The Cambridge Illustrated History of Warfare: The Triumph of the West (review)

Reviews 231 seems reasonable to describe both as products of a traditional (and oralderived ) system of versification' (p. 124). A m o n g the many other acute observations in this book I single out just a few. A new Aldhelm attribution, in the elegiac mode, is established on prosodic and stylistic evidence. Indications of Aldhelm's familiarity with hexameter scansion when preparing his octosyllabic Carmen Rhythmicum combine with documentation of his successive re-workings of borrowed diction to suggest a relative chronology for the total corpus. N e w evidence is adduced that, while on pilgrimage to Rome, Aldhelm instigated the compilation of versified inscriptions from churches and other monuments. The array of writers known to the Anglo-Saxons has been widened to include Prosper of Aquitaine and others. That Northumbrian and Southumbrian institutions differed in their teaching of Latin verse composition is inferred from discrepant incidences of favoured metrical patterns. Conversely, good evidence is furnished that Bede borrowed from Aldhelm's Carmen Ecclesiasticum and other works. All in all, the book makes a major contribution to knowledge and has important implications well beyond the narrower Anglo-Latin specialism. Orchard successfully rehabilitates Aldhelm as a resourceful, ingenious, influential, and understudied author, unjustly outshone perhaps by the romantic aura that clings to Caedmon. Orchard's promised study of Aldhelm's influence on Carolingian verse will be awaited with interest. This book has been produced with exceptional care. The exposition was uniformly lucid and I noted only an insignificant number of typographical, spelling, punctuation, and other errors. Congratulations are in place to all concerned. Russell Poole Department of English Massey University Parker, Geoffrey, ed., The Cambridge Illustrated History of Warfare: The Triumph of the West, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1995; cloth; pp. 408; R.R.P. AU$59.95. 'War', wrote Clausewitz, 'is an act of violence intended to compel our opponent to fulfil our will.' In its destructive and violent continuity, the exploits of the Assyrian Tiglath-Pileser are strongly reminiscent of the wars of the later twentieth century: 232 Reviews Their fighting men I cast down in the midst of the hills, like a gust of wind . . . Their blood I caused to flow in the valleys and on the high places of the mountains . . . I burned the city with fire . . . The whole of the city I laid waste, I destroyed, I turned into heaps and ruins. Geoffrey Parker and his contributors have attempted to cover the history of these three thousand years of warfare in the West, and for the most part they do so very thoroughly and carefully. If there is a theme to their work, it is that the West has come to dominate the globe largely because the Western way of war has been so effective. In his introduction, Parker identifies five characteristics of this effectiveness: discipline, innovation in technology, total defeat of the enemy as the military goal,financialmechanisms for long-term credit, and the formation of the state. Other, non-Western approaches to warfare are not discussed or compared. These themes are not used to structure the book, however, nor are they always woven explicitly into its individual essays. These proceed chronologically for the most part, organised into four 'ages': massed infantry, stone fortifications, guns and sail, and mechanised warfare. Interestingly, perhaps, it is only really in essays by Parker himself on the gunpowder revolution and ships of the line that a more thematic approach is separated out from the chronological. In the other essays, the chronological approach dominates and the themes only emerge in passing. The contributors are all experts in theirfields:Victor Davis Hanson on the Greeks and Romans, Bernard Bachrach and Christopher Allmand on the Middle Ages, John Lynn on the eighteenth century, Williamson Murray on the m o d e m world, and of course Geoffrey Parker himself on the Early M o d e m period. Indeed, Parker's chapter on dynastic war between 1494 and 1660 is perhaps the best thing in the book, a masterly summary of all facets of the warfare of that time—tactics, logistics, weaponry, the rise of professional armies, uniforms, and the role of religion—as well as an excellent account of the...