title: Édouard Daladier

text: Nevertheless, perhaps discouraged by the pessimistic and defeatist attitudes of both military and civilian members of the French government and traumatised by the bloodbath in World War I that he had personally witnessed, Daladier ultimately chose to pressure Czechoslovakia into concessions. The French economic situation was very worrying since the French franc had been devalued on 4 May 1938 for the third time since October 1936. Daladier wanted to stabilise the franc and so had fixed the exchange rate to 176 francs per pound sterling.


title: Édouard Daladier

text: The crisis of 20–22 May 1938 made the franc come under immense financial pressure since many investors did not wish to hold French assets or debts if France went to war. Jacques Rueff, the director of "direction générale du mouvement des fonds" and special adviser to Finance Minister, Paul Marchandeau, stated in a report that the government must cut defense spending or find more sources of short-term loans, as the French government was running out of money. Marchandeau stated that ordinary charges upon the treasury in 1938 would "exceed" 42 billion francs, and Rueff warned that France would go bankrupt once the legal limits upon short-term loans from the Bank of France was reached. Marchandeau, in testimony before the Senate Finance Committee, stated that the government had only 30 million francs in its account and 230 million francs available from the Bank of France.


title: Édouard Daladier

text: As French government expenditure for the month of May 1938 alone totalled 4,500 million francs, the British historian Martin Thomas wrote, "Daladier's government was utterly reliant upon the success of its devaluation". To provide revenue, the government needed to sell more short-term bonds, but investors were highly reluctant to buy French bonds if Germany was threatening Czechoslovakia and put France on the brink of war. Because the franc was tied to the pound, France needed loans from Britain, which were not forthcoming, and so France was left "with its hands tied". British and American investors were unwilling to buy French bonds as long as the Sudetenland Crisis continued, which caused "severe monetary problems" for the French government in August–September 1938. Only when Daladier moved the "free-market liberal" Paul Reynaud from the Justice Ministry to the Finance Ministry in November 1938 did France regain the confidence of international investors, who resumed buying French bonds.


title: Édouard Daladier

text: Reports from the embassy in Warsaw and the legations in Belgrade and Bucharest emphasised that Yugoslavia and Romania would probably do nothing if Germany invaded Czechoslovakia, and Poland might very well join in with Germany since the Teschen conflict between Poland and Czechoslovakia had made them bitter enemies.


title: Édouard Daladier

text: Of France's potential allies in Eastern Europe, only the Soviet Union, which had no border with Czechoslovakia, professed a willingness to come to Czechoslovakia's aid if Germany invaded, but both Poland and Romania were unwilling to extend transit rights for the Red Army, which presented major problems.


title: Édouard Daladier

text: On 25 September 1938, at the Bad Godesberg Summit, Hitler rejected Chamberlain's offer to have the Sudetenland join Germany in few months, declared that the timeline was unacceptable and that the Sudetenland had to "go home to the "Reich"" by 1 October, and stated that the Polish and Hungarian claims against Czechoslovakia must also be satisfied by 1 October or Czechoslovakia would be invaded. Upon hearing what Hitler had demanded at the summit, Daladier told his cabinet that France "intended to go to war".


title: Édouard Daladier

text: The next day, Daladier told his close friend, US Ambassador William Christian Bullitt Jr., that he would much prefer war to the "humiliation" of the Bad Godesberg terms.


title: Édouard Daladier

text: Daladier ordered the French military to mobilise and to put France on a war footing, with a blackout being imposed at night so that German bombers would be not guided to French cities by the lights. On 26 September, Daladier ordered General Maurice Gamelin to London to begin staff talks with the Imperial General Staff. On 27 September, Gamelin, when asked by his "chef de cabinet" if Daladier was serious about war, replied, "He'll do it, he'll do it".


title: Édouard Daladier

text: However, on 29 September 1938, Chamberlain announced to the British House of Commons that he just received a phone call from Benito Mussolini, who said that Hitler had reconsidered his views and was now willing to discuss a compromise solution to the crisis in Munich. Ultimately, Daladier felt that France could not win against Germany without Britain on its side, and Chamberlain's announcement that he would be flying to Munich led him to attend the Munich Conference as well, which was held the next day on 30 September.


title: Édouard Daladier

text: The Munich Agreement was a compromise since Hitler abandoned his more extreme demands such as settling the Polish and Hungarian claims by 1 October, but the conference concluded that Czechoslovakia was to turn over the Sudetenland to Germany within ten days in October and would be supervised by an Anglo-Franco-Italo-German commission. Daladier was happy to have avoided war but felt that the agreement he had signed on 30 September in Munich was a shameful treaty that had betrayed Czechoslovakia, France's most loyal ally in Eastern Europe. Although Daladier feared public hostility to the Munich Agreement on his return to Paris, he was acclaimed by the crowd, which cheered the fact that there would not be another war.


title: Édouard Daladier

text: Most famously, when he saw the enthusiastic crowds waving at his plane as it landed at Le Bourget Airfield before landing, he turned to his aide Alexis Léger (A.K.A Saint John Perse) and commented: ""Ah! les cons! s'ils savaient..."" ("Ah! The fools! If only they knew...").


title: Édouard Daladier

text: Daladier had been made aware in 1932 by German rivals to Hitler that Krupp manufactured heavy artillery, and the "Deuxième Bureau" had a grasp of the scale of German military preparations but lacked hard intelligence of hostile intentions.


title: Édouard Daladier

text: In October 1938, Daladier opened secret talks with the Americans on how to bypass the Neutrality Acts and to allow the French to buy American aircraft to make up for the underproductive French aircraft industry. Daladier commented in October 1938, "If I had three or four thousand aircraft, Munich would never have happened". He was most anxious to buy American war planes as the only way to strengthen the French Air Force. Major problems in the talks were how the French would pay for the American planes and how to bypass the Neutrality Acts.


title: Édouard Daladier

text: In addition, France had defaulted on its World War I debts in 1932 and so fell foul of the 1934 Johnson Act, which banned American loans to nations that had defaulted on their World War I debts. In February 1939, the French offered to cede their possessions in the Caribbean and the Pacific, together with a lump sum payment of 10 billion francs, in exchange for the unlimited right to buy American aircraft on credit.


title: Édouard Daladier

text: After tortuous negotiations, an arrangement was worked out in the spring of 1939 to allow the French to place huge orders with the American aircraft industry, but as most of the aircraft ordered had not arrived in France by 1940, the Americans arranged for French orders to be diverted to the British.


title: Édouard Daladier

text: At a rally in Marseille in October 1938, Daladier announced a new policy: "J'ai choisi mon chemin: la France en avant!" ("I have chosen my path; forward with France!"). He stated that his government's domestic and foreign policies were to be based on "firmness". What that meant, in practice, was the end of the social reforms of the Popular Front government to increase French productivity, especially by ending the 40-hour work week. In a series of decree laws issued on 1 November 1938 by Finance Minister Paul Reynaud, which bypassed the National Assembly, the 40-hour work week was ended, taxes were sharply increased; social spending was slashed, defence spending was increased, the power of unions were restricted and (most controversially) Saturday was once again declared to be a workday. In a radio broadcast on 12 November 1938, Reynaud stated, "We are going blindfold towards an abyss". He also argued that however much pain his reforms might cause, they were absolutely necessary. As part of the effort to put the French economy on a war footing, Reynaud increased the military budget from 29 billion francs to 93 billion francs. In response, the French Communist Party called for a general strike to protest the decrees that ended almost all of the reforms of the Popular Front.


title: Édouard Daladier

text: The one-day general strike of 30 November 1938, which pitted the government against unions supported by the Communist Party, proved to be the first test of Daladier's new policy of "firmness". Daladier declared a national emergency in response to the general strike, ordered the military to Paris and other major cities, suspended civil liberties, ordered the police to disperse striking workers with tear gas and to storm factories occupied by the workers and announced that any worker who took part in the strike would be fired immediately with no severance pay. After one day, the strike collapsed.


title: Édouard Daladier

text: At the time, Daladier justified his policy of "firmness" under the grounds that if France was to face the German challenge, French production would have to be increased and said that was the price of freedom. At the same time, the energetic Colonial Minister Georges Mandel was set about organising the French Colonial Empire for war. He established armament factories in French Indochina to supply the French garrisons there to deter Japan from invading, increased the number of colonial "coloured" divisions from 6 to 12, built defensive works in Tunisia to deter an Italian invasion from Libya and organised the colonial economies for a "total war".


title: Édouard Daladier

text: In France itself, Mandel launched a propaganda campaign emphasising how the French Colonial Empire was a source of strength under the slogan "110 million strong, France can stand up to Germany" in reference to the fact that the population of Germany was 80 million and that of France was 40 million, with the extra 70 million credited to France being the population of its colonies.


title: Édouard Daladier

text: The 40-hour work week was abolished under Daladier's government, but a more generous system of family allowances was established and set as a percentage of wages: for the first child 5%, for the second child 10% and for each additional child 15%. Also created was a home mother allowance, which had been advocated by natalist and Catholic women's groups since 1929. All mothers who were not professionally employed and whose husbands collected family allowances were eligible for the new benefit. In March 1939, the government added 10% for workers whose wives stayed home to take care of the children. Family allowances were enshrined in the Family Code of July 1939 and, with the exception of the stay-at-home allowance, are still in force. In addition, a decree was issued in May 1938 to allow the establishment of vocational guidance centres.


title: Édouard Daladier

text: In July 1937, a new law, which was followed by a similar law in May 1946, empowered the Department of Workplace Inspection to order temporary medical interventions.


title: Édouard Daladier

text: The British historian Richard Overy wrote: "The greatest achievement of Daladier in 1939 was to win from the British a firm commitment", the so-called "continental commitment" that every French leader had sought since 1919. Daladier had a low opinion of Britain and told Bullitt in November 1938 that he "fully expected to be betrayed by the British... he considered Chamberlain a desiccated stick; the King a moron; and the Queen an excessively ambitious woman... he felt that England had become so feeble and senile that the British would give away every possession of their friends rather than stand up to Germany and Italy". In late 1938 to early 1939, the British embassy was bombarded with rumours from reliable sources within the French government that France would seek an "understanding" with Germany that would resolve all problems in their relations. The fact that French Foreign Minister Georges Bonnet was indeed seeking such an understanding lent credence to such rumours.


