A gripping account of the Redcoat's life (Redcoat: The British Soldier in the Age of Horse and Musket - Richard Holmes)

Member Name: markos9

Product:	Redcoat: The British Soldier in the Age of Horse and Musket - Richard Holmes
Date:	17/05/09 (160 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Highly readable and interesting.

Disadvantages: None.

During the 18th and 19th Centuries, the backbone of the British Army was the "Redcoat", the ordinary foot soldier. The Redcoats helped forge an empire the world had never seen before and has not seen since.

The Duke of Wellington, on the eve of the Battle of Waterloo, when asked whether he would be victorious, pointed to a passing Redcoat and said "It all depends on that article there...Give me enough of it, and I am sure". As we all know, he had enough of "that article there" and victory was achieved, just.

The British Army's Redcoats had a well deserved reputation for being fierce fighters, but also for savagery in victory. Stories of looting, rape, and murder followed many of their victories. This abhorrent behaviour was partly due to the type of men who enlisted into the regiments.

Many honest, idealistic men joined up to serve "King and Country", but many others joined to get rich. A great deal of money was to be obtained (stolen) after a successful sack of a town, if the soldier survived.

Many others enlisted to avoid jail, deportation, or even execution, it being common to pardon a criminal if he joined the army. Wellington himself described his soldiers as "the scum of the earth". Despite this, he was fiercely proud of his fighting forces and their achievements.

Life as a Redcoat was not an easy one. The army marched to battle, crossing whole countries on foot to get to war. Without modern medicine, death from disease and infection was far greater than the relatively small number of soldiers who were killed outright in battle.

When a soldier was injured and required medical attention, treatment was often more akin to butchery than surgery. It's no surprise then, that a common prayer before a battle was "God keep me out of the hands of the surgeons".

This book is the Redcoat's story. Written by Richard Holmes, a man ideally suited to the task, it chronicles the ordinary soldier's life in the ranks.

Holmes will be familiar to many as the presenter of the BBC TV series "War Walks" and "The Western Front". He's also written over a dozen books on military history and taught the subject at Sandhurst.

Holmes' enthusiasm for the subject shines through his writing. It's clear that he has immense respect for the Redcoats, for their bravery and achievements, and for their role in creating the British Empire. He writes eloquently and engagingly on the subject and often grips the reader with his tales of life so long ago. Have a read of this excerpt from his description of a battle:

"In just over thirty seconds, each rank has fired two volleys, a total of over two thousand musket balls at a range so close that even the unreliable Brown Bess is hitting a mass target about once in every ten shots. The head of the column falls like corn before the reaper. Its colonel, an attractive target - has half a dozen fatal wounds within seconds."

Holmes has brilliantly incorporated many personal accounts from serving Redcoats into his book. These letters and quotations bring the Redcoats' story to life as no author's words possibly could. Private Bancroft, after the Battle of Inkerman wrote:

"I bayoneted the first Russian in the chest: he fell dead. I was then stabbed in the mouth with great force, which caused me to stagger back, where I shot this second Russian and ran a third through. A fourth and fifth ran at me and ran me through the right side...I returned to the Battery and spat out my teeth: I found only two."

These gripping, gritty accounts are liberally scattered throughout the book and used to emphasise exactly what life was like for these soldiers.

The book focuses on the Redcoat's life. Armies are managed by officers and battles directed by generals, but this story is about how the common soldier behaves and is treated. How the Redcoats were paid and how much is described. The equipment they used (including the venerable, inaccurate "Brown Bess" musket) is explained. How soldiers were able to marry and take their wives and children with them is chronicled, as is how they fared during and after the bloody battles of the period.

Holmes describes how harsh discipline was applied to the ranks. Flogging was common for even small misdemeanours. He tells of the ludicrous nature of the maximum sentence of 2000 lashes (a soldier would be dead well before 1000 lashes would be reached!). Hanging and death by firing squad were carried out frequently for looting and other major crimes. This severe regime has, of course, been eliminated from the modern army, but Holmes descriptions of the fate of many of the soldiers is sobering nonetheless.

In the age before photography, the news of war was often carried back home in the writings of war correspondents, but also in the paintings and drawings of artists. Many of these works of art are reproduced in the book and give a contemporary view of what war was like. The painting of the "Charge of the Light Brigade", printed across two pages in black and white is chilling. One can almost hear and smell the cannons that are making mince meat of the doomed British Cavalry.

The book is then, highly readable, indeed, I found it difficult to put down. It does not glorify war, or apologise for some of the actions the soldiers were responsible for, but 'tells it like it was'. I find imagining what life must have been like for these men almost impossible, but Holmes' writing takes my understanding at least part of the way there.

For anyone interested in learning more about the life of the common soldier in the 18th and 19th Centuries, look no further than this book. Highly recommended.

Summary: This book will tell you everything you wanted to know about life as a Recoat