SOLDIERS, A HISTORY OF MEN IN BATTLE

John Keegan and Richard Holmes, BCA 1985.

Wars are conflicts between states and societies. Soldiers are the human means through which wars are fought.

Soldiers was a major BBC Series on the history of warfare told it’s story through the different types of soldiers who have fought each other since warfare began.

This book was both a companion to the series, and a major history of men in battle in it’s own right. Written by two leading British military historians, Soldiers recounts the rise of warfare from it’s origins as a clash between foot soldiers armed with primitive edged weapons to it’s present state of sophisticated confrontation between automated electronic systems.

Their examination of the history of the foot soldier is followed by an account of the cavalry revolution, which made the horseman the master of the battlefield over much of the world from 1000 B.C. until the end of the Middle Ages.

The horseman’s dominance was ended by the invention of gunpowder, which revived the power of the foot soldier, but also brought artillery to the fore.

The great guns of sixteenth-century warfare toppled the castles from which mounted warriors had exercised their power throughout the Middle Ages. But the rise of artillery drove the military engineer to revise his art..

During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, fortification achieved a complexity which made states and cities impossible to overcome except by detailed and expensive logistical organization. The chapter on the sinews of war examines this often neglected topic.

The book is 288 pages, illustrated in both colour and black-and-white.

Apart from a very small, minor indent along the top front edge, both the book and the dust jacket are in good condition. An interesting item for the militarist. The Foreword is by Frederic Forsyth. As it is a heavy item, parcel or surface mail might be required.