Page 6 - BBC History - September 2017

Dominic Sandbrook highlights events that took place in September in history
ANNIVERSARIES

2 September 1870
Napoleon III
12 September 490 BC
A legend is born at Marathon surrenders to

the Prussians
Athens claims victory against the mighty Persian army
and a new sporting tradition is created
The ailing French emperor
suffers a humiliating defeat at
raditionally dated to 12 September divided, but were finally swayed by a the battle of Sedan
T 490 BC, the battle of Marathon has speech by their general Miltiades. If they
gone down as one of the most celebrated fought and won, he declared, their
clashes in world history. On one side country would “be free – and not free
were the Persians, then by far the greatest only, but the first state in Greece”. he first two days of September 1870
power in the eastern Mediterranean; on So it was that on the dusty plain of T were ones of abject humiliation for
the other, the little democracy of Athens. Marathon, the Athenians advanced into France. Six weeks earlier, when Napoleon
For years, the Athenians had supported legend. According to Herodotus, they III had declared war on Prussia, crowds
Greek rebels in Asia Minor against their actually ran at their Persian adversaries, had packed the streets of Paris chanting
Persian overlords. So the Persian king, singing their battle hymns. The Persian “To Berlin! To Berlin!” But by the time
Darius, decided to teach them a lesson, wings broke, and at last, stunned by the Napoleon’s army arrived at Sedan, in the
sending his fleet towards the bay of Athenians’ courage, Darius’s troops ran Ardennes, the war was going badly. Early
Marathon. There his troops disembarked, for the safety of their ships. on 1 September battle began in earnest.
preparing to march on Athens. Tradition holds that afterwards the Within hours it was clear the French
What followed became part of Athenian fleet-footed Pheidippides ran for almost were finished.
legend. Aided by only 1,000 men from the 26 miles to bring the good news to Athens. Already a sick man, 62-year-old
city of Plataea, the Athenian force faced It was this that inspired the invention of Napoleon spent much of the day in a
a Persian army at least twice the size. the modern marathon. It is a great story – state of helpless paralysis. “If this man
Should they attack? The Athenians were but it is almost certainly untrue. has not come here to kill himself, I don’t
know what he has come to do,” wrote
one observer.
In the afternoon, with his men under
punishing fire, Napoleon ordered that the
white flag be raised above the fortress of
Sedan. Then he sent a message to Prussia’s
Wilhelm I: “Monsieur my brother, not
being able to die at the head of my troops,
nothing remains for me but to place my
sword in the hands of Your Majesty.”
At 6am on 2 September, Napoleon was
shown into the Prussian headquarters.
After signing a humiliating surrender, he
was taken to a nearby castle and held in
relative comfort. “It is impossible for me
to say what I have suffered and what I am
suffering now,” he wrote to his wife later
that night.
He would, he said, have “preferred
death to a capitulation so disastrous,
and yet, under the present circumstances,
it was the only way to avoid the
butchering of 60,000 people. If only
all my torments were concentrated GETTY IMAGES
A detail from a relief on a second-century BC sarcophagus depicting the final phase here! I think of you, our son, and our
of the battle of Marathon, fought between Athens and Persia unhappy country.”

6 BBC History Magazine