War of the Sixth Coalition
Part of Napoleonic Wars
Battle of Leipzig
Date 1812–1814 Location Europe Result Coalition victory, Treaty of Fontainebleau, First Treaty of Paris Bourbon Restoration; Napoleon's exile to Elba Various territorial changes Beginning of the Congress of Vienna Hostilities resume with the return of Napoleon to power in 1815
Belligerents
Original Coalition  Russia  Prussia  Austria  United Kingdom  Sweden Spain Portugal Sicily  Sardinia After Battle of Leipzig Saxony  Bavaria  Württemberg	French Empire Italy Duchy of Warsaw[a] Until January 1814 Naples Denmark–Norway Swiss Confederation Confederation of the Rhine (Many member states defected after Battle of Leipzig) United States[c]
Commanders and leaders
Michael Andreas Barclay de Tolly Mikhail Kutuzov Prince Wittgenstein Gebhard von Blücher Karl Schwarzenberg Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington Prince Charles John Karl Philipp von Wrede[b]	Napoleon I Nicolas Oudinot Louis Nicolas Davout Eugène de Beauharnais Józef Poniatowski † Joachim Murat
Strength
approx. 800,000, 1,200,000+ after Napoleon's allies defect	approx. 650,000. After German defection 400,000
Duchy of Warsaw as a state was in effect fully occupied by Russian and Prussian forces by May 1813, though most Poles remained loyal to Napoleon Commanded Bavarian forces nominally allied to the French Empire until Bavaria defected to Allied cause on 8 October 1813 United States was engaged in the War of 1812 with the United Kingdom, they didn't supply any help to Napoleon, but supported his campaign

In the War of the Sixth Coalition (1812–1814), a coalition of Austria, Prussia, Russia, the United Kingdom, Portugal, Sweden, Spain and a number of German States finally defeated France and drove Napoleon into exile on Elba. After the disastrous French invasion of Russia, the continental powers joined Russia, the UK, Portugal and the rebels in Spain. With their armies reorganized, they drove Napoleon out of Germany in 1813 and invaded France in 1814, forcing Napoleon to abdicate and restoring the Bourbons.

Two-and-a-half million troops fought in the conflict and the total dead amounted to as many as two million, including the casualties of the 1812 Russian campaign (some estimates suggest that over a million died in Russia alone). The War of the Sixth Coalition included the battles of Lützen, Bautzen, Dresden and the epic Battle of Leipzig (also known as the Battle of Nations), which was the largest battle of the Napoleonic Wars, and, indeed, the largest in Western history before the First World War. Ultimately, Napoleon's earlier setbacks in Russia and Germany proved to be the seeds of his undoing, and the Allies occupied Paris, forcing his abdication.

Invasion of Russia[link]

In 1812 Napoleon invaded Russia to compel Emperor Alexander I to remain in the Continental System. The Grande Armée, consisting of as many as 650,000 men (roughly half of whom were French, with the remainder coming from allies or subject areas), crossed the Neman River on 23 June 1812. Russia proclaimed a Patriotic War, while Napoleon proclaimed a Second Polish war. But against the expectations of the Poles, who supplied almost 100,000 troops for the invasion force, and having in mind further negotiations with Russia, he avoided any concessions toward Poland. Russian forces fell back, destroying everything potentially of use to the invaders until giving battle at Borodino (7 September) where the two great armies fought a devastating but inconclusive battle. Following the battle the Russians withdrew, thus opening the road to Moscow. By 14 September the French had occupied Moscow but found the city empty. Alexander I (despite having almost lost the war by the standards of the time) refused to capitulate, leaving the French to wallow in the abandoned city of Moscow with little food, shelter (large parts of Moscow had burned down) and winter approaching. In these circumstances, and with no clear path to victory, Napoleon was forced to withdraw from Moscow. So began the disastrous Great Retreat, during which time the retreating army came under increasing pressure due to lack of food, desertions, and increasingly harsh winter weather, all while under continual attack by the Russian army led by Commander-in-Chief Mikhail Kutuzov and other militias. Total losses of the Grand Army were at least 370,000 casualties as a result of fighting, starvation and the freezing weather conditions, and 200,000 captured. By November, only 27,000 fit soldiers were among those who crossed the Berezina River. Napoleon now left his army to return to Paris and prepare a defence of Poland against the advancing Russians. The situation was not as dire as it might at first have seemed; the Russians had also lost around 400,000 men and their army was similarly depleted. However, they had the advantage of shorter supply lines and were able to replenish their armies with greater speed than the French, especially because Napoleon's losses of cavalry and wagons were irreplaceable.

Formation of the Sixth Coalition[link]

The Convention of Tauroggen was a truce signed 30 December 1812 at Tauroggen (now Tauragė, Lithuania), between Generalleutnant Ludwig Yorck von Wartenburg on behalf of his Prussian troops (who had been compelled to augment the Grande Armée during the invasion of Russia), and by General Hans Karl von Diebitsch of the Russian Army. According to the Treaty of Tilsit, Prussia had to support Napoleon's invasion of Russia. This resulted in some Prussians leaving their army to avoid serving the French, like Carl von Clausewitz, who joined Russian service. When Yorck's immediate French superior Marshal MacDonald, retreated before the corps of Diebitsch, Yorck found himself isolated. As a soldier his duty was to break through, but as a Prussian patriot his position was more difficult. He had to judge whether the moment was favorable for starting a war of liberation; and, whatever might be the enthusiasm of his junior staff-officers, Yorck had no illusions as to the safety of his own head, and negotiated with Clausewitz. The Convention of Tauroggen armistice, signed by Diebitsch and Yorck, "neutralized" the Prussian corps without consent of their king. The news was received with the wildest enthusiasm in Prussia, but the Prussian Court dared not yet throw off the mask, and an order was despatched suspending Yorck from his command pending a court-martial. Diebitsch refused to let the bearer pass through his lines, and the general was finally absolved when the Treaty of Kalisch (28 February 1813) definitely ranged Prussia on the side of the Allies. Seeing an opportunity in Napoleon's historic defeat, Prussia re-entered the war, proclaiming a crusade of German Liberation against Napoleonic France.

