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The Decisive Battles of the Western World and Their Influence upon History #2
Decisive Battles of the Western World: From the defeat of the Spanish Armada to Waterloo
General Fuller is already admitted to be the most original and influential military thinker that Great Britain has ever produced; now he must be reckoned as one of her major military historians...an excellence which it would be impertinent to praise.
561 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1954
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About the author
J.F.C. Fuller
127 books70 followersMajor-General John Frederick Charles Fuller, CB, CBE, DSO was a British Army officer (1899–1933), military historian and strategist, notable as an early theorist of modern armoured warfare, including categorising principles of warfare.
Fuller was also an early disciple of English poet and magician Aleister Crowley and was very familiar with his, and other forms of, magick and mysticism.
Fuller was also an early disciple of English poet and magician Aleister Crowley and was very familiar with his, and other forms of, magick and mysticism.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
January 5, 2025
I found two things striking about the author. First, great initials, right up there with FTW and GFY. Second, he was a fascist, something the editor didn’t think worth mentioning, I had to go and find out for myself. I don’t mean a fascist in today’s parlance — someone who even slightly disagrees with you. He was a member of the BUF and a friend of Adolph Hitler. He must’ve been pragmatic enough to keep that support quiet once Britain went to war as there weren’t any legal consequences (as there were with Mosley) but as late as 1939 he was a guest at Hitler’s 50th birthday party (which I’m sure was a riot).
I wasn’t interested in his political views anyway, and prior to the chapter “The Rise Of The Third Reich” they weren’t a distraction. In that chapter he does devote attention to what he calls Hitler’s “astonishing achievements” and quotes in detail other antisemites who placed the responsibility for WW2 squarely on the shoulders of jewish financiers and intellectuals, lamenting the “campaign of hatred” carried out by “the Jews” against German national socialism, propaganda that poisoned the minds of western powers particularly America.
I didn’t read beyond that, I feel Iike I’ve read all I want to about WW2 for this lifetime. The chapters prior were well written and very interesting even to someone like me with no knowledge of and only tepid interest in military tactics. I’ll give the book 3 stars in spite of the subtle sieg heiling towards the end. And 1 star to JFC for being a POS.
I wasn’t interested in his political views anyway, and prior to the chapter “The Rise Of The Third Reich” they weren’t a distraction. In that chapter he does devote attention to what he calls Hitler’s “astonishing achievements” and quotes in detail other antisemites who placed the responsibility for WW2 squarely on the shoulders of jewish financiers and intellectuals, lamenting the “campaign of hatred” carried out by “the Jews” against German national socialism, propaganda that poisoned the minds of western powers particularly America.
I didn’t read beyond that, I feel Iike I’ve read all I want to about WW2 for this lifetime. The chapters prior were well written and very interesting even to someone like me with no knowledge of and only tepid interest in military tactics. I’ll give the book 3 stars in spite of the subtle sieg heiling towards the end. And 1 star to JFC for being a POS.
September 2, 2024
The battles described in the first volume of Fuller’s trilogy on The Decisive Battles of the Western World were fought primarily in Mediterranean countries and resulted in the dominance of the Roman Empire.
The fifteen battles explored in Fuller’s second volume involved or were fought in countries bordering the Atlantic and culminated in the dominance of the British Empire. Fuller’s description of these battles is supplemented by a contextual chronicle of the intervening events.
Fuller opens his narrative with the Anglo-Spanish war in which the Spanish snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. Fuller describes the failure of Drake’s desperate plan to launch eight fire ships at night in an attempt to ignite the Spanish fleet at port. The ships drifted clear of the port and did no damage. However, because of a lack of discipline in the Spanish fleet, the fire ships caused a panic ‘and in confusion many of [the Spanish] ships crashed into each other in the dark, and were borne out to sea.’ As a Spanish officer wrote later, “Fortune so favoured [the English that] they dislodged us with eight vessels, an exploit which with one hundred and thirty they had not been able to do nor dared to attempt” (p29-30) This unlikely English victory changed the course of history and formed the basis for the emergence and dominance of the British Empire.
