Thursday, September 26, 2013

“A Woman’s Life in the Court of the Sun King: Letters of Liselotte von der Pfalz, Elisabeth Charlotte, Duchesse d’Orléans, 1652-1722”, by Duchesse d’Orléans Elisabeth Charlotte, Translated by Elborg Forster


352 pages, Johns Hopkins University Press, ISBN-13: 978-0801856358

On November 16th, 1671, Liselotte von der Pfalz, the 19-year-old daughter of the Elector of Palatine, was married to Philippe d’Orléans, or “Monsieur” as he was known at court, the only brother of Louis XIV. The marriage was not to be a happy one. Liselotte (known in France as Elisabeth Charlotte, Duchesse d’Orléans, or “Madame”) was full of intellectual energy and moral rigor. Homesick for her native Germany, she felt temperamentally ill-suited to life at the French court; besides, the homosexual Monsieur, deeply immersed in the pleasures and intrigues of the court, shared few of his wife’s interests. Yet, for the next 50 years, Liselotte remained in France, never far from the center of one of the most glorious courts of Europe. And throughout this period, she wrote letters – sometimes as many as forty a week! – to her friends and relatives in Germany. It is from this extraordinary body of correspondence that A Woman’s Life in the Court of the Sun King: Letters of Liselotte von der Pfalz, Elisabeth Charlotte, Duchesse d’Orléans, 1652-1722 has been fashioned. As introduced and translated by Elborg Forster, the letters have become the remarkable personal narrative of Liselotte’s transformation from an innocent, yet outspoken, girl into a formidable observer of great events and human folly.

If you share the current love affair with Jane Austen, or still remember Emily Dickinson, or are intrigued by the attitudes and poses of the present royals, you should try this woman for comparison. Everything you ever wanted to know about being a ruling-class woman, who is persecuted by Louis’ mistress Madame Maintenon, and reports on the inner life of the most powerful and corrupt court of the period, all without being absorbed or entirely downcast by its habits: its immorality; its imaginary piety; of kings who are so terrified by the prospect of their own deaths that they cannot allow the strength of other’s actual philosophical or theological thought to penetrate his own ignorance dependence on the apparent orthodoxy of his mistress’ hostilities. A woman’s book.

Monday, September 23, 2013

“Conquistador: Hernan Cortes, King Montezuma, and the Last Stand of the Aztecs”, by Buddy Levy



432 pages, Bantam, ISBN-13: 978-553805383

The Conquest of Mexico by the Spaniards was not a single event; it was not the result of disease, treachery, technology, or evil white men; it was a long two-year slog of battles won and battles lost. Too often the events surrounding the Conquest are simplified to issues of technology or disease and to a demonizing of the Spaniards. In Conquistador: Hernan Cortes, King Montezuma, and the Last Stand of the Aztecs, the Cortes expedition is covered from the landing along the coast through the destruction of the Aztec capital, with a short wrap up of the featured players. I, for one, was glad that the author resisted the temptation to go on and on: he found his ending point and took it. For those wanting more, there is extra information about the important characters and chronologies in several appendices at the end.

Levy writes in a readable style that is befitting the book’s popular audience; it is a narrative account more than academic treatise. Although Montezuma gets equal billing in the title, the book is largely written from Cortes’ point of view; no doubt his person is better sourced, but it is also a choice of the author. It is Cortes who drives the action, landing in a foreign land basically on the run from the authority in Cuba. His courage, determination, diplomacy, and charisma gathers native allies and even Spaniards sent to arrest him. The encounter with Montezuma is almost anti-climactic, as he is an almost passive character once in Cortes’ presence. Once he is off stage the real resistance begins and the Last Stand of the Aztecs arrives and is recounted with a keen eye towards explaining tactics and narrating battles, without bogging down in the details.

However, a flaring problem with this book – as with many books that tackle the conquest of Mexico – is the author’s one-sidedness. Levy has a curious tendency to employ a judgmental tone towards Cortes and his actions while explaining away the gruesome practices of human sacrifice, cannibalism, and skinning (complete with the wearing of human skins) that was at the center of Aztec religion and culture. By their own accounts, the Aztecs could sacrifice tens of thousands of human beings during one religious festival; many of these victims were infants, children, and women. The Aztecs required tribute of human sacrifice victims from the peoples it conquered with their hearts being cut from their living bodies and shown to the victim as they expired. Cortes and the Spaniards were, understandably, horrified by this, and no doubt used these practices to justify his own conquest and domination of the natives. It strikes me as overcompensation, however, for the author to devote a lengthy footnote to the “hypocrisy” of Cortes which “cannot be overlooked or overstated” because of Spanish practices of the Reconquista and the Inquisition. Perhaps I am not as able to escape my Western perspective, but comparisons of tens of thousands of human sacrifices a year, including infants and children, versus an Inquisition that may have committed around 3,000 sanctioned murders over 150 or so years seems misplaced.

The comparison is especially interesting given the author’s more nuanced understanding of ritual human sacrifice on what is likely the largest scale in human history. Take this passage as an example: “After his priests sacrificed a dozen children, believing that the survival of the universe depended on them, Montezuma would kneel before flickering firelight and pray for vision, for truth.” Notably, up to this point, the author had reminded his audience several times that the Aztecs justified their human sacrifices as being required by the gods for the sun to come up, the rains to come, and the harvests to be successful. Setting aside for the moment the fact that the Spanish Inquisitors where no doubt just as sure they were doing God's bidding, dropping this reminder just after a very unpleasant fact associated with the Aztec religion comes across as misplaced excuse making. In short, there is a double standard of cultural context which condemns the West but absolves the Aztecs.

Saturday, September 21, 2013

“With Musket, Canon And Sword: Battle Tactics Of Napoleon And His Enemies”, by Brent Nosworthy



516 pages, Da Capo Press, ISBN-13: 978-1885119278

With Musket, Canon And Sword: Battle Tactics Of Napoleon And His Enemies was the first of Brent Nosworthy’s books I ever read and I was hooked from the first chapter. Like his earlier work on linear warfare, this book is a gold mine of information that is easy to dig out the facts; unlike most of the books I’ve read on tactics this book is anything but dry, as Mr. Nosworthy tells you not only what the troops did, but why they did it. He also very good about distinguishing between fact and opinion and, whenever possible, he uses contemporary sources to back up the opinions given. This is the first study I’ve ever read that goes into the details as to why the British battle tactics were able to defeat the French (hint: he does not, like so many works, say that it was the superiority of British firepower and professionalism of the troops). Mr. Nosworthy gives us a detailed look at both the technical and psychological differences between the two battle tactics and shows why the results were what they were.

The tactics of the Napoleonic Wars have been poorly understood, but Nosworthy gives excellent detailed examples from the era showing how each of the combat arms dealt with each of the combat arms of their opponents. He shows the importance of morale and how 18th Century doctrine evolved into Napoleonic tactics. Skirmishers preceded attacking infantrymen, and columns were generally used not so much for attack as they were for maneuver toward the enemy where the men would then deploy into line. The French used lines more than has been generally thought. This system worked against everyone but the British, whose superior skirmishers kept the French columns in the dark until British infantry fired a volley and charged just as the French were attempting to deploy.

Nosworthy’s book goes a long way toward re-evaluating how we should understand Napoleonic Warfare, and as such is bound to ruffle a few feathers as far as popular established views are concerned. His writing is clear, subtle, and to the point, and there is seldom a paragraph that does not contain some interesting fact.