Adventures In The Land of History
“solid and entertaining military history of the strategic side of the American Revolution,”
* Hardcover: 304 pages
* Publisher: Da Capo Press (26 Oct. 2017)
* Language: English
* ISBN-10: 0306824965
* https://www.amazon.co.uk/Strategy-Victory-Washington-American-Revolution/dp/0306824965
Continue reading “Book Review: The strategy of victory by Thomas Fleming.”
I first encountered Chaz Mena on Twitter, where he was rendering a kicking live-tweet about the siege of Pensacola. I’ve been interested in the Spanish side of the American Revolution for a few years now, so when I saw Chaz’ tweets and found out what he does, I gave a little cheer. From our interactions online, I think he’s a stand up guy who loves what he does, is always eager to help you out with a problem, learn and share, so it is a pleasure to host some great links that showcase what he does best, interpreting history. Everyone explores what I call Historyland in their own way. These in effect are Chaz Mena’s Adventures in Historyland. Continue reading “Chaz Mena’s Adventures in Historyland.”
Tsar Alexander I was dead to begin with, dead since 1 December in fact. Soldiers of the garrison of St Petersburg and the Imperial Guard had sworn allegiance to his brother Grand Duke Konstantin. However the Grand Duke had never wanted to be Tsar and abdicated in accordance with a secret manifesto signed by the dead emperor that transferred the succession. Into the gap stepped his younger brother Nicholas. Reluctantly at first because he didn’t know about the manifesto and then becasue he wouldn’t accept it.
Continue reading “A Winter’s Tale: The Last Stand of the Decembrists.”
Book ISBN 9781445647647
Book Format Hardback
pages 336 pages
Publication Date 15 Aug 2017
https://www.amberley-books.com/house-of-beaufort.html
The cover is attractive, and striking. Heraldry on a plain background is a winning combination. The pages are light and the text is relatively small. It has one 16 page section of 40 colour images with an average of 2 – 3 pictures per page, mostly of magnificent castles and buildings and one family tree.
As grand families go, the Beauforts are one of those clans that are always there but never quite steal the limelight. Alongside Plantagenets, Lancastrians, Yorkists, and Tudors they are the supporting character, the means to an end. Without the Beauforts there could be no Tudors.
Nathen Amin has seen this and realised that this family, whose standards are nevertheless prominent in many battles, and whose matriarchs and patriarchs are key players in history and legend, doesn’t often get much more than a background survey in much of medieval scholarship.
By writing this book he has been able to dig deeper, and shows us with an erudite and strong narrative, how the illegitimate son of John of Gaunt began a dynasty that eventually, via a roundabout route, captured the throne of England.
The book covers the latter end of the 14th century up into the late 15th century, the cast is large and changeable, huge and confusing political events loom large. Rebellions, Wars with France, and the big one for England, the Wars of the Roses.
The story is essentially underpinned by a family trying to maintain itself by a diehard defence of the House of Lancaster, and the struggle down to Margaret Beaufort to ensure the family stayed afloat.
For the King’s descended from the house of Lancaster, the Beaufort’s were their most natural allies. The line descended from a Royal bastard (adopt a Sean Bean accent if you will) flourished only so long as the house of Lancaster ruled, becoming Earls, Dukes and Cardinals due to their loyal support. This close connection saw them become inextricably intertwined with the great and good. This also made them prime targets of Yorkist aggression during the Wars of the Roses.
Today people are still obsessed by who the Royal Family is descended from and who they ally themselves with, adding a layer of significance to this examination of the vague vicissitudes of history. All of this is outlined and examined in this stellar biography of a medieval family, itself a window into the way dynastic politics worked in medieval times.
Questions like how strong was the Beaufort – Tudor claim that rescued the family, and the enemies of York from disaster? Is the character of the scheming cardinal Beaufort just another cliche dreamed up by Shakespeare?
Surprisingly but rather pleasingly, the book doesn’t go all the way to Bosworth, although it could. It stops rather naturally with Tewksbury and its grisly aftermath. Because it was here on the battlefield and on the executioners block that the House of Beaufort came to an end. Yet the purge failed to stamp out the spark of Lancastrian resistance held within the veins of Margaret Beaufort’s son.
Where Beaufort ends Tudor begins, and indeed there is a pleasing symmetry in the final words of the book where the author deftly ties up the rich artery of family and national history that he has tapped. It begins with the bastard son of a Duke, and ends with another, this time the illegitimate son of a Beaufort, the cousin to the future Tudor King.
I would hazard that no reader of 15th century English history will want to miss this book.
Josh.
