Justiciarius set
Last but not least. Well, another set. Now the 10th, closing the series. Once again, let us shine with the beauty of armour, which already seems just a chic attavism, refined cut and sewing of uniform tails, gallant helmets and magnificent plumages.... Aristocratic Europe, glittering Asia, controversial America, little-known Africa - everything is in this set!
Outside the window is 1904, which is the year that is the time point of our project. The Russo-Japanese war has begun. This war, which brought Russia eleven waves of mobilisation, like all wars, had been brewing gradually. For many years Japan had been watching with obvious dislike how Russia was developing the Far East, ‘making friends’ with China, and even deprived the Japanese of control over the Liaodong Peninsula, which the Land of the Rising Sun had victoriously snatched away from the Chinese in the war of 1895. The Russians themselves began to develop the Korean territory, and even built a military base in Port Arthur. All this, of course, did not inspire the Japanese.
On the other hand, Nicholas II had no tender feelings for Japan, which is quite understandable in relation to a country where you, in your youth, were struck on the skull with a sabre and almost killed.
It happened in 1891 in the small town of Osu near Kyoto, where fate took the young heir to the throne (he was then 22 years old) during the ‘eastern journey’ in Greece and Japan. Together with two other princes (Greek and Japanese) he quietly and peacefully returned after a walk on the lake, where he contemplated the lotuses, as suddenly ... One of the policemen guarding the procession took out a sabre, and with a shout that he was, say, a patriot of Japan and a true samurai, rushed to the rickshaw, which was carrying Nicholas. Fortunately, the checker turned out to be as dull as its owner - he managed to make only a few blows flat, without causing serious wounds to the future monarch. ‘Samurai’ immediately tied with ropes, scratches Nicholas wrapped in bandages, and the Imperial House of Japan apologised deeply to Russia.
The Imperial House joined the brothels, deciding to stop serving their clients for a week throughout Japan. At the same time closed stock exchanges, schools, Kabuki theatre. Crowds of Japanese with repentance came to the hospital, where he was treated for his scratches Nicholas, and one lady even cut his throat with scissors under the windows of his room.
The hapless ‘terrorist’ Tsuda Sanzo was sentenced to life imprisonment, which turned out to be surprisingly short: it took only three months for the Japanese correctional system to kill the criminal in prison. In general, the formalities had been observed, but the residue, of course, remained.
Therefore, when in 1903 Japan became bolder, gained the support of England and clearly began to prepare for war with Russia, Nicholas II did not get very upset. He believed that he could cope with the Japanese without much trouble, for the Trans-Siberian railway had managed to stretch all the way to Port Arthur. Besides, a revolution was clearly brewing in Russia itself, and, in order to strangle it as soon as possible, a clash with Japan seemed a very suitable pretext. ‘We need a small victorious war’ - probably everyone remembers this famous phrase, which in 1903 was uttered by Senator von Pleve, and Nicholas II was in complete agreement with him. All that remained was to wait for Japan to attack first.
And she attacked, attacking Port Arthur on 26 January 1904 and forcing the Russians to sink the cruiser ‘Varyag’ and gunboat ‘Koreets’. Such an expected beginning might well have been considered treacherous. The newspapers were awash with patriotic slogans, the surviving sailors of the ‘Varyag’ were greeted in St. Petersburg with flowers, and a famous song was immediately composed about the fate of the ship.
Everywhere, on the pages of newspapers and in street crowds, there was talk of how ‘we will defeat these monkeys in a week’. Nicholas II himself allowed himself to call the Japanese ‘macaques’. The mood in the empire reigned ‘hat-tossing’, except that hats had to be found somewhere else. In the Far East, the Russian army numbered about 100 thousand people, the Japanese brought troops three and a half times more. What to do? It's clear what to do. Declare mobilisation. What happened next, how the war ended - we all know. But even greater upheavals awaited the world ahead.
The world is on the eve of a Great War that no one believes in. Only industrial tycoons and odious politicians want it. How familiar... This war will end in peace in 1918, all wars end. Only the ancient wisdom from the parable of King Solomon remains unchanged: ‘All things pass and this too shall pass.’
