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| 184916410X
| 9781849164108
| 184916410X
| 3.62
| 550
| 2011
| Jan 01, 2011
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it was ok
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None
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Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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not set
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Nov 26, 2016
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Hardcover
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| 1400067057
| 9781400067053
| 1400067057
| 3.93
| 1,344
| Jun 01, 2010
| Jun 01, 2010
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it was amazing
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This may be the single greatest socio-political-economic history ever written. The only comparable book is "A Splendid Exchange," which has a far broa
This may be the single greatest socio-political-economic history ever written. The only comparable book is "A Splendid Exchange," which has a far broader scope yet, as my review indicates, is marred by an annoying trope of academia. A history of the Industrial Revolution, this book explains why the changes took place when and where they did, and the (forgive me) locomotive force that drove exponential growth rates, ending Malthusian nightmares. "The miracle of sustainable invention [is] the most powerful idea in the world." At bottom, William Rosen's answer is that the revolution was not Industrial, but Inventiveness. Or, as Alfred North Whitehead wrote, "the most important invention of the Industrial Revolution was invention itself." At the end of the book, the author even provides the Price Law formula: the number of individuals responsible for half of all inventions is equal to the square root of the number of total contributors. Thus, it takes a village to make a baker, and a town to make a flower mill, a point Adam Smith states less poetically in his 1776 "Wealth of Nations." More controversially, the book takes a swipe at explaining why "invention" (still) is dominated overwhelmingly by the Anglosphere. The author is neither a Whig (great man theory) nor a Marxist (scientific determinism) historian. Instead, he's a small "d" democrat, convinced that the ability to invent is latent in everyone, but it took the Anglophone Rule of Law to democratize the nature of invention. And that change was simple: 17th Century Britain's insistence that ideas were a kind of property, i.e., patents. Much of the book is a satisfying refresher of the great names: Newcomen, Watt, Smeaton, Arkwright and Stephenson--the Industrial Revolution runs essentially contemporaneous with the reign of George III. But the theoretical underpinnings are even more interesting. The United Provinces of the Netherlands was richer than England before 1700, but one reason for its fade in the global league tables was that patent laws protect ideas only within a country's own borders. Inventors in smaller nations "would have been silly" to patent any easily reverse-engineered product (such as steam engines); the lack of legal protection tended to shift investment into industries like dyes and chemicals, where trade secrets (properly managed) might work. But that allowed Britain literally to race ahead of Holland (the Third Anglo-Dutch War helped). China, by contrast, resembled Tudor England in granting legal monopolies ("letters patent") to court favorites, for a share of the booty. But to preserve the secrecy of specialized knowledge funding the country, the Qing Dynasty destroyed nearly every copy of China's relatively Westernized encyclopedia. France had neither disadvantage--but the Revolution, then Napoleon, set its inventors a generation behind Britain's. (Jacobins, remember, guillotined the chemist Antoine Lavoisier.) Compare all this with the trade-off inherent in an Anglosphere patent: in return for a limited-time monopoly, the inventor has to publicize fully his work, available to all--and for anyone to try inventing an improvement. A few other points struck me. Because Britain's ill-conceived Mercantile system lasted until the Corn Laws were repealed, colonies were NOT a source of raw materials for the mother-ship; instead, they were a stash of captive consumers. And there's a splendid chapter on those who historian E.J. Hobsbawm described as "engaging in collective bargaining by riot": "Luddites were on one side of a newly violent debate about…labor and property. Opposing them was the newfangled notion that IDEAS were property; the Luddites argued (with crowbars and torches) that their SKILLS were property.…[Their] thesis, which might be abbreviated as 'property equals labor plus skill' was less attractive than the idea that 'property equals labor plus ideas.' The victory of the latter was decided not by argument, but by economics: it produced more wealth, not just for individuals, but for an entire nation.…One lesson of the Luddite rebellion specifically, and the Industrial Revolution generally, is that maintaining the prosperity of those closed communities--their pride in workmanship as well as their economic well-being--can only be paid for by those outside the communities: by society at large." Great stuff! ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Oct 09, 2016
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Oct 14, 2016
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Jun 18, 2016
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Hardcover
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| 0007137508
| 9780007137503
| 0007137508
| 3.89
| 672
| 2002
| Feb 03, 2003
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liked it
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Very basic introduction to Wellington; almost a high school book. Not that it was poorly written, but that it was so shallow. Oh, there were the occas
