Quotulatiousness

October 7, 2026

Lessons from Patrick O’Brian’s Master and Commander

Filed under: Books, Britain, History, Media, Military — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

As a child, I was a very early fan of C.S. Forester’s series of novels on the career of Horatio Hornblower, so I was a bit wary about reading Patrick O’Brian’s new-to-me stories set in the same period. A friend from Halifax practically forced Master and Commander on me during my first visit to Nova Scotia and I quickly picked up Post Captain, HMS Surprise and a few more in the series. At Athena’s Bridge, Mike Hennelly makes the case that there are valuable leadership lessons that can be learned from O’Brian’s work:

Cover from a later printing than the one I read in 1982.

In the study of leadership, there are many who say that there is nothing to be gained from novels or movies. Their argument is that only the study of reality (real CEOs, real generals, real political leaders) will yield insights of value for the study and practice of leadership. The purpose of this essay is to argue the opposite case. One of the most remarkable literary achievements of the 20th century was Patrick O’Brian’s multi-volume depiction of British naval life during the Napoleonic Wars. Eventually stretching to twenty books, O’Brian gives us the lives of Captain Jack Aubrey and his great friend, Doctor Stephen Maturin. A reviewer from the New York Times stated (rather categorically) that O’Brian’s books are “the best historical novels ever written”. O’Brian’s characters finally appeared in a movie entitled Master & Commander and the film faithfully captures much of the atmosphere and spirit of this maritime world.

O’Brian’s world, both in the books and the movie, is surprisingly faithful to the world of the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic Wars. He brings to life the nature of the great naval leaders of the time, the victories they achieved and the hardships they endured. As O’Brian himself notes, “I have gone straight to the source for the fighting in this book. I have log-books, official letters, contemporary accounts or the participants’ own memoirs“. What follows is not a review of the movie nor a synopsis of the plot. This is an essay that uses one particular movie to frame a discussion of leadership in realistic, uncertain and risky circumstances. Our focus is the character of Jack Aubrey – created by Patrick O’Brian, visualized by director Peter Weir and brought to life by actor Russell Crowe. An examination of Aubrey’s behavior and attitudes throughout the movie provides a wealth of insight into the mystery that is called leadership.

To begin at the beginning, a consideration of the term “master and commander” brings two curious facts to light. First of all, in the early days of the Royal Navy, this term applied to two people – not one. When English warships fought the Spanish Armada, for example, they had a “master” who was a life-long mariner with the nautical experience to sail the ship and a “commander” (frequently a noble) who was entrusted with the combat performance of the ship. Over time, this phrase was combined and came to describe the responsibilities of a warship’s captain. The second curious fact is that this term (as a job description) is incomplete. When Patrick O’Brian brought the character of Captain Jack Aubrey to life, he did so in a way that clearly shows that the term “master and commander” was an incomplete description of a captain’s responsibilities. HMS Surprise might be a ship (that needed a master to sail her) and she might be a weapon of war (that needed a commander to fight her) but she was also a collection of almost two hundred sailors of all sorts (who needed a leader to direct and influence their actions). To carry out all the responsibilities of a ship’s captain, Jack Aubrey needed to be a “master, commander and leader”. Without the ability to take a random set of landsmen and mold them into a cohesive, disciplined and skilled crew, he would not have been able to sail the ship safely nor would he have been able to exert any combat power.

“She’s a vastly heavier ship. She’s out of our class” (or, how leaders get others to face existential risk)

As the movie begins, it is the spring of 1805 and we are aboard HMS Surprise, a small Royal Navy frigate of 28 guns with a crew of 197 souls. The Surprise is under orders to find the French frigate Acheron and “sink, burn or take her as a prize”. The Surprise is off the coast of Brazil and approaching a fogbank when she is ambushed by the Acheron. Captain Aubrey is energized by the prospect of combat (“straight at ’em, Mr. Mowatt!“) but events soon take a turn for the worse as Surprise‘s rudder is shot away and the British barely escape safely into the fog.

We learn more about Aubrey as he faces a serious leadership challenge after this disastrous encounter with the French. The ship’s officers, somewhat in shock, are discussing the engagement and they observe that Acheron was “more like a ship of the line than a frigate” and “our shots couldn’t penetrate“. Their misgivings are understandable. HMS Surprise, with twenty-eight guns, is about as small as a ship can be and still be called a frigate. The forty-four guns of the Acheron make it far larger and more heavily armed than the Surprise and what this means in combat is that every broadside fired by the Acheron is almost four times the weight of a broadside from the Surprise. Aubrey’s command team assumes that the clear superiority of the French ship means the Surprise will have to abandon her mission and head home. But their misgivings are not in line with the attitudes of a) the British Admiralty, b) the British public and c) their captain. At this point in the war, most Britons and the Admiralty operate under the assumption that their navy should always project an aura of invincibility. This has been a British naval characteristic since the great British sea-victories at Camperdown (1797) and the Nile (1798). Furthermore, we find out that Jack Aubrey’s mental model of an ideal officer is Lord Nelson who was famous for his relentlessly aggressive behavior at sea. One of Nelson’s most famous sayings was “no captain can do very wrong if he places his ship alongside that of an enemy” and that is exactly what Aubrey intends to do to the Acheron. Aubrey quickly disabuses his officers of the idea of abandoning their mission. Positively radiating with decisiveness, he tells them there is not a moment to lose if they are to carry out repairs and catch up with the French.

