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Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins of King' s College were personal friends, which influenced subsequent scientific events as much as the close friendship between Crick and James Watson. Crick and Wilkins first met at King' s College and not, as erroneously recorded by two authors, at the Admiralty during World War II. Personal life. Crick married twice, fathered three children and was the grandfather of six grandchildren; his brother Anthony( born in 1918) predeceased him in 1966. Spouses: Children: GrandchildrenCrick died of colon cancer on the morning of 28 July 2004 at the University of California, San Diego( UCSD) Thornton Hospital in La Jolla; he was cremated and his ashes were scattered into the Pacific Ocean. A public memorial was held on 27 September 2004 at the Salk Institute, La Jolla, near San Diego, California; guest speakers included James Watson, Sydney Brenner, Alex Rich, Seymour Benzer, Aaron Klug, Christof Koch, Pat Churchland, Vilayanur Ramachandran, Tomaso Poggio, Leslie Orgel, Terry Sejnowski, his son Michael Crick, and his youngest daughter Jacqueline Nichols. A private memorial for family and colleagues was held on 3 August 2004. Research. Crick was interested in two fundamental unsolved problems of biology: how molecules make the transition from the non- living to the living, and how the brain makes a conscious mind. He realised that his background made him more qualified for research on the first topic and the field of biophysics. It was at this time of Crick' s transition from physics to biology that he was influenced by both Linus Pauling and Erwin Schrödinger. It was clear in theory that covalent bonds in biological molecules could provide the structural stability needed to hold genetic information in cells. It only remained as an exercise of experimental biology to discover exactly which molecule was the genetic molecule. In Crick' s view, Charles Darwin' s theory of evolution by natural selection, Gregor Mendel' s genetics and knowledge of the molecular basis of genetics, when combined, revealed the secret of life. Crick had the very optimistic view that life would very soon be created in a test tube. However, some people( such as fellow researcher and colleague Esther Lederberg) thought that Crick was unduly optimisticIt was clear that some macromolecule such as a protein was likely to be the genetic molecule. However, it was well known that proteins are structural and functional macromolecules, some of which carry out enzymatic reactions of cells.Inthe1940s, some evidence had been found pointing to another macromolecule, DNA, the other major component of chromosomes, as a candidate genetic molecule. In the 1944 Avery- MacLeod- McCarty experiment, Oswald Avery and his collaborators showed that a heritable phenotypic difference could be caused in bacteria by providing them with a particular DNA molecule. However, other evidence was interpreted as suggesting that DNA was structurally uninteresting and possibly just a molecular scaffold for the apparently more interesting protein molecules. Crick was in the right place, in the right frame of mind, at the right time( 1949), to join Max Perutz' s project at the University of Cambridge, and he began to work
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on the X- ray crystallography
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of proteins. X- ray crystallography theoretically offered the opportunity to reveal the molecular structure of large molecules like proteins and DNA, but there were serious technical problems then preventing X- ray crystallography from being applicable to such large molecules. 1949– 1950. Crick taught himself the mathematical theory of X- ray crystallography. During the period of Crick' s study of X- ray diffraction, researchers in the Cambridge lab were attempting to determine the most stable helical conformation of amino acid chains in proteins( the alpha helix). Linus Pauling was the first to identify the 3. 6 amino acids per helix turn ratio of the alpha helix. Crick was witness to the kinds of errors that his co- workers made in their failed attempts to make a correct molecular model of the alpha helix; these turned out to be important lessons that could be applied, in the future, to the helical structure of DNA. For example, he learned the importance of the structural rigidity that double bonds confer on molecular structures which is relevant both to peptide bonds in proteins and the structure of nucleotides in DNA. 1951– 1953: DNA structure. In 1951 and 1952, together with William Cochran and Vladimir Vand, Crick assisted in the development of a mathematical theory of X- ray diffraction by a helical molecule. This theoretical result matched well with X- ray data for proteins that contain sequences of amino acids in the alpha helix conformation. Helical diffraction theory turned out to also be useful for understanding the structure of DNA. Late in 1951, Crick started working with James Watson at Cavendish Laboratory at the University of Cambridge, England. Using" Photo 51"( the X- ray diffraction results of Rosalind Franklin and her graduate student Raymond Gosling of King' s College London, given to them by Gosling and Franklin' s colleague Wilkins), Watson and Crick together developed a model for a helical structure of DNA, which they published in 1953. For this and subsequent work they were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1962 with Wilkins. When Watson came to Cambridge, Crick was a 35- year- old graduate student( due to his work during WWII) and Watson was only 23, but had already obtained a PhD. They shared an interest in the fundamental problem of learning how genetic information might be stored in molecular form. Watson and Crick talked endlessly about DNA and the idea that it might be possible to guess a good molecular model of its structure. A key piece of experimentally- derived information came from X- ray diffraction images that had been obtained by Wilkins, Franklin, and Gosling. In November 1951, Wilkins came to Cambridge and shared his data with Watson and Crick. Alexander Stokes( another expert in helical diffraction theory) and Wilkins( both at King' s College) had reached the conclusion that X- ray diffraction data for DNA indicated that the molecule had a helical structure— but Franklin vehemently disputed this conclusion. Stimulated by their discussions with Wilkins and what Watson learned by attending a talk given by Franklin about her work
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on DNA, Crick and Watson
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produced and showed off an erroneous first model of DNA. Their hurry to produce a model of DNA structure was driven in part by the knowledge that they were competing against Linus Pauling. Given Pauling' s recent success in discovering the Alpha helix, they feared that Pauling might also be the first to determine the structure of DNA. Many have speculated about what might have happened had Pauling been able to travel to Britain as planned in May 1952. As it was, his political activities caused his travel to be restricted by the United States government and he did not visit the UK until later, at which point he met none of the DNA researchers in England. At any rate he was preoccupied with proteins at the time, not DNA. Watson and Crick were not officially working on DNA. Crick was writing his PhD thesis; Watson also had other work such as trying to obtain crystals of myoglobin for X- ray diffraction experiments. In 1952, Watson performed X- ray diffraction on tobacco mosaic virus and found results indicating that it had helical structure. Having failed once, Watson and Crick were now somewhat reluctant to try again and for a while they were forbidden to make further efforts to find a molecular model of DNA. Of great importance to the model building effort of Watson and Crick was Rosalind Franklin' s understanding of basic chemistry, which indicated that the hydrophilic phosphate- containing backbones of the nucleotide chains of DNA should be positioned so as to interact with water molecules on the outside of the molecule while the hydrophobic bases should be packed into the core. Franklin shared this chemical knowledge with Watson and Crick when she pointed out to them that their first model( from 1951, with the phosphates inside) was obviously wrong. Crick described what he saw as the failure of Wilkins and Franklin to cooperate and work towards finding a molecular model of DNA as a major reason why he and Watson eventually made a second attempt to do so. They asked for, and received, permission to do so from both William Lawrence Bragg and Wilkins. To construct their model of DNA, Watson and Crick made use of information from unpublished X- ray diffraction images of Franklin' s( shown at meetings and freely shared by Wilkins), including preliminary accounts of Franklin' s results/ photographs of the X- ray images that were included in a written progress report for the King' s College laboratory of Sir John Randall from late 1952. It is a matter of debate whether Watson and Crick should have had access to Franklin' s results without her knowledge or permission, and before she had a chance to formally publish the results of her detailed analysis of her X- ray diffraction data which were included in the progress report. However, Watson and Crick found fault in her steadfast assertion that, according to her data, a helical structure was not the only possible shape for DNA— so they had a dilemma. In an effort to clarify this issue, Max Ferdinand
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Perutz later published what had
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been in the progress report, and suggested that nothing was in the report that Franklin herself had not said in her talk( attended by Watson) in late 1951. Further, Perutz explained that the report was to a Medical Research Council( MRC) committee that had been created to" establish contact between the different groups of people working for the Council". Randall' s and Perutz' s laboratories were both funded by the MRC. It is also not clear how important Franklin' s unpublished results from the progress report actually were for the model- building done by Watson and Crick. After the first crude X-raydiffractionimagesofDNAwerecollectedinthe1930s, William Astbury had talked about stacks of nucleotides spaced at 3. 4 angström( 0. 34 nanometre) intervals in DNA. A citation to Astbury' s earlier X- ray diffraction work was one of only eight references in Franklin' s first paper on DNA. Analysis of Astbury' s published DNA results and the better X- ray diffraction images collected by Wilkins and Franklin revealed the helical nature of DNA. It was possible to predict the number of bases stacked within a single turn of the DNA helix( 10 per turn; a full turn of the helix is 27 angströms[ 2. 7 nm] in the compact A form, 34 angströms[ 3. 4 nm] in the wetter B form). Wilkins shared this information about the B form of DNA with Crick and Watson. Crick did not see Franklin' s B form X- ray images( Photo 51) until after the DNA double helix model was published. One of the few references cited by Watson and Crick when they published their model of DNA was to a published article that included Sven Furberg' s DNA model that had the bases on the inside. Thus, the Watson and Crick model was not the first" bases in" model to be proposed. Furberg' s results had also provided the correct orientation of the DNA sugars with respect to the bases. During their model building, Crick and Watson learned that an antiparallel orientation of the two nucleotide chain backbones worked best to orient the base pairs in the centre of a double helix. Crick' s access to Franklin' s progress report of late 1952 is what made Crick confident that DNA was a double helix with antiparallel chains, but there were other chains of reasoning and sources of information that also led to these conclusions. As a result of leaving King' s College for Birkbeck College, Franklin was asked by John Randall to give up her work on DNA. When it became clear to Wilkins and the supervisors of Watson and Crick that Franklin was going to the new job, and that Linus Pauling was working on the structure of DNA, they were willing to share Franklin' s data with Watson and Crick, in the hope that they could find a good model of DNA before Pauling was able. Franklin' s X- ray diffraction data for DNA and her systematic analysis of DNA' s structural features were useful to Watson and Crick in guiding them towards a correct molecular model.
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The key problem for Watson
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and Crick, which could not be resolved by the data from King' s College, was to guess how the nucleotide bases pack into the core of the DNA double helix. Another key to finding the correct structure of DNA was the so- called Chargaff ratios, experimentally determined ratios of the nucleotide subunits of DNA: the amount of guanine is equal to cytosine and the amount of adenine is equal to thymine. A visit by Erwin Chargaff to England, in 1952, reinforced the salience of this important fact for Watson and Crick. The significance of these ratios for the structure of DNA were not recognised until Watson, persisting in building structural models, realised that A: T and C: G pairs are structurally similar. In particular, the length of each base pair is the same. Chargaff had also pointed out to Watson that, in the aqueous, saline environment of the cell, the predominant tautomers of the pyrimidine( C and T) bases would be the amine and keto configurations of cytosine and thymine, rather than the imino and enol forms that Crick and Watson had assumed. They consulted Jerry Donohue who confirmed the most likely structures of the nucleotide bases. The base pairs are held together by hydrogen bonds, the same non- covalent interaction that stabilise the protein α- helix. The correct structures were essential for the positioning of the hydrogen bonds. These insights led Watson to deduce the true biological relationships of the A: T and C: G pairs. After the discovery of the hydrogen bonded A: T and C: G pairs, Watson and Crick soon had their anti- parallel, double helical model of DNA, with the hydrogen bonds at the core of the helix providing a way to" unzip" the two complementary strands for easy replication: the last key requirement for a likely model of the genetic molecule. As important as Crick' s contributions to the discovery of the double helical DNA model were, he stated that without the chance to collaborate with Watson, he would not have found the structure by himself. Crick did tentatively attempt to perform some experiments on nucleotide base pairing, but he was more of a theoretical biologist than an experimental biologist. There was another near- discovery of the base pairing rules in early 1952. Crick had started to think about interactions between the bases. He asked John Griffith to try to calculate attractive interactions between the DNA bases from chemical principles and quantum mechanics. Griffith' s best guess was that A: T and G: C were attractive pairs. At that time, Crick was not aware of Chargaff' s rules and he made little of Griffith' s calculations, although it did start him thinking about complementary replication. Identification of the correct base- pairing rules( A- T, G- C) was achieved by Watson" playing" with cardboard cut- out models of the nucleotide bases, much in the manner that Linus Pauling had discovered the protein alpha helix a few years earlier. The Watson and Crick discovery of the DNA double helix structure was made possible by their willingness to combine
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theory, modelling and experimental results(
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albeit mostly done by others) to achieve their goal. The DNA double helix structure proposed by Watson and Crick was based upon" Watson- Crick" bonds between the four bases most frequently found in DNA( A, C, T, G) and RNA( A, C, U, G). However, later research showed that triple- stranded, quadruple- stranded and other more complex DNA molecular structures required Hoogsteen base pairing. The entire field of synthetic biology began with work by researchers such as Erik T. Kool, in which bases other than A, C, T and G are used in a synthetic DNA. In addition to synthetic DNA there are also attempts to construct synthetic codons, synthetic endonucleases, synthetic proteins and synthetic zinc fingers. Using synthetic DNA, instead of there being 43 codons,iftherearennewbasestherecouldbeasmanyasn3 codons. Research is currently being done to see if codons can be expanded to more than 3 bases. These new codons can code for new amino acids. These synthetic molecules can be used not only in medicine, but in creation of new materials. The discovery was made on 28 February 1953; the first Watson/ Crick paper appeared in" Nature" on 25 April 1953. Sir Lawrence Bragg, the director of the Cavendish Laboratory, where Watson and Crick worked, gave a talk at Guy' s Hospital Medical School in London on Thursday 14 May 1953 which resulted in an article by Ritchie Calder in the" News Chronicle" of London, on Friday 15 May 1953, entitled" Why You Are You. Nearer Secret of Life." The news reached readers of" The New York Times" the next day; Victor K. McElheny, in researching his biography," Watson and DNA: Making a Scientific Revolution", found a clipping of a six- paragraph New York Times article written from London and dated 16 May 1953 with the headline" Form of' Life Unit' in Cell Is Scanned." The article ran in an early edition and was then pulled to make space for news deemed more important.(" The New York Times" subsequently ran a longer article on 12 June 1953). The university' s undergraduate newspaper" Varsity" also ran its own short article on the discovery on Saturday 30 May 1953. Bragg' s original announcement of the discovery at a Solvay conference on proteins in Belgium on 8 April 1953 went unreported by the British press. In a seven- page, handwritten letter to his son at a British boarding school on 19 March 1953 Crick explained his discovery, beginning the letter" My Dear Michael, Jim Watson and I have probably made a most important discovery...". The letter was put up for auction at Christie' s New York on 10 April 2013 with an estimate of$ 1 to$ 2 million, eventually selling for$ 6, 059, 750, the largest amount ever paid for a letter at auction. Sydney Brenner, Jack Dunitz, Dorothy Hodgkin, Leslie Orgel, and Beryl M. Oughton, were some of the first people in April 1953 to see the model of the structure of DNA, constructed by Crick and Watson; at the time they were working at Oxford University' s Chemistry Department. All were impressed by the new
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DNA model, especially Brenner who
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subsequently worked with Crick at Cambridge in the Cavendish Laboratory and the new Laboratory of Molecular Biology. According to the late Dr. Beryl Oughton, later Rimmer, they all travelled together in two cars once Dorothy Hodgkin announced to them that they were off to Cambridge to see the model of the structure of DNA. Orgel also later worked with Crick at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. Soon after Crick' s death, there have been allegations about him having used LSD when he came to the idea of the helix structure of the DNA. While he almost certainly did use LSD, it is unlikely that he did so as early as 1953. Molecular biology. In 1954, at the age of 37, Crick completed his PhD thesis:" X- Ray Diffraction: Polypeptides and Proteins" and received his degree. Crick then worked in the laboratory of David Harker at Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute, where he continued to develop his skills in the analysis of X- ray diffraction data for proteins, working primarily on ribonuclease and the mechanisms of protein synthesis. David Harker, the American X- ray crystallographer, was described as" the John Wayne of crystallography" by Vittorio Luzzati, a crystallographer at the Centre for Molecular Genetics in Gif- sur- Yvette near Paris, who had worked with Rosalind Franklin. After the discovery of the double helix model of DNA, Crick' s interests quickly turned to the biological implications of the structure. In 1953, Watson and Crick published another article in" Nature" which stated:" it therefore seems likely that the precise sequence of the bases is the code that carries the genetical information". In 1956, Crick and Watson speculated on the structure of small viruses. They suggested that spherical viruses such as Tomato bushy stunt virus had icosahedral symmetry and were made from 60 identical subunits. After his short time in New York, Crick returned to Cambridge where he worked until 1976, at which time he moved to California. Crick engaged in several X- ray diffraction collaborations such as one with Alexander Rich on the structure of collagen. However, Crick was quickly drifting away from continued work related to his expertise in the interpretation of X- ray diffraction patterns of proteins. George Gamow established a group of scientists interested in the role of RNA as an intermediary between DNA as the genetic storage molecule in the nucleus of cells and the synthesis of proteins in the cytoplasm( the RNA Tie Club). It was clear to Crick that there had to be a code by which a short sequence of nucleotides would specify a particular amino acid in a newly synthesised protein. In 1956, Crick wrote an informal paper about the genetic coding problem for the small group of scientists in Gamow' s RNA group. In this article, Crick reviewed the evidence supporting the idea that there was a common set of about 20 amino acids used to synthesize proteins. Crick proposed that there was a corresponding set of small" adaptor molecules" that would hydrogen bond to short sequences of a nucleic acid, and also link to one of
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the amino acids. He also
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explored the many theoretical possibilities by which short nucleic acid sequences might code for the 20 amino acids. During the mid- to-late1950s Crick was very much intellectually engaged in sorting out the mystery of how proteins are synthesised. By 1958, Crick' s thinking had matured and he could list in an orderly way all of the key features of the protein synthesis process: The adaptor molecules were eventually shown to be tRNAs and the catalytic" ribonucleic- protein complexes" became known as ribosomes. An important step was later realisation( in 1960) that the messenger RNA was not the same as the ribosomal RNA. None of this, however, answered the fundamental theoretical question of the exact nature of the genetic code. In his 1958 article, Crick speculated, as had others, that a triplet of nucleotides could code for an amino acid. Such a code might be" degenerate", with 4× 4× 4= 64 possible triplets of the four nucleotide subunits while there were only 20 amino acids. Some amino acids might have multiple triplet codes. Crick also explored other codes in which, for various reasons, only some of the triplets were used," magically" producing just the 20 needed combinations. Experimental results were needed; theory alone could not decide the nature of the code. Crick also used the term" central dogma" to summarise an idea that implies that genetic information flow between macromolecules would be essentially one- way: Some critics thought that by using the word" dogma", Crick was implying that this was a rule that could not be questioned, but all he really meant was that it was a compelling idea without much solid evidence to support it. In his thinking about the biological processes linking DNA genes to proteins, Crick made explicit the distinction between the materials involved, the energy required, and the information flow. Crick was focused on this third component( information) and it became the organising principle of what became known as molecular biology. Crick had by this time become a highly influential theoretical molecular biologist. Proof that the genetic code is a degenerate triplet code finally came from genetics experiments, some of which were performed by Crick. The details of the code came mostly from work by Marshall Nirenberg and others who synthesised synthetic RNA molecules and used them as templates for" in vitro" protein synthesis. Nirenberg first announced his results to a small audience in Moscow at a 1961 conference. Crick' s reaction was to invite Nirenberg to deliver his talk to a larger audience. Controversy. Use of other researchers' data. An enduring controversy has been generated by Watson and Crick' s use of DNA X- ray diffraction data collected by Franklin and Wilkins. The controversy arose from the fact that some of Franklin' s unpublished data were used without her knowledge or consent by Watson and Crick in their construction of the double helix model of DNA. Of the four DNA researchers, only Franklin had a degree in chemistry; Wilkins and Crick had backgrounds in physics, Watson in biology. Prior to publication of the double helix structure, Watson and
