Elting评论全文如下：
SIR James proposes to cover Napoleon's entire career as a military commander, with proper attention to his interwined activities as a statesman. He also reviews Napoleon's formative years and the legacy he drew from such military theorists as Bourcet and the Du Teils. There are a good chronological table, a bobtailed bibliography, and eighteen maps-most of them good. At the end of each chapter the author attempts an analysis of the events described therein. The tone is stuffy: Napoleon contributed nothing new to the art of war, in strategy, tactics, or weapons; Liddell Hart so pontificated, and that suffices. He was a sort of expert military plumber, supremely skillful in using existing tools. This is the Napoleon of pre-1940 English historians, devoid of personal virtues, if an admitted military genius. The author's coverage of the Napoleonic Wars is quite complete, especially if the relatively short length of his text is considered. Allowing for the author's built-in bias, it is roughly impartial. No words are wasted, but room is found to wedge in an occasional detail of interest. Taken as a whole, the book develops considerable drive, something like a falling brick wall. It is unfortunate that most of the individual bricks are chipped, cracked, broken, or completely pulverized. There is hardly one really complete and ac- curate battle description in the whole book, and some are ridiculous. The author frequently seems ignorant of what troops were engaged and who was in com- mand. The tactics involved get hashed, and the casualties become astronomical.
(For Aspern and Essling, Sir James claims 44,000 French casualties out of the approximate 55,000 engaged and invents the statement that they "had to abandon most of their wounded.") The whole book is studded with such chunks of nonsense: at Marengo, Kel- lermann charges with "two squadrons of the Consular Guard"; the Russians "recaptured Eylan" during that battle; one day's fighting disappears from the Bat- tle of Leipzig; the separate 18I4 battles of Brienne and La Rothiere mysteriously become one affair; at Waterloo French infantry columns attack British infantry squares. The strategical "analysis" likewise contains nothing new, much that is dubious, and some flat errors. The whole effect is one of hasty writing and com- plete carelessness as to the results. In sum, the book cannot be recommended for either pleasure or profit.
Falls Church, Virginia JOHN R. ELTING |
楼主: 蓝色拿破仑
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