I'm not as into military battles as you are -- who is?
Haha, well, no one in salon, certainly! But my interest is very casual, and if you start getting into the subject, you find that there are people who are waaaaay more into them than I am.
but I do find them interesting, especially when explained accessibly like this :)
I'm glad it was accessible. My problem with a book like The War of the Spanish Succession, is that events are presented in chronological order. So you get bogged down in years of battle tactics and marches before you even have a clear picture of what's going on.
I would write military history like this:
- First, the politics, diplomacy, and personalities. - Then, military strategy. - Then, tactics.
Instead, I get, "I'm in my tenth flanking maneuver in 7 years of the war and I don't even know why this battle was important."
This is why learning not to feel bad about reading books out of order was so important! I was able to do the Spanish Succession by approaching the material strategically ;) instead of passively.
ALSO MAPS WHY NO MAPS AUTHOR?? There were maps, but aside from the march up the Rhine, the wrong maps, and too few, and I was like, "But what even is going on here???" (This is one reason you didn't get any of the battles in Spain; I don't know Spanish geography and topology nearly as well, so it was like, "Let's talk about the Rhineland and the Low Countries, where Mildred can fill in the gaps!")
Re: War of the Spanish Succession: 1709 and Malplaquet
Haha, well, no one in salon, certainly! But my interest is very casual, and if you start getting into the subject, you find that there are people who are waaaaay more into them than I am.
but I do find them interesting, especially when explained accessibly like this :)
I'm glad it was accessible. My problem with a book like The War of the Spanish Succession, is that events are presented in chronological order. So you get bogged down in years of battle tactics and marches before you even have a clear picture of what's going on.
I would write military history like this:
- First, the politics, diplomacy, and personalities.
- Then, military strategy.
- Then, tactics.
Instead, I get, "I'm in my tenth flanking maneuver in 7 years of the war and I don't even know why this battle was important."
This is why learning not to feel bad about reading books out of order was so important! I was able to do the Spanish Succession by approaching the material strategically ;) instead of passively.
ALSO MAPS WHY NO MAPS AUTHOR?? There were maps, but aside from the march up the Rhine, the wrong maps, and too few, and I was like, "But what even is going on here???" (This is one reason you didn't get any of the battles in Spain; I don't know Spanish geography and topology nearly as well, so it was like, "Let's talk about the Rhineland and the Low Countries, where Mildred can fill in the gaps!")