This Week in History recalls memorable and decisive events and personalities of the past.
31st May 1916 – The Battle of Jutland, biggest naval battle of the First World War
The most important naval battle of the First World War, and the last fought mainly between battleships, was a clash between the British and German navies off the western coast of the Danish peninsula of Jutland.
The battle was an attempt by the much smaller German navy to draw out and trap a small part of the British fleet as a means of reducing the overwhelming power of the Royal Navy.
The Germans needed to weaken the British fleet so as to break the naval blockade of Germany, which was beginning to cause big problems for the German economy, and food supplies.
The German trap largely failed; when the British became aware of enemy naval activity, they deployed their main battle fleet to intercept the Germans.
Each fleet was unprepared for the other’s deploying at full force, and the 250 ships of the hostile forces engaged twice during the night of 31 May. By the end of the battle, the British had lost 14 ships and the Germans 11, with 6 094 British sailors killed and 2 551 Germans killed.
Despite their higher losses, the British fleet was much larger and, while both sides claimed victory, ultimately the German surface fleet would be completely contained, never being able to break the blockade for the remainder of the war. This compelled the German navy to rely increasingly on submarines.
1st June 1215 – Mongols under Genghis Khan capture Beijing
The Mongol warlord, Temüjin Borjigin, more commonly known as Genghis Khan*, invaded Jin dynasty China in 1211 with 50 000 troops and began to ravage China, first capturing the city of Datong and then marching on Bejing (then called Zhongdu), where a long siege broken by a temporary truce eventually ended on 1 June when Mongol troops entered the city and massacred the inhabitants.
The Jin Dynasty of northern China was one of the first victims of the expanding Mongol empire, which would go on to conquer the largest contiguous empire in all of history, stretching from modern-day Romania in the west to Korea in the east, and from Northern Russia in the north to Persia in the south.
The Mongols, counting on their small, hardy Steppe ponies, and possessing an excellent understanding of logistics, skilful bow-making abilities and a cunning sense of terror, would become an almost unstoppable force, defeating armies many times their size and establishing what had been a nomadic people on the fringes of civilization as one of the dominant powers in world politics.
(*Most historians prefer the English translation Chinggis Khaan, as it is closer to the original Mongolian pronunciation)
2nd June 455 – Sack of Rome by the Vandals
During the final decades of the Western Roman Empire, a Germanic king named Genseric took up an invitation from the Roman empress Eudoxia to march on Rome and take revenge on the murderer of her husband, a man named Maximus, who had also usurped the imperial throne from Eudoxia’s former husband.
Genseric was leader of a confederation of Germanic peoples known as the Vandals, from which we get the modern English word vandal.
At this point in the Roman Empire’s history, its armies were weak, and it was a collapsing power, the city of Rome having already been sacked, 45 years earlier, by the Gothic king, Alaric.
Upon hearing of the Vandal army’s approach, Maximus fled Rome only to be caught by a mob of his own people and stoned to death.
Genseric’s forces met no opposition as they marched on the city and the gates were opened to him after he promised not to massacre the inhabitants, or raze the cit. He mostly kept his promise, with his men only taking some slaves and looting valuables.
This was one of the final humiliations of the Western Roman Empire, which, in 476, would see its last emperor deposed without much fuss.
Roman power would continue in the east in Constantinople until 1453.
3rd June 1989 – Chinese troops sent to force protesters out of Tiananmen Square
Protests demanding changes in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) began on 15 April 1989 during the funeral of pro-reform Communist general secretary Hu Yaobang. The protests were begun by students at the funeral of Yaobang in support of fairly limited demands about economic issues and corruption, but soon expanding to demand freedom of the press and democracy.
Tiananmen Square in Beijing developed as the centre of the protests, with the crowds there swelling to tens of thousands. There were also riots and looting in other parts of China.
At first, the communist hierarchy was unsure of how to respond, with some leaders advising a soft approach and others taking a hard line, favouring force to end the protests.
The protesters also took to hunger strikes, which became widespread.
The government declared martial law on 30 May, but the army was unable to enter the city, as it was blocked by protesters.
On the night of 3 June, the Communist Party finally gave orders to the army to use any means to clear the ‘rioters and counter revolutionaries’ from Tiananmen Square.
Over the next few hours, warning shots from troops led to shots fired directly at the protesters. Street battles ensued, with protesters and residents throwing rocks and chunks of cement at troops who retaliated with live ammunition.
Within days, the protests would be crushed.
Estimates of the final death toll vary wildly, with the official toll being around 300 protesters and soldiers and other estimates ranging from 2 700 to 10 000 killed.
Mention of the suppression of the Tiananmen Square protests is today almost entirely banned in the PRC.
4th June 1940 – Churchill gives his ‘We shall fight on the beaches…’ speech after the British evacuate 338 000 troops from Dunkirk
Following the German breakthrough in the Ardennes forest during the invasion of France in the Second World War, the rapid advance of the German army cut off the lines of retreat for British Expeditionary Force (BEF) troops and a large part of the French army in Northern France and Belgium.
Seaborne rescue was the only option left to the hundreds of thousands of French and British troops.
The rapid advance of the German tanks and the collapse of the French lines led to a hasty and chaotic retreat by the British army towards the port of Dunkirk, where it was hoped to evacuate as many of the troops as possible before they were overwhelmed by the German army.
Luckily for the French and British, the Germans hestitated, fearing their tanks were unsupported by German infantry and that an Allied counter-attack would cut off their armoured units. On 26 May, Hitler ordered his tanks to halt and wait for the German infantry to catch up with them. Hitler believed that the German air force would be capable of eliminating the remainder of the Allied army without his having to risk the tanks. This was an order he would soon reverse, but it helped buy precious time for the Allies.
Expecting the worst, the British began evacuating their army under attack from dive bombers and submarines, while French and British forces held the line against the surrounding Germany army.
The British expected to succeed in evacuating only between 20 000 and 30 000 troops, but, with the help of requisitioned civilian boats and civilian volunteers, the British accomplished what Churchill would later call a ‘miracle’, managing to evacuate 338 226 men from Dunkirk between 27 May and 4 June. Over 100 000 of the evacuated troops were French.
It was on 4 June, in response to the success of the evacuations, that Churchill would give perhaps his most famous wartime speech, declaring that, no matter the setbacks, Britain would go on until the end.
Listen to the whole speech here.
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