Should we believe everything in our history books?
You would be surprises how some of the things written in history books are not exactly true.
For instance, the Battle of Hastings was not actually fought at Hastings.
I don’t know why. Perhaps the people of Hastings objected to having a noisy battle in their town.
Maybe here was a bylaw banning battles to be fought on certain days of the week.
Who knows?
All was not lost (well, it was finally for the English, but we won’t dwell on that.) The two opposing armies moved a short distance away and found a place called Battle. How lucky was that? 🙂
When the dust died down after the battle was over, the paperwork had to be dealt with.
It was decided they couldn’t call it the Battle of Battle. That would be stupid. So, it was called the Battle of Hastings.
I believe William the conqueror had assumed he was going to fight and win at Hastings, so all the publicity had been written. So, he left it.
The Battle of Trafalgar.
Now I am sure that most people are aware that the Battle of Trafalgar was not fought on a square in the centre of London.
But for those who are not sure they should know, it was a battle fought by two fleets of ships, and on the ocean.
The square was built in honour of the victory and in honour of Lord Nelson.
Although why the statue of Nelson was put on top of a column over a hundred and sixty feet high, so only pigeons could look at it closely, has always puzzled me.
The Battle of Waterloo.
The Battle of Waterloo was not fought in a London mainline railway station, although it can resemble a battlefield at rush hour.
It wasn’t even fought at Waterloo.
The battle took place close to the village of Waterloo. Once again, when the battle was over, the paperwork had to be dealt with.
It could not, it was decided, be called The Battle of some Muddy Field In The Middle of Nowhere.
So they called it the Battle of Waterloo, after the village The Duke of Wellington had spent the night before the battle.
The battle of Waterloo was not fought at Waterloo or at Waterloo station.
But there was a small fracas over the name of the station.
Some box ticker suggested we should change the name of the station. The reason, he claimed, it may cause offence to visitors from France.
This did not go down very well, so the suggestion was ignored. I mean, it wasn’t our fault they lost. (Well, I suppose it was in a way.)
I suggested a compromise.
Underneath the station’s name Waterloo, we could put, in French,
“You should have tried harder.” 😆
Thanks for reading.
More stories from my sometimes-addled brain.