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Crick had little direct interaction
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with Franklin herself. They were, however, aware of her work, more aware than she herself realised. Watson was present at a lecture, given in November 1951, where Franklin presented the two forms of the molecule, type A and type B, and discussed the position of the phosphate units on the external part of the molecule. She also specified the amount of water to be found in the molecule in accordance with other parts of it, data that have considerable importance in terms of the stability of the molecule. She was the first to discover and formulate these facts, which in fact constituted the basis for all later attempts to build a model of the molecule. Before this, both Linus Pauling and Watson and Crick had generated erroneous models with the chains inside and the bases pointing outwards. Her identification of the space group for DNA crystals revealed to Crick that the two DNA strands were antiparallel. In January 1953, Watson was shown an X- ray photograph of B- DNA( called photograph 51), by Wilkins. Wilkins had been given photograph 51 by Rosalind Franklin' s PhD student Raymond Gosling. Wilkins and Gosling had worked together in the Medical Research Council' s( MRC) Biophysics Unit before director John Randall appointed Franklin to take over both DNA diffraction work and guidance of Gosling' s thesis. It appears that Randall did not communicate effectively with them about Franklin' s appointment, contributing to confusion and friction between Wilkins and Franklin. In the middle of February 1953, Crick' s thesis advisor, Max Perutz, gave Crick a copy of a report written for a Medical Research Council biophysics committee visit to King' s in December 1952, containing data from the King' s group, including some of Franklin' s crystallographic calculations. Franklin was unaware that photograph 51 and other information had been shared with Crick and Watson. She wrote a series of three draft manuscripts, two of which included a double helical DNA backbone. Her two A form manuscripts reached Acta Crystallographica in Copenhagen on 6 March 1953, one day before Crick and Watson had completed their model. The X- ray diffraction images collected by Gosling and Franklin provided the best evidence for the helical nature of DNA. Franklin' s experimental work thus proved crucial in Watson and Crick' s discovery. Her experimental results provided estimates of the water content of DNA crystals, and these results were most consistent with the three sugar- phosphate backbones being on the outside of the molecule. Franklin' s X- Ray photograph showed that the backbones had to be on the outside. Although she at first insisted vehemently that her data did not force one to conclude that DNA has a helical structure, in the drafts she submitted in 1953 she argues for a double helical DNA backbone. Her identification of the space group for DNA crystals revealed to Crick that the DNA strands were antiparallel, which helped Watson and Crick decide to look for DNA models with two antiparallel polynucleotide strands. In summary, Watson and Crick had three sources for Franklin' s unpublished data:
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1) her 1951 seminar, attended
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by Watson, 2) discussions with Wilkins, who worked in the same laboratory with Franklin, 3) a research progress report that was intended to promote coordination of Medical Research Council- supported laboratories. Watson, Crick, Wilkins and Franklin all worked in MRC laboratories. Crick and Watson felt that they had benefited from collaborating with Wilkins. They offered him a co- authorship on the article that first described the double helix structure of DNA. Wilkins turned down the offer, a fact that may have led to the terse character of the acknowledgement of experimental work done at King' s College in the eventual published paper. Rather than make any of the DNA researchers at King' s College co- authors on the Watson and Crick double helix article, the solution that was arrived at was to publish two additional papers from King' s College along with the helix paper. Brenda Maddox suggests that because of the importance of her experimental results in Watson and Crick' s model building and theoretical analysis, Franklin should have had her name on the original Watson and Crick paper in" Nature". Franklin and Gosling submitted their own joint' second' paper to" Nature" at the same time as Wilkins, Stokes, and Wilson submitted theirs( i. e. the' third' paper on DNA). Watson' s portrayal of Franklin in" The Double Helix" was negative and gave the appearance that she was Wilkins' assistant and was unable to interpret her own DNA data. The X- ray diffraction images collected by Franklin provided the best evidence for the helical nature of DNA. While Franklin' s experimental work proved important to Crick and Watson' s development of a correct model, she herself could not realise it at the time. When she left King' s College, Director Sir John Randall insisted that all DNA work belonged exclusively to King' s and ordered Franklin to not even think about it. Franklin subsequently did superb work in J. D. Bernal' s Lab at Birkbeck College with the tobacco mosaic virus extending ideas on helical construction. Crick was often described as very talkative, with Watson– in" The Double Helix"– implying lack of modesty. His personality combined with his scientific accomplishments produced many opportunities for Crick to stimulate reactions from others, both inside and outside the scientific world, which was the centre of his intellectual and professional life. Crick spoke rapidly, and rather loudly, and had an infectious and reverberating laugh, and a lively sense of humour. One colleague from the Salk Institute described him as" a brainstorming intellectual powerhouse with a mischievous smile... Francis was never mean- spirited, just incisive. He detected microscopic flaws in logic. In a room full of smart scientists, Francis continually reearned his position as the heavyweight champ." Eugenics. Crick occasionally expressed his views on eugenics, usually in private letters. For example, Crick advocated a form of positive eugenics in which wealthy parents would be encouraged to have more children. He once remarked," In the long run, it is unavoidable that society will begin to worry about the character of the next generation... It is not a
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subject at the moment which
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we can tackle easily because people have so many religious beliefs and until we have a more uniform view of ourselves I think it would be risky to try and do anything in the way of eugenics... I would be astonished if, in the next 100 or 200 years, society did not come round to the view that they would have to try to improve the next generation in some extent or one way or another." Sexual harassment.BiologistNancyHopkinssayswhenshewasanundergraduateinthe1960s, Crick put his hands on her breasts during a lab visit. She described the incident:" Before I could rise and shake hands, he had zoomed across the room, stood behind me, put his hands on my breasts and said,' What are you working on?'" Views on religion. Crick referred to himself as a humanist, which he defined as the belief" that human problems can and must be faced in terms of human moral and intellectual resources without invoking supernatural authority." He publicly called for humanism to replace religion as a guiding force for humanity, writing: The human dilemma is hardly new. We find ourselves through no wish of our own on this slowly revolving planet in an obscure corner of a vast universe. Our questioning intelligence will not let us live in cow- like content with our lot. We have a deep need to know why we are here. What is the world made of? More important, what are we made of? In the past religion answered these questions, often in considerable detail. Now we know that almost all these answers are highly likely to be nonsense, having sprung from man' s ignorance and his enormous capacity for self- deception... The simple fables of the religions of the world have come to seem like tales told to children. Even understood symbolically they are often perverse, if not rather unpleasant... Humanists, then, live in a mysterious, exciting and intellectually expanding world, which, once glimpsed, makes the old worlds of the religions seem fake- cosy and stale... Crick was especially critical of Christianity: I do not respect Christian beliefs. I think they are ridiculous. If we could get rid of them we could more easily get down to the serious problem of trying to find out what the world is all about. Crick once joked," Christianity may be OK between consenting adults in private but should not be taught to young children." In his book" Of Molecules and Men", Crick expressed his views on the relationship between science and religion. After suggesting that it would become possible for a computer to be programmed so as to have a soul, he wondered: at what point during biological evolution did the first organism have a soul? At what moment does a baby get a soul? Crick stated his view that the idea of a non- material soul that could enter a body and then persist after death is just that, an imagined idea. For Crick, the mind is a product of physical brain activity and the brain had evolved by natural means over millions of years. He felt
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that it was important that
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evolution by natural selection be taught in schools and that it was regrettable that English schools had compulsory religious instruction. He also considered that a new scientific world view was rapidly being established, and predicted that once the detailed workings of the brain were eventually revealed, erroneous Christian concepts about the nature of humans and the world would no longer be tenable; traditional conceptions of the" soul" would be replaced by a new understanding of the physical basis of mind. He was sceptical of organised religion, referring to himself as a sceptic and an agnostic with" a strong inclination towards atheism". In 1960, Crick accepted an honorary fellowship at Churchill College, Cambridge, one factor being that the new college did not have a chapel. Some time later a large donation was made to establish a chapel and the College Council decided to accept it. Crick resigned his fellowship in protest. In October 1969,Crickparticipatedinacelebrationofthe100th year of the journal" Nature" in which he attempted to make some predictions about what the next 30 years would hold for molecular biology. His speculations were later published in" Nature". Near the end of the article, Crick briefly mentioned the search for life on other planets, but he held little hope that extraterrestrial life would be found by the year 2000. He also discussed what he described as a possible new direction for research, what he called" biochemical theology". Crick wrote" so many people pray that one finds it hard to believe that they do not get some satisfaction from it". Crick suggested that it might be possible to find chemical changes in the brain that were molecular correlates of the act of prayer. He speculated that there might be a detectable change in the level of some neurotransmitter or neurohormone when people pray. He might have been imagining substances such as dopamine that are released by the brain under certain conditions and produce rewarding sensations. Crick' s suggestion that there might someday be a new science of" biochemical theology" seems to have been realised under an alternative name: there is now the new field of neurotheology. Crick' s view of the relationship between science and religion continued to play a role in his work as he made the transition from molecular biology research into theoretical neuroscience. Crick asked in 1998" and if some of the Bible is manifestly wrong, why should any of the rest of it be accepted automatically?... And what would be more important than to find our true place in the universe by removing one by one these unfortunate vestiges of earlier beliefs?" In 2003 he was one of 22 Nobel laureates who signed the" Humanist Manifesto". Creationism. Crick was a firm critic of Young Earth creationism. In the 1987 United States Supreme Court case" Edwards v. Aguillard", Crick joined a group of other Nobel laureates who advised,"' Creation- science' simply has no place in the public- school science classroom." Crick was also an advocate for the establishment of Darwin Day as a British national holiday. Directed panspermia. During the1960s, Crick became concerned with
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the origins of the genetic
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code. In 1966, Crick took the place of Leslie Orgel at a meeting where Orgel was to talk about the origin of life. Crick speculated about possible stages by which an initially simple code with a few amino acid types might have evolved into the more complex code used by existing organisms. At that time, proteins were thought to be the only kind of enzyme, and ribozymes had not yet been identified. Many molecular biologists were puzzled by the problem of the origin of a protein replicating system that is as complex as that which exists in organisms currently inhabiting Earth.Intheearly1970s, Crick and Orgel further speculated about the possibility that the production of living systems from molecules may have been a very rare event in the universe, but once it had developed it could be spread by intelligent life forms using space travel technology, a process they called" directed panspermia". In a retrospective article, Crick and Orgel noted that they had been unduly pessimistic about the chances of abiogenesis on Earth when they had assumed that some kind of self- replicating protein system was the molecular origin of life. In 1976, Crick addressed the origin of protein synthesis in a paper with Sydney Brenner, Aaron Klug, and George Pieczenik. In this paper, they speculate that code constraints on nucleotide sequences allow protein synthesis without the need for a ribosome. It, however, requires a five base binding between the mRNA and tRNA with a flip of the anti- codon creating a triplet coding, even though it is a five- base physical interaction. Thomas H. Jukes pointed out that the code constraints on the mRNA sequence required for this translation mechanism is still preserved. Neuroscience and other interests. Crick' s period at Cambridge was the pinnacle of his long scientific career, but he left Cambridge in 1977 after 30 years, having been offered( and having refused) the Mastership of Gonville and Caius. James WatsonclaimedataCambridgeconferencemarkingthe50th anniversary of the discovery of the structure of DNA in 2003: Now perhaps it' s a pretty well kept secret that one of the most uninspiring acts of the University of Cambridge over this past century was to turn down Francis Crick when he applied to be the Professor of Genetics, in 1958. Now there may have been a series of arguments, which led them to reject Francis. It was really saying, don' t push us to the frontier. The apparently" pretty well kept secret" had already been recorded in Soraya De Chadarevian' s" Designs For Life: Molecular Biology After World War II", published by Cambridge University Press in 2002. His major contribution to molecular biology in Cambridge is well documented in" The History of the University of Cambridge: Volume 4( 1870 to 1990)", which was published by CUP in 1992. According to the University of Cambridge' s genetics department official website, the electors of the professorship could not reach consensus, prompting the intervention of then University Vice- Chancellor Lord Adrian. Lord Adrian first offered the professorship to a compromise candidate, Guido Pontecorvo, who refused, and is said to have
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offered it then to Crick,
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who also refused. In 1976, Crick took a sabbatical year at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California. Crick had been a nonresident fellow of the Institute since 1960. Crick wrote," I felt at home in Southern California." After the sabbatical, Crick left Cambridge to continue working at the Salk Institute. He was also an adjunct professor at the University of California, San Diego. He taught himself neuroanatomy and studied many other areas of neuroscience research. It took him several years to disengage from molecular biology because exciting discoveries continued to be made, including the discovery of alternative splicing and the discovery of restriction enzymes, which helped make possible genetic engineering. Eventually,inthe1980s, Crick was able to devote his full attention to his other interest, consciousness. His autobiographical book,"", includes a description of why he left molecular biology and switched to neuroscience. Upon taking up work in theoretical neuroscience, Crick was struck by several things: Crick hoped he might aid progress in neuroscience by promoting constructive interactions between specialists from the many different subdisciplines concerned with consciousness. He even collaborated with neurophilosophers such as Patricia Churchland. In 1983, as a result of their studies of computer models of neural networks, Crick and Mitchison proposed that the function of REM sleep and dreaming is to remove certain modes of interactions in networks of cells in the mammalian cerebral cortex; they called this hypothetical process' reverse learning' or' unlearning'. In the final phase of his career, Crick established a collaboration with Christof Koch that led to publication of a series of articles on consciousness during the period spanning from 1990 to 2005. Crick made the strategic decision to focus his theoretical investigation of consciousness on how the brain generates visual awareness within a few hundred milliseconds of viewing a scene. Crick and Koch proposed that consciousness seems so mysterious because it involves very short- term memory processes that are as yet poorly understood. Crick also published a book describing how neurobiology had reached a mature enough stage so that consciousness could be the subject of a unified effort to study it at the molecular, cellular and behavioural levels. Crick' s book" The Astonishing Hypothesis" made the argument that neuroscience now had the tools required to begin a scientific study of how brains produce conscious experiences. Crick was sceptical about the value of computational models of mental function that are not based on details about brain structure and function. Awards and honours. In addition to his third share of the 1962 Nobel prize for Physiology or Medicine, he received many awards and honours, including the Royal and Copley medals of the Royal Society( 1972 and 1975), and also the Order of Merit( on 27 November 1991); he refused an offer of a CBE in 1963, but was often referred to in error as' Sir Francis Crick' and even on occasions as' Lord Crick'. He was elected an EMBO Member in 1964. The award of Nobel prizes to John Kendrew and Max Perutz, and to Crick, Watson, and Wilkins was satirised in a short
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sketch in the BBC TV
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programme" That Was The Week That Was" with the Nobel Prizes being referred to as' The Alfred Nobel Peace Pools'. Francis Crick Medal and Lecture. The Francis Crick Medal and Lecture was established in 2003 following an endowment by his former colleague, Sydney Brenner, joint winner of the 2002 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine. The lecture is delivered annually in any field of biological sciences, with preference given to the areas in which Francis Crick himself worked. Importantly, the lectureship is aimed at younger scientists, ideally under 40, or whose career progression corresponds to this age., Crick lectures have been delivered by Julie Ahringer, Dario Alessi, Ewan Birney, Simon Boulton, Jason Chin, Simon Fisher, Matthew Hurles, Gilean McVean, Duncan Odom, Geraint Rees, Sarah Teichmann, M. Madan Babu and Daniel Wolpert. Francis Crick Institute. The Francis Crick Institute is a£ 660 million biomedical research centre located in north London, United Kingdom. The Francis Crick Institute is a partnership between Cancer Research UK, Imperial College London, King' s College London, the Medical Research Council, University College London( UCL) and the Wellcome Trust. Completed in 2016, it is the largest centre for biomedical research and innovation in Europe. Francis Crick Graduate Lectures. The University of Cambridge Graduate School of Biological, Medical and Veterinary Sciences hosts The Francis Crick Graduate Lectures. The first two lectures were by John Gurdon and Tim Hunt. Baron Francis van Aarssens or Baron François van Aerssen( 27 September 1572- 27 December 1641), from 1611 on lord of Sommelsdijk, was a diplomat and statesman of the United Provinces. Biography. He was born in Brussels, the son of Cornelis van Aarsens, also a statesman. His talents commended him to the notice of Advocate Johan van Oldenbarnevelt, who sent him, at the age of 26 years, as a diplomatic agent of the states- general to the court of France. He took a considerable part in the negotiations of the Twelve Years' Truce in 1609. His conduct of affairs having displeased the French king, he was recalled from his post by Oldenbarneveldt in 1614, after the French ambassador Benjamin Aubery du Maurier had demanded Aarsens recall. Such was the hatred he henceforth conceived against his former benefactor, that he did his very utmost to effect Oldebarneveldt' s ruin. However, he was not a member of the court that convicted Oldenbarnevelt in the Trial of Oldenbarnevelt, Grotius and Hogerbeets as Chisholm mistakenly reports. He afterwards became the confidential counselor of Maurice, Prince of Orange, and afterwards of Frederick Henry, Prince of Orange, in their conduct of the foreign affairs of the republic. He was sent on special embassies to Venice, Germany and England, and displayed so much diplomatic skill and finesse that Cardinal Richelieu ranked him among the three greatest politicians of his time. He died, aged 69, in The Hague. A frigate() is a type of warship. In different eras, the roles and capabilities of ships classified as frigates have varied greatly. Inthe17th century, a frigate was any warship built for speed and maneuverability, the description often used being" frigate- built". These could be
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warships carrying their principal batteries
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of carriage- mounted guns on a single deck or on two decks( with further smaller carriage- mounted guns usually carried on the forecastle and quarterdeck of the vessel). The term was generally used for ships too small to stand in the line of battle, although early line- of- battle ships were frequently referred to as frigates when they were built for speed.Inthe18th century, frigates were full- rigged ships, that is square- rigged on all three masts, they were built for speed and handiness, had a lighter armament than a ship of the line, and were used for patrolling and escort. In the definition adopted by the British Admiralty, they were rated ships of at least 28 guns, carrying their principal armaments upon a single continuous deck– the upper deck– while ships of the line possessed two or more continuous decks bearing batteries of guns.Inthelate19th century( beginning about 1858 with the construction of prototypes by the British and French navies), the armoured frigate was a type of ironclad warship that for a time was the most powerful type of vessel afloat. These were still described as" frigates" because such ships still mounted their principal armaments on a single continuous upper deck, in the manner of older sailing frigates. However,bytheendofthe19th century, developments in ironclad warships had made this type of ship obsolete and the term" frigate" became obsolete. During the Second World War the name' frigate' was reintroduced to describe a seagoing escort ship intermediate in size between a corvette and a destroyer. After World War II, a wide variety of ships have been classified as frigates. Often there has been little consistency in usage. While some navies have regarded frigates as principally large ocean- going anti- submarine warfare( ASW) combatants, others have used the term to describe ships that are otherwise recognisable as corvettes, destroyers, and even nuclear- powered guided missile cruisers. Some European navies use the term" frigate" for both their destroyers and frigates. The rank" frigate captain" derives from the name of this type of ship. Age of sail. Origins. The term" frigate"( Italian:" fregata"; Dutch:" fregat"; Spanish/ Catalan/ Portuguese/ Sicilian:" fragata"; French:" frégate") originatedintheMediterraneaninthelate15th century, referring to a lighter galley- type warship with oars, sails and a light armament, built for speed and maneuverability. The etymology of the word remains uncertain, although it may have originated as a corruption of"", a Latin word for an open vessel with no lower deck." Aphractus", in turn, derived from the Ancient Greek phrase ἄφρακτος ναῦς(" aphraktos naus")–" undefended ship". In 1583, during the Eighty Years' War of 1568– 1648, Habsburg Spain recovered the southern Netherlands from the Protestant rebels. This soon resulted in the use of the occupied ports as bases for privateers, the" Dunkirkers", to attack the shipping of the Dutch and their allies. To achieve this the Dunkirkers developed small, maneuverable, sailing vessels that came to be referred to as frigates. The success of these Dunkirker vessels influenced the ship design of other navies contending with them, but because most regular navies required ships of greater endurance than the Dunkirker frigates