title: Édouard Daladier

text: Daladier let Bonnet pursue his own foreign policy in the hope that it might finally spur the British into making the "continental commitment" since a France aligned with Germany would make the "Reich" Europe's strongest power and leave Britain with no ally of comparable strength in Europe.


title: Édouard Daladier

text: In January 1939, Daladier let the "Deuxième Bureau" manufacture the "Dutch War Scare". French intelligence fed misinformation to MI6 that Germany was about to invade the Netherlands with the aim of using Dutch air fields to launch a bombing campaign to raze British cities to the ground. As France was the only nation in Western Europe with an army strong enough to save the Netherlands, the "Dutch War Scare" led the British to make anxious inquiries in Paris to ask the French to intervene if the Netherlands were indeed invaded. In response, Daladier stated that if the British wanted the French to do something for their security, it was only fair for the British do something for French security. On 6 February 1939, Chamberlain, in a speech to the House of Commons, finally made the "continental commitment" as he told the House: "The solidarity that unites France and Britain is such that any threat to the vital interests of France must bring about the co-operation of Great Britain". On 13 February 1939, staff talks between the British Imperial General Staff and the French General Staff were opened.


title: Édouard Daladier

text: Daladier supported Chamberlain's policy of creating a "peace front" that was meant to deter Germany from aggression but was unhappy with the British "guarantee" of Poland, which Chamberlain had announced to the House of Commons on 31 March 1939. France had been allied to Poland since 1921, but Daladier had been bitter by the German-Polish Nonaggression Pact of 1934 and the Polish annexation of part of Czechoslovakia in 1938. Like other French leaders, he regarded the "Sanation" regime ruling Poland as a fickle and unreliable friend of France. The rise in French industrial output and the greater financial stability in 1939 as a result of Reynaud's reforms led Daladier to view the possibility of war with the "Reich" more favourably than had been the case in 1938. By September 1939, France's aircraft production was equal to Germany's, and 170 American planes were arriving per month.


title: Édouard Daladier

text: The Neutrality Acts were still in effect, but the supportive stance of US President Franklin Roosevelt led Daladier to assume that the Americans would maintain a pro-French neutrality and that their tremendous industrial resources would aid France if the Danzig Crisis ended in war.


title: Édouard Daladier

text: Daladier was far keener than Chamberlain was to bring the Soviet Union into the "peace front" and believed that only an alliance with the Soviets could deter Hitler from invading Eastern Europe.


title: Édouard Daladier

text: Daladier did not want a war with Germany in 1939 but sought to have such an overwhelming array of forces arranged against Germany that Hitler would be deterred from invading Poland. Daladier believed that Polish Guarantee by Britain would encourage Poland to object to having the Soviet Union join the "peace front", which indeed proved to be the case. The Poles refused to grant transit rights to the Red Army, which the Soviets made a precondition for their joining the "peace front". Daladier felt that Chamberlain should not have made guarantee until the Poles had agreed to grant transit rights to the Red Army. He charged that the guarantee made British and French diplomats have more leverage over Polish Foreign Minister Colonel Jozef Beck, who was widely disliked by other diplomats for his stubbornness and haughty manners.


title: Édouard Daladier

text: Daladier felt that on economic and military grounds, it was better to have the Soviet Union serve as the "eastern pivot" of the "peace front" than for Poland to do so, as the British preferred. Daladier disliked the Poles and the guarantee but believed in maintaining the alliance with Poland; he believed that France should stand by its commitments.


title: Édouard Daladier

text: A public opinion poll in June 1939 showed that 76% of the French believed that France should immediately declare war if Germany tried to seize the Free City of Danzig. For Daladier, the possibility that the Soviet Union might join the "peace front" was a "lifeline" and the best way of stopping another world war. He was deeply frustrated by the Polish refusal to permit transit rights for the Red Army.


title: Édouard Daladier

text: On 19 August 1939, Beck, in a telegram to Daladier, stated: "We have not got a military agreement with the USSR. We do not want to have one".


title: Édouard Daladier

text: Though the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of 23 August ruined Daladier's hopes of an Anglo-Franco-Soviet "peace front", he still believed that France and Britain could stop Germany together. On 27 August 1939, Daladier told Bullitt, "there was no further question of policy to be settled. His sister had put in two bags all the personal keepsakes and belonging he really cared about, and was prepared to leave for a secure spot at any moment. France intended to stand by the Poles, and if Hitler should refuse to negotiate with the Poles over Danzig, and should make war on Poland, France would fight at once".


title: Édouard Daladier

text: After the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact was signed, Daladier responded to the public outcry by outlawing the French Communist Party on the basis that it had refused to condemn Joseph Stalin's actions. During the Danzig Crisis, Daladier was greatly influenced by the advice that he received from Robert Coulondre, the French ambassador in Berlin, that Hitler would back down if France made a firm enough stand toward Poland. On 31 August 1939, Daladier read out to the French cabinet a letter he received from Coulondre: "The trial of strength turns to our advantage. It is only necessary to hold, hold, hold!"


title: Édouard Daladier

text: After the German invasion of Poland on 1 September, he reluctantly declared war on 3 September and inaugurated the Phoney War. On 6 October, Hitler offered France and Britain a peace proposal. There were more than a few in the French government who were prepared to take Hitler up on his offer, but in a nationwide broadcast the next day, Daladier declared, "We took up arms against aggression. We shall not put them down until we have guarantees for a real peace and security, a security which is not threatened every six months". On 29 January 1940, in a radio address delivered to the people of France, "", Daladier explicitly stated his opinion of the Germans: "For us, there is more to do than merely win the war. We shall win it, but we must also win a victory far greater than that of arms. In this world of masters and slaves, which those madmen who rule at Berlin are seeking to forge, we must also save liberty and human dignity".


title: Édouard Daladier

text: In March 1940, Daladier resigned as prime minister because of his failure to aid Finland's defence during the Winter War, and he was replaced by Paul Reynaud. Daladier remained defence minister, however, and his antipathy to the new prime minister prevented Reynaud from dismissing Maurice Gamelin as Supreme Commander of the French armed forces. As a result of the massive German breakthrough at Sedan, Daladier swapped ministerial offices with Reynaud and became foreign minister while Reynaud became defence minister. Gamelin was finally replaced by Maxime Weygand on 19 May 1940, nine days after the Germans began the Battle of France.


title: Édouard Daladier

text: Under the impression that the French government would continue in North Africa, Daladier fled with other members of the government to French Morocco, but he was arrested and tried for treason by the Vichy government during the Riom Trial.


title: Édouard Daladier

text: Daladier was interned in Fort du Portalet, in the Pyrenees. He was kept in prison from 1940 to April 1943, when he was handed over to the Germans and deported to Buchenwald concentration camp in Germany. In May 1943, he was transported to the Itter Castle, in North Tyrol, with other French dignitaries, where he remained until the end of the war. He was freed after the Battle for Castle Itter.


title: Édouard Daladier

text: After the war ended, Daladier was re-elected to the Chamber of Deputies in 1946 and acted as a patron to the Radical-Socialist Party's young reforming leader, Pierre Mendès-France. He also was elected as the Mayor of Avignon in 1953. He opposed the transferral of powers to Charles de Gaulle after the May 1958 crisis but, in the subsequent legislative elections of that year, failed to secure re-election. He withdrew from politics after a career of almost 50 years at the age of 74.


title: Édouard Daladier

text: Daladier died in Paris on 10 October 1970, at the age of 86. He was buried at Père Lachaise Cemetery.


title: Batman: Year One (film)

text: Batman: Year One is a 2011 American animated superhero film, based on the printed in 1987. It premiered at Comic-Con on July 22 and was officially released on October 18, 2011. The film was directed by Lauren Montgomery and Sam Liu. It is the 12th film released under the DC Universe Animated Original Movies banner, and was released on DVD, Blu-ray, and digital copy. The film received positive reviews upon release for its animation and faithfulness to the source material, although the story was criticized. The film was also a commercial success, bringing in $6.1 million on a budget of $3.5 million. It is followed chronologically by the animated adaptation of "".


title: Batman: Year One (film)

text: Billionaire Bruce Wayne returns home to Gotham City after 12 years abroad, training for his eventual one-man war against crime to avenge his dead parents. James Gordon moves to Gotham City with his wife, Barbara Gordon, after a transfer from Chicago. Both are swiftly acquainted with the corruption and violent atmosphere of the city. Gordon tries to focus on purging corruption from the Gotham City Police Department after witnessing his partner, , abuses his power as a cop. Unfortunately, several officers led by Flass beat him on the orders from his corrupt superior, Commissioner Gillian Loeb. In revenge, Gordon tracks Flass down, beats him, and leaves him naked and handcuffed in the snow.


title: Batman: Year One (film)

text: Bruce believes he is still unprepared to fight against crime despite having the skills he learned from abroad. He goes in disguise on a surveillance mission in Gotham's red-light district, but is reluctantly drawn into a brawl with several prostitutes, Holly Robinson and Selina Kyle. Two police officers shoot Bruce on sight and take him away in their patrol car. Bruce breaks free, flees from the scene and returns to Wayne Manor barely alive. He sits before his father's bust, requesting guidance in his war against crime. A bat suddenly crashes through a window and settles on the bust, inspiring him to save Gotham as Batman.


title: Batman: Year One (film)

text: Crimes significantly decline after weeks of Bruce striking as Batman. He even goes after Flass, who is in the middle of accepting a bribe from Jefferson Skeevers, a drug dealer of Carmine "The Roman" Falcone. Batman interrupts a dinner party held at the mansion of Gotham's mayor and announces that everyone in the party shall be brought to justice for their crimes someday. Infuriated by Batman's threats, Loeb orders Gordon and GCPD Detective Sarah Essen to arrest him. The two cops later come across a runaway truck that nearly hits an old lady. Batman manages to save the lady's life while Gordon stops the truck. Batman then flees into an abandoned building where Loeb immediately orders a bomb dropped on. He also sends in a SWAT team led by a trigger-happy commander, Branden, to kill any survivors left in the building. Batman uses a signal device to attract a swarm of bats from the Batcave as his only route to escape. After witnessing Batman in action, Selina is inspired to don a costume of her own and begin a life of crime.