On 9 January 1812, French troops occupied Swedish Pomerania to end the illegal trade with the United Kingdom from Sweden, which was in violation of the Continental System. Swedish estates were confiscated and Swedish officers and soldiers were taken as prisoners. In response, Sweden declared neutrality and signed a secret treaty with Russia against France and Denmark–Norway on 5 April. Later on 18 July, the Treaty of Örebro formally ended the wars between the United Kingdom and Sweden and Russia. On 3 March 1813, after the United Kingdom agreed to Swedish claims to Norway, Sweden entered an alliance with the United Kingdom and declared war against France.

War in Germany[link]

Napoleon vowed that he would create a new army as large as that he had sent into Russia, and quickly built up his forces in the east from 30,000 to 130,000 and eventually to 400,000. Napoleon inflicted 40,000 casualties on the Allies at Lützen (2 May) and Bautzen (20–21 May 1813). Both battles involved total forces of over 250,000 – making them some of the largest conflicts of the wars so far.

The belligerents declared an armistice from 4 June 1813 and lasting until 13 August, during which time both sides attempted to recover from approximately quarter of a million losses since April. During this time Allied negotiations finally brought Austria out in open opposition to France (like Prussia, Austria had slipped from nominal ally of France in 1812 to armed neutral in 1813). Two principal Austrian armies were deployed in Bohemia and Northern Italy, adding an additional 300,000 troops to the Allied armies. In total the Allies now had around 800,000 frontline troops in the German theatre with a strategic reserve of 350,000.

Napoleon succeeded in bringing the total imperial forces in the region up to around 650,000 (although only 250,000 were under his direct command, with another 120,000 under Nicolas Charles Oudinot and 30,000 under Davout). The Confederation of the Rhine furnished Napoleon with the bulk of the remainder of the forces with Saxony and Bavaria as principal contributors. In addition, to the south Murat's Kingdom of Naples and Eugène de Beauharnais's Kingdom of Italy had a combined total of 100,000 men under arms. In Spain an additional 150–200,000 French troops were being steadily beaten back by Spanish and British forces numbering around 150,000. Thus in total around 900,000 French troops were opposed in all theatres by somewhere around a million Allied troops (not including the strategic reserve being formed in Germany). The figures are however slightly misleading as most of the German troops fighting on the side of the French were unreliable at best and on the verge of defecting to the Allies.^{[citation needed]} It is reasonable to say that Napoleon could count on no more than 450,000 troops in Germany. Thus he was effectively outnumbered by about two to one.

The Russian army enters Paris in 1814.

Following the end of the armistice Napoleon seemed to have regained the initiative at Dresden, where he defeated a numerically-superior allied army and inflicted enormous casualties, while sustaining relatively few. However at about the same time Oudinot's thrust towards Berlin was beaten back and Napoleon himself, lacking reliable and numerous cavalry, was unable to fully take advantage of his victory. He withdrew with around 175,000 troops to Leipzig in Saxony where he thought he could fight a defensive action against the Allied armies converging on him. There, at the so-called Battle of Nations (16 October–19 1813) a French army, ultimately reinforced to 191,000, found itself faced by three Allied armies converging on it, ultimately totalling more than 330,000 troops. Over the following days the battle resulted in a defeat for Napoleon, who however was still able to manage a relatively orderly retreat westwards. However as the French forces were pulling across the Elster the bridge was prematurely blown and 30,000 troops were stranded to be taken prisoner by the Allied forces.

Napoleon defeated an army of his former ally Bavaria at the Battle of Hanau before pulling what was left of his forces back into France. Meanwhile Davout's corps continued to hold out in its siege of Hamburg, where it became the last Imperial force east of the Rhine.

Peninsular War[link]

Meanwhile, Arthur Wellesley Duke of Wellington finally broke the French power in Spain and forced the French to retreat over the Pyrenees and into France itself. In a strategic move, Wellington planned to move his supply base from Lisbon to Santander. The Anglo-Portuguese forces swept northwards in late May and seized Burgos; they then outflanked the French army, forcing Joseph Bonaparte into the valley of the River Zadorra. At the Battle of Vitoria, 21 June, the 65,000 French under Joseph were routed by 53,000 British, 27,000 Portuguese and 19,000 Spaniards. Wellington pursued and dislodged the French from San Sebastián, which was sacked and burnt.

The allies chased the retreating French, reaching the Pyrenees in early July. Soult was given command of the French forces and began a counter-offensive, dealing the allied generals two sharp defeats at the Battle of Maya and the Battle of Roncesvalles. Yet, he was put again onto the defensive by the British army and its Portuguese allies, lost momentum, and finally fled after the allied victory at the Battle of Sorauren (28 and 30 July).

All the participants of the War of the Sixth Coalition. Blue: The Coalition and their colonies and allies. Green: The First French Empire, its protectorates, colonies and allies.

The Battle of the Pyrenees saw Wellington fighting very far from his supply line and winning by a mixture of manoeuvre, shock and persistent hounding of the French forces.

On 7 October, after Wellington received news of the reopening of hostilities in Germany, the allies finally crossed into France, fording the Bidasoa river. On 11 December, a beleaguered and desperate Napoleon agreed to a separate peace with Spain under the Treaty of Valençay, under which he would release and recognize Ferdinand VII as King of Spain in exchange for a complete cessation of hostilities. But the Spanish had no intention of trusting Napoleon, and the fighting continued.

The Peninsular War went on through the allied victories of Vera pass, the Battle of Nivelle, the Battle of Nive near Bayonne (10–14 December 1813), the Battle of Orthez (27 February 1814) and the Battle of Toulouse (10 April). This last one was after Napoleon's abdication.

In Spain, the French forces were harassed and hounded constantly by a large element of the Spanish population. The French forces, having to deal with this guerilla war, in-fighting among its marshallate, and the British campaign Duke of Wellington based in the Peninsula, were eventually forced to retreat into France after large losses of troops, culminating in the abdication of Napoleon and his banishment to the Isle of Elba.

Russian cossacks in Paris in 1814

War in Denmark[link]

In December 1813, the Swedish army attacked Danish troops in Holstein. General Anders Skjöldebrand defeated the Danes at Bornhöved on 7 December 1813. Three days later, the Danish Auxiliary Corps scored a victory over the Swedes at Sehested. However, the Danish victory could not change the course of war.