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could provide, the term soon
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came to apply less exclusively to any relatively fast and elegant sail- only warship. In French, the term" frigate" gave rise to a verb–" frégater", meaning' to build long and low', and to an adjective, adding more confusion. Even the huge English could be described as" a delicate frigate" by a contemporary after her upper decks were reduced in 1651. The navy of the Dutch Republic became the first navy to build the larger ocean- going frigates. The Dutch navy had three principal tasks in the struggle against Spain: to protect Dutch merchant ships at sea, to blockade the ports of Spanish- held Flanders to damage trade and halt enemy privateering, and to fight the Spanish fleet and prevent troop landings. The first two tasks required speed, shallowness of draft for the shallow waters around the Netherlands, and the ability to carry sufficient supplies to maintain a blockade. The third task required heavy armament, sufficient to stand up to the Spanish fleet. The first of the larger battle- capable frigates were built around 1600 at Hoorn in Holland. By the later stages of the Eighty Years' War the Dutch had switched entirely from the heavier ships still used by the English and Spanish to the lighter frigates, carrying around 40 guns and weighing around 300 tons. The effectiveness of the Dutch frigates became most evident in the Battle of the Downs in 1639, encouraging most other navies, especially the English, to adopt similar designs.ThefleetsbuiltbytheCommonwealthofEnglandinthe1650s generally consisted of ships described as" frigates", the largest of which were two- decker" great frigates" of the third rate. Carrying 60 guns, these vessels were as big and capable as" great ships" of the time; however, most other frigates at the time were used as" cruisers": independent fast ships. The term" frigate" implied a long hull- design, which relates directly to speed( see hull speed) and which also, in turn, helped the development of the broadside tactic in naval warfare. At this time, a further design evolved, reintroducing oars and resulting in galley frigates such as of 1676, which was rated as a 32- gun fifth- rate but also had a bank of 40 oars set below the upper deck which could propel the ship in the absence of a favourable wind. In Danish, the word" fregat" often applies to warships carrying as few as 16 guns, such as, which the British classified as a sloop. Under the rating system of the Royal Navy,bythemiddleofthe18th century, the term" frigate" was technically restricted to single- decked ships of the fifth rate, though small 28- gun frigates classed as sixth rate. Classic design. The classic sailing frigate, well- known today for its role in the Napoleonic wars, can be traced back to French developments in the secondquarterofthe18th century. The French- built of 1740 is often regarded as the first example of this type. These ships were square- rigged and carried all their main guns on a single continuous upper deck. The lower deck, known as the" gun deck", now carried no armament, and functioned as a" berth deck" where the
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crew lived, and was in
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fact placed below the waterline of the new frigates. The typical earlier cruiser had a partially armed lower deck, from which it was known as a' half- battery' or" demi- batterie" ship. Removing the guns from this deck allowed the height of the hull upperworks to be lowered, giving the resulting' true- frigate' much improved sailing qualities. The unarmed deck meant that the frigate' s guns were carried comparatively high above the waterline; as a result, when seas were too rough for two- deckers to open their lower deck gun- ports, frigates were still able to fight with all their guns( see the action of 13 January 1797, for an example when this was decisive). The Royal Navy captured a number of the new French frigates, including" Médée", during the War of the Austrian Succession( 1740– 1748) and were impressed by them, particularly for their inshore handling capabilities. They soon built copies( ordered in 1747), based on a French privateer named" Tygre", and started to adapt the type to their own needs, setting the standard for other frigates as the leading naval power. The first British frigates carried 28 guns including an upper deck battery of twenty- four 9- pounder guns( the remaining four smaller guns were carried on the quarter deck) but soon developed into fifth- rate ships of 32 or 36 guns including an upper deck battery of twenty- six 12- pounder guns, with the remaining six or ten smaller guns carried on the quarter deck and forecastle. Technically,' rated ships' with fewer than 28 guns could not be classed as frigates but as" post ships"; however, in common parlance most post ships were often described as" frigates", the same casual misuse of the term being extended to smaller two- decked ships that were too small to stand in the line of battle. A total of fifty- nine French sailing frigates were built between 1777 and 1790, with a standard design averaging a hull length of and an average draught of. The new frigates recorded sailing speeds of up to, significantly faster than their predecessor vessels. Heavy frigate. In 1778, the British Admiralty introduced a larger" heavy" frigate, with a main battery of twenty- six or twenty- eight 18- pounder guns( with smaller guns carried on the quarter deck and forecastle). This move may reflect the naval conditions at the time, with both France and Spain as enemies the usual British preponderance in ship numbers was no longer the case and there was pressure on the British to produce cruisers of individually greater force. In reply, the first French 18- pounder frigates were laid down in 1781. The 18- pounder frigate eventually became the standard frigate of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. The British produced larger, 38- gun, and slightly smaller, 36- gun, versions and also a 32- gun design that can be considered an' economy version'. The 32- gun frigates also had the advantage that they could be built by the many smaller, less- specialised shipbuilders. Frigates could( and usually did) additionally carry smaller carriage- mounted guns on
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their quarter decks and forecastles(
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the superstructures above the upper deck). In 1778 the Carron Iron Company of Scotland produced a naval gun which would revolutionise the armament of smaller naval vessels, including the frigate. The carronade was a large calibre, short- barrelled naval cannon which was light, quick to reload and needed a smaller crew than a conventional long gun. Due to its lightness it could be mounted on the forecastle and quarter deck of frigates. It greatly increased the firepower, measured in weight of metal( the combined weight of all projectiles fired in one broadside), of these vessels. The disadvantages of the carronade were that it had a much shorter range and was less accurate than a long gun. The British quickly saw the advantages of the new weapon and soon employed it on a wide scale. The US Navy also copied the design soon after its appearance. The French and other nations eventually adopted variations of the weapon in succeeding decades. The typical heavy frigate had a main armament of 18- pounder long guns, plus 32- pounder carronades mounted on its upper decks. Super- heavy frigates. The first' super- heavy frigates', armed with 24- pounder long guns, were built by the naval architect F H Chapman for the Swedish navy in 1782. Because of a shortage of ships- of- the- line, the Swedes wanted these frigates, the" Bellona" class, to be able to stand in the battle line in an emergency.Inthe1790s the French built a small number of large 24- pounder frigates, such as and" Egyptienne", they also cut- down( reduced the height of the hull to give only one continuous gun deck) a number of older ships- of- the- line( including) to produce super- heavy frigates, the resulting ship was known as a" rasée". It is not known whether the French were seeking to produce very potent cruisers or merely to address stability problems in old ships. The British, alarmed by the prospect of these powerful heavy frigates, responded by rasée- ing three of the smaller 64- gun battleships, including, which went on to have a very successful career as a frigate. At this time the British also built a few 24- pounder- armed large frigates, the most successful of which was( 1, 277 tons). In 1797, three of the United States Navy' s first six major ships were rated as 44- gun frigates, which operationally carried fifty- six to sixty 24- pounder long guns and 32- pounder or 42- pounder carronades on two decks; they were exceptionally powerful. These ships were so large, at around 1, 500 tons, and well- armed that they were often regarded as equal to ships of the line, and after a series of losses at the outbreak of the War of 1812, Royal Navy fighting instructions ordered British frigates( usually of 38 guns or less) to never engage the large American frigates at any less than a 2: 1 advantage., preserved as a museum ship by the US Navy, is the oldest commissioned warship afloat, and is a surviving example of a frigate from the Age of
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Sail." Constitution" and her sister
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ships and were created in a response to deal with the Barbary Coast pirates and in conjunction with the Naval Act of 1794. Joshua Humphreys proposed that only live oak, a tree that grew only in America, should be used to build these ships. The British, wounded by repeated defeats in single- ship actions,respondedtothesuccessoftheAmerican44s in three ways. They built a class of conventional 40- gun, 24- pounder armed frigates on the lines of" Endymion". They cut down three old 74- gun Ships- of- the- Line into" rasées", producing frigates with a 32- pounder main armament, supplemented by 42- pounder carronades. These had an armament that far exceeded the power of the American ships. Finally, and, 1, 500- ton spar- decked frigates( with an enclosed waist, giving a continuous line of guns from bow to stern at the level of the quarter deck/ forecastle), were built, which were an almost exact match in size and firepower to the American 44- gun frigates. Role. Frigates were perhaps the hardest- worked of warship types during the Age of Sail. While smaller than a ship- of- the- line, they were formidable opponents for the large numbers of sloops and gunboats, not to mention privateers or merchantmen. Able to carry six months' stores, they had very long range; and vessels larger than frigates were considered too valuable to operate independently. Frigates scouted for the fleet, went on commerce- raiding missions and patrols, and conveyed messages and dignitaries. Usually, frigates would fight in small numbers or singly against other frigates. They would avoid contact with ships- of- the- line; even in the midst of a fleet engagement it was bad etiquette for a ship of the line to fire on an enemy frigate which had not fired first. Frigates were involved in fleet battles, often as" repeating frigates". In the smoke and confusion of battle, signals made by the fleet commander, whose flagship might be in the thick of the fighting, might be missed by the other ships of the fleet. Frigates were therefore stationed to windward or leeward of the main line of battle, and had to maintain a clear line of sight to the commander' s flagship. Signals from the flagship were then repeated by the frigates, which themselves standing out of the line and clear from the smoke and disorder of battle, could be more easily seen by the other ships of the fleet. If damage or loss of masts prevented the flagship from making clear conventional signals, the repeating frigates could interpret them and hoist their own in the correct manner, passing on the commander' s instructions clearly. For officers in the Royal Navy, a frigate was a desirable posting. Frigates often saw action, which meant a greater chance of glory, promotion, and prize money. Unlike larger ships that were placed in ordinary, frigates were kept in service in peacetime as a cost- saving measure and to provide experience to frigate captains and officers which would be useful in wartime. Frigates could also carry marines for boarding enemy ships or for operations on shore;
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in 1832, the frigate landed
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a party of 282 sailors and Marines ashore in the US Navy' s first Sumatran expedition. Frigates remained a crucial element of navies until the mid-19th century. The first ironclads were classified as" frigates" because of the number of guns they carried. However, terminology changed as iron and steam became the norm, and the role of the frigate was assumed first by the protected cruiser and then by the light cruiser. Frigates are often the vessel of choice in historical naval novels due to their relative freedom compared to ships- of- the- line( kept for fleet actions) and smaller vessels( generally assigned to a home port and less widely ranging). For example, the Patrick O' Brian Aubrey– Maturin series, C. S. Forester' s Horatio Hornblower series and Alexander Kent' s Richard Bolitho series. The motion picture"" features a reconstructed historic frigate, HMS" Rose", to depict Aubrey' s frigate HMS" Surprise". Age of steam. Vessels classedasfrigatescontinuedtoplayagreatroleinnavieswiththeadoptionofsteampowerinthe19th century.Inthe1830s, navies experimented with large paddle steamers equipped with large guns mounted on one deck, which were termed" paddle frigates". From the mid-1840s on, frigates which more closely resembled the traditional sailing frigate were built with steam engines and screw propellers. These" screw frigates", built first of wood and later of iron,continuedtoperformthetraditionalroleofthefrigateuntillateinthe19th century. Armoured frigate. From 1859, armour was added to ships based on existing frigate and ship of the line designs. The additional weight of the armour on these first ironclad warships meant that they could have only one gun deck, and they were technically frigates, even though they were more powerful than existing ships- of- the- line and occupied the same strategic role. The phrase" armoured frigate" remained in use for some time to denote a sail- equipped, broadside- firing type of ironclad.Duringthe1880s, as warship design shifted from iron to steel and cruising warships without sails started to appear, the term" frigate" fell out of use. Vessels with armoured sides were designated as" battleships" or" armoured cruisers", while" protected cruisers" only possessed an armoured deck, and unarmoured vessels, including frigates and sloops, were classified as" unprotected cruisers". Modern Era. World War II. Modern frigates are related to earlier frigates only by name. The term" frigate" was readopted during the Second World War by the British Royal Navy to describe an anti- submarine escort vessel that was larger than a corvette, while smaller than a destroyer. Equal in size and capability to the American destroyer escort, frigates are usually less expensive to build and maintain. Anti- submarine escorts had previously been classified as sloops by the Royal Navy, and the s of 1939– 1945 were as large as the new types of frigate, and more heavily armed. Twenty- two of these were reclassified as frigates after the war, as were the remaining 24 smaller s. The frigate was introduced to remedy some of the shortcomings inherent in the corvette design: limited armament, a hull form not suited to open- ocean work, a single shaft which limited speed and manoeuvrability, and a lack of range. The frigate was designed and built to the same mercantile construction standards(
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scantlings) as the corvette, allowing
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manufacture by yards unused to warship construction. The first frigates of the( 1941) were essentially two sets of corvette machinery in one larger hull, armed with the latest Hedgehog anti- submarine weapon. The frigate possessed less offensive firepower and speed than a destroyer, but such qualities were not required for anti- submarine warfare. Submarines were slow while submerged, and ASDIC sets did not operate effectively at speeds of over. Rather, the frigate was an austere and weatherly vessel suitable for mass- construction and fitted with the latest innovations in anti- submarine warfare. As the frigate was intended purely for convoy duties, and not to deploy with the fleet, it had limited range and speed. It was not until the Royal Navy' s of 1944 that a British design classified as a" frigate" was produced for fleet use, although it still suffered from limited speed. These anti- aircraft frigates, built on incomplete hulls, were similar to the United States Navy' s destroyer escorts( DE), although the latter had greater speed and offensive armament to better suit them to fleet deployments. The destroyer escort concept came from design studies by the General Board of the United States Navy in 1940, as modified by requirements established by a British commission in 1941 prior to the American entry into the war, for deep- water escorts. The American- built destroyer escorts serving in the British Royal Navy were rated as Captain- class frigates. The U. S. Navy' s two Canadian- built and 96 British- influenced, American- built frigates that followed originally were classified as" patrol gunboats"( PG) in the U. S. Navy but on 15 April 1943 were all reclassified as patrol frigates( PF). Modern frigate. Guided- missile role. The introduction of the surface- to- air missile after World War II made relatively small ships effective for anti- aircraft warfare: the" guided missile frigate". In the USN, these vessels were called" ocean escorts" and designated" DE" or" DEG" until 1975– a holdover from the World War II destroyer escort or" DE". The Royal Canadian Navy and British Royal Navy maintained the use of the term" frigate"; likewise, the French Navy refers to missile- equipped ship, up to cruiser- sized ships(,, and es), by the name of" frégate", while smaller units are named" aviso". The Soviet Navy used the term" guard- ship"(" сторожевой корабль").Fromthe1950stothe1970s, the United States Navy commissioned ships classed as guided missile frigates( hull classification symbol DLG or DLGN, literally meaning guided missile destroyer leaders), which were actually anti- aircraft warfare cruisers built on destroyer- style hulls. These had one or two twin launchers per ship for the RIM- 2 Terrier missile, upgraded to the RIM- 67 StandardERmissileinthe1980s. This type of ship was intended primarily to defend aircraft carriers against anti- ship cruise missiles, augmenting and eventually replacing converted World War II cruisers( CAG/ CLG/ CG) in this role. The guided missile frigates also had an anti- submarine capability that most of the World War II cruiser conversions lacked. Some of these ships– and along with the and es– were nuclear- powered( DLGN). These" frigates" were
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roughly mid- way in size
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between cruisers and destroyers. This was similar to the use of the term" frigate" during the age of sail during which it referred to a medium- sized warship, but it was inconsistent with conventions used by other contemporary navies which regarded frigates as being smaller than destroyers. During the 1975 ship reclassification, the large American frigates were redesignated as guided missile cruisers or destroyers( CG/ CGN/ DDG), while ocean escorts( the American classification for ships smaller than destroyers, with hull symbol DE/ DEG( destroyer escort)) were reclassified as frigates( FF/ FFG), sometimes called" fast frigates".Inthelate1970s the US Navy introduced the 51- ship guided missile frigates( FFG), the last of which was decommissioned in 2015, although some serve in other navies. By 1995 the older guided missile cruisers and destroyers were replaced by the s and s. One of the most successful post- 1945 designs was the British, which was used by several navies. Laid down in 1959, the" Leander" class was based on the previous Type 12 anti- submarine frigate but equipped for anti- aircraft use as well.TheywereusedbytheUKintothe1990s, at which point some were sold onto other navies. The" Leander" design, or improved versions of it, were licence- built for other navies as well. Nearly all modern frigates are equipped with some form of offensive or defensive missiles, and as such are rated as guided- missile frigates( FFG). Improvements in surface- to- air missiles( e. g., the Eurosam Aster 15) allow modern guided- missile frigates to form the core of many modern navies and to be used as a fleet defence platform, without the need for specialised anti- air warfare frigates. Other uses. The Royal Navy Type 61" Salisbury" class were" air direction" frigates equipped to track aircraft. To this end they had reduced armament compared to the Type 41" Leopard"- class air- defence frigates built on the same hull. Multi- role frigates like the MEKO 200, and es are designed for navies needing warships deployed in a variety of situations that a general frigate class would not be able to fulfill and not requiring the need for deploying destroyers. Anti- submarine role. At the opposite end of the spectrum, some frigates are specialised for anti- submarine warfare. Increasing submarine speeds towards the end of World War II( see German Type XXI submarine) greatly reduced the margin of speed superiority of frigate over submarine. The frigate could no longer be slow and powered by mercantile machinery and consequently postwar frigates, such as the, were faster. Such ships carry improved sonar equipment, such as the variable depth sonar or towed array, and specialised weapons such as torpedoes, forward- throwing weapons such as Limbo and missile- carried anti- submarine torpedoes such as ASROC or Ikara. The Royal Navy' s original Type 22 frigate is an example of a specialised anti- submarine warfare frigate, also it also has Sea Wolf surface- to- air missiles for point defense plus Exocet surface- to- surface missiles for limited offensive capability. Especially for anti- submarine warfare, most modern frigates have a landing deck and hangar aft to operate helicopters, eliminating
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the need for the frigate
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to close with unknown sub- surface threats, and using fast helicopters to attack nuclear submarines which may be faster than surface warships. For this task the helicopter is equipped with sensors such as sonobuoys, wire- mounted dipping sonar and magnetic anomaly detectors to identify possible threats, and torpedoes or depth- charges to attack them. With their onboard radar helicopters can also be used to reconnoitre over- the- horizon targets and, if equipped with anti- ship missiles such as Penguin or Sea Skua, to attack them. The helicopter is also invaluable for search and rescue operation and has largely replaced the use of small boats or the jackstay rig for such duties as transferring personnel, mail and cargo between ships or to shore. With helicopters these tasks can be accomplished faster and less dangerously, and without the need for the frigate to slow down or change course. Air defence role.Frigatesdesignedinthe1960sand1970s, such as the US Navy' s, West Germany' s, and Royal Navy' s Type 22 frigate were equipped with a small number of short- ranged surface- to- air missiles( Sea Sparrow or Sea Wolf) for point defense only. By contrast newer frigates starting with the are specialised for" zone- defense" air defence, because of the major developments in fighter jets and ballistic missiles. Recent examples include the air defence and command frigate of the Royal Netherlands Navy. These ships are armed with VL Standard Missile 2 Block IIIA, one or two Goalkeeper CIWS systems,( has two Goalkeepers, the rest of the ships have the capacity for another one.) VL Evolved Sea Sparrow Missiles, a special SMART- L radar and a Thales Active Phased Array Radar( APAR), all of which are for air defence. Another example is the of the Royal Danish Navy. Further developments. Stealth technology has been introduced in modern frigate design by the French design. Frigate shapes are designed to offer a minimal radar cross section, which also lends them good air penetration; the maneuverability of these frigates has been compared to that of sailing ships. Examples are the Italian and French with the Aster 15 and Aster 30 missile for anti- missile capabilities, the German and s, the Turkish type frigates with the MK- 41 VLS, the Indian, and classes with the Brahmos missile system and the Malaysian with the Naval Strike Missile. The modern French Navy applies the term first- class frigate and second- class frigate to both destroyers and frigates in service. Pennant numbers remain divided between F- series numbers for those ships internationally recognised as frigates and D- series pennant numbers for those more traditionally recognised as destroyers. This can result in some confusion as certain classes are referred to as frigates in French service while similar ships in other navies are referred to as destroyers. This also results in some recent classes of French ships such as the being among the largest in the world to carry the rating of frigate. The" Frégates de Taille Intermédiaire"( FTI), which means frigates of intermediate size, is a French military program to design and create a planned class of