title: Batman: Year One (film)

text: Gordon and Essen have a brief affair together and spend two months dating. She, however, chooses to leave Gotham upon learning he is going to be the father of Barbara's unborn child. Gordon is left alone to investigate Bruce's connection to Batman. He travels to Wayne Manor with Barbara to interrogate Bruce, who uses his playboy charms to divert suspicion. While leaving the manor, Gordon confesses his affair with Essen to Barbara. Skeevers gets bailed with the help of a hired lawyer, but is attacked by Batman shortly after who convinces him to testify against Flass. Skeevers is drugged with rat poison as an assassination attempt, so that he remains silent about the ties between the police force and the mafia, although Skeevers survives after all.


title: Batman: Year One (film)

text: Bruce sneaks into Falcone's manor as Batman and overhears the private conversation between the Roman and his nephew, Johnny Viti. He predicts their intentions to target Gordon's family, so he disguises himself as a motorcyclist to help Gordon. Gordon leaves home on Loeb's orders, but becomes suspicious and turns back only to discover Viti and his men already holding his family hostage. Viti flees the scene with Gordon's infant son. Gordon chases after him on Bruce's motorcycle. The two men end up fighting on a bridge until the baby falls. Bruce catches up on time and leaps over the bridge's railing to save the baby while Viti dies from the fall. Gordon thanks Bruce for saving his infant son's life and lets him go. Flass supplies Assistant District Attorney Harvey Dent with the evidence and testimony needed to implicate Loeb, who resigns in disgrace. Gordon is promoted to captain and prepares to meet with Batman in order to investigate a potential plot orchestrated by a criminal calling himself the Joker.


title: Batman: Year One (film)

text: Producer Bruce Timm noted that the adaptation of the film was relatively straightforward due to the cinematic nature of the original story arc. Bryan Cranston originally turned down the role as James Gordon because he was unfamiliar with both animation and classic comics. Cranston said: "I wasn't aware of this level of storytelling in animation."


title: Batman: Year One (film)

text: "Batman: Year One" received positive reviews upon its release. Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a score of based on reviews from critics, with an average rating of .


title: Batman: Year One (film)

text: An IGN review of the film, after its Comic-Con screening, praised the voice actors and concluded with, "This is real, serious adult entertainment that should satisfy longtime fans and newcomers as well." Another review from IGN panned the film, describing it as "dead on arrival – a lifeless bore with stale voice work and a disjointed, sporadic narrative that was best kept on the pages of Frank Miller's stellar graphic novel."


title: Batman: Year One (film)

text: "The A.V. Club" gave the film an A−, saying, ""Batman: Year One" is a stellar adaptation, copying Miller's words and Mazzucchelli's images almost verbatim at times." Concluding that, "It all recalls what it felt like to read "Batman: Year One" for the first time, and sense that this was a story that had always existed."


title: Batman: Year One (film)

text: James O'Ehley of SciFiMoviePage notes that the faithfulness to the source material works for and against the film, with voiceover and dialogue slowing down the action, and he goes on to say how the animation could be bolder, the voices gruffer and the sound more stirring but that overall the film is better than other DC animated films.


title: Batman: Year One (film)

text: In an article for The Missing Slate discussing the influence of the comic version of "Batman: Year One" on film depictions of Batman, Michael Dodd praised the casting of Bryan Cranston as James Gordon. Referencing Cranston's famous role as Walter White on "Breaking Bad", he argued that the choice of casting "truly encompassed the character's determination and downright badass attitude in the comic "Year One"".


title: Batman: Year One (film)

text: The DVD and Blu-ray release includes a short animated film titled "". In the film, Catwoman deals with the crime boss Rough Cut (voiced by John DiMaggio) while trying to stop a cargo shipment.


title: Batman: Year One (film)

text: There is also a sneak peek for the 2012 film "", two featurettes, a commentary, a digital comic book, two "" episodes ("Catwalk" and "Cult of the Cat"), a standard edition of the film, and a high definition edition of the film.


title: Batman: Year One (film)

text: On August 11, 2015, Warner Home Video re-released the film on a combo pack (), which includes the graphic novel it was based on and a copy of DVD and Blu-ray.


title: Batman: Year One (film)

text: In 2019, it was released as part of the Batman 80th Anniversary DVD Collection, which came with 18 animated Batman movies. It released alongside "", "", "Batman vs. Robin", "", "Son of Batman", "", "", "", "", "Batman Ninja", "", "", "", "", and "".


title: Batman: Year One (film)

text: On November 9, 2021, the film got a 4K UHD Blu-ray remastered as part of its 10th anniversary since October 18, 2011 with the title as Commemorative Edition.


title: Asparagaceae

text: Asparagaceae, known as the asparagus family, is a family of flowering plants, placed in the order Asparagales of the monocots. The family name is based on the edible garden asparagus, "Asparagus officinalis". Those who live in the temperate climates may be surprised to learn that this family includes both common garden plants as well as common houseplants. The garden plants include asparagus, yucca, bluebell, and hosta, and the houseplants include snake plant, corn cane, spider plant and plumosus fern.


title: Asparagaceae

text: In earlier classification systems, the species involved were often treated as belonging to the family Liliaceae. The APG II system of 2003 allowed two options as to the circumscription of the family: either Asparagaceae "sensu lato" ("in the wider sense") combining seven previously recognized families, or Asparagaceae "sensu stricto" ("in the strict sense") consisting of very few genera (notably "Asparagus", also "Hemiphylacus"), but nevertheless totalling a few hundred species. The revised APG III system of 2009 allows only the broader sense. A paper published at the same time proposed seven subfamilies to correspond to the originally separate families. These are:


title: Asparagaceae

text: Asparagaceae includes 114 genera with a total of approximately 2,900 known species. Unless otherwise noted, the alphabetical list below is based on genera accepted by the "World Checklist of Selected Plant Families" as in the family Asparagaceae (with synonyms from the same source). The reference against the subfamily name is to the source which places the genus in that subfamily.


title: Civics

text: Civics is the study of the rights and obligations of citizens in society. The term derives from the Latin word "civicus", meaning "relating to a citizen". The term relates to behavior affecting other citizens, particularly in the context of urban development.


title: Civics

text: Civic education is the study of the theoretical, political and practical aspects of citizenship, as well as its rights and duties. It includes the study of civil law and civil codes, and the study of government with attention to the role of citizens―as opposed to external factors―in the operation and oversight of government.


title: Civics

text: The term can also refer to a "corona civica", a garland of oak leaves worn about the head like a crown, a practice in ancient Rome wherein someone who saved another Roman citizen from death in war was rewarded with a "corona civica" and the right to wear it.


title: Civics

text: In his "History of the Peloponnesian War", Thucydides ascribes a speech to Archidamus II in which he stresses the importance for Sparta of civic education for the Spartan virtues of toughness, obedience, cunning, simplicity, and preparedness:


title: Civics

text: French essayist Michel de Montaigne commended how Agesilaus II, the son of Archidamus, followed his father's approach closely:


title: Civics

text: Plutarch relates a comparison made by Simonides between Spartan education of citizens and horse husbandry:


title: Civics

text: According to the Roman historian Plutarch, the semi-legendary Lycurgus of Sparta considered education of the citizenry to be his main priority as framer of the Spartan constitution. Plutarch observes that 'the whole course of [Spartan] education was one of continued exercise of a ready and perfect obedience' in which 'there scarcely was any time or place without someone present to put them in mind of their duty, and punish them if they had neglected it.'


title: Civics

text: He also describes how the Spartans limited civic education so as to maintain social control over the young:


title: Civics

text: However, the youth were also required to express themselves forcefully and succinctly, as well to think and reflect on matters of civic virtue, including such questions as who is or is not a good citizen of Sparta. Montaigne would later praise this particular technique of education, admiring the way Spartan citizens spent their time learning to acquire virtues such as courage and temperance, to the exclusion of studying any other subject. Spartan boys were also taught music and songs in praise of courage and in condemnation of cowardice.


title: Civics

text: Essentially, the Spartan ideal of civic education was a process whereby the interest of the citizen becomes totally united with the interest of the polity, in a spirit of perfect patriotism: 'To conclude, Lycurgus bred up his citizens in such a way that they neither would nor could live by themselves; they were to make themselves one with the public good, and, clustering like bees around their commander, be by their zeal and public spirit carried all but out of themselves, and devoted wholly to their country.


title: Civics

text: Civic education for toughness and martial prowess was not only within the purview of Spartan men: Plutarch recounts how Lycurgus 'ordered the maidens to exercises themselves with wrestling, running, throwing the quoit, and chasing the dart' with a view to creating healthy children for the state.


title: Civics

text: Pericles' Funeral Oration provides insight into Athens' sharply contrasting form of civic education from Sparta, for personal freedom, rather than blind obedience, where he boasts that Athens is 'the school of Hellas', since: However, English philosopher Thomas Hobbes believed that the Athenians were only taught to think they had personal freedom in order to discourage them from seeking reform.


title: Civics

text: In the Socratic dialogue "Crito", Crito of Alopece learns from Socrates the importance in civic education of following expert opinion, rather than majority opinion. Socrates uses the analogy of the training gymnast, who he implies ought to follow his gymnastics trainer, not whatever the majority of people think about gymnastics. Crito also hears Socrates' argument that a citizen ought to obey his city's laws partly because it was his city which educated him for citizenship.


title: Civics

text: In the Aristophanes comedy "The Frogs", the character of the playwright Aeschylus scolds fellow tragedian Euripides for writing scenes pernicious to proper ideals of citizenship:


title: Civics

text: Similarly, Plutarch would later speak of the power of the poet Thales to, in the words of the English poet John Milton, 'prepare and mollify the Spartan surliness with his smooth songs and odes, the better to plant among them law and civility'. Plutarch also spoke of the deep influence of Homer's 'lessons of state' on Lycurgus, framer of the Spartan constitution.


title: Civics

text: In the Euripides tragedy "The Suppliants", King Adrastus of Argos describes how Hippomedon received his civic education for endurance, martial skill, and service to the state:


title: Civics

text: In his "Meditations", Marcus Aurelius tells of how he was educated as a citizen to value free speech, to refrain from rhetoric and giving hortatory lectures, and to perceive the defects of tyranny. From his brother he imbibed a specific ideal for the Roman state: He also followed the example of his adopted father Antoninus Pius, who he said kept careful watch of government administration and finances, was open to hearing ideas about how to serve the common good, and cared neither for ambition nor pandering to the popular will: Aurelius was also taught by his father how to live as a public figure restrained by modesty:


title: Civics

text: In his treatise "Leviathan", English philosopher Thomas Hobbes heavily criticised the emphasis in contemporary civic education on studying Athenian democracy and Roman republicanism, saying that it wrongly encouraged monarchical subjects to restrain the actions of their monarchs. He thought that those citizens who imbibed the value of democracy from classic works were likely to oppose monarchy in the manner rabid dogs avoid water. Hobbes was deeply uncomfortable with Aristotelian civic education, which he said advised popular governance instead of monarchical rule.