On 14 January 1814, the Treaty of Kiel was concluded between Sweden and Denmark–Norway. By the terms of the treaty, Norway was to be ceded to the king of Sweden. However, the Norwegians rejected the terms of the treaty, declaring independence and adopting its own constitution on 17 May. On 27 July, Swedish forces invaded Norway and after a short war, an armistice was concluded at the Convention of Moss on 14 August.

Norway accepted to enter into a personal union with Sweden as a separate state with its own constitution and institutions, except for the common king and foreign service. The Union between Sweden and Norway was formally established on 4 November 1814, when the Norwegian parliament adopted the constitutional amendments necessary to allow for the union, and elected Charles XIII of Sweden as king of Norway.

Battles in France[link]

After retreating from Germany, Napoleon fought a series of battles, including the Battle of Arcis-sur-Aube, in France, but was steadily forced back against overwhelming odds. During this time Napoleon fought his Six Days' Campaign, in which he won multiple battles against the enemy forces advancing towards Paris. However he never managed to field more than 70,000 troops during this entire campaign against more than half a million Allied troops. At the Treaty of Chaumont (9 March) the Allies agreed to preserve the Coalition until Napoleon's total defeat. The Allies entered Paris on 30 March 1814. Napoleon was determined to fight on, even now, incapable of fathoming his massive fall from power. During the campaign he had issued a decree for 900,000 fresh conscripts, but only a fraction of these were ever raised and Napoleon's increasingly unrealistic schemes for victory eventually gave way to the reality of the hopeless situation.

Abdication[link]

Napoleon's exile to Elba, from a British engraving, 1814.

Napoleon proposed to march on Paris. His soldiers and regimental officers were eager to fight on. But Napoleon's marshals and senior officers mutinied. On 4 April, Napoleon was confronted by his marshals and senior officers, led by Ney. They told the Emperor that they refused to march. Napoleon asserted that the army would follow him. Ney replied, 'The army will follow its generals.' Napoleon abdicated on 6 April 1814. However, occasional military actions continued in Italy, Spain and Holland throughout the spring of 1814. The victors exiled Napoleon to the island of Elba, and restored the Bourbon monarchy in the person of Louis XVIII. The Treaty of Fontainebleau was signed, the Allied leaders attended Peace Celebrations in England in June, before progressing to the Congress of Vienna, which was held to redraw the map of Europe.

See also[link]

• The Hundred Days or the War of the Seventh Coalition

Notes[link]

This article includes a list of references, related reading or external links, but its sources remain unclear because it lacks inline citations. Please improve this article by introducing more precise citations. (November 2010)

References[link]

• Rothenberg, Gunther Erich. The Napoleonic Wars. London: Cassell. ISBN 0-304-35983-1. 
• Lüke, Martina (2009). Anti-Napoleonic Wars of Liberation (1813–1815). In: The International Encyclopedia of Revolution and Protest: 1500–present. Edited by Immanuel Ness.. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. pp. 188–190. 

External links[link]

• Bogdanovich Modest I. (1863) (in Russian). History of the War in 1813 for the independence of Germany (История войны 1813 года за независимость Германии) at Runivers.ru in DjVu and PDF formats
• Bogdanovich Modest I. (1865) (in Russian). History of the War in 1814 in France and the deposition of Napoleon I, according to reliable sources (История войны 1814 года во Франции и низложения Наполеона I, по достоверным источникам) at Runivers.ru in DjVu and PDF formats
• Napoleon, His Armies and Tactics
• Collection of historical eBooks about the War of the Sixth Coalition (German)

The Five
Mily Balakirev César Cui Modest Mussorgsky Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov Alexander Borodin
v t e

The Five, also known as The Mighty Handful, The Mighty Five, or The Mighty Coterie (Russian: Могучая кучка, Moguchaya kuchka), refers to a circle of composers who met in Saint Petersburg, Russia, in the years 1856–1870: Mily Balakirev (the leader), César Cui, Modest Mussorgsky, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and Alexander Borodin. The group had the aim of producing a specifically Russian kind of art music, rather than one that imitated older European music or relied on European-style conservatory training. In a sense, they were a branch of the Romantic Nationalist movement in Russia, sharing similar artistic goals with the Abramtsevo Colony and Russian Revival.

History[link]

Name[link]

Vladimir Stasov
(1824–1906)

In May 1867 the critic Vladimir Stasov wrote an article, Mr. Balakirev's Slavic Concert, on a concert given for visiting Slav delegations to the "All-Russian Ethnographical Exhibition" in Moscow. The four Russian composers whose works were played at the concert were Mikhail Glinka, Alexander Dargomyzhsky, Mily Balakirev, and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov.^[1] The article ended with the following statement:

God grant that our Slav guests may never forget today's concert; God grant that they may forever preserve the memory of how much poetry, feeling, talent, and intelligence are possessed by the small but already mighty handful of Russian musicians.^[2]

—Vladimir Stasov, Sankt-Peterburgskie Vedomosti, 1867

The expression "mighty handful" (Russian: Могучая кучка, Moguchaya kuchka, "Mighty Bunch" or "Group"), was mocked by enemies of Balakirev and Stasov: Aleksandr Serov, academic circles of the conservatory, the Russian Musical Society, and their press supporters. The group responded by defiantly adopting the name.^[2] This loose collection of composers gathered around Balakirev now included Cui, Mussorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, and Borodin — the five who have come to be associated with the name "Mighty Handful", or sometimes "The Five". Gerald Abraham stated flatly in the Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians that "they never called themselves, nor were they ever called in Russia, 'The Five'"^[3] (although today the Russian equivalent "Пятерка" ("Pyatyorka") is occasionally used to refer to this group).^[4] In his memoirs, Rimsky-Korsakov routinely refers to the group as "Balakirev's circle", and occasionally uses "The Mighty Handful", usually with an ironic tone. He also makes the following reference to "The Five":

If we leave out of account Lodyzhensky, who accomplished nothing, and Lyadov, who appeared later, Balakirev's circle consisted of Balakirev, Cui, Mussorgsky, Borodin, and me (the French have retained the denomination of "Les Cinq" for us to this day).^[5]

—Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov, Chronicle of My Musical Life, 1909

The Russian word kuchka also spawned the terms "kuchkism" and "kuchkist", which may be applied to artistic aims or works in tune with the sensibilities of The Mighty Handful.