Aubrey faces two challenges as he attempts to lead his ship into a situation of existential risk. First, he must gain the support of his officers and secondly, he must ensure the willingness of his crew. He addresses these concerns in turn. To gain the support of his officers and bolster their morale, he addresses their concerns with a discussion of battle tactics in a way that provides reassurance. Although the French ship has far more guns, Aubrey explains that the Surprise possesses intangible advantages that level the killing field. He is convinced that the Surprise is more maneuverable than the Acheron and he intends that his gun crews be better-trained and more effective than their French counterparts. Without any further dissent from his officers, the Surprise carries on with its pursuit of the bigger and more powerful enemy ship – which is a testament to the effectiveness of Aubrey’s leadership.

Aubrey’s approach to the crew about the threat of the Acheron is intensely practical in nature. The crew spend much of their time engaged in gunnery drill. Captain Aubrey has very high standards for the ship’s gunnery because he expects his gun crews to be both fast and accurate. Accuracy in naval gunfire is always a challenge because ships are inherently unstable firing platforms, but, in addition, the faster the rate of fire, the sooner a gun crew is exhausted with a corresponding reduction in accuracy. Aubrey’s standards, while achievable, are higher than the standard in naval fleets of the time. His standards require intensive, dangerous training which is the only way to produce highly disciplined and effective gun crews. To keep his crew motivated while they are training so hard, Aubrey gives them a rousing talk (Do you want to see a guillotine in Piccadilly? NO!, they roar back. Do you want your children to have to sing “La Marseillaise”? NO!). He also states his expectations in terms that every sailor can grasp – the gun crews of the Surprise must be able to fire two broadsides for every broadside fired by the Acheron. Over time, the crew of the Surprise is welded into a cohesive and effective fighting force; they take pride in their achievements and their confidence grows as they face the prospect of future combat.

October 2, 2026

Britain’s best general in World War II

Filed under: Britain, History, India, Japan, Military, WW2 — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

If you’ve been following for a while, you’ll know that I’m a big fan of Field Marshal Bill Slim, the best but also least well known British general of the Second World War. His achievements in Burma and India are overshadowed in popular memory by the struggle against the Nazis in Europe and the vast Pacific campaigns against the Japanese by primarily American forces. In recent years, there’s been a bit more attention paid to the XIV Army’s long and bitter fight, but there’s always more to discover about that incredible struggle:

Field Marshal Sir William Slim (1891-1970), during his time as GOC XIVth Army.
Portrait by No. 9 Army Film & Photographic Unit via Wikimedia Commons.

    But I see him clear, with that robber-baron face under the Gurkha hat … looking like a rather scruffy private with a general’s tab — which of course is what he was.

    – one of General Slim’s soldiers remembers

A search on Amazon using the term “military memoir” yields more than forty thousand results. With so many choices, why read Field Marshal William Slim’s World War II memoir entitled Defeat into Victory? Interestingly enough, there are two answers. The short answer was revealed in 2011 when the National Army Museum in London held a debate and a public poll to answer the question — Who is Britain’s greatest general? Great Britain, of course, has a long and distinguished military history with a great many famous military commanders who could all vie for this honor. In what turned out to be a surprise to many, Field Marshal Slim tied with the Duke of Wellington as the winner. So, if you are considering whether to read Slim’s memoir, ask yourself — how much do you know about someone who might be one of the greatest generals in history?

Before continuing this essay with a longer, more structured answer about the value of Slim’s memoir, a few words about William Slim himself. He began his military career as a temporary lieutenant at the beginning of World War I, without the benefit of a university education or Sandhurst training. By the end of World War I, he had achieved a sterling military record — wounded twice, awarded the Military Cross and temporarily promoted to major. He spent the inter-war years assigned to the Indian Army and was notably associated with the 6th and 7th Gurkha Rifles. At the beginning of World War II, he was given brigade command in East Africa and then command of the 10th Indian Division in the Middle East. His memoir begins in early 1942 when Slim is suddenly and unexpectedly told to leave his command and report immediately to Army Headquarters in India. The summons was so abrupt that Slim thought he was being relieved of command. He didn’t know it at the time but he was about to spend the rest of the war in India and Burma.

A distinct three-act narrative arc forms the structure of his book. In Act I (1942), Slim takes command of Burma Corps. This was an ad hoc two-division force that was in the middle of conducting a fighting retreat while being overwhelmed by the surging Japanese Army. Slim and his men end up suffering through a one hundred day, nine-hundred-mile retreat back to India in what historians have called the longest retreat ever conducted by a British army. By May 1942, the remnants of his Corps finally reached safe haven in India.

In Act II (1943), Slim regroups, retrains and resupplies his forces in preparation for his reconquest of Burma. This was not as straightforward a task as it sounds. Slim now commands the Fourteenth Army which, at its height, consisted of nearly one million soldiers and was one of the largest armies in the world. But the size of the Fourteenth Army was not as striking as the diversity of its composition. Slim had to make a disciplined, cohesive and effective fighting force using regiments from England, Scotland, South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya and a vast array of Indian units including Sikhs, Rajputs, Pathans and Gurkhas from Nepal. Later in the war, Slim described a routine tactical operation: “The Japanese had for some time been harassing 28 East African Brigade Group … and a Punjabi battalion had been sent in to stiffen it”. The Japanese counterattacked “and a British battalion was hurriedly transferred from the east bank and joined them”. One routine tactical operation — involving allied soldiers from three continents.