Very basic introduction to Wellington; almost a high school book. Not that it was poorly written, but that it was so shallow. Oh, there were the occasional confusions, such as when Holmes quotes Wellington (we might as well call him that consistently; his list of titles takes a full page in the book) describing the siege of Burgos as "the worst scrape that ever I was in." Yet, though the author later dutifully quotes Wellington calling Waterloo as a "close run thing", there's nary a mention of which came closest to failure. My greatest disappointment with the book: I had some notion on his India campaigns, and a reasonably good feel for at least the timing, geography and opponents of the Peninsular campaign, and (at this point) easy familiarity with Waterloo, but knew nothing about his childhood, and little about his political career. I admit to being somewhat satisfied on the first. his father went bankrupt; Wellington had to withdraw from Eaton. And Wellington had his (then more successful)brother Arthur purchase an Army Commission, because he ran out options: "his wishes, if he had any, were in favour of a civilian life." But after that, Wellington (as was custom at the time) merely transferred from the books of regiment to regiment seeking promotion, not fighting, but taking a "real" job (often as an ADC to someone higher on the patronage chain). Holmes gives good discourse on late 18th century infantry tactics, and shows how the Army became more meretricious: by the height of the Napoleonic conflict, in 1810, only one fifth of Army commissions were bought. But, based on this book, it would seem that Wellington did no more than appear at the occasional parade drill, and pass the claret at the regimental mess. Holmes agrees with historian Andrew Roberts that "while it is possible to write a long book on Napoleon's early career, not much could be said of Arthur Wesley." His break came when transferred to India, where brother Arthur now was Governor-General. Wellington is given the 33rd regiment of Foot, leapfrogging other senior Colonels--because his brother wants a quasi-official representative, a situation causing substantial and lingering jealousy. The goal is to take Seringapatam, the stronghold of Tipoo, something Cornwallis flunked eight years before. Again, by virtue of his brother's prestige, Wellington also commands the Sepoy (Indian) troops and places his 33rd in the lead position of one side of a pincer attack. The 33rd was the first to arrive at Tipoo's outer defenses, and routed them. Both British armies now joined the siege of the the granite fort Seringapatam. After suffering a brief defeat when ordered to attack ground he had not been able to reconnoiter (a lesson never forgotten), the siege began in earnest, on different ground with better sited guns. It succeeded almost immediately, with fewer than 400 casualties among the attackers to between 8,000-9,000 dead among Tipoo's Mysore tribe. Wellington slept; his soldiers got wildly drunk, and the next day Wellington was named to garrison the fort, again over the head of the senior officer. Wellington restored order, flogging many (and hanging four) British soldiers for theft. This only convinced the local General that Wellington was just the man to take charge of the whole Mysore province, which he did through a 5 year-old puppet, the closest surviving descendent of the former Hindu rajahs. Wellington, vice puppet, ruled fairly, and had to kill another challenger for the province, which he did (though his forces were badly outnumbered, and short of supplies). This was my WTF? moment. The book never explained how, or why, Wellington became such a military tactician, leader, fair disciplinarian, and -- above all -- a pioneer in military logistics. Some talents, I grant you, may be innate. Others may be learned by observation. But the book makes it appear that all four were gifts from the gods. Wellington earned the (derisive) nickname "Sepoy General" from these exploits, but did his talents spring, unbidden, from the thigh of Zeus? Anyway, now a Major-General, he is assigned to pacify the Peshwa. Starting with a complete rece, and ensuring a secure supply chain, he did so. This this sparked a wider rebellion among three other provinces. Waiting for the natives to fire the first shot, and overcoming the nervousness of the East India Company, Wellington (with help from other British forces) attacked and defeated each in detail, another portent of a great battle to come. One of his most famous victories relied on his gaining the other side of a river, where the enemy lay. Although no crossing was known to exist, he lead his army parallel to the river until finding a place where two villages were just across the river from each other: they could not have been built so close "without some habitual means of communications", and a ford swiftly was found; the battle joined. The British won, despite a miscommunication in orders that led to needless deaths, and despite Wellington's being shot off his horse. The war still was on when, in 1804, Wellington asked for a transfer--he's tired, Ill and homesick. The real reason was brother Arthur's term as Governor-General was ending, and the regular army doubtlessly would take its revenge. So he returns, no longer penniless, but with £42,000 and a Knighthood. And (he later was supposed to have claimed) all knowledge about military matters as I ever had since. Life as a Major-General in London was less notorious -- aside from his famous meeting with Vice Admiral Nelson, the latter on his way to join the fleet at Trafalgar. A year later, Wellington commanded a division in the raid on the Danish Navy: he cleared the whole island of Zeeland of Danish regulars and militia, at a cost of only 6 killed and 115 wounded. But, his first efforts in Spain ended in ignominy, when The Convention of Cintra, nominally a surrender that he signed, allowed the French to take all their private property, arms and ships back to France. Only a solid Tory majority saw off that investigation, on top of fresh news of Sir John Moore's martyrdom during the otherwise miraculous evacuation onto Royal Navy vessels of besieged troops that only months before had thrust deep into Spain. Moore's death was Wellington's chance. He was appointed as senior officer in defense of Portugal, where (after his usual preparations) he drove the French from Mendellin and Talavera. This brought him a viscountcy, but as there was no time to consult over the title, his brother William chose Wellington, on the ground that there was a town called Welling not far from the town of Welleslie. The remainder of the Peninsular campaign is in some ways as tediously defensive as World War I, but: "Salamanca gives the lie to the suggestion that Wellington was simply a great defensive general. Maximillen Poy, who commanded a French division that day, thought that the battle: 'raises Lord Wellington's reputation almost to the level of Marlborough.'" Viatoria, of course, can be counted as a similar offensive triumph. It broke the French grip on Spain forever, and got Wellington a promotion to full General. Welling made it as far as Toulouse before Napoleon abdicated. While diplomats