Imprint: Pen & Sword Military
Pages: 202
ISBN: 9781473866805
Published: 12th June 2017
https://www.pen-and-sword.co.uk/Valentine-Bakers-Heroic-Stand-At-Tashkessen-1877-Hardback/p/13481
In 1880 there were probably two popular military hero’s in Britain, Chinese Gordon and Valentine Baker, both would die associated with the epithet “Pasha” after their names, and both would die in North Africa. Continue reading “Book Review: Valentine Baker’s Heroic Stand and Tashkessen 1877. Frank Jastrzembski.”
Author: Mark Lardas
Illustrator: Adam Hook
Short code: CAM 314
Publication Date: 19 Oct 2017
https://ospreypublishing.com/nashville-1864
This is an efficient, fairly standard appraisal of a neglected part of a famous conflict, replete with the mechanics of campaigning, sprinkled with battles rather than being dominated by them. There are interesting photographs throughout. Maps and extensive orders of battle, the main ORBAT section taking up 6 pages. The main battles are covered, as are the main raids. Highlighting a vast selection of unsung hero’s. Most notably the northern officers, who are for the most part all neglected today. All accompanied by some mesmerising original artwork from Adam Hook.
The American Civil War is a fertile ground for examining campaigns proper, instead of just the way battles were fought. It can be said that Battles are small campaigns and campaigns are large battles, in that a campaign is an extended engagement of which general actions form only the terminus or a punctuation. Indeed some campaigns flow effortlessly into field battles without much interruption.
The American civil war is also instructive to the military student in the use of cavalry in the post Napoleonic 19th century. Indeed it shows how indispensable cavalry could be in a wider realm. Here, though they were rarely effective on the field, commanders would rest their plans sometimes entirely on having strong cavalry forces to scout, screen and raid. This is dramatically put on show in this campaign.
John Bell Hood’s attempt on Nashville in 1864 was the last gasp of the Army of the Tennessee, and some think the last gasp of the Confederacy. It saw a bewildering series of engagements and manoeuvres as the battered western army of the South slowly wore itself out to the point that when Union commander George Thomas attacked the Confederates were in no fit state to resist.
The importance of this campaign lies in the “what if”. The author suggests this could have been a game changer for the confederacy if they’d won. Personally I don’t see allot of room for that eventuality in the way it turned out, as General Hood proved unable to move fast enough or with enough success or secrecy to secure his early objectives. Allatoona Pass being a notable example. Nevertheless if for a moment we imagine that Hood did everything right and his opponents did everything wrong, it still wouldn’t have changed the outcome, not alone. However if a victory at Nashville created the opportunity for forces in the east to land a decisive blow, forcing Grant and Sherman out of the south then Lincoln would probably not have survived politically and the war would likely have ended on a matter of terms. You see how many “what if’s” such a scenario requires.
The narrative here isn’t terribly polished, with allot of unnecessary repetition in terms of names and places. It’s also a little light on the use of contemporary quotes, unlike other Osprey titles nowadays, which a replete with short excerpts, this one, although highlighting a particularly interesting source only really uses quotes in a few places.
Adam Hook is a long time Osprey illustrator, his exciting, neat style is well suited to colourful uniforms and panoramas. I always appreciated his work in the books about warfare in America. Of special note are his paintings in the Saratoga campaign book. Recently he’s been illustrating allot of Tactical books, he’s very good at doing birds eye view, mini figure battles. You get to see this here in the painting of the Battle of Franklin, which works a little like an extra map. My favourite, and the illustration that really mesmerised me was the painting of J.B. Forrest retreating from Johnsonville. Painting scenes in the dark is notoriously hard, but Hook has pulled it off brilliantly, capturing a proper moment as union supplies burn like a wild fire over the horizon. That lividly burning cloud, lit by the fires below, helps tell the story.
In sum this is a very efficient and enlightening read, that shines in its effective coverage of a campaign, and the mechanics of campaigning rather than a discussion of a series of battles, with some super illustrations.
Josh.
The Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars that spanned more than two decades are rightly famous for the epic battles that helped to decide the fate of a continent; Valmy, Waterloo, Trafalgar, Austerlitz, and Borodino amongst many others. But what is less well known are the machinations of countless traitors, spies and confidential agents that did as much to shape the progress of the war as any general or admiral. With almost constant political turmoil, especially in the early years of the conflict, France always had a ready supply of disgruntled former generals or ministers with axes to grind that were all too receptive to the approaches of foreign agents. Napoleon’s minister of police, Joseph Fouché and his foreign minister, Charles Talleyrand, both actively plotted against him on more than one occasion. Sometimes such men involved themselves in plots or conspiracies to protect their own positions and sometimes it was just for cold hard cash. Continue reading “The Commerce of Treachery: The Selling of Suriname, 1799. By Rob Griffith.”