In Act III, (1944-45), Slim and his army return to Burma and achieve triumph after triumph. The first triumph is the battle of Imphal (March-July 1944). The famed novelist George MacDonald Fraser was a young Scottish soldier in Slim’s Fourteenth Army and he later wrote; “I imagine that every teenager today has heard of Stalingrad and Alamein and D-Day but I wonder how many know the name of Imphal … where Japan suffered the greatest catastrophe in its military history”. The subsequent battle of Meiktila (February- March 1945) was equally significant and has been characterized by British military historian Corelli Barnett as, “the cleverest, boldest and most brilliant single British victory in World War II”. By mid-1945, Slim’s victorious Fourteenth Army had retaken Rangoon and destroyed the Japanese army in Burma.

There are three dimensions to Slim’s memoir that make it so memorable. It is a tale well-written, it is a tale of wonder and it is a tale filled with wisdom.

September 28, 2026

The Punic Wars – An Overview

Filed under: Africa, Europe, History, Military — Tags: , , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Adrian Goldsworthy. Historian and Novelist
Published 15 Apr 2026

Today we return to a familiar theme — the Punic Wars between Rome and Carthage. This video is meant as an overview of all three wars, rather than just the Second Punic War which is the most famous and involved Hannibal and Scipio and the like. We think about the context of the wars and also how they played out. A particular focus is the significance of big battles, whether on land or on sea. Clearly these mattered, but how much did the matter and how common were they?

September 26, 2026

Jacob Rees-Mogg says the quiet part out loud

Filed under: Britain, History, Media, Politics, WW1 — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Despite British news popping up here fairly regularly, I don’t closely follow individual politicians, so I didn’t have strong opinions about Jacob Rees-Mogg. I guess I had mild positive feelings about him based on what he’d said on various issues several years ago. I’d rather assumed he’d be out of politics by now with the collapse of the “Conservatives” after the Boriswave, but no, he still thinks of himself as a voice worth listening to … unfortunately.

Thoughts from the Shire suggests that we not blame Rees-Mogg too much, as he merely said out loud what they all think:

Don’t be too hard on old Jacob Rees-Mogg.

His recent call for the return of duty and the stiff upper lip, along with his warning that some of us may once again have to fight and die for our country, has predictably, and rightly so been met with howls of derision.

But here’s the thing, Mogg isn’t entirely wrong.

Duty does matter, courage matters, and sacrifice matters. A people incapable of defending themselves will eventually find themselves at the mercy of people who can, this is the story of world history. The problem is not the principle, the problem is the state of the nation, and perhaps more importantly, the relationship between those asking for the sacrifice and those expected to make it. People have rightly been pointing out that Millionaire Mogg, and his progeny are not likely to be the ones enlisted for the frontline, and that too often in our history the likes of Jacob have led many millions of good men to war. It is great that many have seen through Moggs BS rhetoric, and are telling him where he can stick his future war.

However we should not think that the masses of working class men that fought in past conflicts all did so out of patriotism, or because they listened to their betters, or were too stupid to see through the propaganda. Most knew their leaders were full of shit, most despised the upper crust types like Mogg.

It’s rather amusing that both the British and Canadian powers-that-be have spent a long time doing things to diminish the patriotism of their people — not least by mass immigration against the will of the voters — and denigrating the patriotic feelings they haven’t managed to fully suppress. Both ostentatiously treat immigrants, especially illegal immigrants better than they treat their own citizens, both with public support and judicial slight-of-hand to minimize or eliminate punishments when they do find themselves in court.

Now, British elites want the downtrodden young white males to ready themselves to go die for Ukraine, while Canadian elites want their downtrodden young white males to become, as John Carter put it, the Hoser Taliban and fight against the Yankee hordes of the Bad Orange Man. As if everyone will just magically forget that they spent the last decade and more actively trying to erase our history and blacken the reputations of the men who built our nation.

Sorry for the interruption, I’ll get off my hobby horse and let’s get back to Thoughts From the Shire:

Canadian troops going “over the top”

In the Past, the Upper Crust also Paid a Great Price in War

Nor, incidentally, did the upper classes always remain safely at home like old Mogg, and his ilk today. In the Great War, aristocratic families lost sons in extraordinary numbers. In 1919 the House of Lords recorded 160 sons of peers dead, “in many cases the hopes and heirs of their line”. Prime Minister Asquith lost his son Raymond. Bonar Law lost two sons. Public-school boys died in the same mud as miners and millworkers, and actually in a higher proportion. Go further back and the connection between leadership, and physical danger becomes even clearer. Kings fought, Chieftains fought, aristocrats fought. Martial ability was not the only qualification for leadership, but for much of history its obvious absence could certainly be a disqualification. It would have been unthinkable for a Celtic chief not to have been a great warrior, in fact the greatest warrior was often made chief precisely because he was the best warrior. Put the above into the context of today, the weak effeminate excuses for leaders we have in the West, not one of them would have the backbone to stand and fight for anything, let alone for you or me.

Contrary to common belief, in the past the man saying “Lets go to war” was frequently going with you, and on WWI the junior officer was actually going in front of you.

That matters.

Because the great change in our own age is not that ordinary men have suddenly become cowards (although it’s no doubt many are) and the upper classes armchair generals. It is that the bond between sacrifice, and belonging has weakened. My ancestors lived in mill-owned houses. They knew perfectly well where they stood in the social order, right at the bottom. Yet they fought in both world wars, remember there was no conscription in Ireland so they volunteered.

