Now sadly I have come to the conclusion after reading this article below. Is that it is steel on target on.
Since it seems to me that if we had a Eisenhower, Patton, Smedley Butler or a Chesty Puller in charge of our troops over in the Sandbox.


Then we would have of had a Victory Parade down Pennsylvania Ave with the troops several years ago.


I just hope that a lot more high powered folks than I. Have read this article below.

THE U.S. ARMY only seems impressive. Yes, it’s got plenty of tactically competent and physically heroic enlisted soldiers and low-ranking officers. But its generals are, on the whole, crappy, according to a new book that’s sure to spark teeth-gnashing within the Army.

That book is The Generals, the third book about the post-9/11 military by Tom Ricks, a fellow at the Center for a New American Security and the *Washington Post’*s former chief military correspondent. Scheduled to be released on Tuesday, The Generals is a surprisingly scathing historical look into the unmaking of American generalship over six decades, culminating in what Ricks perceives as catastrophic failures in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The basic problem is that no one gets fired. Ricks points back to a system that the revered General George Marshall put into place during World War II: unsuccessful officers – defined very, very liberally – were rapidly sacked, especially on the front lines of Europe. Just as importantly, though, getting relieved of command didn’t end a general’s career. Brig. Gen. “Hanging Sam” Williams, was removed as the assistant commander of the 90th Infantry Division in western France in 1944 for lacking “optimism and a calming nature” in the view of his superior. Six years later, Williams commanded the 25th Infantry Division in Korea and retired as a three-star. Marshall’s approach simultaneously held generals accountable for battlefield failures while avoiding a zero-defect culture that stifled experimentation.

Over the course of six decades, Ricks demonstrates at length, the Army abandoned Marshall’s system. It led to a culture of generalship where generals protected the Army from humiliation – including, in an infamous case, Maj. Gen. Samuel Koster covering up the massacre of civilians at My Lai – more than they focused on winning wars. On the eve of Vietnam, “becoming a general was now akin to winning a tenured professorship,” Ricks writes, “liable to be removed not for professional failure but only for embarrassing one’s institution with moral lapses.”

It’s not an airtight case. Ricks is sometimes at pains to explain why good generals who probably should have been fired under Marshall weren’t (George Patton) or why adaptive generals later on weren’t driven out of the Army (David Petraeus). And it’s overstated to blame dumb wars on dumb generals. But the fact is, the Army almost never fires generals for cause, unlike the Navy, to the point where a lieutenant colonel famously wrote in frustration during the Iraq war that a private who loses a rifle is more likely to be disciplined than a general who loses a war.

Ricks explains how it got to be that way. And it’s something the Army has to reckon with as it deals with its future now that its decade of perpetual warfare is ending, and ending inconclusively. He spoke with Danger Room right before The Generals dropped its bomb on the Army.

Danger Room: So how poor are today’s Army generals? What percentage of them would you say need to be fired outright? Is the public wrong for seeing the Army as an uber-competent institution, a learning organization and a meritocracy?

Tom Ricks: The U.S. Army is a great institution – tactically. Our soldiers today are well-trained, well-motivated, cohesive, and fairly well equipped.

But training is for the known. For the unknown, education is required. You need to teach your senior leaders how to address problems full of uncertainty and ambiguity, and from them, fashion a strategy. And then be able to tell whether it is working, and to adjust if it isn’t.

Our generals today are not particularly well-educated in strategy. Exhibit A is Tommy Franks, who thought it was a good idea to push Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda from Afghanistan into Pakistan, a larger country that also possesses nuclear weapons. Franks also thought that he had won when he took the enemy’s capital in Afghanistan and Iraq — when in fact that is when the wars really began.

When generals don’t know what to do strategically, they tend to regress back down to what they know, which is tactical. That’s one reason why in Vietnam you saw colonels and generals hovering over company commanders giving orders. It is also why our generals were so slow to adapt in Iraq. By the time they became operationally effective, it was 2007, and we had been fighting in Iraq for nearly four years, longer than we had during all of World War II.

What percentage of them need to be fired? All those who fail. That is how George Marshall ran the Army during World War II. Failures were sacked, which is why no one knows nowadays who Lloyd Fredendall was. Successful generals were promoted – which is why why we know names of younger officers of the time such as Eisenhower, Ridgway and Gavin. This was a tough-minded, Darwinian system that reinforced success. Mediocre wasn’t enough back then. It is now, apparently. Back in World War II, a certain percentage of generals were expected to be fired. It was seen as a sign that the system was working as expected.