met in Vienna to dance, tryst, and write a peace treaty, Wellington becomes Britain's envoy to France, a position Napoleon thought unwise at time, as he would be expecting to be treated as equals by those he humbled. Although briefly enjoying the restored Salons of Mme de Staēl, and tryed to persuade the French to abolish the slave trade, it became clear Napoleon was right: assassination plots abounded. So Wellington went to Vienna to assist Castlereigh. Three months after arriving, Napoleon escaped from Elba, lands on France, and the Czar of all Russia placed his hand on Wellington's shoulder and said "Now it is up to you to save the world again." I propose to skip the book's account of Waterloo, both because I learned little new, and I've treated that battle extensively in other reviews. With this exception: when his Prussian aide Müffling asked whether he really expected Macdonell and 1500 of the Coldstream Guards to hold Hougoumont (a small farm key to his right flank), Wellington said "Ah' you don't know Macdonell. I've thrown Macdonell into it." For me, the last quarter of the book was the most interesting: Wellington as politician, a subject I had not studied. He was bull-headed: invited immediately to join the Tory government, he was piqued when Canning, not he, became Prime Minister. So he resigned as Commander in Chief and Master of Arms. Canning's death restored him to the Tory Cabinet, as Commander in Chief, and (following a crisis in the Crimea), he ascended to the top of the greasy pole--but only after promising the King he would not push for Catholic emancipation. Wellington, it is clear, became a reformist Tory—yet, although no one would compare him with Disraeli, Wellington was one of Disraeli's early heroes. He ran the government as he ran the army--a poor delegator, unwilling to listen to other opinions. Wellington started his term with the support only of the high Torys. He fell out with them when he sided with those favoring dissolution of the two most rotten boroughs in England. Needing support from the Whigs, he turned to championing Catholic emancipation. Wellington had to out-wait the King's opposition; the Royal Assent contained a postscript: "God knows what pain it costs me to write these words. G.R." Wellington still needed approval of the Lords, where a particularly obnoxious Ninth Earl of Winchilsea spoke for hours (the word "filibuster" was not born for another 25 years). Winchilsea accused Wellington of "desiring to infringe our liberties and introduce Popery into every department of the state." These then, literally, were fighting words, and Wellington demanded satisfaction. The duel was fought at dawn the next day: when Wellington turned, he saw Winchilsea's arm kept firmly at his side. Wellington aimed wide and shot, and Winchilsea fired into the air. Winchilsea's Second read a prepared statement, to which Wellington insisted the word "apology" be added, and with that, the affair of honor was done. For a Prime Minister to break the law and duel was remarkable. But it completely changed public opinion. The Lords began to swing behind emancipation. "[T]he mob, hooting Wellington a week before, now took to cheering him." Wellington created the embryo of the metropolitan police, usually credited to his protege Peel. He was out of power for a while, though not out of work, as lord-lieutenant of Hampshire. He also cleaned and re-made the Tower of London, of which he had been made Constable. In opposition, he and the other Tories fought Lord Gray's 1832 reform bill to a standstill in the Lords, at the cost of two mob scenes at his own home, two attempts at changes in government and finally -- threatened by a greater evil: mass creation of Whig peers to break the stalemate -- Wellington chose the lesser of two evils, and called off the hounds in the Lords, allowing the bill to pass. He lived long enough not just to see Victoria coronated, but to outlast the Whig Lord Melbourne, and become one of the young Queen's favorites. And, in one of his last acts in the Lords, he helped vote away the Corn Laws, so noxious to economics and to the British poor. So Holmes provides the FACTS allowing us to conclude that Wellington wasn't just the stiff, high Tory of history, but little of the reasoning. He died in 1852; the no longer young Queen Victoria was the first visitor to where he lay in state , but "never got beyond the centre of the hall, where her feelings quite overcame her, and whence she was led, weeping bitterly." Well over a million thronged the streets for the funeral; another 300,000 had seats in the stands. Holmes's best analysis comes nearly at his last page: "Wellington's death marked the passing of an age. He was born when the countryside dominated the town, industry bowed to agriculture, and Britain ruled North America. He was buried [next to Nelson--NOfP] amidst the smoke of busy railways in an accomplished industrial revolution, in a nation which ruled the centre of the greatest empire the world had ever seen, and had begun the long ascent to parliamentary democracy. He ranks, with the Duke of Marlborough, as one of the two greatest generals Britain produced." All good. But, as everyone knows, the British LOVED Nelson and Respected Wellington. The difference is crucial. But Holmes's book won't tell you why. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Jan 31, 2016
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Feb 02, 2016
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Jan 31, 2016
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Paperback
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| 1848879288
| 9781848879287
| 1848879288
| 3.85
| 132
| Jun 05, 2014
| Jan 01, 2014
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it was amazing
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Aussie Rick said it already. Only thing I would add is that the footnotes alone are worth the read.
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Notes are private!
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1
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Dec 14, 2014
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Dec 18, 2014
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Aug 10, 2014
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Hardcover
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| 006108686X
| 9780061086861
| 006108686X
| 4.35
| 2,423
| Aug 03, 2004
| Aug 09, 2005
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None
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Notes are private!
