Resolved

My birthday is New Year's Day, which means I get a double whammy of the impulse to change my life for the better that comes with turning over the calendar and having to write a new, bigger number on forms that ask for my age. So I have a habit of setting really ambitious resolutions for myself. Every year I declare that this year will be different! I will be so organized. I will waste no time. My house will be so neat. I will eat at least five servings of fresh fruits and vegetables every single day. My bills and paperwork will be filed, not just shoved into boxes, and each month I will clear out everything that's past its retention period.

Yeah, right. This year I'm at least attempting to be more realistic. But because it is a new year and I am a year older, I couldn't resist setting a few goals.

1. I've been on Weight Watchers for a little over a year. At the start, I was 70 lbs over the top of the healthy range for my height. I've lost 40 of those pounds and by BMI am now considered overweight rather than obese. This year I want to lose the remaining 30 lbs and maintain the loss. (I'm not trying to lose any more than that because I really am big-boned. I have broad shoulders. My feet and even my head are big. As for my chest, let's just say I laughed uproariously at a book where a hero reflected on the heroine's "generous figure" by thinking she had to wear "C cups, at least." When I'm feeling poetic, I think of myself as the shield maiden type, though "sturdy peasant" is probably more accurate.)
2. I will finish the manuscript I'm under contract for on time.
3. I will submit proposals for two additional manuscripts--one sequel to the contracted book, and one completely unrelated work, possibly even in a whole new genre for me.
4. I will read at least 120 books. (For 2013 I read 115, so this should be doable.)
5. I will have a rough budget and itinerary mapped out for the European "trip of a lifetime" I'm planning for Summer 2015 to coincide with the bicentennial of the Battle of Waterloo. 
6. I will work with my doctor, my physical therapist, and any other specialists needed to get my bad shoulder and bad foot healthy enough to not spend the Summer 2015 trip limping and whimpering my way across Belgium, France, and Spain. (Currently I have good days and bad days with both problem areas.)
7. I will work on improving my social life. I'm still figuring out what that means, but so far I think I'll invite friends to dinner more than once or twice per year, and I'll do some of the classes and activities at my new church instead of just slipping into a pew two minutes before the 10:00 AM service starts and ducking out as soon as it's over.

That's a lot, and if I pull it off I think I can legitimately feel accomplished. But it's not so far beyond what I'm already doing that I feel like I'm asking the impossible of myself.

A Waterloo Dinner

A friend on my personal Facebook page suggested that the problem with my Pork Wellingtons was that I was over-rolling the puff pastry to get one sheet to fit around the tenderloin.  So this time around I used one whole sheet with enough of a second trimmed to fit, no rolling, and it turned out PERFECT.  Quite possibly the best thing I've ever cooked.

And the timing was perfect, too, since I served it at my first annual Waterloo Dinner on Saturday night. Now, I suppose you could do a Waterloo dinner with authentic 1815 foods, and I'd love to attempt such a meal someday...but I went with a Wellington as the main course and a Napoleon (aka a mille-feuille) for dessert, because, really, why wouldn't I?  As a wholly American, wholly non-aristocratic person hosting a Waterloo party, I've got to have my tongue somewhere in my cheek during this process.

Anyway, if the Wellington was the best thing I've ever cooked, the Napoleon was the best dessert I've ever bought and served.  (I was going to say the best thing until I decided that's still the time I had barbecue from Dreamland flown in for a housewarming/first book sale party, because if you can't splurge after buying your first house and selling your first book, when can you?)  The Napoleon came from Le Fournil, which is up there on my Seattle recommendations list with Tilth and Serious Pie.

I didn't get any pictures of the Wellington, but here's the Napoleon, accompanied by my desk toy/writing mascot Duke of Wellington:

The chocolate curls on the side got a little messed up in transit from the bakery, but I think you can still tell that's an awesome cake.