DR: How would George Marshall’s system of relieving failing generals and placing them in remedial positions work today? Wouldn’t a relief inevitably be seen as an irredeemable black mark?

>’All those who fail need to be fired.’

TR: Relief today is indeed a black mark. The system only works if relief is so frequent that it isn’t seen as a career-ender. Of the 155 men who commanded Army divisions in combat during World War II, 16 were fired. Of those, five were given other divisions to command in combat later in the war. Many others who were fired got good staff jobs, or trained divisions back home.

That said, Marshall was pretty hardnosed about this. He didn’t run the Army for the benefit of its officers. In a war for democracy, he wrote, the needs of the enlisted came first. He believed that the Army owed its soldiers competent leadership. That was not the case with the Army in Vietnam, where officers were rotated in quickly to get some time in combat command and then rotated out.

DR: Isn’t it too simplistic to blame bad generalship for lost wars and good generalship for successful ones? Tommy Franks may have been “dull and arrogant,” as you write, but he didn’t decide to invade Iraq; David Petraeus may have been his polar opposite, but Afghanistan is in shambles.

TR: Yes, it would be too simplistic. That’s why the major second theme of the book is the need for good discourse between our top generals and their civilian overseers.

By good discourse, I don’t mean everyone getting along. I mean dialogue that welcomes candor, honesty, and clarity, and is guided so it does two key things: explore assumptions and dig into differences. For example, the Vietnam War was guided on the assumption that the enemy had a breaking point and that it would come before ours. Turns out that was wrong. Likewise, the 1991 Gulf War was run on the assumption that giving Saddam Hussein a good thumping would remove him from power. Didn’t happen.

I came away from the book thinking that the quality of civil-military discourse is one of the few leading indicators you have of how well a war will go. George Marshall was not the natural choice for Army chief of staff (Hugh Drum probably was) but FDR picked him in part because Marshall twice had stood up to Roosevelt in the Oval Office, respectfully but forcefully dissenting on key military issues.

DR: Isn’t relieving generals when they’re generals too late? Why shouldn’t the relieves and reassignments you describe in the book come earlier in their tenures as officers? Or can you really teach a general new tricks?

>’We shouldn’t fight our wars based on what the cool kids think.’

TR: Yes. And yes – if generals see that getting promoted requires some prudent risk-taking, some adaptation, they will do so and learn those tricks. But they won’t if they see that cautious mediocrity is rewarded equally.

DR: Can you make up your mind about Gen. Ray Odierno already? He was a villain in your first book about the Iraq war, a hero in your second, and now he’s a villain again, for giving one of his subordinate commanders a slap on the wrist for obstructing an inquiry into his soldiers’ abuse of Iraqis. Is Odierno fit to serve as Army chief of staff?

DR: I am of two minds about Gen. Odierno. I do think he screwed up when he commanded the 4th Infantry Division early in the Iraq war. But the bottom line is he adapted. You got to learn to live with a little ambiguity, Spencer!

DR: You write that “It seems a good bet that there will not be a ‘Petraeus generation’ of generals.” I took that to mean a more competent and far-sighted general officer corps, but you might also have meant one steeped in counterinsurgency. If you mean the former, why shouldn’t we expect one, since Petraeus remains a remarkably influential figure in the Army even to soldiers who never served under him? If you mean the latter, why is that something to lament? There’s an argument to be made that one of the reasons Afghanistan remains a mess is because the Army and Marines drank the counterinsurgency Kool-Aid too deeply.

TR: Nah, I mean competent, adaptive generals. But one aspect of being adaptive is being able to think critically. I think COIN worked for Petraeus during the surge, but it was a very tough-minded, violent COIN strategy. And it involved risk-taking – like Petraeus striking a private ceasefire with the Sunni insurgents and putting 100,000 of them on the American payroll, and doing it all without asking permission from President Bush.

An aside on COIN: It was in fashion a few years ago. It is out of fashion now. But we shouldn’t fight our wars based on what the cool kids think. We should use what works, and be willing to try other things if what we try doesn’t work. That’s my gripe with Petraeus’ predecessor in Iraq, George Casey [who later became Army chief of staff].