title: Civics

text: English philosopher Francis Bacon was aware of the relevance of civic education to what he termed 'civil merit'. However, in his essay "The Advancement of Learning", Bacon also argues that civic education should be preceded by religious and moral education, so that those who judge policy will not be under the influence of moral relativism.


title: Civics

text: Sudbury schools contend that values, social justice and democracy must be learned through experience as Aristotle said: ""For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them."" They adduce that for this purpose schools must encourage ethical behavior and personal responsibility. In order to achieve these goals schools must allow students the three great freedoms—freedom of choice, freedom of action and freedom to bear the results of action—that constitute personal responsibility. The "strongest, political rationale" for democratic schools is that they teach "the virtues of democratic deliberation for the sake of future citizenship." This type of education is often alluded to in the deliberative democracy literature as fulfilling the necessary and fundamental social and institutional changes necessary to develop a democracy that involves intensive participation in group decision making, negotiation, and social life of consequence.


title: Pete Conrad

text: Charles "Pete" Conrad Jr. (June 2, 1930 – July 8, 1999) was an American NASA astronaut, aeronautical engineer, naval officer and aviator, and test pilot, and commanded the Apollo 12 space mission, on which he became the third person to walk on the Moon. Conrad was selected in NASA's second astronaut class in 1962.


title: Pete Conrad

text: Conrad had dyslexia and yet earned his Bachelor of Science degree in Aeronautical Engineering from Princeton University—being the first Ivy League astronaut—and joined the U.S. Navy. In 1954 he received his naval aviator wings, served as a fighter pilot and, after graduating from the U.S. Naval Test Pilot School (Class 20), as a project test pilot. In 1959 he was an astronaut candidate for Project Mercury.


title: Pete Conrad

text: Conrad set an eight-day space endurance record in 1965 along with his Command Pilot Gordon Cooper on his first spaceflight, Gemini 5. Later, Conrad commanded Gemini 11 in 1966, and Apollo 12 in 1969. After Apollo, he commanded Skylab 2, the first crewed Skylab mission, in 1973. On the mission, he and his crewmates repaired significant launch damage to the Skylab space station. For this, President Jimmy Carter awarded him the Congressional Space Medal of Honor in 1978.


title: Pete Conrad

text: After Conrad retired from NASA and the Navy in 1973, he became a vice president of American Television and Communications Company. He went on to work for McDonnell Douglas, as a vice president. During his tenure, he served as vice president of marketing, senior vice president of marketing, staff vice president of international business development, and vice president of project development. He died on July 8, 1999, from internal injuries sustained in a motorcycle accident, aged 69.


title: Pete Conrad

text: Pete Conrad was born on June 2, 1930, in Philadelphia, the third child and the first son of Charles Conrad (1892–1969) and Frances De Rappelage Conrad ( Vinson; 1899–1981), a well-to-do real estate and banking family.


title: Pete Conrad

text: The Great Depression wiped out the Conrad family's fortune, just as it had those of so many others. In 1942, the family lost their manor home in Philadelphia, and then moved into a small carriage house, paid for by Frances's brother, Egerton Vinson. Eventually, Charles Sr., broken down by financial failures, left his family.


title: Pete Conrad

text: Conrad was considered a bright, intelligent boy, but he continually struggled with his schoolwork. He had dyslexia, a condition little understood at the time. Conrad attended the Haverford School, a private academy in Haverford, Pennsylvania, that previous generations of Conrads had attended. Even after his family's financial downturn, his uncle Egerton supported his continued schooling at Haverford. However, Pete's dyslexia continued to frustrate his academic efforts. After he failed most of his 11th grade exams, Haverford expelled him from school.


title: Pete Conrad

text: Conrad's mother refused to believe that her son was unintelligent, and she set about finding him a suitable school. She found Darrow School in New Lebanon, New York. There, Conrad learned how to apply a "systems approach" to learning, and thus found a way to work around his dyslexia. Despite having to repeat the 11th grade, Conrad so excelled at Darrow that after his graduation in 1949, he not only was admitted to Princeton University, but he was also awarded a full Navy ROTC scholarship. While at Darrow, although he was only 5'6" and weighed 135 pounds, Conrad started as the center on his football team and became the team captain. "He was a very tough boy, and we won our share of games," said the school's assistant headmaster.


title: Pete Conrad

text: Starting when he was 15 years old, Conrad worked during the summertime at the Paoli Airfield near Paoli, Pennsylvania, bartering lawn mowing, sweeping, and other odd jobs for airplane flights and occasional instructional time. He learned more about the mechanics and workings of aircraft and aircraft engines, and then he graduated to minor maintenance work. When he was 16, he drove almost to help a flight instructor whose airplane had been forced to make an emergency landing. Conrad repaired the plane single-handedly. Thereafter, the instructor gave Conrad the flight lessons that he needed to earn his pilot's certificate even before he graduated from high school.


title: Pete Conrad

text: Conrad continued flying while he was in college, not only keeping his pilot's certificate, but also earning an instrument flight rating. He graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in aeronautical engineering from Princeton in 1953, after completing a 200-page-long senior thesis titled ""The Design of a Turbo-Jet Military Advanced Trainer"" with Richard V. Warden, Richard W. Vannata, and Calvin H. Perrine. He was commissioned an Ensign in the U.S. Navy as a Naval ROTC graduate.


title: Pete Conrad

text: Following his commission in 1953, Conrad was sent to Naval Air Station Pensacola, Florida, for flight training. He was also trained at the Naval Air Station Corpus Christi, Texas. He was designated a Naval Aviator in September 1954 and became a fighter pilot. He excelled in Navy flight school, and he served for several years as an aircraft carrier-based fighter pilot in the Navy. Conrad also served as a flight instructor in Navy flight schools along the Gulf of Mexico.


title: Pete Conrad

text: Next, Conrad applied for and he was accepted by the United States Naval Test Pilot School at Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Patuxent, Maryland. His classmates were future fellow astronauts Wally Schirra and Jim Lovell. He graduated in 1958, as part of Class 20, and was assigned as a Project Test Pilot. Conrad became a captain in the U.S. Navy on December 11, 1969.


title: Pete Conrad

text: During this period, Conrad was invited to take part in the selection process for the first group of astronauts for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) (the "Mercury Seven"). Conrad, like his fellow candidates, underwent several days of what they considered to be invasive, demeaning, and unnecessary medical and psychological testing at the Lovelace Clinic in New Mexico. Unlike his fellow candidates, Conrad rebelled against the regimen. During a Rorschach inkblot test, he told the psychiatrist that one blot card revealed a sexual encounter complete with lurid detail. When shown a blank card, he turned it around, pushed it back and replied, "It's upside down".


title: Pete Conrad

text: Then when he was asked to deliver a stool sample to the onsite lab, he placed it in a gift box and tied a red ribbon around it. Eventually, he decided that he had had enough. After dropping his full enema bag on the desk of the clinic's commanding officer, he walked out. His initial application to NASA was denied with the notation "not suitable for long-duration flight."


title: Pete Conrad

text: After his NASA episode, Conrad returned to the Navy as a fighter pilot, serving in the Pacific Fleet's second operational F-4 Phantom II squadron, VF-96, on board . Thereafter, when NASA announced its search for a second group of astronauts, Mercury veteran Alan Shepard, who knew Conrad from their time as naval aviators and test pilots, approached Conrad and persuaded him to reapply. This time, Conrad found the medical tests less invasive, and in June 1962 he was selected to join NASA.


title: Pete Conrad

text: Conrad joined NASA as part of the second group of astronauts, known as the New Nine, on September 17, 1962. Regarded as one of the best pilots in the group, he was among the first of his group to be assigned a Gemini mission. As pilot of Gemini 5 he, along with his commander Gordon Cooper, set a new space endurance record of eight days. The duration of the Gemini 5 flight was actually 7 days 22 hours and 55 minutes, surpassing the then-current Russian record of five days. Eight days was the time required for the first crewed lunar landing missions. Conrad facetiously referred to the Gemini 5 capsule as "a flying garbage can".


title: Pete Conrad

text: Conrad tested many spacecraft systems essential to the Apollo program. He was also one of the smallest of the astronauts, tall, so he found the confinement of the Gemini capsule less onerous than his Commander Gordon Cooper did. He was then named Commander of the Gemini 8 backup crew, and later Commander of Gemini 11 with pilot Richard Gordon. Gemini 11 docked with an Agena target vehicle immediately after achieving orbit. Such a maneuver was an engineering and flight test similar to what the Apollo Command Module (CM) and Lunar Module (LM) would later be required to do. Also, the Gemini 11 flight holds the distinction of being the highest-apogee manned Earth orbit ever, reaching an apogee of .


title: Pete Conrad

text: Conrad was assigned in December 1966 to command the backup crew for the first Earth orbital test flight of the complete Apollo spacecraft, including the Lunar Module (LM) into low Earth orbit. Delays in the LM's development pushed this mission to December 1968 as Apollo 8. But when one more delay occurred in readying the first LM for crewed flight, NASA approved and scheduled a lunar orbit mission without the LM as Apollo 8, pushing Conrad's backup mission to Apollo 9 in March 1969. Director of Flight Crew Operations Deke Slayton's practice was to assign a backup crew as the prime crew on the third following mission. If the swap of 8 and 9 had not occurred, Conrad might have commanded Apollo 11, the first mission to land on the Moon.


title: Pete Conrad

text: On November 14, 1969, Apollo 12 was launched with Conrad as Commander, Dick Gordon as Command Module Pilot, and Alan Bean as Lunar Module Pilot. The launch was the most harrowing of the Apollo program, as a series of lightning strikes just after liftoff temporarily knocked out power and guidance in the Command Module. Five days later, after stepping down from the ladder of the Lunar Module, Conrad joked about his own small stature by remarking:


title: Pete Conrad

text: He later revealed that he said this in order to win a bet he had made with the Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci for $500 to prove that NASA did not script astronaut comments. Fallaci was convinced that Armstrong's "One small step for man" statement had been written for him and were not his own words, while in actuality the two speeches did not represent the same event. Conrad's "long one" referred to the jump from the ladder to the LM footpad, whereas Armstrong's "small step" referred to the small step from the footpad and on to the Moon's surface. Conrad's words for the latter were "Oooh, is that soft and queasy."


