Part 4

Thanks to the careful work of such painstaking astronomers and historians as Lubienitius, Pingré, Dionys de Séjour, J. Russell Hind, Laugier, and Messrs. Cowell and Crommelin, the records of great events connected with Halley’s Comet have been traced back nearly 2,000 years, to the days before Christ.

Among the signal events following in the train of this Comet there have been so many bloody massacres and appalling disasters that Halley’s Comet now has the ominous distinction of being the bloodiest of all stars of ill omen.

Herewith follows the story of this Comet’s periodic appearances in history and of the events connected therewith, as traced back from its last return in 1835 to its first recorded entrance into the history of mankind.

1835-1836

Halley’s Comet last appeared in the Summer of 1835, and was seen until Spring of the following year.

It was first discerned by Father Dumouchel with a powerful telescope from the observatory of the Collegio Romano in Rome on the night of August 6, 1835. Father Dumouchel, who had been watching for it many months, picked it up close to the spot in the heavens that Rosenberger, a German astronomer, had predicted for its appearance on that date.

The last astronomer to see the Comet was Sir John Herschel, who observed it from the Cape of Good Hope until the middle of May, 1836.

Other noted astronomers who made observations of it were Arago, Struve, Bessel, Kaiser, Sir Thomas Maclear, Admiral Smyth, Baron Damoiseau and Count Pontécoulant.

This last astronomer, many years before, had computed the exact time of its coming and came within four days of it. For this brilliant feat Count Pontécoulant received a gold medal from the French Academy of Sciences.

The German astronomer, Rosenberger, who had likewise computed the Comet’s return, coming within five days of its passage nearest to the Sun, received a similar gold medal from the Royal Astronomical Society of Great Britain.

Professor Struve, who studied the Comet through the great telescope at Dorpat in Russia, described it as “glowing like a red-hot coal of oblong form.”

Bessel, who observed it from the Koenigsberg observatory in Northern Germany, described the Comet’s appearance as that of “a blazing rocket, the flame from which was driven aside as by a strong gale, or as the stream of fire from the discharge of a cannon when the sparks and smoke are carried backwards by the wind.”

Struve at Koenigsberg and Kaiser at Leyden were the first to see the Comet with their naked eyes in the third week of September.

Immediately after the Comet became generally visible in the Old World the bubonic plague, known of old as the “Black Death,” broke out in Egypt. In the City of Alexandria alone 9,000 people died on one day. By the Moslems this calamity was generally attributed to the evil influence of the Comet.

In America the Comet became visible to the naked eye only late in the year. Then, on its approach to the Sun, it was lost to view and passed over to the Southern Hemisphere where it was next observed by Sir John Herschel in South Africa.

Shortly after its brief blaze over North America the great “New York Fire” laid waste the entire business section of the biggest city in the New World. All the commercial centre of the city, including the richest firms and largest commercial warehouses, were laid in ashes. The fire raged through days and nights. In all, 530 houses burned down and $18,000,000 of property was consumed. Owing to the intense cold, the sufferings of the homeless were pitiable.

Down in Florida, at the same time, Osceola, the chieftain of the Seminole Indians, called upon the Comet as a signal for war against the whites. The Indians called the Comet “Big Knife in the Sky.”

The war began with a bloody massacre of American soldiers under General Wiley Thompson at Fort King. All were slaughtered. Osceola scalped General Thompson with his own hands.

On the same day, Major Dade of the American Army, who was leading a relief expedition into Florida from Tampa Bay, was ambushed by the Indians near Wahoo Swamp and was massacred with his men. Of the whole expedition only four men escaped death.

Within forty-eight hours of this horrible massacre came another bloody Indian fight on the banks of the Big Withlacoochee.

With the passing of the Comet to the Southern Hemisphere, bloody wars broke out one after another in Mexico, Cuba, Central America, Ecuador, Bolivia, Peru and Argentina. All those countries were in a welter of blood.

