David Collins and Robert Ross

David Collins, who rose from second lieutenant to adjutant and deputy paymaster for the 2nd Marine Battalion, entirely through his family connections during the time he was enduring the siege of Boston (1775-1776) initially got on well with his Scottish marine comrade, Captain Robert Ross. Ross was a comrade of Collins's father, Lt. General Tooker Collins, by whose side he'd fought at Louisburg in 1758. He appears, at that time, to have been a friend of the Collins family. Young David records sociable times with him when they were garrisoning Charleston Heights across from Boston in the weeks after the Battle of Bunker Hill. In 1775, Ross was not yet the 'social monster' he was to become.
Events during the siege of Boston may indicate why Ross eventually turned into the curmudgeon renowned to Australian historians. One English officer records that there was great discontent in Boston among the corps at 'the advancement, insolence and self-sufficiency of a number of Scotch officers'. '[S]everal common soldiers were reprimanded, and threatened with the most exemplary punishment, for swearing they ought to be commanded by Englishmen, and that they would not sacrifice their lives in an attempt to butcher their friends and fellow subjects for any interested North Briton on earth.' [Margaret Wheeler Willard, Letters on the American Revolution, 1774-1776, New York, 1968, p. 190.]
Even as late as 1775, some 30 years after the Jacobite Rebellion, there was still a deep 'Scotophobia' within English society, probably not as intense as it had been in the early years of George III's reign, when the Stuart Lord Bute had been the King's first Minister, and the radical John Wilkes was stirring up popular resentment against the Scots, and Bute in particular, across London, but lingering, still. The American revolutionaries used an empty boot hanging from a tree as a symbol of their discontent with the home government. Colonial Governors, like Gage in Boston, and later Phillip in New South Wales, before they took office had to swear the Oath of Abjuration, wherein they affirmed their belief that no descendants of the Stuart James II who claimed to be the Prince of Wales had title to the British throne. This was followed by a further Oath of Assurance which was yet another declaration against the descendants of the Pretender. [John Currey, David Collins. A Colonial Life, Melbourne. 2000, p. 50.]
For loyal Scots like Robert Ross, who had spent their whole lives in service of the Crown, such anti-Scots feeling no doubt rankled. It is not surprising, then, that Scots officers tended to stick together. Ross's career path, and that of his compatriot, Captain William Campbell, after the American Revolution, was to a great extent dependent on the patronage of the English Tooker Collins. They were friends of the family both and owed their advancement to Tooker Collin's benevolence. Senior British officers in the latter quarter of the 18th century frequently looked kindly on recruits from Scotland, who were recognised for their fighting qualities. General Gage had gone out of his way to recruit Scots migrants straight off the ship from New York and had them brought back to Boston to fight for the British. [General Thomas Gage to Captain Duncan campbell and LieutenantSymes, Boston, 18 July, 1775 in William Bell Clark (ed.) Naval Documents of the American Revolution, Vol. I, washington, 1964, p.912.] Such consideration was not always returned
It is not my intention to outline all the reasons why David Collins fell out with Robert Ross in this post. They are many and various ranging from professional jealousy and hurt pride at the favour shown to Collins by Governor Phillip to sheer bloody-mindedness on Ross's part. [cf. Currey, op. cit, chs. 3,4,5, and 8] David Collins believed Ross no longer paid him due deference, as he had got all he could out of Tooker Collins now that he had been appointed Lieutenant Govertnor of New South Wales. (Collins was mistaken; Ross's appointment had been made by Evan Nepean, under-secretary at the Home Office and Tooker Collins had had nothing to do with it. [Currey, p.39 and 323.]) Beyond these personal reasons , there was also, I would contend, on Ross's side, a simmering resentment at the way he was treated, as a Scot, in the Royal Marines, possibly reaching back as far as the siege of Boston at the beginning of the War of American Independence, and possibly even as far back as the Seven Years' War. Such rancour ate into his soul changing him into the bitter, obstreperous man familiar from First Fleet documents and journals.
In modern parlance, while we do not know the specific occasions when, or for that matter where Robert Ross was taunted about his Scottishness, we can safely conclude it is highly likely he was a victim of a peculiar kind of English racism. Like many victims of racism he was angered and soured by that experience of racism, to the point that it was detrimental to his army career.

Robert Ross at the Siege of Louisbourg, 1758.

I'm currently engaged in researching the early career of the First Fleeter Lieutenant Governor Robert Ross. The research has already taken about a week and I expect it to take about a week more, even though the end result of it all will probably only be a few paragraphs in the first section of the chapter on his experiences during the battle of Bunker Hill.

Mollie Gillen in her Founders of Australia implies the tenuousness of detail about 2nd. Lieutenant Robert Ross's service in North America during the Seven Years' War (1756-1763) when she notes that he was 'said to be present at the siege of Louisbourg ... in 1758 and at the capture of Quebec in September 1759.' (p.314.) We know he probably left Plymouth (England) aged 18, in late February 1758 for Halifax, Nova Scotia, where he arrived about the end of the first week of May. He wintered in Halifax and was probably part of the naval blockade of Louisbourg from March 1758. (John Robson, Captain Cook's War and Peace, Sydney, 2009, pp.48-51.) Undoubtedly, he played some part in the landing at Garbarus Bay near Louisbourg on 7 June 1758, including the driving back of the French from outlying works and posts. (William Charles Henry Wood, The Great Fortress. A Chronicle of Louisbourg, 1720-1760. Vol. 8, Chronicles of Canada, Glasgow, 1920, p.110.) He was probably also involved siege preparations from 13 June, including the setting up of batteries. (Robson, p. 55.) though possibly mainly in supervising picket duty; use of marines this way freed up soldiers for duty of the siege works. Brigade Commander James Wolfe noted that 'all the officers of the Navy in general have given us their utmost assistance, and with the greatest cheerfulness imaginable.' (cited in Robson, p. 58.) This inter-service co-operation was to say the least, unusual, especially from the Royal Navy. Naval personnel thought more highly of dogs than they did of anybody from the Army.
Ross probably took part in the burning and capture of French ships in Louisbourg Harbour on 26 July, the day before the British imposed harsh surrender terms on the garrison (Fred Anderson, Crucible of War, London, 2001, pp.254-255). Indeed, he may have been wounded, (A list of the Additional manuscripts of the French and Indian War in the library of the Society, prepared from the originals under the direction of the library committee, http://www.archive.org/details/listofadditional00amer ) though that is unlikely. Ross probably viewed with equanimity the New Englander provincials' pursuit and massacre of the Native American allies. The New Englanders and Scottish Highlanders decapitated and scalped as many Indians as they could find. giving 'no quarter to anyone, and are scalping everywhere so you cannot know a French from an Indian scalp.' (Frank McLynn, 1759. The Year Britain Became Master of The World, London, 2005, p. 318.) The cause of this savagery was a desire for revenge for an Indian massacre of New Englander prisoners and others, men, women and children, following the British surrender to the French at Fort William Henry in August, 1757. (Anderson, Crucible of War, pp.196-199.) That suspicion of indigenous people would carry over for Robert Ross when he was Lieutenant Governor of New South Wales. Early on he thought Sydney's Aborigines, were by no means 'that harmless, inoffensive race they have in general been represented to be ...' (Ross, cited in Keith Willey, When the Sky Fell Down, Sydney, 1985, p. 69.) Growing Aboriginal hostility to the white presence at Sydney Cove evoked memories of the savagery of Amerindians during the Seven Years'War and the War for American Independence.
In later life Ross was something of 'a social monster' (Inga Clendinnen, Dancing with Strangers, Melbourne, 2003, p. 17) burdened by a large family and financial problems. (Major Ross to Under Secretary Nepean, Portsmouth, 27th April, 1787 in HRNSW, Vol. 1, Pt.2, Mona Vale, 1978, p. 93) His material problems blinded him to the beauty of the world around him. We have no record of his reaction to the Canadian wilderness, but in New South Wales in 1788 he was almost alone in denouncing the colony as 'vile' and of wretched prospect.' (Ross to Nepean, 16 November, 1788, in Tim Flannery (ed. and intr.) The Birth of Sydney, Melbourne, 2000. p. 82.)

