Over the past few weeks I have been reading - for the second time - the late Quintin Barry's two-volume history of Franco-Prussian War.
The first volume covers the outbreak of the war until the surrender at Sedan and the collapse of the Second Empire.
The second volume covers the period from the proclamation of the Third Republic until the end of the war, and includes the Siege of Paris and the foundation of the German Empire.
I have found these to be well-researched and admirably written in a style that told the history of the war in an easy-to-read way that still managed to include the sort of level of detail beloved by wargamers. This is hardly surprising as - according to his obituary in the Law Gazette - he spent ten years doing his research before he wrote this work.
THE FRANCO-PRUSSIAN WAR 1870-71 was written by Quintin Barry and published in paperback format in 2025 by Helion & Company (Volume One: ISBN 978 1 8067 2104 7; Volume Two: ISBN 978 1 8067 2105 4).
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Hi Bob,
ReplyDeleteWhilst I do not have his Franco-Prussian War titles I do own a copy of his War in the East - The Russo-Turkish War and a couple of others. Years ago (at the end of 2012) I fought a big battle Portable Wargame using the block armies based on the the Battle of the Camel’s Neck and I used his book extensively.
All the best,
DC
David Crook,
DeleteI had forgotten that he had written a book about the Russo-Turkish War! Thanks for reminding me about it; it’ll be the next book that I read!
All the best,
Bob
I have come across his books on the blockade of Brest, the Russo-Turkish War and the Russo-Janapese War. The Russo-Turkish book was of most interest because in modern times there have not been many in-depth studies of that whole conflict -- though Piotr Olender has written a useful book on the purely naval aspects, and it is touched on by David Menning, "Bayonets before bullets: Imperial Russian Army, 1861-1914" (Indiana UP, 1992) and David Alan Rich "The Tsar's Colonels: professionalism, strategy and subversion in late Imperial Russia"(Harvard UP, 1998); and considered in M Hakan Yavuz, "War and diplomacy: the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878 and the Treaty of Berlin"(University of Utah Press, 2011), though the latter focuses more on diplomatic and social hsitory, and ethnic cleansing, rather than purely military issues.
DeleteThe weakness of Quintin Barry's Russo-Turkish book, and that on the Brest blockade, is that they don't appear to draw on archival materials (except when already published, as in e.g. Navy Records Society volumes). John Shelton Curtiss' book "Russia's Crimean War", published as far back as 1979, drew on Russian, French, British, Austrian and Dutch archives; Alexander Morrison's recent "The Russian conquest of Central Asia: a study in imperial expansion 1814-1914" (Cambridge UP, 2021) used a wide variety of Russian, Uzbek, Georgian, British and Indian archives; David Alan Rich, "The Tsar's Colonels" draws on a good deal of Russian archival material. I dare say that in the case of the Franco-Prussian war, as Sir Michael Howard wrote in the Note on Sources to his own famous 1961 book on the topic, so much of the documentation was published in the decades after the war, that it sacrificed little to base a book almost entirely on printed sources. But that's not so true of other conflicts.
Toby E,
DeleteThanks very much for the detailed list of books to read. I have read a couple of the ones that you list and will certainly look out for several of the others.
My 8nteresting in the Russo-Turkish War began after I read Boris Akunin’s TURKISH GAMBIT and then watched the Russian film of the book. I don’t know how accurate the novel is, but it led me to read other books, including Frank Jastrzembski’s VALENTINE BAKER’S HEROIC STAND AT TASHKESSEN 1877: A TARNISHED BRITISH SOLDIER’S HEROIC VICTORY June 2017; ISBN 978 1 4738 6608 5).
All the best,
Bob
Like you, I enjoyed the Boris Akunin book and associated film. I recall reading that, in a later book in the series, Akunin aroused the ire of some Russian nationalists with the suggestion that General M D Skobelev (in the novel spelt Sobolev, and who also appears in "Turkish gambit"), a hero of the Russo-Turkish War, had had political ambitions. The real-life general got into trouble by his involvement in massacring prisoners in Central Asia (Alexander Morrison says of him, "there is no doubt that Skobelev was a revolting sadist" on p.535).
ReplyDeleteToby E,
DeleteI gather from conversations that I’ve had with several members of WD that Akunin has quite a following amongst them. Furthermore, I think that Ian Drury might have been involved in signing the book deal that ensured that they were published in English.
I wondered why Akunin had changed the general’s name, but your comment has made the reason very clear.
All the best,
Bob