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frigates to be used by
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the French Navy. At the moment, the program consists of five ships, with commissioning planned from 2023 onwards. In the German Navy, frigates were used to replace aging destroyers; however in size and role the new German frigates exceed the former class of destroyers. The future German s will be the largest class of frigates worldwide with a displacement of more than 7, 200 tons. The same was done in the Spanish Navy, which went ahead with the deployment of the first Aegis frigates, the s. The Myanmar Navy is producing modern frigates with a reduced radar cross section known as the. Before the Kyan Sittha class, the Myanmar Navy also produced an. Although the size of the Myanmar Navy is quite small, it is producing modern guided- missile frigates with the help of Russia, China, and India. However, the fleets of the Myanmar Navy are still expanding with several on- going shipbuilding programmes, including one, 4, 000- tonne frigate with the vertical missile launch systems. Littoral combat ship( LCS). Some new classes of ships similar to corvettes are optimized for high- speed deployment and combat with small craft rather than combat between equal opponents; an example is the U. S. littoral combat ship( LCS). As of 2015, all s in the United States Navy have been decommissioned, and their role partially being assumed by the new LCS. While the LCS class ships are smaller than the frigate class they will replace, they offer a similar degree of weaponry while requiring less than half the crew complement and offering a top speed of over. A major advantage for the LCS ships is that they are designed around specific mission modules allowing them to fulfill a variety of roles. The modular system also allows for most upgrades to be performed ashore and installed later into the ship, keeping the ships available for deployment for the maximum time. The latest U. S. deactivation plans means that this is the first time that the U. S. Navy has been without a frigate class of ships since 1943( technically is rated as a frigate and is still in commission, but does not count towards Navy force levels). The remaining 20 LCSs to be acquired from 2019 and onwards that will be enhanced will be designated as frigates, and existing ships given modifications may also have their classification changed to" FF" as well. Frigates in preservation. A few frigates have survived as museum ships. They are: Operators. Disputed classes. These ships are classified by their respective nations as frigates, but are considered destroyers internationally due to size, armament, and role. Francisco Franco Bahamonde(; 4 December 1892– 20 November 1975) was a Spanish general who led the Nationalist forces in overthrowing the Second Spanish Republic during the Spanish Civil War and thereafter ruled over Spain from 1939 to 1975 as a dictator, assuming the title" Caudillo". This period in Spanish history, from the Nationalist victory to Franco' s death, is commonly known as Francoist Spain or the Francoist dictatorship. Born in Ferrol, Galicia, into an upper- class military
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family, Franco served in the
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Spanish Army as a cadet in the Toledo Infantry Academy from 1907 to 1910. While serving in Morocco, he rose through the ranks to become brigadier general in 1926, aged 33, becoming the youngest general in Spain. Two years later, Franco became the director of the General Military Academy in Zaragoza. As a conservative and monarchist, Franco regretted the abolition of the monarchy and the establishment of the Second Republic in 1931. He was devastated by the closing of his Academy; but nevertheless, he continued his service in the Republican Army. His career redoubled after the right- wing CEDA and PRR won the 1933 election, empowering him to lead the suppression of the 1934 uprising in Asturias. Franco was briefly elevated to Chief of Army Staff before the 1936 election moved the leftist Popular Front into power, relegating him to the Canary Islands. After initial reluctance, he joined the July 1936 military coup, which, after failing to take Spain, sparked the Spanish Civil War. During the war, he commanded Spain' s African colonial army. Later after the death of much of the rebel leadership, he became his faction' s only leader, appointed Generalissimo and Head of State in 1936. He consolidated all nationalist parties into the FET y de las JONS( creating a one- party state). Three years later the Nationalists declared victory, which extended Franco' s dictatorship over Spain through a period of repression of political opponents. His dictatorship' s use of forced labor, concentration camps and executions led to between 30, 000 and 50, 000 deaths. Combined with wartime killings, this brings the death toll of the White Terror to between 100, 000 and 200, 000. In post- civil war Spain, Franco ruled with more power than any Spanish leader before or since. Franco developed a cult of personality around his rule by founding the" Movimiento Nacional". During World War II he maintained Spanish neutrality but supported the Axis— whose members Italy and Germany had supported him during the Civil War— in various ways, damaging the country' s international reputation. During the start of the Cold War, Franco lifted Spain out of its mid-20th century economic depression through technocratic and economically liberal policies, presiding over a period of rampant growth known as the" Spanish miracle". At the same time, his regime transitioned from being totalitarian to authoritarian with limited pluralism. The party became a leader in the anti- Communist movement, garnering support from the West, particularly the United States. The dictatorship softened and Luis Carrero Blanco became Franco' s" éminence grise". Carrero Blanco' s role expanded after Franco started struggling with Parkinson'sdiseaseinthe1960s. In 1973, Franco resigned as prime minister— separated from the head of state office since 1967— due to advanced age and illness. Nevertheless, he remained in power as the latter and as commander- in- chief. Franco died in 1975, aged 82 and was entombed in the Valle de los Caídos. He restored the monarchy in his final years, being succeeded by Juan Carlos as King of Spain, who led the Spanish transition to democracy. The legacy of Franco
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in Spanish history remains controversial,
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as the nature of his dictatorship changed over time. His reign was marked by both brutal repression, with tens of thousands killed, and economic prosperity, which greatly improved the quality of life in Spain. His dictatorial style proved highly adaptable, which enabled wide- sweeping social and economic reform, while consistent pursuits during his reign centered on highly centralised government, authoritarianism, nationalism, national Catholicism, anti- freemasonry and anti- Communism. Early life. Francisco Franco Bahamonde was born on 4 December 1892 in the Calle Frutos Saavedra in El Ferrol, Galicia. He was baptised thirteen days later at the military church of San Francisco, with the baptismal name Francisco Paulino Hermenegildo Teódulo; Francisco for his paternal grandfather, Paulino for his godfather, Hermenegildo for his maternal grandmother and godmother, and Teódulo for the saint day of his birth. Franco was born into a seafaring family of Andalusian ancestry. After relocating to Galicia, the family was involved in the Spanish Navy, and over the span of two centuries produced naval officers for six uninterrupted generations( including several admirals), down to Franco' s father( 22 November 1855– 22 February 1942). His mother, María del Pilar Bahamonde y Pardo de Andrade( 15 October 1865– 28 February 1934), was from an upper- middle- class Roman Catholic family. Her father, Ladislao Bahamonde Ortega, was the commissar of naval equipment at the Port of El Ferrol. Franco' s parents married in 1890 in the Church of San Francisco in El Ferrol. The young Franco spent much of his childhood with his two brothers, Nicolás and Ramón, and his two sisters, María del Pilar and María de la Paz. His brother Nicolás was naval officer and diplomat who married María Isabel Pascual del Pobil y Ravello. Ramón was an internationally known aviator, a Freemason originally with leftist political leanings. He was also the second sibling to die, killed in an air accident on a military mission in 1938. Franco' s father was a naval officer who reached the rank of vice admiral(" intendente general"). When Franco was fourteen, his father moved away to Madrid following a reassignment and ultimately abandoned his family, marrying another woman. While Franco did not suffer any great abuse at his father' s hand, he would never overcome his antipathy for his father and largely ignored him for the rest of his life; years after becoming dictator, Franco wrote a brief novel" Raza" under the pseudonym Jaime de Andrade, whose protagonist is believed by Stanley Payne to represent the idealised man Franco wished his father had been. Conversely, Franco strongly identified with his mother( who always wore widow' s black once she realised her husband had abandoned her) and learned from her moderation, austerity, self- control, family solidarity and respect for Catholicism, though he would also inherit his father' s harshness, coldness and implacability. Military career. Rif War and advancement through the ranks. Francisco was to follow his father into the Navy, but as a result of the Spanish– American War the country lost much of its navy as well as most of its colonies. Not needing any more
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officers, the Naval Academy admitted
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no new entrants from 1906 to 1913. To his father' s chagrin, Francisco decided to try the Spanish Army. In 1907, he entered the Infantry Academy in Toledo. At the age of fourteen, Franco was one of the youngest members of his class, with most boys being between sixteen and eighteen. He was short and was bullied for his small size. His grades were average; though his good memory meant he seldom struggled in mental tests, his small stature was a hindrance in physical tests. He would graduate in July 1910 as second lieutenant, coming in at position 251 out of 312, though this may have been less to do with his grades than his small size, young age and reduced physical presence; Stanley Payne observes that by the time Civil War began, Franco had already become a major general and would soon be a generalissimo, while none of his higher- ranking fellow cadets had managed to get beyond the rank of lieutenant- colonel. At 19, Franco was promoted to the rank of first lieutenant in June 1912. Two years later, he obtained a commission to Morocco. Spanish efforts to occupy their new African protectorate provoked the Second Melillan campaign in 1909 with native Moroccans, the first of a period of Riffian rebellions. Their tactics resulted in heavy losses among Spanish military officers, and also provided an opportunity to earn promotion through merit. It was said that officers would receive either" la caja o la faja"( a coffin or a general' s sash). Franco quickly gained a reputation as a good officer. In 1913, Franco transferred into the newly formed regulares: Moroccan colonial troops with Spanish officers, who acted as shock troops. This transfer into a perilous role may have been decided because Franco failed to win the hand of his first love, Sofía Subirán. The letters between the two were found and she was questioned by journalists. In 1916, aged 23 as a captain, he was shot by enemy machine gun fire. He was badly wounded in the abdomen, specifically the liver, in a skirmish at" El Biutz". The physicians of the battle later concluded that his intestines were spared because he inhaled the moment he was shot. In 2008, it was alleged by historian José María Zavala that this injury had left Franco with only one testicle. Zavala cites Ana Puigvert, whose father Antonio Puigvert, was Franco' s physician. His recovery was seen by native troops in Africa as a spiritual event– they believed Franco to be blessed with" baraka," or protected by God. He was recommended for promotion to major and to receive Spain' s highest honour for gallantry, the coveted" Cruz Laureada de San Fernando". Both proposals were denied citing the 23- year- old Franco' s young age as the reason for denial. Instead Franco received the" Cross of Maria Cristina, First Class". With that he was promoted to major at the end of February 1917 at age 24. This made him the youngest major in the Spanish army. From 1917 to 1920, he served in Spain. In
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1920, Lieutenant Colonel José Millán
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Astray, a histrionic but charismatic officer, founded the Spanish Foreign Legion, on similar lines as the French Foreign Legion. Franco became the Legion' s second- in- command and returned to Africa. In the Rif War, on 24 July 1921, the poorly commanded and overextended Spanish Army suffered a crushing defeat at Annual from the Republic of the Rif led by the Abd el- Krim brothers. The Legion and supporting units relieved the Spanish city of Melilla after a three- day forced march led by Franco. In 1923, by now a lieutenant colonel, he was made commander of the Legion. On 22 October 1923, Franco married María del Carmen Polo y Martínez- Valdès( 11 June 1900– 6 February 1988). Following his honeymoon Franco was summoned to Madrid to be presented to King Alfonso XIII. This and other occasions of royal attention would mark him during the Republic as a monarchical officer. Disappointed with the plans for a strategic retreat from the interior to the African coastline by Primo de Rivera, Franco wrote in April 1924 for" Revista de Tropas Coloniales" that he would disobey orders of retreat from a superior. He also held a tense meeting with Primo de Rivera in July 1924. According to fellow" africanista", Gonzalo Queipo de Llano, Franco visited him on 21 September 1924 to propose him to lead a coup d' état against Primo. Yet, at the end, Franco orderly complied, taking part in the in late 1924, and thus he earned a promotion to Colonel. Franco led the first wave of troops ashore at Al Hoceima( Spanish:" Alhucemas") in 1925. This landing in the heartland of Abd el- Krim' s tribe, combined with the French invasion from the south, spelled the beginning of the end for the short- lived Republic of the Rif. Franco' s recognition eventually caught up with him, and he was promoted to brigadier general on 3 February 1926. This made him the youngest general in Spain, and perhaps, along with Joe Sweeney and Michał Karaszewicz- Tokarzewski, one of the youngest generals in Europe. On 14 September 1926, Franco and Polo had a daughter, María del Carmen. Franco would have a close relationship with his daughter and was a proud parent, though his traditionalist attitudes and increasing responsibilities meant he left much of the child- rearing to his wife. In 1928 Franco was appointed director of the newly created General Military Academy of Zaragoza, a new college for all army cadets, replacing the former separate institutions for young men seeking to become officers in infantry, cavalry, artillery, and other branches of the army. Franco was removed as Director of the Zaragoza Military Academy in 1931; about 95% of his former Zaragoza cadets later came to side with him in the Civil War. During the Second Spanish Republic. The municipal elections of 12 April 1931 were largely seen as plebiscite on the monarchy. The Republican- Socialist alliance failed to win the majority of the municipality cities in Spain, but had a landslide victory in all large cities and in almost all provincial capitals. The monarchists
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and the army deserted Alfonso
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XIII and the King decided to leave the country into exile, giving way to the Second Spanish Republic. Although Franco believed that the majority of the Spanish people still supported the crown, and although he regretted the end of the monarchy, he did not object, nor did he challenge the legitimacy of the republic. But the closing of the Academy in June by the provisional War Minister Manuel Azaña was a major setback for Franco and provoked his first clash with the Spanish Republic. Azaña found Franco' s farewell speech to the cadets insulting. In his speech Franco stressed the Republic' s need for discipline and respect. Azaña entered an official reprimand into Franco' s personnel file and for six months Franco was without a post and under surveillance. In December 1931, a new reformist, liberal, and democratic constitution was declared. It included strong provisions enforcing a broad secularisation of the Catholic country, which included the abolishing of Catholic schools and charities, which many moderate committed Catholics opposed. At this point once the constituent assembly had fulfilled its mandate of approving a new constitution, it should have arranged for regular parliamentary elections and adjourned. Fearing the increasing popular opposition, the Radical and Socialist majority postponed the regular elections, therefore prolonging their way in power for two more years. This way the republican government of Manuel Azaña initiated numerous reforms to what in their view would" modernize" the country. Franco was a subscriber to the journal of Acción Española, a monarchist organisation, and a firm believer in a supposed Jewish- Masonic- Bolshevik conspiracy, or" contubernio"( filthy cohabitation). The conspiracy suggested that Jews, Freemasons, Communists, and other leftists alike sought the destruction of Christian Europe, with Spain the principal target. On 5 February 1932, Franco was given a command in A Coruña. Franco avoided involvement in José Sanjurjo' s attempted coup that year, and even wrote a hostile letter to Sanjurjo expressing his anger over the attempt. As a result of Azaña' s military reform,inJanuary1933Francowasrelegatedfromfirstto24th in the list of brigadiers. The same year, on 17 February he was given the military command of the Balearic Islands. The post was above his rank, but Franco was still angered that he was purposely stuck in positions he disliked. It was quite common for conservative officers to be moved or demoted. In 1932 the Jesuits, who were in charge of many schools throughout the country, were banned and had all their property confiscated. The army was further reduced and landowners were expropriated. Home rule was granted to Catalonia, with a local parliament and a president of its own. In June 1933 Pope Pius XI issued the encyclical Dilectissima Nobis," On Oppression of the Church of Spain", in which he criticized the anti- clericalism of the Republican government. The elections held in October 1933 resulted in a centre- right majority. The political party with the most votes was the Confederación Español de Derechas Autónomas(" CEDA"), but president Alcalá- Zamora declined to invite the leader of the CEDA, Gil Robles, to form a government. Instead he invited the Radical
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Republican Party' s Alejandro Lerroux
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to do so. Despite receiving the most votes, CEDA was denied cabinet positions for nearly a year. After a year of intense pressure, CEDA, the largest party in the congress, was finally successful in forcing the acceptance of three ministries. The entrance of CEDA in the government, despite being normal in a parliamentary democracy, was not well accepted by the left. The Socialists triggered an insurrection that they had been preparing for nine months. A general strike was called by the UGT and the PSOE in the name of the" Alianza Obrera". The issue was that the Left Republicans identified the Republic not with democracy or constitutional law but a specific set of left- wing policies and politicians. Any deviation, even if democratic, was seen as treasonous. A Catalan state was proclaimed by Catalan nationalist leader Lluis Companys, but it lasted just ten hours. Despite an attempt at a general stoppage in Madrid, other strikes did not endure. This left Asturian strikers to fight alone. In several mining towns in Asturias, local unions gathered small arms and were determined to see the strike through. It began on the evening of 4 October, with the miners occupying several towns, attacking and seizing local Civil and Assault Guard barracks. Thirty four priests, six young seminarists with ages between 18 and 21, and several businessmen and civil guards were summarily executed by the revolutionaries in Mieres and Sama, 58 religious buildings including churches, convents and part of the university at Oviedo were burned and destroyed. Franco, already General of Division and aide to the war minister, Diego Hidalgo, was put in command of the operations directed to suppress the violent insurgency. Troops of the Spanish Army of Africa carried this out, with General Eduardo López Ochoa as commander in the field. After two weeks of heavy fighting( and a death toll estimated between 1, 200 and 2, 000), the rebellion was suppressed. The insurgency in Asturias sparked a new era of violent anti- Christian persecutions, initiated the practice of atrocities against the clergy, and sharpened the antagonism between Left and Right. Franco and López Ochoa( who, prior to the campaign in Asturias, had been seen as a left- leaning officer) emerged as officers prepared to use" troops against Spanish civilians as if they were a foreign enemy". Franco described the rebellion to a journalist in Oviedo as," a frontier war and its fronts are socialism, communism and whatever attacks civilisation to replace it with barbarism." Though the colonial units sent to the north by the government at Franco' s recommendation consisted of the Spanish Foreign Legion and the Moroccan Regulares Indigenas, the right- wing press portrayed the Asturian rebels as lackeys of a foreign Jewish- Bolshevik conspiracy. With this rebellion against established political legitimate authority, the Socialists showed identical repudiation of representative institutional system that anarchists had practiced. The Spanish historian Salvador de Madariaga, an Azaña supporter, and an exiled vocal opponent of Francisco Franco is the author of a sharp critical reflection against the participation of the left in the revolt:“ The uprising of
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1934 is unforgivable. The argument