On Reading About The Battle of Bunker Hill

So far I have about four or five small plastic containers that once used to hold chicken stir fry or kiwi fruit, crammed with cards containing notes about the Battle of Bunker Hill and these are mostly though not entirely from secondary sources - e.g. :

Elting's The Battle of Bunker's Hill : very, very good, but too hard on General Gage, who was a bit slack but not that slack - there were factors beyond his control like wind, currents and tide, which frequently stuffed up generals' plans in eighteenth century wars; not hard enough on Admiral Graves, who really was as corrupt and inefficient as the majority of historians paint him  though he did write a wonderful primary source, shorthanded as Graves's Conduct, written to justify his abysmal dereliction of duty while in Boston.)

Thomas J. Fleming's Now we Are Enemies : very well written. Among other things it is especially good on the American artillery and on General William Howe's grand strategy. I found his argument that it was Howe's intention to take Bunker/Breed's Hill swiftly and then move on to take the rebel headquarters and stores at Cambridge, only a couple of miles from the Charlestown Peninsula, quite convincing. As well, it more or less puts paid to the idea that Howe's only strategy was a brutal frontal attack on Breed's Hill. Annoyingly it has no footnotes.

Richard M. Ketchum, Decisive Day. The Battle for Bunker Hill: Also very well written, also without footnotes, and, I think, the last writer to suggest the American rebels used their very inefficient cannon to blast holes in the redoubt walls so they could shoot at the advancing British. Even though it's written after Fleming, who, to my mind, successfully debunks many of the Bunker Hill myths, Ketchum makes no use of him, reiterating all the hoary old stories. (But what else would you expect of an American, (ie Ketchum) who, during the Cold War wrote a book titled What is Communism? I can't bring myself to think of reading it, let alone ordering it via the Net.) His Bunker Hill book needs to be used with considerable care.

So far I've checked through a few general histories for some details, like Ward's The War of the Revolution and MiddleKauff's The Glorious Cause but I've got a few more to go. Then there is the gloriously old History of the Siege of Boston And Of The Battles Of Lexington, Concord And Bunker Hill by Richard Frothingham, published in 1872. He is invaluable for the primary sources in his appendices and footnotes. His telling of the Bunker Hill battle is confused, but really, it doesn't matter; newer secondary sources make the necessary corrections and he just didn't have available to him some of the primary sources we have today.

Some primary sources I've managed to trawl through, like Percy's letters and Drake's edition of British letters from Bunker Hill, Force's American Archives, and a few minor documents I've found on-line. I've ordered Charles Coffin's History of the Bsattle of Breed's Hill By Major Generals Heath, Wilkinson and Dearborn, but its taking Amazon ages to send it to me; and I've been through the relevant parts of Sir Henry Clinton's The American Rebellion. Today I just got in the post Political And Military Episodes In The Latter Half Of The Eighteenth Century Derived From The Life And Correspondence Of John Burgoyne, General, Statesman, Dramatist, (1876). There's quite a few I've yet to get: Heath's Memoirs, the Massachusetts Historical Society's collection of documents on Bunker Hill, (which I trust are more than the few I've downloaded from them on the Net) and various others.

So, you can see, I've been having fun.

Reflections on an Ancient Book.

I'd alway thought the first book that I'd read on the American Revolution was some book by Henry Steele Commager, the title of which I have forgotten. I was a kid, ten or eleven and had somehow managed to get a copy out of the Adults' Library Section at Earlwood, NSW, near where I grew up. Except that was not the book I remember. The same book that I got out of Earlwood library so long ago, arrived at my place from the USA yesterday. It was Christopher Ward's The War of the Revolution, a 2 Volume boxed set, published by MacMillan in New York in 1952. I recognised it the moment I saw it.
I don't know what it was started me off reading history at such an early age, though I'm sure my father had something to do with it. He brought home a poster of the pictures of the kings and queens of England one day, and I pored over that poster for months, maybe even years, examining every picture in minute detail, wondering about each particular king and queen. I quickly learnt from my father that Henry VIII was a bad king, but somehow, despite the fact that she was Protestant, Elizabeth II was a good queen. The medieval kings were endlessly fascinating especially Richard Coeur de Lion and King John, because they had something to do with Robin Hood, (as played by Cornel Wilde, who I think also played John Paul Jones.) When I was thirteeen or younger I wanted to go and see a movie about Martin Luther (not the one based on the play by John Osborne) but I was forbidden it, quite vociferously. So, secretly, I became intrigued by this dreadful thing called the Reformation.
The other very early memory of history I have, apart from Robert Taylor in Ivanhoe and The Knights of the Round Table, and some engraved pictures in a wonderful edition of Walter Scott's Kenilworth, (which I never got around to reading until I was an adult) was the presence on the family bookshelf of Scott's red-covered A History of Australia, the title printed one the spine in black, font unknown. I remember determinedly ploughing through it at quite a young age, and getting bogged down with the NSW Robertson Land Acts of the 1870s. Up to that point I had been enthralled. So, I learnt early, that not all history is necessarily "interesting."
Amazing what the sight and smell of an old dark blue book with its blue spine and faded gold title in a red diamond square can evoke, a book which I have to thank for my perennial fascination with the War of American Independence, which, after all these years, I finally have on my bookshelf.