The thing is they were not fighting for an amorphous administrative machine called “the state”. They were fighting, in however complicated a fashion, for home, hearth, wives, weans, neighbours, streets, churches, towns, regiments, and the men beside them. They knew what was behind them, and beside them, they knew what they were trying to preserve, and that is where Mogg has the problem a bit backwards.

You cannot spend decades hollowing out common identity, weakening attachment to place, treating inherited loyalties as embarrassing, and reducing citizenship increasingly to an administrative relationship, then suddenly reach into the cupboard when war threatens and pull out words such as duty, honour, country, and sacrifice. You cannot look down your nose at the oiks and their gammon like ways, and then suddenly point out that they may have to die with honour and dignity.

Virtues like duty, honour, and sacrifice require roots, common beliefs and identities, a people!!!

So perhaps Mogg is right, we do need to toughen up. Perhaps we have become too comfortable, too passive, and too frightened of hardship. But the courage required of us may not be the courage to march obediently towards the next foreign battlefield for the virtue signalling elite, and their banker friends. It may be the courage to ask our own rulers some very uncomfortable questions first.

On Substack Notes, John Carter links to a Morgoth post on the topic, saying:

Jacob Rees-Mogg has been lecturing Brits about their “duty” to the nation, in particular their duty to die in Ukraine, while at the very same time he denies that the English people even exist as a nation at all. A “nation of mongrels”, he calls them.

He adopts the mannerisms of a grand old lord of times gone by, one of the landed gentry who bled and died en masse when they threw themselves into the trenches of the Great War, answering the very same call of duty to God, king, and country that Rees-Mogg cynically invokes. Will Rees-Mogg die in a slit trench in the Donbass? Will any of his four sons? Peter is 19 — old enough to fight. Will he? To ask the question is to answer it.

Rees-Mogg speaks of duty to fight for a country he will not fight for. He speaks of duty as he smiles upon the invasion of that country by the hordes of third world primitives he and his class continue to invite in. He speaks of duty, as the regime he supports bends itself to persecuting the men and women doing their duty to their country by attempting to fight back against the invasion.

September 22, 2026

The US Army has an institutional aversion to admitting mistakes

Filed under: Military, USA, Weapons — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Tom Kratman, retired US Army officer, has strong opinions about a lot of topics, but especially on things related to the US military in general and the US Army in particular:

The US Army, all of the US armed forces, can never admit to a mistake, no matter how trivial. The reason the RS71 became the SR71 was because some senior officer had a slip of the tongue when briefing Johnson, called the RS71 the SR71, and the Air Force, rather than admit the mistake, changed the name. The reason there was no resistance training in Ranger School (that’s POW resistance, not weight lifting) was because someone, Navy, I think, said that the only resistance training in US armed forces was Navy run (they do run the big important school graduates are forbidden to talk about), so the Army and Air Force, rather than let Navy be embarrassed, killed their programs until rather recently. The reason the Army kept the OH-58 Kiowa was because, after being browbeaten into buying that recon helicopter, it would have been admitting a mistake, to say nothing of some measure of corruption and moral cowardice, to switch to the OH-6 which EVERY chopper pilot in the Army would tell you was a better bird for the mission.

And then, just for the cherry on top, we can contemplate my old slimy toad of a scum-sucking battalion commander who, as a brigade commander, browbeat his HHC commander [Wiki] into falsifying a PT test for him and, when the HHC commander went to the IG, and the story came out, was allowed to pin on BG stars and retire rather than being sent to play rock hockey, as he should have been, at Leavenworth. Why? Because the Army had made a number of serious mistakes with him; they let him command two infantry (one of them a Ranger) battalions, and had promoted him to colonel, selected him to command a brigade, and then selected him for promotion to brigadier general. That could never be allowed out because the army cannot admit to a mistake, let alone five of them.

Now, with that inability to admit a mistake in mind, roll back the sands of time to the late 1950s, when a certain Airborne Mafia general, serving as Chief of Staff of the Army, Max Taylor, had, as generals will, an incredibly stupid idea, that he, as generals also will tend to, thought was just fucking brilliant. He created the pentomic division [Wiki]. I’ve written on the iniquities and stupidities of this at length and won’t repeat myself here. Suffice to say it was a disaster, a complete, total, unmitigated, moral, operational, administrative, tactical, utter, unbefuckinglievable disaster from every perspective. One feature of the Pentomic Division was that regiments were done away with and replaced by one or more “battlegroups” bearing the same regimental number but not necessarily under the same command.

The Army could not admit that mistake. So they dumped the Pentomic Division and battlegroups as soon as possible but, rather than reverting to regiments, went to brigades [Wiki] composed of different battalions of different arms and regimental numbers. This was nothing but a way to pretend that the Pentomic Division hadn’t been a mistake, that it had been a great idea that just needed a little fine tuning.

Brigades, by the way, also sucked but not as much as the new, Pentomic 2.0, Brigade Combat Teams suck [Wiki].

Wiki links added for those (like me) who are not intimately familiar with US military formations.

September 15, 2026

“Napoleon remains the ghost in professional military education”

Filed under: Education, Europe, History, Military, Quotations, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

InfantryDort responds to a complaint that military leaders are taught Clausewitz without the career of Napoleon for context:

THE THING WE STILL CAN’T TEACH

I’ll bite on this one. Napoleon remains the ghost in professional military education. Why? Let me take a stab at it …

Jomini watched him and tried to turn the phenomenon into rules. Anyone in the U.S. Army has seen this before. If you do something exceptional on the field (especially in training), then you’re often coached that you went outside the lines and need to get back in. You may have succeeded, but it COULD have been a disaster. So we try “putting baby in a corner” because the science of war is safe. The art scares people.

