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The first volume of Rick Atkinson’s Revolution Trilogy shows that there’s quite a lot I don’t know about the Revolutionary War. Like a lot of people, I have a good grasp of the outline, and know a few more things, but this book goes into a number of things I hadn’t been aware of.

This is fairly purely popular military history. He goes into the immediate causes of the war, and shows what is happening in England at various points, including a prologue that starts with a naval review by George III in 1773, and includes activities in the ministry, and of course efforts to move men and supplies overseas. In comparison, the Continental Congress is conspicuous by its absence. It is talked about often enough, including the effects of its decisions, but not the process of those decisions. The Declaration of Independence is read out to the army in New York during mid-July 1776, but the deliberations leading to it are not even touched on.

This is, in the end, a laudable maintenance of focus, as there’s already much going on in here. Just be aware that the politics surrounding the war, that saw some really deep thoughts about just what the goals were, are left out.

What is here is a very readable, but detailed look at the actions of the war. There’s also a good look at some of the logistics involved, from the Continental Army’s chronic lack of gunpowder and guns, to all the things the British had to ship across the Atlantic as it became obvious that requisitioning supplies in America was not going to be possible. There’s some good mentions of the chaos done to British plans by various storms delaying and damaging ships, not to mention all the wastage they were suffering.

Most surprising to me were sections on the American invasion of Canada (featuring a guest appearance of Benjamin Franklin, and actually managed to take most everything outside of Quebec itself), and the… ‘floating governments’ of the southern colonies. Despite telling the government back home that all would be well with a few regulars to put down rebels, most of the royal governors in the south were forced to flee, and ended up on Royal Navy ships.

Naturally, Lexington and Concord get a lot of attention and detail, along with the entire Canada campaign. Then there’s very good accounts of the sieges of Boston and New York (that’s really what those extended campaigns come down to). And then ends up with the retreat across New Jersey, Trenton, and Princeton. Since that last really was the disaster that showed this war would not come to a quick close at the start of 1777, it makes a very good end point for the book.

There’s more minor actions of course, and all along the way Atkinson makes generous use of diaries and letters, giving plenty of detail or illustrating points through first-hand accounts. Overall, I was quite happy with the book, and the pages flowed by quickly.

In premise, this is more of a meditation on history than a ‘strict’ history book. Zamoyski had some thoughts on nationalism, and faith, and wrote this book to explore his thoughts. The general theme is that as the church lost its place of primacy in European society, the habits of thought remained, and devotion got redirected to the idea of ‘the state’.

It’s an interesting idea, and he’s certainly onto something. I’d kind of like something a bit less nebulous, though it’d probably go over my head. At any rate, in Holy Madness, it’s obvious that he has found every case of religious imagery, or ecstatic feeling in the writings of 19th Century revolutionaries. But I wonder how much (or really, how many people) doesn’t follow that theme? Perhaps its a consistent tone/theme across the vast bulk of them, but since there’s no examination of that, there’s no way to know. Certainly, he does show a strong ideal of martyrdom in a lot of writings.

Overall, there’s certainly some very interesting things going on here. The end of the French Revolution and Napoleon left a lot of people with unfulfilled dreams in Europe. Whenever some new ‘national project’ came up these people would show up to try to help, aiding revolutions with fundraising for arms, and a people who could form up revolutionary units to fight for a glorious death in the name of liberty. The three decades after 1815 in Europe aren’t dangerous for the ideals unleashed to cause the population to rise up (the general population in the countryside often wanted no part of it), but instead dangerous for all the flotsam and jetsam of previously wrecked hopes washing back and forth across the continent.

Post 1848… ‘revolutionary society’ is shown to be the transition out of the age. Some of what these men have been fighting for is happening politically. The new idealists have very different views, and the people who are powering all this struggle are aging out. The social circles get smaller every year, and while they still hold their decades old grudges, its becoming harder to fire everyone up for a new cause.

To a certain extent the formation of Italy and Germany mark the end of the movements this book is following, but it’s not quite presented that way, with things tending to trail off, not quite off-screen, but not really focused on. As with any natural process, there’s no neat end, no turning of the page, though there is further summary of where some of these passions went next.