History in Books

[Zorral]

49 minutes ago, illrede said:

odd how the post-Louis XIV family courts ended up quality-wise, from a stronger start

Perhaps this explains something about New Orleans, which was created/founded by one?

[illrede]

Quote

And here let me say, to give the devil her due, that the public have been unjust in ascribing all the crimes and follies of the Neapolitan Court to Queen Caroline; for though Ferdinand did not equal her in talents or in courage, he was quite her match in falsehood and aptitude for treachery. If he had been a mere noble of Naples with a plenty of game to shoot, plenty of good things to eat and drink, and a few toadeaters and buffoons on whom he could have played off his jokes, he would have passed through life with the credit of being a good-humoured comical fellow, and a capital sportsman there are such gentlemen in other countries besides Naples ; but placed upon a throne, and tried by difficult times, his ignorance, narrow-mindedness, cowardice, and treacherous deceit, arose in dark relief from the cast.

https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.32388

Narratives of Some Passages in the Great War with France

 

I have for a little while now suspected there is something to look into concerning British Society opinion about Napoleonic-Era Naples. Intra-gender politics having noticeable consequences, like that one kerfluffle during Jackson presidency with Peggy Eaton. Has to do with Lady Hamilton being needed to be given a bad name at the time, and that skews everything.

 

Edited January 23, 2023 by illrede

[Zorral]

57 minutes ago, illrede said:

Napoleonic-Era Naples. Intra-gender politics

I kind of wondered whether or not giving Elizabeth Farnese the credit for the sorts of decisions made by Philip V was something like that.  I don't know, of course, but Partner and I did wonder, this sort of thing being so common as to be unquestioned throughout history.

[Zorral]

Dan Jones's first volume of an historical fiction trilogy set during the 100 Years War is Essex Dogs; evidently following that go-to device of historical fictions of every time and place -- following a buncha mercenaries.  Well, there were a lot of those during the 100 Years War, not least a buncha who, like pirates vs privateers of later years, went back-and-forth between being legit soldiers and mercs, even back at home in England.  I've read his histories.  I'll read this one too.

https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/dan-jones/essex-dogs/

 

 

[illrede]

Darn it, I haven't even read The White Company yet.

[SeanF]

On 1/23/2023 at 11:21 PM, illrede said:

Small world. Watching football playoffs last weekend, sat down in another man's reclining chair, rested my left hand on a coffee table, and there that book was. A very comfortable size indeed.

 

I've encountered opinions on him from every angle, from then-contemporary hearsay on down, and I've yet to see a dissenting opinion (other than the brief window when he was a political cypher and maneuvering against the Royal Favorite meant foisting every virtue on him). A feckless malignant nuisance with no bottom. His Neapolitan Bourbon namesake at the time apparently had something same faults but at least one guy expounding on it then did make a point of noting that if wasn't a King, Ferdinand of Naples would be decent country squire and a good guy to know.

 

It is odd how the post-Louis XIV family courts ended up quality-wise, from a stronger start.

The talent pool really ran dry among the Bourbons after the death of Carlos III.  With the Hapsburgs, it was Joseph II who was the last competent ruler.

That would not necessarily matter if you had a competent chief minister, but after Metternich, the Austrians never did.

You see it too with the Hohenzollerns.  Their last talented ruler was Frederick the Great, followed by a number of capable ministers, culminating with Bismarck.  But, there was no one after Bismarck.

[SeanF]

On 1/24/2023 at 12:16 AM, illrede said:

https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.32388

Narratives of Some Passages in the Great War with France

 

I have for a little while now suspected there is something to look into concerning British Society opinion about Napoleonic-Era Naples. Intra-gender politics having noticeable consequences, like that one kerfluffle during Jackson presidency with Peggy Eaton. Has to do with Lady Hamilton being needed to be given a bad name at the time, and that skews everything.

 

Napoleon delighted in telling all and sundry that Emma Hamilton and Maria Carolina were lovers, which also featured in English and French cartoons.

[illrede]

On 2/21/2023 at 12:43 PM, SeanF said:

The talent pool really ran dry among the Bourbons after the death of Carlos III.  With the Hapsburgs, it was Joseph II who was the last competent ruler.

