Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Chapter I: Old, Unhappy, Far-off Things

A Little Learning
The Usefulness of Military History
The Deficiencies of Military History
The "Battle Piece"
"Killing No Murder?"
The History of Military History
The Narrative Tradition
Verdict or Truth?

Chapter 2: Agincourt, 25 October 1415

The Campaign
The Battle
Archers versus Infantry and Cavalry
Cavalry versus Infantry
Infantry versus Infantry
The Killing of the Prisoners
The Wounded
The Will to Combat

Chapter 3: Waterloo, 18 June 1815

The Campaign
The Personal Angle of Vision
The Physical Circumstances of Battle
Categories of Combat
Single Combat
Cavalry versus Cavalry
Cavalry versus Artillery
Cavalry versus Infantry
Artillery versus Infantry
Infantry versus Infantry
Disintegration
The Wounded

Chapter 4: The Somme, 1 July 1916

The Battlefield
The Plan
The Preparations
The Army
The Tactics
The Bombardment
The Final Preliminaries
The Battle
Infantry versus Machine-Gunners
Infantry versus Infantry
The View from across No-Man's-Land
The Wounded
The Will to Combat
Commemoration

Chapter 5: The Future of Battle

The Moving Battlefield
The Nature of Battle
The Trend of Battle
The Inhuman Face of War
The Abolition of Battle

Bibliography

Index

About the Author

Sir John Desmond Patrick Keegan (1934–2012), was one of the most distinguished contemporary military historians and was for many years the senior lecturer at Sandhurst (the British Royal Military Academy) and the defense editor of the Daily Telegraph (London). Keegan was the author of numerous books including The Face of Battle, The Mask of Command, The Price of Admiralty, Six Armies in Normandy, and The Second World War, and was a fellow at the Royal Society of Literature.

Reviews

"...still widely regarded as his best despite more than 20 other works."—The Guardian

"The most brilliant evocation of military experience in our time" —C.P. Snow

"In this book, which is so creative, so original, one learns as much about the nature of man as of battle." —J.H. Plumb, The New York Times Book Review

"This without any doubt is one of the half-dozen best books on warfare to appear in the English language since the end of the Second World War." —Michael Howard, The Sunday Times (London)

"A totally original and brilliant book" —The New York Review of Books

"The book which changed how military history is written. Keegan set out to discover what it must have been like to be present at Agincourt, Waterloo and the Somme - and he succeeded brilliantly."—Bernard Cornwell (Chosen as number one of his six best books) Daily Express (London)