Perhaps because I write historical fiction myself, I often struggle with reading the genre. So I’ve been really pleased to have read two HistFic books lately that have been a total joy. This week I’m delighted to review both of them.
‘Red Horse’ by MJ Logue
Set in the English Civil War, Red Horse is the first of a series by MJ Logue and I’ve already started on the second.
Hollie Babbitt is a mercenary soldier, fresh from the Seven Years War in Europe. Recruited by Parliament to lead a troop of cavalry, he has some sympathy for the cause but he is mainly in it for the money, though pay is always late and he is beginning to have his doubts as to whether the Parliamentary commander, the Earl of Essex, can afford him. He’s a professional soldier, though, and with the Seven Years War over, this is the best gig he can find, so he sticks around, doing what he is good at (mainly killing people) and waiting to see his money.
One of the many excellent things about this book is the way that we sympathise with Babbitt. In a funny sort of way, he’s a likeable person. The soldiers in his troop clearly see him as an excellent commander and underneath the gruffness and casual violence is a decent man. There’s a back story that comes out little by little: a violent abusive father, a lost love who died, one or two deep friendships that are all that seem to stand between him and madness. Then one of his only friends dies and he falls further into viciousness and despair.
It’s a violent, sweary book set in a violent, sweary time. (The proportion of the population killed during the Civil War is a matter for debate, but even the lowest estimates are appalling.) Despite this, it’s immensely readable, often very funny and although terrible things keep happening, underneath it all, it is warm and humane.
Ultimately, Red Horse is a story of redemption.
I recommend it.
‘The Private Misadventures of Nell Nobody’ by Jennifer Newbold
Almost 200 years later and we have another story of somebody escaping a brutal past by throwing themselves into warfare. This time it’s the Napoleonic Wars and our protagonist is a woman who is hiding from an abusive husband by disguising herself as a man and running away to sea.
As a general rule I hate stories that feature a woman doing things that no woman in the period would ever do. But there were women who successfully passed as men in the French Wars and Jennifer Newbold makes Nell Nobody’s imposture credible.
Nell signs up to the army, but ends up assigned as a naval liaison and forms a very close attachment to Nelson. To my surprise, I found myself completely believing the story, helped by the meticulous descriptions of shipboard life and the battles she finds herself in on both land and sea.
Newbold weaves together Nell’s imaginary adventures as she struggles to keep her secret and accounts of real military victories, notably including Nelson’s triumph at Cape St Vincent. Newbold is clearly a Nelson fan and she draws a convincing picture of him. She also fleshes out Nell as a real, if unlikely, heroine.
I’ll give no plot details for fear of spoilers. The story certainly held my attention to the very end. Definitely to be recommended.
And a third
If you enjoy historical novels and are a visitor to this blog, I hope you have given mine a try. The next James Burke book, about a soldier-spy during the Napoleonic Wars, is out in Kindle on 26 April. It’s set in North America — a new theatre of war for Burke. It’s called Burke and the War of 1812 and it’s available to pre-order now.
If you can’t bear to wait until 26 April, there are seven Burke books already published. Have you read them all?
A short review this week of a novella by Jennifer Newbold. She has been lamenting that it’s difficult to get reviews for indie historical fiction, something that I may have mentioned here from time to time. So if any of you have read any HistFic lately (or ever) and not got round to reviewing it, take this as a hint!
Jennifer classifies her novella, The Maid and the Mid, as a historical piece, but, to be honest, I think it works better as fantasy and, as fantasy, it’s very good.
It definitely is historical, in that it is set in 1776, when a young Nelson was invalided home from India. The story is built around this real incident and there are a lot of nice observations about life aboard a warship, but I’m concerned that some of the details may not be entirely correct. It also seems, for want of a better phrase, a Bridgerton-inspired approach to history. The scenery is lovely, there are real historical characters, but the dialogue and social niceties seemed to belong more in the 21st century than the 18th.
As with Bridgerton, once you stop worrying about the details of social behaviour in the period, you can relax and enjoy the story. In fact, the dialogue gives this tale an immediacy that makes it genuinely spooky, the supernatural horrors not being viewed through a prism of archaic language. And it really is a very good story.
There are some minor spoilers ahead, but, as readers will know that Nelson survives, they shouldn’t spoil your enjoyment.
Told from the viewpoint of a young woman who is attracted to the sickly midshipman, it starts slowly. Horatio Nelson (always referred to as Horace – I warned you that the social niceties are ignored) is suffering (historically accurately) from malaria. As the weeks pass, his condition seems to deteriorate. The narrator, her brother, and young Horace, are troubled by nightmares. They feel a ghostly presence haunting the ship. Tempers fray. A seaman falls from the rigging to his death.
Another midshipman has brought a mysterious Indian idol aboard. Nelson describes it to the narrator: ‘It was only about five inches high, made of bronze, I think; I’m not sure. Just a little figure of a man, dancing… but it was obscene. … I could hardly contain my revulsion … I really could not wait to give the unholy thing back.”
Fortunately, Nelson has heard of djinns and, guided by the advice of the chaplain and others, the young people start out on a ghost hunt.
