The Ministry has instituted a committee of savants, who will act in concert with the military authorities for the purpose of applying in the defense of Paris all the latest results made known of chemical destructive agents.I was always under the impression that World War I marked the first time anyone had contemplated the use of CBW. Does anyone know if the 1870 effort ever got out of the planning stage?
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Late-breaking news on the Franco-Prussian war
For private reasons, I was doing a little historical reading which brought me to this 1870 report in the New York Times of the Battle of Sedan and the capture of Napoleon III. One paragraph was quite striking...
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Well, there is Greek Fire from classical times and biological warfare first surfaced in the Middle Ages when plague victims were catapulted over castle walls. I didn't know that NIII and Paris, though, so that is a very interesting find. I wonder who the "savants" were? (Pasteur maybe? Names escapes me--invented the barometer)
Wikipedia has this:
August 27, 1874: The Brussels Declaration Concerning the Laws and Customs of War is signed, specifically forbidding the "employment of poison or poisoned weapons."
September 4, 1900: The Hague Conference, which includes a declaration banning the "use of projectiles the object of which is the diffusion of asphyxiating or deleterious gases," enters into force.
So, two treaty protocols referenced their use, and banned their use, quite early in the later 19th century.
XI
There's no Wannsee memo about the infected blankets the Hesians gave to the Ottawas - not much to go on besides tribal lore and the great movie with Lon Chaney Jr as Pontiac, believe it or not. But the alcohol poisoning can't be denied. Depends what you mean by war. Checking out the phosphorous news, are you?
According to Thucydides, the wind-swept copper smelting from the Upper Nile was poisoning the Athenian water with typhus, an eco-catastrophe memorialized by Sophocles with his Oedipus promising to consult Apollo's oracle so that the plague killing his Theban subjects would be lifted. It's not as though no one ever noticed and understood. (Ibsen's version in Enemy of the People brings us to the art of the cover-up.) Plus Yaweh's Ten Plagues - what, you think it was chopped liver?
Apparently, this likely started in England with Captain Sir Thomas, Lord Cochrane giving the idea to the future George IV in 1812.
His idea was to float modified sulpher or stink ships towards French ships in order to cloud about 1/2 a square mile.
From the stink ships, he suggested explosions on land to get the French to run away from the choking/deadly gas. He got some of the ideas from his father- who dabbled in chemistry. (sulpher, coke, tar...)
England wanted to pass because they did not want this used on Englishmen. The guy later introduced it for use in the Crimean, but again the answer was, "No" as that war ended before full discussion; the ideas were sealed.
He died in 1860 and his plans were first revealed in 1908... ten years later the ideas were used.
Joe, after sending a link and quote from your article to a Vet friend who is also quite the military historian, I received a reply which includes this quote:
"Greek fire is a substance that folks know did exist. it was probably naptha based as there are more than a few naptha springs with attendant sulpher deposits around delphi. archemides was said to have produced a version of greek fire that burned underwater."
I really want to thank the readers for their fascinating work here.
It's strange that Americans are taught so little about the Franco-Prussian conflict. It was the first war in which soldiers were served by what we now would call MASH units, although they were then called Ambulances. (The word had a different meaning at that time.) And the wounded were flown from the field to these mobile hospitals -- by balloon!
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