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that Mr Gil Robles tried to destroy the Constitution to establish fascism was, at once, hypocritical and false. With the rebellion of 1934, the Spanish left lost even the shadow of moral authority to condemn the rebellion of 1936.” At the start of the Civil War, López Ochoa was assassinated. Some time after these events, Franco was briefly commander- in- chief of the Army of Africa( from 15 February onwards), and from 19 May 1935, on, Chief of the General Staff. 1936 general election. In the end of 1935 President Alcalá- Zamora manipulated a petty- corruption issue into a major scandal in parliament, and eliminated Alejandro Lerroux, the head of the Radical Republican Party, from premiership. Subsequently, Alcalá- Zamora vetoed the logical replacement, a majority center- right coalition, led by the CEDA, which would reflect the composition of the parliament. He then arbitrarily appointed an interim prime minister and after a short period announced the dissolution of parliament and new elections. Two wide coalitions formed: the Popular Front on the left, ranging from Republican Union to Communists, and the Frente Nacional on the right, ranging from the centre radicals to the conservative Carlists. On 16 February 1936 the elections ended in a virtual draw, but in the evening leftist mobs started to interfere in the balloting and in the registration of votes distorting the results. Stanley G. Payne claims that the process was a major electoral fraud, with widespread violation of the laws and the constitution. In line with Payne' s point of view, in 2017 two Spanish scholars, Manuel Álvarez Tardío and Roberto Villa García published the result of a major research work where they concluded that the 1936 elections were rigged. On 19 February the cabinet presided by Portela Valladares resigned, with a new cabinet being quickly set up, composed chiefly of members of the Republican Left and the Republican Union and presided by Manuel Azaña. José Calvo Sotelo, who acquired anti- communism as the axis of his parliamentary speeches, became the speaker of violent propaganda— advocating for a military coup d' état; formulating a catastrophist discourse of a dichotomous choice between" communism" or a markedly totalitarian" National" State, setting the mood of the masses for a military rebellion. The diffusion of the myth about an alleged Communist coup d' état as well a pretended state of" social chaos" became pretexts for a coup. Franco himself along with General Emilio Mola had stirred an anti- Communist campaign in Morocco. At the same time PSOE' s left- wing socialists became more radical. Julio Álvarez del Vayo talked about" Spain' s being converted into a socialist Republic in association with the Soviet Union". Francisco Largo Caballero declared that" the organized proletariat will carry everything before it and destroy everything until we reach our goal". The country rapidly descended into anarchy. Even the staunch socialist Indalecio Prieto, at a party rally in Cuenca in May 1936, complained:" we have never seen so tragic a panorama or so great a collapse as in Spain at this moment. Abroad Spain is classified as insolvent. This
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is not the road to
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socialism or communism but to desperate anarchism without even the advantage of liberty". On 23 February Franco was sent to the Canary Islands to serve as the islands' military commander, an appointment perceived by him as a" destierro"( banishment). Meanwhile, a conspiracy led by General Mola was taking shape. Interested in the parliamentary immunity granted by a seat at the Cortes, Franco intended to stand as candidate of the Right Bloc alongside José Antonio Primo de Rivera for the by- election in the province of Cuenca programmed for 3 May 1936, after the results of the February 1936 election were annulled in the constituency. But Primo de Rivera refused to run alongside a military officer( and Franco in particular) and Franco himself ultimately desisted on 26 April, one day before the decision of the election authority. By that time, PSOE politician Indalecio Prieto already deemed Franco as" possible caudillo for a military uprising". The disenchantment with Azaña' s ruling continued to grow and was dramatically voiced by Miguel de Unamuno, a republican and one of Spain' s most respected intellectuals, who in June 1936 told a reporter who published his statement in El Adelanto that President Manuel Azaña should" commit suicide as a patriotic act". In June 1936, Franco was contacted and a secret meeting was held within La Esperanza forest on Tenerife to discuss starting a military coup. An obelisk commemorating this historic meeting was erected at the site in a clearing at Las Raíces in Tenerife( which has subsequently been removed). Outwardly, Franco maintained an ambiguous attitude until nearly July. On 23 June 1936, he wrote to the head of the government, Casares Quiroga, offering to quell the discontent in the Spanish Republican Army, but received no reply. The other rebels were determined to go ahead" con Paquito o sin Paquito"( with" Paquito" or without" Paquito";" Paquito" being a diminutive of" Paco", which in turn is short for" Francisco"), as it was put by José Sanjurjo, the honorary leader of the military uprising. After various postponements, 18 July was fixed as the date of the uprising. The situation reached a point of no return and, as presented to Franco by Mola, the coup was unavoidable and he had to choose a side. He decided to join the rebels and was given the task of commanding the Army of Africa. A privately owned DH 89 De Havilland Dragon Rapide, flown by two British pilots, Cecil Bebb and Hugh Pollard, was chartered in England on 11 July to take Franco to Africa. The coup underway was precipitated by the assassination of the right- wing opposition leader Calvo Sotelo in retaliation for the murder of assault guard José Castillo, which had been committed by a group headed by a civil guard and composed of assault guards and members of the socialist militias. On 17 July, one day earlier than planned, the Army of Africa rebelled, detaining their commanders. On 18 July, Franco published a manifesto and left for Africa, where he arrived the next day to take command. A week later the rebels,
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who soon called themselves the"
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Nationalists", controlled a third of Spain; most naval units remained under control of the Republican loyalist forces, which left Franco isolated. The coup had failed in the attempt to bring a swift victory, but the Spanish Civil War had begun. The revolt was remarkably devoid of any particular ideology. The major goal was to put an end to anarchical disorder. Franco himself certainly detested communism, but had no commitment to any ideology: his stand was motivated not by foreign fascism but by Spanish tradition and patriotism. From the Spanish Civil War to World War II. The Spanish Civil War began in July 1936 and officially ended with Franco' s victory in April 1939, leaving 190, 000 to 500, 000 dead. Despite the Non- Intervention Agreement of August 1936, the war was marked by foreign intervention on behalf of both sides, leading to international repercussions. The nationalist side was supported by Fascist Italy, which sent the" Corpo Truppe Volontarie", and later by Nazi Germany, which assisted with the Condor Legion. They were opposed by the Soviet Union and communists, socialists, and anarchists within Spain. The United Kingdom and France strictly adhered to the arms embargo, provoking dissensions within the French Popular Front coalition, which was led by Léon Blum, but the Republican side was nonetheless supported by the Soviet Union and volunteers who fought in the International Brigades( see for example Ken Loach' s" Land and Freedom"). Some historians, such as Ernst Nolte, have considered that Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin used the Spanish Civil war as a testing ground for modern warfare, being quickly set up and that the Spanish Civil War, along with World War II, to be part of a European Civil War which lasted from 1936 to 1945 and was mainly characterised as a left/ right ideological conflict. This interpretation has not been accepted by most historians. A. J. P. Taylor calculated that the Spanish conflict had no" significant effect" on the great powers. P. M. H. Bell the author of The Origins of the Second World War in Europe concluded that the Spanish civil war was simply" much ado about nothing" as far as broader events were concerned. Stanley Payne thinks that the Spanish Civil war had more characteristics of a post– World War I revolutionary crisis than of a domestic crisis of the era of World War II. The first months. Following 18 July 1936" pronunciamiento", Franco assumed the leadership of the 30, 000 soldiers of the Spanish Army of Africa. The first days of the insurgency were marked by a serious need to secure control over the Spanish Moroccan Protectorate. On one side, Franco had to win the support of the natives and their( nominal) authorities, and, on the other, had to ensure his control over the army. His method was the summary execution of some 200 senior officers loyal to the Republic( one of them his own cousin). His loyal bodyguard was shot by Manuel Blanco. Franco' s first problem was how to move his troops to the Iberian Peninsula, since most units of the
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Navy had remained in control
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of the Republic and were blocking the Strait of Gibraltar. He requested help from Benito Mussolini, who responded with an unconditional offer of arms and planes; in Germany Wilhelm Canaris, the head of the" Abwehr" military intelligence, persuaded Hitler to support the Nationalists. From 20 July onward Franco was able, with a small group of 22 mainly German Junkers Ju 52 aircraft, to initiate an air bridge to Seville, where his troops helped to ensure the rebel control of the city. Through representatives, he started to negotiate with the United Kingdom, Germany, and Italy for more military support, and above all for more aircraft. Negotiations were successful with the last two on 25 July and aircraft began to arrive in Tetouan on 2 August. On 5 August Franco was able to break the blockade with the newly arrived air support, successfully deploying a ship convoy with some 2, 000 soldiers. On the Republican side, in 26 July, just eight days after the revolt had started, an international communist conference was held at Prague to arrange plans to help the Republican Government. It decide to raise an international brigade of 5, 000 men and a fund of 1 billion francs to be administered by a commission where Largo Caballero and Dolores Ibárruri had prominent roles. At the same time communist parties throughout the world quickly launched a full scale propaganda campaign in support of the Popular Front. The Communist International immediately reinforced its activity, sending to Spain its leader Georgi Dimitrov, and Palmiro Togliatti the chief of the Communist Party of Italy. From August onward, aid from the Soviet Union began; over one ship per day arrived at Spain' s Mediterranean ports carrying munitions, rifles, machine guns, hand grenades, artillery, trucks. With the cargo came Soviet agents, technicians, instructors and propagandists. The Communist International immediately started to organize the International Brigades with great care to conceal or minimize the communist character of the enterprise and to make it appear as a campaign on behalf of progressive democracy. Attractive misleading names were deliberately chosen, such as" Garibaldi" in Italy or" Abraham Lincoln" in the United States. In early August, the situation in western Andalusia was stable enough to allow Franco to organise a column( some 15, 000 men at its height), under the command of then Lieutenant- Colonel Juan Yagüe, which would march through Extremadura towards Madrid. On 11 August Mérida was taken, and on 15 August Badajoz, thus joining both nationalist- controlled areas. Additionally, Mussolini ordered a voluntary army, the" Corpo Truppe Volontarie"( CTV) of fully motorised units( some 12, 000 Italians), to Seville, and Hitler added to them a professional squadron from the Luftwaffe(2JG/ 88) with about 24 planes. All these planes had the Nationalist Spanish insignia painted on them, but were flown by Italian and German nationals. The backbone of Franco' s aviation in those days was the Italian SM. 79 and SM. 81 bombers, the biplane Fiat CR. 32 fighter and the German Junkers Ju 52 cargo- bomber and the Heinkel He 51 biplane fighter. On 21 September, with the
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head of the column at
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the town of Maqueda( some 80 km away from Madrid), Franco ordered a detour to free the besieged garrison at the Alcázar of Toledo, which was achieved on 27 September. This controversial decision gave the Popular Front time to strengthen its defenses in Madrid and hold the city that year, but with Soviet support. Kennan alleges that, once Stalin had decided to assist the Spanish Republicans, the operation was put in place with remarkable speed and energy. The first load of arms and tanks arrived as early as 26 September and was secretly unloaded at night. Advisers accompanied the armaments. Soviet officers were in effective charge of military operations on the Madrid front. Kennan believes that this operation was originally conducted in good faith with no other purpose than saving the Republic. Effort was made to encourage the Spanish Communist Party to seize power, but the holding of Alcázar was an important morale and propaganda success for the Nationalists, because it is clear that Hitler' s primary aim was not a Franco victory but to prolong the war by the active intervention of the Soviet Government as well as that of Italy, Britain, and France in the Civil War. Hitler' s policy for Spain was shrewd and pragmatic. His instructions were clear:" A hundred per cent Franco' s victory was not desirable from a German Point of view; rather were we interested in a continuance of the war and in the keeping up of the tension in the Mediterranean." Hitler wanted to help Franco just enough to gain his gratitude and to prevent the side supported by the Soviet Union from winning, but not large enough to give the Caudillo a quick victory. By February 1937 the Soviet Union' s military help started to taper off, to be replaced by limited economic aid. A more likely motive was Stalin' s instinct for self- preservation; the Spanish Civil War had aroused a spirit of heroism in support of freedom more in line with Trotskyism, and such ideas might be exported to the Soviet Union. Further proof of this is that Modin stated that Stalin decided to attack the extreme Left, particularly Trotskyites and militants of the POUM before liquidating Franco. Those who had served in Spain were tainted in Stalin' s view and were singled out for harshness in the purges and were virtually all eliminated. The defector Orlov, who worked for the NKVD in Spain, confirms that he was told by a Soviet general, whom Orlov did not want to name, that when the general returned to Moscow to seek further instructions, he was told that the Politburo had adopted a new line towards Spain. Until then, the policy of the Politburo was to assist Republican Spain by supplying armaments, Soviet pilots, and tanks to bring about a speedy victory over Franco, but now the Politburo had revised its strategy. Stalin had come to the conclusion that" it would be more advantageous to the Soviet Union if neither of the warring camps gained proponderant strength, and if the war in Spain dragged
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on as long as possible
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and thus tied up Hitler for a long time." The general who informed Orlov of this was shocked by the Machiavellian calculation of the Politburo which, in its desire to obtain time, wanted the Spanish people to bleed as long as possible. Rise to power. The designated leader of the uprising, General José Sanjurjo, died on 20 July 1936, in a plane crash. In the nationalist zone," political life ceased." Initially, only military command mattered: this was divided into regional commands( Emilio Mola in the North, Gonzalo Queipo de Llano in Seville commanding Andalusia, Franco with an independent command, and Miguel Cabanellas in Zaragoza commanding Aragon). The Spanish Army of Morocco was itself split into two columns, one commanded by General Juan Yagüe and the other commanded by Colonel José Varela. From 24 July a coordinating" junta" was established, based at Burgos. Nominally led by Cabanellas, as the most senior general, it initially included Mola, three other generals, and two colonels; Franco was later added in early August. On 21 September it was decided that Franco was to be commander- in- chief( this unified command was opposed only by Cabanellas), and, after some discussion, with no more than a lukewarm agreement from Queipo de Llano and from Mola, also head of government. He was, doubtlessly, helped to this primacy by the fact that, in late July, Hitler had decided that all of Germany' s aid to the nationalists would go to Franco. Mola had been somewhat discredited as the main planner of the attempted coup that had now degenerated into a civil war, and was strongly identified with the Carlist monarchists and not at all with the Falange, a party with Fascist leanings and connections(" phalanx", a far- right Spanish political party founded by José Antonio Primo de Rivera), nor did he have good relations with Germany. Queipo de Llano and Cabanellas had both previously rebelled against the dictatorship of General Miguel Primo de Rivera and were therefore discredited in some nationalist circles, and Falangist leader José Antonio Primo de Rivera was in prison in Alicante( he would be executed a few months later). The desire to keep a place open for him prevented any other Falangist leader from emerging as a possible head of state. Franco' s previous aloofness from politics meant that he had few active enemies in any of the factions that needed to be placated, and he had also cooperated in recent months with both Germany and Italy. On 1 October 1936, in Burgos, Franco was publicly proclaimed as" Generalísimo" of the National army and" Jefe del Estado"( Head of State). When Mola was killed in another air accident a year later on 2 June 1937( which some believe was an assassination), no military leader was left from those who organized the conspiracy against the Republic between 1933 and 1935. Military command. Franco personally guided military operations from this time until the end of the war. Franco himself was not a strategic genius, but he was very effective at organisation, administration, logistics and diplomacy. After the failed assault
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on Madrid in November 1936,
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Franco settled on a piecemeal approach to winning the war, rather than bold maneuvering. As with his decision to relieve the garrison at Toledo, this approach has been subject of some debate: some of his decisions, such as in June 1938 when he preferred to head for Valencia instead of Catalonia, remain particularly controversial from a military viewpoint. Valencia, Castellon and Alicante saw the last Republican troops defeated by Franco. Although both Germany and Italy provided military support to Franco, the degree of influence of both powers on his direction of the war seems to have been very limited. Nevertheless, the Italian troops, despite not always being effective, were present in most of the large operations in large numbers, while the German aircraft helped the Nationalist air force dominate the skies for most of the war. Franco' s direction of the German and Italian forces was limited, particularly in the direction of the Condor Legion, but he was by default their supreme commander, and they rarely made decisions on their own. For reasons of prestige it was decided to continue assisting Franco until the end of the war, and Italian and German troops paraded on the day of the final victory in Madrid. The Nationalist victory could be accounted for by various factors: Political command. The Nazis were disappointed with Franco' s resistance to installing fascism. Historian James S. Corum states: Robert H. Whealey provides more detail: From 1937 to 1948 the Franco regime was a hybrid as Franco fused the ideologically incompatible national- syndicalist Falange(" Phalanx", a fascist Spanish political party founded by José Antonio Primo de Rivera) and the Carlist monarchist parties into one party under his rule, dubbed" Falange Española Tradicionalista y de las Juntas de Ofensiva Nacional- Sindicalista"( FET y de las JONS), which became the only legal party in 1939. Unlike some other fascist movements, the Falangists had developed an official program in 1934, the" Twenty- Seven Points". In 1937, Franco assumed as the tentative doctrine of his regime 26 out of the original 27 points. Franco made himself" jefe nacional"( National Chief) of the new FET(" Falange Española Tradicionalista"; Traditionalist Spanish Phalanx) with a secretary, Political Junta and National Council to be named subsequently by himself. Five days later( 24 April) the raised- arm salute of the Falange was made the official salute of the Nationalist regime. In 1939 the personalist style heavily predominated, with ritualistic invocations of" Franco, Franco, Franco." The Falangists' hymn," Cara al Sol", became the semi- national anthem of Franco' s not- yet- established regime. This new political formation appeased the pro- German Falangists while tempering them with the anti- German Carlists. Franco' s brother- in- law Ramón Serrano Súñer, who was his main political advisor, was able to turn the various parties under Franco against each other to absorb a series of political confrontations against Franco himself. Franco expelled the original leading members of both the Carlists( Manuel Fal Condé) and the Falangists( Manuel Hedilla) to secure his political future. Franco also appeased the Carlists by exploiting the Republicans' anti- clericalism
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in his propaganda, in particular
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concerning the" Martyrs of the war". While the Republican forces presented the war as a struggle to defend the Republic against fascism, Franco depicted himself as the defender of" Catholic Spain" against" atheist communism". The end of the Civil War. By early 1939 only Madrid( see History of Madrid) and a few other areas remained under control of the government forces. On 27 February Chamberlain' s Britain and Daladier' s France officially recognised the Franco regime. On 28 March 1939, with the help of pro- Franco forces inside the city( the" fifth column" General Mola had mentioned in propaganda broadcasts in 1936), Madrid fell to the Nationalists. The next day, Valencia, which had held out under the guns of the Nationalists for close to two years, also surrendered. Victory was proclaimed on 1 April 1939, when the last of the Republican forces surrendered. On the same day, Franco placed his sword upon the altar of a church and vowed to never take it up again unless Spain itself was threatened with invasion. Although Germany had recognised the Franco Government, Franco' s policy towards Germany was extremely cautious until spectacular German victories at the beginning of the Second World War. An early indication that Franco was going to keep his distance from Germany soon proved true. A rumoured state visit by Franco to Germany did not take place and a further rumour of a visit by Goering to Spain, after he had enjoyed a cruise in the Western Mediterranean, again did not materialise. Instead Goering had to return to Berlin. This proved how right Eden was when he said" Whatever the final outcome of the strife... the Spanish people will continue to display that proud independence, that arrogant individualism which is a characteristic of the race. There are twenty- four million reasons why Spain will never for long be dominated by the forces or controlled by the advice of any foreign power." During the Civil War and in the aftermath, a period known as the White Terror took place. This saw mass executions of Republican and other Nationalist enemies, standing in contrast to the war- time Red Terror. Historical analysis and investigations estimate the number of executions by the Franco regime during this time to be between 100, 000 and 200, 000 dead. Stanley G. Payne approximates 50, 000 executions by the Republicans and at least 70, 000 executions by the Nationalists during the civil war, with the victory being followed by a further 30, 000 executions by the Nationalists. Recent searches conducted with parallel excavations of mass graves in Spain( in particular by the Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory, ARMH) estimate the total of people executed after the civil war between 15, 000 and 35, 000. Julián Casanova Ruiz, nominated in 2008 among the experts in the first judicial investigation( conducted by judge Baltasar Garzón) against the Francoist crimes, as well as historians Josep Fontana and Hugh Thomas, estimate the deaths in the White Terror to be around 150, 000 in total. According to Paul Preston, 150, 000 wartime civilian
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executions took place in the
