Joining the staff at Helion as an editor is pretty much a dream job for me; I get paid to read history books! I’ve always loved history. I should have studied it at university but, for some reason, chose to do economics with international relations at Warwick. Why I turned down the place at Lancaster doing War Studies, I’ll never know. Once time travel is invented, I need to go back and give my 18-year-old self a stern talking-to. Anyway, I maintained my sanity with the international relations courses and chose as many economic history modules as I could, but my main interest was running the student newspaper. When I graduated, I vowed to leave economics behind and, due to my experience on the newspaper, managed to get a job on a computer games magazine – reviewing games, writing play guides and designing the pages. After I’d grown tired of playing games for a living (it can happen), I moved over to the tech support side of the business, then started working for a software company, before starting my own business specialising in helping companies reproduce colour accurately. This wasn’t as boring as it sounds. I got to work with major museums, magazine publishers, fashion brands, artists, top photographers, and even the Ministry of Defence.
However, my history itch still needed scratching, so I started writing historical fiction set during the Napoleonic Wars. It’s always been a period I’ve been fascinated by since reading the naval adventures of Alexander Kent’s Bolitho and Dudley Pope’s Ramage, before moving on, somewhat inevitably, to Bernard Cornwell’s Sharpe. I self-published three novels, and while I was in absolutely no danger of being able to quit my day job, the few who read them seemed to enjoy them. I was writing my fourth novel when I decided to join a living history group to get some experience of wearing the uniforms and firing the weapons of the period. The most local group to me portrayed the riflemen of 5/60th. I joined and was soon learning the period drill, firing a replica Baker rifle, cooking over campfires, and perhaps, drinking the odd beer.
It wasn’t long before From Reason to Revolution commissioning editor Andrew Bamford, a fellow living historian at the time with the French 85e de ligne, approached the group saying that as the battalion had an interesting history, was there anybody who wanted to write a book about them? After the rest of the group had marched one step to the rear, I was left at the fore as the ‘volunteer’. To be honest, I jumped at the chance. I had writing experience and had done a lot of research to support my fiction, so I thought I could make a fair job of it. And, of course, it was a chance to be ‘properly’ published.
I launched myself into the research, spending days at The National Archives, and spending far too much money on books. A couple of years later I delivered the 180,000 word manuscript for Riflemen. The book was published and garnered some positive reviews, and then Andrew, obviously a glutton for punishment, suggested I write another. He floated the idea of my covering Rowland Hill’s combats at Arroyomolinos and Almaraz during the Peninsular War. Being a fellow Shropshire Lad and having always found Hill’s famously gentle nature more appealing than many of the brasher commanders of the time, I agreed. The result was At the Point of the Bayonet, which was published in 2021 and written mostly during the pandemic.
Whilst the pandemic had given me lots of time to write, it also proved the final nail in the coffin for my business. I found myself doing email tech support for a writing software company, but quickly tired of answering the same support issues again and again. Then Andrew asked if I was interested in doing some freelance editing for Helion. I agreed, of course, and after a year or so of being freelance, I was very pleased to be taken on staff, working under Andrew on the From Reason to Revolution series.
There are downsides to reading books for a living. Honestly. For a start, some manuscripts need more work than others, and you can spend your days fixing the formatting of footnotes. Also, after reading all day, it is hard to want to read for pleasure in the evenings, especially as you keep noticing missing commas. I still manage to find time to do my own writing, of course, early in the mornings before the rest of the house is awake. I’m currently working on a history of the Vimeiro campaign. So Just and Glorious a Cause will be published next year, as long as I manage to get the word count down to my target. Editors can be so demanding!
But what I love most about being an editor, apart from being paid to read books, is helping other authors, especially first-timers, and paying back the opportunities I’ve been given to see my books in print and make a small contribution to the history of such a fascinating period.
Me (centre) and the lads of the 5/60th recreating Christa Hook’s excellent cover art for Riflemen.
Series and Commissioning Editor Andrew Bamford reviews what’s new for the From Reason to Revolution series in September 2023.
Following on form the paperback reprint of Peninsular War title The Key to Lisbon earlier this month, late September sees a glut of From Reason to Revolution titles with a broad spread across the whole series era, with hopefully something to suit all interests. First off the mark, and available since 20 September, Alexander Querengässer’s Kesselsdorf 1745 takes a detailed look at one of the less-well-known battles of the Austrian Succession era. Fought on 15 December 1745, Kesselsdorf was the last and – as this work would argue – most decisive Prussian victory in the Second Silesian War. The Saxon army, supported by a small Austrian corps but left waiting in vain for the arrival of the main Austrian army, was smashed by a succession of Prussian attacks and effectively knocked out of the conflict. It is, however, something of a forgotten battle as it was won not by Frederick the Great but by a survivor of the previous generation – Fürst Leopold von Anhalt-Dessau, the ‘Old Dessauer’. This new account provides the readers with a comprehensive narrative of the battle and the campaign that led up to it, and a detailed study of the two armies involved. Great use is made of eyewitness accounts, particularly those from the Saxon side which have not previously been seen in English. Full orders of battle are provided for both sides, and the plates section contains eight detailed depictions by Patrice Courcelle of troops involved in the battle.
Staying with the War of the Austrian Succession but moving from Germany to Flanders, Alastair Massie’s Great Britain and the Defence of the Low Countries 1744-1748 takes a detailed look at the politics and strategy of Britain’s part in the war and how these impacted on the battlefield. Based on the author’s doctoral thesis and heavily grounded in original archival sources, the narrative shows how political infighting back home shaped – and hindered – the British war effort. A strong case is made for the Elder Pitt – rightly praised for his later leadership in the Seven Years War – being at least in part to blame for the British contingent in the vital Fontenoy campaign lacking the greater part of the Hanoverian auxiliary troops previously attached to it due to the policies forced upon the Pelham government by his opposition faction. Later, arguments over seniority and precedence between Britain and her allies led to the failure to adequately utilise the skills of Britain’s talented Huguenot general, Sir John Ligonier, to the detriment of the 1746 campaign. There is no denying that British troops fought bravely through Fontenoy, Rocoux, and Laffelt, but with vacillating allies and confused political leadership is it to be wondered that de Saxe and the French emerged triumphant?
