Tactics and The Experience
of Battle in the
Age of Napoleon

Book Review

by Old Duffer

Rory Muir for Yale.

Napoleonic warfare is by far the most popular topic in the hobby (board and figures) and new books (academic and quasi-academic) come out in response to this demand. Yet for all this popularity the academic overview, seems to me, to be missing. Chandler certainly provides an overview of the operational methods in his book, but as part of a narrative history. Keegan moves us dramatically forward in The Face Of Battle with his chapter on the experience of warfare at Waterloo. There are mountains of books by the likes of Haythornthwaite that are chock full of information but a bit woozy on the analysis, drill fetishists can OD on Nafziger or Nosworthy, but we lack an equivalent to the excellent The Military Experience in the Age of Reason. Duffy managed to combine excellent analysis with a knowledge of the sources that allowed him to call a number of witnesses of wide-ranging experience. Rory Muir's new book attempts to be that book and I think he makes a good stab at it.

It is worth observing one limitation immediately (which Muir alerts us to early on); the book depends to a disproportionate amount on the evidence of British memoirists. Considering the weight of battles fought in the extended Napoleonic wars the most common experience should be (I guess) French fighting Austrians, but you will find nothing of the sort here. We have some visits to Borodino, Baron Thiebault exercises his mendacious ways at Austerlitz, but everything else seems to be the bleeding Peninsula or Waterloo. (I exaggerate but not by much). There is a real risk that one can pass from the military experience of the wars to the limited evolutionary cul-de-sac of British military methods (using a professional army, a thing long vanished in Europe after 1806). And if we must talk column and line we must consider the one area where the inevitable British victories came a pearler - the Americas. However, any book that spends time on minor actions in Canada when it should be visiting Leipzig, or Rivoli, or Jena is clearly drifting away from its topic. It is to such ends that the lack of evidence takes us. One does just wonder if the difficulty is with Rory Muir's linguistic skills, I do not notice (for example) Ermolov's memoirs which tell us so much about Austerlitz. However, I will leave it to the polyphones amongst you to cast the first stone.

The book opens with two excellent chapters on the eve of battle and the physical qualities of the battlefields themselves. The elements of combat are dealt with in four chapters and infantry, cavalry, artillery and light infantry. There is a lot of good stuff here, and much solid sense. For example, the comments on Bussaco show why this is less a test of column and line as of well-posted good troops defeating badly supported poor troops. Muir is a man who guards against the unreasoned passions of the gamers. He admits that bayonets were not much in evidence in the wound tables, but demonstrates that the breaking before the onset did involve the fear of the bayonet (and notes that many bayonet victims may be found under "dead"). No army (it seems, but the evidence is for the British) waited to meet the enemy's onslaught instead they volleyed and charged themselves. Once both sides were moving it was a game of 'chicken', if they stopped moving mutually it was a matter of musketry. Paddy Griffith noted the same in the ACW, human beings are remarkably similar over the years.

The Command and Control section has a lot of useful new ideas. One goes from the commander down to regimental level officers in examining their roles. Here the lack of real ancien regime evidence is devastating, the relationship of the English officer (many from families "tainted" by trade) with their men is unlikely to be similar to that of a Russian or Austrian officer. I would like to know how these units functioned, and I might as well read Tolstoy. The sections on Morale & Cohesion and Feelings & Attitudes are very informative.

Finally, two sections discuss what constituted Victory or Defeat (the model is of both sides draining "energy" until one collapses) and action after the battle (shades of le Colonel Chabert).

Some excellent bibliographical notes including some hobby publications complete a thundering good (if self-limiting) read.

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© Copyright 1998 by Charles and Teresa Vasey.
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