Clausewitz watched the same fire in Napoleon and concluded that rules would never be enough. Two centuries later we are still dissecting the campaigns, naming principles, drawing arrows on maps, and trying to explain what exactly lived inside that man.

Again, why?

There is a part of command that refuses to become curriculum. T.E. Lawrence called it the “kingfisher flash”. Clausewitz reached for the genius. It’s the instant when one mind sees through fog what a hundred educated men cannot see at all, then possesses enough violence of will to act before the moment disappears.

Read that last part again 👆

You can feed that gift with history, sharpen it through hardship. But you CANNOT manufacture it with another degree. It MUST be revealed.

Yet modern institutions are built around the opposite assumption. We stack schools, evaluations, gates, boards, and credentials high enough and convince ourselves that eventually genius will emerge from the assembly line. It won’t. It can’t. Ever.

Worse, the machine often recognizes the dangerous talent and rejects it precisely because it cannot reproduce it. The unusual man is “reckless”. The instinctive one is “unserious.” The officer who refuses the approved path becomes “unqualified”.

READ. IT. AGAIN. 👆 👆 👆

Then war arrives and burns the paperwork. That is the lesson Napoleon keeps trying to teach us from two hundred years away. You can study the flame forever. You still have to recognize it when it walks into the room.

The closest we can come to discovering this genius is testing our officers on it. No more reliance on pure paperwork. I say to these officers: Show us the gift you’re supposed to possess for the highest commands.

Or step aside for someone who will.

QotD: Auftragstaktik or “mission-type tactics”

Filed under: Germany, History, Military, Quotations — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

Mission Command or Auftragstaktik (also “mission-type tactics”) is a style of command and control which stresses flexible decision-making by smaller units pursuing an objective (the “mission” of mission tactics) rather than imposing a single rigid top-down plan on the entire force. Under this framework, upper-level commanders assign objectives to their subordinates, who can then use their better local knowledge and quicker reaction times (being closer to the front) to craft a flexible plan to achieve those objectives; this process is then repeated down the command structure. Originally a German concept, US doctrine embraces mission command as its ideal style of command. Russian doctrine, by contrast, has generally been substantially more top-down in nature (with implications for force structure as well); this has proven a liability in Ukraine as the top-down plan did not go to plan and lower-level Russian commanders and NCOs are not generally trained to deviate from the plan “on the fly”.

Bret Devereaux, “Miscellanea: A Very Short Glossary of Military Terminology”, A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry, 2022-03-25.

September 9, 2026

QotD: Subordinate officers in pre-modern armies

Filed under: Europe, History, Military, Quotations — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

[B]efore we go any further, we need to clarify what we mean by this term “officer”. Militaries, as I have stressed before, recreate their civilian social institutions; since different societies have different institutions, that produces differences in the division of class structure.

One of the key divides that shows up repeatedly is the division between commoners elevated to positions of minor authority and aristocrats in positions of command. Indeed, we have this in our modern armies: this is the distinction between non-commissioned officers (NCOs) which are generally soldiers promoted from the lower ranks and commissioned officers who enter the military typically at the rank of lieutenant (or its equivalent). That system is a hold-over from the origins of modern military structure in Europe’s early-modern gunpowder armies: the commissioned officers (whose commission, to be clear, came from the king) were drawn from the aristocracy and often the nobility, while their non-comissioned subordinates were drawn from the common soldiery who were in turn recruited from the peasantry. Because no peasant could become a knight or noble (under normal circumstances) so too no sergeant could (under normal circumstances) become a lieutenant; the social orders were thus kept separate, civilian mirroring military.

But exactly where that divide occurs and its significance varies wildly. In the modern military structure, a second lieutenant, the lowest commissioned officer, typically commands a platoon of c. 40 soldiers while a sergeant typically leads a squad or section (around 10 soldiers). By contrast in the Roman army, the centurion – a senior NCO like the sergeant promoted from the common soldiers – led a century of 60-80 soldiers; more senior centurions (the primi ordines) commanded an entire cohort (480 soldiers). So the line between NCO and commissioned officer can be drawn in very different places in different societies.

Likewise an important distinction is often made around the emergence of a professional officer class (following on the emphasis made on this point by Samuel P. Huntington in The Soldier and the State (1957)) and the officers who came before which Huntington describes as “amateurs”. This is, I’d argue, a mistaken understanding of the role of military aristocrats in their societies; they were no more amateurs at war than a person born into serfdom is am amateur farmer. Neither the serf nor his military aristocrat overlord is a professional, but neither of them is an amateur either; the categories are not exclusive. Nevertheless there is a difference between truly “amateur” officers (which certainly existed), military aristocrats for whom war is a born-calling, and professional officers.

For this discussion, however, much of this complexity is beside the point. That isn’t to say it is unimportant generally (it is very important generally) but that for this topic here, we can define “officer” very broadly and so avoid having to untangle the particular social context of each military in question. Consequently we’re going to just define officer here as anyone who has command over other combatants, effectively lumping NCOs and commissioned officers (and their ancient equivalents) together. That isn’t because those distinctions are unimportant (they are important!) but because they aren’t quite relevant here, since we are really focused on how command structures enable armies to respond with ability and execute complex plans. It is command, not social status per se that we’re focused on.