The name of Les Six, an even looser collection of French-speaking composers, emulates that of "The Five".

Formation[link]

The formation of the group began in 1856, with the first meeting of Balakirev and César Cui. Modest Mussorgsky joined them in 1857, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov in 1861, and Alexander Borodin in 1862. All the composers in The Five were young men in 1862. Balakirev was 25, Cui 27, Mussorgsky 23, Borodin the eldest at 28, and Rimsky-Korsakov just 18. They were all self-trained amateurs. Borodin combined composing with a career in chemistry. Rimsky-Korsakov was a naval officer (he wrote his First Symphony on a three-year naval voyage circumnavigating the globe). Mussorgsky had been in the Guards, then in the civil service before taking up music; even at the height of his career in the 1870s he was forced by the expense of his drinking habit to hold down a full-time job in the State Forestry Department.^[6]

In contrast to the élite status and court connections of Conservatory composers such as Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, The Five were mainly from the minor gentry of the provinces. To some degree their esprit de corps depended on the myth, which they themselves created, of a movement that was more "authentically Russian," in the sense that it was closer to the native soil, than the classic academy.^[7]

Before them, Mikhail Glinka and Alexander Dargomyzhsky had gone some way towards producing a distinctly Russian kind of music, writing operas on Russian subjects, but The Mighty Handful represented the first concentrated attempt to develop such a music, with Stasov as their artistic adviser and Dargomyzhsky as an elder statesman to the group, so to speak. The circle began to fall apart during the 1870s, no doubt partially due to the fact that Balakirev withdrew from musical life early in the decade for a period of time. All of "The Five" are buried in Tikhvin Cemetery in Saint Petersburg.

Musical language[link]

Stylization[link]

The musical language The Five developed set them far apart from the Conservatoire. This self-conscious Russian styling was based on two elements:

• They tried to incorporate in their music what they heard in village songs, in Cossack and Caucasian dances, in church chants and the tolling of church bells (to the point where the bell tolling became a cliché). The Five's music became filled with imitative sounds of Russian life. They also tried to reproduce the long-drawn, lyrical and melismatic peasant song, what Glinka had once called "the soul of Russian music." Balakirev made this possible by his study of songs from the Volga in the 1860s. More than any previous anthology, his transcriptions artfully preserved the distinctive aspects of Russian folk music:
  • Tonal mutability

  A tune seems to shift naturally from one tonal center to another, often ending up in a different key than the one in which the song began. This can produce a feeling of elusiveness, a lack of definition or of logical progression in the harmony. Even when stylized by The Five, this quality can make Russian music sound very different from the tonal structures of the West.

  • Heterophony

  A melody is simultaneously rendered by two or more performers in different variations. This is improvised by the singers until the end, when the song reverts to a single melodic line.

  • Parallel fifths, fourths and thirds

  The effect lends Russian music a raw sonority missing entirely from the comparatively polished harmonies of Western music.

• The Five also adopted a series of harmonic devices to create a distinct "Russian" style and color different from Western music. This "exotic" styling of "Russia" was not just self-conscious but entirely invented. None of these devices was actually used in Russian folk or church music:
  • Whole tone scale

  Although Glinka did not invent this scale, his application of it in the opera Ruslan and Lyudmila (1842) — most recognizable at the end of the festive overture — provided a characteristic harmonic and melodic device. This scale in "Russian" works often suggests evil or ominous personages or situations. It was used by all the major composers from Tchaikovsky (the appearance of the Countess's ghost in The Queen of Spades) to Rimsky-Korsakov (in all his magic-story operas—Sadko, Kashchey the Deathless and The Invisible City of Kitezh). Claude Debussy also uses this scale in his music, taking this, among many things, from the Russians. Later it became a standard device in horror-movie scores.

  • The Russian submediant^[8]

  Also linked to Glinka's Ruslan, this is a harmonic pattern (in major mode) in which one upper part proceeds from the dominant pitch chromatically to the submediant while the other harmony parts remain constant. The most basic form of this pattern can be shown as follows (beginning with typical tonic): root-position tonic triad --> root-position augmented tonic triad -> 1st inversion submediant minor triad. A famous example of the Russian submediant occurs in the very opening bars of the third movement of Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherezade.

  • Diminished or octatonic scale

  Rimsky-Korsakov first used this in his symphonic poem Sadko in 1867. This scale became a sort of Russian calling-card — a leitmotif of magic and menace used not just by Rimsky-Korsakov but all of his followers, above all Alexander Scriabin, Maurice Ravel, Igor Stravinsky and Olivier Messiaen (mode 2).

  • Modular rotation in sequences of thirds

  The Five made this device of Franz Liszt their own to base a loose symphonic-poem type of structure. This way, they could avoid the rigid Western laws of modulation in sonata form, allowing the form of a musical composition to be shaped entirely by the "content" of the music (its programmatic statements and visual descriptions) rather than by formal laws of symmetry. This loose structure became especially important for Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition, a work that may have done more than any other to define the Russian style.^[9]

  • Pentatonic scale

  This stylistic aspect became used by every Russian nationalist composer.^[10] Its distinctive feature is to have only five notes in the octave, rather than the seven of the heptatonic scales (e.g., major and minor). The pentatonic scale is one of the ways of suggesting a "primitive" folk-melodic style as well as the "Eastern" element (Middle East, Asia). A melodic example of the "major-mode" pentatonic scale (C-D-E-G-A) can be heard at the entrance of the chorus at the beginning of Borodin's Prince Igor.