I plan to continue this dinner in future years.  We were even riffing on the idea of a Waterloo seder, complete with questions like, "Why is this night different from any other night? On all other nights we eat our meat plain or lightly sauced. On this night why do we wrap it in puff pastry?"  Halfway through we'd send someone to the door to look for Blucher and the Prussian army, and Mr. Fraser thinks we should close with a particularly solemn rendition of this song.

Too many anniversaries

Had I won the Mega Millions lottery last week, I would've spent a large part of the next few years on battlefields. If you're interested in military history, as I am, our time is filled with anniversaries. We're 200 years out of the later parts of the Napoleonic Wars, a year into the American Civil War's 150th, and World War I is coming back into public consciousness as we approach its 100 year mark.

Tomorrow (April 6) my hypothetical rich self would need to be two places at once. It's the 200th anniversary of the Storming of Badajoz, which plays a significant role in my first book, The Sergeant's Lady.

Badajoz was an unusually gruesome battle for its time--the elite Light Division lost 40% of its fighting strength. The aftermath was even worse, as the victorious British sacked the city in a rampage of looting, rape, and murder.

It's also the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Shiloh, which at the time was the bloodiest battle in American history.

Badajoz and Shiloh are both grim enough to make me stop and question my own fascination with military history. I'm by no means a pacifist, because I think there are some evils that can't be stopped short of a war. World War II and the Civil War, viewed from the Union side, both strike me as just and unavoidable. But I'm also by no means unthinkingly militaristic. Few things make me angrier than seeing good men and women sacrificed for no worthy purpose in an unjust, unnecessary war. I find World War I all but unbearable to contemplate precisely because it was so damn pointless, and if it served any purpose beyond decimating Europe and making World War II all but inevitable, I've never been able to find it. And even the most just of wars...well, I'll quote William Tecumseh Sherman in May 1865:

I confess, without shame, that I am sick and tired of fighting — its glory is all moonshine; even success the most brilliant is over dead and mangled bodies, with the anguish and lamentations of distant families, appealing to me for sons, husbands, and fathers ... it is only those who have never heard a shot, never heard the shriek and groans of the wounded and lacerated ... that cry aloud for more blood, more vengeance, more desolation.

So, I don't love war, but I can't look away from its history. Maybe it's in the blood--though I'm not an Army brat, I've got a lot of soldiers in my family, both in the present and living memory and at least as far back as the American Revolution. (Though, as noted above, I firmly believe the Union had all the right on its side in the Civil War, my roots in Alabama go deep enough that I'm the great-great-granddaughter of a Confederate soldier. I'm neither proud nor ashamed of that fact--it simply is what it is. He was a product of his place and time. If anything, my eligibility for the Daughters of the Confederacy, which I would never, ever join, is a useful reminder to occasionally ask myself what injustices I condone unthinkingly because they're normal for where and when I live.)

Whatever the cause, I expect I'll continue studying military history and writing about soldiers--the glory, moonshine though it be, and the horror, and the courage, honor, and sacrifice. And there's one anniversary I intend to make. Barring catastrophe, I'll be at Waterloo on June 18, 2015.

Books read, week of 3/21

I'm editing like mad, since my manuscript for An Infamous Marriage is due in less than two weeks, but I've managed to squeeze in some reading time:

33) The Duchess of Richmond's Ball: 15 June 1815, by David Miller. Only of interest to the SERIOUS Waterloo geek, especially if said geek is working on a novel including a scene at the famous ball. Containes a complete guest list with mini-bios of everyone present. That said, I'm not sure how far to trust any of those bios, since I caught several errors about the Duke of Wellington's background--e.g. he gets nuances of the Wellesley family's assorted titles wrong, and he says that Wellington was 3rd of 4 brothers rather than 3rd of 5 (admittedly, Gerald managed to avoid the fame/notoriety of the other four--no sex scandals that I'm aware of, for starters--but his existence isn't exactly hidden and hard to discover). Of course, in the grand scheme of things it doesn't matter that Richard Wellesley was Earl of Mornington before he became Marquess Wellesley, nor that there was a less famous clergyman brother named Gerald, but still, it makes it hard for me to trust the book on areas where I'm NOT coming in with preexisting expertise.

