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In a struggle where more than 650,000 men perished over a period of a mere four years, on a fascinating stage where the last vestiges of feudalism clashed with the industrial revolution and modern respresentative democracy, there are bound to be lessons. Latest estimates put the tally at around 800,000 deaths caused by the war. A staggering figure given that the US at the time -1860- had only around 31 million inhabitants all together. Percentage wise this is more than France or Germany lost during the First World War. If so many people were willing to risk their lives in the most destructive of circumstances, for reasons that are not always clear to us today, this war must have seen some fierce characters, some rose to the occasion and others faltered miserably. What are are some lessons we can derive from these examples?A true leader takes the blameOne of the most inspirational leaders of the American Civil War was no doubt Robert E. Lee. He won a string of victories against opponents that often outnumbered him by two to one and had superior weaponry and logistics. He was not the most brilliant strategist however and his victories were costly. His management of the war’s biggest and most famous battle, Gettysburg, was very poor and based on deep feelings of contempt for the fighting qualities of his enemy. When his last attempt to win the battle -a grand charge over an open field where his men would be exposed to enfilade fire from well-positioned, long-range Union artillery- was bloodily repulsed, he immediately took all the blame. From the approximately 15,000 men that were assigned to make the charge, about half were lost. He did not make the most sound decisions during this battle, but it’s equally true that several of his key subordinates made vital mistakes as well. Instead of putting all the blame on them, he took full responsibility for the bloody defeat. This act held the army together, it had the paradoxical effect of maintaining the confidence of the soldiers had in him, and it inspired the army to fight an other day.So remember, if you go around blaming other people for what went wrong, they will subconsciously realize that you are not really in charge and your authority will suffer. If you want to be a leader, take full responsibility for whatever happens to your cause, army, company, business, community…Big egos, big failluresIf you are scared out of your wits to make a mistake and lose face, guess what… You will fail and lose face.We jump from the one extreme to the other extreme. If the war produced one man who could never admit to any mistake and heaped all the responsibility for setbacks on others, it has to be George B. McClellan. What makes his case extra sad, is that the man actually had a very bright head on his shoulders. He was a superb organizer of men and can in some ways be seen as the father of the Army of The Potomac, one of the most important Union armies. He was extremely meticulous, his men adored him, and he did come up with a very good plan to defeat his opponent. Fairly early in the war he devised an original plan to transport his massive host over sea and drop it on the flank of his enemy, where it was poised to take out the enemy’s capital at Richmond, Virginia. Unfortunately he had taken a hell of a lot of time to put the plan in motion, because he was always afraid he didn’t have enough men. Somehow he was struggling to achieve the impossible: he wanted to have 100 percent certainty that his army would prevail. Of course, in war nothing is certain, and it’s common knowledge that ‘no plan survives contact’, meaning that as soon as armies clash there’s the inevitable factor we tend to call ‘luck’ or ‘chance’ that is out of our control. McCellan’s huge ego could not allow for faillure, so he moved at a snail’s pace. Although he vastly outnumbered his oppponent he insisted on dragging cumbersome siege guns to the front lines to blast his way through. His opponent was smart enough to wait till the last minute and retreat before the siege guns were finally ready to open fire. In this way they deftly stalled for time, which allowed them to assemble more forces. McCellan meanwhile kept clamoring for more reinforcements, almost pestering his superiors with requests and accusations, telling everyone who wanted to listen that the authorities were doing everything they could to thwart him. Going so far as to say that he was the only one who could save the army, in spite of the foolish decisions of all the other idiots in charge. He had this to say about Abraham Lincoln: ‘The President is no more than a well-meaning baboon. I went to the White House directly after tea, where I found “The Original Gorilla”, about as intelligent as ever. What a specimen to be at the head of our affairs now.’His fear of faillure also led him to believe that his opponent vastly outnumbered him, whereas the complete opposite was true. In the end he did manage to come very close to the outskirts of his enemy’s capital. There his opponent, Robert E. Lee, deciced to attack. McClellan got scared and retreated, even though the damage was rather minimal and he had far more reserves than his enemy. His self-fulling prophecy dictated his actions and ultimately he retreated all the way back and abandoned his campaign.On a later occasion he even had the impossible stroke of luck that his enemy’s precise marching orders fell into his hands. He knew everything