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I though I'd post this great book review on Andrew Robert's book "Waterloo: Napoleon's Last Gamble."
It was in the Economist, and anyone who knows the Economist knows that their writers have a rather unique sens of humour...this review is great for a good laugh...enjoy!
BEATING BONEY
Feb 10th 2005
Waterloo, to many, still represents England's finest
fighting moment.
Andrew Roberts's new book cannot resist rubbing French
noses in it
WALK into any major European art gallery and you are
likely to see
soldiers, cavalry and cannon spread across huge
canvases. In some, the
troops line out across the plain under the watchful
gaze of a general.
Others show the battle up close, often in a moment of
conspicuous
heroism--the capturing of a standard, say, or a cavalry
charge.
This genre dates from the period between the French
revolution and the
end of the Victorian era, but after that time it
suddenly disappears,
killed off by new, more scientific ways of writing
history and by
fundamental changes in how warfare was imagined. The
battles that
Tolstoy describes in "War and Peace", which was
published in the late
1860s, were neither tidy nor heroic. Even less so were
the muddied
struggles of the first world war. Treating them as if
they were
suddenly seemed naive.
Andrew Roberts's new book, "Waterloo: Napoleon's Last
Gamble", takes
the reader back to a war zone that resembles the big
paintings.
Although Mr Roberts does write about the difficulties
of battlefield
communications (the Duke of Wellington kept losing the
AIDES DE CAMP
whose job it was to convey his orders and ended up
relying on
passers-by), Napoleon and Wellington are definitely
directing the
picture, rather than sitting in the back row munching
popcorn. It is
also unashamedly grand. So much so that the soldiers
sometimes seem to
have been displaced from a 1950s Hollywood epic. Mr
Roberts has one
British general "shot through the right temple with the
words 'Charge!
Charge! Hurrah' upon his lips."
In some ways this is appropriate. When Napoleon faced
Wellington on
June 18th 1815, it certainly was a grand affair.
Wellington was at a
ball when the news came that Napoleon's troops were
moving, so several
officers fought in evening dress. The armies were vast.
There were
around 218,000 men in the field that day, more than
twice the number at
Blenheim a century earlier. More than 70,000 died or
were wounded.
The sense of occasion did not come from the fact that
the battle was "a
marker, a turning point, an epoch-making incident, a
directional
laser-beam of light from the past to the future," as
Amanda Foreman and
Lisa Jardine write in their somewhat over-wrought
introduction.
Waterloo was rather a chance for the "disturber of
world repose", as
the congress of Vienna had branded Napoleon, to put off
his reckoning
with France--which was tired of its revolution and
craved quiet--and
with the rest of Europe; and also to burnish his
immortality before
returning to jail.
The battle of Waterloo unfolded in five phases, which
Mr Roberts lays
out quite clearly. The early part of the day was taken
up with a French
advance on buildings held by English troops and their
allies, which had
to be taken before any attack on Wellington's main
defences could
begin. Then Napoleon launched his infantry on the
centre-left of
Wellington's line, followed by a cavalry charge on the
allied infantry,
which had formed into strong but brittle squares. The
defence was made
impassable at the end of the day when Prussian troops
arrived in large
numbers. Then the allied advance began, and it
continued until
nightfall, with Prussian cavalrymen lancing French
soldiers in the back
as they retreated.
Did Wellington outwit Napoleon,as well as winning the
battle? Some
19th-century French historians thought not, blaming the
ex-emperor's
defeat on fatigue, or on a mysterious ditch that is
supposed to have
swallowed up his cavalry. Mr Roberts has not time for
any of this. He
points out that Wellington chose his ground well.
Waterloo was narrower
than most Napoleonic battlefields, which ruled out the
kind of wide
flanking manoeuvre that had brought Napoleon success
before. A second
decisive factor was Napoleon's reluctance to deploy his
Imperial Guard
at a moment when they might have turned the battle,
preferring to
preserve them until the fighting was almost over.
Mr Roberts is very adept at entertainment, and has made
a good career
as an after-dinner speaker. That may be one reason why
his book sounds
so wildly partisan. At the end of the battle, when
Napoleon's last
troops are being mangled by artillery, Mr Roberts
writes that "the
carnage was terrific".
Add attitude to a grandiloquent style--"Shakespeare
would easily have
recognised the role that hubris and arrogance played in
Napoleon's
downfall," Mr Roberts announces early on--and you begin
to have the
tiresome impression that the target reader is a retired
brigadier in
the English shires who delights in using the pepper
grinder and a few
spoons to play out the moment when Anglo-allied forces
routed Boney.
Our brigadier may place the silverware just so, but the
other guests at
the table are more likely to remember him as rather
boorish and
overbearing.