Bret Devereaux, “Collections: Total Generalship: Commanding Pre-Modern Armies, Part IIIb: Officers”, A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry, 2022-06-24.

September 3, 2026

Canada’s “softer, gentler, more inclusive, more sensitive” cadet movement

Filed under: Cancon, Military — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

I was in the army cadets from 1972-76. We were still wearing British-style battledress uniforms rather than the CF Green delivery driver uniforms, but we weren’t in cadets for the pseudo-scouting experience … we wanted to be army cadets. Not long after I left cadets for the reserves, the leadership vision changed to (I assume) make cadet organizations more “inclusive”, as John Carter describes:

This unfortunately isn’t new. I was in Army Cadets back in the 90s. Even then female fatbodies in the adult officer corps weren’t unknown, and cadets was coed.

I didn’t actually mind the coed aspect at the time, I picked up a lot of my hs gfs through cadets. What I did mind was how ridiculously soft it was. Weapons training, in particular, was essentially impossible to obtain unless you joined the marksmanship team (which I did for that specific reason), and even then they only gave us ancient Lee-Enfields with .22 inserts. We did a lot of camping and rucking, including in winter, which was great, but aside from the exercises being on army bases and conducted in combat fatigues using old surplus kit, there was almost nothing to mark it out as military in character. Nor for that matter was there anything in the way of physical conditioning.

I wasn’t the only one annoyed by that. The kids who joined cadets wanted to be little warriors. They wanted to crawl through mud with a knife clenched between their teeth, they wanted to get emotionally abused as they struggled through obstacle courses, and they wanted to handle firearms. There was a rumor that all of us had signed an agreement that in event of war, if the rest of the military had been wiped out, we could be called up for the last line of defence. I doubt that was true but we thought it was the coolest thing.

Instead, the only cadets who were allowed to handle C7s were the honour guard, who were issued (rubberized) rifles before parades.

Unfortunately it didn’t matter what the cadets themselves wanted. The adults had decided that softer, gentler, more inclusive, more sensitive was the name of the game. I didn’t make the connection with the presence of female cadets at the time, though in retrospect that’s obvious. What was obvious to me at the time however was that this was all downstream of liberal females aghast at the very concept of a militarized youth, and weak men who couldn’t tell the females to shut their fool mouths.

As an epilogue, when I turned 17 I joined the Army Reserve, only to discover that this infernal feminine softening had long since infected the military, as well.

The cadet Lee-Enfields firing .22LR were an important part of our weapons training … although due to a weird bit of timing, the very first rifle I ever fired was a full-size .303 Lee Enfield that seemed to have enough kick to push me right out of the rifle pit when I fired it (I was small for a 12-year-old). We hadn’t yet learned about hearing protectors, so my ears were ringing for about an hour after the range trip.

September 1, 2026

Marius: The Outsider Who Rose to Command Rome’s Army | Rome’s First Civil War

Filed under: Europe, History, Military — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

The Rest Is History
Published 31 Aug 2026

Who was Gaius Marius, one of the two men who would shape the fate of Rome in the first century BC? Why was his road to fame, fortune, and political greatness, from total obscurity, so dangerous? And, would Marius be the man to face down the existential threat facing the empire during this period?

Join Tom and Dominic as they launch into one of the greatest struggles in the history of Rome, as two titanic generals and politicians clash over hegemony of the empire, in an age of tumult.

0:00 Gaius Marius: Rome’s outsider
6:13 Marius goes to war
12:09 Climbing Rome’s political ladder
18:35 Amazon
19:45 The Roman Republic turns violent
27:00 Marius takes on the aristocracy
31:45 War with Jugurtha
37:53 Marius betrays Metellus
40:12 Marius becomes Consul
44:28 A new threat approaches Rome
45:09 Marius meets his future rival: Sulla

August 4, 2026

QotD: Limits to tactical flexibility in Roman Republican armies

Filed under: Europe, History, Military, Quotations — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

… the real reason I wanted to run through the Roman system […] is actually to demonstrate the limits of this kind of synchronized discipline. Because yes, this sort of drill and training allowed constituent units to potentially maneuver more dynamically and flexibly (when under competent leadership; it is quite striking that Roman command skill with this sort of thing was very dependent on the skill of the general (and one assumes by proxy the skill of his subordinate officers)), but only to do those things which they had practiced.

And therein lies the rub: just as the commander doesn’t have a multitude of points where he can intervene in the battle but rather a limited set of key decision points, so too he does not have an infinite set of potential orders he (or his subordinates) might give at any given moment. Instead, the commander (or his subordinates) has a McDonald’s menu worth of options he can employ. He can order anything on the menu and expect the unit to respond accordingly but he cannot order anything not on the menu, nor can he order an altered version of a menu item (no Big Mac without cheese; Sir, this is not a Wendy’s).

Now generals could and did use drilling in the early stages of the campaign to add one or two “menu items” to their drill so as to be prepared for this or that problem. Indeed the general preparing some sort of surprise of this sort and then deploying it against an enemy is a standard topos of effective ancient generalship (although in many cases we may doubt the purported gimmick was actually used (e.g. Dionysius 20.1.6, Dio 10.5)). But that is the thing: such extra “menu items” have to be prepared in advance and often well in advance of the battle. Caesar, for instance, anticipating war elephants drills his troops in anti-war-elephant tactics before the Battle of Thapsus (46 BC, Caes. Bel. Afr. 84). Alexander’s phalanx seems to have been drilled to respond to scythed chariots as well (Arr. Anab. 3.13.5-6).

