Waterloo diorama..

Just spotted this [clicky] in the online Daily Mail today... superb - must visit Winchester soon...

 

Closure (?) on the body of the British solider found at Waterloo...

Good read in the paper yesterday - I wondered if they'd manage to close on the story..

Background to this in the following post [clicky], and this follow up [clicky] from a year later ... then this weekend we had the following..  click to 'embigen' as Conrad Kinch would say..

With thanks to the Sunday Times for the content....

...apologies for the missing text between scans, it reads ....Leicester in 2012, were able to use DNS from living relatives to check the identity of their skeleton, the team at ....

...you have to admire Bousquet's tenacity..  three years they've been investigating this... amazing!

"Words of Command" - a review..

Howling gale with lashing rain this Sunday so no chance of spending any time getting the boat [clicky] ready, grandson was at his other grandparents, eldest was at work, the current Mrs Steve the Wargamer also at work, so a lazy day lounging on the sofa was the order of the day - even more so when I realised at lunchtime that I'd missed the clocks changing and was running an hour late..  exhausting...

One thing I did want to do however, was to put some time in with the 6th Light Dragoons, now commanded by Matthew Hervey so while youngest was at the kennels (she has the best job ever, she's paid to go and play with the dogs for an hour or two!) I took myself off to the pub - couple of pints of Hophead [clicky] later and the book was finished...

So - let's start off with saying that, but for the last few chapters, this volume is not about rip roaring, blood, guts, smoke and black powder...  it's 1830, and with the best will in the world Britain was not heavily involved in overseas wars at the time, so Mallinson extemporises....

I would also say however, that I enjoyed the book enormously, easily as much as any of the previous volumes...  Hervey is as much about the mores and social aspects of the time, as he is about martial endeavour, and Mallinson slips in these little bits and pieces to take you back to the time in question...

So what is it about - the reality of serving in a light cavalry regiment in 1830 really - not all glory and charging at the enemy - a large part of it would have been civil policing (which takes up the first part of the book) involving industrial unrest, ludditism, etc In Hervey's case these are (hay) rick burners who he successfully manages to arrest in the environs of Windsor - as a result he is presented to the ailing King...

The second part of the book however deals with the celebrations at the time for the then 15th anniversary of Waterloo (clearly a parallel there then) - as part of an international brigade (with Dutch and Prussian light horse) the 6th form the British contingent at the celebrations. It couldn't come at a worse time however, since nationalist feeling in the region is running high for a independent Belgic nation (they were at the time governed by Holland)

As feelings run high, the French see the chance of making some political advantage, taking it upon himself, Hervey takes the 6th to the border to deter them - I won't spoil the story...

Elsewhere in the book, his disastrous marriage gets even worse, he doesn't see his daughter once, and I do worry that Fairbrother doesn't have enough to do, on the plus side his good friend Peto is recovered, and much happier...

I do hope we don't have to wait another 4 years for the next instalment!!    Steve the Wargamer rates this as an 8 out of 10....

Defiant Unto Death by David Gilman - a review..

....so - a quick breather between slapping on coats of paint and varnish on anything that doesn't move [clicky] and as promised, a review of the last book... 

One of the many wargame projects that I've been tempted by over the years is a medieval one - the Wars of the Roses (I read "Sun of York" [clicky] as a youngster and was immediately lost), but based on recent books by Cornwell and Gilman it could just as easily be the 100 Years War...   that era where the English and Welsh archers, hauling back a 6 foot war bow sent cloth yards of death across almost every square foot of France...  hugely stirring stuff, but I long ago came to the conclusion that the 'stirring stuff' doesn't actually translate the the table very well...

When push comes to shove (and that phrase describes warfare in the period quite nicely) the wars were about long range death (archery) followed by short range bludgeoning (pole arms) - long lines of opposed heavily armoured men, hitting each other with large heavy weapons preferably with as many spikes, cutting edges, and heavily blunted surfaces, as possible...  battles were largely static, slow moving, affairs - all in all, better read about than recreated (in my mind anyway)

The stories, and written history however, are a different thing entirely, and having discovered Gilman's first book almost by accident [clicky], this, his second one, was waited for almost as eagerly as the new Matthew Hervey.

Once again - no cause for concern and the wait was well worth it.. at the end of the previous book, the central character of the story (Thomas Blackstone, a sergeant of archers) has just taken part in the English victory at Crecy (though the army consisted of large numbers of Welsh and Irish as well) but in the dying moments of the battle in attempting to save his brother, he also inadvertently saves the life of Edward the Black Prince who knights him on the spot.

Despite his injuries, Thomas survives and this book starts 10 years later - he is married, he has children, his own squire, a retinue, and has carved out a small holding in Normandy where he has the reputation of being a hard but fair man.

The country is in a state of constant war, the French king is not liked by his own people,and certainly not by Thomas's Normandy neighbours who wish to turn over Normandy to Edward.

When Thomas leads a small group of armed men and captures a vital port town, the French kings attention turns on him, and by association Normandy - a plot is hatched to hire a band of mercenaries, lead by a renegade priest, to kill Thomas and his family - the book is about that attempt, but also about the battle of Poitiers - a far closer run thing for the English than Crecy or Agincourt, and again an absolute delight to read...

I'll not spoil the ending - but this is wholeheartedly recommended - a real 9 out of 10'er.. Better still for the next book, the focus looks to be shifting to Italy, scene of the wars between rich city states, where English troops, along with all the nations of Europe, were hired in their hundreds...  yup - the time of the condottieri and their is more than a passing similarity between Blackwood and Sir John Hawkwood [clicky]

The year is slipping away...

..as if....

...and there are precious few updates here because of the time of the year.. 

...if you want updates you need to go to the boat blog [clicky], because with just over 4 weeks to launch all available resources are currently focussed there.... 

...which isn't to say that thoughts don't still stray towards things soldierly, and wargamingly, but that's all they are - thoughts...

On the paint table I have the Minifigs Sikh infantry and the Bengal Lancers waiting to complete before shipping to Suakin on the Red Sea coast of Egyptian Sudan

Along side them there is also a battalion of CP Models infantry waiting for uniforms and standards of a yet to be decided British or French regiment before they march to the sounds of the guns in Flanders in support of, or against, The Duke of Marlborough

DG and I are long overdue to refight the last battle in the Chiraz campaign - the table is still set from the last game, we will swap sides and 'set to' just as soon as I can find some time...

I have also just completed the second volume of the David Gilman "Thomas Blackstone" series - almost as eagerly awaited as the newest Mallinson/"Hervey", it met all expectations - I will review it separately I think...