Ensign Francis Grose and the Battle of Lexington Concord

This is the conclusion from the third chapter of my book on the First/Second Fleeters and their association with the American Revolution. Enjoy.

At this distance in time it is difficult to assess the adverse psychological impact that the experience of the Lexington-Concord conflict had on the young Francis Grose. Alan J. Guy has argued convincingly that traumatic stress had a major impact on the eighteenth century British soldiery.⁴⁷ Grose must have been affected adversely in some way by the devastating slaughter at 'The Bloody Angle' in particular, and the militia's harried pursuit of the Concord espedition from Concord to Lexington. He was almost certainly involved in the bloody hand-to-hand and house-to-house combat at Menotomy. It is very likely that he may have killed his first man at Menotomy. He would certainly have been traumatised both by the sight of the apparently scalped British private near Concord's North bridge, and by the normal onset of fear soldiers experience in battle - '... I never had such a tremor come over me before -' Those experiences may have been heightened for him because he went into battle with very little training compared to many of his fellow officers.

Nevertheless, Grose's experiences on this police action turned murderous were nowhere near as severe as many of his comrades. To state the obvious, he was neither killed nor wounded. He was not at the first fight in Lexington. He missed the battle at the North bridge in Concord. At Barrett's Farm, though he was in a situation that engendered tension, he was one of the officers treated with a strained courtesy and dined on bread and fresh milk. At Mrs. Brown's Tavern he had a further opportunity to quench his thirst after a long, hot march, an opportunity not given to many of his peers. Basically, he missed the actual beginning of the War of American Independence.

One series of events do seem to have had an impact on his impressionable mind: the impunity with which the rank and file, along with some officers, were allowed to loot the houses of possibly innocent colonists. It is probably drawing a long bow to argue from this that his witnessing of the looting and its lack of punishment alone planted the seeds for his later attitudes of leniency toward the New South Wales Corps seventeen years later in Sydney. A long-formed regimental loyalty and the tradition that soldiers were entitled to land to settle on in the colonies in which they served undoubtedly also informed his attitudes in that instance.⁴⁸

47 Alan Guy, 'The Army of the Georges, 1714-1783' in The Oxford History of the British Army,p. 107; Samuel Blacheley Webb to Joseph Webb, Cambridge, June 19, 1775, in John Rhodehamel, (ed.) The American Revoluition. Writings from the War of Independence,New York, 2001, p. 37, for an 18C. Expression of fear in first battle.

48 Manning Clark, A New History of Australia, Sydney, 1963, p. 29; Alan Atkinson, The Europeans in Australia, Vol. I, p. 183.

As this post has been transposed directly from the original manuscript, the original numbering of footnotes has been retained.

Burnsey's TV Dinners et al.

Yesterday (ie last Wednesday) on Larvatus Prodeo on the condemn thread, there was a discussion on food, partly prompted by me admitting I cook up shop bought chili con carne. Whereupon I was asked to expatiate here on my experiences with TV Dinners. Obviously, as some-one who lives half or all of the fortnight on pre-prepared meals I ain't no food critic. Nevertheless, here goes.
Best to start with the real TV dinners; the stuff in cardboard boxes you put in the microwave oven and cook for 30 seconds to one minute more than they say on the packet.
McCain's Roast Turkey Dinner. Slices of turkey covered with a combination of gravy and cranberry sauce. With vegetables, namely, thinly sliced carrots, peas, and roast potato. Eaten with bread thickly margarined on a plate beside the black plastic plate ready to mop up what's left of the gravy after I've eaten everything else. Appeals to my sweet tooth (sweet teeth why I haven't got any teeth; tho genetics played a part as well - an inherited calcium deficiency - though it might have something to do with the fact I don't drink milk, except for the powdered stuff you get in instant Mocha coffee.) much recommended because of it varying taste sensations.
McCain's Veal Cordon Bleu. I kid you not. Veal wrapped in ham and crumbed. Carrots as above. Beans - I think they're string beans. Some sort of cheese sauce, I think. Sometimes the ham the veal is wrapped in comes away from the ham. Crunchy. I'm not big on cheese sauce, but it does for variety.
McCain's Roast Chicken. Vegetables as above. Roast potato pieces and beans, I think. Don't have a packet in the fridge to check at the moment. Lots of gravy. Size of the chicken breast varies. Sometimes its big, sometimes, well, not so big. On those latter days I get annoyed. Gravy mopped up with bread and margarine. Usually recommended but if you don't put it in the microwave long enough the chicken isn't heated through.
Mccain's Steak Diane. This one's a bit more expensive so I don't get it very often. I don't like beef much so anything I say about this particular dinner can't be trusted.
McCain's Roast Lamb. Peas, carrots, chunks of roast potatoes. Gravy and mint sauce. Up there with the turkey and roast chicken, for the same reasons.
Mccain's Chicken Parmagiana. A TV Dinner gourmet's delight. Peas, carrots, pieces of baked potato. And that sauce! What can I say? Don't have to go out to Italian restaurants. Besides, I don't know where the one in Armidale is.
McCain's Lamb Cutlet With Gravy. Peas, carrots, instant mashed potato. Have to keep it in the microwave a minute longer to cook through the cutlets.
McCain's black plastic plates Sometimes they crack round the edges when they're stacked on the supermarket shelves. Its a bugger getting the plastic cover of the plate then and you have to pick out little bits of sharp black plastic from the meal before you eat. I could return them, I suppose but I live two miles from Bi-Lo and I don't have a car. Can't drive in fact. So, I pick out the sharp bits of black plastic.

Bird's Eye Create-a-Meals. All you can get at the moment at Bi-Lo's in Armidale are Honey Soy, Black Bean, Teryaki and some Green Ginger gunk. They're named after the rather large sauce packets in them which you melt over the cooked chicken with a tablespoon of water. Sometimes I sprinkle a very little bit of sugar on them.They used to have Chili Con Carne and Sweet'n'Sour. But they don't any more. Capsicum, water, chestnuts, beans, carrots etc, etc. all very good for you. Cook up with fried stir fry chicken in a frying pan - my wok is rusty - and serve on steamed long grained white rice. Lasts two days. Good stuff. Except you have to cook it on the stove. I suppose I could microwave it but sometimes I get a bit traditional, if you know what I mean.