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0
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not set
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not set
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Jul 07, 2014
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Paperback
| |||||||||||||||
| 000753938X
| 9780007539383
| 000753938X
| 4.23
| 8,102
| Sep 11, 2014
| Sep 11, 2014
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really liked it
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Only buy the hardback edition--this is a gloriously handsome book with at least 50 color plates/maps. Don't even think of buying in electronic form. Su Only buy the hardback edition--this is a gloriously handsome book with at least 50 color plates/maps. Don't even think of buying in electronic form. Such "Saxon Tales" storytelling of a Napoleonic battle isn't for everyone--marred upon occasion by over-dramatic storytelling hardly necessary for the most consequential land battle of the first half of the 19th Century (and perhaps the entire Century). But it is a good basic introduction, with more maps than most modern works provide, and far more color (excuse me, colour) plates -- thirty three, not counting maps -- than similar works. Including this beauty, though Cornwell explains it is inaccurate: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia... My prior familiarity with Waterloo came in two or three bios of Napoleon. So I'll have to read another to see whether the pattycake approach obscured fact. For me, the key insight was Cornwell's "scissors, paper, stone" analogy ("rock, paper, scissors" in North America) to Napoleonic land warfare: cavalry could attack infantry, whose defense was the square, which was vulnerable to artillery--but to win, the timing of the attack had to be perfect. Napoleon's and Marshal Ney's wasn't. I have a feeling this book will annoy more knowledgeable readers (and I see Aussie Rick already found a factual error). But a great into, and a wonderful reference for those of us old enough to have bookcases. "They had expected a swift victory over the ragged armies of Revolutionary France, but instead they sparked a world war which saw both Washington and Moscow burned." "A few weeks before Waterloo [the Duke of Wellington] was walking in a Brussels park with Thomas Creevey, a British parliamentarian, who rather anxiously asked the Duke about the expected campaign. A red-coated British infantryman was staring at the park's statutes and the Duke pointed at the man. 'There', he said, 'there. It all depends upon that article whether we do the business or not. Give me enough of it, and I am sure." French officer Captain Pierre Cardon was summoned along with all the infantry regiment. The stood in two ranks "asking each other what was going on? What was there? In the end we were filled with worry. [Then, his Colonel appeared] holding in his hands, what? You would not guess in a hundred years. . . Our eagle, under which we had marched so many times to victory and which the brave Colonel had hidden inside the mattress of his bed. . . At the sight of the cherished standard cries of 'Vive l'Empereur' could be heard; soldiers and officers, all overwhelmed, wanted not only to see, but to embrace and touch it; this incident made every eye flow with tears of emotion… we have promised to die beneath our eagle for the country and Napoleon." "So Napoleon believed he could shove the Prussians further away, then switch his attack to the British. It was all going to plan and the Emperor would take breakfast in Brussels's Laeken Palace on Saturday morning. Except Ney had still not captured Quatre-Bras." "[T]he Emperor, alarmed, delays that attack until he can discover the identity of these newly arrived troops. They are his own men, but in the wrong place, so a messenger rides to d'Erlon ordering him to turn northwards and assault the Prussian flanks, but just then yet another courier arrives, this one from Narshal Ney, demanding that d'Erlon return to Quatre-Bras immediately. D'Erlon assumes that Ney is in desperate trouble and so he turns his Corps around and sets off a second time for Quatre-Bras. The Emperor has launched his great attack, but by the time he realizes d'Erlon is not engaged, the 1st Corps has vanished. Thus did those 22,000 men spend that Friday, marching between two battlefields and helping at neither. D'Erlon arrived at Quarte-Bras at sundown and his powerful Corps, which could have swung either the battle at Ligny or the fighting at Quatre-Bras, had achieved nothing. It is the French equivalent of the Grand Old Duke of York, except d'Erlon spend his day halfway between two fights, neither up nor down, and his prevarication denied Napoleon the crushing victory he expected." "[The Duke of Wellington] was not loved as Blücher was, nor worshipped like Napoleon, but he was respected. He could be sharply witty; long after the wars were over, some French officers pointedly turned their backs on him in Paris, for which rudeness a woman apologized. 'Don't worry, Madame,' the Duke said, 'I've seen their backs before.'" "At Ligny the Emperor had set a trap for Blücher, hoping that Ney or d'Erlon would fall like a thunderbolt on the Prussian right flank. The trap had failed. Blücher had hoped that Wellington would come to Ligny and so attack the French left flank, but that trap had also failed. Now a third trap was set. Wellington was the bait, Napoleon the intended victim and Blücher the executioner. It was dawn on Sunday, 18 June 1815," "Macdonell realized that the most important task was not to kill Legros [the French Sous-Lieutenant who axed-open the door to Hougoumont] and his companions, but to close the gate so that no more Frenchmen could enter. He led a small group of men past the intruders and together the forced the big gates shut, they heaved against the pressure from outside, some men shot through the slowly closing gap, and they ignored Legros's men who were fighting behind them. . . Wellington once remarked that closing the gates [at Hougoumont] was the decisive act of battle and, later, when an eccentric clergyman wanted to arrange an annuity for 'the bravest man at Waterloo' and requested the Duke to make such a difficult judgement, Wellington chose Macdonnell. Macdonnell, in turn, insisted on sharing the money with Sergeant James Graham, an Irishman who had been at his side in those decisive moments, the pair did receive the annuity for two years before the generous clergyman lost his money, but it is significant that Wellington, forced to make a decision, nominated Macdonnell and, by association, Graham." "Napoleon now faces a dilemma. He has Wellington's army in front of him, but he must have known that a heavy force of Prussians was approaching to his right. He will be greatly outnumbered, yet he still insisted that he had a good chance of winning the battle. 