title: Pete Conrad

text: One of the photos that he took during the mission with his own image visible on the helmet visor of Al Bean was later listed on "Popular Science"s photo gallery of the best astronaut selfies.


title: Pete Conrad

text: Conrad's last mission was as Commander of Skylab 2, the first crew to board the Skylab space station. The station had been damaged on its uncrewed launch, when its micrometeoroid shield tore away, taking one of two main solar panels with it and jamming the other one so that it could not deploy. Conrad and his crew repaired the damage on two spacewalks. Conrad managed to pull free the stuck solar panel by sheer brute force, an action of which he was particularly proud. The astronauts also erected a "parasol" solar shield to protect the station from intense solar heating, a function which the lost micrometeoroid shield was supposed to perform. Without the shield, Skylab and its contents would have become unusable. President Jimmy Carter honored Conrad for this in 1978 by awarding him the Congressional Space Medal of Honor.


title: Pete Conrad

text: During his training for Skylab 2, Conrad had to bail out from NASA T-38 N957NA on May 10, 1972. He was returning to Houston from a visit to ILC Industries in Delaware. On approach to Ellington AFB he was advised that the weather had deteriorated below minimums so he diverted to Hobby. During the night, instrument flight rules (IFR) descent, he suffered a generator failure at 800 feet and broke off the approach. He elected to divert to an airfield with better weather. Unfortunately he ran out of fuel as he reached Bergstrom AFB and was forced to eject at 3,700 feet. He landed about 100 yards from the base operations building and his airplane impacted in an open field about two miles away.


title: Pete Conrad

text: Conrad retired from NASA and the Navy in 1973, and went to work for American Television and Communications Company. He started as the vice president of operations and chief operating officer. Conrad was in charge of the operation of existing systems and the national development of new cable television systems.


title: Pete Conrad

text: In 1976, he accepted a position with McDonnell Douglas as a vice president and consultant. In 1978, he became vice president of marketing and was responsible for the commercial and military sales of Douglas Aircraft Company. After an engine fell off a McDonnell Douglas DC-10, causing it to crash with the loss of all passengers and crew in 1979, Conrad spearheaded McDonnell Douglas's ultimately unsuccessful efforts to allay the fears of the public and policymakers, and save the plane's reputation. In 1980, he was promoted to senior vice president of marketing. From 1982 to 1984, Conrad served as the senior vice president of marketing and product support. He was appointed staff vice president of international business development in 1984. During the 1990s he consulted for the Delta Clipper experimental single-stage-to-orbit launch vehicle. He became vice president of project development in 1993.


title: Pete Conrad

text: On February 14, 1996, Conrad was part of the crew on a record-breaking around-the-world flight in a Learjet owned by cable TV pioneer, Bill Daniels. The flight lasted 49 hours, 26 minutes and 8 seconds. Today the jet is on permanent static display at Denver International Airport's Terminal C.


title: Pete Conrad

text: A month before he died, Conrad appeared on ABC News "Nightline" and said, "I think the Space Shuttle is worth one billion dollars a launch. I think that it is worth two billion dollars for what it does. I think the Shuttle is worth it for the work it does." In the last interview he gave before his death, Conrad sat down for PBS's "Nova" series and discussed where he felt the future direction of space travel should go. He considered returning to the Moon "a waste of taxpayer money", but recommended missions to Mars and asteroids.


title: Pete Conrad

text: In 2006, NASA posthumously awarded him the Ambassador of Exploration Award for his work for the agency and science.


title: Pete Conrad

text: While at Princeton, Conrad met Jane DuBose, a student at Bryn Mawr, whose family owned a ranch near Uvalde, Texas. Her father, Winn DuBose, was the first person to call Conrad "Pete" rather than "Peter", the name he had used since birth. Upon his graduation from Princeton and acceptance of his navy commission, Conrad and Jane were married on June 16, 1953. They had four sons: Peter, born in 1954; Thomas, born in 1957; Andrew, born in 1959; and the youngest, Christopher, born in 1960.


title: Pete Conrad

text: Given the demands of his career in the navy and NASA, Pete and Jane spent a great deal of time apart, and Pete saw less of his boys growing up than he would have liked. Even after he retired from NASA and the Navy, he kept himself busy. In 1988, Pete and Jane divorced. Both Pete and Jane remarried.


title: Pete Conrad

text: In 1989, Conrad's youngest son, Christopher, was stricken with a malignant lymphoma. He died in April 1990, at the age of 29.


title: Pete Conrad

text: Conrad was a Cub Scout. His recreational interests included golf, water skiing and auto racing, such as Formula Vee.


title: Pete Conrad

text: Conrad died on July 8, 1999, from internal injuries sustained in a motorcycle accident. While traveling with his wife and friends from his Huntington Beach home to Monterey, California, his motorcycle crashed on a turn. Conrad later died in a hospital in Ojai. He was wearing a helmet at the time and was operating within the speed limit. He was buried with full honors at Arlington National Cemetery, with many Apollo-era astronauts in attendance.


title: Pete Conrad

text: The Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, has a grove of trees that have been planted to honor the memory of the astronauts who have died. After Conrad's death, NASA planted a tree in his honor. During the dedication ceremony, his Apollo 12 crewmate Alan Bean, used his speech to lighten the somber occasion by injecting a little levity, pretending to "channel" Conrad's instructions from the hereafter. Bean said, Conrad wanted NASA to light his tree every Christmas season with colored lights instead of the white used for everyone else, in keeping with his motto "when you can't be good, be colorful". NASA has honored this "request", and every Christmas since then, all of the trees in the grove have been lit with white lights, except Conrad's tree, which has been lit with red lights.


title: Pete Conrad

text: He is inducted into several Aviation and Astronaut Halls of Fame. He was one of ten Gemini astronauts inducted into the International Space Hall of Fame in 1982. Conrad and his fellow Gemini astronauts were inducted into the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame in 1993. Conrad was presented an Honorary Master of Arts degree from Princeton in 1966; an Honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Lincoln-Wesleyan University in 1970, and an Honorary Doctor of Science degree from Kings College, Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania in 1971.


title: Pete Conrad

text: The three Skylab astronaut crews were awarded the 1973 Robert J. Collier Trophy "For proving beyond question the value of man in future explorations of space and the production of data of benefit to all the people on Earth." Gerald Carr accepted the 1975 Dr. Robert H. Goddard Memorial Trophy from President Ford, awarded to the Skylab astronauts. They were awarded AIAA's 1974 Haley Astronautics Award.


title: Pete Conrad

text: Conrad was a fellow of the American Astronautical Society; New York Academy of Sciences; American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, and the Society of Experimental Test Pilots.


title: Pete Conrad

text: Conrad was discussed at length in Tom Wolfe's 1979 book, "The Right Stuff", about the pilots engaged in U.S. postwar research about rockets, although he was never mentioned in the 1983 film version. He played a news commentator in the 1975 made-for-TV movie, "Stowaway to the Moon", and himself in the 1991 television movie "Plymouth", about a fictional lunar base, and in an American Express television commercial.


title: Pete Conrad

text: In the 1995 film "Apollo 13", Conrad was played by David Andrews; in the 1998 HBO miniseries "From the Earth to the Moon", by Peter Scolari and Paul McCrane;, in the 2018 film "First Man", by Ethan Embry and in the 2019 alternate history web television series "For All Mankind" by Steven Pritchard.


title: Blackadder Goes Forth

text: Blackadder Goes Forth is the fourth series of the BBC sitcom "Blackadder", written by Richard Curtis and Ben Elton, which aired from 28 September to 2 November 1989 on BBC1. The series placed the recurring characters of Blackadder, Baldrick, and George in a trench in Flanders during World War I, and followed their various doomed attempts to escape from the trenches to avoid death under the misguided command of General Melchett. The series references famous people of the time and criticises the British Army's leadership during the campaign, culminating in the ending of its final episode, in which the soldiers are ordered to carry out a lethal charge of enemy lines.


title: Blackadder Goes Forth

text: Despite initial concerns that the comedy might trivialise the war, it was acclaimed and won the British Academy Television Award for Best Comedy Series in 1989. In 2000 it was placed 16th by industry professionals in a list of the 100 Greatest British Television Programmes compiled by the British Film Institute. However, some historians and politicians have criticised it for presenting a critical view of the war, reinforcing the popular notion of "lions led by donkeys". It follows much of the setting of the 1928 play Journey's End by R. C. Sherriff.


title: Blackadder Goes Forth

text: "Blackadder Goes Forth" is set in 1917 on the Western Front in the trenches of World War I. Captain Edmund Blackadder (Rowan Atkinson) is a professional soldier in the British Army who, until the outbreak of the Great War, has enjoyed a relatively danger-free existence fighting natives who were usually "two feet tall and armed with dried grass". Finding himself trapped in the trenches with another "big push" planned, his concern is to avoid being sent "over the top" to certain death. The series thus chronicles Blackadder's attempts to escape the trenches through various schemes, most of which fail due to bad fortune, misunderstandings and the general incompetence of his comrades. The aforementioned comrades are his second-in-command, idealistic upper-class Edwardian twit Lieutenant George St Barleigh (Hugh Laurie) and their profoundly stupid but dogged batman Private S. Baldrick (Tony Robinson).


title: Blackadder Goes Forth

text: More than the Germans, who are generally unseen, Blackadder's nemeses come in the form of his superior, the eccentric General Melchett (Stephen Fry) who rallies his troops from a French château from the front, and Melchett's bureaucratic assistant, Captain Kevin Darling (Tim McInnerny). Despite the two being of equal rank, Blackadder treats Darling with contempt – while the former is on the front line, the latter is "folding the general's pyjamas". Their animosity is mutual, largely as a result of Blackadder exploiting the comic potential of Darling's surname at every opportunity. Although Blackadder and Darling are both captains, Darling has seniority because he is a staff officer. This is signified by the red tabs on the collar of his uniform and the red band on his service cap.