34) How to Be Black, by Baratunde Thurston. One of the blogs I followed obsessively during the run-up to the 2008 election and still check from time to time is Jack and Jill Politics, so when I heard that Thurston, the blog's cofounder, had a book out, I requested it from the library. While I'm white, you can't live in America without being aware of racial issues (especially if you've got a smart kid who asks all kinds of probing questions based on snippets of commentary she hears on the radio), and this book is a satirical, thoughtful look at where we are now.

35) While at Amazon preordering Captain Vorpatril's Alliance, I noticed Proto Zoa, a collection of Lois McMaster Bujold's early short stories that I'd never read before. I'm not a huge fan of short stories, because you don't have time to connect to the characters, but I like Bujold's writing so much I bought it anyway. I'm not sorry I did. It was a nice, quick read even if I didn't love the stories the way I do her full-length books.

A reading post

I'm in deadline mode, so posting will probably be a wee bit sparse for the remainder of March, though I'll try to catch up on my cooking posts and keep up my reading diary. On that note, here's what I've read so far this month. Told you my 2012 reading pace would slow down!

31) A First-Rate Madness, by Nassir Ghaemi. The author, a psychiatrist, contends that in times of crisis the most effective leaders are often those who show some degree of mental illness, or at least highly atypical personalities, including conditions such as depression, which Winston Churchill and Abraham Lincoln among others seem to have had, and bipolar disorder, which seems a likely explanation for some of William Tecumseh Sherman's odd behavior over the course of his life. On the other hand, leaders with more typical, "sane" behavior patterns can be ineffective in a crisis–his examples include George McClellan, George W. Bush, and Tony Blair.

It's an intriguing book, but I'm not sure how much I buy his thesis. He contends that “normal” personalities are often closed to change or exploring new options, while those who struggle with depression are often more realistic and given to empathy, and those with manic symptoms can be more creative. It's not that he minimizes the real problems caused by mood disorders, but I have my doubts that George McClellan's failure, for example, was caused by his being too sane. I do, however, agree with what Ghaemi says about the importance of resilience, which often results from facing and overcoming a crisis or challenge–whether that is surviving a depressive episode as Winston Churchill did on several occasions, or becoming president despite major health problems as both Franklin Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy did, or any number of other options. By that token, I think McClellan's real problem is that for the first 35 years of his life everything came so easily to him that he had no resources for facing a challenge when one arose, which he might have developed even with a completely typical personality if he hadn't had the bad luck of so much early good luck, as it were.

Ghaemi's historical examples are all from the American Civil War and later, but with my historical interests I couldn't help but try to apply them to some of the more familiar figures of the Napoleonic Era. I know Wellington better than anyone else from that time, since he's a major character in an as-yet-unpublished alternative history manuscript I wrote, and I couldn't make him fit any of Ghaemi's boxes. He doesn't have a typical, conformist sort of personality, and he certainly fits Ghaemi's mold of being a better crisis leader (as wartime commander) than a peacetime leader (as prime minister). But he doesn't come across as depressive or manic, either. Resilient, certainly. He had a few traits of hyperthymia, another good-for-crisis-leadership personality type Ghaemi cites, but by no means all of them. (Prototypical hyperthymic leaders include FDR, JFK, and Bill Clinton. Wellington had the energy, ability to function on next to no sleep, and arguably the libido of the type, but NSM the extroversion and charm.) But if there's a name for that hyper-cool, hyper-controlled, no-drama-except-that-which-I-choose-for-effect personality that Wellington had, it's not in this book.

