Gibbon and Barbarians

Michael Grant is pretty good for that time period.

Indeed, but he isn't as wonderfully over the top as Gibbon. Now, I would never use Gibbon as a source for a seminar paper, but I wonder if we haven't lost the ability to write pleasing historical prose in the last two centuries. Fraser was another "good'un."
I guess I'm just wondering where all the litereary historiography went? I know my writings are not fun. One of the first thing one masters in Grad school is how to write papers that would anaesthetize a charging rhino.

Gibbon is useful and entertaining, although it is necessary to have enough background information to know when he's on a christian-inspired rant, so that one can find the few useful nuggets buried there when's he not. J.M. Berry (Barry?) has a lot of good information on the "barbarian invasion" of the western portion of the empire--but he sure can't write.

I've always been partial to William Prescott and Frances Parkman. Prescott can't hold a candle to Parkman when it comes to literary style, though. I'd rate Parkman and Carlysle as the best when it comes to an engrossing style of writing.

Try Paul Johnson's Birth of the Modern. Johnson can write wonderful prose, and he is a fine historian. Unfortunately, his work is very uneven. Though Birth of the Modern is so good that I've given probably half a dozen copies away to folks, his History of the American People is absolutely terrrible. His American history was such sloppy scholarship and poor editing that I tossed it in the trash. He never seemed to understand that there was more than one Confederate general named Johnson. Other works by Johnson fall somewhere in between his authoratative Birth, and his D- in American history.

You like Gibbon, alright his work did influence generations. I agree with Setanta that Prescot and Parkman should reside on the historian's shelf. Carlisle's style doesn't appeal much to me, and his history is also pretty spotty. Try Herodotus, Tucyddides, Tacitus for the historys of ancient Greece and Rome. However, Michael Grant's modern studies of that period are less tainted by inaccuracies and legends masquerading as fact.

Stephen (the last name escapes me... the effects of age, I suppose. Our library was recently flooded and the surviving books are all in storage, so I can't even check. Perhaps Setatanta will be so good as to help my failing memory here.) has written a series of excellent books centered around battles of the American Civil War. His study of Antietam/Sharpsburg, The Landscape Ran Red is a must read. After reading his book on Chancellorsville, I've had to reevaluate my thinking about Gen. Hooker. The American Civil War is sort of a "Black Hole of 18th Century American History"; once attracted to it, it is almost impossible to escape. As a result, there have been literally thousands of very fine books written on the subject by excellent writers. Freeman's Lee's Lieutenants, and his multi-volume biography of R. E. Lee are sine qua non for anyone interested in the military history of the Late Unpleasantness.

Bottom line? There are a whole lot of histories out there. Some are far less usefull than a warehouse full of Charmin, even though the are guaranteed page turners. There are also some histories in print that will put you to sleep within a page, yet they are chock full of facts and may be brilliant in their analysis. You have to pick and choose what to read, and what to believe. Generally choose your history for the clarity of thinking and the depth of research rather than the sparkeling prose. Many academically trained historians never learn to write, and even more fine writers are too lazy to check the most elementary facts.

Just a quick side-note. The following incident occured many years ago on my wife's 30th birthday. When I returned from a hard day at the Student Union she was busy making me a plate of spicy enchiladas, though her New England taste buds reveal her deprived childhood. I breezed in the door, kissed her on the cheek and set her nicely wrapped birthday present on the counter. When she was able to set the cooking aside for a moment she opened the package.

Unfortunately, she didn't appreciate the present. I had found a nice two volume set of Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire at our local bookstore. Though our finances at the time were tight, I managed to buy the set for probably fifty dollars. Like I said above, she didn't appreciate the thought. She threw them at me! Her unreasonable anger took months to even off, and even today I avoid the subject of Gibbon if Natalie is anywhere within hearing distance. Oh well, who can ever understand women.

I greatly enjoyed Freeman's three major works--Lee's Lieutenants, R. E. Lee and George Washington. However, i found it very curious that Freeman, in an early article, pinpointed some of the worst of the Confederate blunders--an area defense, a tactical offensive wedded to a strategic defensive and a general lack of unity in the political realm--but by the time he is writing R. E. Lee, he seems to have forgotten these criticisms. I consider that Lee's staff work was sloppy to non-existent, a curious circumstance for someone whose school of war was to lead the staff engineers for Winfield Scott in Mexico. Lee was also profligate, to a criminal extent, with his infantry. I won't get started on the Seven Days--it was a completely unnecessary abatoir. The Washington biography is much more reliable, he doesn't reify Washington the Way he did Lee. I wouldn't rate him high as a writer, neither would i pan his style.

I agree that Carlisle (thanks, Ash, i always misspell that) is spotty in the quality of his research, but his writing is good. Motley is an example of someone who has thoroughly done his scholarship, and writes fairly well, and spoils it all with a specious theory. I had just read Bernal Diaz' The Conquest of New Spain when i came across a set of all 23 of Prescott's monumental work on the Conquista and the Kings and Queens of that era. Unfortunately, i couldn't keep the set, but i did read The Conquest of Mexico in three volumes, and The Conquest of Peru in two. What was striking to me about Prescott was the readability while he adhered to every convention of scholarship. Each volume is divided into tomes, and between tomes, he has an excellent thumbnail biography of the major primary sources he uses, such as Diaz--these bios usually ran to 10 or 12 pages. Prescott avoided, almost always, putting a qualitative judgment on the information he presents, which i appreciated, as i'd rather form my own opinions. Motley is so wrapped up in his specious theory about the libertarian impulses of "Germanic" western Euopeans (i.e., first the Dutch, then the English, and finally the Americans), that it makes his story tedious--but the scholarship is first rate, and one can draw one's own conclusions.