title: Blackadder Goes Forth

text: "Blackadder Goes Forth" is darker in tone than the previous three "Blackadder" series and most sitcoms, and presents an anti-war message. The dialogue is marked throughout by satirical musings about the nature of the war, its origins and the effects on the soldiers who suffered over its course. The idea that the soldiers suffered whilst their commanders remained safely distant from the action was also referenced on many occasions, such as when Melchett says to Baldrick, "Don't you worry my boy, if you should falter, remember that Captain Darling and I are behind you!", to which Blackadder responds, "About 35 miles behind you." In the episode "Corporal Punishment", Blackadder justifies the shooting for food of a carrier pigeon (which turns out to be Melchett's pet, Speckled Jim) by saying, "With 50,000 men getting killed a week, who's going to miss a pigeon?" This episode sees Blackadder being sentenced to death by firing squad for the act, a reference to the capital sentences carried out under the laws of war in force at the time.


title: Blackadder Goes Forth

text: In "Private Plane", after receiving word that Blackadder and Baldrick may have been killed when shot down over German lines, Melchett tries to cheer George up by showing him a life-size model (measuring seventeen square feet) of land recaptured by the British, a commentary on the high human cost and small physical gains achieved by attacks in the middle years of the war. Later in the same episode, Blackadder describes the Great War as "a war which would be a damn sight simpler if we just stayed in England and shot 50,000 of our own men a week".


title: Blackadder Goes Forth

text: Field Marshal Douglas Haig, whose orders are alleged to have resulted in hundreds of thousands of British deaths at the battles of Passchendaele and the Somme, is continually referenced. Blackadder himself describes Haig's attempts at an advance as no more than "another gargantuan effort to move his drinks cabinet six inches closer to Berlin" and, when asked by Melchett for suggestions to improve the troops' morale, jokingly suggests Haig's resignation and suicide. In "Goodbyeee", a scene parodies Haig's professional abilities by depicting the field marshal playing with toy soldiers, which he sweeps nonchalantly from trench to trench and then into a rubbish bin, while listening to Blackadder's plea to get out of the big push on the telephone.


title: Blackadder Goes Forth

text: The series recalls a number of actual historical events of the war, such as the Christmas truce of 1914. Blackadder recalls the event: "Both sides advanced further during one Christmas piss-up than they did in the next two and a half years of war." References are also made to the popular culture of the era, as well as the previous series. The episode "Private Plane", sees the return of the characters of Lord Flashheart and Bob from the second series episode "Bells" and also an appearance of the German flying ace, the Baron von Richthofen. A plot thread in the third episode "Major Star" involves Blackadder's dislike of the silent film star, Charlie Chaplin, whom he finds "as funny as getting an arrow through the neck, and then finding there's a gas bill tied to it". Another reference was made to the Sudan, which Blackadder was a veteran of. Unlike the brass, Blackadder sees through the overconfidence that earlier victories supressing colonial uprisings in proving preparation for the Great War.


title: Blackadder Goes Forth

text: In the fifth episode "General Hospital", the anti-German sentiment in Britain during the war is repeatedly referenced. General Melchett orders Blackadder to find out what is behind the leak in top-secret battle plans and immediately, though erroneously, pins it on a "German spy" (who is later discovered to be one of their own). Blackadder interrogates Captain Darling, who vehemently denies being a spy and says that he is "as British as Queen Victoria", to which Blackadder sarcastically replies "So your father is German, you're half German and you married a German?". Blackadder's retort references the fact that Victoria was a member of the House of Hanover and that her husband Prince Albert was a prince from the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. In 1917, Victoria's grandson, King George V, changed the royal house name from Saxe-Coburg and Gotha to Windsor in an effort to appease British nationalist feelings.


title: Blackadder Goes Forth

text: The final episode of this series, "Goodbyeee", although true to the series' usual comedy style through most of the preceding scenes, featured a non-comedic final scene, in which the main characters (except General Melchett) are finally sent over the top. Darling keeps some sense of hope, saying this may be the very last battle and history will be written as "The Great War, 1914-1917!". Disregarding Baldrick's claim to have one last cunning plan to save them from the impending doom, Blackadder delivers the final line:


title: Blackadder Goes Forth

text: To the sound of a slow, minimal piano version of the title theme, the four are seen in slow-motion, charging into the fog and smoke of no man's land, with gunfire and explosions all around, before the scene fades into footage of a sunny poppy field and the sound of birdsong. The fate of the four is left ambiguous.


title: Blackadder Goes Forth

text: The series aired for six episodes broadcast on BBC1 on Thursdays at 9.30pm between 28 September and 2 November 1989, ending nine days before Remembrance Day. The titles of the first five episodes, "Captain Cook", "Corporal Punishment", "Major Star", "Private Plane" and "General Hospital" are puns based on the pairing of a military rank and another word related to the episode's content. The final episode, "Goodbyeee", was the title of a period song.


title: Blackadder Goes Forth

text: Writers Ben Elton and Richard Curtis wrote the scripts for "Blackadder" episodes separately using word processors and then swapped the disks containing the scripts for each other to add or remove jokes and dialogue. Curtis recalls that they stuck to a policy whereby if one removed a line for not being funny, then it was never put back.


title: Blackadder Goes Forth

text: During rehearsals, the script was exhaustively discussed and redrafted by the cast, with Richard Curtis having the final say on the content. Fry, Laurie and Atkinson were comic writers and performers themselves, and having worked together on previous series were not afraid to question the script and make suggestions. For example, Captain Darling was originally called Captain Cartwright and was renamed when Stephen Fry recalled a boy at his school with the surname Darling, who had found his own surname a constant embarrassment. Curtis recalls that he was initially reluctant to change the name, as he considered it a one-off joke.


title: Blackadder Goes Forth

text: Speaking to "The Times" about the ending of the show in 1989, Curtis hinted that the collaborative writing process caused tensions amongst the cast: "Everybody on the show thinks they can put in good jokes, despite the fact that Ben Elton and I think there are already quite a few good ones in there to start with. It does usually end up funnier, but it's time to do something over which I have more control." Twenty years on, Curtis recalled in the documentary "Blackadder Rides Again" that: "They would literally sit around for the entire time discussing the script... sometimes we would just say to them 'if you stood up and tried to act this script out, you would find out things about it.'" Ben Elton stated that by opening it up, they allowed the cast to question every aspect of the script.


title: Blackadder Goes Forth

text: During "Blackadder Rides Again", Tony Robinson likewise recalls that these script meetings could be uncomfortable, and has been less reserved speaking about the script rehearsals since. In an interview with "The Daily Telegraph" he suggests that although relations between the actors were generally cordial "There was bad feeling between the writers and the performers – the writers felt we were unilaterally altering the script and altering it for the worse. At end of the first day of rehearsals, the writers would go away and by the time they came back we would have changed an awful lot of it. By the end, they felt we had run away with it. There were quite a lot of emotions flashing around about that."


title: Blackadder Goes Forth

text: Producer John Lloyd, speaking to "The Times" in 1989 hinted that it was the draining scripting and rehearsal process that led to the writers deciding not to make another series: "Things do get very tense by the end of a series, because everyone involved in the thing is very clever, and very funny, and they all want to push the scripts along. It's a very exhausting process, and by the end of it we all swear we'll never, ever, do another one. But then you start to think how rare it is to get so many good people in the same room and you talk yourself into doing another series."


title: Blackadder Goes Forth

text: Rowan Atkinson and Tony Robinson reprised their roles as Edmund Blackadder and Baldrick respectively. Hugh Laurie also returned to play Lieutenant George. The fourth series enlarged the principal cast from the third series to include Stephen Fry as General Melchett and Tim McInnerny as Captain Kevin Darling, who had both appeared in guest roles in "Blackadder the Third" and had appeared regularly in "Blackadder II". This cast appeared together in every episode of the fourth series, although the only episode to feature no guest appearances was "Captain Cook". Miranda Richardson, who had played Elizabeth I in the second series, appeared in a guest role in one episode (as she had in the third series). In their guest performances, actors such as Rik Mayall and Gabrielle Glaister reprised versions of characters they had played in earlier series. Other performers, such as Bill Wallis and Lee Cornes, who had played minor roles in prior series, appeared briefly again in the fourth series as well. Of the series, only Adrian Edmondson and Geoffrey Palmer portray fictitious takes on historical figures as Baron Manfred von Richthofen and Field Marshal Douglas Haig respectively.


title: Blackadder Goes Forth

text: This series of Blackadder was one of the first television programmes in Britain to be made and transmitted with stereo sound, using the NICAM digital system, even though most viewers could only afford, or were only able to receive due to their location, the standard FM mono audio carrier signal.


title: Blackadder Goes Forth

text: The series was directed by Richard Boden and all interior scenes were shot at BBC Television Centre in front of a live studio audience. Rowan Atkinson recalls that the studio shooting could present him with problems:


title: Blackadder Goes Forth

text: That sitcom tradition is very strange when you're performing to both a camera and an audience at the same time...The thing that sometimes held us up is my stammer. Some words and some phrases did catch me out..."B"s in particular. I remember one episode in which Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie were going "woof" a lot, and my line was "it's like Battersea Dogs Home in here". The B of Battersea was a problem for me. The floor manager suggested that I say "Crufts" instead.


title: Blackadder Goes Forth

text: Atkinson has said that in the build-up to the final episode, he began to psychologically experience something of his character's apprehension. Speaking to Michael Parkinson in 2003, he recalled "I remember... in the weeks leading up to the one-day recording of that final episode when we went over the top, for the first time in my acting career... knowing that even though the rest of the episode was its usual standard funny sitcom self, there was this deep twist in my stomach throughout that week thinking along with your character that you were doomed. It was most peculiar. I'm sure serious character actors feel this all the time... Obviously if you're trying to feel the character and his dilemma then you're going to experience some of the fictional feelings for real. You felt swept along by it."


title: Blackadder Goes Forth

text: Other than the title sequence, the series used little exterior shooting. To create the flying sequences in the episode "Private Plane", footage from the 1976 film "Aces High" was re-edited and dubbed over with the actors' voices. The most challenging scene to shoot was the final "over the top" sequence, which was recorded in a separate studio set, away from the audience, which had been rigged with special effects to simulate a battlefield.