This is the find of the week for me, something I’ve not seen before that I suddenly noticed adorning a book jacket. A view of Florence c1490, painted I hope by the anonymous gentlemen pictured in it. It’s amazing what art can do. Today I was feeling pretty humdrum, nothing much to stir the juices, then two or three hours ago I caught a glimpse of this and suddenly everything went into warp drive. This little post is the result.
Continue reading “A view of Florence and the nature of History.”
Paperback: 96 pages
Publisher: Osprey Publishing (30 Nov. 2017)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1472826809
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Shrewsbury-1403-Struggle-Fragile-Campaign/dp/1472826809
First of all I’m going to direct your attention to the author’s name. Dickon (of) Whitewood, could there be a better name for a medievalist? Dickon itself being a medieval nickname for Richard. Add to that the peerless skills of expert artist Graham Turner and I was already pleased with this campaign book before I read a word. Because they are short and highly illustrated, Osprey Books don’t need to be particularly well written to be good, they need only to convey concise, detailed information. But this conventionally formatted Osprey title has a distinctive feel for the time, inserting excellent quotes from contemporary sources, and retelling the history of the campaign through it’s primary sources in a logical and fresh way.
“Never” writes the author quoting the perhaps over-exuberant Dieuclares Chronicle “in the whole world was such a great host thought to have been destroyed in battle in the space of two hours”. Although comparatively neglected and unfamiliar as a pivotal battle nowadays in the 15th century this engagement was remembered as the greatest threat to royal power until the Wars of the Roses. Which of course means that this campaign represents the consolidation of the House of Lancaster on the throne, which indeed created the arena in which those later dynastic Wars were played out. Had things gone differently for the Royal side at Shrewsbury, the Wars for control of the throne later in the century might have included an entirely different cast
Certainly in terms of military and political significance this battle served as a potent punctuation mark in the history of medieval England. It altered the balance of power amongst the aristocracy of the realm and it solidified the massed use of long-bowmen, already proven in combat in Wales and Scotland, as a battle altering formula.
Pitting the powerful Percy family (an original family of King-Makers), allied with their arch foes the Douglas’, and attempting to join forces with the Welsh, agains King Henry IV, whom the Percy’s feared was attempting to undermine them. A sudden march south saw the Rebels gather large numbers to their banner, but an audacious royal advance caught them at Shrewsbury before they could unite their forces fully. What followed was a model of many 15th century battles to come. A dependence on bowmen and dismounted knights and a focus on capturing or killing the enemy leader would be a key part of both side’s strategy.
The battle was large, costly but comparatively short. Both commanders and their high ranking supporters were in the thick of the fighting, here Prince Henry (Future Henry V) was wounded by an arrow, requiring dangerous major surgery to remove the shaft and barb from his face, and here Hotspur died. In the marvellously rich language of medieval England the battle began with: “The notes of furie, the sounds of slaughter, the harmonie of hell: trumpettes, fifes, drumms, musicke sutable to the mirth at hand.” was there ever a more superb or poetic description of he beginning of a battle?
The fairly unassuming position it now holds in terms of general consciousness isn’t borne out by its medieval legacy, which was sufficient enough to be given room in one of Shakespeare’s, (albeit lesser known) plays. Notable for some dry wit on the part of the Earl of Douglas who when told tricky King Henry had many men wearing his coat of arms, replies that he will just have to slaughter the entire royal wardrobe then. Indeed it was a deadly day, the author quotes Walsingham in yet more pithy prose. “The place for arrows was not in the ground… for men fell on the King’s side as fast as leaves fall in autumn after the hoar frost.”
The power of the bow en masse was demonstrated with great effectiveness at this battle, but interestingly although it seems Hotspur’s Cheshire archers did inflict more damage than the King’s it was the Percy’s that surrendered the field.
All of the colour plates in this book are excellent, the one of the Earl of Douglas is perhaps akin to the one painted in the campaign book about Poitiers but Turner has interpreted the subject matter into three original and excellently detailed compositions. This book sheds light not only onto an important moment in the history of medieval Britain but also on the military background of Henry V. It will be a welcome addition to any medieval military shelf.
Josh.
As expected, Spain’s reaction to the unsanctioned Catalan vote for independence has been to rush to exert central authority and seems to be moving to repudiate the independence vote by removing the seditious government and holding new elections. Catalonia’s leaders, having successfully persuaded much of their state to throw in with their ideas has, in doing so, undemocratically excluded the rest of Spain from a crucial national decision, and have endangered the autonomy the Catalan people have enjoyed up to this point. Such is the risks entwined with the pursuit of liberty. Bear in mind, no matter what your politics today, that politically Catalonia was already part of the Crown of Aragon when Ferdinand married Isabella of Castile in 1469, the act that essentially unified Spain. Continue reading “Handle With Care, Revolution Inside.”
You must be logged in to post a comment.