and responded by giving him children and relatives with… plot.  Which leads us to—

Edward VIII (r.  1936): “Speedrun monarchy”

Edward VIII reigned less than a year but managed to deliver one of the biggest royal crises of the modern era: abdication to marry Wallis Simpson, a twice-divorced American, in a time when that collided spectacularly with monarchy, church, and politics.  Even after his abdication, Edward managed to create new scandals, at one time plotting with Hitler to serve as puppet king in a postwar England.

This wasn’t “randy” so much as “romantic defiance with constitutional consequences.” Still, if you’re grading royal scandals on impact, this one is a platinum medal.

George VI (r.  1936–1952): “Stability, courage, and no time for nonsense”

George VI is the emergency replacement monarch who turned out to be exactly what Britain needed during WWII: steady, hardworking, and personally respectable, with a marriage that projected partnership rather than chaos.

If you’re hunting for scandal, this reign will disappoint you.  Its drama was national, not tabloid: war, duty, health, and the weight of a job he never wanted.  The juiciest thing about George VI is that he makes people feel bad for ever enjoying the gossip in the first place.  (Well, there is that story about smoking three packs of cigarettes a day resulting in having a lung removed in an operation at home…)

åElizabeth II (r.  1952–2022): “The longest reign, the largest scrapbook”

Elizabeth II’s personal life, by royal standards, was famously restrained—yet her reign became a museum of modern scandal simply because it lasted so long, and because the press got louder, faster, and more hungry.

Her “royal scandal” chapter is not so much “the Queen did what?!” but more of a series of her family’s private lives showing up on the evening news:

• family marriages cracking under public pressure,
• the media turning private misery into public sport,
• and the monarchy learning that cameras don’t blink, and tabloids don’t forgive.

If earlier monarchs had scandals as events, Elizabeth II had scandal as weather—rolling in, blowing through, and occasionally taking the roof off the gazebo.

Charles III (r.  2022– ): “The sequel nobody expected to be this complicated”

Charles III arrived on the throne with a backstory already widely known: a long, messy, very public romantic history that played out over decades, and a modern monarchy trying to look timeless while living in real time.

If you want “randy,” this reign’s reputation is mostly inherited from Charles’s years as Prince of Wales—proof that in royal life, your prequel can dominate your present.  As king, the challenge is less romance than management: family narratives, rebuilding public trust, and the small task of being a symbol in an age that distrusts symbols.

Which brings us back to Prince Andrew, who proves that selecting leaders by birth order has never once produced a slow-motion fiasco.  If your family business is literally hereditary symbolism, it’s only a matter of time before one member treats the whole operation like a private club with unlimited guest passes and no bouncer.   Andrew’s modern masterpiece was the attempt to talk his way out of trouble on television—an interview that didn’t so much “clear the air” as replace it with a thick, lingering fog of disbelief—followed by the palace doing what it does best: removing uniforms, patronages, and public duties in the calm, administrative tone usually reserved for reassigning a problematic office printer.

And then the plot did what royal plots always do: it escalated.  Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor was arrested.  If the Georgians gave us mistresses with titles and the Edwardians gave us baccarat in the drawing room, the 21st century gives us the inevitable endpoint of a system that foolishly breeds for primogeniture instead of judgment: not scandal as naughty gossip, but scandal as paperwork, police statements, and the monarchy discovering—again—that “born to it” is not the same thing as “good at it.”

The Surrender of Fort Fillmore

Perhaps the first thing you should know about this little-known Civil War episode is that the geography is the villain of the story—or, at least, a co-conspirator.  People love to imagine Civil War battles as neat little arrows on a tidy map.  Down here in the Mesilla Valley, the map itself has been wandering around like a drunken steer.  The mountains behave; the river does not.

And then there’s the border.  When Fort Fillmore’s drama unfolds in July 1861, the “southern New Mexico” you know today is still the new wing of the house—added via the Gadsden Purchase in 1853–1854, which means the international boundary everyone takes for granted had been settled, locally, for only about seven years.  That short timeline helps explain why some old maps look a bit… aspirational.

In 1848, the little community that became Mesilla was established west of the Rio Grande (and along El Camino Real).  But the Rio Grande is famous for behaving like a living thing—shifting, braiding, cutting new channels during big floods, and (at times) flipping what people think of as the “east bank” and “west bank.”  One technical summary of the 1860s flooding notes the river cut a new course that left Mesilla on the river’s east bank, and other local histories point out yet another course change later that helped produce the river’s present-day position.

That’s why old descriptions can sound like they’re contradicting one another when they’re actually describing different decades of a restless river.

Now, about Fort Fillmore, itself: if you’re picturing towering stockade walls and a gate you could drive a stagecoach through—nope.  Fort Fillmore was a typical southern New Mexico “fort”: a cluster of adobe buildings, arranged around a central space, with one side open toward the Rio Grande.  A visitor in the 1850s even described it as “large and pleasant,” with comfortable adobe quarters.

Fort Fillmore was established in 1851, across the Rio Grande from La Mesilla to protect travel and traffic through a corridor that connected settlements, trails, and commerce, and that also drew Apache raids and other violence common to the era.

So, keep that mental image in mind: Fort Fillmore was not a compact stone castle, but crude adobe structures in open desert country that was surrounded by nothing but tumbleweeds—hardly an ideal place to absorb a determined attack, especially from mounted men who could choose their angles of attack.  This was a fort that you could demolish with a good garden hose much less a howitzer.