title: Blackadder Goes Forth

text: On viewing the original studio rushes for the 20th anniversary documentary "Blackadder Rides Again", John Lloyd recalls that originally the final scene was "all very embarrassing", as the actors only had to run before they reached the barbed wire in front of the camera, where they had to pretend to die, an effect described by Atkinson as "somewhat unconvincing". It was only in post-production that the final effect was achieved by running the video and audio in slow motion and fading another video of the empty set over the top to make it appear as if the characters had disappeared. This image of a barren landscape was then faded into a still image of a poppy field found in the BBC Picture Library.


title: Blackadder Goes Forth

text: The theme melody was a variation on the "Blackadder" theme by Howard Goodall over opening title images of Blackadder and George parading their men past Melchett and Darling, while Baldrick plays the triangle. The title music starts with the opening bars of "The British Grenadiers" before segueing into the familiar "Blackadder" theme. In the closing credits, the full "Blackadder" theme plays over visuals of armed men marching on a parade ground. The sequences were filmed and recorded on location at the former Colchester Cavalry Barracks, with the production using 50 members of the 3rd Battalion, the Royal Anglian Regiment to represent Blackadder's men, attired in reproduction First World War uniforms, with the battalion's band providing the music.


title: Blackadder Goes Forth

text: The titles are presented as static captions instead of being rolled as in the previous three series. The crew credits are presented in pseudo-military fashion: for example, the designer is credited thus: "Dgr – 404371 Hull, C". The opening sequence is filmed in colour, while the closing sequence was treated in post-production to appear grainy, streaky, and sepia toned in imitation of newsreels of the era.


title: Blackadder Goes Forth

text: "Goodbyeee" has no closing titles, simply fading from the protagonists charging across no man's land under fire, to a field of poppies in the sunlight, a reference to the poem "In Flanders Fields" and the flower's symbolic significance. The music was also changed to a slow, echoey solo piano arrangement (recorded in a school gymnasium), finishing with three strong bass-drum notes, interposed with sound effects of gunshot, and later birdsong. In the 25th anniversary special interview, Richard Curtis stated that the production team had not planned such an ending and the idea of the scene fading to the poppy field was only conceived after some of the cast stated their reluctance in doing a second take.


title: Blackadder Goes Forth

text: Emma Hanna, in her book "The Great War on the Small Screen", has noted that some contemporary reviewers felt the topic of the First World War to be inappropriate for a comedy series, with one newspaper critic uncertain of the writers' motives: "is [the series] justified in using tragic situations as a springboard for comedy merely for entertainment value?". Ben Elton's uncle, the historian Geoffrey Elton, "was at first most unhappy at what he considered to be an insulting portrayal of the army", although "he later took the view that the satire was drawn with great respect".


title: Blackadder Goes Forth

text: The issue of the series' subject matter was of concern to the producers. Atkinson recalled in an interview with Michael Parkinson that the poignant ending of the final episode was in part written to counter the possibility of criticism that the subject was inappropriate for a comedy. Speaking during filming in 1989, he remarked that despite the 20th century setting, the trenches were particularly apt for the "Blackadder" series:


title: Blackadder Goes Forth

text: We wanted a place and a time that could reproduce to a certain extent the claustrophobia and the sordidness of medieval England, and the best way to do that is to set it in the middle of a war.


title: Blackadder Goes Forth

text: Co-writer Richard Curtis has said that before writing the series, the writers read a number of books about the war and decided that the First World War was a particularly apt subject for a situation comedy, finding that "actually, all the lead up to the first world war was very funny, all the people coming from communities where they'd never bumped into posh people...and all being so gung ho and optimistic...the first hundred pages of any book about the world war are hilarious; then of course everybody dies."


title: Blackadder Goes Forth

text: Michael Brooke, assessing the series for the British Film Institute, suggests that the characterisation and pervading sense of danger prevented the sitcom from trivialising its subject matter: "The prospect of its characters suddenly dying a violent death provided a constant source of tension and gags, though when they really were killed off at the end of the final episode...the result was so unexpectedly moving that the programme was later repeated as part of an otherwise wholly serious BBC2 Armistice Day programme without anyone batting an eyelid."


title: Blackadder Goes Forth

text: The series won the British Academy Television Award for Best Comedy Series in 1989. In addition, for his performance as Captain Blackadder, Rowan Atkinson won Best Light Entertainment Performance. In 2000, the series was placed 16th by industry professionals in a list of the 100 Greatest British Television Programmes compiled by the British Film Institute. In 2004, championed by John Sergeant, the whole "Blackadder" series came second in the BBC poll to find Britain's Best Sitcom with 282,106 votes.


title: Blackadder Goes Forth

text: Journalists and historians have noted that the television series has become a pervasive view of the war in the public's perception of World War I, with Max Hastings calling the common British view of the war "the "Blackadder" take on history". Military historian Richard Holmes commented in his book "The Western Front": "Blackadder's aphorisms have become fact... A well-turned line of script can sometimes carry more weight than all the scholarly footnotes in the world." Stephen Badsey, analysing trends in television programmes about the war, remarked that "Blackadder Goes Forth" as a popular comedy series was subject to particular criticism from historians, remarking that the series "consciously traded on every cliche and misremembered piece of history about the Western Front, and was influential enough to draw a surprising degree of angry criticism from professional historians as a result."


title: Blackadder Goes Forth

text: The series has prompted debate among politicians in the UK. In 2014, it was the subject of a public dispute between Conservative politician Michael Gove, then serving as Secretary of State for Education, and Labour activist Tony Robinson, who portrayed Baldrick, after Gove had written that it presented the war as "a misbegotten shambles – a series of catastrophic mistakes perpetrated by an out-of-touch elite. Even to this day there are left-wing academics all too happy to feed those myths." Robinson responded "to categorise teachers who would introduce something like "Blackadder" as left-wing and introducing left-wing propaganda is very, very unhelpful. And I think it's particularly unhelpful and irresponsible for a minister in charge of education." Tristram Hunt also criticised Gove's comments, but Andrew Murrison compared the series to "Oh, What a Lovely War!" as a take on history that had "sadly been in the ascendant for the past 50 years".


title: Blackadder Goes Forth

text: Esther MacCallum-Stewart of Sussex University noted in her essay "Television Docu-Drama and The First World War" that ""Blackadder Goes Forth" is used as a teaching aid in schools; not as a secondary text that should be analysed and discussed for its own reliability, but as a truthful parody ["sic"] of the conditions of the First World War." Broadcaster Jeremy Paxman criticised schools for relying on episodes of "Blackadder Goes Forth" to teach pupils about the conflict.


title: Blackadder Goes Forth

text: "Blackadder Goes Forth" is available on a variety of BBC Worldwide-distributed DVD and VHS video releases, either as an individual series or as part of a boxset with the other series of "Blackadder". In addition, a BBC Radio Collection audio version created from the TV soundtrack is available on Cassette and CD. All 4 series and the Christmas special are also available for download on iTunes. The complete scripts of the four television series were released in 1998 as "Blackadder: The Whole Damn Dynasty 1485–1917", and later reissued by Penguin Books in 2009.


title: Eight Banners

text: The Eight Banners (in Manchu: "jakūn gūsa", ) were administrative and military divisions under the Later Jin and Qing dynasties of China into which all Manchu households were placed. In war, the Eight Banners functioned as armies, but the banner system was also the basic organizational framework of all of Manchu society. Created in the early 17th century by Nurhaci, the banner armies played an instrumental role in his unification of the fragmented Jurchen people (who would later be renamed the "Manchu" under Nurhaci's son Hong Taiji) and in the Qing dynasty's conquest of the Ming dynasty.


title: Eight Banners

text: As Mongol and Han forces were incorporated into the growing Qing military establishment, the Mongol Eight Banners and Han Eight Banners were created alongside the original Manchu banners. The banner armies were considered the elite forces of the Qing military, while the remainder of imperial troops were incorporated into the vast Green Standard Army. Membership in the banners became hereditary, and bannermen were granted land and income. After the defeat of the Ming dynasty, Qing emperors continued to rely on the Eight Banners in their subsequent military campaigns. After the Ten Great Campaigns of the mid-18th century the quality of the banner armies declined. Their failure to suppress the Taiping Rebellion of the mid-19th century ruined their reputation. By the late 19th century the task of defending the empire had largely fallen upon regional armies such as the Xiang Army. Over time, the Eight Banners became synonymous with Manchu identity even as their military strength vanished.


title: Eight Banners

text: Initially, Nurhaci's forces were organized into small hunting parties of about a dozen men related by blood, marriage, clan, or place of residence, as was the typical Jurchen custom. In 1601, with the number of men under his command growing, Nurhaci reorganized his troops into companies of 300 households. Five companies made up a battalion, and ten battalions a banner. Four banners were originally created: Yellow, White, Red, and Blue, each named after the color of its flag. By 1614, the number of companies had grown to around 400. In 1615, the number of banners was doubled through the creation of "bordered" banners. The troops of each of the original four banners would be split between a plain and a bordered banner. The bordered variant of each flag was to have a red border, except for the Bordered Red Banner, which had a white border instead.


title: Eight Banners

text: The banner armies expanded rapidly after a string of military victories under Nurhaci and his successors. Beginning in the late 1620s, the Jurchens incorporated allied and conquered Mongol tribes into the Eight Banner system. In 1635, Hong Taiji, son of Nurhaci, renamed his people from Jurchen to Manchu. That same year the Mongols were separated into the Mongol Eight Banners (Manchu: , "monggo gūsa"; ).


title: Eight Banners

text: Under Hong Taiji, the banner armies participated in two invasions of Joseon in the Korean Peninsula first in 1627 and again in 1636. As a consequence, Joseon was forced to end its relationship with the Ming and become a Qing tributary instead.


title: Eight Banners

text: Initially, Han troops were incorporated into the existing Manchu Banners. When Hong Taiji captured Yongping in 1629, a contingent of artillerymen surrendered to him. In 1631, these troops were organized into the so-called Old Han Army under the Han commander Tong Yangxing. These artillery units were used decisively to defeat Ming general Zu Dashou's forces at the siege of Dalinghe that same year. In 1636, Hong Taiji proclaimed the creation of the Qing dynasty.


title: Eight Banners

text: Between 1637 and 1642, the Old Han Army, mostly made up of Liaodong natives who had surrendered at Yongping, Fushun, Dalinghe, etc., were organized into the Han Eight Banners (Manchu: "nikan cooha" or "ujen cooha"; ). The original Eight Banners were thereafter referred to as the Manchu Eight Banners (Manchu: , "manju gūsa"; ). Although still called the "Eight Banners" in name, there were now effectively twenty-four banner armies, eight for each of the three main ethnic groups (Manchu, Mongol, and Han).