The path to British dominance was threatened by the English Civil Wars. Fuller highlights how this was not just a war between King and Parliament. Within the Parliamentary forces there was a conflict between Independents and the ‘persecuting zeal’ of the Puritan Presbyterians - echoes of the battle in the US Republican party today between moderates and Puritans.
During the first war between the Royalists and the Parliamentarians, the Roundheads captured the Kings private cabinet – literally a cabinet – containing drafts of copies of his letters to the Queen. Parliament printed the part of the correspondence which would blacken the king and concealed parts which would have vindicated him. They also learned ‘the Royal epistolary style’ and ‘invented for purposes of propaganda letters which purported to come from the Queen’. Fuller’s description of this propaganda war is a reminder that the ‘fake news’ spread by social media today is not new, just an echo of the past.
The Royalists were defeated by Cromwell’s army. But the victory was won by his New Model Army, composed mainly of Independents, which ‘struck a death-blow at Presbyterian Puritan discipline’ and acted as a catalyst for the second English Civil War. Despite the fact that Cromwell himself was a Puritan, Cromwell’s New Model Army now needed to defeat the Parliamentary supporters of the Puritan Presbyterians. Fuller concludes that Cromwell’s second victory saved England from ‘the paralysing autocracy of the Kirk…’.
Fuller reminds us that religious fundamentalism is not new. Although Cromwell introduced religious freedom, it was limited to Protestants. Cromwell was able to find ‘a justification for every human act, however atrocious’ in the Bible. In 12 years of war, Cromwell’s forces ‘indiscriminately slaughtered’ some 500,000 lives in Ireland, a third of the country’s population. As a result of the massacre of the Irish by the English, the population of Ireland fell below 1 million.
Fuller’s description of Ottoman Turkey’s war against Russia in the 1700s is a reminder of the impact that the decisions of an individual can have on history. In 1711, Russia’s Peter the Great declared war on Turkey and advanced over ‘land so wasted by the Turks that it was impossible to provision his men.’ Reduced through starvation to 38,000 men, and confronted by a Turkish force of 190,000 men the Russian army was forced to retreat and entrench. Peter’s position was desperate: had the Turks invested the Russian army, Peter’s capitulation would have been certain. ‘Muscovy would, in all probability, have revolted, and the whole course of history have been changed.’ Instead, inexplicably, the Turkish Grand Visier decided to assault the entrenched Russian camp. When the assault failed, ‘the Grand Visier opened negotiations, with the results that Peter was allowed to withdraw his starving army…’.
A surprising inclusion in Fuller's selection of Decisive Battles is the Battle of Plassey in June 1757. This battle, which took place in Carnatic India, resulted in the deaths of a mere eighteen mercenaries of the private army of the British East India company. However from these few deaths ‘there sprouted forth the power of the nineteenth century.’ The enormous wealth England extracted from India as a result of this victory was able to finance Britain’s Industrial Revolution and the expansion of its Empire.
Another battle described by Fuller which combined very few British losses and the decisive role of an individual together with the impact of a series of random events, was the loss of Canada by the French in 1759. The British had been emboldened to launch an attack by the information passed on by two French deserters. Boats full of British soldiers were allowed to simply pass French sentries, twice, because the Scottish captain leading the British happened to be able to speak French and could respond to the sentries’ challenges. Then, the French failed to respond quickly enough to the British incursion as their leader had been replaced by someone less capable. Fuller describes how, as a result of this tragedy of errors, the ‘crowning battle in the long struggle between England and France for supremacy in North America’ saw the French streaming away from Quebec “in disorderly and disgraceful flight” and enabled England to win Canada from the French for the loss of just 58 killed. Fuller ends his chapter on this battle with the prophetic observation of the Duke of Bedford: “I don’t know whether the neighbourhood of the French to our North American colonies was not the greatest security for their dependence on the mother country, which I feel will be slighted by them when their apprehension of the French is removed.”
Bedford’s prophecy quickly proved accurate. Over his next two chapters Fuller describes how, with the withdrawal of the French, the Native Americans captured every western fort except two. The disorganised colonial militia were unable to resist and had to turn to the British redcoats to quell the rising. This in turn required taxation to meet the cost of the British troops, which saw the introduction of stamp duty, including on tea. The United States would have been the first of the English colonies to demand Dominion status, but because in 1774 it had not yet been invented, the only option was to demand complete independence.
