Each issue of PA contains notes from Old Duffer, a pseudonym protecting one of the finest military minds of the century who has served in the Cavalry. (CHV: So by normal standards he is none too bright).
Cambridge Atlas Of Warfare (Renaissance to Revolution 1492-1792) (Jeremy Black for CUP)
There are a lot of atlases around with dull maps and disconnected photographs. This volume is not one. It considers a whole range of topics (mostly Eurocentric but not exclusively) and in good detail. It will not be sufficient for a major design project but is excellent at joining together the edges of combats. So much of this period involved multi-front wars that at times we need to be reminded of how they inter-related. This is done very well, as well as showing one the range of campaigns. So often a year produces a couple of minor movements on the Rhine, and then in others entire armies go walk-about. A lot of good stuff for designers.
The Pursuit of Victory (Brian Bond for OUP)
A very gentle stroll through the issue of turning victory on the field into victory in ending wars. We start out in the Age of Reason where decisive battles (in terms of killed) do not translate into victory at the conference table. Look at how many times Frederick had to beat the Austrians in the early Silesian Wars before they sued for peace (and more often so they could go and fight the French or Spanish). In the Seven Years War all parties showed a total refusal to respond to military defeat with political defeat. This even in an era where there were sufficient small states to be used as grist to the diplomatic wheel. (After 1870 there were no pawns left).
Napoleon did knock his enemies out by battle but was then unwilling to accept political norms and so unravelled the political structure that might have given him the decisive result. Instead he espouses the principle of Charles XII in Johnson's poem "Think nothing gained till naught remain". Of course in this single-minded insanity he is matched by the British Government.
Just when one was ready to accept that battles were decisive only in attritional terms along came the "quick" victories of Bismarck. Here the skill of that very great German is made manifest. Bond points out that to achieve victory one must first beat the enemy militarily, then persuade him giving in is a Good Thing and finally have a statesman at hand who spots the moment to achieve the peace. The devils of the Third Reich were never going to survive a peace (other than one dictated in 1940) and thus had little to gain from giving in, although the 1943 Russian-German negotiations sound worrying. Bismarck managed to give the Austrians (and almost the French) a golden bridge over which to escape.
Could a statesman have translated victories in the field in World War One and Two into a peace? Bond notes that just at the point when the Allies were the nearest to negotiation (early 1918) the Germans had demonstrated shameful rapacity in the East with Brest-Litovsk. Once again the statesman had been lacking. The possibilities of Britain coughing a deal in 1940 are interesting, but once again so statesman existed. Bismarck remains triumphant as the man who stopped wars starting, and stopped them as soon afterwards as he could.
Bond covers a lot of ground (including cheekily pointing out that in 1922 the resurgent Poles saw at first hand decisive victory leading to be peace, you can always cut a deal with a Commie, whereas the West saw warfare as a best a draw, at worst defeat) without ever falling into stridency.
Big Boys Rules (Mark Urban for Faber and Faber)
This book could easily have been a "how the SAS are dead neat" book with lots of orders-of-battle training details and stories of daring-do, it isn't that. It could also have been a "Government all liars" report, and it isn't really that. It is a story of how anti-terrorist policy shifts back and forward in which the terrorists are but one of the problems ("Number nine on my list every morning" as one individual put it). Urban questions whether "ambush" is an effective answer to terrorists (as against arrests) - does it in fact encourage an increase of response. This sort of probing only occurs occasionally though in the narrative. Reading it reminded me so much of the issues that confronted the French in Algeria - at times both sides are busy fighting their own people (The IRA trying to find touts and the security forces fighting turf wars). Depressing but effective.
Lyautey and the French Conquest of Morocco (William Hoisington for MacMillan)
Douglas Porch excited an entire generation with his Conquest of Morocco this is a much quieter scholarly book that goes beyond the battles of the early years and into the period before the Rif wars of Abd-el-Kadr. So one can just as equally be reading about the appointment of caids as the marches of Charles Mangin. Now this the reality of colonialism, but it is not what wargamers want. Excellent maps help a lot, but the tale does lack much panache. It does, however, develop a much tighter chronological narrative than Porch. One for the keen colon only.