32) Dancing Into Battle: A Social History of the Battle of Waterloo, by Nick Foulkes. An interesting overview of the social milieu before and immediately after the great battle, focusing largely on the British in Brussels in the months, weeks, and days before the battle. Fascinating stuff, though I can't really find it shocking that people chose to party on the verge of war. What are they supposed to do, compose battle plans in their every waking hour or sit around contemplating their mortality? And it's a subtle thing, but Foulkes focuses more on how much was different 200 years ago than universal commonalities.

Another week's reading

I've been neglecting this blog shamefully of late, largely due to a pinched nerve flareup. I'm trying to save my best computer time for my writing. But I never stop reading, and here are books 7-9 toward my goal of reading 75 books in 2012:

7) Margarita, by Joan Wolf. This is a traditional Regency romance--i.e. a subgenre with less sex and often a bit more history than you generally find in historical romance. They're rare in print publishing nowadays, but more and more trad authors are reviving their backlists as ebooks, as is the case with this book, originally released in 1982.

Wolf delves deeply into the actual history of the time period even by the standards of the subgenre. In this case the heroine is the daughter of a Venezuelan man and an English woman, and she loses all her family fighting in Bolivar's revolution. She goes to her English grandfather for lack of any other options, and after he dies she finds herself married to the cousin who inherited his title and estates. It contains multiple elements that would be a tough sell in today's market--very young heroine (17 when she marries), a rather distant omniscient POV, a hero who doesn't give up his mistresses until long after marrying the heroine, and a hero and heroine who are cousins (anathema to your typical American reader, though I've read Mansfield Park and Rose in Bloom often enough that I can put on a 19th century brain for the duration of the read and not be bothered by it). I enjoyed it, though I don't think I'd want omniscient POV in most of my romance reading.

8) Cinderella Ate my Daughter, by Peggy Orenstein. I heard Orenstein interviewed on Fresh Air a few weeks ago and knew I had to read this book. She's a few years older than I am, and her daughter is about the same age as mine, so we're both experiencing a certain disconnect in seeing the very pink, princessy, and girlie-girl culture our daughters are pushed to conform to--one that's in many ways more constricting than what we knew in the 70's despite all the strides women have made in the past 30-40 years.

It's a quick read, and one that doesn't pretend to have all the answers, either to why the cultural shift happened or how to raise a confident, true-to-herself daughter in the midst of it. (For the former, she points to similar moves to shelter and cherish daughters during previous economic and cultural crises.) Speaking from personal experience, one of the persistent and unexpected challenges of parenting Miss Fraser has been the fact she DOESN'T embrace her surrounding culture. She's a tomboy--not unusually so, but she reminds me of myself at the same age, more interested in animals and animal stories than dolls or fairy tales, and she doesn't like pastels or fussy, dressy clothes. One day when she was barely 2 and just starting to get really verbal, she pushed away a pink floral-print set of overalls I was trying to dress her in and said, "No flow-flers! No pink!" And she has stuck to that line ever since, though she'll wear fuchsia or raspberry shades. When her grandmother or aunts and uncles try to call her princess, she frowns and says, "I'm NOT a PRINCESS!" I wouldn't have her any other way, but it makes her surprisingly hard to shop for, given how gender-coded and branded so much children's merchandise is these days.

Obviously, this isn't a major problem. My daughter is happy and has plenty of friends at school. It just bugs me that this pattern exists and is so strong. Miss Fraser is fully aware that the mold exists and she doesn't quite fit it. We've talked a lot, at her initiation, about the different ways of being a girl, and how it's fine for her to be, as she puts it, "a little bit girlie," because she enjoys Littlest Pet Shop and My Little Pony and the like, but that above all she needs to be herself and accept other people for being themselves.