Moving forward into the later years eighteenth century, David Bonk’s Atlas of the Campaign and Battles of the American Revolution, with cartography by George Anderson, represents the conclusion of a long-term project to map the campaigns and battles of this pivotal conflict. It includes over 120 full-colour maps, sourced from period mapping including the large collection from the US Library of Congress and enhanced with more accurate topographic mapping from the 1880s. As well as depicting the terrain, the maps also show troop dispositions and movements taken from a wide range of written sources to provide the most accurate representation of the battles and campaigns. Beginning with the opening skirmishes at Lexington and Concord, the Atlas follows the course of the war including the major engagements at Brooklyn, Trenton, Brandywine, Saratoga, Monmouth, Savannah, Guilford Courthouse, and Yorktown as well as many smaller actions. Reflecting the fact that what began as a rebellion in the Thirteen Colonies spawned a global war, coverage is also given to fighting in the West Indies, Gibraltar, and the Indian Ocean. It is hoped that this will be the first of a series of military atlases in the From Reason to Revolution series, with subsequent volumes covering other key campaigns.
Lastly, the period following the loss of America represents something of a nadir in the fortunes of the British Army, which did not seriously pick up again until the campaigns of the late 1790s. It was therefore unfortunate for William Roworth that he chose the year 1786 to embark on a military career and enlist in the 44th Regiment of Foot, but fortunate for historians that his letters back to his wife – who wisely chose not to follow the drum – have survived to give us a picture of life in the ranks at this time. Authored by William’s descendent Vivien Rowart, Not So Easy, Lads combines William’s letters home with other accounts and regimental records to provide a detailed picture of the life, and deaths, of the redcoats of the 44th at home and on campaign at the close of the eighteenth century. The regiment chased smugglers on the Isle of Man, served under the Duke of York in Flanders, and then fought in the West Indies under John Moore. Dysentery, malaria, and yellow fever continually thinned their ranks on St Lucia, devastating the regiment. During this time, William proved himself a conscientious and able soldier and rose to the rank of Serjeant Major only for the fevers of the West Indies to put an end to any further hopes of military glory.
Hopefully there is at least one title in this quartet that will appeal to fans of the series, but there’s plenty more to follow before the year is out – and watch this space for plans for 2024.
Professor Malcolm Wanklyn is one of the countries leading historians of the British Civil Wars. He was the Head of Wolverhampton University’s History Department, where he taught Charles Singleton, Commissioning Editor for Helion’s Century of the Soldier book series. To date, Malcolm has written three books for Helion and is looking to write a fourth. He will be the key note speaker at the Helion British Civil War Conference on Saturday 11th May 2024, which will be held at the Midland Institute, Birmingham.
As a child I became interested in the English Civil Wars because on most Sundays in the late 1940s my mother and I were taken by my grandparents to the Hind Hotel, Wellingborough for afternoon tea. There I was regaled with the tale, which I now know to be false, that when the hotel was being built Oliver Cromwell marched past at the head of his troops heading for the battlefield at Naseby. The hotel was also full of seventeenth-century armour and weapons.
I studied History and Economics at the University of Manchester and on graduating I was fortunate to be granted a State Studentship to write an MA thesis on the King’s Armies in the West of England 1642-46. I subsequently received a doctorate for a study of the factors that might explain why members of the landed gentry in Shropshire and Cheshire chose to support the royalists or the parliamentarians or neither in 1642. After that, military history being unfashionable in academic circles in the 1970s, my teaching and research became focused on the counties situated in the valleys of the Severn and the Wye where landowners were one of the social groups driving change in agriculture, industry and commerce. The culmination of this was managing the team of researchers who digitised the Gloucester port books which monitored goods carried up and down the River Severn from the reign of Elizabeth I to the first years of the Industrial Revolution. This project was completed in 1995 and is in the public domain as a component of the Social Science Data Archive at the University of Essex.
Thus, although I continued to teach a special subject on the English revolution in which the civil war was the principal focus, my commitment to military history was firmly on the backburner for well over twenty years. However, when I retired from my full-time post as Professor of Regional History at Wolverhampton University in 2002 my first love revived. I began tentatively in 2004 with a revisionary narrative of the First Civil War mainly from a royalist perspective in cooperation with my former student Frank Jones. Two monographs followed – Decisive Battles of the English Civil War: Myth and Reality (Pen and Sword, 2006) and The Warrior Generals (Yale University Press, 2010) as well as some contributions to academic journals.
In 1940 Oxford University Press had published a two-volume book entitled The Regimental History of Cromwell’s Army compiled by Professor Godfrey Davies from notes and drafts written by Professor Sir Charles Firth who had died four years before. At the time neither had access to the many thousands of manuscripts in the Exchequer Papers and the State Papers in the National Archives because these were very largely uncatalogued. By 2012 the cataloguing was well advanced, and I decided that I could perform a great service for historians by reconstructing in tabular form the names of the company and troop commanders in the New Model Army between 1645 and 1661. These were published in two volumes by Helion and Company in 2015 and 2016 as Reconstructing the New Model Army. Since then I have written two further monographs – Parliament’s Army Commanders 1642-1651 (Pen and Sword, 2019) and The Army of Occupation in Ireland 1603-1642 (Helion, 2022). I have now begun to re-appraise the battles of the British Wars (1642-1651) in the light of the numerous studies published since Decisive Battles and my subsequent research and reflection on what I had written in 2006 which began in the foreword to paperback edition of that book published in 2015.
As I sit in my desk, I look though the open window into the gardens and the hint of the changing season is in the air, so I guess it’s a good time to look ahead to what the start of the autumn schedule looks like for Century of the Soldier and Retinue to Regiment book series.
September’s releases start with ‘Hojo,Samurai Warlords 1487-1590’, by Stephen Turnbull. The book examines the 16th century Japan Hojo military dynasty who lived in the famous Odawara Castle, within the context of the military developments on the 16th century. The dynasty founded in 1487 fielded armies using bows and arrows, but within 60 years, their troops were trained to use mass musketry and artillery. The book is lavishly illustrated and has several new art work commissions. Due mid-September, in the Retinue to Regiment series.
Remaining with Retinue to Regiment, September will also see the release of Jonathan Davies final third volume of ‘The Tudor Arte of War’. The final book will look at the Elizabethan Army, and how it was equipped and organised. The author looks at the wars in Ireland and against the Spanish in the Netherlands. Once again, Jonathan has pulled together some fantastic illustrations to add to the fascinating text.
The book will be out for the Tudor Warfare Conference on the 16th September.
The final book due in September will be The Army of Transylvania (1613-1690) by Florin Ardelean. This is Florin’s second book for Helion and his first for the Century of the Soldier book series. In this new work, the author examines the development of the Transylvanian forces as it struggles to maintain various degrees of independence sandwiched between the Habsburg Empire in the west and the Ottoman Empire in the east. Illustrated with newly commissioned art work and rich in detail, this book is very much a first in the English language.