his outnumbered and outgunned opponent was going to do and he still failed to destroy his enemy. To his wife he wrote: ‘Those in whose judgment I rely tell me that I fought the battle splendidly and that it was a masterpiece of art.’Big egos, big embarassing faillures…You decide when you are defeatedEarly in the war general Nathan Bedford Forrest and his men were being -sort of- besieged in Fort Donelson, together with about 14,000 other soldiers. His commanders quickly lost all hope, ignoring opportunities to break out and defeat their enemy. Instead they started bickering over who should take care of the details of their surrender.Nathan Bedford Forrest understood the situation better than his superiors and took matters into his own hands. He deciced to at least keep his own little command out of the enemy’s prisons. He told his men: ‘Boys, these people are talking about surrendering, and I am going out of this place before they do or bust hell wide open.’ He took 700 men and somehow managed to slip them past the enemy’s lines, something his demoralized superiors weren’t even willing to consider.The lesson: you’re not defeated until you give up looking for opportunties to turn the tide.Is the elite in your society doing your thinking for you?The Confederacy -the eleven states that tried to break away from the United States to form their own nation- was dominated in thoughts and actions by its slave owning elite. Though only a minority of Southern whites owned slaves, the vast majority of Southern politicians owned slaves. Their political actions were of course influenced by their stake in the perpetuation and expansion into new territories of slavery. The white population heard and read a lot of rhetoric often obscuring this fact, and went to war for many different reasons. During the war, however, they quickly came to the realization that they were mainly fighting for the interests of their rich neighbours. The cry ‘A rich man’s war and a poor man’s fight’ became common. Especially after the new slave holding nation passed a law saying you didn’t have to fight if you happened to have 20 slaves back home. It turned out the elite moved their poorer neighbours into the abyss and wasn’t willing to pay the price to get them back out of it. In the end, around 258,000 people died for the perpetuation of a system that benefited only a tiny, fabulously wealthy elite. So always ask yourself when something major happens: Cui Bono? Who benefits? A variant of this is: Follow the Money. Why does the American political system spew forth pathologically lying demagogues such as Donald Trump and Hillary Rodham Clinton? Cui bono? Who benefits? Chances are it won’t be the unemployed, the working poor or the debt ridden students…Keep your eyes on the prize, be flexible about your approachAccording to some, Abraham Lincoln abolished slavery because he hated the inhumane institution, according to others he only abolished the war because it undermined his enemy’s war effort. The truth is that Abraham Lincoln was a very shrewd politician and a very complicated man who went through lots of evolutions throughout his life. He’s often painted as a racist and just a man of his times based on quotes where he says he does not think the black race equal to the white race. Imagine him saying the opposite, his political career would have ended then and there… He also said he was waging the war not to abolish slavery, but to keep the country together. If the nation fell apart by the actions of a minority he thought the country was headed for anarchy and chaos. It’s clear however that he did abhor slavery and that he did slowly move towards its abolition.He was shrewd enough to bide his time though. When early in the war one of his generals tried to abolish slavery in his district, Lincoln immediately prevented him from doing so and cancelled this attempt. He drew a storm of criticism for this from anti-slavery factions in the country. The truth is that at the time it was the best thing he could have done. Quite a few slaveholders were still loyal to the United States and if he had moved against slavery too early, they would have gone over to the other side, therefore bolstering the survival chances of slavery. When he did abolish slavery his timing was excellent. He did it right after a battle that ranks as a Union victory. Why? Because if he had done it when the war was going against him, his action would have been perceived as the action of a desperate man. The way in which he abolished slavery was also shrewd. His emancipation proclamation freed slaves only in the areas still under control of the Confederacy. He did not touch slavery in states still loyal to the Union or in areas that were under Union occupation, again to secure the support of loyal slaveholders. The proclamation made slaves run off. One in four left their masters. Slaves also realized they should support the Union -even though their was plenty of racism in non-slaveholding states as well- and 180,000 black soldiers ended up serving in Union ranks. Later in the war he made sure that slavery was eventually abolished throughout the entire country, even setting the stage to allow freed slaves to vote.The lesson: decide on your outcome, but be flexible about your approach.