There are mysterious mists that wrap around the ship, strange noises in the night, and a gratifying number of spine-tingling moments before things are (as in all the best djinn stories) satisfactorily resolved.
Overall, a good read for a winter afternoon.
Post your own reviews
Did I just mention how important reviews are? The most useful in terms of selling books are those on Amazon, but Goodreads helps or just posting on your own social media to say how much you enjoyed something. There are links to the Amazon pages for all my books here on this website. Just click on ‘My Books’ in the Navigation bar or go straight to https://tomwilliamsauthor.co.uk/my-books/. I read all my reviews and look forward to reading yours.
Last week was the anniversary of the Battle of the Nile back in 1798. Nowadays we associate Nelson so firmly with Trafalgar that his other victories can be overlooked. Back in the early 19th century, though, the Nile featured prominently on memorials like this one at Greenwich.
Memorial Arch to Nelson at Greenwich HospitalDetail of cherub on arch
As with many battles, the name isn’t geographically accurate. The battle of the Nile didn’t actually take place at the Nile but at Abū Qīr Bay near Alexandria. Napoleon had invaded Egypt, his troops travelling in an enormous French fleet. After the troops had been successfully landed, his warships remained on the Egyptian coast ready to protect his lines of supply. They moored near the shore in the shelter of the bay.
Conventionally, naval battles were fought broadside to broadside, one ship against another. The French fleet was immensely strong. L’Orient, the French flagship mounted 118 guns. The French anchorage meant that the ships’ broadsides were facing out to sea, allowing an enormous concentration of fire to be brought to bear on any force attacking from the Mediterranean.
The British fleet that discovered the French lying at anchor was, on paper, vastly inferior. However, the British realised that the French had anchored slightly too far out into the open sea, allowing a channel between their line and the shore. The British split their force, some ships sailing between the French and the shore while others sailed between the shore and the open sea. With an onshore wind, the French were unable to manoeuvre away from their anchorage and the British sailed slowly down the line, each French ship being engaged one after the other by at least two British ships firing simultaneously from both sides.
The tactic was overwhelmingly successful. Of the 13 French ships of the line, nine were captured and two destroyed. No British ships were lost.
The most dramatic moment of the battle was the loss of L’Orient which caught fire and exploded when the flames spread to the powder magazine. The Captain’s young son had been ordered by his father to stand at his position until his father told him to move. His father having died, the son is said to have remained on deck and died. His death is commemorated in the poem, Casabianca:
The boy stood on the burning deck Whence all but he had fled.
Battle of the Nile, August 1st 1798 at 10 pm, by Thomas Luny
After the battle, the British had complete naval dominance in the Mediterranean. With his lines of supply cut off, Napoleon’s plans to use Egypt as a jumping off point for further invasions were in disarray. Napoleon fled back to France the following year and the French army lingered on in Egypt until surrendering to the British in 1801.
Burke and the Bedouin
The Battle of the Nile is the climax of Burke and the Bedouin. William Brown is on board, the Orion, one of the British ships, and witnesses L’Orient’s sinking.
“It’s the Orient… The Orient is ablaze… The Orient is sinking.”
An officer appeared. “All hands on deck!”
Confused, William joined the procession of seamen clambering onto the deck. The night was still warm, but after the atmosphere of the gun deck, it was bliss to breathe fresh air.
Out here, the view was dominated by the blaze from the Orient. Sales and rigging were well alight and the spars were dropping onto the deck. Flames could be seen running along the joints between her timbers, where they had been sealed with tar. Here and there, the fire had spread to the timbers themselves. Against the light, the crew could be seen desperately throwing water onto the fire, but many had clearly already given up hope and were shimmying down ropes to escape into the sea.
“Stop gawping! Start dousing the deck.”
Buckets of water appeared, passed hand-to-hand up ship from the bilges or hauled to the deck from the sea below. While most of the men from the gun deck poured the water over the timbers at their feet, the crew who had been manning the sails aloft hauled buckets from the deck and soaked the canvas and ropes.
William could not understand the reason for this frantic activity, but it became all too clear after they had been at work for only a few minutes.
William had his back to the Orient when it happened. The night was lit up with a brilliant flash of light and, while his brain was still trying to comprehend what he had seen, the noise of the explosion rolled across the ship. William felt himself pushed forward by the force of the blast.
“Get down!”
William fell to the deck, along with the rest of the crew.
Debris from the wreck flew across the ship. Pieces of hot metal scoured tracks in Saumarez’s immaculate deck. Pieces of the Orient‘s hull – two yards long and three feet thick – were hurled at the Orion as if they weighed no more than pieces of paper. There was other debris too – things William did not want to look at too closely. Most of the bodies were in pieces too small to be recognised as human, but William saw what was clearly an arm, the fist still clenched, although whatever it had been holding was lost somewhere in the Mediterranean.
Like all the Burke books, Burke and the Bedouin is first and foremost a spy story. But I wanted to describe one of Nelson’s greatest victories for a generation that has no longer grown up with the tale. There are French spies and a beautiful woman and midnight gallops across the desert, but the story ends with the historical reality of the Battle of the Nile and the end of Napoleon’s dreams of conquest in the east.