At the same time the American settlers of Texas declared themselves independent and made open war on Mexico. The war began with the bloody battle of Gonzales, in which 500 American frontiersmen fought and defeated over a thousand Mexican soldiers. This was followed by other fierce fights at Goliad and Bexar.

Next came the bloody massacre of the Alamo, when all of Jim Bowie’s and Davy Crockett’s American followers were killed in an all night fight. Out of 200 Americans every man fell at his post. This was the deed of blood on which Joaquin Miller wrote his stirring Ballad of the Alamo.

“Santa Ana came storming as a storm might come,— There was rumble of cannon; there was rattle of blade; There was cavalry, infantry, bugle and drum,— Full seven thousand, in pomp and parade, The chivalry, flower of Mexico, And a gaunt two hundred in the Alamo.”

One month before the final disappearance of the Comet, the Texas War came to an end with the bloody battle of San Jacinto, when Sam Houston, with 800 American frontiersmen, defeated 1,500 Mexicans, and made a prisoner of President Santa Ana of Mexico.

When the Comet had passed to the Southern Hemisphere, it was seen at its brightest in South Africa.

The pious Boers of Cape Colony understood it to be a sign from heaven and forthwith set out on their great trek across the Orange and Vaal rivers, where they founded the Orange Free State and Transvaal Republic.

Thus the Comet was the signal for the first blood drawn in the long fight between the British and Boers.

A little later, though, the Boers found another, more woeful significance for the blazing of the Comet.

Under the leadership of Piet Relief, a thousand Boer families had trekked across the Drakensberg Mountains into Natal. A solemn treaty of peace with the Zulu warriors was entered into with Dingaan, the chief of the Zulus at Dingaan’s Kraal. Suddenly the Zulus pounced upon the unsuspecting Piet Relief and his sixty-five Boer followers and massacred them to a man.

Then the Zulus, numbering some 10,000 warriors, swept out into the veldt and made for the Boer wagon trains. Near Colenso, at a spot called Weenen (weeping), in remembrance of the dreadful tragedy there perpetrated, the Zulus overwhelmed the Boer laager and slaughtered all its inmates—41 men, 56 women, 185 children and 250 Kaffir slaves.

After this bloody massacre, equalling in horror the Massacre of the Alamo on the other side of the world, the Comet of 1835-36 was seen no more.

1758-1759

This was the first return of the Comet predicted by Halley. Hence it must be reckoned as the first appearance of “Halley’s Comet” under his name.

It was first seen on Christmas night, 1758, by John Palitsch, a Saxon farmer, near Dresden, who was looking for it with a self-constructed telescope of eight-foot focus. The Comet did not become visible to the naked eye until well into 1759. It passed around the sun on March 12, 1759. After that it was seen throughout Europe during April and May, appearing at its brightest during the first week in May. Later it was seen to advantage in the Southern Hemisphere.

In Germany, where it was seen at its fiercest, the Comet was taken as a token of the bloody Seven Years’ War, which was then being fought between Frederick the Great and his enemies on all sides.

The ominous Comet had scarcely vanished from view when all Germany was overrun by marching armies from France, from Austria, from Russia.

The French, under the Duke of Broglie, overthrew the Germans, under the Duke of Brunswick, at Bergen, and seized the city of Frankfurt. Then came the bloody battle of Minden, in which two large French armies were beaten. Meanwhile the Russians were marching into Prussia, and another bloody battle was fought at Kay in midsummer.

Within a fortnight King Frederick the Great and his whole army were overthrown by the Austrians and Russians in the disastrous battle of Kunersdorf.

Another Prussian army was overcome at Maxen, where 13,000 Prussians were taken.

Altogether, during this year’s campaigns, several hundred thousand soldiers lost their lives.

It was the worst year of the Seven Years’ War for Frederick the Great and his soldiers, who attributed their bloody defeats to the ill omen of the Comet.

In other parts of the world, likewise, the coming of the Comet was followed by widespread war and bloody fighting.

For the French, the Comet signalled disaster after disaster. After their armies had been beaten in Germany, their navy was defeated on August 17 in a great sea fight in the Bay of Lagos, on the coast of Portugal. Six weeks later there was another bloody sea fight between the British and French, when Admiral Pocock inflicted a telling defeat on the French fleet.