Orientalism[link]

One hallmark of "The Five" was its reliance on orientalism.^[10] Many quintessentially "Russian" works were composed in orientalist style, such as Balakirev's Islamey, Borodin's Prince Igor and Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade.^[10] Orientalism, in fact, became widely considered in the West both one of the best-known aspects of Russian music and a trait of Russian national character.^[11] As leader of "The Five," Balakirev encouraged the use of eastern themes and harmonies to set their "Russian" music apart from the German symphonism of Anton Rubinstein and other Western-oriented composers.^[10] Because Rimsky-Korsakov used Russian folk and oriental melodies in his First Symphony, Stasov and the other nationalists dubbed it the "First Russian Symphony," even though Rubinstein had written his Ocean Symphony a dozen years before it.^[10] These were themes Balakirev had transcribed in the Caucasus.^[10] "The symphony is good," Cui wrote to Rimsky-Korsakov in 1863, while the latter was out on naval deployment. "We played it a few days ago at Balakirev's—to the great pleasure of Stassov. It is really Russian. Only a Russian could have composed it, because it lacks the slightest trace of any stagnant Germanness."^[12]

Orientalism was not confined to using authentic Eastern melodies.^[13] What became more important than the melodies themselves were the musical conventions added to them.^[13] These conventions allowed orientalism to become an avenue for writing music on subjects considered unmentionable otherwise, such as political themes and erotic fantasies.^[11] It also became a means of expressing Russian supremacy as the empire expanded under Alexander II.^[11] This was often reinforced through misogynist symbolism—the rational, active and moral Western man versus the irrational, passive and immoral Eastern woman.^[11]

Two major works entirely dominated by orientalism are Rimsky-Korsakov's symphonic suite Antar and Balakirev's symphonic poem Tamara.^[13] Antar, set in Arabia, uses two different styles of music, Western (Russian) and Eastern (Arabian).^[13] The first theme, Antar's, is masculine and Russian in character.^[13] The second theme, feminine and oriental in melodic contour, belongs to the queen, Gul Nazar.^[13] Rimsky-Korsakov was able to soften the implicit misogyny to some extent.^[13] However, female sensuality does exert a paralyzing, ultimately destructive influence.^[13] With Gul Nazar extinguishing Antar's life in a final embrace, the woman overcomes the man.^[13]

Balakirev gives a more overtly misogynistic view of oriental women in Tamara.^[13] He had originally planned to write a Caucasan dance called a lezginka, modeled on Glinka, for this work.^[14] However, he discovered a poem by Mikhail Lermontov about the beautiful Tamara, who lived in a tower alongside the gorge of Daryal.^[14] She lured travelers and allowed them to enjoy a night of sensual delights, only to kill them and throw their bodies into the River Terek.^[14] Balakirev uses two specific codes endemic to orientalism in writing Tamara. The first code, based on obsessive rhythms, note repetitions, climactic effects and accelerated tempi, represents Dionysian intoxication.^[13] The second code, consisting of unpredictable rhythms, irregular phrasing and based on long passages with many repeat notes, augmented and diminished intervals and extended melismas, depict sensual longing.^[13] Not only did Balakirev use these codes extensively, but he also attempted to supercharge them further when he revised the orchestration of Tamara in 1898.^[14]

A direct result of such orientalism was the big influence that this circle left on the formation of classical traditions in other nations of the east and south of Russia. For instance, one of Rimsky-Korsakov's famous students, Alexander Spendiaryan went on to become the founder of Armenian classical music, carrying on the traditions and aesthetics of the Mighty Handful to the Caucasus.

Quotations[link]

Rimsky-Korsakov provides the following picture of "The Mighty Handful" in his memoirs, Chronicle of My Musical Life (translated by J. A. Joffe):

Tastes[link]

"The tastes of the circle leaned towards Glinka, Schumann, and Beethoven's last quartets ... they had little respect for Mendelssohn ... Mozart and Haydn were considered out of date and naive ... J. S. Bach was held to be petrified ... Chopin was likened by Balakirev to a nervous society lady ... Berlioz was highly esteemed ...Liszt was comparatively unknown ... Little was said of Wagner ... They respected Dargomyzhsky for the recitative portions of Rusalka ... [but] he was not credited with any considerable talent and was treated with a shade of derision. ...Rubinstein had a reputation as a pianist, but was thought to have neither talent nor taste as a composer."

Balakirev[link]

"Balakirev, who had never had any systematic course in harmony and counterpoint and had not even superficially applied himself to them, evidently thought such studies quite unnecessary ... An excellent pianist, a superior sight reader of music, a splendid improviser, endowed by nature with the sense of correct harmony and part-writing, he possessed a technique partly native and partly acquired through a vast musical erudition, with the help of an extraordinary memory, keen and retentive, which means so much in steering a critical course in musical literature ... He instantly felt every technical imperfection or error, he grasped a defect in form at once. Whenever I or other young men, later on, played him our essays at composition, he instantly caught all the defects of form, modulation, and so on, and forthwith seating himself at the piano, he would improvise and show how the composition in question should be changed exactly as he indicated, and frequently entire passages in other people's compositions became his and not their putative authors' at all. He was obeyed absolutely, for the spell of his personality was tremendous. ... His influence over those around him was boundless, and resembled some magnetic or mesmeric force. ... he despotically demanded that the tastes of his pupils should exactly coincide with his own. The slightest deviation from his taste was severely censured by him. By means of raillery, a parody or caricature played by him, whatever did not suit him at the moment was belittled — and the pupil blushed with shame for his expressed opinion and recanted...."

Abilities[link]

"Balakirev considered me a symphony specialist ... in the sixties, Balakirev and Cui, though very intimate with Mussorgsky and sincerely fond of him, treated him like a lesser light, and of little promise at that, in spite of his undoubted talent. It seemed to them that there was something missing in him and, in their eyes, he was in need of advice and criticism. Balakirev often said that Mussorgsky had "no head" or that his "brains were weak." ... Balakirev thought that Cui understood little in symphony and musical forms and nothing in orchestration, but was a past master in vocal and operatic music; Cui, in turn, thought Balakirev a master in symphony, form, and orchestration, but with little liking for operatic composition and vocal music in general. Thus they complemented each other, but each, in his own way, felt mature and grown up. Borodin, Mussorgsky, and I, however — we were immature and juvenile. Obviously, towards Balakirev and Cui we were in somewhat subordinate relations; their opinions were listened to unconditionally...."

Influence[link]

Except perhaps for Cui, the members of this group influenced or taught many of the great Russian composers who were to follow, including Alexander Glazunov, Mikhail Ippolitov-Ivanov, Sergei Prokofiev, Igor Stravinsky, and Dmitri Shostakovich. They also influenced the two french symbolist composers Maurice Ravel and Claude Debussy through their radical tonal language.