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Francoist area, as well as 50, 000 in the Republican area, in addition to 20, 000 civilians executed by the Franco regime after the end of the war. According to Helen Graham, the Spanish working classes became to the Francoist project what the Jews were to the German Volksgemeinschaft. According to Gabriel Jackson and Antony Beevor, the number of victims of the" White Terror"( executions and hunger or illness in prisons) only between 1939 and 1943 was 200, 000. Beevor" reckons Franco' s ensuing' white terror' claimed 200, 000 lives. The' red terror' had already killed 38, 000." Julius Ruiz concludes that" although the figures remain disputed, a minimum of 37, 843 executions were carried out in the Republican zone with a maximum of 150, 000 executions( including 50, 000 after the war) in Nationalist Spain." Despite the end of the war, guerrilla resistance to Franco, known as" the" Maquis"", occurred in the Pyrenees, carrying out sabotage and robberies against the Francoist regime. Several exiled Republicans also fought in the French resistance against the German occupation in Vichy France during World War II. In 1944, a group of republican veterans from the French resistance invaded the Val d' Aran in northwest Catalonia, but were quickly defeated.TheactivitiesoftheMaquiscontinuedwellintothe1950s. The end of the war led to hundreds of thousands of exiles, mostly to France, but also to Mexico, Chile, Cuba, and the United States. On the other side of the Pyrenees, refugees were confined in internment camps in France, such as Camp Gurs or Camp Vernet, where 12, 000 Republicans were housed in squalid conditions( mostly soldiers from the Durruti Division). The 17, 000 refugees housed in Gurs were divided into four categories: Brigadists, pilots," Gudaris" and ordinary" Spaniards". The" Gudaris"( Basques) and the pilots easily found local backers and jobs, and were allowed to quit the camp, but the farmers and ordinary people, who could not find relations in France, were encouraged by the French government, in agreement with the Francoist government, to return to Spain. The great majority did so and were turned over to the Francoist authorities in Irún. From there they were transferred to the Miranda de Ebro camp for" purification" according to the Law of Political Responsibilities. After the proclamation by Marshal Philippe Pétain of the Vichy France regime, the refugees became political prisoners, and the French police attempted to round up those who had been liberated from the camp. Along with other" undesirables", they were sent to the Drancy internment camp before being deported to Nazi Germany. 5, 000 Spaniards thus died in Mauthausen concentration camp. The Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, who had been named by the Chilean President Pedro Aguirre Cerda special consul for immigration in Paris, was given responsibility for what he called" the noblest mission I have ever undertaken": shipping more than 2, 000 Spanish refugees, who had been housed by the French in squalid camps, to Chile on an old cargo ship, the" Winnipeg". World War II. In September 1939 World War II began. On 23 October 1940, Hitler and Franco met in Hendaye in
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France to discuss the possibility
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of Spain' s entry on the side of the Axis. Franco' s demands, including supplies of food and fuel, as well as Spanish control of Gibraltar and French North Africa, proved too much for Hitler. At the time Hitler did not want to risk damaging his relations with the new Vichy French government.( An oft- cited remark attributed to Hitler is that the German leader said that he would rather have some of his own teeth extracted than to have to personally deal further with Franco.) Franco had received important support from Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini during the Spanish Civil War, and he had signed the Anti- Comintern Pact. He described Spain as part of the Axis in official documents, while offering various kinds of support to Italy and Germany. He allowed Spanish soldiers to volunteer to fight in the German Army against the Soviet Union( the Blue Division), but forbade Spaniards to fight in the West against the democracies. Franco' s common ground with Hitler was particularly weakened by Hitler' s propagation of Nazi mysticism and his attempts to manipulate Christianity, which went against Franco' s fervent commitment to defending Catholicism. Contributing to the disagreement was an ongoing dispute over German mining rights in Spain. Some historians argue that Franco made demands he knew Hitler would not accede to, in order to stay out of the war. Other historians argue that Franco, as the leader of a destroyed and bankrupt country in chaos following a brutal three- year civil war, simply had little to offer the Axis and that the Spanish armed forces were not ready for a major war. It has also been suggested that Franco decided not to join the war after the resources he requested from Hitler in October 1940 were not forthcoming. According to some scholars, after the Fall of France in June 1940, Spain did adopt a pro- Axis stance( for example, German and Italian ships and U- boats were allowed to use Spanish naval facilities) before returning to a more neutral position in late 1943 when the tide of the war had turned decisively against the Axis Powers, and Italy had changed sides. Franco was initially keen to join the war before the UK could be defeated. In the winter of 1940– 41 Franco toyed with the idea of a" Latin Bloc" formed by Spain, Portugal, Vichy France, the Vatican and Italy, without much consequence. Franco had cautiously decided to enter the war on the Axis side in June 1940, and to prepare his people for war, an anti- British and anti- French campaign was launched in the Spanish media that demanded French Morocco, Cameroon and Gibraltar. On 19 June 1940, Franco pressed along a message to Hitler saying he wanted to enter the war, but Hitler was annoyed at Franco' s demand for the French colony of Cameroon, which had been German before World War I, and which Hitler was planning on taking back for Plan Z. Franco seriously considered blocking allied access to the Mediterranean Sea by invading British- held Gibraltar, but
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he abandoned the idea after
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learning that the plan would have likely failed due to Gibraltar being too heavily defended. In addition, declaring war on the UK and its allies would no doubt give them an opportunity to capture both the Canary Islands and Spanish Morocco, as well as possibly launch an invasion of mainland Spain itself. Franco was aware that his air force would be defeated if going into action against the Royal Air Force, and the Royal Navy would be able to blockade Spain to prevent imports of crucial materials such as oil. Spain depended on oil imports from the United States, which were almost certain to be cut off if Spain formally joined the Axis. Franco and Serrano Suñer held a meeting with Mussolini and Ciano in Bordighera, Italy on 12 February 1941. Mussolini affected not to be interested in Franco' s help due to the defeats his forces had suffered in North Africa and the Balkans, and he even told Franco that he wished he could find any way to leave the war. When the invasion of the Soviet Union began on 22 June 1941, Franco' s foreign minister Ramón Serrano Suñer immediately suggested the formation of a unit of military volunteers to join the invasion. Volunteer Spanish troops( the" División Azul", or" Blue Division") fought on the Eastern Front under German command from 1941 to 1944. Some historians have argued that not all of the Blue Division were true volunteers and that Franco expended relatively small but significant resources to aid the Axis powers' battle against the Soviet Union. Franco was initially disliked by Cuban President Fulgencio Batista, who, during World War II, suggested a joint U. S.- Latin American declaration of war on Spain to overthrow Franco' s regime. Hitler may not have really wanted Spain to join the war, as he needed neutral harbors to import materials from countries in Latin America and elsewhere. In addition Hitler felt Spain would be a burden as it would be dependent on Germany for help. By 1941 Vichy French forces were proving their effectiveness in North Africa, reducing the need for Spanish help, and Hitler was wary about opening up a new front on the western coast of Europe as he struggled to reinforce the Italians in Greece and Yugoslavia. Franco signed a revised Anti- Comintern Pact on 25 November 1941. Spain continued to import war materials and trade wolfram with Germany until August 1944 when the Germans withdrew from the Spanish frontier. Spanish neutrality during World War II was appreciated and publicly acknowledged by leading Allied statesmen. In November 1942 President Roosevelt wrote to General Franco:"... your nation and mine are friends in the best sense of the word." In May 1944 Winston Churchill stated in the House of Commons:" in the dark days of the war the attitude of the Spanish Government in not giving our enemies passage through Spain was extremelly helpful to us... I must say that I shall always consider that a service was rendered... by Spain, not only to the United Kingdom and to the British Empire
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and Commonwealth, but to the
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cause of the United Nations." Similar gratitude was also expressed by the Provisional French Government. Franco interposed no obstacle to Britain' s construction of a big air base extending out of Gibraltar into Spanish territorial waters, and welcomed the Anglo- American landings in North Africa. Moreover, Spain did not intern any of the 1, 200 American airmen who were forced to land in the country, but gave them shelter and helped them to leave. After the war, the Spanish government tried to destroy all evidence of its cooperation with the Axis. In 2010 documents were discovered showing that on 13 May 1941, Franco ordered his provincial governors to compile a list of Jews while he negotiated an alliance with the Axis powers. Franco supplied Reichsführer- SS Heinrich Himmler, architect of the Nazis' Final Solution, with a list of 6, 000 Jews in Spain. On 14 June 1940, Spanish forces in Morocco occupied Tangier( a city under international control) and did not leave until the war' s end in 1945. After the war, Franco allowed many former Nazis, such as Otto Skorzeny and Léon Degrelle, and other former fascists, to flee to Spain. Treatment of Jews. Franco had a controversial association with Jews during the WWII period. He made anti- Semitic remarks in a speech in May 1939, and made similar remarks on at least six occasions during World War II. In 2010, documents were discovered showing that on 13 May 1941, Franco ordered his provincial governors to compile a list of Jews while he negotiated an alliance with the Axis powers. Franco supplied Reichsführer- SS Heinrich Himmler, architect of the Nazis' Final Solution, with a list of 6, 000 Jews in Spain. Contrarily, according to" Anti- Semitism: A Historical Encyclopedia of Prejudice and Persecution"( 2005): Spain provided visas for thousands of French Jews to transit Spain en route to Portugal to escape the Nazis. Spanish diplomats protected about 4, 000 Jews living in Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, and Austria. At least some 20, 000 to 30, 000 Jews were allowed to pass through Spain in the first half of the War. Jews who were not allowed to enter Spain, however, were sent to the Miranda de Ebro concentration camp or deported to France. In January 1943, after the German embassy in Spain told the Spanish government that it had two months to remove its Jewish citizens from Western Europe, Spain severely limited visas, and only 800 Jews were allowed to enter the country. After the war, Franco exaggerated his contribution to helping to save Jews to end Spain' s isolation, to improve Spain' s image in the world. After the war, Franco did not recognize Israeli statehood, maintained strong relations with the Arab world and Israel expressed disinterest in establishing relations, although there were some informal economic ties between the countries in the later years of Franco' s governance of Spain. In the aftermath of the Six Day War in 1967, Franco' s Spain were able to utilise their positive relationship with Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser and the Arab world( due
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to not having recognised the
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Israeli state) to allow 800 Egyptian Jews; many of Sephardic ancestry; safe passage out of Egypt on Spanish passports. This was undertaken through Francoist Spain' s Ambassador to Egypt, Angel Sagaz, on the understanding that they would not immediately emigrate to Israel and that the emigrant Jews would not publicly use the case as political propaganda against Nasser' s Egypt. On 16 December 1968, the Spanish government formally revoked the 1492 Edict of Expulsion against Spain' s Jewish population. Franco personally and many in the government openly stated that they believed there was an international conspiracy of Freemasons, and Communists against Spain, sometimes including Jews or" Judeo- Masonry" as part of this. While under the leadership of Francisco Franco, the Spanish government explicitly endorsed the Catholic Church as the religion of the nation state and did not endorse liberal ideas such as religious pluralism or separation of Church and State found in the Republican Constitution of 1931. Following the Second World War, the government enacted the" Spanish Bill of Rights"(" Fuero de los Españoles"), which extended the right to private worship of non- Catholic religions, including Judaism, though did not permit the erection of religious buildings for this practice and did not allow non- Catholic public ceremonies. With the pivot of Spain' s foreign policy towards the United States during the Cold War, the situation changed with the 1967 Law on Religious Freedom, which granted full public religious rights to non- Catholics. The overthrow of Catholicism as the explicit state religion of Spain and the establishment of state- sponsored religious pluralism would be completely established in Spain in 1978, with the new Constitution of Spain, three years after Franco' s death. Spain under Franco. Franco was recognized as the Spanish head of state by the United Kingdom, France and Argentina in February 1939. Already proclaimed" Generalísimo" of the Nationalists and" Jefe del Estado"( Head of State) in October 1936, he thereafter assumed the official title of" Su Excelencia el Jefe de Estado"(" His Excellency the Head of State"). He was also referred to in state and official documents as" Caudillo de España"(" the Leader of Spain"), and sometimes called" el Caudillo de la Última Cruzada y de la Hispanidad"(" the Leader of the Last Crusade and of the Hispanic heritage") and" el Caudillo de la Guerra de Liberación contra el Comunismo y sus Cómplices"(" the Leader of the War of Liberation Against Communism and Its Accomplices"). On paper, Franco had more power than any Spanish leader before or since. For the first four years after taking Madrid, he ruled almost exclusively by decree. The" Law of the Head of State," passed in August 1939," permanently confided" all governing power to Franco; he was not required to even consult the cabinet for most legislation or decrees. According to Payne, Franco possessed far more day- to- day power than Hitler or Stalin possessed at the respective heights of their power. He noted that while Hitler and Stalin maintained rubber- stamp parliaments, this was not the case in Spain in the early years after the
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war– a situation that nominally
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made Franco' s regime" the most purely arbitrary in the world". This changed in 1942, when Franco convened a parliament known as the Cortes Españolas. It was elected in accordance with corporatist principles, and had little real power. Notably, it had no control over government spending, and the government was not responsible to it; ministers were appointed and dismissed by Franco alone. On 26 July 1947 Franco proclaimed Spain a monarchy, but did not designate a monarch. This gesture was largely done to appease the monarchists in the" Movimiento Nacional"( Carlists and Alfonsists). Franco left the throne vacant, proclaiming himself as a" de facto" regent for life. At the same time, Franco appropriated many of the privileges of a king. He wore the uniform of a Captain General( a rank traditionally reserved for the King) and resided in El Pardo Palace. In addition he began walking under a canopy, and his portrait appeared on most Spanish coins and postage stamps. He also added" by the grace of God", a phrase usually part of the styles of monarchs, to his style. Franco initially sought support from various groups. His administration marginalised fascist ideologues in favor of technocrats, many of whom were linked with Opus Dei, who promoted economic modernisation. Franco adopted Fascist trappings, although Stanley Payne argued that very few scholars consider him to be a" core fascist". Regarding the regime, the" Oxford Living Dictionary" uses Franco' s regime as an example of fascism, and it has also been variously presented as a" fascistized dictatorship", or a" semi- fascist regime". Francisco Cobo Romero writes that, besides neutering left- wing advances by using an essentially antiliberal brand of ultranationalism," in its attempt to emulate Fascism, Francoism resorted to the sacralization and mystification of the motherland, raising it into an object of cult, and coating it with a liturgic divinization of its leader". All in all, some authors have pointed at a purported artificialness and failure of FET JONS in order to de- emphasize the Fascist weight within the regime whereas others have embedded those perceived features of" weak party" within the frame of a particular model of" Spanish Fascism". However, new research material has been argued to underpin the" Fascist subject", both on the basis of the existence of a pervasive and fully differentiated Fascist falangist political culture, and on the importance of the Civil War for falangism, which served as an area of experience, of violence, of memory, as well as for the generation of a culture of victory. Under the perspective of a comparative of European fascisms, Javier Rodrigo considers the Francoist regime to be paradigmatic for three reasons: for being the only authoritarian European regime with totalitarian aspirations, for being the regime that deployed the most political violence in times of rhetorical peace, and for being the regime deploying the most effective" memoricidal" apparatus. With the end of World War II, Spain suffered from the consequences of its isolation from the international economy. Spain was excluded from the Marshall Plan, unlike other neutral countries in Europe. This situation ended in part
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when, in the light of
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Cold War tensions and of Spain' s strategic location, the United States of America entered into a trade and military alliance with Franco. This historic alliance commenced with the visit of US President Dwight Eisenhower to Spain in 1953, which resulted in the Pact of Madrid. Spain was then admitted to the United Nations in 1955. American military facilities in Spain built since then include Naval Station Rota, Morón Air Base, and Torrejón Air Base. Political repression. The first decade of Franco' s rule following the end of the Civil War in 1939 saw continued repression and the killing of an undetermined number of political opponents. Estimation is difficult and controversial, but the total number of people who were killed during this period probably lies somewhere between 15, 000 and 50, 000.Bythestartofthe1950s Franco' s state had become less violent, but during his entire rule, non- government trade unions and all political opponents across the political spectrum, from communist and anarchist organisations to liberal democrats and Catalan or Basque separatists, were either suppressed or tightly controlled with all means, up to and including violent police repression. The" Confederación Nacional del Trabajo"( CNT) and the" Unión General de Trabajadores"( UGT) trade unions were outlawed, and replaced in 1940 by the corporatist" Sindicato Vertical". The Spanish Socialist Workers' Party and the" Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya"( ERC) were banned in 1939, while the Communist Party of Spain( PCE) went underground. The Basque Nationalist Party( PNV) went into exile, and in 1959 the ETA armed group was created to wage a low- intensity war against Franco. Franco' s Spanish nationalism promoted a unitary national identity by repressing Spain' s cultural diversity. Bullfighting and flamenco were promoted as national traditions while those traditions not considered" Spanish" were suppressed. Franco' s view of Spanish tradition was somewhat artificial and arbitrary: while some regional traditions were suppressed, flamenco, an Andalusian tradition, was considered part of a larger, national identity. All cultural activities were subject to censorship, and many, such as the Sardana, the national dance of Catalonia, were plainly forbidden( often in an erratic manner). This cultural policy was relaxed over time,mostnotablyduringthelate1960sandearly1970s. Franco also used language politics in an attempt to establish national homogeneity. He promoted the use of Castilian Spanish and suppressed other languages such as Catalan, Galician, and Basque. The legal usage of languages other than Castilian was forbidden. All government, notarial, legal and commercial documents were to be drawn up exclusively in Castilian and any documents written in other languages were deemed null and void. The usage of any other language was forbidden in schools, in advertising, and on road and shop signs. For unofficial use, citizens continued to speak these languages. This was the situationthroughoutthe1940s and to a lesser extentduringthe1950s, but after 1960 the non- Castilian Spanish languages were freely spoken and written, and they reached bookshops and stages, although they never received official status. The Catholic Church was upheld as the established church of the Spanish State, and it regained many of the traditional privileges which it had lost under the Republic. Civil servants had
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to be Catholic, and some
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official jobs even required a" good behavior" statement by a priest. Civil marriages which had taken place in Republican Spain were declared null and void unless they had been confirmed by the Catholic Church. Divorce was forbidden, along with contraceptives, and abortion. Most country towns and rural areas were patrolled by pairs of" Guardia Civil", a military police force for civilians, which functioned as Franco' s chief means of social control. Larger cities and capitals were mostly under the jurisdiction of the Policia Armada, or the" grises"(" greys", due to the colour of their uniforms) as they were called.Studentrevoltsatuniversitiesinthelate1960sandearly1970s were violently repressed by the heavily armed" Policía Armada"( Armed Police). Plain- clothed secret police worked inside Spanish universities. The enforcement by public authorities of traditional Catholic values was a stated intent of the regime, mainly by using a law( the" Ley de Vagos y Maleantes", Vagrancy Act) enacted by Azaña. The remaining nomads of Spain( Gitanos and Mercheros like El Lute) were especially affected. Through this law, homosexuality and prostitution were made criminal offenses in 1954. Women in Francoist Spain. Francoism professed a devotion to the traditional role of a woman in society; that is, being a loving daughter and sister to her parents and brothers, being a faithful wife to her husband, and residing with her family. Official propaganda confined the role of women to family care and motherhood. Immediately after the civil war most progressive laws passed by the Republic aimed at equality between the sexes were nullified. Women could not become judges or testify in a trial. They could not become university professors. Their affairs and economic lives had to be managed by their fathers and husbands.Untilthe1970s, women could not open a bank account without having it co- signed by her father or husband.Inthe1960sand1970s these restrictions were somewhat relaxed. The Spanish colonies and decolonisation. Spain attempted to retain control of its colonies throughout Franco' s rule. During the Algerian War( 1954– 62), Madrid became the base of the" Organisation armée secrète"( OAS), a right- wing French Army group which sought to preserve French Algeria. Despite this, Franco was forced to make some concessions. When French Morocco became independent in 1956, he surrendered Spanish Morocco to Morocco, retaining only a few cities( the" Plazas de soberanía"). The year after, Mohammed V invaded Spanish Sahara during the Ifni War( known as the" Forgotten War" in Spain). Only in 1975, with the Green March, did Morocco take control of all of the former Spanish territories in the Sahara. In 1968, under pressure from the United Nations, Spain granted Equatorial Guinea its independence, and the following year it ceded Ifni to Morocco. Under Franco, Spain also pursued a campaign to force a negotiation on the British overseas territory of Gibraltar, and closed its border with that territory in 1969. The border would not be fully reopened until 1985. Economic policy. The Civil War ravaged the Spanish economy. Infrastructure had been damaged, workers killed, and daily business severely hampered. For more than a decade after Franco' s victory, the devastated economy recovered very slowly.