Lean Cuisine Meals. Like Meatball Arrabiatta, Satay Beef, beef and Mushroom. I'm sure you know them. Heat and shake the sauce packets, add vegetable packets, mostly rice or pasta and some few vegetables. Cook in four minutes. All wonderful, but very spicy. Go for it.

Tuscan Style Baby Potatoes. I have them in the microwave right now. Potatoes in some kind of Italian herbs. Cooking for 9 minutes, it says 7, but what the hell. And I did sort of bust the plastic on top when I tried to pierce them with a fork. Never tried it before. Was looking for strawberries and chocolate dip, and there they were. We'll see.

Post-script. Reporting on Tuscan Style Baby Potatoes. A bit bland. I ended up eating most of them cold. Tasted better that way and I could use my fingers instead of struggling with a fork. I mean ... well ... nobody was watching.

Researching Barrett's Farm and Widow Brown's Tavern.

Maybe it's jejeune to remark on the amazement one sometimes experiences when undertaking historical research, but I guess I'm not world-weary enough, world-weary as I am, not to get some excitement out of the things I find.

Presently, as I remarked in an earlier post, I'm in the process of writing about the experiences of Ensign Francis Grose in the battles of Lexington/Concord on 19 April, 1775. In the process of this battle the British soldiery battered on several house and tavern doors in their search for weapons, and later, out of anger and a desire for revenge, because one of their own had apparently been scalped, and had his ears and nose cut off after the skirmish at the North Bridge near Concord. ( He hadn't been scalped, whatever the British thought, nor had his ears been cut off, but he had been cleaved with a tomahawk by a young teen while he lay dying of his wounds on the Concord road.) Grose, who was fortunate enough to miss the battle at Lexington and the deadly clash on the North Bridge, through no fault of his own, had been sent to search the Barrett's Farm some miles out of Concord for weapons and ammunition. James Barrett was head of the Concord militia and Loyalist spies had reported his farm was one of the main storage depots for weapons in Concord.
There was much tantalising material about Barrett's Farm in the secondary sources, but I still didn't really have a good idea of what actually went on there until I came across a little gem of a book which had all the American first hand accounts of events at the farm and a good deal of Concord local tradition. (There is a British narrative by Ensign John De Berniere, but it didn't have much in it for this part of the Concord expedition; and its reliability is suspect in any case.) That little gem was Ellen Chase's The Beginnings of the American Revolution based on contemporary letters, diaries and other documents, compiled in the nineteenth century. It can be found at http://www.archive.org/details/beginningofam03chas The same work gave me quite a bit of information about how Grose's detachment behaved on their way back from Barett's Farm when they stopped at Widow Brown's Tavern a mile away from the North Bridge. Basically, with the encouragement of three of their officers they sat under a tree tippling. Because of young Francis Grose's propensity for the grog I like to think he was one of the officers who encouraged this moment of quiet relaxation. A thirteen year old boy who was in the tavern at the time, years later made a deposition about the soldiers' behaviour, and that is in Chase's little pamphlet in its entirety. The boy heard the musket fire at the North Bridge, but it seems none of the British did. Or if they did, they ignored it.
There are no pictures of Widow Brown's Tavern. From what I can work out it did not survive the ravages of time. However, there are a plethora of images of Barrett's Farm and you can get an idea of what the place looked like inside and and out here:
http://www.hmdb.org/marker.asp?marker=18064
Apparently his bedroom walls were painted a "Red Indian red."
The Barrett family had hid musket balls in barrels of feathers in their attic, ploughed kegs of powder, muskets and cannon into the fields near their house, hidden food meant for rebel soldiers on an ox-driven wagon in the swamp etc., if the local tradition is correct. And there is no reason to suppose it isn't in this instance. All that were found were some gun carriages in the barn. When the soldiers proceeded to set fire to them in the middle of the barn, Mrs. Barrett insisted they burn them out in the middle of the road, as they had promised they would preserve private property. [at this point the writer is tempted to be a socialist smart-alec about the radicalism of the American Revolution, but he refrains.] She fed the soldiers bread and milk after they had finished their searching, because "we are commanded to feed our enemy if he hunger", refused to dole out any spirits she may have had hidden away in a cupboard and told them they were giving her blood money when an officer tried to pay for the food. At 58, which was old for those days, she was quite a spirited ancient.
I reckon the whole story of Barrett's farm and the drinking session afterwards under the trees at Widow Brown's Tavern will be one of the many good stories in my chapter on Grose and the battles of Lexington/Concord.

History Minutiae: Lexington and Concord

Presently I'm deep in the throes of writing chapter 3 of my book on the Australian connection with the American Revolution and the War of American Independence. The chapter is about 20 year old Ensign Francis Grose (Commander of the New South Wales Corps in 1792 and Lieut. Governor of New South Wales from 1792). And in the process I've got bogged down (briefly) in some historical minutiae which by itself is vaguely purposeless, but for purposes of historical accuracy one sort of has to get right.

The first of these was the vexed question of how many officers and rank and file went on the Concord expedition. We know it was somewhere between 700 to 800 troops overall but I got this bug trying to work out exactly how many troops were in the detachment of the 52nd. Light Infantry (Grose's company) that went to Concord. Helpfully, David Hackett Fischer provided some records in the appendices of his excellent Paul Revere's Ride. According to one list which was partly drawn from pay rosters there were 2 officers and 35 other ranks in the 52nd. Light Infantry. But another list provided in Fischer's appendices which showed the Returns of of Strength of the British Army in Boston which did not include commissioned officers, sergeants or musicians showed that in April 1775 there were 299 soldiers fit to march, 30 unfit, and that the company was down 61 effectives. Finally, looking at British casualty figures a captain and 2 lieutenants were killed along the Battle Road, which, one might note is more than the total complement of officers supposed to be attached to the 52nd. according to the pay rosters. At this point, I just threw my hands up in the air, and gave up. (I hate numbers anyway, even if I do have to deal with them sometimes.)

The second piece of minutiae I became temporarily obsessed with was why was there such a negative and angry reaction from the Americans in the powder scares in late 1774, (which partly arose out of the fact that one of the things the British were out to destroy at Concord was gunpowder.) when the British confiscated American powder in Massachusetts. The answer to that one was easy enough to find. It was in one of the books I have here, Robert Harvey's A Few Bloody Noses. The main ingredient to gunpowder was saltpetre, mined in Bengal and exported to Europe. The Americans had to import all their gunpowder as they didn't have all the ingredients to make it. (And, from early December, 1774, importation of gunpowder into the thirteen rebellious colonies, but especially Massachusetts was prohibited.

