I've been trying to write up the Battle of Sedan for September, really, I have. Like a schoolboy who sits at the table unwilling to begin his homework, I have made several starts at it only to stop, sullenly unpleased by the brutal waste of the
L'Année terrible.
"I take up pen to tell of the terrible year,
And suddenly I stop, elbows on my desk.
Must I proceed? must I go on?
France! what horror! to see a star fade in the heavens!
I feel the lugubrious ascent of disgrace."
Like Hugo, I feel the need to document the Terrible Year:
N'importe. Poursuivons. L'histoire en a besoin.
But I fear that it may not be in the appropriate month but, rather, in October that I finally write the doleful tale of the end of an empire; perhaps alongside the battle for
that month, Milvian Bridge, where an earlier empire ended and a new one began.
Soon, though. I promise.
3 comments:
Oooh, anything from the Franco-Prussian War is interesting. The war that essentially guaranteed the great war.
Okay, where is it? The Sedan material, which only you can write in a way that combines a grunt’s view with a profound understanding of history. Weeks we’ve been waiting. And instead we get a medical report. Hell, I suffer from cholera, plague, vitamin C deficiency, and other assorted other incommodities. But you don’t hear me complaining.
And what about the evolution of armored vehicles, a subject you touched on and flitted off in chase of wooden floors or something of that sort? Don’t you think that IEDs might spell the end to heavy armor? Conventional anti-tank weapons are limited by the need for portability and accuracy; there are few limits to the explosive potential of IEDs, which substitute waiting for movement and timing for aiming.
Seriously, Chief, let's hear from you.
Paul: The post is finished - I'm adding the illustrations today and it should be up tonight.
Sorry for the delay; this week I was out of both Portland and internet range. No help for it, but I promise you some war to read by Monday morning...
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