This may sound like the punchline to a bad joke, but it’s mostly a story about risk management.

Fort Fillmore was not built near the river, but on sand hills above it—a choice that made sense if you feared floods and wanted slightly higher, drier ground.  The problem is that a river that shifts can turn “near” into “not near” with alarming speed.  One widely repeated summary notes that after the Rio Grande changed course, the fort ended up being about a mile from the river and had to be supplied by water wagons, which, in turn, made it harder to defend in a crisis.

In other words: it wasn’t built where there was no water so much as it was built where water was close enough—until it wasn’t.

When the Civil War begins, the U.S. Army in the far Southwest is thinly spread, and everything is held together with small detachments, long supply lines, and optimism.  In July 1861, Confederate forces from Texas under Lt.  Col.  John R.  Baylor move into the Mesilla area.  Baylor’s men are mounted, aggressive, and comfortable in desert campaigning.

At Fort Fillmore, the Union commander is Major Isaac Lynde, with several companies of infantry regulars and attached elements—enough to look respectable on paper, but not enough to feel secure when you’re staring at mounted opponents, on a jittery frontier, and insecure in the knowledge that your supply lines have been cut and that the rest of the nation’s attention is a thousand miles away.

Lynde marches out toward Mesilla, where Baylor’s men are positioned.  The confrontation becomes what you might call a “confidence test,” and Lynde does not pass it, despite having more soldiers than the Confederate force.  After a short fight kills three union soldiers, Lynde falls back to Fort Fillmore.  This small battle is known as the First Battle of Mesilla.  (There was a second battle about a year later, but it was so small that no one is sure exactly when it happened.)

This is the hinge point: once he returns to the post, Lynde has a decision.  He can try to defend his mud fort or abandon it and try to save his command by moving north towards another Union fort.  It was not much of a choice, so Lynde orders the soldiers to prepare to abandon the fort.

Now here’s where the story gets a little hazy.  As part of the preparation to leave, Lynde orders that all of the fort’s stores that couldn’t be evacuated are to be destroyed.  Whether the fort had a large stock of medicinal brandy or the Sutler’s store was oversupplied with whiskey is a mystery.  What is known is that many of the soldiers decide that the best way to destroy the liquor is to run it through their systems.  Many of the soldiers choose to fill their canteens with whiskey. 

Perhaps they were worried about snake bite?  As W. C. Fields said, “Always carry a flagon of whiskey in case of snake bite.  Always carry a snake in case of thirst.”

Lynde wants an orderly retreat, leaving the Mesilla area and heading east into the Organ Mountains and the only source of reliable water nearby—the springs in the San Augustin Pass, about 20 miles distant.  From there, they could move north towards Fort Union. 

That was the plan.  In practice, it turns into a slow-motion collapse.  Men fall out, heat punishes them, the column straggles, and the mounted Confederates enjoy the luxury of mounted pursuit while the infantry fights the desert as much as any enemy.  Southern New Mexico in July is as hot as a pawn shop pistol.  The heat is stifling even in the shade and there ain’t no shade.  In the middle of a New Mexico summer, I’ve seen trees chase dogs in hope of relief.

Baylor splits his forces, sending half through a narrow mountain pass that now bears his name.  While his men are mounted, Lynde’s troops are on foot, struggling in the heat and are beginning to suffer from the effects of their canteens.

By the time Baylor closes in near the San Augustin Pass/San Augustin Springs area, Lynde’s command is demoralized and scattered enough that the surrender becomes, in Lynde’s mind, the least-bad way to avoid slaughter.  He surrenders without a climactic last stand. 

Baylor plays this well.  He pressures, pursues, and presents Lynde with the sense that resistance will only mean pointless casualties.  Lynde yields.  Baylor has captured a Union force in spectacular fashion, and the Confederacy suddenly has a foothold in the region strong enough for Baylor to proclaim a Confederate “Arizona” government soon after, with Mesilla as its capital. 

Lynde’s surrender detonates his career.  He is disgraced, and the Army moves harshly against him.  A War Department order drops him from the rolls “for cowardice,” effective the date of the surrender. 

Baylor rides his victory into power.  His proclamation and early Confederate control in the region make him briefly prominent.  But Baylor’s story also curdles.  He is removed from authority later after issuing an infamous order calling for the extermination of the Apache people—an act so extreme that even Confederate leadership moved against him. 

Today, Fort Fillmore is not only forgotten, but it has almost completely vanished. Where the fort once stood is a large pecan orchard where the grounds have been expertly leveled to conserve the precious irrigation water.  All that is left is the fort cemetery, located about half a mile southeast.

We need some way to commemorate this battle.  Since commemorative runs and walks are the national hobby now, let’s do what any responsible civilization would do: every July, we should stage an annual Fort Fillmore Whiskey Run.

Participants will begin with the traditional gesture—all water bottles will be confiscated and replaced with a pint of whiskey—then participants will set off to recreate Lynde’s finest hour: twenty miles of ambitious decision-making through the desert and march up into the Organ Mountains.  Finishers will be rewarded with access to the springs, which is a lovely touch of historical authenticity, except for the small complication that the springs inconveniently dried up around 1950.  Still, details, details.  History is built on them and is then immediately trampled by them.