9) The Hundred Days, by Antony Brett-James. More Waterloo research, this one a compilation of various eyewitness accounts. In many cases I wished I could know more--e.g. the young Prussian volunteer who talked in a matter-of-fact way about his female sergeant, who was so brave that when she married another sergeant after the war she had three military honors pinned to her gown. And I was flabbergasted by the account of the woman hosting the ball where the Prince Regent was when the officer bringing the victory dispatches and captured French eagles caught up with him--she called it a dreadful night because everyone deserted her ball to either celebrate or try to get hold of a casualty list. She actually said she thought it would've been better for the messenger to wait quietly until the morning!

What I've read so far in 2012

LibraryThing has a 75 Books in 2012 Challenge. Before I went back to work full time when my daughter was 18 months old, I used to read 125-150 books a year. Since then, I haven't counted, because I've been afraid the number would depress me with its smallness. But this year I decided to shoot for 75. Surely that's doable.

Anyway, here's what I've read so far in 2012, shamelessly copied from my LibraryThing thread. Lest you think, "Of course you'll make 75. You're on pace for around 200," I was home sick with a bad cold for a good chunk of last week and had more reading time than normal.

1) Chain Reaction, by Simone Elkeles. It's the third book in a YA trilogy. Unusually gritty, sexy, and violent for its genre, but in a good way--at least to read. When I reflect that my daughter will be the age of the main characters in just 10 years, I hope that her life, like mine, will be tame, peaceful, and boring by comparison!

2) The Hundred Days, by Edith Saunders. This is only one of several Waterloo books I plan to read in the next couple months, since my current novel-in-process is partially set there. Saunders takes more of a big picture view than a lot of the Waterloo books on my shelves, so you don't get a play-by-play of the battle, but she includes more of the behind-the-scenes political machinations in France before and after the battle, which gives you a better sense of the context. And during the battle sections, she does a good job of showing what was happening with the Prussians, the French under Marshal Grouchy, etc. throughout the day, so you see their impact on the final outcome. She's no great lover of Napoleon, but neither am I, so that didn't bother me.

3) How Few Remain, by Harry Turtledove. An alternate history of a world where the South won the Civil War that held my interest, though somehow the characters (all real historical figures re-imagined) never quite hooked me. I don't know if there were too many point-of-view characters and plot threads or what, but instead of looking for the next book in the series, I was satisfied to find plot synopses online to see how Turtledove's version of the world plays out.

4) Heat Rises, by "Richard Castle." Castle is my current favorite TV series (mm, Nathan Fillion), and I've enjoyed the three "Nikki Heat" tie-in novels for all the meta references to the show. Obviously not the deepest book I've ever read, but in my view there's nothing wrong with reading purely for entertainment (I won't call it a guilty pleasure, even, because AFAIC there's nothing to be guilty about), and this was a perfect read for a day spent curled up in bed between doses of DayQuil.

5) Eat that Frog, by Brian Tracy. As a writer not yet in a position to quit my full-time day job, I tend to collect time management books. This one, picked up on the cheap a few days ago as a Kindle Daily Deal, is nothing I haven't heard before, but it was a quick read with some useful tips. Its focus is on identifying your most critical tasks and doing them first, since you really DON'T have time to finish everything.

6) Waterloo 1815 - Captain Mercer's Journal, by Cavalie Mercer, edited by WH Fichett, introduction by Bob Carruthers. Almost every nonfiction work on Waterloo I've read contains quotes from Cavalie Mercer, a British artillery captain with a gift for vivid, descriptive writing who took part in the battle. I didn't realize when I bought this book that it's an abridged version of his journal, and I'll probably keep digging around until I find the whole thing. For research purposes I was hoping for more details of day-to-day life in the weeks and days leading up to the battle than the abridgment provided.

My next book!

I'm delighted to report that Carina is acquiring my next book. Title and release date remain TBD, but it's a historical romance with a (fictional) British general for a hero. The hero and heroine, Jack and Elizabeth, marry in 1804 to fulfill a deathbed promise and are soon separated by the demands of his military career. By the time they're reunited in early 1815, they've accumulated a long list of grievances against each other and wish they'd never married. Just as they're beginning to make their own peace, Jack is called back to war when Napoleon returns to power--only this time Elizabeth has no intention of remaining quietly behind in England.



