The Fields of Death
by Simon Scarrow
(Headline Publishing Group, R140)
If you like your history peppered with atmospheric vignettes such as, “He frowned as he lowered the telescope and snapped it shut”, this is the book for you. It is the last of a series on the Napoleonic Wars that sees Napoleon face his nemesis, the Duke of Wellington, in the Battle of Waterloo.
Wellington battles not only the French but a critical and tight-fisted parliament at home. His campaigns in Spain are beset with financial concerns.
This is a bestseller and best-seller is as bestseller does – it feeds received opinion; the received opinion here being the English view of the conflict.
Wellington, urbane, restrained, impeccable in word and deed, cautious but brave, eats mutton with silver cutlery at the head of a table of toffs. Napoleon is an irascible fantasist and egomaniac with little regard for the well-being of his men, who slurps onion soup and stabs at distant targets with the butt of a chicken portion, surrounded by sycophantic marshals.
French novelists and popula-risers of history have no doubt another take, so your enjoyment of the book will depend on the fantasy you want to fulfil.
The style is robust and straight-forward with vivid battle scenes drawn with manifest knowledge of 19th-century weaponry and tactics.
Wellington is always talking in prose and uttering memorable aphorisms, while Napoleon rants and plays the man of destiny even when he clearly no longer has one.
Scarrow is a skilled entertainer and his previous work, Centurion, was made into a movie. Here he may have overdone the clichés, and the bias can be grating at times, but don’t let me discourage you from reading it – bear in mind the line given to Lady Caroline Lamb in the eponymous film as she is about to be seduced by the irrepressible Iron Duke: “You sir, will always be remembered as the man who defeated Napoleon. Napoleon will be remembered for himself”.