The common perception of the American War of Independence, particularly for Americans, is one of American colonists bravely standing alone battling the British. Fuller highlights that in fact the War of Independence was a precursor to what would later be called World Wars. The Americans cemented an alliance with the French. When Spain allied herself with France in 1779 she also declared war on England. Spain and France were joined by Holland in 1780. The British allies included five regiments of Germans (most Brunswickers) as well as Canadian and Native Americans.
In his chronicle on the revolt of the American colonies, Fuller shows, again, how a random event by an individual shapes history. When the American colonists planned to attack the British in Quebec, their leader, General Arnold, asked a Native American to deliver a letter outlining the American colonists’ plan to one of his generals. Instead, the letter was delivered to the British. The colonists attack was a complete failure. According to General Francis Vinton Greene, ‘Had it succeeded, [the attack] would probably have united Canada to the Thirteen Colonies and changed the whole course and outcome of the war’ and the Canadian provinces would have become states of an enlarged United States of America.
A cascade of errors also determined the outcome of the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805 which Fuller notes ‘brought to an end the 100 years struggle between [England] and France for lordship of the seas.’ French Rear-Admiral Allemand at Rochefort was ordered to put to sea to unite with Admiral Villeneuve; but Villeneuve was not informed of this. When Villeneuve sighted some frigates after sailing he assumed them to be English. So instead of following his orders to sail north, he altered course southward to avoid them. Given English Admiral Cornwallis had decided to split his fleet, victory would have gone to the French if the fleets of Villeneuve and Allemand had united. Notwithstanding this mistake, there was still a chance for a French victory as Villeneuve had predicted Nelson’s tactics at Trafalgar. But he said nothing to his officers about how to meet Nelson’s attack when he knew his captains were only capable of forming line ahead. Fuller recalls Napoleon’s reaction: “What a chance Villeneuve has missed!”
The character of French General Davout shaped history at the Battle of Jena in 1806, when with just 26,000 men, he did not hesitate to march against 70,000 Prussians, and won the battle.
The Battle of Waterloo on 18 Jun 1815 is often thought of as an English victory over the French. Based on the participants nationality it should be remembered as battle between the French and a German army, led by a British general. Of the Allied forces that fought, 80% were non-British of which almost two thirds were German or Prussian. Even allowing that Blücher’s 50,000 Prussians only arrived at the end, still only about a third of the 68,000 Allied troops at Waterloo were British and more than half were German.
While history remembers the Duke of Wellington as the victor of the Battle of Waterloo, Fuller’s narrative highlights his ineptitude. Wellington ‘was totally unprepared to face the situation. He did not believe that Napoleon would assume the offensive...’ so decided to take his mistress 'Lady Jane Lennox to Enghien for a cricket match' and the following day to a ball. (p502)
Wellington had ordered the Dutch to relocate from Quatre Bras. The Dutch general ignored Wellington’s orders. However, his disobedience meant that when the French attempted to take Quatre Bras, they were prevented from doing so by the Dutch forces still concentrated there.
On the same day, 16 Jun 1815, a series of random events determined the outcome of the Battle of Ligny. Things started badly when Napoleon, on hearing of the presence of Prussian troops nearby, ‘refused to believe it’ as this ‘disrupted’ his carefully prepared plan. Then, French cavalry riding to support Napoleon took a different road than ordered. This error was compounded by the failure of D’Erlon, the French cavalry’s commander, to send out an advance rider to notify Napoleon of their approach. On hearing of the approach of an unknown force of 20-30,000 cavalry, some French troops panicked. Because it took time to restore order Napoleon suspended his advance against the Prussians. During this time a thunderstorm broke over the battlefield. This ‘terrific storm of rain saved Wellington, for it so drenched the ground that the French were unable to advance across country’ and it rendered cannon fire impossible.
Blücher attempted to save the situation by leading a cavalry charge against the French. But the 73-year-old Prussian field-marshal’s horse was shot and rolled over its rider. Although surrounded by French Cuirassiers, Blücher’s aide, Nostiz, ‘dragged him ... to safety’. As Fuller notes, had Nostiz not saved Blücher ‘Waterloo would never have been fought'.