As an avid collector of books relating to the Franco Prussian conflict of 1870, I was struck many years ago by fact that many English language accounts of this war were very much written from the victor’s perspective; perhaps not surprising since many of the standard German texts of the period were translated and widely circulated amongst a new hungry general public and equally curious military establishment, keen to understand the secrets of the all-conquering Prussian led armies.
That is not to downplay the value of such material; the sheer detail of their official history, the quality of the maps within the numerous studies produced by the Groβen Generalstabe and the information contained within the almost limitless number of semi-official histories and accounts is truly awe inspiring, albeit one-sided, with the authors, with the noticeable exception of Hoenig, seemingly anxious not to upset the widespread and carefully cultivated perception of Prussian infallibility in all matters military.
A chance purchase of several volumes of the French official history on one of my many trips to the battlefields around Metz opened my eyes to just what material was available to those who were prepared to dig a little deeper; not easy, if like me, you passed your time during French lessons at school looking out of the window, but definitely rewarding.
Lehautcourt’s excellent works on the war were the next to grace my shelves, and added much detail and information that was simply not available to earlier German authors, providing for a more rounded and nuanced account of the conflict.
For a whole new layer of intrigue and backstabbing noticeably missing from their German equivalents, it is hard to match the memoirs of the senior French participants, and these works take up an ever-growing amount of shelf space. When the established social order in France thrown out of the window following the Paris uprisings of September 1870, key figures in the military together with notable politicians were all too anxious to put pen to paper, seeking to defend and enhance personal reputations and excuse and explain (sometimes all too non-convincingly!) their actions which resulted in such ignominy and humiliation for France.
My intention behind the four volumes in this series is to share this material with a wider audience, hopefully providing a fresh, and I suspect to many, more nuanced perspective of events. In particular, the inclusion of numerous quotations from participants offers an immediacy and vivacity missing from more staid studies of the conflict with the text being complemented by comprehensive OOB’s and casualty returns, numerous photographs and illustrations together with detailed colour maps taken from official and semi-official staff studies. With any luck, not only will it encourage people to dig a little deeper into the widely available source material, it may act a spur to make that trip to the battlefields of Eastern France. You won’t regret it!
Being both much interested in post-war Southeast Asian military aviation history since our teens, we had of course been attracted by the figure of General Claire Lee Chennault but learned only later about his connections with American intelligence services.
We then felt the need to learn more and fill the gap between two better-known episodes: the American Volunteer Group achievements during the Sino-Japanese War, and the not-so-secret-anymore operations of Air America during the Vietnam War. We co-authored several articles on the topic, and, a few years later, the Asia@War series by Helion Publishing gave us the opportunity to include our research material into a wider overview of the geopolitical and military situation of the countries involved, with CAT being both the connecting thread and the central theme. Meanwhile, the fantastic research into Air America archives carried out by the team of Dr. Joe F. Leeker at the University of Texas in Dallas had made it possible to connect the dots in the history of many airframes.
The first volume of the series sets the stage and introduces some of the major players, starting with Claire Lee Chennault himself. Often portrayed as a lonesome maverick with a cause, Chennault was from the start of his Chinese adventure considered as an American asset by some circles in Washington. He was the right guy at the right place at the right moment to define a strategy that could help contain Japanese expansion in mainland China. The study also described the other actors involved, such as Italy, Germany, the Soviet Union, and France, each of them with their own agenda in China.
After the creation of the American Volunteer Group, a.k.a. the Flying Tigers, on the eve of the Pearl Harbour’s attack, Chennault worked on several projects, such as an extension of the AVG that would have included British and Commonwealth pilots, or strategic bomber units that would have had the range to bomb Japanese cities from Chinese bases. The moment of glory for Chennault was when he ably directed the AVG during the Japanese onslaught throughout Southeast Asia. When Western powers suffered defeats after defeats, the Flying Tigers accomplishments, often exaggerated, were highlighted and they were treated as heroes and became a legend until this very day.
The career of Chennault during WWII is summarized by insisting not only on his achievements in directing air operations in a far flung and isolated theatre of operation, at the bottom of global United States priorities, but also his battling with Washington and his direct hierarchical commander, Lt Gen Joseph Stilwell. Both diverged on the strategy to follow and the place to be accorded to the air power. Chennault seemed to prevail when Stillwell was called back, averting a deep crisis with Chiang Kai Shek. However, when the old and acerbic warrior, at odds with his superiors for decades, believed that his leadership had merited a third star and command of air units in theatre, top brass in Pentagon would not allow a China maverick to triumph over the old-boy network. Chennault was forced to resign, with the explicit threat that if he refused, he would be demoted back to colonel and then retired. Chennault left China on 1 August 1945. Two weeks later, Japan surrendered. The career of one the most popular and controversial American commanders ended in apparent disgrace. He shared the destiny of many of his men, secret shadow air warriors often publicly glorified, but facing continued hostility from the hierarchy.
A depressed Chennault returned to the USA, where he divorced. Once a hero, he found himself excluded from the top military hierarchy and without purpose to fill his free time in retirement. However, the events in China did not keep him away from there for long. He came back to setting up a new company, the Civil Air Transport (CAT), beginning as a humanitarian relief airline that was soon caught on the ongoing civil war opposing Nationalists to Communists. Calling back his former Tigers, Chennault would write another chapter of their legend. Many of them would form the core for the clandestine operations in the next decade. The description of the missions flown by some of these adventurers, like former Marine Robert R. Rousselot who acted as CAT’s chief pilot, Felix Smith, Paul Holden, James B. McGovern, later shot down and killed over Dien Bien Phu, or Eric Shilling who went to Asia in 1941, flew P-40s with the AVG and ended his career with Air America in Laos in 1967, would add a personal dimension to the Tigers’ tale.
The CAT operations were also presented within the wider air operations taking place in China, including those of the Chinese Nationalist Air Force (CNAF), the other local airlines, the CNAC and CATC, which were also more and more mobilized for paramilitary operations as the war dragged on, providing the reader with a wide overview of the military operations conducted in China during the 1945-1949 period. The nascent Chinese communist air power was also studied as well as the presence of the foreign air forces still in China: British in Hong Kong, the Americans in Peiping and Tsingtao, and the Soviets at Port Arthur. The authors also explores some issues that still entailed the relationship between China and United States until this very day, like continued confrontation about Taiwan, or the secessionist trends in Tibet or Sinkiang (Xingjian). The study concluded with the evacuation of the CAT towards Taiwan and its outright acquisition by the Central Intelligence Agency. By all public appearance, CAT continued to operate as a normal airline, and from a decade, even became Taiwan de facto national airline. On the other side, it was involved in secret air operations.