That would be Henry III, who ruled the Kingdom of England from 1216 to 1272, which is 56 years.(No, it wasn’t George III because George was the King of Great Britain, not England).Here is the text of my Monarchs of England blog post (though it’s technically now a space) about Henry III.Henry III was born in 1207, the eldest son of King John and Isabella of Angoulême, his second wife, meaning unlike both Richard and John, he was groomed for the succession from birth. This was a good thing, because he became King at just 9 years old when John died, right in the middle of a major Baron’s rebellion.Fortunately for Henry and the Plantagenet cause, he would not have to lead his armies to glorious victory himself. John had appointed a council of 13 regents, or executors, to rule for him until he came of age. The most significant of these was a man named William Marshal, one of the most famous knights in England. Despite his being 70 years old, he threw himself into the war. For example, in 1217, he personally led the charge at the Battle of Lincoln, which ended up being a victory.Henry also enjoyed strong support from the Papacy. John had declared England a papal fiefdom, meaning it declared alliegance to the Pope, and Henry carried this on by swearing homage to the Pope at his coronation, as well as taking the cross. This entitled him to special protection from Rome, and the personal representative of the Pope in England, Guala Bicchieri, was fully intending to win the war and punish the rebels.Marshal was appointed the leader of the regency government, after being asked to lead by both Bicchieri and Ranulf of Chester, the grandson of the one who caused King Stephen so much pain.Meanwhile, Prince Louis controlled Westminster Abbey, but could not crown himself because both the church in England and in Rome backed Henry. The rebels had also been partially placated by the death of King John. Henry tried to encourage rebel barons to come back to his side by reissuing an edited Magna Carta, which had clauses unfavourable to the Papacy edited out, but this move did not work.Louis decided to gather reinforcements, and so went forth to France. In his absence, the French and English rebels began to bicker. Bicchieri also went as far as to proclaim the war against the rebels a full blown religious crusade, which prompted mass defections. The tide of war was swinging in Henry’s favour. When Louis returned, he split his forces, which led to the aforementioned Battle of Lincoln where the Royalists decisively defeated one of the Rebel prongs. However, the Royalist campaign stalled thereafter and only really got going again after they had negotiated a prisoner exchange.Louis meanwhile looked at his support, which was dropping off dramatically at home in France, and concluded that the war was lost. He negotiated terms with Cardinal Bicchieri, in which he renounced his claims to the throne. In return, any followers of his who had been excommunicated would have that lifted, and his followers would also get their land back. King Henry also had to promise to enforce Magna Carta as law. However, the settlement soon fell apart as it was felt it was too generous towards the Rebels. As a result, Louis sat in London with his remaining forces, and waited for reinforcements to arrive.Soon enough, reinforcements did arrive, in the form of a French fleet carrying extra soldiers, siege engines such as Trebuchets and supplies. However, unfortunately for the French, and their commander Eustace the Monk, they were intercepted by an English fleet, leading to the Battle of Sandwich where the French fleet was scattered. Eustace the Monk was captured. He tried to beg for his life and bribe the English sailors huge sums of money, but the English sailors hated him with a passion, so he was merely given the choice of where on the ship he would like to be executed.Louis entered into fresh negotiations at the news of Sandwich, and this time a deal was agreed in the Treaty of Lambeth. This was very similar to the earlier aborted treaty, except that the Rebel Clergy would still have their property confiscated. This was signed in September 1217, and the First Baron’s War came to an end.This did not mean that Henry’s troubles were over though. Many former rebels still routinely ignored whatever Henry told them to do, and even his allies staunchly defended their independence. Even William Marshal, who had won the Baron’s War, was having difficulty winning the peace. This was partly because the Royalist barons expected rewards for taking Henry’s side, rewards that Henry was not capable of giving. The government tried to reform the governance of the forest.However, a blow soon struck the Regency when William Marshall fell ill and died in 1219. This meant the government had to be changed up, and the new one revolved around three men: Pandulf, the new Papal Legate replacing Cardinal Bicchieri, Peter des Roches, and Hubert De Burgh. Their government soon came to rely on councils of the nobility for its authority. This was not helped by the fact that Des Roches and De Burgh did not like each other, and De Burgh succeeded in accusing Des Roches of treason and got him removed as the King’s guardian. Pandulf the Legate got recalled to Rome soon afterwards, which left De Burgh as the man who made the weather in Henry’s government.In 1220, Henry was crowned a second time; this was meant to reaffirm Royal Authority, and all the barons promised to give back the Royal castles and pay their debts, on pain of excommunication.In 1223, De Burgh and Henry moved into Wales to crush a rebellion there, and their forces meanwhile began to take back Royal castles. The effort ended