French misfortune was compounded by poor choices Napoleon made when appointing his leaders. Following the French victory at Ligny, France’s General Ney had orders, and an opportunity, to pursue and destroy the Prussians. Instead Ney paused his army for lunch. Together with the two hours delay resulting from the confusion caused by the arrival of D’Erlon’s cavalry, this meant that the fading sunlight prevented the French from pursuing and destroying the shattered Prussian corps. Were it not for this two hour delay the Prussians would not have been able to regroup and play a part at the Battle of Waterloo. Had they been able to advance, Napoleon’s forces would have been able to attack the Allied forces before they were fully deployed. While D’Erlon’s expected approach in the least expected of directions did not cost the French the Battle of Ligny, it did cost them the decisive Battle of Waterloo. Napoleon realised the magnitude of the errors, telling d’Erlon: “France has been ruined”. As Fuller poetically writes, ‘With such subordinates as Grouchy and Ney, Michael and all his angels would have lost the campaign.’
But Napoleon cannot just blame his generals. On 17 Jun 1815 a waiter who had served breakfast to Wellington served supper to French general Grouchy. The waiter had overheard Wellington’s plan and shared it with the French. When told of it, Napoleon’s sole answer was ‘Nonsense!” ‘Nothing would shift the fixed ideas which possessed him...’. And on the day of the final Battle of Waterloo on 18 Jun 1815, Wellington positioned one corps of 17,000 men eight to nine miles away from Waterloo – ‘a blunder of the first magnitude’ (p524)
Napoleon’s inflexibility, together with the French failure to decisively defeat the Prussians, meant that despite Wellington splitting his forces, victory went to the Allies. As a contemporary wrote, Napoleon was ‘so mastered by his genius that at times he lived in a land of illusions.’
In telling the history of these battles, Fuller highlights the stories of the people involved, the role of random events, and how the current is shaped by the past. Fuller’s work is engaging and detailed; insightful and informative.
A rewarding read for anyone with an interest in military history.
The fifteen battles explored in Fuller’s second volume involved or were fought in countries bordering the Atlantic and culminated in the dominance of the British Empire. Fuller’s description of these battles is supplemented by a contextual chronicle of the intervening events.
Fuller opens his narrative with the Anglo-Spanish war in which the Spanish snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. Fuller describes the failure of Drake’s desperate plan to launch eight fire ships at night in an attempt to ignite the Spanish fleet at port. The ships drifted clear of the port and did no damage. However, because of a lack of discipline in the Spanish fleet, the fire ships caused a panic ‘and in confusion many of [the Spanish] ships crashed into each other in the dark, and were borne out to sea.’ As a Spanish officer wrote later, “Fortune so favoured [the English that] they dislodged us with eight vessels, an exploit which with one hundred and thirty they had not been able to do nor dared to attempt” (p29-30) This unlikely English victory changed the course of history and formed the basis for the emergence and dominance of the British Empire.
The path to British dominance was threatened by the English Civil Wars. Fuller highlights how this was not just a war between King and Parliament. Within the Parliamentary forces there was a conflict between Independents and the ‘persecuting zeal’ of the Puritan Presbyterians - echoes of the battle in the US Republican party today between moderates and Puritans.
During the first war between the Royalists and the Parliamentarians, the Roundheads captured the Kings private cabinet – literally a cabinet – containing drafts of copies of his letters to the Queen. Parliament printed the part of the correspondence which would blacken the king and concealed parts which would have vindicated him. They also learned ‘the Royal epistolary style’ and ‘invented for purposes of propaganda letters which purported to come from the Queen’. Fuller’s description of this propaganda war is a reminder that the ‘fake news’ spread by social media today is not new, just an echo of the past.
The Royalists were defeated by Cromwell’s army. But the victory was won by his New Model Army, composed mainly of Independents, which ‘struck a death-blow at Presbyterian Puritan discipline’ and acted as a catalyst for the second English Civil War. Despite the fact that Cromwell himself was a Puritan, Cromwell’s New Model Army now needed to defeat the Parliamentary supporters of the Puritan Presbyterians. Fuller concludes that Cromwell’s second victory saved England from ‘the paralysing autocracy of the Kirk…’.