'This morning we had ninety chances of winning,' the Emperor told Soult, 'we still have sixty.'" "French cavalry threatened, French infantry was on the ridge's crest and Marshal Soult was surely justified in thinking that victory was imminent. Duthilt's men might have been in disorder, but there were more battalions stacked behind his and sheer weight of numbers would push the redcoats back. And those redcoats were in line, and infantry in line was red meat to cavalryman, as the cuirasses had already proved on the Hanoverians whose slaughtered bodies lay thick close to La Haie Sainte. The British battalions would have to form square and, while that would protect them from cavalry, it would make them horribly vulnerable to French infantry volleys. Scissors, paper, stone. And then the cavalry charged. Only it was the British cavalry." "[T]hat was the great disadvantage of the formation the French had chosen to use. A column made of successive battalions in line looked magnificent and, given the chance, might have spread into a formidable line to give devastating volley fire, but it would take a battalion in a three-rank line a lot of time to form square,and they would be hammered by the battalions in front and behind while they did. There was neither space nor time to form square. Major Frederick Clarke, who charged with the Scotland Greys, reckons the enemy was trying to form square, but 'the first and nearest square had not time to complete their formation, and the Greys charged through it.' So the British heavy cavalry drove into the panicking columns and [Louis] Canler tells what happened: ' A real carnage followed. Everyone was separated from his comrades and fought for his own life. Sabres and bayonets slashed at the shaking flesh for we were too close packed to use our firearms.' . . .There was no time to form square, so his unit was cut to ribbons." "At first Ordener probably thought Ney was doing the right thing because, as his horse breasted the British-Dutch ridge, he saw 'the enemy baggage and massed fugitives hurrying along the road to Brussels,' and he saw abandoned artillery through which the horsemen had passed 'like lightning,' but then he saw something else. British squares. The British were not running away. Wellington was not disengaging and trying to withdraw his forces. Yes there were men and wagons on the road, but most of the British-Dutch army was still on the ridge and they were ready to fight. . . So it was horsemen against Infantry, and every cavalryman must have known what Captain Duthilt had written, that 'it is difficult, if not impossible, for the best cavalry to break infantry who are formed in squares', so while at first the cavalrymen seemed to have pierced the British-Dutch line, instead they were faced with the worst obstacle a horseman could encounter. The wide plateau of the ridge top was packed with squares, at least twenty of them, in a rough chequer pattern so that if a horseman rode safely past one square he was immediately faced with another, and then encountered more beyond. And each square bristled with bayonets and spat musket fire." "'The best of all France possesses,' General Foy said, watching in amazement as the cavalry rode again and again to its doom. 'I saw their golden breastplates,' a French infantry officer said of the curassiers, 'they passed me by and I saw them no more.'" "Marshal Ney's cavalry assault had been brave and hopeless, hurling horses and men against immovable squares. Those squares could have been broken by artillery if Ney had managed to bring more guns close to the line, or he could have destroyed them with infantry. That was the scissors, paper and stone reality of Napoleonic warfare. If you could force an enemy to form a square you could bring a line of infantry against it and overwhelm it with musket fire, and very late in the afternoon Marshal Ney at last tried that tactic, ordering 8,000 infantry to attack the British squares. . . Their task was to deploy into line and then smother the British squares with musketry, but the British would only be in square if the cavalry threatened and the French cavalry was exhausted. They had charged again and again, they had shown extraordinary courage and too many of them were now dead on the hillside. There was no charge left in them." "British infantry firepower had again shown its effectiveness and again the line had overcome the column. Eight thousand men had been defeated in seconds, blasted off the ridge by concentrated musket volleys and shredded by canister. The survivors fled down that terrible slope that was slick with blood, thick with dead and dying horses, and with dead and wounded men. It was littered with breastplates discarded by unhorsed cuirassiers running for their lives, and with scabbards because many of the French cavalry had pointedly thrown away their sword scabbards to show that they would not sheathe their blades until they had victory." "Meanwhile, a furious argument was raging between Lieutenant Colonel von Reiche, one of von Zieten's staff officers, and Captain von Schnarhorst. Von Reiche wanted to obey the original orders and go to Wellington's assistance, despite the report of the Duke's defeat, but von Schnarhorst insisted that Blücher's new orders [to turn south and join the main Prussian body] must be obeyed. 'I pointed out to him', von Reiche said: ' that everything had been arranged with von Müffling, that Wellington counted on our arrival close to him, but von Schnarhorst did not want to listen to anything. He declared that I would be held responsible if I disobeyed Blücher's orders.'. . . The troops had paused while this argument had raged, but then General Steinmetz, who commanded the advance guard of von Zieten's column came galloping up, angry at the delay, and brusquely told von Reiche that Blücher's new orders would be obeyed. The column dutifully continued marching eastward, looking for a smaller lane that led south towards Plancenoit, but just then von Zieten himself appeared and the argument started all over again. Von Zieten listened and then took a brave decision. He would ignore Blücher's new orders and, believing von Müffling's assurance that the Duke was not in full retreat, he ordered his troops onto the British-Dutch ridge. The Prussian 1st Corps would join Wellington after all." "The Imperial Guard was trying to deploy into line, but once again, as had happened so many times in the Peninsula, they had left it too late. The Brigade of Guards outnumbered and overlapped them, the musket balls were coming in front and from the sides, and when they tried to spread into a line they were beaten back by those steady, relentless volleys. . . Raw, badly trained troops oft n opened fire at far too long a range and then had a tendency to shoot high, but not the Brigade of Guards. They were shooting at a range where a musket could hardly miss, and their enemy, if he wanted to reload, had to halt, and then the ranks behind pushed him on, and so the Chasseurs fell into confusion and still those relentless volleys struck them and more men died. They were obstructed now by their own dead and wounded, and the Bregade of Guards was still firing until Lieutenant-Colonel Alexander, Lord Saltoun, shouted them forward. . . 'Now's the time, my boys!', he shouted, and the Guarde leveled bayonets and charged. 