in success when Henry managed to capture the last of his fortresses back at the 8 week long Siege of Bedford Castle.Meanwhile, The Prince Louis who had tried to grab the throne in the First Barons’ War had become the King of France, as King Louis VIII. He now invaded Poitou and Gascony, which were part of what remained of the Angevin Empire of Henry II and Richard. Poitou swiftly fell as the army there was underfunded and lacked local support, and it looked like Gascony would go the same way unless urgent action was taken. The Great Council approved a tax to raise an army, and this army soon managed to repel the French from Gascony. In return however, the Barons demanded that Henry had to reissue the Magna Carta and the Charter of the Forest, which he did.In 1227, Henry III finally assumed control of government himself, having had the business of ruling done for him by regents and councils up to this point. Hubert De Burgh found himself richly rewarded for his good work as Regent, and became the Earl of Kent.Henry’s first priority was getting his lands in France back, but the French had far more money, and thus military power, at their disposal than Henry did, and this advantage was only growing. The French king, Louis VIII, died, and was replaced by his son, Louis IX. The new King was in a precarious position, and faced opposition from barons who still had ties to England. In 1228,a group of these barons called upon Henry to invade. Henry’s plans progressed slowly,and when he did invade, in 1230, it was a costly disaster because Henry avoided battle with the French and instead half heartedly campaigned in Poitou for bit. He then retreated to Gascony, where he signed a truce with Louis and went home.The following year, Peter des Roches came back from the Crusade and set about removing de Burgh from power, which he did by presenting Henry with allegations that de Burgh had squandered Royal money and lands, and been responsible for riots against foreign clergy. The result was that Henry arrested de Burgh and locked him up in the Tower of London. Des Roches immediately started abusing his new power by stripping his opponents of their estates. These opponents, including William Marshal’s son Richard, were predictably unhappy about this and claimed that Henry was not protecting their rights, and so war broke out between supporters of Des Roches and supporters of Richard Marshal. Des Roches invaded Ireland and South Wales, while Richard allied himself with the Welsh and rose up in rebellion in England. Henry was now facing a crisis and he feared that the French would invade Brittany (where the truce was about to expire) while he wasn’t looking.It fell to the Archbishop of Canterbury, Edmund Rich, to intervene and put a stop to the whole sorry affair, which he did by getting Henry to accept the dismissal of des Roches. However, before peace could be signed, Richard Marshal died of wounds sustained in battle and his estates fell to his younger brother Gilbert Marshal. Eventually the peace was signed, and Henry was widely praised for swallowing his pride.Meanwhile however, the truce expired, and so Louis invaded Brittany as feared. He captured it in November 1234, because Henry could not send a very large force to assist the defenders. 1234 was also the year that Henry began to rule the Kingdom personally, rather than through senior ministers.Henry tried to unite his Kingdom peacefully, rather than having to deal with another Anarchy or Baron’s War. He adopted Edward the Confessor as his patron saint, hoping to emulate how he brought peace. He abided by the 1225 charters and used his authority leniently, in a bid to appease some of the more hostile barons.As an interesting sidenote, during the 1230s and 1240s a new term appeared to describe large gatherings of the Royal Court- Parliament.In 1235, Henry got married, to Eleanor of Provence, which would give him valuable alliances in the South of France. There was the small fact that Eleanor was only 12 years old at the time of the union, while Henry was 28. However, Henry was reputed to have taken a personal interest in setting up her household. They would have 5 children. There was Edward (the future Edward I Longshanks), born in 1239, Margaret in 1240, Beatrice in 1242, Edmund in 1245 and Katherine in 1253; however Katherine was a very sickly child and died in 1257. Eleanor also brought many relatives from Savoy to England, who were integrated into the aristocracy.In 1241, the Barons in France rebelled again, in Poitou, though this time against the King of France, not the King of England. They looked to Henry for support, but Henry lacked support and so had trouble raising an army. When he finally did and joined the rebels in 1242, the campaign was hesitant, and was not helped by one of the rebels switching sides back to King Louis. The whole debacle came to a head when Henry was encircled by the French at the Taillebourg. Henry’s brother Richard managed to persuade the French to delay their attack, which allowed Henry to escape to Bordeaux. However, many people were unhappy with him; Simon de Montfort, who had fought a successful rearguard action while the King escaped, told him he should be locked up. In the aftermath of the revolt, French power extended through the region, threatening the interests of the Lusignan family. Henry invited them to come to England, and so they did. Many of them were given estates on the Welsh Marches, where they helped to protect the