Then came the final French naval disaster off Quiberon, in the Bay of Biscay, when Admiral Hawke destroyed French naval power by sinking or blowing up over a score of the French fighting ships. This bloody defeat was a disaster of untold consequences to the French, since it meant the loss of India.

But this was not all that this Comet of ill omen had brought to the French.

On September 13th of that year the French lost their strongest hold on America in the disastrous defeat inflicted upon them by General Wolfe in the bloody battle on the Plains of Abraham, where Wolfe himself fell fighting. On the French side, General Montcalm, the Commander-in-Chief, was mortally wounded. This meant the loss of Quebec and of all Canada to the French, an event of far-reaching importance that has changed the destiny of all America and of the modern world.

1682

The Comet which put Halley on the right track in his theories of Comets, first came into view on the night of August 15, 1682. It was first detected by Flamsteed’s assistant at the Greenwich Observatory, while searching the northern heavens with a telescope.

Flamsteed, the first Astronomer Royal, and Halley, his successor, kept a close watch upon the Comet every night, and followed its course over the sky. Others who watched it were Sir Isaac Newton, Cassini, Picard and La Hire in Paris, Baert at Toulon, Kirch and Zimmermann in Germany, Montanari at Padua, and Hevelius in Dantsic. They observed that the tail lengthened considerably as the Comet came nearer the sun. Later a jet of luminous matter was seen shooting out toward the sun, which afterward fell back into the tail. Hevelius has left us a drawing of this phenomenon.

On November 11th, Halley found that the Comet had come within a semi-diameter of the path of our earth. This startling discovery caused Halley to reflect what might happen if the earth and the Comet had arrived at the same time at the spot in space where their two orbits intersect. Assuming as he did that the mass of the Comet was considerably larger than our earth, he declared: “If so large a body with so rapid a motion were to strike the earth—a thing by no means impossible—the shock might reduce this beautiful world to its original chaos.”

Others beside Halley took alarm at the Comet. They called it “The Chariot of Fire.”

Dr. Whiston—he who succeeded Newton in the Lucasian chair of mathematics at Cambridge—in a moment of prophetic vision fervently declared that this Comet was God’s agent that would bring about the General Conflagration by involving the world in flames.

In America, the Rev. Increase Mather, President of Harvard College, on the appearance of the Comet in New England, preached his great sermon on “Heaven’s Alarm to the World ... wherein is shown that fearful sights and signs in the Heavens are the presages of great calamities at hand.”

Increase Mather’s warning was handed down as an inspired prophesy, in view of the fact that the English settlers in North America soon afterwards got into bloody warfare with the Indians. The war raged at its fiercest in the Carolinas, where the English settlers made war upon the redskins simply for the purpose of taking them captive and selling them into slavery in the West Indies.

To the Indians the Comet appeared as a sign of ill omen, as shown by their frequent references to it during the parleys with the white men.

The Comet was shining at its fiercest when the six greatest chiefs of the Susquehanna nation were enticed into a pretended council of peace with the white men, only to be foully murdered with all their followers.

While this was going on in America, the Comet gave the signal in India for the first hostilities there upon the white settlers from Portugal, as well as for the outbreak of the bloody Mahratta War, which ravaged India for a generation to come.

Nearer East, the Turks, under the leadership of Mohammed Bey, ravaged Egypt, while, on the other side, a Turkish army under Kara Mustapha carried war into Hungary, to the very gates of Vienna, until Emperor Leopold felt constrained to call for help from Sobieski, the warrior king of the Poles.

In Europe the French overran Alsace, and suddenly seized the German city of Strasburg.

At the same time the bubonic plague broke out in North Germany. In the little university town of Halle alone, within a few days, 4,397 people died out of a total population of ten thousand.

It was then that medals were struck off in Germany with a design of the comet on their face, and an inscription imploring God to avert the evils threatened by the Comet:

“The star threatens evil things; Only trust! God will make it right.”

