The Emperor’s Last Victory
Book Review
by Dave Hollins
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Rothenberg, G:
When I first heard about this project, I had mixed feelings: I was disappointed as an author with Rothenberg’s stature would close off Wagram for a detailed bicentennial work, which some of us have been discussing. However, it seemed to be a breakthrough that a mainstream publisher was prepared to publish something on a campaign, which did not involve British troops and Waterloo. Still showing on the publisher’s website as 352pp and, from what I was told, an account of Wagram, with three introductory chapters on the front, it sounded like heady stuff. Rothenberg’s well-known Napoleon’s Great Adversary was published in 1982 and even when that was reprinted in 1995, this key campaign was only just starting to emerge from the shadows. Now as the rear fly cover of this book claims, this work was to be “the definitive account of one of the major conflicts of the Napoleonic wars, a battle, which changed the face not just of warfare, but of Europe itself”. Poignantly, the author died in April 2004, just as the text was going to the publishers. The output on 1809 has appeared in a rather unusual order – Jack Gill’s detailed work on the Confederation came too early, while Ian Castle’s Osprey Campaigns were published in reverse order. Now, we are promised a detailed account of the climactic en-gagement – in fact, we take a step back to look at the whole campaign in general. After various introductory and epitaph pieces, together with index, further reading and a single vague Wagram OB, the substantive text is down to less than 200 pages in a large print, which makes the total word count probably no more than 70,000 words. Wagram itself is covered in about 50 pages, as part of what is in fact, a general summary of the entire campaign, which relies rather heavily on recent literature -– the only new material I could see was a few bits from Hoen’s essay on Wagram in das Kriegsjahr in Einzeldarstellungen (1906). In reality, this is an attempt to reach a wider readership and so, there is not much detail. However that target market has become used to a blood and glory approach to most of the history of the last two centuries, along the lines of Beavor’s Stalingrad or indeed, Cornwell’s fictional Sharpe. Regimental histories alone would have painted the kind of picture they prefer, but none are utilised. Specialists in this campaign will quickly see many errors of fact, ranging from Austrian brigade batteries being solely composed of 3pdr cannon through to Oudinot making is main attack on Wagram village on 6th July. There are also too many typos and places, where simple errors should have been picked up – Hohenzollern’s II Korps is under Hohenlohe. In marked contrast, the maps, inserted at the front, are very good and clear, which is an advance on most historical works, albeit none are large scale. Again looking for the wider market, there are a series of colour illustrations in the middle – mostly Generals with a few battle scenes, often based around the Emperor’s view. The fixation with Wagram has however led to some bizarre captions -- Moreau in republican uniform has suddenly become Archduke John and the famous picture of Charles with IR15’s flag at Aspern (also on the original front cover of Great Adversary), has become Charles directing IR15 on the evening of 5th July. The double reference to Archduke Louis and then Archduke Ludwig in the index only underlines that this should have been given a once-over by someone familiar with the campaign. The real failing is that this also represents a step backwards in the overview of the campaign –- Rothenberg mentions several times directly or by implication, the analysis in the works of Epstein and Arnold. Neither of these authors can read German and thus use Great Adversary for their Austrian information –- in effect Rothenberg is quoting himself from a quarter of a century ago, a position from which he has failed to move on. Despite the considerable work done on this campaign in the last ten years, Rothenberg has failed to move on and merely repeats the same tired old claims about the 1807 reaction and how the Austrian army had not even been able to emulate a less effective French army. While there is some value in Epstein’s views on the growing importance of artillery, this had begun back at Eylau really, but the corps/staff arrangements claims are based on the old approach. The Austrian author Rauchensteiner (a big fan of Hiller and a revisionist on Charles) clearly influences Rothenberg, but he illustrates the reality behind the supposed foisting of the offensive plan on the Archduke by Wimpffen during the night of 5th/6th July. Rothenberg says in one place that Napoleon ran a delegated corps system allowing initiative, then says elsewhere that Napoleon ran a centralised command -– precisely what he criticises Charles for. Rothenberg’s work is a readable, single volume summary of the whole campaign and will largely replace Petre’s rather tortuous version in that respect. It may thus appeal to general period enthusiasts, who just want a quick reference, but they may well wait for the paperback due in November 2005 through Cassell (like W&N, part of the Orion Publishing group, which is adopting this approach to increase the run and thus lower the unit price). However, this book does not add to the existing literature, even in terms of recent output. For the moment, Ian Castle’s account in Osprey Campaign 33: Aspern & Wagram 1809 remains the best account of this key battle and the detailed version has yet to be written. Book Review
Osprey Vanguard Books The Emperor’s Last Victory Letters from the Battle of Waterloo March of Death (Corunna 1809) Osprey: Wellington (Peninsula) Back to Table of Contents -- First Empire # 80 Back to First Empire List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 2004 by First Empire. This article appears in MagWeb.com (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other articles from military history and related magazines are available at http://www.magweb.com |