The May 2012 issue of Military History Monthly, the British military history magazine, is on sale today.<\/p>\n
In the latest issue we cover:<\/p>\n
History of the British Army – Waterloo, 18 June 1815
\nIt is perhaps the most famous victory in the British Army’s history. But Waterloo was not only ‘a near run thing’. It was also the end of a century of battlefield supremacy by British redcoats -the last hurrah of an obsolescent military system<\/p>\n
Pirates! – the Royal Navy and the suppression of maritime raiding, 1620-1830
\nWith Somali pirates in the news, naval historian Peter Earle takes a timely look at how the Royal Navy dealt with pirates in their 17th century heyday.<\/p>\n
‘All Sir Garnett!’ – Lord Wolseley and the British Army in the First World War
\nJulian Brazier explores the central role of one of QueenVictoria’s greatest generals in preparing the Army for a modern industrialised war -and discovers it was the Americans who were the greatest inspiration.<\/p>\n
The Desert Rats in Burma – fighting the Japanese in the jungle
\nSome of the famous Desert Rats spent part of the war fighting in Burma. WWII veteran and military historian Patrick Delaforce tells the story.<\/p>\n
MUD -the waterlogged battlefields of the First World War
\nMatt Leonard explores the intimate physical relationship between soldiers and mud on the waterlogged battlefields of WWI.<\/p>\n
Also in this issue: War Culture, Warrior, and Book Reviews.<\/p>\n
From the editor
\nNeil Faulkner, Editor\/n
\nWe lead this issue with Waterloo, perhaps the most famous land battle in British history. It is especially noted for two things: Wellington’s faultless tactical handling of the battle; and the gritty resilience of disciplined British redcoats.<\/p>\n
But the British Army was to pay a heavy price for Waterloo over the next century. The victory taught the wrong lesson -that the old way of war could still beat the new -such that outdated methods became hardwired into British military doctrine and practice.<\/p>\n
Wellington himself was an arch-conservative, and he dominated Army thinking until his death in 1852. Yet he admitted that Waterloo had been ‘a near run thing’.<\/p>\n
Indeed it had. Without the Prussians, there is little doubt that Wellington’s line of some 68,000 would have been smashed by Napoleon’s 72,000.<\/p>\n
This would have been a victory against the odds. The numerical advantage was insignificant. The French were on the offensive all day. Napoleon and his senior marshals mismanaged the battle. Despite all this, no-one seriously doubts that Wellington’s line would have broken but for the mounting Prussian pressure on the French right from late afternoon onwards.<\/p>\n
The simple fact is that the French army was better. Better because the French had pioneered a new way of war. They had created a ‘nation-at-arms’: a citizen army motivated by nationalism and idealism, an officer corps based on merit, and a military doctrine stressing movement, mass, and shock.<\/p>\n
Waterloo was the last hurrah of an obsolescent system. But it had the effect of concealing this truth from Britain’s political and military elite -until it was unmistakably exposed on the killing-fields of the First World War.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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