The study of clandestine missions undertaken thereafter from Taiwan by CAT is also an amazing journey through a changing Asia in times of decolonization.
The brutal Japanese occupation had set up a chain reaction leading to the definitive demise of the colonial powers. When WWII finally came to an end in August 1945, for most peoples of Europe, Russia and United States peace allowed things to finally settle down. But that was not the case in the Far East where the collapse of the colonial empires set up a series of events that led in many cases to armed struggles and revolutions. Western troops who had survived the ordeal of the most destructive conflict in history and though that they could go home to deserve a well-earned peaceful rest found themselves caught in the crossfire. Military aviation would play a distinctive if not a crucial role on those conflicts. In addition to the desire for emancipation, the Cold War logic also spread to the area forcing the CIA to mount its first aerial clandestine air operations. The agency had already started clandestine flights across the Iron Curtain in Europe, but it was in Asia that the concept was refined, including the use of offensive means, in addition to transport missions. The same operational concepts were later expanded into South America and Africa.
The logic was to contain the spread of communism in Asia, but Washington was also involved in secret missions for causes not always related to this officially avowed objective. Some countries refusing to strictly adhere to the western interests, for example trying to settle a middle way between capitalist and communist blocks within the non-aligned movement, like Indonesia or Burma, were also pressured as it will show in the subsequent volumes.
That sets the stage for the conflicts to unfold during the following decades, from the Nationalist exile to Taiwan, the secret missions, the skirmishes over the border islands, to the numerous attempts at organizing and supporting local rebellions based on ethnic, cultural, or religious minorities, like in Sinkiang or Tibet where CAT flown secret missions over mainland China. Missions over Communist China became increasingly complex and dangerous, with the loss of a CAT crew and the capture of a CIA team in November 1952.
CAT also rapidly found itself involved in the Korean War, both as regular freight airline, and as a vector for clandestine infiltration missions. Similar, CAT also flew in support of Kuomintang units that had fled into Northern Burma. The Burmese political situation and the state of the fledging Union of Burma Air Force will also be addressed. At the end of the Korean War, CAT needed a new mission lest it would be dissolved, and the situation in French Indochina was going to provide plenty. Even though the United States were very reluctant to see France return to Asia after World War II, they were obliged to oppose the progress of the Communist-oriented Viet Minh. During the last two years of the Indochina War, and especially during the fight for the stronghold of Dien Bien Phu, CAT provided crucial assistance despite constant friction between the French command and the American crews. The CAT’s involvement in French Indochina will also give an overview of the political context, describe French air assets and operations, and the various American proposals that may help the French reverse the course of the war.
The fall of Dien Bien Phu and the end of the French presence in Indochina did not mean the end of CAT’s presence. On the contrary, the airline had to take over part of the logistical support to the Royal Laotian armed forces fighting the Pathet Lao Communist guerrilla movement that controlled most of the eastern part of the country. This marked the beginning of a continuous presence of American aviators and operators in Laos until 1975. Later CAT also flew in support of the Thai Police forces operating clandestinely in Laos. The study will also provide a glimpse into the secret air operations carried out by the other side over Indochina, including those carried out by the Soviet and North Vietnamese air forces.
In 1957, the CIA started a series of supply drops for the Tibetan rebels fighting the Chinese invaders. These missions, carried out under most difficult conditions, triggered a very harsh response from Beijing, including the deployment of air power. In the longer run, India’s secret services and air force took over the covert operations.
The last major covert endeavour for CAT was Operation Haik, during which the airline provided logistical support and technical assistance from the Philippines and Taiwan to pro-Western, anti-Sukarno rebels in Indonesia, and even included an attempt at operating a rebel air force, as the CIA had done in 1954 in Guatemala. After noticeable early successes in the eastern part of the Indonesian archipelago, the operation turned into a disaster when the young Indonesian air force managed to focus its resources to the area. Based on available local documents and interviews, the study will give an insight into the Indonesian air force of the time and its capabilities.
In parallel to the Indonesian operation, CAT returned to Burma, where, together with the Republic of China Air Force, it flew covert missions to assist the remaining Kuomintang units, exiled there since 1950, and under attack by both the Popular Liberation Army and the Burmese governmental troops.
In 1959, CAT underwent a major reorganization, and one of its offspring, Air America, took over the covert side of operations. However, during a transitional period, both CAT and Air America aircraft could be seen operating together on the field, like in Laos. In Taiwan, CAT continued its official life as a civilian airline despite a first crash in 1964, for which foul play was suspected. A luxury service with jet planes was even started in 1961 until a fatal crash in 1968 sealed the fate of the airline. Now unwanted by the Taiwanese government, and having served its purpose as a front company, CAT disappeared, but was survived by several front companies it had bred.
The Nine Lives of the Flying Tiger series will certainly not be the definitive work on the subject, as more documents are bound to emerge, but we hope it will provide the reader with a comprehensive and readable account of the adventures of a multi-facetted airline with enough geopolitical background to understand the specificities of each theatre in which the airline was involved. Moreover, it was practically the first time that a study encompasses the whole career of Claire Lee Chennault, the famed commander of the American Volunteer Group – alias the Flying Tigers – from pre-WWII to the Cold War period.
The series is lavishly illustrated with rare photos, and specially commissioned maps and profiles.
Helion author Yuhan Kim discusses the generalship of Louis-Gabriel Suchet, central figure in his two-volume study of the Peninsular War on the east coast of Spain.
Despite the renown of Louis-Gabriel Suchet’s name amongst the Napoleonic scholar community, little has been written about him or his campaigns in the English language when compared to other areas of the Peninsular War. Referenced constantly, but with little information other than that he bears the prestigious award of being the most successful French marshal in the Peninsular War, I sought to explore the why and hows that would justify, or argue against, Suchet’s standing in To Conquer and To Keep.
Suchet’s Army
Competence seems to have been a trait that was generally quite common in the Armée d’Aragon. Suchet’s subordinates readily carried out his bidding with energy and their tactical skills more than compensated for any blunders Suchet may have made. As seen in To Conquer and To Keep, they were aggressive and excellent at independent operations. Even the generals who unsuccessfully fought the guerrillas could hardly be called incompetent, and even with their backs against the wall they managed to eke out victories.