That would not necessarily matter if you had a competent chief minister, but after Metternich, the Austrians never did.

You see it too with the Hohenzollerns.  Their last talented ruler was Frederick the Great, followed by a number of capable ministers, culminating with Bismarck.  But, there was no one after Bismarck.

I'm going to raise voice in favor of Joseph II's brother, Leopold II. Even better than his brother, tragic in a different way, didn't reign long enough to get an era though.

[SeanF]

1 minute ago, illrede said:

I'm going to raise voice in favor of Joseph II's brother, Leopold II. Even better than his brother, tragic in a different way, didn't reign long enough to get an era though.

Oh yes, he was quite good.

[Zorral]

Essex Dogs (2023)  by Dan Jenkins is the first in a projected trilogy set in one of my perennial eras of fascination, the 14th century. Jenkins has written many popular histories of the middle ages, many of which I've read, without being impressed; he's also written-narrated on camera quite a few history progammes for Brit tv.  This is his first foray into fiction. 

This first novel follows one very small troop of hired fighters from Essex -- the Dogs of the title -- from the 1346 Normandy Beach landing, through this particular French campaign, to its conclusion with the Battle of Crécy.  So, the part of story of King Edward III I’m interested in primarily, the role the Black Death played in the War starting in 1348 and thereafter, particularly how the English monarchy handled the effects of the Great Pestilence, is not here. 

What we've got is the sort of debunking of the chivalry and prowess on the field and leadership with which we are all deeply familiar, at least in fiction, since at least the days of Glenn Cook and Abercrombie. On the other hand, let's be honest here: being a monarch, or merely a member of a monarch's family, is to be a monster. It cannot be helped.  Part of this debunking chivalry is the theme of what a twit, turd, and creep is the Black Prince, showing him as a thoroughly horrible youth not in least above raping and further degrading peasant girls. This goes against what contemporaries and chroniclers have written of him:  

Quote

"Contemporaries praised the Black Prince's chivalrous character, in particular his modesty, courage and courtesy on the battlefield. According to the medieval chronicler Jean Froissart, after the battle the Black Prince held a banquet in honour of the captured king and served him dinner

No one can ever say that the practice of chevauchee was ever anything but brutal in the extreme, destroying everything in the path, including ethics, morals, compassion, honor and that phantasm, chivalry:

Quote

Even in his lifetime, contemporaries challenged the Black Prince’s heroic image, recasting him as a villain. Criticism focused on his chevauchée raiding expedition [-- Me here: 'raiding expedition' mildly describes the murder, pillage, rape, burning and destroying everything within as 20 mile radius of the army's passage --but never fear, the novel revels in describing these matters, in detail, as Our Dogs do indeed participate.] in France in 1355–56, a brutal affair designed to demoralise the enemy. Starting in Bordeaux in September 1355, Edward moved across France passing Toulouse, Carcassonne and Narbonne. He focused his attention on towns where he could inflict the most damage with the least resistance. His troops looted, burned property and killed inhabitants. On campaign with the Black Prince in 1355, Sir John Wingfield wrote a letter to the bishop of Winchester proclaiming that “there was never such loss nor destruction as hath been in this raid”.

This novel is as gritty as it gets, i.e. gritty for gritty's sake – how many detailed phlegm balls are hawked on every page? It was neither interesting or revelatory.  It may be fiction but we’ve seen all of it depicted in novels many, many times before, and we know this first invasion of France by Edward III was successful, if only by the hair of winning at Crécy.

Jones has a Name, has written many books of popular history, and television programs, but there is no fictional narrative drive, pacing or voice to this first novel by a guy who hasn’t written fiction before.  On the other hand, this novel details this “road to ruin for both England and France” as The Spectator’s reviewer labeled this 1346 campaign, the initiation of what became the 100 Years War -- though truly, the war began quite a few years earlier than 1346, at least as early as the Battle of Sluys, 1340 -- or even earlier.

Jones tells us he got the idea for how the book should work from a dinner with GRRM.