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Franco initially pursued a policy
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of autarky, cutting off almost all international trade. The policy had devastating effects, and the economy stagnated. Only black marketeers could enjoy an evident affluence. On the brink of bankruptcy, a combination of pressure from the United States and the IMF managed to convince the regime to adopt a free market economy. Many of the old guard in charge of the economy were replaced by" technocrata", despite some initial opposition from Franco. From the mid-1950s there was modest acceleration in economic activity after some minor reforms and a relaxation of controls. But the growth proved too much for the economy,withshortagesandinflationbreakingouttowardstheendofthe1950s. When Franco replaced his ideological ministers with the apolitical technocrats, the regime implemented several development policies that included deep economic reforms. After a recession, growth took off from 1959, creating an economic boom that lasted until 1974, and became known as the" Spanish miracle". Concurrent with the absence of social reforms, and the economic power shift, a tide of mass emigration commenced to other European countries, and to a lesser extent, to South America. Emigration helped the regime in two ways. The country got rid of populations it would not have been able to keep in employment, and the emigrants supplied the country with much needed monetary remittances.Duringthe1960s, the wealthy classes of Francoist Spain experienced further increases in wealth, particularly those who remained politically faithful, while a burgeoning middle class became visible as the" economic miracle" progressed. International firms established factories in Spain where salaries were low, company taxes very low, strikes forbidden and workers' health or state protections almost unheard of. State- owned firms like the car manufacturer SEAT, truck builder Pegaso, and oil refiner INH, massively expanded production. Furthermore, Spain was virtually a new mass market. Spain became the second- fastest growing economy in the world between 1959 and 1973, just behind Japan. By the time of Franco' s death in 1975, Spain still lagged behind most of Western Europe but the gap between its per capita GDP and that of the leading Western European countries had narrowed greatly, and the country had developed a large industrialised economy. Succession. Franco decided to name a monarch to succeed his regency, but the simmering tensions between the Carlists and the Alfonsoists continued. In 1969 Franco nominated as his heir- apparent Prince Juan Carlos de Borbón, who had been educated by him in Spain, with the new title of Prince of Spain. This designation came as a surprise to the Carlist pretender to the throne, as well as to Juan Carlos' s father, Don Juan, the Count of Barcelona, who had a superior claim to the throne, but whom Franco feared to be too liberal. However, when Juan Carlos asked Franco if he could sit in on cabinet meetings, Franco would not permit him saying that" you would do things differently." Due to the spread of democracy, excluding the Eastern Bloc, in Europe since World War II, Juan Carlos could or would not have been a dictator in the way Franco had been. By 1973 Franco had surrendered the function of prime minister("
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Presidente del Gobierno"), remaining only
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as head of state and commander in chief of the military. As his final years progressed, tensions within the various factions of the" Movimiento" would consume Spanish political life, as varying groups jockeyed for position in an effort to win control of the country' s future. The assassination of prime minister Luis Carrero Blanco in the 20 December 1973 bombing by ETA eventually gave an edge to the liberalizing faction. Death and funeral. On 19 July 1974, the aged Franco fell ill from various health problems, and Juan Carlos took over as acting head of state. Franco recovered and on 2 September he resumed his duties as head of state. A year later he fell ill again, afflicted with further health problems, including a long battle with Parkinson' s disease. Franco' s last public appearance was on 1 October 1975 when, despite his gaunt and frail appearance, he gave a speech to crowds from the balcony at the Royal Palace of El Pardo in Madrid. On 30 October 1975 he fell into a coma and was put on life support. Franco' s family agreed to disconnect the life- support machines. Officially, he died a few minutes after midnight on 20 November 1975 from heart failure, at the age of 82– on the same date as the death of José Antonio Primo de Rivera, the founder of the Falange, in 1936. Historian Ricardo de la Cierva claimed that he had been told around 6 pm on 19 November that Franco had already died. Juan Carlos was proclaimed King two days later. Franco' s body was interred at Valle de los Caídos, a colossal memorial built by the forced labour of political prisoners to honour the casualties of both sides of the Spanish Civil War. The site was designated by the interim government, assured by Prince Juan Carlos and Prime Minister Carlos Arias Navarro, as the burial place for Franco. According to his family, Franco did not want to be buried in the Valley, but in the Almudena Cathedral in Madrid. Nonetheless, the family agreed to the interim government' s request to bury him in the Valley, and has stood by the decision. This made Franco the only person interred in the Valley who did not die during the civil war. No Western European countries sent their leaders to attend Franco' s funeral due to his tenure as dictator. The following guests took part in his funeral: Both Pinochet and Banzer revered Franco and modelled their leadership style on the Spanish leader. Former US President Richard Nixon called Franco" a loyal friend and ally of the United States." Exhumation. On 11 May 2017, the Congress of Deputies approved, by 198– 1 with 140 abstentions, a motion driven by the Socialist Workers' Party ordering the Government to exhume Franco' s remains. On 24 August 2018, the Government of Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez approved legal amendments to the Historical Memory Law stating that only those who died during the Civil War would be buried at the Valle de los Caídos, resulting in plans to exhume Franco'
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s remains for reburial elsewhere.
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Deputy Prime Minister Carmen Calvo Poyato stated that having Franco buried at the monument" shows a lack of respect... for the victims buried there". The government gave Franco' s family a 15- day deadline to decide Franco' s final resting place, or else a" dignified place" would be chosen by the government. On 13 September 2018, the Congress of Deputies voted 176– 2, with 165 abstentions, to approve the government' s plan to remove Franco' s body from the monument. Franco' s family opposed the exhumation, and attempted to prevent it by making appeals to the Ombudsman' s Office. The family expressed its wish that Franco' s remains be reinterred with full military honors at the Almudena Cathedral in the centre of Madrid, the burial place he had requested before his death. The demand was rejected by the Spanish Government, which issued another 15- day deadline to choose another site. Because the family refused to choose another location, the Spanish Government ultimately chose to rebury Franco at the Mingorrubio Cemetery in El Pardo, where his wife Carmen Polo and a number of Francoist officials, most notably prime ministers Luis Carrero Blanco and Carlos Arias Navarro, are buried. His body was to be exhumed from the Valle de los Caídos on 10 June 2019, but the Supreme Court of Spain ruled that the exhumation would be delayed until the family had exhausted all possible appeals. On 24 September 2019, the Supreme Court ruled that the exhumation could proceed, and the Sánchez government announced that it would move Franco' s remains to the Mingorrubio cemetery as soon as possible. On 24 October 2019 his remains were moved to his wife' s mausoleum which is located in the Mingorrubio Cemetery, and buried in a private ceremony. Though barred by the Spanish government from being draped in the Spanish flag, Francisco Franco' s grandson, also named Francisco Franco, draped his coffin in the nationalist flag. According to a poll by the Spanish newspaper," El Mundo", 43% of Spanish people approved of the exhumation while 32. 5% opposed it. The exhumation also seems to have been an opinion divided by party line with the Socialist party strongly in favor of its removal as well as the removal of his statue there. There seems to be no consensus on whether the statue should simply be moved or completely destroyed. Legacy. In Spain and abroad, the legacy of Franco remains controversial. The longevity of Franco' s rule, his suppression of opposition, and the effective propaganda sustained through the years have made a detached evaluation difficult. For almost 40 years, Spaniards, and particularly children at school, were told that Divine Providence had sent Franco to save Spain from chaos, atheism, and poverty. Historian Stanley Payne described Franco as being the most significant figure to dominate Spain since Philip II, while Michael Seidman argued that Franco was the most successful counterrevolutionaryleaderofthe20th century. A highly controversial figure within Spain, Franco is seen as a divisive leader. Supporters credit him for keeping Spain neutral and uninvaded in World War II. They emphasize his
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strong anti- communist and nationalist
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views, economic policies, and opposition to socialism as major factors in Spain' s post- war economic success and later international integration. Abroad he had support from Winston Churchill, Charles De Gaulle, Konrad Adenauer and many American Catholics, but was strongly opposed by the Roosevelt and Truman administrations. Conversely, critics on the left have denounced him as a tyrant responsible for thousands of deaths in years- long political repression, and have called him complicit in atrocities committed by Axis forces during World War II due to his support of Axis governments. When he died in 1975, the major parties of the left and the right agreed to follow the Pact of Forgetting. To secure the transition to democracy, they agreed not to have investigations or prosecutions dealing with the civil war or Franco. The agreement effectively lapsed after 2000, the year the Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory was founded and the public debate started. In 2006, a poll indicated that almost two- thirds of Spaniards favored a" fresh investigation into the war". Franco served as a role model for several anti- communist dictators in South America. Augusto Pinochet is known to have admired Franco. Similarly, as recently as 2006, Franco supporters in Spain have honored Pinochet. In 2006, the BBC reported that Maciej Giertych, an MEP of the clerical- nationalist League of Polish Families, had expressed admiration for Franco, stating that the Spanish leader" guaranteed the maintenance of traditional values in Europe". Spaniards who suffered under Franco' s rule have sought to remove memorials of his regime. Most government buildings and streets that were named after Franco during his rule have been reverted to their original names. Owing to Franco' s human- rights record, the Spanish government in 2007 banned all official public references to the Franco regime and began the removal of all statues, street names and memorials associated with the regime, with the last statue reportedly being removed in 2008 in the city of Santander. Churches that retain plaques commemorating Franco and the victims of his Republican opponents may lose state aid. Since 1978, the national anthem of Spain, the" Marcha Real", does not include lyrics introduced by Franco. Attempts to give the national anthem new lyrics have failed due to lack of consensus. In March 2006, the Permanent Commission of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe unanimously adopted a resolution" firmly" condemning the" multiple and serious violations" of human rights committed in Spain under the Francoist regime from 1939 to 1975. The resolution was at the initiative of Leo Brincat and of the historian Luis María de Puig, and was the first international official condemnation of the repression enacted by Franco' s regime. The resolution also urged that historians( professional and amateur) be given access to the various archives of the Francoist regime, including those of the private Francisco Franco National Foundation( FNFF) which, along with other Francoist archives, remain inaccessible to the public as of 2006. The FNFF received various archives from the El Pardo Palace, and is alleged to have sold some of them
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to private individuals. Furthermore, the
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resolution urged the Spanish authorities to set up an underground exhibit in the Valle de los Caidos monument to explain the" terrible" conditions in which it was built. Finally, it proposed the construction of monuments to commemorate Franco' s victims in Madrid and other important cities. In Spain, a commission to" repair the dignity" and" restore the memory" of the" victims of Francoism"(" Comisión para reparar la dignidad y restituir la memoria de las víctimas del franquismo") was approved in 2004, and is directed by the social- democratic deputy Prime Minister María Teresa Fernández de la Vega. Recently the Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory( ARHM) initiated a systematic search for mass graves of people executed during Franco' s regime, which has been supported since the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party' s( PSOE) victory during the 2004 elections by José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero' s government. A" Ley de la memoria histórica de España"( Law on the Historical Memory of Spain) was approved on 28 July 2006, by the Council of Ministers, but it took until 31 October 2007, for the Congress of Deputies to approve an amended version as" The Bill to recognise and extend rights and to establish measures in favour of those who suffered persecution or violence during the Civil War and the Dictatorship"( in common parlance still known as Law of Historical Memory). The Senate approved the bill on 10 December 2007. Official endeavors to preserve the historical memory of the Franco regime include exhibitions like the one the Museu d' Història de Catalunya( Museum of Catalan History) organised around the prison experience. The accumulated wealth of Franco' s family( including much real estate inherited from Franco, such as the" Pazo de Meirás", the" Canto del Pico" in Torrelodones and the"" in A Coruña), and its provenance, have also become matters of public discussion. Estimates of the family' s wealth have ranged from 350 million to 600 million euros. While Franco was dying, the Francoist Cortes voted a large public pension for his wife Carmen Polo, which the later democratic governments kept paying. At the time of her death in 1988, Carmen Polo was receiving as a pension more than 12. 5 million pesetas( four million more than the salary of Felipe González, then head of the government)." Flash Crowd" is a 1973 English- language novella by science fiction author Larry Niven, one of a series about the social consequence of inventing an instant, practically free displacement booth. One consequence not foreseen by the builders of the system was that with the almost immediate reporting of newsworthy events, tens of thousands of people worldwide— along with criminals— would teleport to the scene of anything interesting, thus creating disorder and confusion. The plot centers around a television journalist who, after being fired for his inadvertent role in inciting a post- robbery riot in Los Angeles, seeks to independently investigate the teleportation system for the flaws in its design allowing for such spontaneous riots to occur. His investigation takes him to destinations and people around the world within the matter of
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less than 12 hours before
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he gets his chance to plead his case on television, and he encounters the wide- ranging effects of displacements upon aspects of human behavior such as settlement, crime, natural resources, agriculture, waste management and tourism. Use in other works. In various other books, for example" Ringworld", Niven suggests that easy transportation might be disruptive to traditional behavior and open the way for new forms of parties, spontaneous congregations, or shopping trips around the world. The central character in" Ringworld", celebrating his birthday, teleports across time- zones to" lengthen" his birthday multiple times( particularly notable since the first edition had the error of the character heading the wrong direction, increasing that edition' s value). Niven' s essay" Exercise in Speculation: The Theory and Practice of Teleportation" was published in the collection" All the Myriad Ways" In it he discusses the ideas that underlie his teleportation stories. Similar references. On the World Wide Web, a similar phenomenon can occur, when a web site catches the attention of a large number of people, and gets an unexpected and overloading surge of traffic. This usage was first coined by John Pettitt of Beyond. com in 1996. Multiple other terms for the phenomenon exist, often coming from the name of a particular prominent, high- traffic site whose normal base of viewers can constitute a flash crowd when directed to a less famous website. Notorious examples include the" Slashdot effect", the" Instalanche"( when a smaller site gets links by the popular blog Instapundit), or a website being" Farked" or Drudged( where the target site is crashed due to the large number of hits in a short time). Friedrich August Kekulé, later Friedrich August Kekule von Stradonitz(,; 7 September 1829– 13 July 1896), was a German organic chemist.Fromthe1850s until his death, Kekulé was one of the most prominent chemists in Europe, especially in theoretical chemistry. He was the principal founder of the theory of chemical structure and in particular the Kekulé structure of benzene. Name. Kekulé never used his first given name; he was known throughout his life as August Kekulé. After he was ennobled by the Kaiser in 1895, he adopted the name August Kekule von Stradonitz, without the French acute accent over the second" e". The French accent had apparently been added to the name by Kekulé' s father during the Napoleonic occupation of Hesse by France, to ensure that French- speaking people pronounced the third syllable. Early years. The son of a civil servant, Kekulé was born in Darmstadt, the capital of the Grand Duchy of Hesse. After graduating from secondary school( the Grand Ducal Gymnasium in Darmstadt), in the fall of 1847 he entered the University of Giessen, with the intention of studying architecture. After hearing the lectures of Justus von Liebig in his first semester, he decided to study chemistry. Following four years of study in Giessen and a brief compulsory military service, he took temporary assistantships in Paris( 1851– 52), in Chur, Switzerland( 1852– 53), and in London( 1853– 55), where he was decisively influenced by Alexander Williamson. His Giessen doctoral degree was
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awarded in the summer of
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1852. Theory of chemical structure. In 1856, Kekulé became Privatdozent at the University of Heidelberg. In 1858, he was hired as full professor at the University of Ghent, then in 1867 he was called to Bonn, where he remained for the rest of his career. Basing his ideas on those of predecessors such as Williamson, Charles Gerhardt, Edward Frankland, William Odling, Auguste Laurent, Charles- Adolphe Wurtz and others, Kekulé was the principal formulator of the theory of chemical structure( 1857– 58). This theory proceeds from the idea of atomic valence, especially the tetravalence of carbon( which Kekulé announced late in 1857) and the ability of carbon atoms to link to each other( announced in a paper published in May 1858), to the determination of the bonding order of all of the atoms in a molecule. Archibald Scott Couper independently arrived at the idea of self- linking of carbon atoms( his paper appeared in June 1858), and provided the first molecular formulas where lines symbolize bonds connecting the atoms. For organic chemists, the theory of structure provided dramatic new clarity of understanding, and a reliable guide to both analytic and especially synthetic work. As a consequence, the field of organic chemistry developed explosively from this point. Among those who were most active in pursuing early structural investigations were, in addition to Kekulé and Couper, Frankland, Wurtz, Alexander Crum Brown, Emil Erlenmeyer, and Alexander Butlerov. Kekulé' s idea of assigning certain atoms to certain positions within the molecule, and schematically connecting them using what he called their" Verwandtschaftseinheiten"(" affinity units", now called" valences" or" bonds"), was based largely on evidence from chemical reactions, rather than on instrumental methods that could peer directly into the molecule, such as X- ray crystallography. Such physical methods of structural determination had not yet been developed, so chemists of Kekulé' s day had to rely almost entirely on so- called" wet" chemistry. Some chemists, notably Hermann Kolbe, heavily criticized the use of structural formulas that were offered, as he thought, without proof. However, most chemists followed Kekulé' s lead in pursuing and developing what some have called" classical" structure theory, which was modified after the discovery of electrons( 1897) and the development of quantum mechanics(inthe1920s). The idea that the number of valences of a given element was invariant was a key component of Kekulé' s version of structural chemistry. This generalization suffered from many exceptions, and was subsequently replaced by the suggestion that valences were fixed at certain oxidation states. For example, periodic acid according to Kekuléan structure theory could be represented by the chain structure I- O- O- O- O- H. By contrast, the modern structure of( meta) periodic acid has all four oxygen atoms surrounding the iodine in a tetrahedral geometry. Benzene. Kekulé' s most famous work was on the structure of benzene. In 1865 Kekulé published a paper in French( for he was then still in Belgium) suggesting that the structure contained a six- membered ring of carbon atoms with alternating single and double bonds. The following year he published a much longer paper in German
