Rindis.com

Gill’s third book has Wagram and Znaim as the subtitle, and these battles are indeed important to the volume. However, we finally get a proper recounting of events elsewhere (other than Italy, which was covered previously, though the sequel to the campaign is in here). Napoleon and the Hapsburgs were both concerned with events elsewhere, and Gill brings them in to show how things went, and how they influenced strategic thinking. Neither were very concerned with Spain (which, unlike everything else, was not adjacent to the Danube front), so naturally, that doesn’t get explored, but outside of that, this turns into a thorough look at the 1809 campaigning season.

He starts with an account of the campaigning in Poland, moves into Hungary, where Eugene’s victorious army moved into after chasing Johann out of Italy, and then ties in all the smaller forces in the south, scattered from the north Italian border to Dalmatia. This takes about half the text. After talking about the pause on the Danube while Napoleon put everything together for a surprise second crossing (which really shouldn’t have been a big surprise) we go to the centerpiece of the book: Wagram.

Znaim is a battle that started, but was called off on account of a ceasefire that paved the way to the eventual peace. Gill has done another book really detailing the situation, but it certainly gets good coverage here.

And over one third of the book is a set of detailed orders of battle for everyone.

As expected, the three books are an excellent set, and while I quibble over some of the order of presentation, they’re excellently written and put together, and recommended for anyone who has an interest in one of Napoleon’s more important campaigns.

Marc Morris returns to Dark Ages England with a ‘prequel’ of sorts to The Norman Conquest. This time, he tackles the entire period from Saxons and others legendarily being invited to help defend Britain to the end of Anglo-Saxon rule in 1066.

Everything that you may well expect to be here is here, with a lot more to provide context and framework. Overall, Morris does an excellent job of summarizing about six hundred years, and helping make sense of what can be a very confusing subject. He starts with some of late Roman coin hordes that have been found, and points out the kind of instability those represent, and proceeds from there.

We get the emergence of petty kingdoms, the church, arguments about the church, fluctuations in power, and of course, Vikings. No part of this period was peaceful. Independent rulers a fairly quick jaunt from each other is no way to run a country even without anyone coming over the sea to visit. Information can be a bit sparse in this period, which makes his knowledge of archaeological findings help; he also tends to focus on figures that we know more about (some of which are not well-known) to show the concerns of the day in better light.

One place I’ll disagree is that he dismisses much of Bede’s story of the coming of the Saxons as being unreliable and cliche. He’s generally right, but he points out, “…brothers with alliterative names are another frequent feature of European foundations myths. Hengist and Horsa are no more likely to have existed than Romulus and Remus.” The thing is, Frankish custom of the day was definitely for close relatives to have close variations on the same name, and as another Germanic people, the Saxons could have easily had some form of alliterative naming tradition. Not that that really argues against his point… but then he does pass over a fair number of alliterative names later in the book without comment. I think we should condemn Bede’s history a bit less than Morris does.

Other than that nitpick, it’s a fine book, a very good read, and well worth picking up. And read The Norman Conquest afterwards too, he has a lot more to say about the final century of Anglo-Saxon rule in that book, and has room for details lost here.