The colonels, particularly Rouelle (116e Ligne) and Millet (121e Ligne) were beloved by their men and renowned for their courage. Suchet’s troops themselves tended to be of good quality. The foreign troops of the Vistula Legion and Italian division were on-par with their French allies – their commanders excellent too. Suchet’s cavalry regiments were arguably the best line cavalry fielded by French in the Peninsula. After the Siege of Tarragona, Delort and his 24e Dragons rode through the breached wall in an impressive feat of horsemanship, and repeated this at the First Battle of Castalla when they charged over a narrow bridge under fire to crush the Spanish left flank. One of the most interesting aspects of Suchet’s campaigns is the 13e Regiment de Cuirassiers, the only regular French cuirassier regiment to serve in Spain. Under excellent leadership of men such as d’Aigremont, Robichon, Scarampi, and de Gonneville, the regiment found itself at the center of many of Suchet’s victories. So feared were they that the Spanish army celebrated when they received news that the regiment was being transferred to fight in France in 1814.
Suchet kept a tight grip on his men with regards to discipline so as to not alienate the Spanish populace through French excesses, but strategically released the reins in calculated displays of violence, especially during sieges, to deter future resistance.
Suchet is best known for having suppressed the guerrillas in the areas he was in charge of: this is true, at least for Aragon. From 1809-1810, the French successfully crushed or expelled the guerrillas in Aragon, and henceforth most guerrilla warfare was due to incursions by Spanish units rather than internal uprisings or localized guerrilla forces. It is not far off to say that Suchet had crushed armed resistance within Aragon, but it is difficult to determine how much of that was due to Suchet’s counterinsurgency policies. The lack of popular resistance against French rule in Aragon could also be attributed to war fatigue following the terrible Second Siege of Zaragoza, and the elimination of Spanish regular armed forces from the province.
With respect to military counterguerrilla operations, there is something of a myth regarding Suchet: Suchet only ever personally directed one counterguerrilla operation, which ended in the failure of French columns to trap the Spanish. Most of the guerrilla war at a ground level was prosecuted by Suchet’s subordinates while Suchet was outside of Aragon on campaign. What Suchet did succeed in however, was creating a regional administration and economy efficiently tailored to French military interests, such that he ensured that his force was well supplied without having to rely on supply convoys from France. His excellent administration, combined with the military victories he led against Spanish regular forces, broke resistance within Aragon and ensured it as a French base of operations for several years.
Sieges and Battles
The Armée d’Aragon under Suchet held the impressive record of successfully besieging and taking five major fortresses and countless smaller forts and castles. Much of this can be accredited to the skills of Suchet’s engineering and artillery corps. Joseph Rogniat, Sylvain Valée, and Nicolas Haxo. Suchet himself was more in a supervisory role, competently managing logistics and the siege camp, within the context of the overall campaign. Readers should find the accounts of the sieges to be highly informative on the preparations and procedures that went into investing and besieging a city.
Suchet’s record as a battlefield commander is somewhat mixed, and a close analysis reveals that his battlefield victories were often due to his enemies’ plans becoming unraveled by the fog of war, or the tactical superiority of his troops and subordinates. I dare say that Claude-Victor Perrin, not normally counted one of the stars of the marshalate, was probably a better tactician than Suchet. Suchet was caught on the wrong foot when the Spanish armies attacked him at Sagunto, having been successfully tricked by Blake into believing that he would not be attacked, and failing to properly scout the battlefield beforehand. It was only due to sheer luck that his scattered forces were able to consolidate in time for the battle. In the spring offensive of 1813, Suchet made a brilliant opening move that saw his troops wipe out several Spanish battalions. But the normally prudent and methodical Suchet made a gamble and sent his outnumbered army against John Murray’s Anglo-Allied army. Suchet vastly underestimated the fighting qualities of Murray’s polyglot force and – denied use of his fearsome cavalry by the rough terrain – suffered a defeat.
In fact, in a sandbox version of the Battle of Valencia, when a perfect execution of Suchet’s battle plan is pitted against a perfect execution of Blake’s, the result would probably have been that Suchet would capture Valencia, but Blake and the bulk of his army would escape intact. Historically, the French managed to capture both. Herein again, it was Suchet’s subordinates that made the victory as complete as it was. Général de Division Pierre-Joseph Habert, whose division had been relegated to a diversionary role against the Spanish right, went above and beyond by aggressively advancing and unwittingly cutting off Blake’s contingency line of retreat – it was that, more so than Suchet’s grand envelopment, that was the decisive factor in the French victory.
Suchet did not have the panache of Murat, or the inspirational frontline battlefield leadership of Ney. Perhaps this is something that he yearned for: in his memoirs, he distorts his wounding at Sagunto to have occurred as he rallied the 13e Cuirassiers for a charge – in reality he had been shot by a spent bullet during a reconnaissance that morning at the onset of the battle. Nonetheless, his competence, manifesting in visible successes, garnered him the loyalty and respect of his troops, and in turn, he cared well for them, always concerned for their well-being. He fostered a close relationship with his men, especially the junior officers, whom he so valued in a war where low-level leadership was critical. Even after the war ended, Suchet maintained relations with his former subordinates. When Général de Brigade Millet (former colonel of the 121e Ligne) died of his wounds not long after the war, Suchet and his wife looked after Millet’s impoverished wife and children, and became godparents to Millet’s son.
All that is to say, Suchet’s true strengths lay in strategic and operational command, while his subordinates were best entrusted with the finer tactical details. When on campaign, Suchet had to divide his army between garrison troops and the field force, meaning that on campaign he was often outnumbered and had limited troops. Yet he was adept at making the most of the resources available to him to achieve his objectives. At the peak of his career, Suchet was juggling occupational forces in three provinces in addition to a frontline army. Under Suchet, the Armée d’Aragon operated as a finely tuned machine of war, with Suchet handling operational details, while his subordinates executed his plans and took care of tactics.
Buy To Conquer and to Keep Volume 1 1809-1811: Suchet and the War for Eastern Spain, 1809-1814here.
Buy To Conquer and to Keep Volume 2 1811-1814: Suchet and the War for Eastern Spain, 1809-1814here.
The Century of the Soldier, the name of one of the more prolific series of Helion books, was also the Swedish Century. The seventeenth century was the time when Sweden rose from the position of a small, northern kingdom into a regional great power which dominated northern Europe and whose influence reached far and wide, throughout the Holy Roman Habsburg Empire from Strasbourg in the southwest to Vienna in the southeast, but also to eastern powers such as the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Muscovy, Transylvania, the Khanate of the Crimea, and Ottoman Turkey. Many modern-day historians call seventeenth-century Sweden an empire, and for sure, the Swedish Crown also established (admittedly short-lived) colonies in North America and West Africa. In Sweden, the century is usually referred to as the Great Power Period (Swedish: Stormaktstiden).