frontiers of the realm. However, their presence in England did not go down well in some quarters.Henry around this time launched a military campaign against Wales, or more specifically against Dafydd ap Llywelyn, ruler of Gwynedd. Henry accepted Dafydd’s claim on Gwynedd itself, but Dafydd’s father Llywelyn the Great had conquered areas outside of Gwynedd, and Henry decided Dafydd shouldn’t own those bits. So he invaded in 1241, and soon forced Dafydd to give up his lands outside of Gwynedd and also his half-brother Gruffydd, who Henry carted off to the Tower of London with a view of using him against Dafydd. However, this plan went out of the window at around the same time Gruffydd himself did, falling to his death while trying to escape by climbing down a knotted bedsheet. This meant Dafydd could go on the offensive, and he managed to inflict several setbacks on the English. A truce was agreed under which Henry’s army withdrew in Autumn 1245, but Dafydd’s death effectively ended the truce.In Ireland, Henry undertook major land redistributions, giving land to his supporters to create buffer zones between his land and the native Irish lords. He gave Ireland to his son in 1254, on condition that it remained in the Crown’s hands.However, for all of Henry’s involvement across the British isles, affairs on the Continent had not gone well. By the late 1240s Henry was unable to take on Louis alone, and so he tried to use diplomatic means instead. To do this he made alliances with other European rulers to put military pressure on France, in particular Frederick II of the Holy Roman Empire.In 1248, Louis went off Crusading, having first obtained a promise from the Pope to protect his lands from Henry because he did not trust him. This did not work out too well for Louis; he got defeated at the Battle of Al Mansurah in 1250. Henry did not take part in this Crusade, but he soon announced his intentions for a separate Crusade of his own. He set about making arrangements for safe passage, hiring transports, and generally preparing. He never set off though, because of an inconvenient rebellion in Gascony in 1252, which was supported by Castille next door. Henry had to go to crush the rebellion in Gascony, and in this he was effective, even if the campaign was rather expensive. Alfonso of Castille was forced to make peace in 1254.In 1255, Henry also had to rescue the King of Scotland, Alexander III, who had been locked up in Edinburgh Castle by a rebellious noble. Henry remained at peace with Scotland throughout his reign, and he had a good relationship with Alexander.On his way back from Gascony, Henry met his nemesis Louis in person for the first time, and they actually got along and became friends. The adventure in Gascony had however been ruinously expensive, and all of Henry’s crusade money had been blown. This left him reliant on loans from his brother and from the Lusignans, who were still making themselves unpopular.Henry’s next adventure involved getting his son Edmund the Kingdom of Sicily, which was both wealthy and controlled by Frederick II. Henry was encouraged by Pope Innocent, who was a rival of Frederick’s, to send an army to take Sicily. The Pope even offered to contribute to paying for it. Henry wanted Sicily for other less Pope related reasons, because it was both a valuable prize for his son and as a useful base for Crusading. However, Innocent then died and was replaced by Pope Alexander IV. Alexander was less enthusiastic about the whole affair than his predecessor had been, was facing increasing military pressure from the Holy Roman Empire, and could not afford to fund Henry’s army. So he told Henry to pay him back the £90,000 that had been lent to him so far.Henry was having trouble with this, especially as the Pope still expected him to send the Army to sicily, and so he turned to Parliament for assistance. In this he was rejected in 1255, and multiple times thereafter. By 1257 Parliament had offered some assistance, but not enough, and to make matters worse the Pope was acting like a Holy Loan Shark and was threatening to excommunicate Henry. After Parliament once again told him to get stuffed he was forced to more unpopular means of raising money; he forced senior clergy to sign blank charters, agreeing to pay in effect unlimited sums of money. Through this method Henry raised £40,000. This irritated the English church, and bred resentment among local barons.Meanwhile, Henry decided to meddle in some elections, the elections in question being the ones held in the Holy Roman Empire for the new King of the Romans. His brother Richard stood, and after the German candidates failed to gain any ground Henry backed his brother and he won. There was also a possibility that Kings of the Romans could become the Holy Roman Emperor, which would greatly help Henry in his attempts to threaten France using military alliances.However, threatening France was not quite as necessary as it once had been, for after they had met and actually got along Henry and Louis were moving towards settling their disputes peacefully.Then, in 1258, revolution struck.Discontented with the influence the Lusignans held over the King, the methods Henry was using to raise money, as well as with Henry’s ability to rule, an alliance of seven English and Savoyard barons, supported by the queen, was formed. One of them, Roger Bigod, stormed Parliament and carried out a coup d’etat in August. Henry agreed to stop his personal rule and