THE U.S. ARMY only seems impressive. Yes, it’s got plenty of tactically competent and physically heroic enlisted soldiers and low-ranking officers. But its generals are, on the whole, crappy, according to a new book that’s sure to spark teeth-gnashing within the Army.

That book is The Generals, the third book about the post-9/11 military by Tom Ricks, a fellow at the Center for a New American Security and the *Washington Post’*s former chief military correspondent. Scheduled to be released on Tuesday, The Generals is a surprisingly scathing historical look into the unmaking of American generalship over six decades, culminating in what Ricks perceives as catastrophic failures in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The basic problem is that no one gets fired. Ricks points back to a system that the revered General George Marshall put into place during World War II: unsuccessful officers – defined very, very liberally – were rapidly sacked, especially on the front lines of Europe. Just as importantly, though, getting relieved of command didn’t end a general’s career. Brig. Gen. “Hanging Sam” Williams, was removed as the assistant commander of the 90th Infantry Division in western France in 1944 for lacking “optimism and a calming nature” in the view of his superior. Six years later, Williams commanded the 25th Infantry Division in Korea and retired as a three-star. Marshall’s approach simultaneously held generals accountable for battlefield failures while avoiding a zero-defect culture that stifled experimentation.

Over the course of six decades, Ricks demonstrates at length, the Army abandoned Marshall’s system. It led to a culture of generalship where generals protected the Army from humiliation – including, in an infamous case, Maj. Gen. Samuel Koster covering up the massacre of civilians at My Lai – more than they focused on winning wars. On the eve of Vietnam, “becoming a general was now akin to winning a tenured professorship,” Ricks writes, “liable to be removed not for professional failure but only for embarrassing one’s institution with moral lapses.”

It’s not an airtight case. Ricks is sometimes at pains to explain why good generals who probably should have been fired under Marshall weren’t (George Patton) or why adaptive generals later on weren’t driven out of the Army (David Petraeus). And it’s overstated to blame dumb wars on dumb generals. But the fact is, the Army almost never fires generals for cause, unlike the Navy, to the point where a lieutenant colonel famously wrote in frustration during the Iraq war that a private who loses a rifle is more likely to be disciplined than a general who loses a war.

Ricks explains how it got to be that way. And it’s something the Army has to reckon with as it deals with its future now that its decade of perpetual warfare is ending, and ending inconclusively. He spoke with Danger Room right before The Generals dropped its bomb on the Army.

Danger Room: So how poor are today’s Army generals? What percentage of them would you say need to be fired outright? Is the public wrong for seeing the Army as an uber-competent institution, a learning organization and a meritocracy?

Tom Ricks: The U.S. Army is a great institution – tactically. Our soldiers today are well-trained, well-motivated, cohesive, and fairly well equipped.

But training is for the known. For the unknown, education is required. You need to teach your senior leaders how to address problems full of uncertainty and ambiguity, and from them, fashion a strategy. And then be able to tell whether it is working, and to adjust if it isn’t.

Our generals today are not particularly well-educated in strategy. Exhibit A is Tommy Franks, who thought it was a good idea to push Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda from Afghanistan into Pakistan, a larger country that also possesses nuclear weapons. Franks also thought that he had won when he took the enemy’s capital in Afghanistan and Iraq — when in fact that is when the wars really began.

When generals don’t know what to do strategically, they tend to regress back down to what they know, which is tactical. That’s one reason why in Vietnam you saw colonels and generals hovering over company commanders giving orders. It is also why our generals were so slow to adapt in Iraq. By the time they became operationally effective, it was 2007, and we had been fighting in Iraq for nearly four years, longer than we had during all of World War II.

What percentage of them need to be fired? All those who fail. That is how George Marshall ran the Army during World War II. Failures were sacked, which is why no one knows nowadays who Lloyd Fredendall was. Successful generals were promoted – which is why why we know names of younger officers of the time such as Eisenhower, Ridgway and Gavin. This was a tough-minded, Darwinian system that reinforced success. Mediocre wasn’t enough back then. It is now, apparently. Back in World War II, a certain percentage of generals were expected to be fired. It was seen as a sign that the system was working as expected.

DR: How would George Marshall’s system of relieving failing generals and placing them in remedial positions work today? Wouldn’t a relief inevitably be seen as an irredeemable black mark?