The French Revolutionary Wars (TCW Blanning for Arnold)
One of the Modern Wars series this is an excellent introduction for those of you who, like me, cannot remember how we got into the Revolution in the period and see it from the vantage point of the Napoleonic Wars. Here we see the course of the Revolution being channelled by war and the threat of war. The survival of France is not, thinks Blanning, the result of heroic French masses hurling back effete lackeys. He argues that in most cases numbers told, and that on this basis Carnot is more important than the generals. He does see a number of vital features. Austria and Prussia had Poland to devour. They hated each other (as Central European rivals) much more than the Western European French. All the major states had the opportunity to plunder smaller ones (so Austria got Salzburg and Venetia in a swap for Lombardy and Tuscany). Finally, no single commander arose to mass the armies of the counter-revolution, so they frittered away in small actions. The sort of tunnel vision generated by games like Empires in Arms where hindsight is a curse, is no where to be seen. Blanning also makes some interesting points about the collapse of France as a naval power, and the Spanish victories against the Revolutionaries. Jolly good stuff.
The War Of American Independence 1775-1783 (Stephen Conway for Edward Arnold)
Was the American War the first modern war? It jolly well better be if you are getting published in a series on Modern Wars. I cannot say I was persuaded completely but this is a good general history for those of us who have been playing We The People. Conway seeks to demonstrate the peculiarity of the war. He then takes us through the protagonists in the widest sense including the Spanish, Dutch and French who he sees as just as important as the rebels in the States. He divides up military operations in America into 1775-77 and 1777-83. The English operations come over as being misconceived and mishandled, the considerations of raising loyalists and then protecting them being very poorly handled. The early English advantages of numbers and skill seem to last hardly at all with the marauding of the British Army being a splendid recruiter for the rebels. What a relief to go off to India, Africa, the West Indies and Europe to have a decent war with gentlemen (including some surprisingly effective Spaniards). Conway does a valuable commentary on the effect of the war on Britain and America and a very good section on diplomacy (as sad a selection of initiatives as I have seen from Algeria to Ulster). An interesting book, if one that takes the view the Brits never really had the same rule-book as the US. Is We The People accurate? Not on the basis of this book, far too tidy and far too americanocentric.
Imperial Warrior (Lawrence James for Weidenfield & Nicolson)
A life of "Bull" Allenby by an author with a specialism in the Empire, what could be more enchanting? The Bull has always interested me as an attacking British general, a cavalryman built in the mould (almost to the inch) of my Vasey grandfather, and with a vicious tongue that reminds me of mine own good self. Surely something to learn here. Indeed, the plot thickens (and so do the accents) when we discover that on the Western Front the Bull was exactly the sort of shocking old blimp that wargamers (that natural warrior elite) sneer at. Lots of bodies - plenty more where they came from - Commander Cockroach to a T! Then he gets hoofed out to Palestine, and wins big in a mobile war involving air strafing of retreating Turks. Not quite what the Ted Raicer Big Book of World War One might tell us. Lawrence James begins to press back the edges of the enigma but ultimately, I think, he fails; he poses exactly the sorts of interesting question for which I bought the book to read interesting answers. Out in South Africa as a colonel the Bull was certainly willing to fit in with the enormous changes in techniques and style which the army had to undertake (similar in style to those of the American War). On the Western Front he seems to have believed that absolute devotion to French and Haig would bring victory or stave off being stellenbosched. In the course of this he was extremely rude, unpleasant and unfair. The fact that he know it is, perhaps, not enough. This was clearly a complex general but so were others - Daddy Plumer and Smith-Dorrien. This book will not solve anything (perhaps just as the Bull intended).
Elizabeth's Irish Wars: (Cyril Falls reprinted by Constable)
Well written and very analytical book that covers the wars of Elizabeth's reign as narrative military history. Ireland is a small place but its history reads like something from Caesar's Gallic Wars, a cattle-raising warrior society in which a Somali could feel at home, meeting the arable farming Brits with their armies raised and "conducted" to the wars from far away. Indeed throughout the book I felt it could have been India rather than Ireland. The same lack of a national identity, perhaps because enough clan chiefs remained to ensure it did not exist and religion was not yet the issue it was to become. Viceroys come and go (always ill) and chiefs rise and fall preying on their neighbours. There are some great characters - if you like vicious gang-leaders (and most people do) - Sorley Boy MacDonald (a Scots import), Hugh O'Neill - The O'Neill - of Tyrone who blew it all before English pluck at Kinsale, Hugh Roe O'Donnell, Feagh McHugh O'Byrne (hero of "Carry me up to Carlow" for those of you who believe wars are won by singing in pubs) and the Protestant Anglo-Norman great feudatory the Earl of Ormonde. This is an Ireland before the Jacobean Plantations where Ulster is the least English of provinces. Both sides were brutal in a fashion that will remind you of the Balkans, and for much the same reasons. You humans have a lot to answer for, and as soon as the Mother Ship returns this child is burning parsecs.