It was an interesting experience though, reading the fictional Essex Dogs by night, and three times a week working out to the audio version of Ian Mortimer's Edward III: The Perfect King: The Life of Edward III, Father of the English Nation (2006).  I've read biographies of Edward III by other authors, who admire him for many reasons, while providing a fair judgment of the shortcomings, or downright evils that may have been committed -- though which is which, contemporaries, posterity and historians do not necessary agree to.

Myself am suspicious of Mortimer’s claims that Edward II wasn’t executed, but lived on as a wanderer for another decade + in Europe. I also admit to being skeptical regarding Edward III's expenditures on luxuries of every kind, including dressing people for the earlier decades' endless tourneys being excused as necessary PR for the Crown of England who also must project an aura as the ultimate badass warrior king, rather than as bad for England as well as for the war -- I mean the expenditure is even more astounding than the accounts of what the Queen Mother spent purely on luxurious living, decade after decade, including her racing stables -- every year Queen Elizabeth had to pay off her mother's debts, despite the Queen Mother's personal staggeringly immense wealth. Mortimer (one wonders: distant relative of the Mortimer family who highjacked Edward II's crown?) excuses Edward III's order to behead his uncle, the Duke of Kent, as something he had no choice about – that in particular, I’m not buying, since in a matter of less than a half year Edward III and his supporters arrested Mortimer and executed him.

Alas though, this biography doesn't answer my perennial question, which is how in the world were France, particularly, and England also,able to keep fielding armies for this war when the Great Mortality returns time and time and time again, crops can't be planted, or if they are the English burn them or steal them so famine stalks France. Where are the fighting men coming from -- particularly when so many French nobles are killed at the same time in such military disasters as Crécy and Poitiers? The plague came back to England too, crops weren't planted and / or the weather destroyed them, yet somehow Edward III manages to keep getting ever increasing taxation passed to fund his wars, while so many die and go hungry.

The writers / historians I've read haven't mentioned the supreme irony that Edward III, the supreme King of Chivalry, identifying himself and his court with mythical King Arthur, chivalry's values, and performative, at least, practices, was the European king to dethrone the traditional  aristo knight in shining armor as skilled swordsman and horse rider, by funding and encouraging in every way projectile weapons, from the long bow to gunpowder and cannon.  They Do Say there were early cannon used at Crécy.

Balancing out some of the lacks as perceived in Mortimer's biography of Edward III, are his frequent citations of the rather astonishing number of successful and effective warrior noblewomen that populate the 14th century, such as Joanna of Flanders.  Isabella of 15th C Spain did not come out of a vacuum.

     . . . . Two other books, one a novel, also written by a successful screen writer and director, as well authentically a novelist, John Sayles, and the other non-fiction as well, but these two are centuries apart:

Quote

 

John Sayles Delivers Epic Battles and Travels in a New Novel

“Jamie MacGillivray” gives readers a sweeping tour of 18th-century history, from Scotland to the American Colonies.

 

The reviews are quite good. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/28/books/review/john-sayles-jamie-macgillivray.html

Then to the 19th century New York City:

MADAME RESTELL: The Life, Death, and Resurrection of Old New York’s Most Fabulous, Fearless, and Infamous Abortionist (2023) by Jennifer Wright.

The title tells us what we need to know, which includes how pertinent this book is today, as the good people, male doctors killing women giving birth because they thought it cool to go from working with a corpse in a mortuary to deliver a baby, men just generally, of course, but particularly Anthony Comstock, battle to make this woman stop helping women.  Fascinatingly, at the end, when she's to be arrested, she commits suicide.  But, the author asks, "Did that happen? Or did she fake the suicide and escape, as for years her family hinted?
 

Edited March 3, 2023 by Zorral

[SeanF]

It sounds to me as if Bernard Cornwell already did the job better than Dan Jenkins.  His five novels set in The Hundred Years War don’t spare any details of the horrors inflicted upon civilians.

Even Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, writing The White Company, in 1890, is pretty explicit about the atrocities committed by the English Army (at a time when most boys’ writers would have glossed over them.)

In the ASOIAF universe, both Prince Daeron and Robb Stark are viewed as models of chivalry, in-universe.  But, being chivalrous did not prevent the former slaughtering the people of Bitterbridge, and the latter hanging young peasant women, and conducting his chevauchee in the West.  