Fuller reminds us that religious fundamentalism is not new. Although Cromwell introduced religious freedom, it was limited to Protestants. Cromwell was able to find ‘a justification for every human act, however atrocious’ in the Bible. In 12 years of war, Cromwell’s forces ‘indiscriminately slaughtered’ some 500,000 lives in Ireland, a third of the country’s population. As a result of the massacre of the Irish by the English, the population of Ireland fell below 1 million.
Fuller’s description of Ottoman Turkey’s war against Russia in the 1700s is a reminder of the impact that the decisions of an individual can have on history. In 1711, Russia’s Peter the Great declared war on Turkey and advanced over ‘land so wasted by the Turks that it was impossible to provision his men.’ Reduced through starvation to 38,000 men, and confronted by a Turkish force of 190,000 men the Russian army was forced to retreat and entrench. Peter’s position was desperate: had the Turks invested the Russian army, Peter’s capitulation would have been certain. ‘Muscovy would, in all probability, have revolted, and the whole course of history have been changed.’ Instead, inexplicably, the Turkish Grand Visier decided to assault the entrenched Russian camp. When the assault failed, ‘the Grand Visier opened negotiations, with the results that Peter was allowed to withdraw his starving army…’.
A surprising inclusion in Fuller's selection of Decisive Battles is the Battle of Plassey in June 1757. This battle, which took place in Carnatic India, resulted in the deaths of a mere eighteen mercenaries of the private army of the British East India company. However from these few deaths ‘there sprouted forth the power of the nineteenth century.’ The enormous wealth England extracted from India as a result of this victory was able to finance Britain’s Industrial Revolution and the expansion of its Empire.
Another battle described by Fuller which combined very few British losses and the decisive role of an individual together with the impact of a series of random events, was the loss of Canada by the French in 1759. The British had been emboldened to launch an attack by the information passed on by two French deserters. Boats full of British soldiers were allowed to simply pass French sentries, twice, because the Scottish captain leading the British happened to be able to speak French and could respond to the sentries’ challenges. Then, the French failed to respond quickly enough to the British incursion as their leader had been replaced by someone less capable. Fuller describes how, as a result of this tragedy of errors, the ‘crowning battle in the long struggle between England and France for supremacy in North America’ saw the French streaming away from Quebec “in disorderly and disgraceful flight” and enabled England to win Canada from the French for the loss of just 58 killed. Fuller ends his chapter on this battle with the prophetic observation of the Duke of Bedford: “I don’t know whether the neighbourhood of the French to our North American colonies was not the greatest security for their dependence on the mother country, which I feel will be slighted by them when their apprehension of the French is removed.”
Bedford’s prophecy quickly proved accurate. Over his next two chapters Fuller describes how, with the withdrawal of the French, the Native Americans captured every western fort except two. The disorganised colonial militia were unable to resist and had to turn to the British redcoats to quell the rising. This in turn required taxation to meet the cost of the British troops, which saw the introduction of stamp duty, including on tea. The United States would have been the first of the English colonies to demand Dominion status, but because in 1774 it had not yet been invented, the only option was to demand complete independence.
The common perception of the American War of Independence, particularly for Americans, is one of American colonists bravely standing alone battling the British. Fuller highlights that in fact the War of Independence was a precursor to what would later be called World Wars. The Americans cemented an alliance with the French. When Spain allied herself with France in 1779 she also declared war on England. Spain and France were joined by Holland in 1780. The British allies included five regiments of Germans (most Brunswickers) as well as Canadian and Native Americans.
In his chronicle on the revolt of the American colonies, Fuller shows, again, how a random event by an individual shapes history. When the American colonists planned to attack the British in Quebec, their leader, General Arnold, asked a Native American to deliver a letter outlining the American colonists’ plan to one of his generals. Instead, the letter was delivered to the British. The colonists attack was a complete failure. According to General Francis Vinton Greene, ‘Had it succeeded, [the attack] would probably have united Canada to the Thirteen Colonies and changed the whole course and outcome of the war’ and the Canadian provinces would have become states of an enlarged United States of America.