TR: Relief today is indeed a black mark. The system only works if relief is so frequent that it isn’t seen as a career-ender. Of the 155 men who commanded Army divisions in combat during World War II, 16 were fired. Of those, five were given other divisions to command in combat later in the war. Many others who were fired got good staff jobs, or trained divisions back home.

That said, Marshall was pretty hardnosed about this. He didn’t run the Army for the benefit of its officers. In a war for democracy, he wrote, the needs of the enlisted came first. He believed that the Army owed its soldiers competent leadership. That was not the case with the Army in Vietnam, where officers were rotated in quickly to get some time in combat command and then rotated out.

DR: Isn’t it too simplistic to blame bad generalship for lost wars and good generalship for successful ones? Tommy Franks may have been “dull and arrogant,” as you write, but he didn’t decide to invade Iraq; David Petraeus may have been his polar opposite, but Afghanistan is in shambles.

TR: Yes, it would be too simplistic. That’s why the major second theme of the book is the need for good discourse between our top generals and their civilian overseers.

By good discourse, I don’t mean everyone getting along. I mean dialogue that welcomes candor, honesty, and clarity, and is guided so it does two key things: explore assumptions and dig into differences. For example, the Vietnam War was guided on the assumption that the enemy had a breaking point and that it would come before ours. Turns out that was wrong. Likewise, the 1991 Gulf War was run on the assumption that giving Saddam Hussein a good thumping would remove him from power. Didn’t happen.

I came away from the book thinking that the quality of civil-military discourse is one of the few leading indicators you have of how well a war will go. George Marshall was not the natural choice for Army chief of staff (Hugh Drum probably was) but FDR picked him in part because Marshall twice had stood up to Roosevelt in the Oval Office, respectfully but forcefully dissenting on key military issues.

DR: Isn’t relieving generals when they’re generals too late? Why shouldn’t the relieves and reassignments you describe in the book come earlier in their tenures as officers? Or can you really teach a general new tricks?

TR: Yes. And yes – if generals see that getting promoted requires some prudent risk-taking, some adaptation, they will do so and learn those tricks. But they won’t if they see that cautious mediocrity is rewarded equally.

DR: Can you make up your mind about Gen. Ray Odierno already? He was a villain in your first book about the Iraq war, a hero in your second, and now he’s a villain again, for giving one of his subordinate commanders a slap on the wrist for obstructing an inquiry into his soldiers’ abuse of Iraqis. Is Odierno fit to serve as Army chief of staff?

DR: I am of two minds about Gen. Odierno. I do think he screwed up when he commanded the 4th Infantry Division early in the Iraq war. But the bottom line is he adapted. You got to learn to live with a little ambiguity, Spencer!

DR: You write that “It seems a good bet that there will not be a ‘Petraeus generation’ of generals.” I took that to mean a more competent and far-sighted general officer corps, but you might also have meant one steeped in counterinsurgency. If you mean the former, why shouldn’t we expect one, since Petraeus remains a remarkably influential figure in the Army even to soldiers who never served under him? If you mean the latter, why is that something to lament? There’s an argument to be made that one of the reasons Afghanistan remains a mess is because the Army and Marines drank the counterinsurgency Kool-Aid too deeply.

TR: Nah, I mean competent, adaptive generals. But one aspect of being adaptive is being able to think critically. I think COIN worked for Petraeus during the surge, but it was a very tough-minded, violent COIN strategy. And it involved risk-taking – like Petraeus striking a private ceasefire with the Sunni insurgents and putting 100,000 of them on the American payroll, an

 




The only problem that I could see with this big step forward looking rifle.
Is the fact that if all the chambers went off due to a mistake somewhere. Then the operator would very quickly become a one handed man.
Here is some more information about this interesting colt!

Colt Model 1855 Revolving Carbine
Type	Rifle
Place of origin	United States
Service history
In service	1855-1863
Wars	American Civil War
Production history
Designed	1855
Produced	1856 – 1864
Specifications
Length	15-,18-,21-,and 24-inches
Action	Revolving

The Colt revolving rifles were early repeating rifles produced by the Colt’s Manufacturing Company 1856 until 1864.
They were mainly based upon the Colt Model 1855 Sidehammer Pocket Revolverdeveloped by Elisha K. Root.