The final piece of minutiae I got caught up with was - exactly where in Boston was the 52nd. Light Infantry stationed? This was actually of some significance for the paragraph I was currently working on as I wanted to know the time it took Grose's 52nd. Light Infantry to march from their quarters to Back Bay where the Concord expedition began. It could have been from near Back Bay, from the Long Wharf or from various other places. It turns out they were encamped on Beacon Hill only ten minutes march from their embarkation point, but they were probably one of the last regiments to reach the beach, because Lt. Frederick Mackenzie of the Royal Welch Fusiliers does not note their arrival at the beach.

And if you wondering what's happening to the chapter on Bunker Hill, discussed in an earlier post, I'll be starting on it after I've completed the research and have finished chapter 3.

Book Review: Nicholson Baker's Human Smoke. The Beginnings of World War II, the End of Civilization

This book review is published in Green Left Weekly.

Here is the link:

http://www.greenleft.org.au/2009/807/41520

(You can comment here, if you like.)

Cheers,
PB.

Poem #1

THIS GREAT, GAUNT CITY.

These things I see,

each day,

as I wander round this great, gaunt city.

I.

Mornings I hear her.

and the wail of those hungry tired children,

shadows beyond the frost cracked windows

of her battered Toyota.

When its rusted rear door swung open

as I passed by,

I glimpsed her, with sickly kids

in ragged clothes and shoes unpolished,

that sudden pale of fear, flitting like the shadow of a bird

across her face,

all of them shivering in the dull morning chill

amidst bright multi-coloured rugs,

hues of stark red and green and purple,

some yellow,

reminders of happier days,

and the scent of stale chocolate milk cartons,

hitting the day from the car's inside.

I've seen that fear before on women's faces,

as some man stands not far from them across the street,

the clenched anger,

old hopelessness,

the bitter eyes of blasted hope,

refugees from clenched fists,

a face of fury,

memories of dinners late-prepared

flung across the kitchen table.

I do not approach.

I am a stranger, male,

and doubly dangerous.

In the bright, cold sun of the later morning

the car is empty, locked.

A passer by, not a woman,

tells me, "She's been there for months,

with those kids, too.

Somebody should do somethin'."

And I think,

"Why don't you?

Why don't I?"

II.

Beggars don't walk up to me.

I look like one.

Tangled hair, long unkempt beard,

battered country hat,

cracked glasses.

There's this bloke,

a young fella,

dancing with sores on his bared arms,

bugs crawling along his veins (he thinks),

flesh torn through days of tearing, trying to make them come out,

Come out!.

People run from the park to get away,

to run, to hide,

to not see the dancing pain,

fingernails ripping across the skin,

terrified he might strike out,

but he sees no one,

not the sun, the bright breeze.

He's trapped in the blaze of his own mind.

Once, in the night,

I heard him screaming,

but I was well-hidden, and sort of snug,

behind bushes,

and did not come out.

III.

He sits alone on that city park bench,

every day,

week-ends too,

shirt ironed,

suit trousers pressed,

with some mysterious iron,

tie neatly knotted,

tailored coat pulled tight across his shoulders,

sleeves beginning to fray,

always clean shaved,

his despair growing with every evening's

five o'clock shadow,

shoes polished like a mirror.

Not old,

home gone,

wife gone,

kids gone.

He was a money-man.

That much I know.

Once those computers with their profit graphs crashed around him

life and the dollar-signs drained from his eyes.

Some days, there, on that park bench,

he sits and weeps all day,

clutching a paper-bag of cheap fried chips,

his only food.

Some days I sit across from him,

legs crossed on the heat-blasted grass,

a ragged reminder of what he might become,

feeling a strange compassion

for this one faded capitalist.

We never talk.

IV.

Some days I sit in those vast open planned offices

in Centre-link, somewhere.

(On days you have to pretend you're human,

and somebody out there in Internet-land

will want to give you a job.)

They were close to closing, close on four,

or was it five? It doesn't matter.

No home, no television to tell the time by.

Who cares?

Outside the rain was falling down like rats.

Truth be told, I think that's why I was there.

He was six foot tall,

thirty or thereabouts,

come through those magic glass doors,

hair wet across his face.

And he had no beard - I do remember that.

There was something odd about his teeth.

Maybe he didn't have any.

He was, I suspect, a man from the Bush,

Not quite out of a Henry Lawson poem,

but he did have a swag.

There was something he wanted at the counter.

The jumped up clerk was saying no.

(I tell yer, these places are worse than banks.)

Think it was a counter check.

Usually is, but you s'posed to come in

In the morning, if you want it that day.

And you got to have a good yarn.

Anyway, they weren't gonna give it to him.

Comes across to us. There were a few of us,

sitting there, out of the rain.

Sits beside me.

Picks at the cords of his furled sleeping bag.

"Bastards!" I say.

He gives me a smile.

I knew something was up.

It was one of those smiles people give yer.

when you know they're gonna cause trouble.

He stood up, shaking out the sleeping bag

"Move back," he says, "Move back."

So we shifted our chairs and gave him some room.

Blow me down if he doesn't put the sleeping bag

down on the floor and jump in it.

You shoulda seen that Centrelink lot.

They'd seen a lot of things,

but nobody'd ever done this to them before.

The clerk comes hurrying over,

(he was a bastard if you got him in the interview room),

He says, "You can't do that here."

The bloke from the Bush was polite,

Didn't do his block or nothin'.

He just says, "Well, where else am I gonna sleep?

You blokes won't give me a counter cheque."

Then he rolls over, on his side, like,

closes his eyes and goes to sleep!

Clerk goes back behind the counter.

Those clerks, they stood around talking a bit,

staring at the clock, pointing at the bloke

on the floor in the sleeping bag,

pointing at the clock.

I thought they were gonna call the cops.

But ten minutes later, they come back

with a bloody cheque.

The bushie leaves happy.

Well, bugger me, mate,

who woulda thought it?

V.

The old men in their great-coats

sitting in the gutter outside Matt Talbot,

waiting for the night to fall,

never rooves above their heads.

They're used to the winter chill.

They look for corner shops

that keep the metho in the fridge,

behind the soft drinks.

Their flesh is paper-thin,

and bony.

They wear a different rage,

eyes clouded by the sun's glare.