Sweden established its empire through the traditional means of empire-building: military conquests, the intimidation of weaker neighbours by blunt force, and the imposition of trade sanctions (usually blockades) on neighbouring states who did not soon enough follow Swedish dictates. The Duchy of Courland attempted to stay neutral in the ongoing war between Sweden and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, yet allowed the enlistment of soldiers on behalf of Sweden’s enemies and allowed its ports to serve as transit points for all kinds of goods sanctioned by Sweden. While neither action constituted a formal cause for war, as then defined by international law, Courland’s activities displeased Stockholm. In 1658, a Swedish assault force hidden in a fleet of barges covertly infiltrated the Duchy, carried out a coup, and imprisoned the Duke of Courland who was forced to accept Swedish security guarantees and de-facto Swedish occupation. The assault force was led by Field Marshal Robert Douglas, a Scottish veteran of the Thirty Years’ War.
The Swedish army in Prussia- from Lion of the North Volume One- art work by Sergey Shemenkov
The Swedish army was uniquely experienced and advanced for its time. The Swedish Crown maintained an efficient intelligence system which served the country well during foreign wars. The systems and organisations put in place to raise the Swedish army during the Thirty Years’ War ensured that the Swedish Crown, despite the country’s small population, few sources of state revenue, and poorly monetised economy, repeatedly could raise professional armies.
To save its limited manpower, Sweden made extensive use of hired mercenaries, privateers, pirates, and, in times of need, assorted cutthroats who received patents to plunder hostile territories as they pleased. Sweden was a Lutheran country, and soldiers had to attend Lutheran mass – but their personal beliefs did not matter as long as they maintained the Lutheran front. The Swedish army was inclusive in its acceptance of Poles, Germans, Italians, and Spaniards who professed the Catholic faith. The same went for Muscovites and other Orthodox believers. The army also accepted Tatars and the occasional Turk of the Muslim faith. As long as everybody attended mass together, there were no complaints.
Swedish Musketeer- From the Kalmar War- art work by Sergey Shemenkov
Yet, most foreigners within the Swedish army and navy were Germans, Scots, and Dutchmen, with English and Irish soldiers also serving in great numbers. Many of them learnt their military skills in Swedish service. Because of innovations by well-known kings and commanders such as King Gustavus Adolphus and Field Marshal Lennart Torstensson, Sweden had the arguably most modern and up-to-date military establishment of its time, if for no other reason than its innovations in organisational model and tactical doctrine ultimately were copied by most adversaries. The Swedish model of warfare was indeed copied by most west and north European militaries and accordingly strongly influenced the western way of warfare, with Sweden’s opponents no less keen to imitate than its allies. Muscovy based its entire set of new formation regiments on the Swedish pattern. Moreover, the Swedish model laid the foundation for subsequent improvements in British infantry and French cavalry tactics. In addition, the Swedish regimental artillery system was copied by many countries, including France, the Holy Roman Empire, and Muscovy.
The Swedish Century can be said to have begun in 1617. In this year, after decades of complicated relations, Sweden and Muscovy agreed the Treaty of Stolbovo which gave Sweden a stable and advantageous border in the northeast. Moreover, in the same year Sweden re-ignited the ongoing war with the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth through a surprise naval landing in and invasion of Livonia.
Swedish colours- taken from Charles Xth’s Wars Volume Three- art work by Anderson Subertile
During the Swedish Century, Sweden was an aggressive, expansionist, and militaristic country. The country reached its greatest geographical extent in the period from 1658 to 1660, when Sweden had gained a sizeable part of Norway – in addition to its previous conquests in the east and on the Continent. Seldom loved, but frequently feared, Sweden wielded military power and early in the century, with Dutch help, established efficient industries, especially in arms manufacturing. However, it was not the place to visit for great art and literature, a highly developed cuisine, or a pleasant climate. The French philosopher and scientist René Descartes was intrigued by the powerful Swedish court in Stockholm, but having arrived, he soon contracted pneumonia and died.
Meanwhile, the Swedish Crown during its many wars sponsored what can only be called plundering for culture expeditions on the Continent. Books, works of art, even statues were selected by diligent officials who had them carefully packaged and shipped back to the old country, which surely was in need of some classical culture. Plundering for culture under wartime conditions was legal as then defined by international law. Moreover, the practice also fit in well with the somewhat unusual neo-classicist ideology of the higher strata of Swedish society, who in words and deeds wished to emulate their professed ancient Gothic ancestors who conquered the Roman Empire. This ideology, incidentally, was from the nineteenth century onwards frequently derided by Continental and British historians who much preferred to identify with the properly civilised and comfortably imperial Romans than with what they regarded as uncouth barbarian invaders. That the horrid seventeenth-century Swedes actually believed themselves to be Goths only made them yet more ghastly in modern eyes. By then, Swedish historians agreed, but they were in most cases secretly pleased by the presence in Sweden of so many excellent museums and libraries whose collections derived from conquests during the Swedish Century.
All good things come to an end. The Swedish Century ended in 1721 with the Treaty of Nystad which concluded the war between Sweden and old Muscovy’s successor Russia, the new and rising great power in eastern Europe. The Treaty formally ended the Great Northern War, and obligated Sweden to cede to Russia all its gains in 1617 as well as Estonia and Livonia.
Although in recent years more known for athletes, popular musicians, and the Nordic noir genre of crime fiction, Sweden’s application to join NATO resulted in increased public interest in the Swedish Century and the country’s history as a one-time great power. A t-shirt illustrating Sweden’s greatest geographical extent, with the comment ‘It was better in the past’, has become popular. (Photo: SMB)
Only fragments of the history of the Swedish empire were previously available in English-language publications. Now, full details on the establishment of Sweden’s seventeenth-century empire, complete with explanations on the developments of the Swedish army and navy during the Swedish Century, appear in the following eight Helion books by Michael Fredholm von Essen:
I was looking at the Henry VIII arquebus at the Royal Armouries, not his personal breech-loading gun but one of those bought by the thousand from Italy for those lucky enough to accompany him to Boulogne in 1544. It had a tubular aperture or peep sight and a neat little foresight, it was meant to be aimed. I noted a similar proliferation of simple but effective sights in many of the guns in the Styrian State armouries in Graz. Why was it that for centuries muskets lost their sights and were no longer aimed but simply ‘levelled’? Smooth bore weapons firing round lead balls are intrinsically inaccurate but could they be as ineffective as has been claimed, much evidence suggests so? At the battle of Chotusice in 1742 Frederick the Great’s men fired 540 balls (33 lb of lead and a regimental volley) for each enemy fatality. The French General Comte de Guibert equated musketry to “burning powder at the birds.”