That said the bulk of the menu was likely to remain constant. After all these “menu items”, while they have simple names are often actually fairly complex to do and train when you are dealing with units of dozens or hundreds. Turning back to our example of Company, Right Wheel! we can get a sense of the complexity of training that maneuver by the way they did it. The “right guide” (the man on the extreme right) adopts a set pace (nine inch steps) while the “left guide” moves at the normal regulated speed (note this requires training your soldiers not only to step in time but to step at standard lengths) and every soldier in the middle regulates his motion by maintaining elbow contact with the man to his side. That’s a good method to get the result, but it isn’t an obvious or simple method: the fellow training the company to do this needs to already know how to do this.

Now in the modern period with mass printing, you could print drill manuals that had all of the commands and instructions on how to do them, but in the pre-modern period that kind of mass printing isn’t an option (and our military texts almost never go into this kind of granular detail) so your officers have to learn to train the behavior by observing it and participating in it themselves. Which means in turn a great deal of your “package” is set before the army is even mustered at the beginning of the campaign season because you are relying on a package of culturally embedded knowledge about how armies ought to function. And if your culture doesn’t have that tradition, inventing it from scratch is going to be hard and take time; and by “time” I mean “decades”. Effective drill for volley fire (the “countermarch”), for instance, answered a need that had existed for most of the 16th century, but the embryonic ideas for it only started emerging in the 1570s, the actionable plan on how to do it in 1594 and it was only then finally deployed in a major battle in 1600 at Nieuwpoort.

However, the time available for that kind of training is limited. Remember that drill works by repeating the same set of actions over and over again until they become almost instinctive. That takes a lot of time and repetition! That both means it is going to be difficult to find space for new “menu items” (especially with green troops that still need to learn the basics) but also that synchronized discipline itself is expensive. Our ancient sources stress how Roman levels of synchronized discipline required diligent and continuous drilling to create and maintain.

Doing that in turn would demand keeping the soldiers in question under arms for training for long periods when they were not fighting. In the Middle Republic this seems to have been accomplished through rolling recruitment: Rome was essentially always at war and always raising armies so there were always a goodly number of veterans to train and “break in” the truly green new recruits in any given draft (though again – and I owe this notion to Michael Taylor – there are some signs that the less intense conflict of the mid-second-century leads to some dulling of the Roman edge). As we transition through the Late Republic into the Early Empire, that is replaced by the slow professionalization of the Roman army, culminating in the force of long-service professionals created by Augustus. Being mobilized in peacetime, professional soldiers could be drilled extensively (assuming their cultural values are going to let them drill you; also be wary here of assuming standing forces of “military settlers” are professional in this way).

But all of that is extraordinarily expensive. Keeping those soldiers under arms, after all, means that they need to be fed, clothed and paid. Even in a system like the Middle Roman Republic where soldiers provided their own kit out of their own wealth (because Roman soldiers in the Middle Republic were recruited from the modestly well-to-do smallholding class), by drafting those men you have removed them from that economic activity. The expense of doing this would have been in most cases enormous and of course those are resources that could be deployed to any number of other uses, including simply raising a larger army of less disciplined, well trained troops. For, say, a Greek polis given the choice between having 450 men under arms all year round and excellently trained or having 5,000 hoplites under arms only in the one month where there is a battle to fight the clear answer is the latter. A lot of things need to line up before producing armies with high levels of synchronized discipline makes sense: the state needs a lot of resources, year-round security challenges and a tactical system which is effective and demands this kind of investment. So while developing synchronized discipline offered an army a degree of greater control and flexibility, it was prohibitively expensive.

Bret Devereaux, “Collections: Total Generalship: Commanding Pre-Modern Armies, Part IIIa”, A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry, 2022-06-17.

July 27, 2026

The shambolic Fifth Crusade, or “Waiting for Fredot”

Filed under: Books, Europe, History, Middle East, Military, Religion — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

In The Critic, Anatoly Grablevsky reviews a new book on one of the less well-known attempts to wrest control of the Holy Land from the Islamic conquerors:

By the early 13th century, the military and geopolitical situation of the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem was dire. After the Third Crusade (1189-92) had failed to retake Jerusalem, the Frankish realm in the Holy Land was reduced to a thin coastal strip centred on the heavily fortified city of Acre. The rest of the Near East was in the hands of the Ayyubids, the successors of Saladin.

In response to Ayyubid encroachment, in 1213 Pope Innocent III called for a new holy war to reinforce the Kingdom of Jerusalem and reclaim the Holy City for Christendom. The bulk of the expedition was recruited in the Holy Roman Empire, whose young emperor, Frederick II, the wonder of the world himself, ostentatiously took up the cross. He was, however, in no hurry to join his countrymen in the east.

Learning from their bitter past experiences, this time around the Crusaders adopted a novel strategy. Instead of focusing their efforts on the Holy Land, the Christians targeted Egypt, the political and economic heartland of the Ayyubids.

The Crusader army’s first port of call was the coastal city of Damietta, which, after a lengthy siege, fell in 1219. This was a major victory for Christendom: Crusaders had not captured a city of Damietta’s size, wealth and strategic importance since the fall of Jerusalem in 1099.