Timeline[link]

<timeline> ImageSize = width:800 height:155 PlotArea = width:620 height:135 left:100 bottom:20 AlignBars = justify

Colors =

 id:Borodin            value:tan1
 id:Cui                value:rgb(1,0.6,0.5)
 id:Balakirev          value:lightorange
 id:Mussorgsky         value:gray(0.8)
 id:Rimsky-Korsakov    value:coral
 id:Tsar               value:white
   

Period = from:1830 till:1920 TimeAxis = orientation:horizontal ScaleMajor = unit:year increment:10 start:1830 ScaleMinor = unit:year increment:10 start:1830

Define $markred = text:"*" textcolor:red shift:(0,3) fontsize:10

PlotData=

 align:center textcolor:black fontsize:8 mark:(line,black) width:18 shift:(0,-5)

 bar:Tsar color:white text:""
 from: 1830 till: 1855 color: orange text: Nicholas I       
 from: 1855 till: 1881 color: yellow text: Alexander II
 from: 1881 till: 1894 color: orange text: Alexander III
 from: 1894 till: 1917 color: yellow text: Nicholas II
 bar:Borodin color:Borodin
 from: 1833 till: 1887  
 bar:Cui color:Cui
 from: 1835 till: 1918 
 bar:Balakirev color:Balakirev
 from: 1837 till: 1910  
 bar:Mussorgsky color:Mussorgsky
 from: 1839 till: 1881  
 bar:Rimsky-Korsakov color:Rimsky-Korsakov
 from: 1844 till: 1908  

LineData=

  at:1855 color:black width:0.5 layer:back
  at:1881 color:black width:0.5 layer:back
  at:1894 color:black width:0.5 layer:back
  at:1917 color:black width:0.5 layer:back

</timeline>

See also[link]

• List of Russian composers
• Tchaikovsky and the Five
• Les Six, French composers
• Armenian Mighty Handful
• Group of Eight (music), Spanish composers

References[link]

External links[link]

• Encyclopædia Britannica article about "The Five" [1]
• The Article about The Five in "1000 years of Russian Music" [2]
• Turgenev and Russian Music: The Mighty Handful (with music samples)
• Russian musical influences of The Five on works of Claude Debussy [3]

Roderick 'Rory' James Nugent Stewart OBE FRSL MP (born 3 January 1973) is a British academic, author, and Conservative politician. Since May 2010, he has been the Member of Parliament for Penrith and the Border,^[1] in the county of Cumbria, North West England.

Overview[link]

Stewart was a senior coalition official in a province of occupied Iraq in 2003-2004. He is known for his book about this experience, The Prince of the Marshes (also published under the title Occupational Hazards) and for his 2002 walk, lasting 32 days, across Afghanistan, which served as the basis for another book, The Places in Between, as well as his later cultural development work in Afghanistan as the Executive Chairman of the Turquoise Mountain Foundation, a British charity.^[2]

He also served for nine months on his gap year in the Black Watch regiment of the British Army and in the British Foreign Service, where he worked as a diplomat in Indonesia and the Balkans.

Early life and education[link]

Stewart, whose family hails from Crieff in Perthshire, Scotland, was born in Hong Kong, raised in Malaysia and Scotland and educated at the Dragon School, Eton College and Balliol College, Oxford, where he studied modern history and politics, philosophy and economics (PPE). He graduated with a First and while a student at Oxford, he was a summer tutor to Prince William and Prince Harry. He holds Honorary Doctorates from the University of Stirling,^[3] as well as from The American University of Paris.^[4] As a teenager, he was a member of the Labour Party.^[5]

Military and diplomatic service[link]

After a brief period as an officer in the British Army on a gap year commission (to the Black Watch), Stewart joined the Foreign Office.^[6] He served in the British Embassy in Indonesia from 1997 to 1999, working on issues related to East Timor independence, and as the British Representative to Montenegro in the wake of the Kosovo campaign. From 2000 to 2002 he made a series of treks in rural districts of Pakistan, Iran, Afghanistan, India and Nepal, a journey totalling around 6000 miles, during which time he stayed in five hundred different village houses.^[7][8]

After the coalition invasion of Iraq, he was appointed the Coalition Provisional Authority Deputy Governorate Co-Ordinator in Maysan and Deputy Governorate Co-ordinator/Senior Advisor in Dhi Qar, two provinces in southern Iraq. His responsibilities included holding elections, resolving tribal disputes and implementing development projects. He faced an incipient civil war and growing civil unrest from his base in a Civil-Military Co-operation (CIMIC) compound in Al Amarah, and in May 2004 was in command of his compound in Nasiriyah when it was besieged by Sadrist militia. He was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire for his service in Iraq at the age of 31. While Stewart initially supported the Iraq War, the International Coalition's inability to achieve a more humane, prosperous state led him in retrospect to believe the invasion had been a mistake.^[9]

Academia and charity work[link]

In late 2004, Stewart became a Fellow at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard University.

In 2006, at the request of HRH The Prince of Wales and HE Hamid Karzai, President of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan,^[10] he established, as Executive Chairman, the Turquoise Mountain Foundation, a human development NGO, in Afghanistan, and relocated to Kabul.

In July 2008, he was appointed Ryan Family Professor of Human Rights at Harvard University and Director of the John F. Kennedy School of Government Carr Center for Human Rights Policy. He has frequently been called on to provide advice on Afghanistan and Iraq to policy-makers, particularly in the US, UK and Canada. Having acceded to the position on 1 January 2009, he combined the role with his charitable work in Afghanistan and with service on a number of boards, including the International Development Research Centre of Canada.

Stewart left his position at Harvard in March 2010 (maintaining, however, an advisory position there), and stepped down as Executive Chairman of the Turquoise Mountain Trust in May 2010.^[11]

Writing[link]

His first book, The Places in Between was an account of his 32-day solo walk across Afghanistan in early 2002. It was a New York Times bestseller, was named one of the New York Times' 10 notable books in 2006 and was hailed by the NYT as a "flat-out masterpiece".^[12] It won the Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize, a Scottish Arts Council prize, the Spirit of Scotland award and the Premio de Literatura de Viaje Caminos del Cid. It was short-listed for the Guardian First Book Award and the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize. The book was adapted into a radio play by Benjamin Yeoh and was broadcast in 2007 on BBC Radio 4.