With your permission, I will then translate an excerpt of an article by the Ukrainian historian and publicist Oles Buzina, who was murdered by nationalists for his beliefs. In my opinion, it describes the atmosphere at the beginning of the war very well.
The end of the age of steam. The great, proud, self-confident Victorian man, lord of iron and steam, who had recently put electricity at his service, suddenly found himself again a helpless servant of God, a speck of dust in the whirlwind of evil time. The whistling trains were taking him not to the resort, but to the front. The electric spark helped to send not congratulations but murderous orders by telegraph. And in the telephone he heard not the voice of his beloved, but the torn voice of the artillery adjuster breaking through the bursts of shells, transmitting the coordinates of the target. The crack of machine guns drowned out the best that still remained in human hearts.
In the four years of the First World War, 72 million men were conscripted in the countries involved. Casualties alone reached 10 million. Mostly young and healthy men -
the most physically fit. The expression ‘unknown soldier’ appeared for the first time. Often people did not even have time to recognise each other in hastily assembled units, and they were already covered with ‘suitcases’ by whole platoons, flying out of the mouths of heavy
artillery guns, which no one had even seen. Firing from ‘closed positions’ came into fashion. Therefore, the longest soldier lived in the artillery, and the least - in the infantry. An infantry officer had a very short period of life - an ensign had only two or three months at the front. The ‘Queen of the Fields’ - infantry - whole regiments moved to the fields of death.
And nobody thought at first that everything would turn out this way. Well, a tubercular boy from Bosnia Gavrilo Princip killed Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand on 28 June 1914 in Sarajevo... Was it the first? Didn't a hot Italian boy Luigi Luceni kill Austrian Empress Elisabeth in the same way in 1898? Didn't the Austro-Italian war break out because of that, despite all the border disputes between the two countries!
Were not Russian ministers and grand dukes killed by terrorists without number, Italian King Umberto in 1900, American
President McKinley in 1901, Serbian King Alexander in 1903, and, finally, most recently, Portuguese King Carlos in 1908?
The august personalities died as if someone invisible had hunted them down. But the world stood still. Somewhere in the African colonies, another black tribe was being conquered. And it did not even occur to anyone to dig trenches in Europe from Lamanche to Adriatic and start exterminating each other with the latest patented methods. And the very thought of it seemed monstrous. Especially if we remember that in 1907 the great powers signed the Hague Convention, which established new, ‘humane’ rules of warfare. These included, among others, such marvellous articles as the 23rd, which forbade ‘declaring that no one will be spared’, and the 25th, which strictly forbade ‘attacking or bombarding in any manner whatsoever unprotected cities, towns, villages, dwellings or buildings’. Temples, hospitals and historical monuments were required by the same convention to be ‘spared as far as possible’ and private property to be preserved and never confiscated.
In theory, everything in the world was arranged in the best possible way. But in practice the Archduke was treacherously assassinated, and suddenly such hidden springs began to unclench that European society, fascinated by apparent progress, had not noticed at all.
It turned out that the contradictions between the world's financial and industrial groups had reached a boiling point. That the booming German imperialism simply had nowhere to expand. That France and Russia have long been eager to knock it down. And, most importantly, everyone has long been READY for war and see nothing dangerous in it. An interview of the Russian Minister of
War, General of Cavalry Sukhomlinov, posted as early as the spring of 1914 in the influential newspaper ‘Birzhevye Vedomosti’, quite unequivocally stated: ‘WE ARE READY!’
Each tin soldier is handmade by the finest craftsmen in the industry.
Here are all 24 miniatures from the set.
(please click on the picture to learn more about each miniature and the character depicted)
Kong Lingjun
Vajiravudh
Mohammad Ali of Qajar
Sunjong
Mikhail Gedroits
Gustaf Axel
von Kothen
Ombalahivelo Rasanjy
Takatsukasa Hiromichi
Donald Cameron
of Lochiel
Yuhi V Musinga,
Mwami of Rwanda