The Ayyubid Sultan Al-Kamil, under pressure from Mongol attacks at the rear, now offered attractive peace terms that included the return of Jerusalem to the Christians. The Crusaders, overconfident and under orders from the absentee emperor, rebuffed Al-Kamil and instead decided to march on the Ayyubid capital of Cairo.

Here, the crusade took a shambolic turn. The Christians wasted precious months awaiting the arrival of Frederick II, but the emperor never bothered to show up (Smith might have called his book “Waiting for Fredot”). By the time the Crusaders finally began the march south, Al-Kamil had gathered his strength, and the Franks were quickly outmanoeuvred by the Sultan, who used his superior knowledge of the Nile’s flooding patterns to trap them against the river.

The Crusaders reacted by launching an all-out assault on their substantial wine provisions so that, when the Muslims attacked, the Christian army disintegrated in a drunken rout.

In the ensuing peace deal, Al-Kamil regained Damietta, in return for giving safe passage back to Europe to the Christian survivors.

July 19, 2026

Rome’s Greatest Enemy: Bloodbath in Africa | EP 3

Filed under: Africa, History, Italy, Military — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

The Rest Is History
Published 9 Feb 2026

Would the Roman general Publius Cornelius Scipio successfully march on Africa? What happened when Hannibal and Scipio — the greatest commanders of their age — came head to head at the Battle of Zama, in the ultimate showdown? And, what would be the fate of these two titans of the ancient world?

Join Tom and Dominic, as they discuss the Roman Republic’s audacious invasion of North Africa under the leadership of the dashing Scipio, and his clash with Hannibal.

00:00 Scipio’s night attack in Numidia
02:16 Hannibal as a commander
08:07 The rise of Scipio Africanus
13:05 The Roman invasion of Africa begins
21:56 The Battle of the Great Plains
25:29 Hannibal recalled from Italy
28:18 Preparing for the final showdown
33:02 The Battle of Zama begins
36:03 Could Hannibal have won?
40:25 Hannibal urges acceptance of defeat
42:40 Hannibal as a civilian reformer
44:22 Scipio after the war
46:45 Cato’s rise and the conservative backlash
49:29 Rome turns east after victory
52:32 The Hellenistic world after Alexander
56:45 Hannibal and Scipio compare great generals
58:31 Rome defeats Antiochus
1:00:18 Hannibal’s final flight and death
1:01:40 Scipio’s death and exile
(more…)

July 12, 2026

How Rome’s Survival Came Down To One 25-Year-Old General – The Second Punic War | EP 2

Filed under: Africa, Europe, History, Military — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

The Rest Is History
Published 5 Feb 2026

What happened at the Battle of Ibera, a totemic though overlooked battle of the Punic Wars? With the forces of Carthage closing in on a depleted Rome, would a young Roman, Publius Cornelius Scipio resurrect the fortunes of the Republic? And, could he destroy Carthage’s most crucial power base in Europe?

Join Tom and Dominic, as they discuss this next phase of the Carthaginian Wars.

00:00 Intro: Rome’s “darkest hour” + Scipio teased as the Republic’s saviour
02:26 206 BC, Atlantic coast of Iberia
04:26 What’s “up” with Scipio?
12:05 Spain as hostile “sci-fi planet”
15:30 New Carthage (Cartagena)
18:09 215 BC crisis: Hasdrubal tries to march north
19:14 Battle of the Ebro
21:25 “Two rival pairs of brothers”
24:48 Rome’s commander problem
30:36 Scipio’s bold plan
31:37 New Carthage targeted
34:57 Sack of New Carthage
39:01 Hasdrubal crosses the Alps with elephants
39:59 Italy’s crisis for Rome
44:05 Battle by the Metaurus
47:23 Ilipa (206): Scipio crushes Mago and breaks Carthage’s Spanish power
49:52 Mago’s last throws
52:14 Scipio returns to Rome as a superstar
53:05 Senate authorises Africa invasion
(more…)

July 7, 2026

Carthage at the Gates – The Second Punic War | EP 1

Filed under: Europe, History, Italy, Military — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

The Rest Is History
Published 2 Feb 2026

Our whole series on Rome vs Carthage can be found here: • Rome Vs Carthage

[NR: Last year’s animated episode on Cannae is here — The Bloody Battle of Cannae]

Did Hannibal march on Rome after his legendary victory at the Battle of Cannae in 216 BC? How could Rome fight on after losing so many men? And, where would their next cataclysmic clash take place …?

Join Tom and Dominic, as they discuss the beginning of the end for the once mighty city of Carthage, and her masterful general, Hannibal Barca.

00:00 Cold open
02:02 After Cannae
05:20 Carthage vs Rome: the long backstory
12:44 The Barcid dynasty
15:37 Hannibal’s invasion route
18:37 Why Hannibal doesn’t march on Rome
21:30 Roman morale collapse (and recovery)
25:01 Rome’s “Lord Halifax moment” that never happens
28:00 Fabius Maximus takes control
31:06 Early heroes and hard choices
33:39 The Fabian strategy returns
34:26 Italy fractures
36:10 The Capua turning point
37:07 “Hannibal at the gates”
39:40 The war becomes a stalemate
43:08 Syracuse at its peak
50:14 Archimedes’ war machines
51:15 Syracuse switches sides
52:06 Marcellus besieges Syracuse
56:20 The fall of Syracuse
57:25 Death of Archimedes
58:40 What Syracuse means for the wider war
(more…)

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