Stewart's second book, The Prince of the Marshes describes his experiences as a Deputy Governorate Co-ordinator in Iraq.^[13][14] It too was critically acclaimed with The New York Times saying "Stewart seems to be living one of the most remarkable lives on record." His books have been translated into French, Spanish, German, Danish, Dutch, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Japanese, Lithuanian and Bosnian. Stage versions, TV documentaries and film scripts have been optioned. Until 2008, when he took up his position at Harvard, Stewart resided in Kabul as Executive Chairman of the Turquoise Mountain Foundation.

Many of Stewart's articles (which have appeared in newspapers and magazines from the New York Times and the Guardian to the London and New York Review of Books), like his interviews on CNN, Al Jazeera, the BBC and Channel 4, have cautioned against over-ambitious foreign interventions, particularly in Iraq and Afghanistan.^[15] His 2008 cover article in Time magazine, where he debated against Presidential candidates Obama and McCain, arguing against a troop surge in Afghanistan has been shortlisted for an American Journalism Association Award.

Stewart's reflections on the circumstances under which outside military and political intervention in countries' internal affairs may or may not hope to achieve positive results are further distilled in a 2011 book, Can Intervention Work?, co-authored with Gerald Knaus and part of the Amnesty International Global Ethics Series.

He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2009 ^[16]

Entry into politics[link]

Stewart attempted to be selected as the Conservative Party candidate for the Bracknell constituency in the 2010 General Election,^[17] but was unsuccessful.^[18]

He was also shortlisted as one of three male and three female candidates for the Penrith and the Border constituency open caucus on 25 October 2009.^[19] He won the open primary (a process in which any registered voter from the constituency could attend and vote) to become the Parliamentary Candidate for the Conservative Party for the 2010 election.^[1][20] He was returned as the MP for the constituency on 6 May 2010.^[21][22]

On 25 July 2010, Stewart apologised to his constituents after blogging about the relative poverty of rural areas and need for more public services.^[23] He was quoted in the Scottish Sun as saying that "Some areas around here are pretty primitive, people holding up their trousers with bits of twine".^[23] A light hearted Guardian article, "In praise of … binder twine" whilst acknowledging the "serious effort" Stewart had made "walking hundreds of miles" to get to know his constituency believed he had simply underestimated the importance of the "ubiquitous and indispensable" twine to the rural community.^[24]

Stewart attended the exclusive Bilderberg Conference in June 2011,^[25] along with leading world politicians and bankers including UK Conservative Chancellor George Osborne.^[26] Columnist Charlie Skelton commented in the Guardian that this made it likely that Stewart would receive a "forthcoming promotion", based on the history of other politicians invited to the exclusive Bilderberg group.^[26]

Personal life[link]

Stewart lives in Dufton in Cumbria,^[27] and is a member of the Beefsteak Club.

Honours[link]

• 40px - OBE (2004)

Miscellaneous[link]

• On 25 January 2008 Stewart was the guest on BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs^[28]

• In August 2008, the UK media widely reported that Studio Canal and Brad Pitt's production company Plan B had bought the rights to a biopic of Stewart's life. The actor Orlando Bloom will apparently play Stewart.^[29] That Brad Pitt had bought the rights was confirmed on Lateline, on Australia's ABC on 29 July [year?]^{[citation needed]}

• On 16 & 23 January 2010, Stewart presented a two part series on "The Legacy of Lawrence of Arabia" on BBC2 in the UK^[30]

• Stewart speaks some French, Persian (Dari), and Indonesian. He has also studied at school, in the Foreign Office, and on his Asian travels Latin, Greek, Russian, Chinese, Serbo-Croat, Urdu, and Nepali languages. He acknowledges that the latter languages are "very rusty".^{[citation needed]}

• In May 2012, Stewart wrote and presented Afghanistan: The Great Game - A Personal View by Rory Stewart, which aired on BBC Two.

Notes[link]

Books[link]

• The Places in Between, Picador, 2004-2006
• Occupational Hazards: My Time Governing in Iraq, Picador, 2006, ISBN 0-330-44049-7
  • Published in the US as The Prince of the Marshes: And Other Occupational Hazards of a Year in Iraq, Harcourt, 2006, ISBN 0-15-101235-0
• Can Intervention Work? Amnesty International Global Ethics Series, co-authored with Gerald Knaus. W.W. Norton and Co. (Published in the USA on 15 August 2011; due for UK publication on 7 October 2011). ISBN 0-393-08120-6.

External links[link]

MP

• Rory Stewart MP Official constituency website
• Contributions in Parliament at Hansard 1803–2005
• Electoral history and profile at The Guardian
• Voting record at PublicWhip.org
• Record in Parliament at TheyWorkForYou.com
• Profile at Westminster Parliamentary Record
• Profile at BBC News Democracy Live
• Articles authored at Journalisted

Professional

• Rory Stewart Books, Official books site
• The Turquoise Mountain Foundation
• Biography and picture, from Harvard's Carr Center for Human Rights Policy

Articles

• "Afghanistan: What Could Work", by Rory Stewart in the "New York Review of Books", Vol. 57 No. 1 dated 14 January 2010
• "The Irresistible Illusion", by Rory Stewart in the London Review of Books, Vol. 31 No. 13 dated 9 July 2009 - Concerning Afghanistan
• "Degrees of Not Knowing", by Rory Stewart in the London Review of Books, Vol. 27 No. 7 dated 31 March 2005 - Concerning Iraq
• "My enemy's enemies", by Rory Stewart. Reprinted from the Financial Times, 18 September 2004 - Concerning Afghanistan
• "Diary", by Rory Stewart in the London Review of Books, Vol. 23 No. 17 dated 6 September 2001 - Walk across Iran
• "Losing the south", by Rory Stewart in Prospect Magazine, November 2005
• "Dervishes", by Rory Stewart in Granta, 15 June 2002
• "Iranian girls", by Rory Stewart in Prospect Magazine, November 2001

Profiles

• "Days of hope and hubris", interview by Robert Hanks in The Independent, 23 June 2006
• "In the thick of it", profile by David Robinson in The Scotsman, 24 June 2006
• "Stewart of Afghanistan", profile by Aryn Baker in Time, 19 April 2007
• "Can Rory Stewart Fix Afghanistan?", profile by Paul Kvinta in National Geographic Adventure Magazine, June 2007
• "A new kind of Tory", profile by Anna Van Praagh in Daily Telegraph, November 2009
• "Paths of Glory", profile by Ian Parker in the New Yorker, 15 November 2010 (subscription required)

Lectures etc.

