“Heroes and Villains: Inside the Minds of the Greatest Warriors in History”, by Frank McLynn

384 pages, Pegasus Books, ISBN-13: 978-1605980294

On March 9 of 2018 I reviewed Richard and John: Kings at War by Frank McLynn and described it as “a book that is simultaneously a joy to read and a chore to get through”. Well, ditto for Frank McLynn’s Heroes and Villains: Inside the Minds of the Greatest Warriors in History (guess I shoulda learned my lesson the first time around, huh?). This work is a series of mini-bios of six hell-raisers from across history:

• Spartacus, The gladiator who brought Rome to its knees 
• Attila the Hun, The Mafioso-warrior 
• Richard the Lionheart, England’s greatest warrior-king 
• Cortés, The renegade Conquistador 
• Tokugawa Ieyasu, Japan’s legendary Shogun 
• Napoleon, The master tactician and military genius

No reason is given as to why these six men in particular were chosen, but one can gather that they each represent a different era of warfare and, therefore, are the paragons of the same. I guess. I mean, Napoleon is obvious, as is (maybe) Richard Cœur de Lion, but Spartacus? While he was, no doubt, a great leader who managed to keep his collection of runaway slaves together through thick and thin, all of his victories were against third-string legionaries led by mediocre commanders. Attila the Hun was a master of mounted warfare (well, he was a Hun, wasn’t he?), but when the might of the fading Roman Empire at last mustered itself for one last throw of the dice he was done for; the only thing that saved him was the fact that Flavius Aëtius, his Roman antagonist (and sometime friend, BTW) refused to destroy him, as this would have broken up the carefully crafted coalition he had painstakingly assembled to hit the Huns. Cortés benefited from superior technology and the defections of the Aztec’s many subservient tribes to his cause; as for his battles, they were one running slug-fest after another in which the last man standing was declared the victor. Tactics? Strategy? Bah…kill ‘em all. Tokugawa is the biggest mystery of all, and not because he is the only Easterner in this collection of Western fighters; as McLynn states several times, Tokugawa…WAS NOT A GERNERAL! Rather, he was a master Machiavellian with an endless reservoir of patience and a knack of finding the right moment to screw his enemies and allies over; all of his victories – especially the last, the Battle of Sekigahara – were won when key allies of his opponents defected to his side.

Beyond that, McLynn promised that he would get Inside the Minds of the Greatest Warriors in History and, well…he doesn’t. The last chapter promises to do so, although by now one would have thought that this summing up would have been unnecessary. I mean, c’mon, Frank, you devoted a whole chapter each to get all Freudian on these cats, why another chapter telling us what you were supposed to have already told us?! While we were given a thumbnail biography of each man, along with a summary of their greatest achievements, by the time I slammed the covers closed on this book, I didn’t feel as if I was any closer to knowing what made these guys tick than I was when I cracked the spine. So Heroes and Villains is an okay overview of Spartacus, Attila the Hun, Richard the Lionheart, Cortés, Tokugawa Ieyasu and Napoleon, but nothing more.