No comments about The Maratha War Papers of Arthur Wellesley.

No comments about The Anglo-Maratha Campaigns and the Contest for India: The Struggle for Control of the South Asian Military Economy.

4 comments about Wellington in India (Napoleonic Library).

1. When Wellington's name is mentioned, people tend to think first of Waterloo, then of the Peninsulars Wars. It is easy to forget that he got his start in India, and that is the period which Jac Weller covers so well in this book. This was a completely different kind of warfare than that fought in Europe, and Wellington (or Wellesley, as he was then) had to contend not only with far superior forces, but also with the climate, which caused Europeans to die like flies. Two things above all should be remembered: first, that when Wellington was asked what his greatest victory was, he said not Waterloo, but Assaye; and second, Weller's three books about Wellington's campaigns were named by Bernard Cornwell as the best source material for his Sharpe series.



2. Jac Weller's Wellington in India is a truly excellent book. It is very readable and flows extremely well. It is one of the few books of its kind that I've read literally cover-to-cover - forward, preface, body, and appendixes - everything. The detail of the book is also exceptional. He tells the reader why and how Wellington achieved his successes not just when.



3. Jac Weller's "Wellington in India" is a highly readable study of Arthur Wellesley's formative military experiences in India, and one of remarkably few books devoted to the topic. The book in battlefield level detail sketches the future Duke's 1797-1805 campaigning against a variety of native opponents. The battlefield narratives are closely informed by Weller's understanding the terrain, based on having walked all the principal battlefields. In addition, Weller lays out the complex political environment in which the young Wellesley operated. What emerges from this portrait is a young, ambitious, and professional officer who operates with increasing confidence and success in a challenging battlefield and political environment. From his experiences in India comes the future Duke's understanding of the importance of logistics, intelligence, planning, and the careful deployment of well-trained troops on the battlefield. Wellesley's long apprenticeship in India and later in the Peninsular War of 1808-1814 made him a master of battlefield tactics and operational-level planning, skills that would serve him well in the decisive battle of Waterloo in 1815 against Napoleon. This book is highly recommended to the serious student of Wellington's military career and of the Napoleonic era.



4. Jac Weller continues his admiration of Sir Arthur Wesley (later Wellsley and Duke of Wellington). Here we take a step back in time to Wesley's earlier career in India. For many this will have little known territory. Those who have read the Sharpe novels may have some idea of the period in question, and they will certainly get the historical background for those novels here.
   
   Wesley certainly learned his trade in India. Much of what he learned here in terms of supply, organization and diplomacy would stand him in well in the campaigns of Spain and Portugal, and of course Waterloo. In terms of tactics readers might see some differences. In the sub-continent our hero aspired to an aggressive stance. The trick to defeating large cavalry type armies whether Mysore or Mahratta was aggression. Wesley always believed that these unweildy masses should be attacked whenever possible with the smaller, disciplined and more maneaverable Anglo-Indian forces. This is a different form of generalship than what we would see in the Peninsular and Waterloo. Again, Wesley was a supurb tactician, and adaptable. He was always learning and researching better methods of supply, intelligence, etc. This combined with his brilliance and coolness under fire certainly made him one of the best generals of the Napoleanic period.
   
   One tactic which the reader will see employed later was his distribution of artillery among his infantry units. The guns were never massed as the Mahrattas preferred, or indeed the French. One marvels how at Assaye the 78th Highlanders were able to frontally attack all those guns. The key was speed and elan, combined with excellent and flexible generalship. India would see Wesley's ability to be everywhere on the battlefield. Because of Orrick's mistake at Assaye he would never truly trust others to carry out his orders. It was here where he developed that personal mega-detail style of generalship that won all his later battles. He was also fortunate never to receive any wounds, even though at Assaye he had two horses shot out from under him! Also, his steady horsemanship and ability to conduct extensive recces on his own or with a small staff was something many generals of the period never took too seriously.
   