'At that moment, Captain Reeve', another Peninsular veteran recalled, 'we charged them, they went to the right about and fled in all directions.'" "[Lieutenant Colonel Sir John Colborne] took the 52nd out of line. Half Colborne's men were Peninsula veterans, and they knew their business. Sir John marched his battalion forward, then wheeled it round so that his men faced the left flank of the Guard Chasseurs. . . They began firing volleys into the French flank so that the Imperial Guardsman were being attacked from their front and from their left. It was merciless. The Unbeaten were being killed by the Unbeatable. . . They did not just retreat, they broke. They had been beaten by British volleys and they fled that terrible musketry and when they fled so did the rest of the guard. And when they broke, so did the hopes of France." "Wellington rode back towards the centre of his line. Leeks had seen him just before the 52nd marched out of line to destroy and Emperor's dreams. The Duke's clothes, Leeke said, 'consisted of a blue sur tout coat, white kerseymere pantaloons, and Hessian boots. He wore a sword with a waist belt, but no sash.' The plain blue coat and black cocked hat made Wellington instantly recognizable to his men, and now, as the French began to flee, he watched from the ridge's centre fro a few moments. He saw an enemy in panic, a retreating enemy that was dissolving into chaos. He watched them, then was heard to mutter, 'In for a penny, in for a pound'. He took off his cocked hat and men say that just then a slanting ray of evening sunlight came through the clouds to illuminate him on the ridge he had defended all day. He waved the hat towards the enemy. He waved it three times, and it was a signal for the whole allied army to advance." "[It was about 10pm on June 21, in London when socialite Mrs Boehm 'walked up to the Prince, and asked whether it was his Royal Highness's pleasure that the ball should open. The first quadrille was in the act of forming, and the Prince was walking up to the dias on which his seat was placed, when I saw everyone without the slightest sense of decorum fishing to the windows, which had been left wide open because of the excessive sultriness of the weather. The music ceased and the dance was stopped; for we heard nothing but the vociferous shouts of an enormous mob, who had just entered the square, and were rushing by the side ota post-chaise and four, out of whose windows were hanging three nasty French eagles. In a second the door of the carriage was flung open, and, without waiting for the steps to be let down, out sprung Henry Percy -- such a dirty figure! with a flag in each hand, pushing aside every one who happened to be in his way, darting up stairs, into the ball-room, stepping hastily up to the Regent, dropping on to one knee, laying the flags at his feet, and pronouncing the words "Victory, Sir! Victory!" . . . Of course, one was glad to think one had beaten those horrid French, and all that sort of thing; but still, I shall always think it would have been far better if Henry Percy had waited quietly till the morning, instead of bursting in upon us, as he did, in such indecent haste.'" "The battle of Waterloo was an allied victory. That was how it was planned and that was how it turned out. Wellington would never have made his stand if he thought for one moment that the Prussians would let him down. Blücher would never have marched if he thought Wellington would cut and run. It is true that the Prussians arrived later than Wellington hoped, but that probably contributed to the battle's success. If Blücher's forces had arrived two or three hours earlier then Napoleon might have disengaged his army and retreated, but by the time that the Prussians intervened the French army was almost wholly committed to the fight and disengagement was impossible. The Emperor was not just defeated, he was routed." "An easier question to answer than 'who won the battle?' Is 'who lost the battle?', and the answer must be Napoleon. The Duke and Blücher both offered leadership, but Napoleon left the conduct of the battle to Marshal Ney, who, though braver than most men, did little more than hurl troops against the most skillful defensive general of the age. The French had the time and the men to break Wellington's line, but they failed, partly because the Duke defended so cleverly, and partly because the French never coordinated and all-arms assault on the allied line. They delayed the start of the battle on a day when Wellington was praying for time. They wasted men in a time-consuming assault that lasted much of the afternoon. And why Napoleon entrusted the battle's conduct to Ney is a mystery; Ney was certainly brave, but the Emperor damned him as 'too stupid to be able to succeed', so why rely on him? And, when the French did achieve their one great success, the capture of La Haie Sainte, which enabled them to occupy the forward slope of Wellington's ridge, the Emperor refused to reinforce the centre and so gave the Duke time to bring up his own reinforcements. Finally, when the Imperial Guard did attack, it was too few and too late, and by that time, the Prussians were on the French flank and threatening their rear." ...more |
Notes are private!
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Sep 19, 2014
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Sep 21, 2014
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May 18, 2014
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Hardcover
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| 0670025321
| 9780670025329
| 0670025321
| 4.23
| 24,302
| Oct 02, 2014
| Jan 01, 2014
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liked it
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Gushing bio--unusual for an Englishman. Roberts claims that newly available letters present a vastly more favorable portrait than previously available
Gushing bio--unusual for an Englishman. Roberts claims that newly available letters present a vastly more favorable portrait than previously available to scholars. "All too often historians have taken at face value the biographies written by people around Napoleon, whereas many of them were deeply compromised, to the point of being worthless unless co firmed by as second source." The problem is that although Roberts tries to be balanced, and points out the warts, his over-the-top admiration for his subject distorts the lens of otherwise excellent research. One example--Roberts extols Napoleon's re-created nobility: "Unlike anywhere else in Europe, a French family's noble simply lapsed if the next generation hadn't done enough to deserve its passing on." A paragraph later, however, he describes the new hierarchy -- "a complete reordering of the system" -- from top to bottom without placing the new peers. Instead, he digresses into a discussion of the exact mix of liberty, equality and fraternity the new scheme supplied. Similarly, Roberts's discussion on Napoleon and the Jews is muddled. On one page, he touts (reasonably enough) the Decree on Jews and Usury. A page later, Napoleon is upholding prosecutions of Jewish moneylenders, and the best Roberts can manage is that "Napoleon was personally prejudiced against Jews to much the same degree as the rest of his class and background." While the book is readable, the writing is not page turning. Lots of facts; snippets of stirring writing (the best of which is when Roberts called something "yet