title: Eight Banners

text: Among the Banners gunpowder weapons, such as muskets and artillery, were specifically wielded by the Han Banners.


title: Eight Banners

text: After Hong Taiji's death, Dorgon, commander of the Solid White Banner, became regent. He quickly purged his rivals and took control over Hong Taiji's Solid Blue Banner. By 1644, an estimated two million people were living in the Eight Banners system. That year, rebels led by Li Zicheng captured Beijing and the last emperor of the Ming dynasty, Chongzhen, committed suicide. Dorgon and his bannermen joined forces with Ming defector Wu Sangui to defeat Li at the Battle of Shanhai Pass and secure Beijing for the Qing. The young Shunzhi Emperor was then enthroned in the Forbidden City.


title: Eight Banners

text: Ming defectors played a major role in the Qing conquest of the Central Plain. Ethnic Han generals who defected to the Qing were often given women from the imperial Aisin Gioro family in marriage while the ordinary soldiers who defected were given non-royal Manchu women as wives. The Qing differentiated between Han bannermen and ordinary Han civilians. Han bannermen were made out of ethnic Han who defected to the Qing up to 1644 and joined the Eight Banners, giving them social and legal privileges in addition to being acculturated to Manchu culture. So many Han defected to the Qing and swelled up the ranks of the Eight Banners that ethnic Manchus became a minority within the Banners, making up only 16% in 1648, with Han bannermen dominating with 75% and Mongol bannermen making up the rest. It was this multi-ethnic force, in which Manchus were only a minority, which conquered the Central Plain for the Qing. Hong Taiji recognized that Han defectors were needed by the Qing in order to assist in the conquest of the Ming, explaining to other Manchus why he needed to treat the Ming defector General Hung Ch'eng-ch'ou leniently.


title: Eight Banners

text: The Qing showed in propaganda targeted towards the Ming military that the Qing valued military skills to get them to defect to the Qing, since the Ming civilian political system discriminated against the military. The three Liaodong Han Bannermen officers who played a massive role in the conquest of southern China from the Ming were Shang Kexi, Geng Zhongming, and Kong Youde and they governed southern China autonomously as viceroys for the Qing after their conquests. Normally the Manchu Bannermen acted as reserve forces while the Qing foremost used defected Han troops to fight as the vanguard during their conquest of the Central Plain.


title: Eight Banners

text: The Liaodong Han military frontiersmen were prone to mixing and acculturating with (non-Han) tribesmen. The Mongol officer Mangui served in the Ming military and fought the Manchus, dying in battle against a Manchu raid. The Manchus accepted and assimilated Han soldiers who defected. Liaodong Han transfrontiersmen soldiers acculturated to Manchu culture and used Manchu names. Manchus lived in cities with walls surrounded by villages and adopted Han-style agriculture before the Qing conquest of the Ming. The Han transfrontismen abandoned their Han names and identities and Nurhaci's secretary Dahai might have been one of them.


title: Eight Banners

text: There were not enough ethnic Manchus to conquer the Central Plain, so they relied on defeating and absorbing Mongols, and more importantly, adding Han to the Eight Banners. The Qing had to create an entire "Jiu Han jun" (Old Han Army) due to the massive number of Han soldiers who were absorbed into the Eight Banners by both capture and defection, Ming artillery was responsible for many victories against the Qing, so the Qing established an artillery corps made out of Han soldiers in 1641 and the swelling of Han numbers in the Eight Banners led in 1642 of all Eight Han Banners being created. It was defected Han armies which conquered southern China for the Qing.


title: Eight Banners

text: When Dorgon ordered Han civilians to vacate Beijing's inner city and move to the outskirts, he resettled the inner city with the Bannermen, including Han bannermen, later, some exceptions were made to allowing to reside in the inner city Han civilians who held government or commercial jobs.


title: Eight Banners

text: The Qing relied on the Green Standard soldiers, made out of defected Ming military forces who joined the Qing, in order to help rule northern China. It was Green Standard Han troops who actively military governed China locally while Han Bannermen, Mongol Bannermen, and Manchu Bannermen who were only brought into emergency situations where there was sustained military resistance.


title: Eight Banners

text: The Manchu Prince Regent Dorgon gave a Manchu woman as a wife to the Han official Feng Quan, who had defected from the Ming to the Qing. The Manchu queue hairstyle was willingly adopted by Feng Quan before it was enforced on the Han population and Feng learned the Manchu language.


title: Eight Banners

text: To promote ethnic harmony, a 1648 decree from the Shunzhi Emperor allowed Han civilian men to marry Manchu women from the Banners with the permission of the Board of Revenue if they were registered daughters of officials or commoners or the permission of their banner company captain if they were unregistered commoners. It was only later in the dynasty that these policies allowing intermarriage were done away with. The decree was formulated by Dorgon.


title: Eight Banners

text: The Guangzhou massacre of Ming loyalist Han forces and civilians in 1650 by Qing forces, was entirely carried out by Han Bannermen led by Han generals Shang Kexi and Geng Jimao.


title: Eight Banners

text: The Qing sent Han Bannermen to fight against Koxinga's Ming loyalists in Fujian. The Qing carried out a massive depopulation policy clearances forcing people to evacuated the coast in order to deprive Koxinga's Ming loyalists of resources, this has led to a myth that it was because Manchus were "afraid of water". In Fujian, it was Han Bannermen who were the ones carrying out the fighting and killing for the Qing and this disproved the entirely irrelevant claim that alleged fear of the water on part of the Manchus had to do with the coastal evacuation and clearances. Even though a poem refers to the soldiers carrying out massacres in Fujian as "barbarian", both Han Green Standard Army and Han Bannermen were involved in the fighting for the Qing side and carried out the worst slaughter. 400,000 Green Standard Army soldiers were used against the Three Feudatories besides 200,000 Bannermen.


title: Eight Banners

text: In the Revolt of the Three Feudatories Manchu Generals and Bannermen were initially put to shame by the better performance of the Han Green Standard Army, who fought better than them against the rebels and this was noted by the Kangxi Emperor, leading him to task Generals Sun Sike, Wang Jinbao, and Zhao Liangdong to lead Green Standard soldiers to crush the rebels. The Qing thought that Han were superior at battling other Han people and so used the Green Standard Army as the dominant and majority army in crushing the rebels instead of Bannermen. In northwestern China against Wang Fuchen, the Qing put Bannermen in the rear as reserves while they used Han Green Standard Army soldiers and Han Generals like Zhang Liangdong, Wang Jinbao, and Zhang Yong as the primary military forces, considering Han troops as better at fighting other Han people, and these Han generals achieved victory over the rebels. Sichuan and southern Shaanxi were retaken by the Han Green Standard Army under Wang Jinbao and Zhao Liangdong in 1680, with Manchus only participating in dealing with logistics and provisions. 400,000 Green Standard Army soldiers and 150,000 Bannermen served on the Qing side during the war. 213 Han Banner companies, and 527 companies of Mongol and Manchu Banners were mobilized by the Qing during the revolt.


title: Eight Banners

text: The Qing forces were crushed by Wu from 1673–1674. The Qing had the support of the majority of Han soldiers and Han elite against the Three Feudatories, since they refused to join Wu Sangui in the revolt, while the Eight Banners and Manchu officers fared poorly against Wu Sangui, so the Qing responded with using a massive army of more than 900,000 Han (non-Banner) instead of the Eight Banners, to fight and crush the Three Feudatories. Wu Sangui's forces were crushed by the Green Standard Army, made out of defected Ming soldiers.


title: Eight Banners

text: Koxinga's rattan shield troops became famous for fighting and defeating the Dutch in Taiwan. After the surrender of Koxinga's former followers on Taiwan, Koxinga's grandson Zheng Keshuang and his troops were incorporated into the Eight Banners. His rattan shield soldiers (Tengpaiying) 藤牌营 were used against the Russian Cossacks at Albazin.


title: Eight Banners

text: Under the Kangxi and Qianlong emperors, the Eight Banners participated in a series of military campaigns to subdue Ming loyalists and neighboring states. In the Qianlong Emperor's celebrated Ten Great Campaigns, the banner armies fought alongside troops of the Green Standard Army, expanding the Qing empire to its greatest territorial extent. Though partly successful, the campaigns were a heavy financial burden on the Qing treasury, and exposed weaknesses in the Qing military. Many bannermen lost their lives in the Burma campaign, often as the result of tropical diseases, to which they had little resistance.


title: Eight Banners

text: Although the banners were instrumental in the transition from Ming to Qing in the 17th century, they began to fall behind rising Western powers in the 18th century. By the 1730s, the traditional martial spirit had been lost, as the well-paid Bannerman spent their time gambling and theatergoing. Subsidizing the 1.5 million men, women and children in the system was an expensive proposition, compounded by embezzlement and corruption. Destitution in the northeastern garrisons led many Manchu Bannermen to abandon their posts and in response the Qing government either sentenced them with penal slavery or death.


title: Eight Banners

text: In the 19th century, the Eight Banners and Green Standard troops proved unable to put down the Taiping Rebellion and Nian Rebellion on their own. Regional officials like Zeng Guofan were instructed to raise their own forces from the civilian population, leading to the creation of the Xiang Army and the Huai Army, among others. Along with the Ever Victorious Army of Frederick Townsend Ward, it was these warlord armies (known as "yongying") who finally succeeded in restoring Qing control in this turbulent period.


title: Eight Banners

text: John Ross, a Scots missionary who served in Manchuria in the 19th century, wrote of the bannermen, "Their claim to be military men is based on their descent rather than on their skill in arms; and their pay is given them because of their fathers' prowess, and not at all from any hopes of their efficiency as soldiers. Their soldierly qualities are included in the accomplishments of idleness, riding, and the use of the bow and arrow, at which they practice on a few rare occasions each year."


title: Eight Banners

text: During the Boxer Rebellion, 1899–1901, the European powers recruited 10,000 Bannermen from the Metropolitan Banners into Wuwei Corps and gave them modernized training and weapons. One of these was the Hushenying. However, many Manchu Bannermen in Beijing supported the Boxers and shared their anti-foreign sentiment. The pro-Boxer Bannermen sustained heavy casualties and subsequently were driven into desperate poverty.