Today’s word of the day, courtesy of The Dictionary Project, is debacle (/di ˈbɑ kəl/ or deɪ- or də- or – -ˈbæk əl/, showing the different acceptable pronunciations). A debacle is “a general breakup or dispersion; sudden downfall or rout; [or] a complete collapse or failure” (https://www.dictionary.com/browse/debacle). For example, “Most Americans seem to feel that no matter whether Trump beats Biden or Biden beats Trump, the 2024 election will be a debacle.”

But this definition, of which most of us are already familiar, is a figurative application of the literal meaning of the word: “a breaking up of ice in a river.: Compare embacle; a violent rush of waters or ice.”
So from the disaster that can accompany the breaking up of ice in a river, and the violent rush of water that follows, we get the modern sense of “a complete collapse.” This is an example of linguistic broadening or generalization.

According to etymonline, the word with the modern sense enters the English language in 1848 with the meaning of disaster because the broadening had already taken place in French: “from French débâcle ‘downfall, collapse, disaster’ (17c.), a figurative use, literally ‘breaking up (of ice on a river) in consequence of a rise in the water,’ extended to the violent flood that follows when the river ice melts in spring; from débâcler ‘to free,’ earlier desbacler ‘to unbar,’ from des– ‘off’ (see dis-) + bacler ‘to bar,’ from Vulgar Latin *bacculare, from Latin baculum ‘stick’ (see bacillus). The literal sense is attested in English from 1802, in geology, to explain the landscapes left by the ice ages. Figurative sense of ‘disaster’ was present in French before English borrowed the word” (https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=debacle).

On this date in 1367, Richard of Bordeaux was born to Edward, Prince of Wales, the Black Prince, and Joan of Kent, the most beautiful woman in England, according to the French chronicler Jean Froissart.

Edward, the son of Edward III, one of the longest reigning monarchs in English history, did not survive to inherit the kingdom from his father, dying in 1376. Richard’s eldest son had died around the age of six in 1370.  Parliament quickly named Richard the Prince of Wales, the designation for the heir to the English throne, and it was probably a good thing because the next year, in June of 1377, Edward III died after a 50-year reign. So Richard III became the King of England at 10.

For the next few years, England was run by a council who advised the young king, but they became less and less popular. In 1381, England experience the Peasants’ Revolt. The peasants, led by Wat Tyler, John Ball, and Jack Straw (I love those names—they sound made up). Richard met with Wat Tyler and agreed to the peasants’ demands, but eventually the revolt was quashed and the leaders were executed.

Richard was married twice. His first wife, Anne of Bohemia, whom he married in 1382 (yes, he was 15) died childless of the plague in 1394. The marriage was politically significant because Bohemia was seen as a potential ally against the French, with whom the English had been fighting in the 100 Years’ War. Richard negotiated a truce with the French in the 1396, a truce that included a marriage between Richard and the daughter of Charles VI, Isabella of Valois. Oddly, Richard was 29 and Isabella was 6 at the time of their wedding. The truce was popular in England, but Richard’s popularity would not last.

In 1397, Richard began making moves against some of the powerful elites in England. Richard had developed an absolutist notion of kingship, what is sometimes called “the divine right of kings,” the notion that since God has chosen and anointed Earthly kings, that no one can gainsay anything that those kings might do. But in his arrogance, he antagonized enough of the English aristocracy that eventually he was deposed by his cousin, Henry Bolingbroke, who because King Henry IV.

William Shakespeare’s Henriad begins with his Tragedy of Richard II. The play is not historically accurate in all of its details (Richard’s wife is far older than Isabella was at the time of Richard’s abdication), but Shakespeare does hit the highlights. It is one of my favorite Shakespeare plays, and my favorite among the histories. Richard is not very likeable at the beginning of the play, but once he has been deposed, he becomes more sympathetic. The play was probably composed at the point in Shakespeare’s career when he was writing poetry, and Richard II has some really beautiful poetry:

For God’s sake let us sit up on the ground
And tell sad stories about the death of kings:
How some have been depos’d, some slain in war,
Some haunted by the ghosts they have deposed,
Some poisoned by their wives, some sleeping kill’d,
All murthered – for within the hollow crown
That rounds the mortal temples of a king
Keeps Death his court, and there the antic sits,
Scoffing his state and grinning at his pomp,
Allowing him a breath, a little scene,
To monarchize, be fear’d, and kill with looks;
Infusing him with self and vain conceit,
As if this flesh which walls about our life
Were brass impregnable, and humour’d thus,
Comes at the last, and with a little pin
Bored through his castle wall, and farewell king!
Cover your heads, and mock not flesh and blood
With solemn reverence, throw away respect,
Tradition, form, and ceremonious duty;
For you have but mistook me all this while.
I live with bread like you, feel want,
Taste grief, need friends – subjected thus,
How can you say now to me, I am a king?

My students often disliked Richard because at times he expresses such self-pity, and because early in the play he is arrogant and unlikeable. But to me Richard comes into his own through his suffering. His suffering makes him eloquent.

Richard claims, at one point, that “Not all the water in the rough rude sea / Can wash the balm off an anointed king.” Although Richard is unsuccessful as a king, and really as a person, when the water breaks over him and washes the balm away, he rises, verbally, to confront the debacle that his life has become.

Today’s image is the Westminster Portrait of Richard II, done in the mid-1390s.