another example of the luck that [Napoleon] was starting to mistake for Fate."). So far, most interesting thing I've learned is that Napoleon's autobiography "Le Mémorial de Sainte-Hélène" was the bestseller of the 19th Century, topping "Uncle Tom's Cabin". In sum, Roberts is unparalleled as a researcher. But he doesn't provide the reader reasons why any particular piece of previously accepted Napoleonic legend should be rejected in favor of his new interpretation. And, although is writing is good enough, he's hardly a compelling read like a Ian Toll, Corrigan, Nicolson, Stephen Taylor or Donald Thomas; better than N.A.M. Rodger, however. Born in quasi-obscurity on Corsica, Napoleon (a native Italian and Corsican speaker) was trucked off to learn French, then to a military academy. Napoleon not only was an excellent student but -- ill-dressed and awkward, with plenty of time on his hands-- he read of heroes and conquerors past: Caesar, Alexander the Great, etc. Napoleon's fascination (for the non-French) is in part because he may have been history's most successful autodidact. For that reason alone, more bios, and more reading, are justified. "Napoleon represented the Enlightenment on horseback."… The ideas that underpin our modern world--meritocracy, equality before the law, property rights, religious toleration, modern secular education, sound finances and so on--were championed by Napoleon." "An astonishing number of his letters throughout his career refer to providing footwear for his troops." "One of the reasons why he maintained such a fluid campaign [in Italy] was that he had no resources for anything else." "'The strength of the army', he stated, 'like power in mechanics, is the product of multiplying the mass by the velocity." "Napoleon was capable of compartmentalizing his life, so that one set of concerns never spilled over into another -- probably a necessary attribute for any great statesman, but one he possessed to an extraordinary degree." "'Severe to the officers,' was his his stated mantra, 'kindly to the men.'" "'I have no doubt there will be lively criticism of the treaty I've just signed,' Napoleon wrote to Talleyrand the [day after signing the treaty of Campo Formio], but he argued that he only way to get a better deal was by going to war again and conquering 'two or three times more provinces than Austria. Was that possible? Yes. Probable? No' He sent Berthier and Monge to Paris with the treaty to expound its merits. They did such a good job, and so enthusiastic was the public enthusiasm [sic] for peace, that the Directory ratified it swiftly despite several of its members privately regretting the lack of republican solidarity shown to Venice. (It is said that when asked about the Venetian clauses, Napoleon explained 'I was playing vingt-et-un, and stopped at twenty.')" Napoleon's general orders for army behavior in Egypt: "'Every soldier who shall enter into the houses of the inhabitants to steal horses or camels shall be punished,' he instructed. He was particularly careful to give no cause for jihad. 'Do not contradict them,' he ordered his men with regard to Muslims. 'Deal with them as we dealt with the Jews and the Italians. Respect their muftis and imams as you respected rabbis and bishops. . .The Roman legions protected all religions. . . The people here treat their wives differently from us, but in all countries the man who commits rape is a monster.'" "Soldiers! You came to this country to save the inhabitants from barbarism, to bring civilization to the Orient and subtract this beautiful part of the world from the domination of England [sic--England was not running Egypt at the time]. From the top of those pyramids, forty centuries are contemplating you." The closest Napoleon came to being killed was in Israel, while crossing the Red Sea, as the tide came in: "[T]hey got lost as night fell, and wandered through the low lying marshy sea-shore as the tide rose: 'Soon we were bogged down to the bellies of our mounts, who were struggling and having great difficulty in pulling themselves free. . . It was nine at night and the tide had already risen three feet. We were in a terrible situation, when it was announced that a ford had been found. General Bonaparte was among the first to cross; guides were situated at various points to direct the rest. . . We were happy not to have to have shared the fate of the Pharaoh's soldiers.'" "Even if Acre had fallen, and the Druze Christians and Jews had all joined him, the logistics and demographics would not have permitted an invasion of either Turkey or India" "Long accused afterwards of deserting his men, in fact he was marching to the sound of the guns, for it was absurd to have France's best general stuck in a strategic sideshow in the Orient when France itself was under threat of invasion." "The greatest long-term achievements of Napoleon's Egyptian campaign were not military or strategic, but intellectual, cultural and artistic. The first volume of Vivant Denon's l'Égypte was published in 1809, it's title pag proclaiming that it was 'published by the order of His Majesty Emperor Napoleon the Great'. . .although not politically triumphalist, the multiple volumes of the Description de l'Égypte represent an apogee of French, indeed Napoleonic, civilization, and had a profound effect on the artistic, architectural, aesthetic and design sensibilities of Europe. . . Tragically, the Institut near Trahir Square in Cairo was burned down during the Arab Spring uprising on December 17, 2011, and almost all 192,000 books, journals, and other manuscripts -- including the only handwritten manuscript of Denon's Description de l'Égypt -- were destroyed. "he forgave Josephine totally, and never made allusion to her infidelity again, either to her or anyone else." "only two letters of his survive for the twenty-three days between his arrival in Paris on October 16 and the 18 Brumaire when the coup was launched, neither of which was compromising. For a man who wrote an average of fifteen letters a day, this time everything was to be done by word of mouth." "They put the orders of the officers under which which they had served . . . . before those of their elected officials. When it came down to a choice between obeying those giants of their profession or the politicians baying for their arrest in the Orangerey, there was simply no contest." "Talleyrand was characteristically profiting from the situation. When Napoleon years later asked him how he had made his fortune, he insouciantly replied 'Nothing simpler; I bought rentes [government securities] on the 17th and sold them on the 19th.'" "In his first week as First Consul, Napoleon wrote two letters proposing peace to Emperor Francis of Austria and to Britain’s King George III. ‘I venture to declare that the fate of all civilized nations is concerned in the termination of a war which kindles a conflagration over the whole world,’ he told the latter. When the British foreign secretary, Lord Grenville, responded by saying that Napoleon should restore the Bourbons, Napoleon replied that if the same principle were applied to Britain it would result in the restoration of the Stuarts." "'A newly born government must dazzle and astonish,' he told Bourrienne at this time. 