In other words, I'm writing a Waterloo story. I think every Regency writer, at least those of us with even the tiniest degree of interest in the military side of the era, has one in her, and this is mine. Or possibly just my first.

The book will probably come out in late 2012. I wish I wasn't looking at such a long gap between releases, but my pinched nerve slowed me down a lot for six months or so. Now, well, to use the cliche, it is what it is. Assuming the date holds, at least I won't have a calendar year without a release in it.

Summer reading: pre Dance With Dragons edition

A Dance With Dragons hit my Kindle at midnight, so there's a good chance that I'm somewhere with Tyrion Lannister, Jon Snow, or Daenerys Targaryen right now. Which I guess is a spoiler that all three survived the first four books, for those of you who've only seen the show...or maybe it isn't. They could be undead. Stranger things have happened. You'll just have to find out for yourselves.

Anyway, I continue to plug away at the Seattle Public Library Adult Summer Reading Program. I want to win that Nook, dang it. Not that there's anything wrong with my Kindle, but as an e-published author I need to be familiar with multiple formats, don't I? Or maybe I'm just competitive.

Last week's books:

1) A Reluctant Queen, by Joan Wolf
Genre: Inspirational historical romance
Format/source: trade paperback, library

A biblical novelization, but one that isn't particularly preachy or literalistic in its approach to the source text. Really, it's almost an alternative history, in that Ahasuerus is Xerxes' brother instead of another name for the same man. The action takes place between Marathon (490 BCE) and Thermopylae/Salamis (480), and as a bit of a Greek history geek I couldn't help wondering what's going to happen to, oh, world history in general and western civilization in particular if Xerxes isn't the Great King and the 480 invasion of Greece either doesn't happen or is better led. And the text invites those questions, since one of the topics the characters argue over is what to do about those troublesome Greeks. Still, I enjoyed the book. Sweetly romantic, I liked how Haman and Mordecai were humanized, and the details of Persian court life felt well-researched.

2. Ladies of Waterloo, by Charlotte Eaton, Magdalen de Lancey, and Juana Smith
Genre: Nonfiction (history)
Format/source: trade paperback, bought

Three women's experiences living through Waterloo, not at the battle itself but as friends and wives of men who were involved. Research for the WIP.

3. A Cook's Tour, by Anthony Bourdain
Genre: Nonfiction (food/travel)
Format/source: Kindle, bought

Companion volume to Bourdain's old Food Network series. Made me long to go to Vietnam, France, Morocco, and the French Laundry (where I have promised to take my husband if I ever make the NYT bestseller list). Cambodia, not so much.

196 years ago today

The Battle of Waterloo was 196 years ago today. As a Regency romance author who prefers to write about soldiers and also something of a military history geek, I think I'm contractually obligated to post something about the battle.

Four years from now, I plan to actually be there on the field for the 200th anniversary. I've got a decent-sized chunk of money set aside in a CD where I won't be tempted to touch it before it's time to book plane tickets, and I'm hoping to take 3-4 weeks off work and make a leisurely trip of it.



My new WIP is partially set at Waterloo, so I've been re-reading some of my sources. Today I was reminded by John Keegan in The Mask of Command that from the time Wellington woke up on June 15 (the day the French army crossed into Belgium) and when he fell asleep on the floor in his headquarters after Waterloo (having given his bed up to a dying officer), he got about 9 hours of sleep. Total. In three nights. Knowing that, I'm even more amazed and impressed with how well he and his army performed. On that little sleep, I'd have trouble framing a coherent sentence, and I'd probably botch the whole battle doing whatever is the military equivalent of getting a bowl of cereal, but putting the cereal box away in the fridge and the milk carton on the pantry shelf.

