Among all the stars known in astronomy, the periodically returning
Comet now known as Halley’s Comet has the most baleful record.
In this Comet’s wake, after every one of its recorded appearances,
there have always followed terrible disasters.
Not only war and battles, or other deeds of bloodshed, such as
massacres and murders, but each of the dread disasters that are held to
go with Comets have followed along one after the other in this Comet’s
train.
Of the eight baneful after-effects of Comets mentioned in the old
German ditty that has been sung in the Fatherland ever since the great
Comet which ushered in the dreadful Thirty Years’ War,
“Wind, Famine, Plague and Death to Kings
War, Earthquakes, Floods and Dire Things.”
Halley’s Comet is known to have preceded each and every form of these
evils in turn.
Directly after each return of Halley’s Comet there has always followed
somewhere within the influence of its rays one or other of those “dire
things,”—a flood, an earthquake, a hurricane, famine, plague, war,
bloodshed, or the sudden death of a ruler.
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.
[Illustration: HALLEY’S COMET OF 1835. FROM A DRAWING BY ROSENBERGER.]
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.”
[Illustration: HALLEY’S COMET, JANUARY 9, 1683, AS DRAWN BY HEVELIUS.]
[Illustration: THE COMET OF 1682, AS REPRESENTED IN THE NUREMBURG
CHRONICLE.]
[Illustration: MEDAL STRUCK IN GERMANY TO ALLAY THE TERROR CAUSED BY
THE COMET OF 1680-81.