Armies and Warfare in the Middle Ages: (Michael Prestwich)
Something rustling in the Medieval publishing shrubbery with lots of new books. This one is subtitled "The English Experience" (I think I have one of their CDs somewhere) and it sticks to its title. Prestwich is a historian of mostly Edwardian interests, but he draws his examples widely and tends to draw them from across the period. The book is thematic rather than chronological so the chapter on mercenaries will look at Free Bands, Ribauds and Stephen's stipendiary knights. All the usual suspects are here (the man who turns up for muster with one arrow, shoots it and goes home claiming to have met his obligation for example) but there is a lot of other good stuff even if the statistics are not always as clearly laidout as they might be. Chapters cover; the nature of medieval warfare, the military elite, military obligation, rewards, infantry, mercenaries, command, strategy and intelligence, chivalry, the logistics of war, the navy, siege warfare, battle and whether this was the Military Revolution (of which Mr Eltis wrote last PA). Analysis sometimes does not always break through the statistics but there is plenty of both and I recommend the book.
The Rise And Fall Of Renaissance France (R.J.Knecht for Fontana)
R.J.Knecht? Sounds like a Montana law enforcement officer, but actually we have a rather old fashioned narrative history occasionally cross-attached by a chapter than will move with the topic rather than time. I found it a good read and very tempting on the game design front. We start of with the death of Louis XI and the minority of Charles VIII, this is a France in which Brittany is still independent, the English still hold Calais and Navarre is on both sides of the mountains. At peace, populous and rich the first nation of Europe then gets embroiled in Italy under Charles, Louis XII and Francois I. It is clear early on that these wars were profitable, and once hooked the old problems of honour arose. Henri II rounds out these kings, secure in their sacred role at the heart of the French nation, beginning to expand into Germany (the three Bishoprics) and surviving a number of dynastic weaknesses (Louis and Francis were both cousins of their predecessor). Then the Medici Boys ascend the throne and youth and Protestantism (that most excellent of movements) combine to destroy France. The Guise rise to power, the Montmorencies act against them. The Bourbon princes become Protestant. The result is a horrid microcosm of what the Thirty Years War became. The four kings that see out the book, Francois, Charles and the two Henris are men losing control (or trying to regain it). This is all well covered, but I found Knecht's views on Henri III as particularly interesting. He sees him not as some incompetent faggot, but a licentious man of considerable talents and some religious feelings (in the way only Catholics can combine licentiousness with religiosity) trapped between inexorable forces and with no resources. Good stuff.
The French Secret Services (Douglas Porch for Macmillan): A not very well-written book badly in need of an editor to force the author to explain himself better and stop his hubris overspilling the mark. Does have a very interesting explanation of why Dien Bien Phu was fought. An interesting subject but its author suffers from the same vices as his subject.
PALLAS ARMATA
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The Belgians at Waterloo (Demetrius Boulger)
Published in 1901 this book attempts to correct the anti-Belgian stance of Siborne Mark 1 (although Sibbers did later recant) and the ghastly Charles Oman who (you will remember) had already consigned the entire Middle Ages to the role of mindless thug (apart from those pansy boy Byzantines whose sexual peccadilloes might be expected to appeal to an Oxbridge man). [Ed: Good work Charles I think you managed to insult at least three groups there].
In presenting his argument Mr Boulger may well, for all I know, overplay his hand but the after-action reports from Chasse, Perponcher, and many others form a valuable base of source information. Since folks are still arguing about whether van Bylandt's men were on the forward slope at Waterloo or the reverse (as Craon shows them) we should pause to consider whether the actions of the Netherlands formations were that bad or whether we have a case of "giving a dog a bad name".
The late 19th century was replete with nationally biased historical scholarship much of it misguided (I mean they criticised the Blessed Norman Race - om om om). Certainly the Netherlands troops held out well at Quatre-Bras, and it must be admitted Chassé's boys did drive off some of the Garde (here Boulger is scrupulously careful - pointing out that most of the Garde were driven off by English units, which in no way weakens his case). Another splendid volume from Gareth Simon's imprimatur.
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© Copyright 1996 by Charles and Teresa Vasey.
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