By Andrew Roberts. HarperCollins; 144 pages; $21.95
HarperCollins; 143 pages; GBP12.99
It was in the Economist, and anyone who knows the Economist knows that their writers have a rather unique sens of humour...this review is great for a good laugh...enjoy!
BEATING BONEY
Feb 10th 2005
Waterloo, to many, still represents England's finest
fighting moment.
Andrew Roberts's new book cannot resist rubbing French
noses in it
WALK into any major European art gallery and you are
likely to see
soldiers, cavalry and cannon spread across huge
canvases. In some, the
troops line out across the plain under the watchful
gaze of a general.
Others show the battle up close, often in a moment of
conspicuous
heroism--the capturing of a standard, say, or a cavalry
charge.
This genre dates from the period between the French
revolution and the
end of the Victorian era, but after that time it
suddenly disappears,
killed off by new, more scientific ways of writing
history and by
fundamental changes in how warfare was imagined. The
battles that
Tolstoy describes in "War and Peace", which was
published in the late
1860s, were neither tidy nor heroic. Even less so were
the muddied
struggles of the first world war. Treating them as if
they were
suddenly seemed naive.
Andrew Roberts's new book, "Waterloo: Napoleon's Last
Gamble", takes
the reader back to a war zone that resembles the big
paintings.
Although Mr Roberts does write about the difficulties
of battlefield
communications (the Duke of Wellington kept losing the
AIDES DE CAMP
whose job it was to convey his orders and ended up
relying on
passers-by), Napoleon and Wellington are definitely
directing the
picture, rather than sitting in the back row munching
popcorn. It is
also unashamedly grand. So much so that the soldiers
sometimes seem to
have been displaced from a 1950s Hollywood epic. Mr
Roberts has one
British general "shot through the right temple with the
words 'Charge!
Charge! Hurrah' upon his lips."
In some ways this is appropriate. When Napoleon faced
Wellington on
June 18th 1815, it certainly was a grand affair.
Wellington was at a
ball when the news came that Napoleon's troops were
moving, so several
officers fought in evening dress. The armies were vast.
There were
around 218,000 men in the field that day, more than
twice the number at
Blenheim a century earlier. More than 70,000 died or
were wounded.
The sense of occasion did not come from the fact that
the battle was "a
marker, a turning point, an epoch-making incident, a
directional
laser-beam of light from the past to the future," as
Amanda Foreman and
Lisa Jardine write in their somewhat over-wrought
introduction.
Waterloo was rather a chance for the "disturber of
world repose", as
the congress of Vienna had branded Napoleon, to put off
his reckoning
with France--which was tired of its revolution and
craved quiet--and
with the rest of Europe; and also to burnish his
immortality before
returning to jail.
The battle of Waterloo unfolded in five phases, which
Mr Roberts lays
out quite clearly. The early part of the day was taken
up with a French
advance on buildings held by English troops and their
allies, which had
to be taken before any attack on Wellington's main
defences could
begin. Then Napoleon launched his infantry on the
centre-left of
Wellington's line, followed by a cavalry charge on the
allied infantry,
which had formed into strong but brittle squares. The
defence was made
impassable at the end of the day when Prussian troops
arrived in large
numbers. Then the allied advance began, and it
continued until
nightfall, with Prussian cavalrymen lancing French
soldiers in the back
as they retreated.
Did Wellington outwit Napoleon,as well as winning the
battle? Some
19th-century French historians thought not, blaming the
ex-emperor's
defeat on fatigue, or on a mysterious ditch that is
supposed to have
swallowed up his cavalry. Mr Roberts has not time for
any of this. He
points out that Wellington chose his ground well.
Waterloo was narrower
than most Napoleonic battlefields, which ruled out the
kind of wide
flanking manoeuvre that had brought Napoleon success
before. A second
decisive factor was Napoleon's reluctance to deploy his
Imperial Guard
at a moment when they might have turned the battle,
preferring to
preserve them until the fighting was almost over.
Mr Roberts is very adept at entertainment, and has made
a good career
as an after-dinner speaker. That may be one reason why
his book sounds
so wildly partisan. At the end of the battle, when
Napoleon's last
troops are being mangled by artillery, Mr Roberts
writes that "the
carnage was terrific".
Add attitude to a grandiloquent style--"Shakespeare
would easily have
recognised the role that hubris and arrogance played in
Napoleon's
downfall," Mr Roberts announces early on--and you begin
to have the
tiresome impression that the target reader is a retired
brigadier in
the English shires who delights in using the pepper
grinder and a few
spoons to play out the moment when Anglo-allied forces
routed Boney.
Our brigadier may place the silverware just so, but the
other guests at
the table are more likely to remember him as rather
boorish and
overbearing.
By Andrew Roberts. HarperCollins; 144 pages; $21.95
HarperCollins; 143 pages; GBP12.99
