QI The Book of the Dead

leg on the floor. The pain caused made him increasingly difficult to deal with. Intractable differences both of character and political aspiration made the relationship with his deputy untenable. Van der Donck was stripped of public office. In quick succession, he lost his job, his right to practise law and his life. In a tragic irony, he was murdered in an Indian raid.
    What Stuyvesant lost was the colony. Ten years after van derDonck’s death, the Second Anglo-Dutch War broke out and four English warships sailed up the Hudson. The Dutch knew they had no chance: the West India Company either couldn’t or wouldn’t send troops to defend the colony properly. The battleweary Stuyvesant stood bravely at his post as New Netherland’s leading citizens – including his son – pleaded with him to give in. ‘I would much rather be carried out dead,’ he replied. When finally forced to accept the inevitable, he did so proudly, stumping out of Fort Amsterdam in full uniform with his Dutch troops behind him.
    It’s hard not to feel sorry for him. Without his cussedness and intelligence, the colony might have fallen to the English much sooner. When it did, it was well established enough for most of the colonists – including Stuyvesant and his family – to segue peacefully into life as New Yorkers. Little is known of Pieter Stuyvesant’s private life, but he did have one passion, inspired by his years in Curaçao. He collected tropical birds and by the time of his death in 1672 had several large aviaries full of them. It’s an odd thought that this tight-lipped old moralist, with his black-and-white view of the world, saw out his days surrounded by loud squawks and splashes of brilliant colour, on the farm that would one day become famous as the street of bums and drunks.

     
    It’s impossible to tell how much the loss of his leg changed Stuyvesant’s life. One of the central tenets of the modern approach to disability is that no one should be limited or defined by it. Stuyvesant, in his stoical Dutch way, would have assented to that. The career of another one-legged military man makes a dramatic contrast. General Antonio de López de Santa Anna (1794–1876) holds the unique distinction of being the only person to become head of the same nation state on eleven separate occasions, once for less than a fortnight. From 1833 to 1855, Mexico was unstable even by Mexican standards: the presidency changed hands thirty-six times. To carve out a political career in these unpromising conditions, Santa Anna had to use anything he could to gather popular support, including the shameless exploitation of his missing appendage.
    He was born into a respected Mexican Spanish family in the port of Veracruz and his initial loyalty was to the Spanish crown. He was an outstanding soldier but also a keen gambler, and as a young officer he was often in debt. During his first tour of duty in Texas he appropriated money from regimental funds, got caught and was sent back to headquarters in Veracruz as punishment. This allowed him to indulge his other passion, women. His military duties were not demanding and he soon acquired a reputation for whoring and for dalliances with other men’s wives.
    The first wife of his own was only fourteen when he married her. Too busy fighting to make the ceremony, he deputised his prospective father-in-law to stand in for him. His bride brought a dowry large enough for Santa Anna to buy a country estate but, not long afterwards, he made a personal appearance at another marriage ceremony in Texas, having persuaded one of his soldiers to dress up as a priest so he could bed a young woman who had agreed to sleep with him – but only if he married her.
    This flexible ruthlessness was to serve Santa Anna well in politics. At various points in his long career others claimed him as a liberal and a conservative, a monarchist and a republican, a liberator and a despot. In fact, he was a pragmatist. Political ideology didn’t excite him: what mattered was to be on thewinning side. His first major defection was in 1821. Now a colonel, Santa Anna was part of the Spanish force sent to crush the uprising of Agustín de Iturbide. Seeing that the tide was about to turn in the rebels’ favour, Santa Anna switched sides. Iturbide promoted him to the rank of brigadier general, and crowned himself Mexico’s first constitutional emperor. But the two men didn’t get on. According to one (entirely believable) rumour