A cascade of errors also determined the outcome of the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805 which Fuller notes ‘brought to an end the 100 years struggle between [England] and France for lordship of the seas.’ French Rear-Admiral Allemand at Rochefort was ordered to put to sea to unite with Admiral Villeneuve; but Villeneuve was not informed of this. When Villeneuve sighted some frigates after sailing he assumed them to be English. So instead of following his orders to sail north, he altered course southward to avoid them. Given English Admiral Cornwallis had decided to split his fleet, victory would have gone to the French if the fleets of Villeneuve and Allemand had united. Notwithstanding this mistake, there was still a chance for a French victory as Villeneuve had predicted Nelson’s tactics at Trafalgar. But he said nothing to his officers about how to meet Nelson’s attack when he knew his captains were only capable of forming line ahead. Fuller recalls Napoleon’s reaction: “What a chance Villeneuve has missed!”
The character of French General Davout shaped history at the Battle of Jena in 1806, when with just 26,000 men, he did not hesitate to march against 70,000 Prussians, and won the battle.
The Battle of Waterloo on 18 Jun 1815 is often thought of as an English victory over the French. Based on the participants nationality it should be remembered as battle between the French and a German army, led by a British general. Of the Allied forces that fought, 80% were non-British of which almost two thirds were German or Prussian. Even allowing that Blücher’s 50,000 Prussians only arrived at the end, still only about a third of the 68,000 Allied troops at Waterloo were British and more than half were German.
While history remembers the Duke of Wellington as the victor of the Battle of Waterloo, Fuller’s narrative highlights his ineptitude. Wellington ‘was totally unprepared to face the situation. He did not believe that Napoleon would assume the offensive...’ so decided to take his mistress 'Lady Jane Lennox to Enghien for a cricket match' and the following day to a ball. (p502)
Wellington had ordered the Dutch to relocate from Quatre Bras. The Dutch general ignored Wellington’s orders. However, his disobedience meant that when the French attempted to take Quatre Bras, they were prevented from doing so by the Dutch forces still concentrated there.
On the same day, 16 Jun 1815, a series of random events determined the outcome of the Battle of Ligny. Things started badly when Napoleon, on hearing of the presence of Prussian troops nearby, ‘refused to believe it’ as this ‘disrupted’ his carefully prepared plan. Then, French cavalry riding to support Napoleon took a different road than ordered. This error was compounded by the failure of D’Erlon, the French cavalry’s commander, to send out an advance rider to notify Napoleon of their approach. On hearing of the approach of an unknown force of 20-30,000 cavalry, some French troops panicked. Because it took time to restore order Napoleon suspended his advance against the Prussians. During this time a thunderstorm broke over the battlefield. This ‘terrific storm of rain saved Wellington, for it so drenched the ground that the French were unable to advance across country’ and it rendered cannon fire impossible.
Blücher attempted to save the situation by leading a cavalry charge against the French. But the 73-year-old Prussian field-marshal’s horse was shot and rolled over its rider. Although surrounded by French Cuirassiers, Blücher’s aide, Nostiz, ‘dragged him ... to safety’. As Fuller notes, had Nostiz not saved Blücher ‘Waterloo would never have been fought'.
French misfortune was compounded by poor choices Napoleon made when appointing his leaders. Following the French victory at Ligny, France’s General Ney had orders, and an opportunity, to pursue and destroy the Prussians. Instead Ney paused his army for lunch. Together with the two hours delay resulting from the confusion caused by the arrival of D’Erlon’s cavalry, this meant that the fading sunlight prevented the French from pursuing and destroying the shattered Prussian corps. Were it not for this two hour delay the Prussians would not have been able to regroup and play a part at the Battle of Waterloo. Had they been able to advance, Napoleon’s forces would have been able to attack the Allied forces before they were fully deployed. While D’Erlon’s expected approach in the least expected of directions did not cost the French the Battle of Ligny, it did cost them the decisive Battle of Waterloo. Napoleon realised the magnitude of the errors, telling d’Erlon: “France has been ruined”. As Fuller poetically writes, ‘With such subordinates as Grouchy and Ney, Michael and all his angels would have lost the campaign.’