Writing Weekend (sorta): This is why I'll never get to choose my own cover models...

My tendinitis is gradually improving, so I'm trying to return to a normal life of work, writing, blog posts, and generally hanging out online.

This post is going to mostly be pictures, though. Eye candy...at least for me.

You see, I got an idea for a new novella, which I'm going to work on concurrently with my historical fantasy WIP. It's set in the run-up to the Battle of Waterloo, with a seasoned, weather-beaten officer hero.

I immediately knew my Harry looks exactly like Christopher Eccleston:



Just give him a bit more hair, put him in a red coat with a sword in his hand, and can't you just see him all intense and badass on the battlefield? I sure can.

And a man who looks good in a leather coat would also work an early 19th century greatcoat, dontcha think?



What a profile!



I think he'd look great on cover. Don't you?

...anyone?

::crickets::

Can an author of 90,000-word novels write a 1500-word short story?

I would dearly love to enter this contest. It's for short stories of any genre, set during or in the days leading up to the Battle of Waterloo, with all proceeds going toward restoration of the battlefield in preparation for the 200th anniversary of the battle in June 2015.

On the surface, this looks perfect for me. I own something like five books on Waterloo alone, plus multiple biographies of Wellington and Napoleon, general histories of the Napoleonic Wars, analyses of the French and British armies of the era, etc. I'm planning to be there for the 200th anniversary--I've already got most of the money for the trip set aside and everything.

Problem is, the upper limit on word count is 1500 words. I don't know that I can think in that length. That's an awfully short space to develop a character and a plot, or even to describe an incident, especially for an author whose shortest-ever manuscript clocked in right around 90,000 words.

Still, I'd like to enter, and I don't want to enter some half-assed effort that won't even have a chance at the prize. I mean, I could just send a donation for the battlefield restoration (and may well do so regardless, because history, and preserving history, MATTER to me). But if I'm going to compete, my goal is to win.

So, with that in mind...what makes a good 1500-word story? Any author recommendations?

Random research ramblings

One of the story ideas I'm toying with attempting in the near- to medium-term future is a romance set around the Battle of Waterloo. You see, Waterloo is endlessly fascinating to me. I've got at least six books on the great battle packed away in boxes waiting for me to finish getting my new office ready, not to mention any number of biographies of Wellington and a few of Napoleon, too.



I never get tired of reading new accounts of Waterloo. If they're well-written, I read them with the same breathless, sleepless attention I give to the most page-turning and suspenseful of popular fiction, as if this time the British squares won't hold, the Guard won't falter, and the Prussians won't show up. So when browsing a newsstand the other day, I picked up a copy of a magazine I'd never tried before, Armchair General, whose June issue had the Scots Greys charging across the cover and the tantalizing headline of "Sun Tzu's Waterloo."

That's a different approach, thought I, and picked up the magazine, curious to see how the author had analyzed the battle from the perspective of a famous expert from another time and place.

Turns out people who've read as many books on Waterloo as I have probably shouldn't bother with magazine articles. The author concluded that Sun Tzu would've thought Napoleon's tactics extremely flawed on the day, and that though Wellington made some minor mistakes he'd chosen his position very well and defended it ably. Well, yeah. (And yes, there was more to it than that, but I didn't come away feeling I'd learned anything new or had my mind changed.)

The reason I'm blogging about this minor incident is that the article author stated with confidence that while Napoleon might've read Sun Tzu's Art of War, since there was a French translation available, Wellington most certainly had not, because no English translation existed in his lifetime.



Thing is, there's a slight problem with that logic that I as a Duke of Wellington fangirl spotted immediately: Wellington was fluent in French. Now, I have no reason to believe he ever read Sun Tzu, but as an aristocratic Englishman who was involved in international diplomacy (including a stint as ambassador to France), he wouldn't have needed to wait for an English translation.

Moral of the story? Don't trust everything you read.