go back to ruling through a council, half of which would be chosen by the King and half by the Barons. However, Henry’s choices were comprised heavily of Lusignans.This did nothing to stop calls for reform, and soon Parliament had passed the Provisions of Oxford, which set up a smaller council of 15, which had the power to choose Justiciars, Chancellors, and Treasurors. This council was selected exclusively by the barons. In 1259, with the assistance of Edward, the Provisions of Westminster were passed which introduced other limits on major barons and local royal officials.That same year, Henry and Eleanor went to France, on a mission of peace, to settle the differences between Henry and Louis and sign a peace treaty. Under the terms of this treaty, Henry gave up his claims to the lands in Northern France but was confirmed as the rightful ruler of the lands in the South, which he had to give homage to Louis for. Henry also took the opportunity, away from his councils and barons, to start ruling independently again. He began to issue Royal Orders independently of the barons. He returned to England in 1260, where war was brewing.A disagreement had broken out between two of the barons, Richard de Clare on one side and Peter de Montfort on the other. De Montfort was also backed by Edward. Military action was only stopped by the intervention of Henry’s brother Richard, who brokered an agreement. Edward was reconciled to his father, and De Montfort was briefly put on trial, but this did not last long and he was part of a coalition that siezed control of the country back from the King; within a few months this had dissolved into chaos.Henry was also secretly negotiating with the Pope, Urban IV, to get him to release him from his oath he had made for the Provisions of Oxford. The Pope obliged,and in 1261 Henry announced he was free of his obligations from Oxford and promptly carried out a coup of his own. This united the barons against him and they began establishing their own system of control across the Country. The King began to raise an army comprised of foreign mercenaries in response. The Barons backed down once the threat of civil war became apparent. De Clare switched sides and De Montfort fled to France.However, his government soon proved short lived. He began to target political opposition and restart his Sicilian adventure, which alienated the barons. Fighting in Wales did not help matters. The Pope then reversed his earlier decision on the Provisions of Oxford and declared them as legitimate. Soon England was spiralling towards a Second Barons War.De Montfort came back to England, and had soon raised an army and was marching towards London. London itself rose up in revolt, and Henry and Eleanor were soon trapped in the Tower by the Rebels. Eleanor tried and failed to escape and soon they had both been captured by De Montfort. He kept up a pretence of a royal government but was really replacing it with one comprised of his supporters. Unfortunately for De Montfort however, the coalition of his supporters began to fragment and soon Henry had regained his freedom. He turned to Louis for help, and went to Paris to try and settle things. This resulted in Louis passing the Mise of Amiens, which condemned the Rebels and annulled the Provisions of Oxford. This led to the outbreak of the Second Barons war in 1264.Henry (having left Eleanor in France) led an army into the midlands before going South East to reoccupy the route to France. In this he was pursued by De Montfort and their armies finally met at the Battle of Lewes in May. The result was victory for De Montfort, and the capture of Henry, Edward, Richard and many others. Henry was forced to pardon the rebels and to uphold the Provisions of Oxford. However, Edward soon escaped and began raising an army, Eleanor was plotting an invasion with the support of Louis and there was disorder throughout the country. Edward soon came after De Montford, and caught him at the Battle of Evesham. Edward won, and De Montfort was killed. Henry was almost killed by Edward’s forces because he was wearing borrowed armour, before he was recognised and freed. The rebellion was now leaderless, but it still dragged on in a few places. There were some Rebels in the fort at Kenilworth, which was only captured after a long siege in 1266, and some resistance on the Isle of Ely was mopped up the following year. The Surrender of Ely in 1267 marked the end of the war.Henry, being truly magnanimous in victory, immediately ordered the land and property of the rebels to be siezed, prompting chaotic looting across England. This policy continued until the Papacy managed to convince him to calm down a bit, and so provision was made for the return of the land in the Dictum of Kenilworth, but only if the rebels paid massive fines. He also implemented a range of anti-semitic measures, influenced by Parliament, around this time. He put money into Westminster Abbey, and reburied Edward the Confessor there in 1269.Edward left for the Eighth Crusade in 1270, while Henry’s health began to wane. He wrote to Edward requesting him to come home, because there were fears of another rebellion, but Edward didn’t turn around and Henry recovered a bit. He announced yet again his intention to go Crusading, but he never regained his health.Henry III died on the 16th November 1272, probably with Eleanor next to him, and was buried in Westminster Abbey. He was succeeded by Edward, who became Edward I of England.