But Napoleon cannot just blame his generals. On 17 Jun 1815 a waiter who had served breakfast to Wellington served supper to French general Grouchy. The waiter had overheard Wellington’s plan and shared it with the French. When told of it, Napoleon’s sole answer was ‘Nonsense!” ‘Nothing would shift the fixed ideas which possessed him...’. And on the day of the final Battle of Waterloo on 18 Jun 1815, Wellington positioned one corps of 17,000 men eight to nine miles away from Waterloo – ‘a blunder of the first magnitude’ (p524)
Napoleon’s inflexibility, together with the French failure to decisively defeat the Prussians, meant that despite Wellington splitting his forces, victory went to the Allies. As a contemporary wrote, Napoleon was ‘so mastered by his genius that at times he lived in a land of illusions.’
In telling the history of these battles, Fuller highlights the stories of the people involved, the role of random events, and how the current is shaped by the past. Fuller’s work is engaging and detailed; insightful and informative.
A rewarding read for anyone with an interest in military history.
May 14, 2012
Originally published on my blog here in August 1999.
General Fuller's analysis of decisive battles and their effects is one of the classics of military history in English. Its editing by John Terraine into two volumes concentrating on those battles fought in Europe and the Middle East has made the work a great deal more accessible. The way that Terraine has done this is to replace the missing sections with much shorter summaries of his own. The book in generals is structured to contain alternating "chronicles", describing the events following one battle and leading up to the next, with detailed analysis of the mayor battles between Salamis and the Normandy landings.
The concept of the book is a fairly old-fashioned one. Historians at the moment tend to assume that warfare never actually decided anything; a war is supposed to have an inevitable outcome pre-determined by economic factors. Even if, say, Napoleon had won the battle of Waterloo - as he could fairly easily have done - his eventual defeat would have only been postponed. This may well be true, but then some other battlefield would have marked Napoleon's defeat and would be regarded as decisive. (Decisive, in Fuller's book, means not so much that the battle itself had a definite outcome, but that it marks the end or shows the inevitability of the end of a period of history.)
Fuller was well qualified as a military analyst, being one of those who, during the First World War, saw the significance of the tank and whose ideas were influential in the German development of blitzkrieg. His experience tells him that no general, no matter how brilliant,. is infallible, and that military campaigns are often catalogues of mistakes on both sides. (Even if the generals never made mistakes, they are always at the mercy of an incomplete knowledge of enemy intentions.)
That doesn't mean that he didn't have his heroes (Napoleon was one), but he certainly realised that they weren't perfect. Fuller too has faults, though he avoids some of the worst ones into which any kind of historian can fall. One is an unquestioning attitude to sources, which can lead to such absurdities as a statement I heard on TV the other day, that the US entered the First World War as a moral duty, to "safeguard democracy". The other is that which M.I. Finley has spent much of his career attacking in ancient historians, a blindness to anything outside their speciality. Fuller is aware that he is not just concerned with strategy and tactics, weapons and equipment. There are economic and political backgrounds to every war, and to some important wars (such as the American War of Independence, the French Revolutionary wars or the Thirty Years' War), the history of ideas can be involved as well. He also manages to avoid the trap that many British establishment figures fell into after the Second World War - though Fuller could hardly be described as establishment - of thinking that Churchill was to be praised as a god. He is extremely critical of both Churchill and Roosevelt, whose political decisions he believed extended the war by some time and led inevitably to the Russian triumph in Eastern Europe and the Cold War.
One attitude Fuller shared with many other historians of the twentieth century is an anti-religious bias. (This stems from the belief many non-scientists have that science has disproved religion.) This is particularly apparent in his one sided picture of Luther and Calvin in the chronicle of events leading up to the Thirty Years' War.
The book ends with a fairly accurate prophecy of how the Cold War would develop - Fuller died long before this became obvious. The developments he did not see were the ability of guerrillas and minor powers to hold out against the major nations - Vietnam and Nicaragua for the US, Afghanistan for the USSR - and the rise of China as a major power.