You hear the rattle in their throats,

the rasping of their damaged voices,

that voice that no-one else has.

Sometimes they're in a cheery mood.

"G'day. mate," they'll say.

And bite you for a smoke.

More often they brawl,

rolling across the gravel,

drunker than you could ever imagine,

one on top of the other,

turn about,

punching weakly at each other's faces,

no breath to fight.

I saw them as a kid. I used to think

"I hope I don't grow up like you",

and something in me, child-like,

thought they were romantic.

(Well, you can't get everything you want,

can you?

Thoughts on writing about the Battle of Bunker Hill: Tales from the First Fleet II.

As some of you know I'm researching and writing a book on the First/second Fleeters who fought in the War for American Independence. So, I thought I'd add to that plethora of stuff that emanates from teh Internet every July 4.

At the moment I'm researching the Battle of Bunker Hill on June 17, 1775. Two marines, David Collins and Robert Ross were in the Marines, who were sent in as reinforcements out of nearby Boston about two hours before the fighting finished.

So far as I can work out at this date,Collins ended up in both the First and Second Battalions, but was mostly a second lieutenant in the Third Company, First Battalion. He was an adjutant in the Second Battalion in Halifax, a job his influential marine father got him to keep him out of harm's way during the war. He ended up back in England in 1777.

Robert Ross was a captain in the Fifth Company, First Battalion. Ross was a recruiting agent in Ireland in 1778 and 1779. He was captured on board the Ardent out of Plymouth (U.K.) in 1780. Her crew were inexperienced and mistook the French fleet for an English one. Ross, though never formally charged, was believed to be responsible for ordering the Ardent's flag struck. He was briefly a prisoner of war, then was relegated to service on guardships at Plymouth for the rest of the war.

Francis Grose who was in the 52nd Foot was involved in the battle from the beginning. He later fought at Fort Montgomery, during the Saratoga campaign in 1777. He was sent home in 1778 after being severely wounded in the Battle of Monmouth Courthouse.

All these men eventually ended up in New South Wales, Collins as Judge Advocate, Ross and Grose as lieutenants-governor.

At the moment I'm in the first stage of doing a battle analysis of Bunker Hill. It goes something like this - I've yet to fill in the detail. -
Midnight 17th June 1775. The American rebels build a redoubt of Breeds Hill opposite Boston Town, from where they can lob cannon balls into the town and onto Royal Navy ships. They meant to build it on Bunker Hill, but it appears they got lost in the dark and built it on the hill closest to Boston which was a pretty stupid thing to do, really, as it guaranteed the Brits were going to come powering out of Boston and knock them off the hill, because of the danger to the British garrison.
4 in the morning, when the sun comes up, the Royal Navy in Boston Harbour wakes up to the fact the Americans are up on Breed's Hill. After a bit of dithering around, they shell the American redoubt more or less ceaselessly, killing only one rebel, but scaring the hell out of the other 2000 odd.
2 in the afternoon - more American reinforcements arrive. They build some high rail fences to make life very hard in the expected attack from the British.
The British land on Moulton Point and slowly advance on Breed's Hill. Its taken them so long because they've had the wind and tide against them getting their boats on the Charles Town peninsula to effect a flanking movement. Grose is in this first wave of troops.
3.30 pm. The Americans repulse the first British attack at the rail fences. The battle toll for the Brits in particular is ghastly. Grose survives, but the father of the marine John Shea, who will arrive in Boston in July, is killed in the First Brigade Marines.
4.00 pm. A second British assault is repulsed at fleches and the redoubt. David Collins and Robert Ross, in the Second Battalion Marines take part in this equally bloody battle.
4.30 pm. A third, successful assault is made on the redoubt. The American retreat.
By 5.30 mopping up operations by the British are over.

Of course, there's a lot more to it than that, but that's the bones of it. I have to sort through the fog of war one is confronted with in the primary sources, and, much to my horror, there's two primary and two more secondary sources I have to buy yet. But, since one of the primary sources is dated 1775, and I haven't checked to see if there's a modern reprint, that one might be hard to get.

Basically though, I'll be able to follow the first stage of the battle through Grose in the 52nd Foot, and the rest of it through him, and through Collins and Ross in the Marines. Trouble is, Collins seems to be the only one whose accounts survive. So it'll take a bit of delicate footwork to tease out the full story.

Notes: For David Collins see - John Currey, David Collins. A Colonial Life, South Carlton, 2000, Chapter 2.
For Robert Ross, see biographical entry, Australian Dictionary of Biography On-Line and Mollie Gillen, The Founders of Australia, A Biographical Dictionary of the First Fleet, pp. 314-315.
For Francis Grose see see biographical entry, Australian Dictionary of Biography On-Line and Historical Records of New South Wales, Vol. 1, Pt.2 and Vol.2.
The literature on the Battle of Bunker Hill is voluminous. I have consulted a variety of texts to create the very brief analysis provided above.

Latest Book Review

Below is the link to my latest book review for Review of Australian Studies.


http://search.arrow.edu.au/main/results?c_creator0=Paul+Burns&c_date0=2009&inst=Reviews+in+Australian+Studies&start=0

On the Discovery of Books

On today's Saturday Salon at Larvatus Prodeo some-one asked if anybody had read Alexander Pope's translation of The Iliad. (I had glanced at it briefly as a 17 year old but was, back then, put off by Pope's use of rhyming couplets.) This set me reflecting on the discovery of books - the first impressions books and authors of books make on one when you first discover them. Hence this post.

My parents were great lovers of books. My mother read to me from an early age and, by the time I got to school I was, for my age, a pretty accomplished reader. At the age of eight or nine my father gave me a copy of Dickens's Pickwick Papers as a birthday present. I dutifully read it. I was, of course, impressed by Dickens's literary genius, as opposed to comic genius, but I can't say I 'got' the book. I didn't get it until I got round to re-reading it about age forty, and that time I was bursting into uproarious laughter about every second page. I had a similar experience with Dickens's Nicholas Nickleby, which I first read when I was about twenty. I simply got extremely annoyed and bored by the character of Nicholas Nickleby'ss mother, probably because in some was she cut too close to the bone in her resemblance to my much unlamented stepmother.

The next Dickens book my father bought me, the Christmas after he'd got me Pickwick, was Great Expectations. It took me almost a month to go back to the book after I'd read the first chapter. In my boyish imagination I was too scared to go further. And then, Uncle Pumblechook annoyed me. I simply thought he was a very nasty man. (Which he was.)