1607

The Comet this year was seen all over Europe. The best observations of it were made by Kepler and Longomontanus (Langberger). It was seen at its brightest in England.

Shortly after its appearance over England, there came freshets and floods which completely submerged the richest counties of England. In Somersetshire and Gloucestershire the water rose above the tops of the houses. This was followed by a visitation of the plague.

In Ireland the Comet was taken as an omen of the fate of Londonderry, where the Irish rebels, suddenly seizing the city, massacred Sir George Powlett and all his English garrison.

In Germany the Comet was taken as a token of the war then brewing between the Emperor and the German Protestant Princes—the so-called Protestant League—which ushered in the dreadful Thirty Years’ War in Germany.

Off Gibraltar, a Dutch fleet completely destroyed a fleet of Spanish war galleons, thereby crippling Spanish sea power for a generation to come.

Meanwhile, in America, the early settlers in Virginia, led by John Smith, found themselves beset by the redskins, who were incited to war by the appearance of the Comet. They called it “Red Knife in the Sky.” During the war, John Smith was taken prisoner, and escaped with his life only through the intercession of Pocahontas, the daughter of Powhattan.

1531

The Comet was first sighted by the German astronomer Bienewitz (“Apianus”) in midsummer of this year. Zwingli preached about it as an omen of disaster.

German astrologers regarded it as a herald of the wars between Spain and France, which broke out in that year, and of the bloody war carried into Hungary by the Turks under Soleyman, who ravaged the Danube country to the very walls of Vienna. These wars were followed by a visitation of the black plague.

In the Netherlands the breaking of the ocean dykes caused terrific floods, in which over 400,000 people were drowned.

Toward the close of the year the Comet passed over to the Southern Hemisphere.

To the aborigines of South America it proved a star of dreadful omen. During this year the most cruel of Spanish conquerors did their bloodiest work in the New World—Cortez in Mexico, Alvarado at the Equator, and Pizarro in Peru. Before the Comet disappeared from view, several hundred thousand wretched Incas and Aztecs had been slaughtered by the Spaniards, while many more hundred thousands were worked to death as slaves.

1456

The Comet this year was observed throughout Europe and also in China. It came into view over Europe on the 29th of May, and was seen gliding over the sky towards the moon.

Writers of that period say that it shone with exceeding brightness and spread out a fan-shaped train of fire. The Arab astronomers describe its shape as that of a Turkish scimitar, which, blazing against the dark sky, was regarded as a sign from heaven of the war then raging against the Christian infidels.

A clear story of the Comet’s appearance has been left by the Bavarian Jesuit, Brueckner (Pontanus). He based his story on the record of Georgos Phranza, Grandmaster of the Wardrobes to the Emperor of Constantinople. There the Comet is described as “rising in the West; moving towards the East, and approaching the Moon.”

By the Chinese this Comet was described as having a tail sixty degrees long, and a head “which at one time was round, and the size of a bull’s eye, the tail being like a peacock’s.”

Halley wrote of this Comet in 1686: “In the summer of the year 1456 a Comet was seen, which passed in a retrograde direction between the earth and the sun. From its period and path, I infer that it was the same Comet as that of the years 1531, 1607 and 1682. I may therefore with confidence predict its return in the year 1758.”

The appearance of the Comet in 1456 was so well remembered even 225 years later, because this was the scimitar-shaped Comet hailed by the conquering Turks as their guiding star, against the evil influence of which Pope Calixtus III. exhorted all Christians to pray to God.

This story has been denied by certain latter-day sceptics, but the medieval historian Platina, who was living in Rome at the time, and who knew whereof he spoke, wrote in his “Lives of the Popes” in 1470:

“A hairy and fiery star having then made its appearance for several days, the mathematicians declared that there would follow grievous pestilence, dearth and some great calamity. Calixtus, to avert the wrath of God, ordered supplications that if evils were impending for the human race He would turn all upon the Turks, the enemies of the Christian name. He likewise ordered, to move God by continual entreaty, that notice should be given by the bells to call the faithful at midday to aid by their prayers those engaged in battle with the Turk.”

