Battle Narratives Research Articles

The Franco-Prussian War: the German conquest of France in 1870-1871

Franco-Prussian War: German Conquest of France in 1870-1871. By Geoffrey Wawro. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003. 327 pages. $35.00. Reviewed by Dr. Eugenia C. Kiesling, Professor of History, US Military Academy. For 40 years, no historian has dared to risk comparison with Michael Howard's Franco-Prussian War: German Invasion of France, 1870-1871 by publishing an English-language history of the Franco-Prussian War. Professor Geoffrey Wawro is not only brave but has succeeded in producing, if not a replacement for Howard, a worthy companion volume. Even more than Howard's book, this is straightforward military history, a study of armies and battles with little discussion of national policy, and with no concern for the economic or other domestic aspects of the war. As such, it is a useful work. Franco-Prussian War was a military proving ground in an age full of uncertainties. French long-service professionals fought against Prussian conscripts, Chassepot rifles and Mitrailleuse machine guns against the Dreyse needle gun, Krupp's new steel breech-loading six-pounder gun against the French army's four-pounder bronze muzzle-loaders, an efficient general staff against a poor one. No one knew how these various contests would turn out, and Wawro offers an enthralling narrative of how battles were won and lost. As such, it ought to be of great interest to the professional soldier as well as the military historian. In introducing the two armies, Wawro touches only briefly on the fairly well-understood subject of contemporary technological developments and their impact on military tactics. That decision reflects a reasonable economy of force, especially as the necessary points are clearly illustrated in the battle narratives. More problematic is the absence of discussion of the technology's effects at the operational and strategic levels of war. For example, because Wawro says little about railroads, readers unfamiliar with the subject may fail to recognize the technological background to General Helmut von Moltke's prediction for battles of encirclement. One advantage of being the second person to write on a given war is there is no historiography to bother about. Wawro's book is all the more readable for the absence of arguments with other historians. On the other hand, a historiographical discussion would have had the salutary effect of forcing Wawro to take more rigorous positions on certain points of controversy. In particular, Wawro does not situate himself vis-a-vis the triumphalist school of German military history, which sees the Prussian of as a model of inexorable efficiency, the precursor of the Wehrmacht of the early years of World War II. If one believes this theory, Germans rolled over France in and 1940 (and almost in 1914) because their was overwhelmingly superior in quality of soldiers, leadership, doctrine, organization, and use of technology. This school emphasizes the German General Staff system and an aggressive approach to war characterized by doctrines like auftragstaktik and operational art. In the early pages, Wawro appears to belong in the triumphalist camp. His chapter on The Armies in 1870 compares the sins of the French army with a Prussian war-planning marked by theoretical and technical innovations. He invidiously compares French methods, orderly but slow and rigid, with auftragstaktik, purposeful energy behind the appearance of disorder. But the operation narrative refers to auftragstaktik and operational art too rarely to demonstrate the importance of these concepts to the German victory. For example, the claim that operational art dictated a particular action begs the question of defining operational art and explaining how a doctrine enforces its will on armies. …

The Role of Comparison in Homeric Thought

The Role ofComparison in Homeric Thought IEFFREY C. ROBINSON One of the most persistent prejudices dominating many readings of the Iliad since the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries is that the story of Achilleus stands as the clear and unquestionable foreground of the work, a central focus from which everything else recedes into merely supportive relationships. But the Iliad is much more than the story of Achilleus; it is more accurately seen as a portrayal of history and an interpretation of it. Achilleus participates in that larger structure and in Homer's epic inquiry into the nature of his universe. It is largely through comparison-thinking that Homer's extended vision becomes apparent, that he presents a glimpse of a world which at once counters, expands, and interprets 1 the imprisoning world of war. The 350 similes of the Iliad constitute a major sub-set of comparisonthinking . After analyzing the similes themselves and the simile-like structure of larger sections of the Iliad, this study will recast the old myth of "Homer," that unself-conscious poet of nature, and will meditate on the drama of imagination in the Iliad, a drama which exhibits the struggle of interpretation against the intractable reality of the received, traditional story. Jeffrey C. Robinson (Assistant Professor of English at the University of Colorado) is presently completing a study of the literary relationship of Dorothy and William Wordsworth. 1 The idea that comparison-thinking, or, more specifically, the simile, plays a central role in early Greek thought is explored by Uvo Hölscher in "Paradox, Simile, and Gnomic Utterance in Heraclitus," in The Pre-Socratics, ed. Alexander P. D. Mourelatos (New York: Anchor, 1974), pp. 229-33. "Simile is the means of hinting at a state of affairs that lies hidden" (p. 234). Also in Bruno Snell, The Discovery of the Mind (New York: Harper and Row, 1960), pp. 191-226: "Homer's similes . . . undoubtedly contribute to the creation of deep feeling, but their principal function is more direct. They constitute his only mechanism of describing the essence or the intensity of an event" (pp. 199-200). ROCKY MOUNTAIN REVIEW181 Most scholars agree that the similes constitute a relatively late addition to the main narrative strains of the Iliad and that the narrative itself stems from earlier versions. It seems possible, then, that the comparisonthinking which governs other parts of the poem might be relatively late also, although such a hypothesis cannot be proven. But it is fairly certain that the simile-poet is responding to traditionally-received battle narratives. In this reading he is not simply an embellisher of these narratives but an interpreter, bringing his more modern consciousness to bear upon the old stories, and the similes are at least one form of the language of interpretation. A true interpreter cannot effect a significant change in the perspective of an event, or in this case a tale, if he does not encounter the resistance emanating from the tale itself. W. J. Bate's and Harold Bloom's recent theories of poetic influence in postEnlightenment literature describe the poet adhering to, being inspired by, a great poet of the past while at the same time being intimidated and overwhelmed by him. Interpretation, or re-vision, the act of the poet with respect to his precursor, becomes a self-conscious struggle. Poetry itself represents this struggle either explicitly or implicitly in its handling of what for the poet is the crucial poetic material of the precursor. May we suppose that the Homeric poet is at once inspired by the pre-Homeric narratives to build his statement upon them and at the same time chastened by the awesome presence and inevitability of that great precursor poetry? Is there any evidence of struggle to free himself from the tyranny of the tradition? The representation of the simile-world in the similes persistently, and victoriously, opposes the vision of war and inevitable doom in the narrative. Yet there are evidences that this victory is not so complete, that the similes and other elements of the poem appear to fulfill rather than to oppose the tendency of the narrative itself; in other words, that the drama of consciousness in the...

The Naval Battle at Pylos and its Consequences

In the course of the military operations at Pylos three major actions were fought. The first was the series of attacks by land and sea launched by the Peloponnesians against the forces under Demosthenes occupying the peninsulaof Pylos (Thuc. 4. 9–12); the second was the naval battle in the harbour (13–14); the third was the Athenian assault on the Spartans cut off on Sphacteria(29–39). The second of these actions does not appear to have had less influenceon the development of the situation or to have been militarily less interestingand instructive than the other two. The account of it by Thucydides is, however, less detailed than his accounts of the first and third major actions andmay be thought to be lacking in the clarity which is normally a conspicuousfeature of his battle narratives.