There are plenty of hearsay reports from the early-modern period onwards of the inaccuracy of massed arquebus and then caliver and musket fire. I have provided plenty of them in Vol. 1 of the Arte of Warre and accuracy doesn’t get any better in the period covered by Vol. 2 and Vol. 3! Why was this? It must in part come down to the quality of training. In 1569 the Privy Council wanted to develop a corps of arquebusiers. They recommended mustering twice a month and allocating 120 rounds for practice. The project was abandoned because of the cost. Training of Shot at the time of the Armada took all of six days and would have involved about twenty rounds of musket ammunition at most. Conscripted or pressed men for service overseas in Elizabeth I’s reign may have never fired their weapons before their arrival on hostile soil.
From the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries where there are accurate statistics for accuracy the results were unimpressive. The targets were often massive rectangles corresponding to a large formation, not individual men. In 1814 against such a cavalry target well-trained British soldiers managed 53% of hits and ordinary soldiers 40%, much better than the results in combat. British soldiers were well provided in training with 30 cartridges of ball to practice and 70 cartridges of ‘blank’ per annum. This was a very generous allocation compared to the Austrians who had six rounds for practice and the Russians only two or three! No wonder so many armies relied upon the bayonet! What is even more surprising is that when the American armies in the Civil War were equipped with superbly accurate rifled-muskets they failed to exploit their accuracy through the absence of effective training and regular practice. This contrasted with the British Army at the time where their new rifled-musket proved so effective against the Russians in the Crimea. This was because of systematic training in the principles of marksmanship and then extensive practice with adequate provision of ammunition. In the Vietnam war the poor quality of the infantry soldier, often drawn from the poorest and least well educated portion of the population, led to the abandonment of marksmanship and a reliance on unaimed automatic fire.
If the weapon was inaccurate, the shifts used by the soldiers made it worse. Soldiers would omit to wad the charge, or tap-load without ramming as well as using smaller charges of powder to reduce recoil, all these practices further reduced the effectiveness of the weapon. As the smooth-bore gun changed little, except for the method of ignition, for four hundred years and the same sharp practices pursued, it was hardly surprising that the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of ‘musketry’ hardly changed. The only means by which it could be made effective was by volley fire, something of an obsession with historians of the Military Revolution, as it has been identified as a key factor in military progress. It was a policy of despair from captains contemptuous of their mens’ competence.
In contrast in Japan, Korea and China it was accuracy not rate of fire that was valued. Barrels were forged true and the bore could be honed until it shone. Ammunition would be polished and made to fit precisely and it was then well charged and wadded. Barrels were provided with a variety of sights and it was made clear to the soldier that the rate of fire took a distant second place to precision. The marksmen were taught to shoot at individual targets, aligning their sights carefully and could shoot from a stable kneeling position as well as standing. In the West there was no effort made to provide sights, or improve the quality of the bore, as would have been perfectly possible. The acme of European professionalism the Prussian army went so far as to design a weapon that couldn’t effectively be aimed but could be loaded very quickly. Why did the West give up on aiming for well over three hundred years?
J R Hale wrote with tremendous insight when he considered what he considered the proletarianisation of warfare in the Early Modern period. The Cheshire archer in the retinue of the Stanleys in 1485 was far more of a ‘soldier’ than the ‘pressed’ youth clutching a caliver in the rain and mist of Ulster a century or so later. The latter was not expected to possess any martial skills, merely to perform limited drill manoeuvres and when called upon to load and fire his weapon in the direction of the enemy. This poor lad contrasted with his Irish enemy who was part of Tyrones new model army. He was trained to deploy and skirmish in good order using his fieldcraft and to achieve high standards of marksmanship. What clearly mattered was the respect and expectations that leaders had for their men.
Could it have been different? It clearly was in the East. In the West on the other hand the ‘fierie’ weapons was treated with disdain as the shameful means by which a peasant could tumble a prince from his prancing mount. A captain may take his place among the plump of pikes but never amongst the musketeers. It was a weapon that could never match the social cachet of the edged weapon and the man who carried it, whether sword, pike or partisan. It is hardly surprising that in the Royal Armouries in the glass cases filled with the exquisitely gilded and etched armour, fine-hilted swords with blades from Solingen and Toledo, the humble musket should be found at the bottom, in comparative obscurity and relative ignominy.
Researched exclusively using primary sources drawn from archival records, regulations and memoirs, The Garde Nationale 1789-1815: France’s Forgotten Armed Forces is the first comprehensive study in the English language of this institution which played a prominent role during the Revolutionary decade, but did not fade away during Napoleon’s Empire. In today’s blog post, Helion author Pierre-Baptiste Guillemot gives a brief overview of the research, writing and illustration process behind his book.
I’ve been interested in military history of the years 1789-1815 since an early age, and started writing on the revolutionary and imperial armies when I turned 18. At the time, I was interested in ‘exotic’ and little-known units that historians had seldom studied. Moreover, these troops had often been raised in a hurry and disbanded just as quickly once peace – or defeat! – came. This observation applies to French émigré troops in Dutch, British or Russian service, but also to and to the Légions of the Revolution and to the Corps Francs of the end of the Empire. Such topics were indeed the inspiration for my very first articles in the French magazines Soldats Napoléoniens and Traditions. In October 2016, under François Hollande’s presidency, the Garde Nationale was recreated in France after almost a 145-year eclipse. Coincidentally, it was at this very moment that I began researching into this subject, which I felt had unjustly fallen into oblivion. I published a series of articles in French historical journals. Renowned artist Patrice Courcelle produced the plates. Through these early works, I realized that this subject was an ever-changing one. Through it, it was possible to combine political, social and military history. The research went on for over four years. By 2020, when the lock-down period began, I had already written two university dissertations, nearly 30 articles and attended several conferences as a speaker. I felt then that I was ready to go to the next step and write a full-length book. Numerous discussions with some close friends convinced me to write a book on the Garde Nationale, as my research would make a valuable contribution to that topic.