About this time my father started taking me to a wonderful second-hand bookshop in Castlereagh Street in Sydney - Greenwoods I think it was called. He bought books like John Halifax, Gentleman, the poetry of Mrs. Hemans - The Boy Stood on the Burning Deck' - Thomas Moore, the Irish poet, (I was brought up on stories from Ireland), Henry Lawson's short stories, the poetry of Paterson and Lawson, (Dorothea Mackellar I was discovering at school), and so on.

At age ten a friend of the family bought me the complete works of Shakespeare, a huge book with a red cover and a giant woodcut of Shakespeare as the frontispiece. I'm sure many grown-up back then hadn't read Shakespeare from cover to cover. I did. The Tempest was okay, parts 1, 2, and 3 of Henry VI were enthralling, especially Jack Cade and the Maid of Orleans, but then I discovered that Shakespearian play of blood, death, mutilation and rape that surely must have been the secret delight of many a pubescent boy in that unenlightened era, Titus Andronicus. Then Pericles, Prince of Tyre, with its salacious opening scenes. I spent hours in the garage learning speeches from Julius Caesar, having been inspired by James Mason in the old MGM black and white movie. And Henry V's speech before the battle of Agincourt. (I tried to sound like Laurence Olivier.) I stumped around distorting my cerebral palsy, dragging my foot along the garage concrete floor, pretending I was Richard III. I was hooked for life.

In those days there were Classic Comics, which I devoured with avidity. (I particularly remember a very thick comic about Robin Hood, and being terrified by the comic version of R. H. Dana's Two Years Before the Mast.) But it wasn't long before I graduated to the books themselves. I struggled through Defoe's Robinson Crusoe and badgered my father for money to buy every work by Robert Lewis Stevenson I could find. He refused the money, but took me down to the local library and signed me up as a member. Of course, I loved Kidnapped and Treasure Island, but the two Stevenson books that made the greatest impression on me were The Master of Ballantrae (which almost gave me nightmares) and a collection of short stories, The New Arabian Nights. I can recall the first story in the book was particularly scary, about, I think, some sort of devilish poker game. Sadly, I've never come across the book since.

Enough of childhood reading. I need to get a little bit biographical here. I was brought up in a very strict anti-Communist Catholic family, with horror tales of the Stalinist gulag. By age 15 I'd decided I wanted to find out more about these ice-bound prison camps for myself, so I trudged off to the local library to see what I could find. There was this book about a writer who had spent time in a prison camp. His name was Dostoevsky and the book was Crime and Punishment. I had absolutely no idea what I was letting myself in for, but I got it out rather eagerly. I remember the librarian giving me a very weird look as I booked the book out. There are some, very few books, that hit you in the guts. They take a little of your soul with them. The Master of Ballantrae was one. Crime and Punishment is another. It was the first truly adult book that I had read. I couldn't turn the pages quick enough. It left me emotionally fraught. I was shaking at the end of it, utterly overcome by its power. I had discovered the glory of reading, that thing you don't get with every book, but when you do get it, you know why books are written. As an adult I would experience it with other books, and I will post about those experiences here some time in the future. But Crime and Punishment was the first.

On Going to Book Sales and Stuff

I've just come back from the Rotary Book Sale at the Armidale Race-Course. For a bibliophile like me walking into a capacious room filled with tables crammed with books is, I guess, a bit like going to Heaven (if such a place existed.)

Of course I headed straight for the history book table, eager to see what they had on the eighteenth century and the American Revolution. There was an incredibly wide range of books available: World War 2, World war 1, lots of stuff on Victorian England, a Marx-Engels reader, a few books on the English Civil War, several books on the philosophy and practice of history, some of which I might go back and pick up tomorrow, a fair whack of medieval and Tudor history, some books on Revolutionary Europe, a smattering of books on Chinese and Japanese history, by which I was sorely tempted, and by dint of searching, a few books on the eighteenth century. A veritable feast, really.

I ended up with the following: Daniel J. Boorstin's The Americans, The National Experience - not exactly the period I'm researching and writing about, but I like his work; Ludwig Reiner's biography of Frederick the Great; Dorothy Marshall's Eighteenth Century England - I've read it, but the one I read was a library copy and its nice to have my own copy; Christopher Duffy's The Military Experience in the Age of Reason - which is intrinsically interesting, and I am writing a sort of military/social history of the late 18th century; and the original Oxford History of England volume of Basil Williams's The Whig Supremacy 1714-1760 - which means I now have all the volumes on eighteenth century Britain in both the original and new Oxford History of England series.

After that I searched round for the biography section, tucked away in a corner - there was the usual assortment - biographies of royalty, movie stars, politicians etc., etc., but there was one jewel - Frank McLynn's biography of Bonnie Prince Charlie - apart from it being eighteenth century, as an ex-Catholic I have a sneaking regard for the Jacobites, even if, on balance, the Stuarts were a bunch of incredibly inept monarchs.

Then back to the history table to pick up a copy of Bernal Diaz's The Conquest of New Spain- which I read years ago but want to have another look at. In my spare time when I'm not writing book reviews, researching my book on First Fleeters in the War of American Independence, and fart-arsing around on teh Internet, I've set myself a project of reading (or re-reading) the classic historians. I'm looking for a three volume copy of Gibbon.

My copies of Herodotus, Thucydides, Polybius, Livy, Sallust, Tacitus, Suetonius, Josephus, Ammianus Marcellinus (my favourite Roman historian), Bede, Froissart and Joinville/Villehardouin all disappeared years ago. I was leaving Armidale for a while and left all my books in my flat. In an act of foolish kindness I sublet my flat to a homeless old guy, but he didn't pay the rent, and was evicted. I didn't find out for months. Consequently the real estate agent, who thought I'd disappeared into smoke, either auctioned all the books off or threw them out on the tip. I'd had them for so many years and leafed through them so many times, they were almost falling apart.

Down at the local book shop there's an abridged copy of Clarendon's History of the Rebellion I've got my eye on, along with a copy of Jacob Burckhardt's The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy. And it would be a pleasure to read Macaulay once more. Don't think I'll try Carlyle again though. There are limits.

There are some early Americans - William Bradford for one, I'd like to have a go at. Parkman is one of the few of their greats I've read, waiting for a re-read, and Richard Frothingham's delightful history of Bunker Hill and the Siege of Boston, which cheers me every time I dip into it. I'd like to have another go at Prescott's History of the Conquest of Mexico again, too. Last time I found him quite a struggle, though that might have had something to do with the fact that the local library copy I was reading had a warped cover. I just found it annoying.

