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1993: 350th Anniversary of the Siege of Castle Cornet (Design - Clive Abbott) |
Scenes from the English Civil War. Castle Cornet was a Royalist stronghold however the population of Guernsey were for the Parliamentarians, they called on the Lieutenant Governor to surrender but he fired on them. The population were not equipped to storm the castle as they discovered after one abortive attempt. The defensive batteries around St Peters Port originally built to protect Guernsey from the French directed their fire at Castle Cornet. The guns on the castle fired back. Today archaeological excavations regularly find musket and canon balls fired from the castle. Cornet was supplied by ships throughout the Civil War which were sent by the Lieutenant General of Jersey. I liked the story portrayed on the 28p stamp of the three local officials who were tricked aboard one of the enemy ships thinking it was one of their own but the captain had switched sides. Imprisoned for 43 days they managed to escape by making a hole in the wooden floor to the room below where they found a supply of flax which they made into ropes and escaped.

The FDC shows the three shields of Castle Cornet's commanders, Osborn was disliked by both the population and his own side however on surrender Burgess, the last Governor, and his men, were allowed to march out bearing arms and leave the island at the end of the siege in recognition of their humane treatment of prisoners. Here is the story from the FDC insert...
taking us to the present day...
Sunday Stamps theme - Military - See It On A Postcard
5 comments:
Stamps are helping keep history alive!
Superb stamps! I like them. Great post.
An interesting lesson of a part of history I hadn't known before! We in the US barely get lessons on our own history, let alone other country's.
Thank you for sharing the history! Wow.
The war does not seem so hard on these illustrations...
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