Trinidad & Tobago is
well known to all Cricket lovers. Trinidad is the larger and more
populous of the two major islands and numerous landforms which make up the
island nation of Trinidad and Tobago. Trinidad and
Tobago is a Republic, an archipelagic state in the southern
Caribbean, lying just off the coast of northeastern Venezuela and
south of Grenada in the Lesser Antilles. The island of Trinidad was
a Spanish colony from the arrival of Christopher Columbus in 1498.
Cricket is one of the
most popular sports of Trinidad and Tobago. The legendary Brian Lara
hails from this place. The other famous West Indian cricketers would
include – Ian Bishop, Mervyn Dillon, Larry Gomes, Logie, Deryck Murray,
Stollymeyer, Wes Hall. There have further been the likes of Darren Ganga, Adrian Barath, Darren
Bravo, Dwayne Bravo, Lendl Simmons, Denesh Ramdin, Ravi Rampaul, Kieron
Adrian Pollard and in
the present team that is battling in England - Shannon Gabriel.
In recent times, a portrait of a Battle of Waterloo hero the
Queen has hanging in Windsor Castle has had its accompanying gallery and online
description changed!
The Battle of Waterloo was fought on
Sunday, 18 June 1815, near Waterloo in Belgium, part of the United Kingdom of
the Netherlands at the time. A French army under the command of Napoleon
Bonaparte was defeated by two of the armies of the Seventh Coalition. The
battle marked the end of the Napoleonic Wars.
Upon Napoleon's return to power in
March 1815, many states that had opposed him formed the Seventh Coalition and
began to mobilise armies. Wellington and Blücher's armies were cantoned close
to the northeastern border of France. Napoleon planned to attack them
separately in the hope of destroying them before they could join in a
coordinated invasion of France with other members of the coalition. On 16 June,
Napoleon successfully attacked the bulk of the Prussian army at the Battle of
Ligny with his main force, causing the Prussians to withdraw northwards on 17
June, but parallel to Wellington and in good order.
Waterloo was the decisive engagement of
the Waterloo Campaign and Napoleon's last.
Napoleon abdicated four days later, and
coalition forces entered Paris on 7 July. The defeat at Waterloo ended
Napoleon's rule as Emperor of the French and marked the end of his Hundred Days
return from exile. This ended the First French Empire and set a chronological
milestone between serial European wars and decades of relative peace, often
referred to as the Pax Britannica. This post is no History chronicling but the fall of a man
once considered mighty .. .. and now sought to fall in disgrace with changing
times !
Lieutenant-General Sir Thomas Picton
GCB (24 August 1758 – 18 June 1815) (yes the
day referred earlier as Battle of Waterloo) was a Welsh officer of the British Army who
fought in the Napoleonic Wars. According to the historian Alessandro Barbero,
Picton was "respected for his courage and feared for his irascible
temperament". The Duke of Wellington called him "a rough foul-mouthed
devil as ever lived", but found him capable. He is chiefly remembered for his exploits
under Wellington in the Iberian Peninsular War of 1807–1814, during which he
fought in many engagements, displaying great bravery and persistence. He was killed in 1815 fighting at the
Battle of Waterloo, during a crucial bayonet charge in which his division
stopped d'Erlon's corps' attack against the allied centre left. He was the most
senior officer to die at Waterloo. He was a sitting Member of Parliament at the
time of his death.
Earlier in 1795, he shot to prominence
under Sir Ralph Abercromby t at the
capture of Saint Lucia and then that of St Vincent. (those of us following Cricket and especially West Indies
would easily know that these Caribbean places) After the reduction of Trinidad in 1797,
Abercromby made Picton governor of the island. For the next 5 years he held the
island with a garrison he considered inadequate against the threats of internal
unrest and of reconquest by the Spanish. He ensured order by vigorous action,
viewed variously as rough-and-ready justice or as arbitrary brutality. Picton was also accused of the
execution of a dozen slaves and the
trade in captive humans was partly behind his considerable fortune.
Now comes the news that the statue of
19th century slave owner Sir Thomas Picton will be removed from Cardiff City
Hall where it has stood for 104 years after majority council vote in wake of
BLM movement. MailOnline reports that
today construction workers began to take
down the controversial marble statue, which is now encased in a wooden box,
after councillors agreed it should be removed at a Cardiff Council vote on
Thursday. During the meeting, councillors said Picton's 'abhorrent' behaviour
as Governor of Trinidad meant he was 'not deserving of a place in the Heroes of
Wales collection', with 57 ruling in favour of the statue's removal, five
voting against the move and nine abstaining. The move comes just a month after
the statue of slave trader Edward Colston was toppled over by protestors in
Bristol.
Picton became the highest-ranking
British Army officer killed at the Battle of Waterloo and a memorial dedicated
to his efforts was unveiled by the former prime minister David Lloyd George as
part of a series depicting the 'Heroes of Wales' in 1916. However the senior officer was also known to
have used the slave trade to build up his considerable fortune and in 1806 was
also found guilty of torturing Luisa Calderon, a 14-year-old mixed-race girl,
during his rule of the Caribbean island.
He was never sentenced, and two years later the verdict was reversed at
a retrial. Cardiff's first black mayor Dan De'Ath called for the statue of the
'sadistic 19th Century slave-owner' to be removed.
'Statues are not just about history.
They are about celebrating the lives of the people they depict, and
representing a certain set of values. These aren't the values, he's not the
person, and these aren't the deeds we want to celebrate and recognise in
Cardiff today.' The girl, Louisa Calderon, was tortured in an
attempt to get her to confess to stealing from a businessman she lived with as
a mistress, and was suspended with rope by one arm above a spike in the floor. The latest move comes just weeks after a
portrait of Picton the Queen has hanging in Windsor Castle had its accompanying
gallery and online description changed to include his links to slavery. Historical
details of the painting of Picton were altered to include a reference to
torturing a slave girl when he was the 'Tyrant of Trinidad'.
Picton joined Hood in military
operations in Saint Lucia and Tobago, before returning to Britain to face
charges brought by Fullarton. In December 1803 he was arrested by order of the
Privy Council and promptly released on bail set at £40,000. The Privy Council
dealt with the majority of the charges against Picton. Those charges related
principally to excessive cruelty in the detection and punishment of
practitioners of obeah, severity to slaves, and of execution of suspects out of
hand without due process. Picton was,
however, tried in the Court of King's Bench before Lord Ellenborough in 1806 on
a single charge; the misdemeanour of having in 1801 caused torture to be
unlawfully inflicted to extract a confession from Luisa Calderón, a young free
mulatto girl suspected of assisting one of her lovers to burgle the house of
the man with whom she was living, making off with about £500.
Historical wrongs get reversed though
after centuries ~ and may not mean anything for the man in statue !
With regards – S. Sampathkumar
24.7.2020.
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