I have subtitled my book France’s Forgotten Armed Forces. Indeed, the Garde Nationale has been somewhat forgotten in many aspects. A key institution during the revolutionary decade, it seemed to be moribund during the Consulate. It was mainly confined to fighting gangs and outlaws in the French countryside, acting as a guard of honour on an ad hoc basis and taking part in the grand ceremonies held by the new regime. Similarly, its participation as ‘ultimate resources’ in the final battles of the imperial period is largely overlooked. Yet, at the beginning of July 1815, gardes nationaux fought the advancing coalition troops at the Plaine des Vertus, a few kilometres away from Paris. Others defended fortresses in eastern France and in the French Alps. Moreover, the Garde Nationale has been neglected by contemporary historical research. It is indeed mentioned in all the general histories of the period, but hardly more than just mentioning it. For example, none of the 549 symposiums organised during the Revolution Bicentennial gave it any attention whatsoever. Similarly, only two French-language studies devoted to it cover the 1789-1815 period, but actually deal more with its history up to its decline in 1871. As a result, the study of the Garde Nationale Parisienne takes the lion’s share, while that of the départements is largely neglected, just as is the history of the Garde Nationale under the 1st Empire. The situation is very similar as far as English-speaking historiography is concerned.
La Fayette at the Fête de la Fédération on 14 July 1790. Based on a painting by Charles Thevenin, the Commandant General of the Garde Nationale de Paris wears the epaulettes of an American general. (Original artwork by Patrice Courcelle, author’s collection)
To write a synthesis – whether in French or, in my case, in English – means confronting a patchwork of representations. In many respects, the Garde Nationale is heir to the milices bourgeoises of early modern France. In other words, every town of any size had a Garde Nationale by 1789-1790. However, this also applied to the rural areas of the kingdom of France. In Paris, the Garde was led by La Fayette, the ‘hero of two worlds’, and played a major role in the famed Fête de la Fédération. In fact, the Garde took part in all the major events of the Revolution – including illegal ones – and gave them unquestionable legitimacy. From 1791 onwards, the gardes nationaux became an integral part of the volontaires, whose units they filled, thus forming the nucleus of the revolutionary armies. Under the 1st Empire, these men constituted genuine reserve armies and even served integrated into the Grande Armée from the beginning of 1813.
Discussing the various representations of the Garde prompts me to evoke its related iconography. Researching its uniforms was a real challenge, requiring a thorough study of contemporary images, surviving items and archival records. Fortunately, iconography is plentiful, as readers will have noticed: nearly 240 images, almost 200 of them in colour, are reproduced in my book. The selection process, as you can imagine, was complex! The selected images dispel a number of common clichés. For example, between 1789 and 1791, the Gardes were not universally clad in blue. On the contrary, many were dressed in red, green and even white. Similarly, a comparison with texts drawn from the archives shows that we must be wary of overly nice images. In January 1806, Général de Division Antoine-Guillaume Rampon, who commanded the Saint-Omer camp, revealed that at the end of 3 months’ service on the coasts of northern France, 75 percent of his gardes nationaux were half-naked. As for weaponry, although the pike was mass-produced during the Revolution, it did not disappear thereafter: under the Consulate, it was used, for example, by the rural national guardsmen of the Cambrésis district. Similarly, pikes were produced in 1814 – the famous Régnier pikes – but Napoleon’s abdication prevented them from being used by too many guardsmen.
When the siege of Lyon occurred in the summer of 1793, young Louis-Sébastien Rosaz (1777–1849) was only 16 years old. Yet he joined the chasseurs of the Bataillon de la Croisette. It is likely that, like many of the soldiers of the Armée Départementale de Rhône-et-Loire, he was dressed in civilian clothes. The usual uniform included a cotton carmagnole and pantaloons of the same fabric, with a wide belt. Hat pompoms and epaulettes – red for the grenadiers, green for the chasseurs – gave a slightly more military appearance to these troops. (Original artwork by Patrice Courcelle, author’s collection)
I was very lucky to work with Patrice Courcelle, well known for his military artwork. Most of the plates depict guardsmen whose background is briefly recalled in the commentaries. The cover artwork, for example, features Sous-Lieutenant Ponthaux, flag-bearer of the Garde Nationale of Puteaux, then a small village just west of Paris. This officer confidently carried a flag which had been made in June 1790 and blessed by parish priest Eustache-Louis Noël on 4 July of the same year. It was burnt on 27 November 1793 because it ‘bore signs of royalty’, but a detailed description in the communal registers enabled Patrice to reconstruct it. My favourite plate is still the one depicting Louis-Sébastien Rosaz, a young chasseur from the Lyon Garde Nationale who fought during the siege of his city back in the summer of 1793. By chance, while the plates were being made, I came across his physiognotrace portrait, drawn during the 1st Empire. Otherwise, the finished works are excellent and provide a perfect illustration of the progression of French fashions over this 30-year period. A quick glance at the first and final plates will confirm the changes.
Varennes Garde Nationale flag. (Original artwork by Jean-Claude Colrat)
Jean-Claude Colrat has created a series of 20 exclusive illustrations of Garde Nationale flags, covering the entire time span under study. That of the Varennes Garde Nationale tells a most interesting story. King Louis XVI and his family were arrested in this small Meuse village during their failed escape on 21 June 1791. On 18 August of that year, in gratitude for the role played by the local Garde Nationale during this event, the National Assembly presented them with ‘a flag in three colours bearing the motto “La Patrie reconnaissante aux citoyens de Varennes”’ (The Fatherland grateful to the citizens of Varennes). The inscription painted on the silk finally read ‘to the town of Varennes’. Prussian troops seized this flag as they passed through in 1792. Deposited in Berlin’s military arsenal, the emblem is now preserved, in a very poor condition, in the Deutsches Historisches Museum. Jean-Claude Colrat’s digital drawing restores it to its original state for the first time ever.
My book was published in mid-November 2022. It was a wonderful experience, the fulfilment of an old dream. My heartfelt thanks go to my parents, my friends who have supported me throughout this adventure – first and foremost Thibaut and Yves, but also Patrice, Jean-Claude, Stéphane, Fabien, François and Arnaud – and, at Helion, Andrew and Rob. Nevertheless, the research continues, because no study is ever complete. After submitting the final proofs, I turned my attention to the role of women in the Garde Nationale. I also intend to develop further the study of overseas gardes nationaux, as well as the music bands of the Garde. In addition, some new flags have resurfaced, which will provide the basis for an upcoming article. Finally, archive investigations have enabled me to identify with great accuracy the two figures in the magnificent portrait reproduced in the concluding chapter, and to clarify the context in which the painting was completed. René Dogereau and Perrine Trouillard were two elders living in squalor in Nantes by 1791. Although a tenacious local legend has them as centenarians, genealogical research shows that they were only in their seventies. In any case, they were at the heart of a communication operation set up by the local branch of the Société des Amis de la Constitution.
I believe that readers will find that The Garde Nationale provides a comprehensive and readable study of one of the major players of the French Revolution and the 1st Empire. I also hope that it will stimulate further research into this most fascinating period.
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