History

Revolving rifles were an attempt to increase the rate of fire of rifles by combining them with the revolving firing mechanism that had been developed earlier for revolving pistols.
Colt began experimenting with revolving rifles in the early 19th century, making them in a variety of calibers and barrel lengths.^[1]
Colt revolving rifles were the first repeating rifles adopted by the U.S. Government, but they had their problems. They were officially given to soldiers because of their rate of fire.
But after firing six shots, the shooter had to take an excessive amount of time to reload. On occasion Colt rifles discharged all their rounds at once, endangering the shooter. Even so, an early model was used in the Seminole Wars in 1838.^[2]
In March, 1836, Colt formed the Patent Arms Company and began operation in an unused silk mill along the banks of the Passaic River in Paterson, New Jersey.
His first product was a ring-lever revolving rifle, available in .34, .36, .38, .40, and .44 caliber, in which a ring located forward of the trigger served to cock the hammer and advance the cylinder for each shot.
This was soon followed with a revolving pistol. These five-shot “Paterson” revolvers featured folding triggers, and were available both with and without loading levers in .28, .31, and .36 caliber.
Patent Arms produced smoothbore revolving carbines and shotguns. The outbreak of war between the U.S. government and the Seminole tribe provided Colt with his first break.
Seminole warriors had learned that soldiers were vulnerable while reloading their single-shot firearms, and they developed a tactic of drawing fire, then rushing the temporarily defenseless soldiers and wiping them out before they could fire a second volley.
Colt’s revolving rifles were quite effective against this, and the army purchased his products for use by troops in the Florida campaign.^[3]
In 1855, with his Model 1855 patent, Colt introduced a spur-trigger revolver that featured a fully enclosed cylinder.
These handguns were officially named Sidehammer revolvers, but they also were known as “Root” revolvers after Elisha K. Root, who at that time was employed as Colt’s factory superintendent and Chief Engineer.^[4]
Based on the Sidehammer design, Colt produced the Sidehammer Model 1855 rifles and carbines for military and sporting use, as well as a revolving shotgun.
In failing health, Colt expanded his factory on the eve of the Civil War, and began production of a new, lightweight .44 caliber Army revolver, followed a year later by a .36 caliber Navy version.^[5]
This was produced in a rifle version as well as a shortened carbine. In 1855 it became the first repeating rifle to be adopted for service by the U.S. Military, but problems with the design prevented its use until 1857.
The principal problem was that gunpowder would sometimes leak from the paper cartridges in field conditions, lodging in various recesses around the firing cylinder.
Hot gas leaking from the gap between the firing cylinder and the barrel would ignite this powder, which would in turn, ignite all of the powder in the chambers waiting to be fired.
This is known as a “chain fire” and was a relatively common failure with early percussion revolving firearms. When this happened with the Colt Revolving Rifle, a spray of metal would be sent forward into the left arm and hand of the user.^[6]
A distrust in the weapon developed as a result. Commanders attempted to get around the problem in a number of ways.
The rifle had to be properly and thoroughly cleaned, since sloppy cleaning would leave residue behind that would increase the risk of a chain fire.
Some commanders instructed their men to fire the weapon only while supporting it directly in front of the trigger guard or by holding the lowered loading lever, which moved their left hand out of the path of danger during a chainfire.
Other commanders instructed their men to load only a single chamber, preventing any chain fires from occurring.
Loading a single chamber at a time also reduced the weapon to a single shot weapon, and effectively defeated the entire purpose of having a repeating rifle.^[6]
Brevete Colt Dragoon revolving rifles were made in Belgium under license from Colt during the 1850s to 1860s.

Design and Features

Colt Model 1855 Carbine

The design of the Colt revolving rifle was essentially similar to revolver type pistols, with a rotating cylinder that held five or six rounds in a variety of calibers from .36 to .64 inches.^[7]
The Model 1855, which was the most widely produced revolving rifle, was available in .36, .44 and .56 caliber. Four barrel lengths were available: 15, 18, 21 and 24 inches. A six shot cylinder was used if the caliber was .36 or the .44. If the caliber was .56, a five-shot cylinder was used.^[8]
A revolving rifle used percussion caps, like revolving pistols of the time. A cartridge (consisting of powder and a lead ball) was loaded into the front of the chamber and then compressed with a plunger that was located beneath the barrel.
Once the cylinder’s chambers were loaded, percussion caps were placed over the vent nipples at the rear of the cylinder.
The weapon was now ready to fire. In addition to being susceptible to chain fire problems, the revolving cylinder design also tended to spray lead splinters into the wrist and hand of the user.^[9]
Revolving pistols did not suffer from this problem since the user kept both hands behind the cylinder while firing a pistol.
Some models could be fitted with sword style bayonets. In these rifles, the front sight would double as the bayonet lug.

