Keegan, John;
The Face of Battle
Viking Adult 1976-11-11 (Hardcover $13.95)
ISBN 9780670304325 /0670304328
topics: | history | military | postmodern
Considers the "heroic" reconstruction of history, unfolding an impossible advance, against impossible in lyrical, hagiographic prose (see the beautiful choice of Napier's account of an 1811 battle below. . Argues for a less flowery approach to history.
General Sir William Napier's account of the Fusilier Brigade at the Battle of Albuera, May 16 1811, generally regarded as the crucial moment of the battle (of which Napier was not an eye-witness, having been wounded at Fuentes d'Onoro a fortnight before. 37 Such a gallant line, issuing from the midst of the smoke and rapidly separating itself from the confused and broken multitude, startled the enemy's masses, then augmenting and pressing forward as to assured victory; they wavered, hesitated and, vomiting forth a storm of fire, hastily endeavoured to enlarge their front, while a fearful discharge of grape from alltheir artillery whistled through the British ranks. Myers was killed, Cole, the three colonels Ellis, Blakeney and Hawkshawe, fell wounded, and the fusilier battalions, struck by the iron tempest, reeled and staggered like sinking ships: but suddenly and sternly recovering, they closed on their terrible enemies, and then was seen with what strength and majesty the British soldier fights. In vain did Soult with voice and gesture animate the Frenchmen; in vain did the hardiest veterans, breaking from the crowded columns, sacrifice their lives to gain time for the mass to open out on such a fair field; in vain did the mass itself bear up, and fiercely striving fire indiscriminately upon friend and foes, while the horsemen hovering on the flank threatened to charge the advancing line. Nothing could stop that astonishing infantry. No sudden burst of undisciplined valour, no nervous enthusiasm weakened the stability of their order, their flashing eyes were bent on the dark columns in their front, their measured tread shook the ground, their dreadful volleys swept away the head of every formation, their deafening shouts overpowerd the dissonant cries that broke from all parts of the tumultous crowd, as slowly and with a horrid carnage it was pushed by the incessant vigour of the attack to the farthest edge of the height. There the French reserve, mixing with the struggling multitude, endeavoured to restore the fight but only augmented the irremediable disorder, and the mighty mass, giving way like a loosened cliff, went headlong down the steep: the rain flowed in after in streams discoloured with blood, and eighteen hundred unwounded men, the remnant of six thousand unconquerable British soldiers, stood triumphant on the fatal hill. From Napier's "British Battles and Sieges" 37-38 Now as romantic prose passages go, this is clearly a very remarkable achievement, rich in imagery, thundersous in rhythm, and immensely powerful in emoptional effect; it almost vibrates on the page, towards its climax it threatens indeed to loosen the reader's hold on the book... descriptive account... has become a firm favourite with compilers of military anthologies. But 'descriptive' begs, of course, an important, not to say vital question. Just what does it tell us about the Fusiliers' advance; and is what it tells us credible? [Was the episode indeed] as extraordinary as he makes out - by comparison with everyday human behaviour and the norma of military performance? If so, he as a veteran was in a position, he owed it to the reader, one may think, to make that clear. As it is, he seems to suggest that it is by no means abnormal ("The was seen with what strength and majesty the British soldier fights") that a leaderless brigade of infantry (brig dead, 3 cols injured) should overcome, at the cost of over half its number, a very much stronger combined force of infantry, cavalry and artillery led by one of the foremost soldiers of the age (Soult). 39 Also: the extreme uniformity of human behavior : the British are all attacking and with equal intensity ('no sudden burst of undisciplined valour...') the French are likewise all resisting, no individual turns tail and rusn, drops down to sham dead or stands thuder-struck at the indescribable horror of it all. How exactly do the French go "over the steep"? The British soldiers are "gallant line", but the French are "dark coluimns". Also the British are individual Fusiliers; the French are merely part of a "crowded columns" or a "tumultous crowd" or a "struggling multitude" a "mighty mass", or, a "loosened cliff". Napier: "It is the business of the historian... to bring the exploits of the her into broad daylight... the multitude must be told where to stop and wonder and to make them do so, the h8istorian must have recourse to all the power of words" 41