In truth, all Christendom appeared indeed to have fallen under the “wrath of God,” for the Turks; having wrested Constantinople away from the Christians, now came ravaging up the Danube countries and laid siege to the Christian city of Belgrade. Bloody battles were fought between the Magyars and Turks on the Danube, until Hunyadi, the great Magyar leader, at last overthrew the Turks under Mahomet II., under the walls of Belgrade, in a great battle, in which no less than 24,000 Turks were slain. This was on July 21st, on the eve of which day the Comet had been seen to blaze at its fiercest.

1378

The Comet appeared late in the year, and was seen at its brightest over Northern Europe, in Scotland, Scandinavia, Russia and Poland.

All these countries, during the same period and immediately afterwards, were cursed by the terrible pestilence called the “Black Death,” now known to have been the worst visitation of the bubonic plague known in history. Wherever the dread sickness appeared, the people “died like rats.” So many succumbed to the disease, and so many others fled aghast from the pestilence, that whole cities and towns were left empty, and no labourers could be found to till the fields.

1301

The Comet this year was first observed by German and Flemish astrologers during the late Summer and Autumn. It was interpreted as an ill omen of the wars which then ravaged Europe. Immediately after the appearance of the Comet, Emperor Albrecht of Germany ravaged the Rhine lands with fire and sword. Afterwards the German astrologers explained the Comet as a warning omen of the death of the Emperor’s son Rudolf, who died within a twelvemonth of his coronation as King of Bohemia.

In Flanders the Comet was taken as a heavenly token of the fierce war which followed the bloodstained massacre of 3,000 French soldiers by the enraged people of Flanders.

Soon after this came Robert of Artois’ bloody defeat at Coutrai, the famous “Battle of the Spurs,” so called from the thousands of gilt spurs that were taken afterwards from the feet of the slain French cavaliers.

1222

The Comet during this year is recorded by the Chinese astronomers in the months of September and October. During these months, and immediately afterwards, Jenghis Khan, the bloody Mongol conqueror, with his fierce Mongol hordes, was ravaging all China, Persia, India and the Caucasus country as far as the River Don.

The Comet was taken as a special omen of the terrible fate of the City of Herat and its surrounding country, where the bloodthirsty conqueror caused to be slaughtered over a million of people. Jenghis Khan, who believed in stars and omens, having been born with bloodstained hands, hailed the Comet as his special Star. Under its rays he extended his immense Empire to its outermost boundaries from the China seas to the banks of the Dniepr in Russia. After the Comet’s disappearance, Jenghis Khan regarded the planets that had crossed its orbit as stars of ill omen, betokening his death, so he set his face backward from his march of conquest, and soon afterwards died in Mongolia.

1145

The Comet appeared over Europe early in Spring. It was seen at Rome in March and April.

Inspired by the appearance of the Comet, Pope Eugenius III. called for a crusade against the Moslems. St. Bernard in France took up the cry, and preached a holy war all over France. On Easter Sunday, King Louis VII. of France, his Queen and all his nobles, received the Cross from St. Bernard at Vizelay.

In Rome, however, the Comet was taken as a token of the Pope’s downfall. Arnold of Brescia preached against the Pope and aroused the Roman populace against him. The Holy Father had to flee.

On the disappearance of the Comet, the Pope returned and excommunicated the Patricians of Rome. Arnold of Brescia was taken and strangled in his cell. Later historians, like Lubienitius, accordingly interpreted the Comet as a sign of warning rather than as an ill omen.

1066

This is the most famous appearance of the Comet now known as Halley’s Comet. Under its seven rays, that year, William the Conqueror felt inspired to fall upon England, while Harold, the Saxon, on the other hand, saw in the Comet a star of dread foreboding and of doom.

The medieval chronicles of this year all make special mention of the Comet. A picture of the Comet, as it appeared to the doomed Harold, was embroidered by Matilde of France, on the famous coloured tapestry of the Norman Conquest, which is still preserved at Bayeux in Normandy.