[SeanF]

On 3/2/2023 at 6:51 PM, Zorral said:

 

Alas though, this biography doesn't answer my perennial question, which is how in the world were France, particularly, and England also,able to keep fielding armies for this war when the Great Mortality returns time and time and time again, crops can't be planted, or if they are the English burn them or steal them so famine stalks France. Where are the fighting men coming from -- particularly when so many French nobles are killed at the same time in such military disasters as Crécy and Poitiers? The plague came back to England too, crops weren't planted and / or the weather destroyed them, yet somehow Edward III manages to keep getting ever increasing taxation passed to fund his wars, while so many die and go hungry.

 

England, at least, was much richer, per head, in 1450, than in 1340, and the Black Death played a big part in that.  The shortage of labour stimulated the demise of villeinage, and landlords had to find new ways of making money, with far fewer labourers.  What they hit upon was rearing sheep.  Exports of wool became a massive source of revenue to the Engish aristocracy and merchants.  Overall productivity soared.  That century was probably the most rapid period of economic growth in England's history, prior to the Industrial Revolution.  Essentially, a popuation of less than one half its level in 1340 was actually producing more, overall, by the end of that period than at the start.

That's how England financed the war.  And, there were periods (1346-60) (1415-1430) where the war was highly lucrative for English participants.

I know much less about France, but while the marches between English France and French France, were appallingly devastated, much of France was untouched by war, and the country had a huge population.  It was only in the early 19th century that Russia overtook France, in terms of population.

[Macklunkey]

A bit more recent history but The Prisoner in His Palace by Will Bardenwerper is an excellent book that details the relationship between Saddam Hussein and his American doctor and army guards that watched over him during his trials. 

[Zorral]

One of the books I've put on my reading app is In a Dark Wood Wandering (1949),by Hella Haasse. She wrote it mostly during the war; it's never been out of print. The English translation was published in 1989.

Quote

.... In a Dark Wood Wandering is the story of the Valois family, from the late 14th century through the mid-15th. Charles, Duke of Orleans, is the focal point of the story, however, and the novel follows his life from birth, though childhood, early adulthood, the battle at Agincourt, his imprisonment in England, and finally his retirement and death. ....

http://agirlwalksintoabookstore.blogspot.com/2009/08/review-in-dark-wood-wandering-by-hella.html

It's disappointing that none of the books wrt Spanish medieval and visigothic eras I would have/wanted to download are available for that. 

10 hours ago, SeanF said:

 Exports of wool became a massive source of revenue to the Engish aristocracy and merchants.  

This doesn't entirely go along with what I've been reading.

England was already wealthy from exporting wool.  What they did ramp up most significantly, due a great deal to not getting along with Flanders for some time, was cutting off both export for quite some time -- shutting down the Staple there and moving it to Calais, which was now in English rule. Then, realizing they still weren't getting anywhere in hurting the economy because the European cloth merchants were still getting the wool from other countries, and didn't have the extra cost of importing it across the water, was to encourage in every way the making of cloth themselves and exporting that, instead of reimporting at high cost the cloth made from the wool they'd been exporting.

It was taxation that financed Edward III's wars -- as well, for a time, as you mention, their tremendous success in waging the war on French soil, not at home, bringing back vast loot -- which again, then, kept his popularity high enough that Parliament continued, though often loathe to, continue the very high taxation -- which ultimately then (among other abuses, such as the Labor Ordinances), after he died, led to the Wat Tyler, etc.

Nevertheless this isn't the answer to the question of where do the men for the amies come from, about 1348 - 1378 -- at the very least! -- when the Great Mortality, famine and war had killed so many? The second round of the Black Death particularly killed infants and young children, because no immunity of any kind.

Wide swathes of France never recovered from the double whammy of the Death and chevauchée until into the 18th C -- and some of them, with the next whammy of the Revolution and Napoleon, not in the 19th either.  Whole counties were without population.  Lately though, historians have become unclear whether some of those lost villages and towns lost their people due to plague, or famine or war in the first place.

