Triumph of the redcoats

Given the choice between philosophising in the company of Socrates or fighting in the army of the soldier-monarch Charles XII of Sweden, most men, Dr Johnson observed, would prefer arms to argument. That physical danger should offer a more appealing prospect than logical thought remains one of the Great Cham’s more provocative insights. At one level, it explains why universal peace will not soon arrive, and at another why military history commands a larger readership than philosophy.

In recent years, a golden generation has set the bar pretty high in this field. Enthusiasts for vicarious soldiering have grown accustomed to the acute analysis of fighting and tactics provided by eloquent academics like John Keegan and the late Richard Holmes, and to the intense drama of war conveyed by such outstanding writer-historians as Max Hastings and Anthony Beevor.

Among the promising newcomers is Professor Saul David, whose well-received book on imperial warfare, Victoria’s Wars, spurred expectation that he might continue this rich seam. His new work on the exploits of the British army in the century and a half before Waterloo explores that vital period, bookended by Marlborough and Wellington, when Britain lost its American empire but emerged from being an offshore irrelevance in Europe’s affairs to become its social and industrial arbiter.

All the King’s Men is grounded in the letters and journals of private soldiers, a device that leaves the early years thinly covered — only one such source exists for Marlborough’s campaigns — but pays off handsomely in the Peninsular Wars when an increasingly literate population encouraged a rush of this kind of writing. What the writers convey is the immediacy of the period’s warfare. Battles were won by muskets fired at a range of less than 50 yards, and by bayonets wielded in hand-to-hand combat.