   Jac Weller describes how the Wellsely's, Arthur and his two brothers, vastly improved the British position in India. In fact they did too good a job as the conservative East India Company grew tired of their rapid advances with additional expenses. The Wesley's introduced a notion of good government over the growing empire in India, an idea that had profound influence in that nation's future development under British rule. Jac Weller may come across to some as a colonialist, but many of his arguments make sense within the concept of the time. India's peasants were no doubt better off under the British than their own petty and often murderous rulers. Mysore and the Mahratta kingdoms were certainly not about improving the lot of their own people, and there was no notion of a greater India at that time. The work of the Wellsleys would play no small part in developing a greater nationalist outlook in India.
   
   Be warned, Jac Weller is very pro-British. The Iron Duke is his hero, and there is little that he can do wrong. Judgeing from what was accomplished here one tends to agree with that. Still, this is a fine work with many fascinating details, and wonderful tactical descriptions of battle. No one describes Napoleanic warfare better than Weller. Though an older book, no one has come out with anything better since so I strongly recommend this work, especially if you have read his other two works on Wellington in the Peninsular and of course at Waterloo. All that he later accomplished there was first worked out in India. There are also good maps and an appendix on the army's and weapons. A classic work.

No comments about Galloping Guns: the Experiences of an Officer of the Bengal Horse Artillery During the Second Maratha War 1804-1805.

No comments about Lake's Campaigns in India: the Second Anglo Maratha War, 1803-1807.

No comments about The Making of Arthur Wellesley.

5 comments about Sharpe's Fortress: India 1803 (Richard Sharpe's Adventure Series #3).

1. This is the third book of the series, and I can't seem to read them fast enough. I'm leaving the office early this Friday to go home and read.



2. This is the third book in Bernard Cornwell's India trilogy and it is a spellbinder. There are 22 Sharpe stories and I just finished number 17. This series is right up there with Patrick O'Brians Aubrey/Maturan series and when you start a book you can't put it down until you've finished the history recap at it end. Sharpe is a private in India in the infantry and the East India Company is trying to keep their trade going against the warlords and Princes who are standing in their way. There are tigers and elephants and battles and looting and rape, murder and thievery. Cornwell covers a battle with such insight and depth that you swear you are right there. Great! You can't put it down and when you're through you're looking for the next adventure. Join the throng...Sharpe is the one!



3. Bernard Cornwell is the absolute best military fiction author there is. This installment of Sharpe's adventures is excellent (as expected).



4. Another great book in the Sharpe series. In this one, our hero is now Lt. Richard Sharpe and hating it. Having received a battlefield commission from the future Duke of Wellington after saving his life at the Battle of Assaye, Sharpe languishes amid gentlemen who resent his commoner presence and enlisted men who resent his elevation above them.
   
   With his commander pressuring him to sell his commission and leave the Army - a tempting offer to one of Sharpe's impoverished background - he is transferred to a backwater supplies unit. It proves a den of corruption and Sharpe soon finds himself a fugitive.
   
   That doesn't stop him from joining the assault on the daunting fortress of Gawilghur, a mountain fastness never conquered and the key to British power's northward thrust in India. Even positioning artillery to shell it is a daunting task. Defending it now is the forbidding and formidable Colonel Dodd, the mercenary commander we met in "Sharpe's Triumph", who schemes how to use Gawilghur's defense to depose his Indian masters, and rule himself.
   
   Helping Sharpe along the way are cavalry Sergeant Eli Lockhart; the brave Arab servant boy Ahmed; and Sharpe's old pal, the engineer Major Stokes. Altogether enjoyable.



5. I really enjoyed this book. While the Sharpe's Rifle series (which I've read about 1/2-2/3 of) is sort of testosterone filled and militaristic I really do like how Cornwell uses the real settings and history in his books. Sometimes it seems like Sharpe is shoe-horned in to too many improbable situations, but hey if you can suspend disbelief long enough to watch 24 on Fox then why not do so here and learn some real history along the way.
   
   If you like this book you'll also want to check out Sharpe's Tiger. You might also consider a book called "Revenge of the Jaguar King" by a new writer named Jay Hersh. It's set in Belize and does a similar sort of thing in combining history of the Maya with an action adventure.