In Spain, the vast loss of population on the economy was dealt with by re-instituting serfdom.  And of course the Labor Ordinance in England reflect people leaving the rural country or switching lords for better conditions and money were not effective.  They keep saying though, that with fewer people there were more resources/wealth available.  I'm unsure whether that squares the wheel or not.  I do know though, that the plague truly enriched Chaucer, over and over, as his relatives died and he remained.

 

Edited March 6, 2023 by Zorral

[Wilbur]

What is a testament to the inherent richness of the English French lands is how the population did eventually rebound eventually from the chevauchee.  

File:Map of the route of Edward III's chevauchée of 1346.svg - Wikipedia

[Larry of the Lawn]

Just started Cloudsplitter by Russell Banks, told from the point of view of Owen Brown, youngest son of John Brown.  It covers his father's activities leading up to Harper's Ferry.  I have no idea how historically accurate any of it is but I'm enjoying it so far.  I'm not super familiar with this period of US history outside what I learned in highschool, but looking forward to seeing where Banks takes this.  

[Zorral]

Woo.  Last week in the Prado Museum of Art we spent hours looking at Goyas, and other art works from the ante-Napoleonic era of Spain, then other artists post-Napoleon.  Among these are rooms filled with the massive canvases from the grand era of historical panoramic painting.  One of my strongest take-aways from the Goyas and others from the era of the Napoleonic invasion was:  Napoleon, if you were honestly interested in non-resistance to taking over Spain by invasion and conquest, and having the Spanish people acquiesce peacefully due to the utter feckless rulership of the Spanish Bourbons, you wouldn't have sent in regiments of Muslim Egyptian Mameluke cavalry, would you have?

 

[Gaston de Foix]

2 hours ago, Zorral said:

Woo.  Last week in the Prado Museum of Art we spent hours looking at Goyas, and other art works from the ante-Napoleonic era of Spain, then other artists post-Napoleon.  Among these are rooms filled with the massive canvases from the grand era of historical panoramic painting.  One of my strongest take-aways from the Goyas and others from the era of the Napoleonic invasion was:  Napoleon, if you were honestly interested in non-resistance to taking over Spain by invasion and conquest, and having the Spanish people acquiesce peacefully due to the utter feckless rulership of the Spanish Bourbons, you wouldn't have sent in regiments of Muslim Egyptian Mameluke cavalry, would you have?

 

Napoleon wasn't exactly known as an international man of peace.  Gandhi he ain't.  

[Wilbur]

4 hours ago, Zorral said:

Woo.  Last week in the Prado Museum of Art we spent hours looking at Goyas, and other art works from the ante-Napoleonic era of Spain, then other artists post-Napoleon.  Among these are rooms filled with the massive canvases from the grand era of historical panoramic painting.  One of my strongest take-aways from the Goyas and others from the era of the Napoleonic invasion was:  Napoleon, if you were honestly interested in non-resistance to taking over Spain by invasion and conquest, and having the Spanish people acquiesce peacefully due to the utter feckless rulership of the Spanish Bourbons, you wouldn't have sent in regiments of Muslim Egyptian Mameluke cavalry, would you have?

 

The Prado is amazing, a real cherry on top of all the astonishingly beautiful things to see and do in Madrid.  I felt like half the paintings we had studied in my Art Appreciation class in college were on the walls or leaning against a pilaster in the Prado.

[SeanF]

5 hours ago, Zorral said:

Woo.  Last week in the Prado Museum of Art we spent hours looking at Goyas, and other art works from the ante-Napoleonic era of Spain, then other artists post-Napoleon.  Among these are rooms filled with the massive canvases from the grand era of historical panoramic painting.  One of my strongest take-aways from the Goyas and others from the era of the Napoleonic invasion was:  Napoleon, if you were honestly interested in non-resistance to taking over Spain by invasion and conquest, and having the Spanish people acquiesce peacefully due to the utter feckless rulership of the Spanish Bourbons, you wouldn't have sent in regiments of Muslim Egyptian Mameluke cavalry, would you have?

 

I visited the Prado and Thyssen in October, as well as the Archivo Historico Nacional.  I finally completed my Dissertation, last night.