Use

A combination of Colt revolving pistols and revolving rifles were used on the Pony Express by the eight men who guarded the dangerous run between Independence, Missouri, and Santa Fe.
When doubts were expressed about the ability of these eight men to deliver the letters on this run reliably, the Missouri government declared that “these eight men are ready in case of attack to discharge 136 shots without having to reload. We have no fears for the safety of the mail.” All mail deliveries on this route were completed safely.^[10]
The U.S. government had purchased 765 Colt revolving carbines and rifles prior to the Civil War. Many of these were shipped to southern locations and ended up being used by the Confederacy.^[9]
After the war began, the Union purchased many more rifles and carbines. Sources disagree over the exact number purchased, but approximately 4,400 to 4,800 were purchased in total over the length of the war.
The weapon performed superbly in combat, seeing action with the 21st Ohio Volunteer Infantry Union forces at Snodgrass Hill during the Battle of Chickamauga during the American Civil War.^[11][12]
The volume of fire from this weapon proved to be so useful that the Confederate forces were convinced that they were attacking an entire division, not just a single regiment, but still, the Ohioans ran out of ammunition, and surrendered.^[7]
Despite these victories, the rifle’s faults would prove fatal for the weapon. A board of officers evaluated the evidence and decided to discontinue its use. The rifles were sold for 42 cents each, a fraction of the original purchase cost of 44 dollars.^[6]

Use in film

In 3:10 to Yuma (2007) the Mexican sharpshooter Campos (Rio Alexander) carries a Colt Model 1855 fitted with a full length telescopic sight and converted to fire metallic cartridges.^[13]
In The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly one of Angel Eyes’s killers uses a Remington revolving rifle.
In the John Wayne movie El Dorado, actor Arthur Hunnicut’s character, Bull Harris, carries a Model 1855 revolving carbine as his main weapon.^[13]
In The Mask of Zorro, Captain Love carries an early revolving rifle. In the sequel, the Legend of Zorro, a cavalry captain carries one as well.
In the Quentin Tarantino film The Hateful Eight, the character John Ruth (played by Kurt Russell) carries a Remington revolving rifle as his main weapon.

So if it’s off to the Bachelor’s Officers Quarters my young F.N.G.*, As The New C.O. want his shit there ASAP!

Of course the saying of “If it looks stupid but it works, then it’s not stupid!” does comes to mind.
*  Fucking New Guy – The worst Rank in any military unit

Happy Guy Fawkes Day!

This might explain to our other readers why the British Celebrate this day.

Guy Fawkes Day: A Brief History

BY JESSE GREENSPAN // NOVEMBER 5, 2012

HISTORY STORIES

Guy Fawkes Day: A Brief History

  Catholic dissident Guy Fawkes and 12 co-conspirators spent months planning to blow up King James I of England during the opening of Parliament on November 5, 1605. But their assassination attempt was foiled the night before when Fawkes was discovered lurking in a cellar below the House of Lords next to 36 barrels of gunpowder. Londoners immediately began lighting bonfires in celebration that the plot had failed, and a few months later Parliament declared November 5 a public day of thanksgiving. Guy Fawkes Day, also known as Bonfire Night, has been around in one form or another ever since. Though originally anti-Catholic in tone, in recent times it has served mainly as an excuse to watch fireworks, make bonfires, drink mulled wine and burn Guy Fawkes effigies (along with the effigies of current politicians and celebrities).

Catholicism in England was heavily repressed under Queen Elizabeth I, particularly after the pope excommunicated her in 1570. During her reign, dozens of priests were put to death, and Catholics could not even legally celebrate Mass or be married according to their own rites. As a result, many Catholics had high hopes when King James I took the throne upon Elizabeth’s death in 1603. James’ wife, Anne, is believed to have previously converted to Catholicism, and his mother, Mary Queen of Scots, was Elizabeth’s Catholic archrival prior to being executed. There were even rumors, inspired by his diplomatic overtures to the pope, that James himself would become Catholic.
It soon became clear, however, that James did not support religious tolerance for Catholics. In 1604 he publicly condemned Catholicism as a superstition, ordered all Catholic priests to leave England and expressed concern that the number of Catholics was increasing. He also largely continued with the repressive policies of his predecessor, such as fines for those refusing to attend Protestant services.