General Fuller's analysis of decisive battles and their effects is one of the classics of military history in English. Its editing by John Terraine into two volumes concentrating on those battles fought in Europe and the Middle East has made the work a great deal more accessible. The way that Terraine has done this is to replace the missing sections with much shorter summaries of his own. The book in generals is structured to contain alternating "chronicles", describing the events following one battle and leading up to the next, with detailed analysis of the mayor battles between Salamis and the Normandy landings.
The concept of the book is a fairly old-fashioned one. Historians at the moment tend to assume that warfare never actually decided anything; a war is supposed to have an inevitable outcome pre-determined by economic factors. Even if, say, Napoleon had won the battle of Waterloo - as he could fairly easily have done - his eventual defeat would have only been postponed. This may well be true, but then some other battlefield would have marked Napoleon's defeat and would be regarded as decisive. (Decisive, in Fuller's book, means not so much that the battle itself had a definite outcome, but that it marks the end or shows the inevitability of the end of a period of history.)
Fuller was well qualified as a military analyst, being one of those who, during the First World War, saw the significance of the tank and whose ideas were influential in the German development of blitzkrieg. His experience tells him that no general, no matter how brilliant,. is infallible, and that military campaigns are often catalogues of mistakes on both sides. (Even if the generals never made mistakes, they are always at the mercy of an incomplete knowledge of enemy intentions.)
That doesn't mean that he didn't have his heroes (Napoleon was one), but he certainly realised that they weren't perfect. Fuller too has faults, though he avoids some of the worst ones into which any kind of historian can fall. One is an unquestioning attitude to sources, which can lead to such absurdities as a statement I heard on TV the other day, that the US entered the First World War as a moral duty, to "safeguard democracy". The other is that which M.I. Finley has spent much of his career attacking in ancient historians, a blindness to anything outside their speciality. Fuller is aware that he is not just concerned with strategy and tactics, weapons and equipment. There are economic and political backgrounds to every war, and to some important wars (such as the American War of Independence, the French Revolutionary wars or the Thirty Years' War), the history of ideas can be involved as well. He also manages to avoid the trap that many British establishment figures fell into after the Second World War - though Fuller could hardly be described as establishment - of thinking that Churchill was to be praised as a god. He is extremely critical of both Churchill and Roosevelt, whose political decisions he believed extended the war by some time and led inevitably to the Russian triumph in Eastern Europe and the Cold War.
One attitude Fuller shared with many other historians of the twentieth century is an anti-religious bias. (This stems from the belief many non-scientists have that science has disproved religion.) This is particularly apparent in his one sided picture of Luther and Calvin in the chronicle of events leading up to the Thirty Years' War.
The book ends with a fairly accurate prophecy of how the Cold War would develop - Fuller died long before this became obvious. The developments he did not see were the ability of guerrillas and minor powers to hold out against the major nations - Vietnam and Nicaragua for the US, Afghanistan for the USSR - and the rise of China as a major power.
April 1, 2024
The author is a Nazi sympathizer and rabidly anti-Semitic, he falls into several conspirational pitfalls when explaining WW2. The only interesting part of his WW2 analysis was his discussion on the validity of demanding unconditional surrender and how that demand sidelined policy in favour of limitless war.
The rest of the book was okay, but now I don’t know if anything I read can be trusted, given that the author seems to love his conspiracy theories.
The hate cannot be easily explained away as a product of the time. I’ve read plenty of WW2 books published in the immediate aftermath and they have contained superb analysis with limited and non-hateful bias. There’s really no excuse for this author.
The rest of the book was okay, but now I don’t know if anything I read can be trusted, given that the author seems to love his conspiracy theories.
The hate cannot be easily explained away as a product of the time. I’ve read plenty of WW2 books published in the immediate aftermath and they have contained superb analysis with limited and non-hateful bias. There’s really no excuse for this author.
August 21, 2007
I go back the these three volumes over and over. right now I'm reading the middle volume again. Fuller was not only the greatest military thinker since Clausewitz, he was also a first-rate historian and excellent writer. Most of all, though, his clear thinking helps the reader see what should have been obvious. I don't always agree with him, but he makes me think, and has helped me get in the practice of thinking better.
August 16, 2009
Dense and detailed.
June 20, 2016
A classic of military history! Broad, insightful, readable. The commentary on the historical influence of each battle is the key feature. (Read during High School)
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