With Diaz, as with Tacitus, Titus Livius, Seutonius, Polybius and Thucydides, i am reading a translation, so i'm unable to form an opinion on the quality of the writing. If the translation of Diaz is realiable, his style is crisp, economical and vivid--i greatly enjoyed it. Parkman is thoroughly entertaining in his seven volumes on the history of the French in North America. I've not read his The Oregon Trail. It helped that i can read French from about any period in the last thousand years, and so i was able to make my decisions about what he drew from sources he quotes in that language. I've noted in my other reading that the only substantive criticisms i've read about Parkman were from military "historians," who are largely a superficial an nit-picking lot. Their most common criticism is that he overrates Montcalm, and they cite Montcalm's "corset-lacing" of the Canadians with the French as the cause of his defeat before Québec. I consider this superficial for the following reasons: Vaudreuil, the Governor, and Bigot, the Intendant, were venal and corrupt to the last degree. After his return to France, Bigot was tried, convicted, stripped of his ill-gotten gains and sent into exile. While the war continued, Montcalm only had control of the Canadians when away from the colony (as at Carillon, where the Canadians were unsteady, but nevertheless held against the American militia), or when attached to his forces. Otherwise, they were under the control of the Governor. The French colonies were under the control of the Ministre de Marine, and there was a standing "professional" army in Canada, separate from the Canadian militia. In the spring and summer of 1759, Wolfe threatened the city along a river-front stretching about 20 miles. Montcalm was obliged to stretch his few French professionals over a wide area. "Corset lacing" the Canadian professionals with his troop gave him control of them, and allowed him to position forces to oppose any landing the English might make. When Wolfe landed at Montmorency in the summer, he was driven back from the ford by the timely arrival of Canadians and Canadian militia, but they only held because Montcalm was able to get French regulars there quickly. Wolfe considered the Montmorency attack a failure--Montcalm saw it as evidence of how dangerously thin his forces were spread. In an excellent little book, the title of which i have forgotten, Simon Schama makes a compelling case that Wolfe, despondant about his "failure," committed suicide by combat in the final assault on the "Plains of Abraham." (The fields below the walls of the upper city were owned by Abraham Martin, a local fisherman, and "the Plains of Abraham" was a local joke--of course, the English didn't get it.) Montcalm was swept away when the Canadian regulars broke, and his own French troops fell back, mostly in good order, because their flanks were thereby uncovered. He was shot through both lungs by a stray musket ball, and his death assured that no reasonable defense would be mounted. Vaudrieul got out of town as fast as his fat little legs would carry him, and St. Foy, who later mounted a very well executed offensive against the English in the winter, which failed for lack of logistical support, did not yet know that Montcalm was dying, and he did not therefore take command and try to attack the English and the Highlanders, who could have been swept to the brink of the bluffs. I've found no one who has made a credible case to contradict Parkman's histories.

I also recently obtained a reprint of William Preston Johnston's life of his father, Albert Sidney Johnston. The style is very 19th century, but it is refreshingly fast-paced and entertaining nevertheless. His interviews with Lee, however, were taken down as notes from the foot of the throne, and although interesting, are really just another contribution to the beatification of Lee.

Fascinating subject, for me at least.

Though Lee has been deified by generations of Southerners, my family among them, he had a number of glaring faults as a commander.

More later, Natalie just told me to get up and eat a bowl of chili while it's hot. I alway obey.

Smart man . . .

Within the last year or so, i found and read a book which offered a "reappraisal" of Lee's career. It is quite well done. It's around somewhere, or perhaps i lent it out, or perhaps it grew legs and walked away. (I keep waiting for the faeries to come sort through my books, magazines and papers, and put them in some rational order, and place them where they are easy of access-however, to my sorrow, I've discovered the faeries to be even less reliable than am i.) I knew of Johnston's interviews of Lee, and Jubal Early's lectures which began the formal process of raising Lee to sainthood. This book is very comprehensive. I was delighted to find, for example, to read the critique of a gentleman who had been a Federal staff officer-i believe it dated from the late 1870's, in which he advances the cogent criticisms of overall Confederate military policy which I've already mentioned: area defense, tactical offensive combined with a strategic defensive, etc. This was refreshing to me, as this has been taken up in recent decades as though it were a new idea, and i have been suspicious of those who advance that idea. I will try to find it to give you a citation.

The Schama book to which i referred earlier is Dead Certainties: Unwarranted Speculations. It starts with his narrative of the death of Wolfe, in which he advances his opinion that Wolfe committed suicide by combat. I have accepted this assessment as being the likely truth: Parkman in his Montcalm and Wolfe: The French and Indian War notes Wolfe's despondency before the final, fatal assault was launched, as have others whom i have read. From there, he proceeds to the story of Benjamin West, whose The Death of General Wolfe, debuted in 1770, was his most famous work, and made him a celebrity.



He compares this to the painting by Edward Penny, The Death of Wolfe, painted in 1764, and although unpopular, it probably has a good deal more versimilitude (please forgive the poor quality of the image-there were literally tens of thousands of hits for West's painting, but it took me a long time to find this).



From there, he proceeds to a brief description of Frances Parkman, and his writing of his great project, The History of the French in North America. Finally, he gets to the heart of his book, which is the story of the murder of George Parkman in Boston in 1849. I'm sure you would thoroughly enjoy this work. I've enjoyed everything of Schama's which I've read, and his credentials are impeccable.

More later . . . Hobbitbob will regret having opened this thread . . .