'When it ceases to do that it fails.'" "Within a week of Brumaire, as a result of the new sense of stability, efficiency and sheer competence, the franc-dollar and franc-pound exchange rate rates had doubled." "The art of policing is punishing infrequently and severely." "In November 1799, some 40 percent of France was under martial law, but within three years it was safe to travel around France again, and trade could be resumed. Not even His Italian victories brought Napoleon more popularity." "Napoleon took a deep personal interest in the strategic dissemination of news. ‘Spread the following reports in an official manner,’ he once instructed Fouché. ‘They are, however, true. Spread them first in the salons, and then put them in the papers.’" "All the leading French admirals -- Genteaume, Eustche Bruix, Laurent Trugent, Pierre de Villeneuve, as well as Decès -- opposed the English expedition." III "[T]he duke [d'Enghien] had offered to serve in the British army, was receiving large amounts of money from London, was paying British gold to other émigrés, and was hoping to follow the Austrians into France should they invade. He had also corresponded with William Wickham . . . that is, the British secret service. [A]lthough he was not specifically aware of the Cadoudal-Pichegru plot [to assassinate Napoleon], he was clearly holding himself in readiness. It hardly constituted strong enough grounds to have him executed, however, except as a ruthless message to Louis XVIII to call off my further plots." Roberts's absurd justification for Napoleon's becoming Emperor: "France was de facto an empire by 1804, and it was only acknowledging that fact that Napoleon declared himself an emperor de jure, just as Queen Victoria would become for the British Empire in 1877." Roberts ignores what made Napoleon an illegitimate ruler, much less Emperor: the regicide, the phony plebiscites, and the fact that -- at the time -- France had little territory beyond today's hexagram: part of the Rhineland, and Northern Italy (the latter of which hardly counts since it was stolen from the chinless Hapsburgs). The Emperor "took the somewhat convoluted and seemingly contradictory style 'Napoleon, through the grace of God and the Constitution of the Republic, Emperor of the French.'" Preparing for the coronation, "Napoleon ordered his officials to treat the pontiff as though he had 200,000 troops at has back, just about his greatest complement." Roberts says, contrary to most other sources, "Although [Napoleon] lifted the Charlemagne replica over his own head, as previously rehearsed with the Pope, he didn't actually place it on top because he was already was wearing the [crown of laurels, meant to invoke Rome]. He did, however, crown Josephine." "He never did understand that a fleet which spent seven-eighths of its time in port simply could not gain the seamanship necessary to take on the Royal Navy at the height of its operational capacity." "The fall of Berlin came so quickly that shopkeepers did t have time to take down the numerous satirical caricatures of Napoleon from their window." After the battle of Friedland: "Soldiers! On 5 June we were attacked in our cantonments by the Russian army, which misconstrued the causes of our inactivity. It perceived, too late, that our repose was that of the lion, now it does penance for its mistake… From the shores of the Vistula, we have reached those of the Nieman with the rapidity of the eagle." In establishing brother Jérôme as King of Westphalia, Napoleon wrote, "It is essential that your people enjoy a liberty, an equally, a well-being unknown in Germany…The population of Germany anxiously awaits the moment when those who are not of noble birth but who are talented, have an equal right to be considered for jobs; for the abolition of all serfdom as well as intermediaries between the people and their sovereign." "As the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars progressed, the casualty rates in battles increased exponentially [sic]: at Fleurus they were 6% of the total number of men engaged, at Austerlitz, 15%, at Eylau 26%, at Borodino 31% and at Waterloo 45%." At the famous meeting in the middle of the river at Tilsit--"The Tsar's first words were ' I will be your second against England'"…Napoleon immediately appreciated that a wide-ranging agreement would be possible -- indeed, as he put it later, 'Those words changed everything.'" It was the late-night conversations about philosophy, politics and strategy that shaped Napoleon's relationship with the Tsar. Years later, Napoleon said--"Perhaps I was happiest at Tilsit. I had just surmounted many vicissitudes, many anxieties, at Eylau for instance; and I found myself victorious, dictating laws, having emperors and kings pay me court." "The simple fact that Napoleon had missed was also the most obvious one: its vast size made Russia impossible to invade much beyond Vilnius in a single campaign. His military administration was incapable of dealing with the enormous strain that he was putting on it. Each day, in his desperation for a decisive battle, he had fallen further into Barclay's trap." "In retrospect, it would have been better for the French had [Moscow] been razed to the ground, as that would have forced and immediate retreat.…Napoleon eventually chose what turned out to be the worst possible option: to return to the a Kremlin, which had survived the fire, on September 18, to see whether Alexander would agree to end the war." "[T]he real significance of the rain was that his artillery commander, General Drouot, suggested waiting for the ground to dry before starting the battle the next day, so that he could get his guns into place more easily and the cannonballs would bounce further when fired. It was advice that Drouot was to regret for the rest of his life." "'If it had not been for you English, I should have been Emperor of the East; but wherever there is water to float a ship we are sure to find you in our way.'" ...more |
Notes are private!
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Jan 02, 2015
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Jan 24, 2015
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May 18, 2014
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Paperback
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| 0312372973
| 9780312372972
| 0312372973
| 4.03
| 158
| 2006
| Nov 13, 2007
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really liked it
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Wonderful intro to a man who was foreign minister to pre-Napoleon Kings, then Napoleon, then the Kings re-established by the Congress of Vienna, 1815
Wonderful intro to a man who was foreign minister to pre-Napoleon Kings, then Napoleon, then the Kings re-established by the Congress of Vienna, 1815 (and after Waterloo).
...more
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Notes are private!
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not set
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not set
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Apr 22, 2014
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Hardcover
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