English Catholics had organized several failed conspiracies against Elizabeth, and these continued under James. In 1603 a few priests and laymen hatched the so-called Bye Plot to kidnap James, only to be turned in by fellow Catholics. Another related conspiracy that year, known as the Main Plot, sought to kill James and install his cousin on the throne. Then, in May 1604, a handful of Catholic dissidents—Guy Fawkes, Robert Catesby, Tom Wintour, Jack Wright and Thomas Percy—met at the Duck and Drake inn in London, where Catesby proposed a plan to blow up the Houses of Parliament with gunpowder. Afterwards, all five men purportedly swore an oath of secrecy upon a prayer book.

Eight other conspirators would later join what became known as the Gunpowder Plot. But although Catesby was the ringleader, Fawkes has garnered most of the publicity over the past 400-plus years. Born in 1570 in York, England, Fawkes spent about a decade fighting for Spain against Protestant rebels in the Spanish-controlled Netherlands. He also personally petitioned the king of Spain for help in starting an English rebellion against James. According to writings in the Spanish archives, Fawkes believed the English king was a heretic who would drive out his Catholic subjects. Fawkes also apparently expressed strong anti-Scottish prejudices.

By 1605 Fawkes was calling himself Guido rather than Guy. He also used the alias John Johnson while serving as caretaker of a cellar—located just below the House of Lords—that the plotters had leased in order to stockpile gunpowder. Under the plan, Fawkes would light a fuse on November 5, 1605, during the opening of a new session of Parliament. James, his eldest son, the House of Lords and the House of Commons would all be blown sky-high. In the meantime, as Fawkes escaped by boat across the River Thames, his fellow conspirators would start an uprising in the English Midlands, kidnap James’ daughter Elizabeth, install her as a puppet queen and eventually marry her off to a Catholic, thereby restoring the Catholic monarchy.

On October 26, an anonymous letter advising a Catholic sympathizer to avoid the State Opening of Parliament alerted the authorities to the existence of a plot. To this day, no one knows for sure who wrote the letter. Some historians have even suggested that it was fabricated and that the authorities already knew of the Gunpowder Plot, only letting it progress as an excuse to further crack down on Catholicism. Either way, a search party found Fawkes skulking in his cellar around midnight on November 4, with matches in his pocket and 36 barrels of gunpowder stacked next to him. For Fawkes, the plot’s failure could be blamed on “the devil and not God.” He was taken to the Tower of London and tortured upon the special order of King James. Soon after, his co-conspirators were likewise arrested, except for four, including Catesby, who died in a shootout with English troops.
Fawkes and his surviving co-conspirators were all found guilty of high treason and sentenced to death in January 1606 by hanging, drawing and quartering. A Jesuit priest was also executed a few months later for his alleged involvement, even as new laws banned Catholics from voting in elections, practicing law or serving in the military. In fact, Catholics were not fully emancipated in England until the 19th century.
After the plot was revealed, Londoners began lighting celebratory bonfires, and in January 1606 an act of Parliament designated November 5 as a day of thanksgiving. Guy Fawkes Day festivities soon spread as far as the American colonies, where they became known as Pope Day. In keeping with the anti-Catholic sentiment of the time, British subjects on both sides of the Atlantic would burn an effigy of the pope. That tradition completely died out in the United States by the 19th century, whereas in Britain Guy Fawkes Day became a time to get together with friends and family, set off fireworks, light bonfires, attend parades and burn effigies of Fawkes. Children traditionally wheeled around their effigies demanding a “penny for the Guy” (a similar custom to Halloween trick-or-treating) and imploring crowds to “remember, remember the fifth of November.”
Guy Fawkes himself, meanwhile, has undergone something of a makeover. Once known as a notorious traitor, he is now portrayed in some circles as a revolutionary hero, largely due to the influence of the 1980s graphic novel “V for Vendetta” and the 2005 movie of the same name, which depicted a protagonist who wore a Guy Fawkes mask while battling a future fascist government in Britain. Guy Fawkes masks even cropped up at Occupy Wall Street protests in New York City and elsewhere. “Every generation reinvents Guy Fawkes to suit their needs,” explained historian William B. Robison of Southeastern Louisiana University. “But Fawkes was just one of the flunkies. It really should be Robert Catesby Day.”