5 comments about Sharpe's Triumph: Richard Sharpe and the Battle of Assaye, September 1803 (Richard Sharpe's Adventure Series #2).

1. In this earlier installment of the Richard Sharpe series, we find Sgt. Sharpe performing his duties with the Royal Army in India. He is assigned to commissary duties and likes his CO and likes even more his newly received stripes. When he leads a group on a mission to pick up some ammunition recovered by the local garrison, though, things change. He is the sole survivor when a turncoat British officer conducts a massacre while attempting to retrieve the same ammunition. It is only dumb luck and a need to relieve himself that spares him.
   
   Since he is the only person who has actually seen the officer in question, he is assigned to help the intelligence officer tasked to bring him in. In doing so, the mercenary leader to whom the turncoat defected offers Sharpe a commission and gets him to thinking. He would like to be an officer. He is not, however, willing to betray the trust of those he likes. Still, the seed of the idea is planted.
   
   Those tasked with taking the defector are attached to Wellington's army. It is his first big campaign. Sharpe has come to Wellington's notice before but, in this installment, we finally get to read the story in which he saves Wellington's life during the climactic battle. The result is a commission for Sharpe and the expectation by everyone is that he will fail. You only have to read the original series to know how wrong that expectation is.
   
   This is neither Cornwell's best nor his worst. It does fill in a big piece of the Sharpe story and is well worth reading.



2. This is number two in the series and is typical of Bernard Cornwell with detailed accounts of historical events that support the storyline of his work. Action packed throughout. Easy reading but hard to put down.



3. This is a fine book about a forgotten but important battle in a long-gone empire. The battle of Assaye, won against far superior numbers of natives and European mercenaries by a great general who made his reputation there, quelled native revolt and let the British push north into previously unoccupied parts of India.
   
   Richard Sharpe is a sergeant here, longing for promotion to officer but with scant chance of it in the class-constrained British army. He is detached to hunt a deserter who has gone over to the other side, to become a coldblooded but effective officer. Sharpe is the sole survivor of a massacre by Major William Dodd's troops, and wants him taken down.
   
   Dodd serves Colonel Anthony Pohlmann, also a defector from the East India Company. Now army commander of the Mahratta Confederation, he has become in the process a fabulously rich, elephant-riding, harem-keeping nabob. Sharpe must weigh Pohlmann's atractive offer to change sides himself, and meanwhile dodge a trumped-up criminal charge levied by an enemy suspecting Sharpe's deepest secret.
   
   The period and place detail are excellent. The descriptions of India under the British Raj reminded me of Fraser's "Flashman in the Great Game", although the Flashman black comedies are quite different in tone.
   
   Bernard Cornwell writes Sharpe with some subtlety. His overall detail compares with Patrick O'Brian's, although not his tale's charm. Cornwell's battlefield descriptions of Assaye - not only of the battle itself but of its preliminary maneuvers - are exemplary. Readers of military fiction know how hard it can be for authors to describe multiple units maneuvering over complicated terrain, responding to each other simultaneously and in the smoke of chaos, and for readers to keep it all straight. Cornwell makes it all crystal clear despite the passage's length and the battle's complexity. And Cornwell plausibly fits the fictional Sharpe into a key moment of the historical general's career.
   
   I do have a few problems with Sharpe's character development. In opening chapters he is portrayed as scheming to embezzle part of an ammunition shipment. Petty graft like this may have been common among noncoms in India (and a lot of wars) but it's an odd way to depict someone intended to be developed as the hero of twenty or so historical novels. Perhaps Cornwell does it to dramatize the grim life and outlook of the enlisted ranks,and of someone from Sharpe's low birth, but it didn't work for me.
   
   A flaw, but not enough to compromise an otherwise excellent story.



4. My husband loves these books and actually came back to get more after he was done with this one.



5. All I have to say is, "Incredible." I felt as if I was on the fronts lines of a British regiment and fighting side by side Sharpe.