The book that's inspired me to go on this particular trope is John Burrow's A History of Histories. Well worth a read, though he's far too dismissive of the Marxist contribution to the theory and practice of history in my opinion. (Who can read Christopher Hill, Eric Hobsbawm, Marcus Rediker or Peter Linebaugh without being inspired?)

I once said on another blog, don't get me going on history and books. You can't stop me. But stop I will - for now.

Update: Monday. Went back to the Rotary Book Sale this morning. Its one of those cold drizzly mornings that happen in Armidale, a usual precursor to the horror of an Armidale winter; or what used to be the horror of an Armidale winter before global warming kicked in. But books are one thing that can get me out of bed in winter.

On Saturday, going to the book sale was a bit like going to a David Jones Boxing Day Sale - well, not quite, but I'm sure you know what I mean. Today, though, there was hardly anybody roaming among those numerous tables of books.

I only looked at the history table. And the history god/goddess was with me, I think, because I found a couple of books I would've bought on-line eventually. Lawrence Henry Gipson's The Coming of the Revolution, which I'll start on almost immediately; and Barbara Tuchman's The First Salute. A View of the American Revolution. This book didn't get very good reviews, especially from maritime historians, who said she didn't know one end of a sailing ship from the other, but it will be interesting, nonetheless. Now I'll have to make up my own mind about it.

There were other treasures, too. J. H. Parry's The Age of Reconnaissance - one wonders, though, when the jacket reads 'Profusely illustrated' exactly what one's in for; Boxer's classic history of The Portuguese Seaborne Empire, 1415-1825. And W. J. Eccles' France in America. Written from a Canadian perspective, I suspect, at the very least it will be intriguing.

As I was paying for the books, the Rotary bloke behind the counter where you pay said of the rain, "The spots hardly join together." And he was right. It was a pleasant walk home.

Afghanistan- The Graveyard of Empires

Recently Australia's Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, told us that the Australian commitment in Afghanistan was likely to become deeply unpopular and that it was a long way from over. Rudd is recognised Australia wide as that rare phenomenon in Australian politics, an intellectual. And one presumes that as a former diplomat he has a fair knowledge of history. (If our diplomats are wanting in that department you could probably argue that when it comes to foreign affairs we'd be in more than a bit of a mess) But our Prime Minister seems somewhat lacking in his knowledge of Afghan history. If he wasn't, he wouldn't have sent more Australian troops there.

Okay, it wasn't his fault. We ended up there because Chimpo, aka The American Imbecile aka George W. Bush was running the U. S of A, and he didn't really have his eye on Afghanistan after 9/11. We all know now he was more interested at getting at Saddam Hussein and the Ba'ath Party in Iraq because, in Bush's immortal words, Saddam had tried to poison his Daddy. (One wonders about his morality of starting a ten year war because he was trying to stay in Daddy's good books, after wiping out his brains with cocaine for forty years but that's not the topic of this post, and Bush is gone, so ...) He only went into Afghanistan because that was where most Americans thought Osama Ben Laden was, and Ben Laden, not Saddam Hussein, was responsible for 9/11.

So that brings us to Afghanistan. At last count ten Australian soldiers are dead in Afghanistan, because John Winston Howard (let's put the blame where it really lies) invoked the ANZUS Treaty and followed America into Afghanistan, then concentrated all his attention on the Bush family feud in Iraq, to the grave detriment of the situation in Afghanistan. Those soldiers died fighting the Taliban. Bush, Howard, and probably Rudd and Obama would have us believe that the Taliban arose out of the Mujahadeen irregular forces that resisted the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan from 1975 onwards. (What they no longer wish to remind us of is that the Mujahadeen i.e. the Taliban and/or Al-Quaeda were cheerfully funded and supplied with arms by the CIA and once the Russians had gone said Mujahadeen turned round and bit their financial benefactors on the bum.)

What Howard/Bush/Rudd/Obama haven't told us is that Afghani bandits have been around for centuries, since the time of Alexander the Great, and that imperial forces invading Afghanistan ever since, with the exception of the Mughals, have had a really, really bad time there and have always lost. Its not for nothing its called the graveyard of empires. And that brings me to my narrative of that first European force, the British, who confronted the nineteenth century equivalent of the Taliban. The following is based on the account of the First Afghan War (1839-42) given by Boyd Hilton in A Mad, Bad & Dangerous People? England 1783-1846, Oxford, 2006.

Lord Auckland, India's Governor General (1836-1842) perceived an exaggerated Russian threat to India out of what is now modern day Iran and decided the best way to counter the Russians was to erect an alternative buffer state in Afghanistan. (This was part of what was known at the time and ever since as The Great Game). Unfortunately, this meant the British being involved in tribal warfare in Afghanistan, something they simply didn't understand, and in a series of rapidly changing alliances one might argue are analogous to the situation in Afghanistan/Pakistan today. Basically, just like the present Afghan War, the idea was that local forces should bear the brunt of most of the fighting, in a plot hatched to replace Dost Muhammad, the pro-Persian Emir of Afghanistan in Kabul. This was done easily enough by the British and their Hindu allies. The emir was replaced by a pro-British puppet. The British, however, could not leave well enough alone (a common problem in Victorian India) and they interfered with local tribal practices. The result was a riot and the British Consul at Kabul was shot, then hacked into pieces. The stranded British garrison opted for a retreat to the safety of Jalalabad.

Thus began one of the greatest defeats in British military history up to that time. Major-General William Elphinstone, the commander of the British forces, underestimated the effect of snow and frost-bite on his troops in the cold mountain passes of Afghanistan. Worse, he was surprised by the fanaticism of the supporters of the supplanted Emir Dost, who, in January 1842, attacked the British troops with knives, not guns, and wiped out 12,000 to 16,000 British troops in Jagdalak Pass. Only one white survivor, a medical officer, made it back to Jalalabad.

British honour was impugned. The British Army marched on Kabul, blew up the bazaar, randomly and collectively punished some nearby villages then left, leaving their puppet Shah Shuja without protection. He was, of course murdered and Emir Dost was back in Kabul.

As Hilton has noted, the Afghani bandits were 'oblivious to the conventions of chivalrous warfare.' (p.571.) The West, for the first time, had 'met the equivalent of today's suicide bomber'. (ibid.) A similar fate would meet the Russians in the twentieth century, though it took longer for the Afghanis to rid Afghanistan of them. One has to wonder what Kevin Rudd means when he tells us this new (well, relatively new) war is a long way from over.