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on the same subject. The
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empirical formula for benzene had been long known, but its highly unsaturated structure was a challenge to determine. Archibald Scott Couper in 1858 and Joseph Loschmidt in 1861 suggested possible structures that contained multiple double bonds or multiple rings, but the study of aromatic compounds was in its earliest years, and too little evidence was then available to help chemists decide on any particular structure. More evidence was available by 1865, especially regarding the relationships of aromatic isomers. Kekulé argued for his proposed structure by considering the number of isomers observed for derivatives of benzene. For every monoderivative of benzene(C6H5X, where X= Cl, OH,CH3,NH2, etc.) only one isomer was ever found, implying that all six carbons are equivalent, so that substitution on any carbon gives only a single possible product. For diderivatives such as the toluidines,C6H4(NH2)(CH3), three isomers were observed, for which Kekulé proposed structures with the two substituted carbon atoms separated by one, two and three carbon- carbon bonds, later named ortho, meta, and para isomers respectively. The counting of possible isomers for diderivatives was, however, criticized by Albert Ladenburg, a former student of Kekulé, who argued that Kekulé' s 1865 structure implied two distinct" ortho" structures, depending on whether the substituted carbons are separated by a single or a double bond. Since ortho derivatives of benzene were never actually found in more than one isomeric form, Kekulé modified his proposal in 1872 and suggested that the benzene molecule oscillates between two equivalent structures, in such a way that the single and double bonds continually interchange positions. This implies that all six carbon- carbon bonds are equivalent, as each is single half the time and double half the time. A firmer theoretical basis for a similar idea was later proposed in 1928 by Linus Pauling, who replaced Kekulé' s oscillation by the concept of resonance between quantum- mechanical structures. Kekulé' s dream. The new understanding of benzene, and hence of all aromatic compounds, proved to be so important for both pure and applied chemistry after 1865 that in 1890 the German Chemical Society organized an elaborate appreciation in Kekulé' s honor, celebrating the twenty- fifth anniversary of his first benzene paper. Here Kekulé spoke of the creation of the theory. He said that he had discovered the ring shape of the benzene molecule after having a reverie or day- dream of a snake seizing its own tail( this is an ancient symbol known as the ouroboros). This is likely an example of the exercise of a particular imaginative state, involving homospatial and janusian processes, followed by stepwise logical thinking. A similar humorous depiction of benzene had appeared in 1886 in the" Berichte der Durstigen Chemischen Gesellschaft"( Journal of the Thirsty Chemical Society), a parody of the" Berichte der Deutschen Chemischen Gesellschaft", only the parody had six monkeys seizing each other in a circle, rather than a single snake as in Kekulé' s anecdote. Some historians have suggested that the parody was a lampoon of the snake anecdote, possibly already well- known through oral transmission even if it had not yet appeared
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in print. Others have speculated
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that Kekulé' s story in 1890 was a re- parody of the monkey spoof, and was a mere invention rather than a recollection of an event in his life. Kekulé' s 1890 speech, in which these anecdotes appeared, has been translated into English. If one takes the anecdote as reflecting an accurate memory of a real event, circumstances mentioned in the story suggest that it must have happened early in 1862. He told another autobiographical anecdote in the same 1890 speech, of an earlier vision of dancing atoms and molecules that led to his theory of structure, published in May 1858. This happened, he claimed, while he was riding on the upper deck of a horse- drawn omnibus in London. Once again, if one takes the anecdote as reflecting an accurate memory of a real event, circumstances related in the anecdote suggest that it must have occurred in the late summer of 1855. Honors. In 1895, Kekulé was ennobled by Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany, giving him the right to add" von Stradonitz" to his name, referring to a possession of his patrilineal ancestors in Stradonice, Bohemia. His name thus became Friedrich August Kekule von Stradonitz, without the French accent on the last" e" of his name, and this is the form of the name that some libraries use. This title was inherited by his son, genealogist Stephan Kekule von Stradonitz. Of the first five Nobel Prizes in Chemistry, Kekulé' s former students won three: van' t Hoff in 1901, Fischer in 1902 and Baeyer in 1905. A larger- than- life monument of Kekulé, unveiled in 1903, is situated in front of the former Chemical Institute( completed 1868) at the University of Bonn. His statue is often humorously decorated by students, e. g. for Valentine' s Day or Halloween. Frederick III( 21 September 1415– 19 August 1493) was Holy Roman emperor from 1452 until his death. He was the fourth king and first emperor of the House of Habsburg. He was the penultimate emperor to be crowned by the pope, and the last to be crowned in Rome. Prior to his imperial coronation, he was duke of the Inner Austrian lands of Styria, Carinthia and Carniola from 1424, and also acted as regent over the Duchy of Austria from 1439. He was elected and crowned King of Germany in 1440. He was and is the longest- reigning Holy Roman Emperor and German monarch in history until when in 1493, after ruling his domains for more than 53 years, he was succeeded by his son Maximilian I. During his reign, Frederick concentrated on re- uniting the Habsburg" hereditary lands" of Austria and took a lesser interest in Imperial affairs. Nevertheless, by his dynastic entitlement to Hungary as well as by the Burgundian inheritance, he laid the foundations for the later Habsburg Empire. Mocked as" Arch- Sleepyhead of the Holy Roman Empire"() during his lifetime, he is today increasingly seen as an effective ruler. Historian Thomas A. Brady Jr. credited Frederick with leaving a credible claim on the imperial title and a secure grip
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on the Austrian lands, now
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organized as a single state, for his son. This imperial revival( as well as the rise of the territorial state) began under the reign of Frederick. Early life. Born at the Tyrolean residence of Innsbruck in 1415, Frederick was the eldest son of the Inner Austrian duke Ernest the Iron, a member of the Leopoldian line of the Habsburg dynasty, and his second wife Cymburgis of Masovia. According to the 1379 Treaty of Neuberg, the Leopoldinian branch ruled over the duchies of Styria, Carinthia and Carniola, or what was referred to as Inner Austria. Only three of Frederick' s eight siblings survived childhood: his younger brother Albert( later to be Albert VI, archduke of Austria), and his sisters Margaret( later the electress of Saxony) and Catherine. In 1424, nine- year- old Frederick' s father died, making Frederick the duke of Inner Austria, as Frederick V, with his uncle, Duke Frederick IV of Tyrol, acting as regent. From 1431, Frederick tried to obtain majority( to be declared" of age", and thus allowed to rule) but for several years was denied by his relatives. Finally, in 1435, Albert V, duke of Austria( later Albert II, the king of Germany), awarded him the rule over his Inner Austrian heritage. Almost from the beginning, Frederick' s younger brother Albert asserted his rights as a co- ruler, as the beginning of a long rivalry. Already in these years, Frederick had begun to use the symbolic A. E. I. O. U. signature as a kind of motto with various meanings. In 1436 he made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, accompanied by numerous nobles knighted by the Order of the Holy Sepulchre, which earned him great reputation. Upon the death of his uncle Duke Frederick IV in 1439, Frederick took over the regency of Tyrol and Further Austria for the duke' s heir Sigismund. Again he had to ward off the claims raised by his brother Albert VI; he prevailed by the support of the Tyrolean aristocracy. Likewise he acted as regent for his nephew Ladislaus the Posthumous, son of late King Albert II and his consort Elizabeth of Luxembourg, in the duchy of Austria( Further Austria).( Ladislaus would die before coming of age). Frederick was now the undisputed head of the Habsburg dynasty, though his regency in the lands of the Albertinian Line( Further Austria) was still viewed with suspicion. As a cousin of late King Albert II, Frederick became a candidate for the imperial election. On 2 February 1440, the prince- electors convened at Frankfurt and unanimously elected him King of the Romans as Frederick IV; his rule was still based on his hereditary lands of Styria, Carinthia and Carniola, or Inner Austria. In 1442, Frederick allied himself with Rudolf Stüssi, burgomaster of Zurich, against the Old Swiss Confederacy in the Old Zurich War( Alter Zürichkrieg) but lost. In 1448, he entered into the Concordat of Vienna with the Holy See, which remained in force until 1806 and regulated the relationship between the Habsburgs and the Holy See. In 1452, at the age of 37, Frederick
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III travelled to Italy to
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receive his bride and to be crowned Holy Roman Emperor. His fiancée, the 18- year- old" infanta" Eleanor, daughter of King Edward of Portugal, landed at Livorno( Leghorn) after a 104- day trip. Her dowry would help Frederick alleviate his debts and cement his power. The couple met at Siena on 24 February and proceeded together to Rome. As per tradition, they spent a night outside the walls of Rome before entering the city on 9 March, where Frederick and Pope Nicholas V exchanged friendly greetings. Because the emperor had been unable to retrieve the Iron Crown of Lombardy from the cathedral of Monza where it was kept, nor be crowned King of Italy by the archbishop of Milan( on account of Frederick' s dispute with Francesco Sforza, lord of Milan), he convinced the pope to crown him as such with the German crown, which had been brought for the purpose. This coronation took place on the morning of 16 March, in spite of the protests of the Milanese ambassadors, and in the afternoon Frederick and Eleanor were married by the pope. Finally, on 19 March, Frederick and Eleanor were anointed in St Peter' s Basilica by the Vice- Chancellor of the Holy Roman Church, Cardinal Francesco Condulmer, and Frederick was then crowned with the Imperial Crown by the pope. Frederick was the last Emperor to be crowned in Rome; his great- grandson Charles V was the last emperor to be crowned, but this was done in Bologna. Personality. Frederick' s style of rulership was marked by hesitation and a sluggish pace of decision making. The Italian humanist Enea Silvio Piccolomini, later Pope Pius II, who at one time worked at Frederick' s court, described the Emperor as a person who wanted to conquer the world while remaining seated. Although this was regarded as a character flaw in older academic research, his delaying tactics are now viewed as a means of coping with political challenges in far- flung territorial possessions. Frederick is credited with having the ability to sit out difficult political situations patiently. According to contemporary accounts, Frederick had difficulties developing emotional closeness to other persons, including his children and wife Eleanor. In general, Frederick kept himself away from women, the reasons for which are not known. As Frederick was rather distant to his family, Eleanor had a great influence on the raising and education of Frederick' s children, and she therefore played an important role in the House of Habsburg' s rise to prominence. Despite the fact that their marriage had been unhappy, when Eleanor died the Emperor was affected by her loss and remained widowed for the rest of his long life. Emperor. Frederick' s political initiatives were hardly bold, but they were still successful. Frederick III was crowned Holy Roman Emperor in 1452, following the death of his father. His ascension to the role of emperor came with the stipulation that should the previous queen give birth to a male heir, Frederick would become his guardian. When the queen gave birth to Ladislaus the Posthumous, as according to
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the stipulations, Frederick took on
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his guardianship. This led to conflicts between Frederick and other members of the royal family and nobility. His first major opponent was his brother Albert VI, who challenged his rule. He did not manage to win a single conflict on the battlefield against him, and thus resorted to more subtle means. He held his second cousin once removed Ladislaus the Posthumous, the ruler of the Archduchy of Austria, Hungary and Bohemia,( born in 1440) as a prisoner and attempted to extend his guardianship over him in perpetuity to maintain his control over Lower Austria. Ladislaus was freed in 1452 by the Lower Austrian estates. He acted similarly towards his first cousin Sigismund of the Tyrolian line of the Habsburg family. Ultimately, Frederick prevailed in all those conflicts by outliving his opponents and sometimes inheriting their lands, as was the case with Ladislaus, from whom he gained Lower Austria in 1457, and with his brother Albert VI, whom he succeeded in Upper Austria. In 1462, his brother Albert raised an insurrection against him in Vienna and the emperor was besieged in his residence by rebellious subjects. In this war between the brothers, Frederick received support from the King of Bohemia, George of Poděbrady. These conflicts forced him into an anachronistic itinerant existence, as he had to move his court between various places through the years, residing in Graz, Linz and. owes him its castle and the" New Monastery". In 1469 Friedrich founded the Order of St. George, which still exists today, whereby the first investiture in the Lateran Basilica in Rome was carried out by him and Pope Paul II. Mary soon made her choice among the many suitors for her hand by selecting Archduke Maximilian of Austria, the future Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I, who became her co- ruler. With the inheritance of Burgundy, the House of Habsburg began to rise to predominance in Europe. This gave rise to the saying" Let others wage wars, but you, happy Austria, shall marry", which became a motto of the dynasty. Frederick secured in 1486 the succession of the son in his own lifetime. On 16 February 1486 Maximilian was unanimously elected Roman- German king at the Frankfurt Reichstag by the six electors present. The Elector of Bohemia was not invited because the Bohemian spa law might have been claimed by the Hungarian King Corvinus. The choice of Maximilian violated the rules of the Golden Bull. Protests against the irregular election remained in the kingdom but out. Fearing that the Electors would take advantage of his son' s political inexperience, Friedrich Maximilian did not equip him with government powers. On the occasion of the election of Maximilian, a ten- year land peace was decided. In order to safeguard the peace of the land and against the expansive territorial policy of the Wittelsbachs, numerous affected empire- related states of Swabia joined in 1488 on Frederick' s initiative for the Swabian League. After the royal election Frederick accompanied his son to Aachen, where Maximilian was crowned on 9 April 1486. The marriage of his daughter Kunigunde to
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Albert IV, Duke of Bavaria,
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was another result of intrigues and deception, but must be counted as a defeat for Frederick. Albert illegally took control of some imperial fiefs and then asked to marry Kunigunde( who lived in Innsbruck, far from her father), offering to give her the fiefs as a dower. Frederick agreed at first, but after Albert took over yet another fief, Regensburg, Frederick withdrew his consent. On 2 January 1487, however, before Frederick' s change of heart could be communicated to his daughter, Kunigunde married Albert. A war was prevented only through the mediation of the Emperor' s son, Maximilian. In some smaller matters, Frederick was quite successful: in 1469 he managed to establish bishoprics in Vienna and, a step that no previous Duke of Austria had been able to achieve. Frederick failed to gain control over Hungary and Bohemia in the Bohemian– Hungarian War( 1468– 78). Frederick proclaimed himself King of Hungary on 27 February 1459, but this dis not intimidate Mathias Corvinus. Frederick decided to invade, but his army never got far, as he was no general. From Mantua, Pius II( who was also Frederick' s former secretary) urged the Emperor to leave Mathias alone. Hungary, he proclaimed," is the shield of all Christendom under cover of which we have hitherto been safe.[...] If the road is thus opened to the barbarians, destruction will break in over all and the consequences of such a disaster will be imputed by God to its authors." Frederick was even defeated in the Austrian– Hungarian War( 1477– 88) by Matthias Corvinus in 1485, who managed to maintain residence in Vienna until his death five years later in the Siege of Vienna. Emperor Frederick failed to procure help from the Prince- electors and the Imperial States. In 1483 he had to leave his Hofburg residence in Vienna and fled to Wiener Neustadt, where he also was besieged by Matthias' troops for 18 months until the fortress was captured in 1487. Humiliated, Frederick fled to Graz, and later to Linz in Upper Austria. Frederick' s personal motto was the mysterious string A. E. I. O. U., which he imprinted on all his belongings. He never explained its meaning, leading to many different interpretations being presented, although it has been claimed that shortly before his death he said it stands for' or'(" All the world is subject to Austria"). It may well symbolise his own understanding of the historical importance and meaning of his rule and of the early gaining of the Imperial title. Frederick had been very careful regarding the reform movement in the empire. For most of his reign, he considered reform as a threat to his imperial prerogatives. He avoided direct confontation, which might lead to humiliation if the princes refused to give way. After 1440, the reform of the Empire and Church was sustained and led by local and regional powers, particularly the territorial princes. In his last years, however, there was more on pressure on taking action from a higher level. Berthold von Henneberg, the Archbishop of Mainz, who spoke on behalf of reform-
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minded princes( who wanted to
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reform the Empire without strengthening the imperial hand), capitalized on Frederick' s desire to secure the imperial eletion for Maximilian. Thus in his last years, he presided over the initial phase of Imperial Reform, which would mainly unfold under his son Maximilian. Maximilian himself was more open to reform, although naturally he also wanted to preserve and enhance imperial prerogatives. After Frederick retired to Linz in 1488, as a compromise, Maximilian acted as mediator between the princes and his father. When he attained sole rule after Frederick' s death, he would continued this policy of brokerage, acting as the impartial judge between options suggested by the princes. Patronage of the arts. Frederick was an important and powerful patron of music, with a" preference for important for importing Western talent". This, combined with the efforts by non- coủtly institutions like the Cathedral at Trent, would contribute to the flourishing of music under Maximilian I. The 110 books he collected form the core collection of the later" Bibliotheca Regia", that was the predecessor of the later Imperial Librrary and the current Austrian National Library(" Österreichische Nationalbibliothek"). Marriage and children. Frederick had five children from his marriage with Eleanor of Portugal: For the last 10 years of Frederick' s life, he and Maximilian ruled jointly. Death. In his last years Friedrich remained in the region on the Danube, in Vienna and in Linz. In 1492 he was elected Knight of the Order of the Golden Fleece. Since February 1493, Frederick' s health deteriorated increasingly. In the Lent of 1493, Friedrich' s personal physicians diagnosed Kaiser in the left leg as a symptom, usually referred to as age- burning, in the research literature, which according to current medical terminology is considered to be the result of arteriosclerosis. On 8 June 1493 he was amputated under the direction of the surgeon Hans Seyff in the Linz castle of the affected area of the leg. This leg amputation is considered one of the most famous and best- documented surgical procedures of the entire Middle Ages. Although Frederick initially survived the procedure well, he died on 19 August 1493 in Linz at the age of 77. The contemporaries cited as the cause of death the consequences of leg amputation, senility or rapid diarrhea caused by melon consumption. His bowels were probably buried separately on 24 August 1493 in the Linz parish church. The arrival of Turks in Carinthia and the Krain delayed the arrival of Maximilian and with it the funeral service. On 6 and 7 December 1493, the funeral took place in St. Stephen' s Cathedral. His grave, built by Nikolaus Gerhaert von Leyden, in St. Stephen' s Cathedral, Vienna, is one of the most important works of sculptural art of the late Middle Ages.( His amputated leg was buried with him.) The heavily adorned tomb was not completed until 1513, two decades after Frederick' s death, and has survived in its original condition. Fuerteventura() is one of the Canary Islands, in the Atlantic Ocean, part of the North Africa region, and politically part of Spain. It is
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located 97 km from the
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