Header picture
The picture at the top of the page is ‘The Battle of the Nile, 1 August 1798‘ by Nicholas Pocock.
The Battle of the Nile was on 1 August 1798. Nobody seems to remember it these days – it’s all about Trafalgar. Back in the day, though, the battle of the Nile was regarded as quite a big deal. Look at this commemorative arch at Greenwich and you can see one of the figures holding a scroll saying “Trafalgar” on the left while a cherub on the right holds another saying “The Nile” and “Copenhagen”.
In many ways, I think that the Battle of the Nile was a more impressive victory than Trafalgar. I’ll go into details of battle and why it was important later, but first I should explain the background to the engagement.
In 1798 Napoleon invaded Egypt. He had distinguished himself by his generalship during his invasion of Italy and was a rising star in France. There are suggestions that the Directory (the rulers of France at the time) wanted him out of the way. He was becoming a little bit too popular and they may well have been worried that he could one day challenge their rule, as, indeed, he did only a year later.
Was the invasion of Egypt just a sideshow? Or would its possession by France allow them to move troops overland into India and threaten British possessions there? We know that Napoleon looked seriously at the idea of building a canal very close to where the Suez Canal was eventually constructed, but in the end his plans were thwarted, so we will never know whether an overland invasion of India was a serious prospect or not.
Victory at the Battle of the Pyramids gave Napoleon control of Egypt
Egypt had fallen very quickly to the French attack, but if it was to be used as a jumping off point for further conquest it was essential that France maintain its supply lines across the Mediterranean. The British had a substantial naval presence in the Med, but Napoleon had assembled a considerable fleet to transport his army and to maintain communications after the conquest. This was lying off the northern coast of Egypt, not actually at the Nile at all but in the Bay of Aboukir, near Alexandria.
Nobody knows exactly why the fleet was lying at anchor in a position where it was at risk from an attack from the sea where it would be pinned between the land and any hostile force. After the French defeat everybody blamed everybody else for this strategic error. One possible explanation is that Napoleon had ordered the fleet to sea but that the message had somehow never reached it, and this is the version that I use in Burke and the Bedouin. We’ll never know, of course, but if the British had had an agent in Egypt, then stopping that message getting through would have been a very useful way for him to spend his time.
There was a roughly equal number of ships in both fleets, but the French ships carried more guns. In 18th-century naval battles the number of guns that could be brought to bear was usually decisive and the French fleet carried 1196 guns against only 1012 for the British.
The British sailed into the bay intending a conventional attack. Each British ship would line up against a French vessel and both sides would hammer into each other with their cannon until the loser was no longer able to fight effectively. However, as the British approach the French line they realised that the French vessels were swinging at anchor. Clearly there was enough water between the line of French vessels and the coast for them to swing without grounding and, the British reasoned, it must therefore be possible for their ships to sail down the narrow channel. The British split into two columns and each French vessel found itself engaged on both sides. With the wind making it impossible for the French to make out to sea, they were stuck in line as the British worked their way along sinking ship after ship.
The most dramatic French loss was their flagship L’Orient, which carried an astonishing 120 guns. Fire on deck spread to the magazine magazine which exploded and the ship very quickly sank. While nowadays most of us have forgotten the Battle of the Nile many will remember the boy who “stood on the burning deck, whence all but he had fled”, a poem that commemorated the sinking of L’Orient. The boy was the captain’s son who, the captain being dead and unable to tell him to abandon ship, remained at his post and became one of over a thousand men to die in the explosion.
When it was all over, of 13 French ships of the line and four frigates, three were destroyed and nine captured by the British. British casualties were 895 while the French lost 5,225 dead and 3,105 captured.
The French defeat left them with no way of resupplying or reinforcing their army in Egypt. The French remained stuck in the country, despite attempts to fight their way out through Syria, until they surrendered to an Anglo-Ottoman force in 1800. By then, of course, Napoleon had abandoned them, returning to France in August 1799.
Nelson’s remarkable victory left the British firmly in control of the Mediterranean and prevented the French from using Egypt as a jumping off point for further aggression in the Middle East or towards India. It deserves to be remembered.
‘Twas on the ninth day of August in the year ninety-eight
We’ll sing the praise of Nelson and the bold British fleet.
Traditional sea song.
Burke and the Bedouin
Did a British spy stop the messenger carrying the orders to the French fleet to set to sea and thus make Nelson’s victory possible? We’ll never know, but the idea that the messenger was intercepted is one that historians consider quite credible.
Burke’s escapades in Egypt are a straightforward adventure story, featuring a beautiful woman (of course), desperate rides across the desert, evil Turks, and dastardly Frenchmen. It’s a lot of fun but there’s some solid history about the French landings, the Battle of the Pyramids and, of course, the Battle of the Nile.
Burke and the Bedouin is available from Amazon in both paperback and e-book format, and in the USA from Simon & Schuster.
Picture credits
The Battle of the Pyramids, by Louis-François, Baron Lejeune, 1808. Public domain Battle of the Nile, August 1st 1798 at 10 pm, by Thomas Luny. Public domain