• "Authors @ Google: Rory Stewart" YouTube - Discussion of his walk across Afghanistan and his NGO, the Turquoise Mountain Foundation
• Stewart on Afghanistan London Frontline Club, 11 March 2009

George Galloway MP
Galloway at a Stop The War protest in London, 24 February 2007
Member of Parliament for Bradford West
Incumbent
Assumed office 29 March 2012
Preceded by	Marsha Singh
Majority	10,140 (16.7%)
Member of Parliament for Bethnal Green and Bow
In office 5 May 2005 – 6 May 2010
Preceded by	Oona King
Succeeded by	Rushanara Ali
Majority	823 (1.9%)
Member of Parliament for Glasgow Kelvin
In office 1 May 1997 – 5 May 2005
Preceded by	Constituency created
Succeeded by	Constituency abolished
Majority	7,260 (27.1%)
Member of Parliament for Glasgow Hillhead
In office 11 June 1987 – 1 May 1997
Preceded by	Roy Jenkins
Succeeded by	Constituency abolished
Majority	4,826 (12.3%)
Personal details
Born	(1954-08-16) 16 August 1954 (age 57) Dundee
Citizenship	British
Political party	Respect (2004–present) Labour (1967–2003)
Residence	London
Website	www.georgegalloway.com

George Galloway (born 16 August 1954) is a British politician, author, journalist, and broadcaster, and the Respect Member of Parliament (MP) for Bradford West. He was previously an MP for the Labour Party, for Glasgow Hillhead and then its successor constituency Glasgow Kelvin from 1987 until 2005. He was expelled from the Labour Party in October 2003 because of his strident public opposition to the Iraq War.^[1] He subsequently became a founding member of the left-wing Respect Party, and was elected as the MP for Bethnal Green and Bow in 2005.^[2] In 2010, Galloway unsuccessfully contested the seat of Poplar and Limehouse, and in 2011 he unsuccessfully contested the Glasgow list for the Scottish Parliament, before being elected as an MP in the Bradford West by-election, 2012.^[3][4]

Galloway is well known for his campaigns in support of the Palestinians in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. In the late-1980s Hansard records him delivering a ferocious assault on the Ba'ath regime, and Galloway opposed Saddam's regime until the United States-led Gulf War in 1991.^[5] Galloway is known for a visit to Iraq where he met Saddam Hussein, and delivered a speech, which ended in English with the statement "Sir, I salute your courage, your strength, your indefatigability."^[6] He has always stated that he was addressing the Iraqi people in the speech.^[7] Galloway testified to the United States Senate in 2005 over alleged illicit payments from the United Nations' Oil for Food Programme.^[8]

Early and personal life[link]

Galloway was born in the Lochee area of Dundee to a Scottish trade unionist father and Irish republican mother.^[9][10] He describes himself as "born in an attic in a slum tenement in the Irish quarter of Dundee, which is known as Tipperary".^[11][12] He grew up in Charleston and attended Charleston Primary and then Harris Academy, a non-denominational school. During his school years at Charleston Primary and Harris Academy, he used to play football for the school team. As an amateur footballer, he went on to play for West End United U12s, Lochee Boys Club U16s and St Columbus U18s.^[13]

From 1979 to 1999, he was married to Elaine Fyffe, with whom he has a daughter. In 1994, he married Amineh Abu-Zayyad as a second wife in a Muslim ceremony (later after his divorce from his first wife, he and Abu-Zayyad also undertook a civil ceremony); Zayyad filed for divorce in 2005. In 2005, Galloway married as his third wife Rima Husseini, a Lebanese woman and former researcher, also in a Muslim ceremony. She gave birth to their first son in May 2007, and a second son in December 2011. In March 2012, Galloway married Putri Gayatri Pertiwi, a consultant with a Dutch research firm.^[14]

Galloway was raised as a Roman Catholic.^[12] By his own account he decided, at the age of 18, never to drink alcohol. He disapproves of it and describes it as having a "very deleterious effect on people".^[9][15] He stated at a March 2012 rally "We stand for justice and haqq" and "A Muslim is somebody who is not afraid of earthly power but who fears only the Judgment Day. I’m ready for that, I’m working for that and it’s the only thing I fear".^[16]

In a April 2012 New Statesman magazine interview with Galloway, Jemima Khan asserted that the politician had become a Muslim sometime around 2000, but had not advertised this fact.^[17] Galloway subsequently denied a ceremony had taken place: "I have never attended any such ceremony in Kilburn, Karachi or Kathmandu. It is simply and categorically untrue."^[18]

Labour Party organiser[link]

Galloway joined the Labour Party at 13 years old and, within five years, was secretary of the Dundee West Constituency Labour Party. His enthusiasm led him to become Vice-Chairman of the Labour Party in the City of Dundee and a member of the Scottish Executive Committee in 1975. On 5 May 1977, he contested his first election campaign in the Scottish district elections, but failed to hold the safe Labour seat at Gillburn, Dundee. He was defeated by the Independent candidate Bunty Turley. Galloway became the secretary organiser of Dundee Labour Party—the youngest ever Scottish chairman—in March 1981 at 26 years old.^[19]

In his mid-20s after a trip to Beirut in 1977,^[12] he became a passionate supporter of Palestine stating "barely a week after my return I made a pledge to devote the rest of my life to the Palestinian and Arab cause". He supported Dundee City Council which flew the Palestinian flag inside the City Chambers and was involved in the twinning of Dundee with Nablus in 1980,^[20] although he did not take part in the visit of Lord Provost Gowans, Ernie Ross MP and three City Councillors to Nablus and Kuwait in April 1981.^[19]

In 1981, Galloway wrote an article in Scottish Marxist supporting Communist Party affiliation with the Labour Party. In response, Denis Healey, Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, tried and failed to remove Galloway from the list of Prospective Parliamentary Candidates. Healey lost his motion by 13 votes to 5.^[21] Galloway had argued that this was his own personal viewpoint, not that of the Labour Party. He once quipped that, in order to overcome a £1.5 million deficit which had arisen in the city budget, he, Ernie Ross and leading Councillors should be placed in the stocks in the city square: "we would allow people to throw buckets of water over us at 20p a time."^[22]