It's quite normal to review new books of interest to wargamers and other military history buffs; it's less usual to review a work that came out almost a hundred years ago, and hasn't been in print in any of our lifetimes. I shall make an exception at this point, for BATTLES OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY, by Archibald Forbes, G A Henty and others, Cassel & Co, 1896, is a fascinating body of literature which is of tremendous interest to anyone even slightly attracted to the wars of that period. What we have here is a series of chapters, each of about 8-20 pages, devoted to a particular battle or similar event This means, obviously, that the better known battles - Waterloo, Gettsyburg, Balaklava, etc - have been covered more thoroughly elsewhere; one wonders, anyway, whether the opinion of an Englishman of the 'nineties has anything very useful to say on the Battle of Shiloh! The value of BATTLES OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY lies instead in its treatment of obscure actions wholly forgotten by the mainstream of history. Anyone who wishes to know about "The Shargari Patrol" (Matabelel and 1893) or Gislikon (Switzerland 1847) or Duppel 1864 or the French campaign in Dahomez 1892 or Buenos Aires 1807 or the Janissary Revolt of 1801 or any number of obscure actions in the Carlist Wars/ Garbaldi's campaigns/Russian expansion into Turkestan, will find something of interest here. The writing is Victorian, with lots of heroric officers dying courageously and villainous oriental-types provoking clean-limbed Europeons into beating the living tar out of them for their own good (you understand!) Wonderful period illustrations of variable accuracy and enormous martial vigour punctuate the text, while the maps (which have also appeared in recent works in same cases) are of a very high standard indeed. Colonial enthusiasts like myself will thrill to stirring accounts of the Storming of the Nilt Forts (The Frontier 1891), the Italian defeat of the Dervishes at Agondat (1893) and the - count 'em- five separate chapters on the 1884-85 Sudan Campaigns. These are particularly enjoyable, with maps of every action. We also find out why the Zulus and Arabi Pasha needed to be crushed in the Interests "Christian Civilization," and are entertained by the thoughts of Major General T. Bland Strange on camels, lancers against impressionable natives, and how to keep the Czar's minions out of the Hindoo Kush. Great stuff! I remember BATTLES OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY from my school library, then it came in five or six slim volumes, whereas the copy I have had recently - interlibrary loan from Florida State University found for me by my local public library system - came in two fat tomes. A final volume, covering wars after initial publication in 1896, was issued in 1901 or thereabouts; it featured the Tirah campaign in India, The Sudan reconquest, the Spanish-American War and the first stages of the great Beer War. I'm hoping to rediscover that one too. Down to the Library gentalmen....... Back to MWAN #18 Table of Contents Back to MWAN List of Issues Back to Master Magazine List © Copyright 1985 Hal Thinglum This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com