the Marlborough historiography

For those with an interest in the life and times of the Duke of Marlborough, please check out this rather good read at Jamel Ostwald's blog: What's the matter with the Marlborough historiography

A musical intermezzo

On this joyful 30th April 2013 some musical entertainment from the early modern period.

One is called 'Marlbrough ne revient pas', and written after the battle of Malplaquet of September 1709. It tells how Sarah Churchill is told that her husband found his death on the fields of Malplaquet.

Le roi et mort, vive le roi: The funeral march for Louis XIV.

And finally, William Croft's ode for the peace of Utrecht, now 200 years ago.

(Please ignore any commercials)

Book writing ~~ lessons learned

In little over than one year, two books were compiled by the author of this blog and published by Drenth Publishing.As the two books are on the same subject, half-pay officers, this post will compare both efforts and look into lessons learned and differences between the two projects.

Lessons learned:

•  Never underestimate your audience. However, don't assume your audience is that well informed into the subject you are writing on as you are. So, it is better to write a bit more on some intricate detail, than leave it out (and: you can always remove it afterwards).
• Who are the people that will buy your book? Or, putting it a bit differently, know about your target audience. This helps in formulating the scope of the project, and finding additional scope to be covered.
• If I were a potential customer, what would I want to see in such a book.
• Be critical to yourself. Re-read what you have written, and question yourself: what is the scope, what is the level of detail, what would a reader expect.
• So, accept that requirements can change!
• (Unless you have agreed to someone deliver before a certain time, don't set a hard deadline when there are still things to be sorted out.)
• (So, communicate the fruits of your labour only when the completion is feasible.)
• Make a print of the document to see what it looks like on paper, or at least view the document in a two-page modus. This will avoid silly mistakes that makes the project look like a rubbish.

Differences:

• The second project on the reduced officers for 1699 greatly benefited from technicalities solved in the first project on the half-pay officers for 1714.
• This meant layout issues: how to present the lists of officers, how to format tables.
• But it also meant that the design of the cover could be done much quicker.
• Contact with a printing company was already established.
• The first project had the benefit of being, partially, based on an existing document. This meant more research time was needed for the second project, even though the information was readily available: the first project run between January and April 2012 (three months), the second between April 2012 and March 2013 (one full year!). 
• So, where does this extra time from given the 'newby' issues with the first and 'documentation' issues with the second:
• the second project has an index of officers (should have been done for the first too ...)
• the introduction in the second project has a more detailed and quantitative approach
• one appendix was almost a project in itself

When the second project was started, it seemed to be an easy walk-over: the information was present and had 'only' to be arranged and edited. However, during the process the requirements changed a bit by the inclusion of 600+ Huguenot officers, and addition of an index. This explains for a large part the extra time needed.

Now, on to the next project!

A Regimental list of the Reduced officers for the year 1699

Fresh from the press and ready for shipment:

A Regimental list of the reduced officers for the year 1699 

on the English, Scots and Irish Establishments

Please see the publisher's website for more details and ordering information.

This book is the companion volume to the Half-Pay list 1714, that was published in May 2012. Both volumes provide, as the titles indicate, information on the officers that were reduced after the Nine Years' War and War of the Spanish Succession, respectively. But there is more to that. All regiments that were part of the British army, during the respective periods, are detailed (except the subsidy troops), with information on the regimental lineage and a succession of colonels. Moreover, orders of battle are given for a variety of battles, sieges, descents (executed or aborted), expeditions, et cetera.

Treaty of Utrecht 300 years

Today is a bit of a special day. Today, 300 years ago on 11 April 1713, the Treaty of Utrecht was signed between several of the belligerents of the War of the Spanish Succession and saw an end to the conflict that started in 1701. See the Wiki for some more information.

Though one of the few quality newspapers in the Netherlands, NRC Handelsblad, devotes an article on the Treaty of Utrecht, they miss at least one very crucial point: how did they manage to remove any mention in the article of the Dutch Republic as one of the main, not to say most important, opponents of France? Is this simply lack of the journalist's understanding of history, or that deep ingrained believe in the peaceful past of the Dutch?

It is a bit like writing about the Yalta Conference, and omitting the United States as one of the participants ....

New books forthcoming

Though the new year is almost in its fourth month, the lack of postings did not mean that the author had been idling away his time. A lot of time went to the compilation of a list of the officers reduced after the Nine Years' War. Please see the website here: http://www.drenthpublishing.nl/halfpay1699/halfpay1699.html. The book can already be pre-ordered, and will be ready for shipment in May or June.

Another book will be re-printed, and this will/should be welcomed by anyone with an interest in the British army during the Nine Years' War. The book in question is John Childs' The Nine Years' War and the British army 1688–97. The book was first published in the early 1990s, and long out-of-print since, and hard to find second-hand. This book still is the only modern narrative on the British army on operations in the Low Countries during the Nine Years' War. A thorough review of this book is found here.

Capture of Dixmuide en Deinze 1695, pt. II

This blog reported earlier on the capture of Dixmuide and Deinze by the French in July 1695. In July 1695, in order to divert the Confederates from their siege of Namur, the French undertook operations against the towns of Dixmuide and Deinze. They did not succeed in raising the siege, but captured both towns nevertheless. With the capture of these town, the complete garrisons of 10 battalions (regiments) of infantry and one regiment of dragoons went into captivity.

The identity of most of these eleven regiments can be established without too much effort: the English and Scots regiments, and one Dutch at Deinze, are mentioned as such in several sources. The problem lies with the other regiments at Dixmuide. Besides the two English and two Scots regiments, there were four more regiments. Some sources make reference to two each of Dutch and German regiments, others mention Dutch and Danish. Two of these four can be found without too much work as well: one Dutch regiment in English pay, and a Danish regiment in English pay. The colonel of this last regiment, Elnberger, was also governor of Dixmuide and was beheaded for surrendering to the French without any serious attempt to defend the town.

Of the remaining two regiments, the previous blog report makes mention of one Dutch regiment and a regiment from Wolfenbüttel. Though the latter is correct, the former was actually a Brandenburg regiment in Dutch service. We are talking here about the regiment Jung-Holstein. The Wolfenbüttel regiment, in the previous blog said to be Regiment Holle. Holle died in 1693, however, and contemporary sources referred to the regiment as Regiment Schack; Schack may have been the successor.

This missing piece of information comes from a letter from the Duke of Württemberg to Antonie Heinsius, the Dutch Raadspensionaris, dated 17 August 1695. This letter details the 'l'infame reduction' of Deinze and Dixmuide, and loss of ten battalions and one regiment of dragoons. It also informs us on the French bombardment of Brussels: 4000 bombs in 36 hours.
The letter can be found in the second part of Het Archief van den Raadspensionaris Antonie Heinsius, page 101, found in full on Google Books.

So, taken into captivity were two English regiments of foot, three Scots regiments, two Dutch regiments, one Danish, one Brandenburg, and one Wolfenbüttel, and one English regiment of dragoons.