Romanticism and War: A Study of British Romantic Period Writers and the Napoleonic Wars

264 Pages·2003·1.421 MB·English

by  J. R. Watson (auth.)

Romanticism and War
Also by J.R. Watson
THE ENGLISH HYMN
ENGLISH POETRY OF THE ROMANTIC PERIOD
EVERYMAN’S BOOK OF VICTORIAN VERSE
THE POETRY OF GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS
WORDSWORTH’S VITAL SOUL
Romanticism and War
A Study of British Romantic Period Writers
and the Napoleonic Wars
J.R. Watson
Emeritus Professor
University of Durham
© J.R. Watson 2003
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2003 978-0-333-80176-5
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Watson, J.R. (John Richard), 1934–
Romanticism and war:a study of British Romantic Period writers
and the Napoleonic Wars/J.R. Watson.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. English literature—19th century—History and criticism.
2. Napoleonic Wars, 1800–1815—Literature and the wars.
3. France—Foreign public opinion, British. 4. English
literature—French influences. 5. Great Britain—Relations—
France. 6. France—Relations—Great Britain. 7. Romanticism—
Great Britain. 8. France—In literature. 9. War in literature.
I. Title.
PR129.F8W38 2003
820.9′358—dc21
2003050960
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03
Contents
Preface vii
Acknowledgement ix
Introduction 1
Reading about war 1
Writing, history and experience 4
Chivalry and morality 8
War and the individual 10
Justifications 13
War and wars 14
Politics and the idea of the just war 17
Postscript 20
1 Ways of Seeing War 23
1.1 The broken soldier 23
1.2 The minstrel boy 27
1.3 Fire, famine and slaughter 33
2 1793 39
3 1793 and after 52
3.1 Armies and navies 52
3.2 The campaign in the Low Countries 57
3.3 Poland 59
4 1795–1802 68
4.1 Jacobin and anti-Jacobin 68
4.2 1798: Switzerland 73
4.3 Before the peace: Thomas Campbell
and the poetry of war 77
5 The Peace of Amiens and after, 1802–05 84
5.1 1802–03: Paris and Calais 84
5.2 1805: Heroism 95
v
vi Contents
6 Poetry and the Army: The War, 1807–08 108
6.1 After Trafalgar: the case of Scott 108
6.2 The army after 1800 115
7 Cintra and Corunna 123
7.1 The rebellion in Spain and the Convention
of Cintra 123
7.2 1809: a hero and a poet 132
8 The Last Years 144
8.1 1809–13: the Peninsula 144
8.2 Towards the abdication: 1812–14 151
8.3 1815: Waterloo 159
9 Ways of Seeing War: The Poets 174
9.1 Wordsworth and the Thanksgiving Odes 174
9.2 Byron and warfare 182
10 Ways of Seeing War: The Soldiers 197
10.1 William Napier: The History of the War
in the Peninsula 197
10.2 Carl von Clausewitz: On War 207
11 Afterwords: De Quincey, Ruskin and Hardy 217
11.1 De Quincey on war 217
11.2 Ruskin on war 220
11.3 Thomas Hardy and The Dynasts 223
Notes 230
Bibliography 245
Index 250
Preface
This book was written at the suggestion of Professor Stephen Prickett
and with the encouragement of Professor Marilyn Gaull. I am grateful
to them.
It is an attempt to write a straightforward account of the way in
which the war of 1793–1815 was perceived by British Romantic period
writers, and how they in turn helped produce perceptions of the war. In the
process, I have tried to understand something of the complexity of war
itself, a subject which has interested me ever since I was a peace-time
soldier at the height of the Cold War. As a summary of that complexity,
I would quote a passage from Vera Brittain’s Testament of Youth which
Ido not entirely agree with, but which I can understand and which may
serve as an epigraph:
It is, I think, this glamour, this magic, this incomparable keying up
of the spirit in a time of mortal conflict, which constitute the pacifist’s
real problem – a problem still incompletely imagined, and still quite
unsolved. The causes of war are always falsely represented; its honour
is dishonest and its glory meretricious, but the challenge to spiritual
endurance, the intense sharpening of all the senses, the vitalising
consciousness of common peril for a common end, remain to allure
those boys and girls who have just reached the age when love and
friendship and adventure call more persistently than at any later time.
The glamour may be the mere delirium of fever, which as soon as the
war is over dies out and shows itself for the will-o’-the-wisp that it is,
but while it lasts no emotion known to man seems as yet to have quite
the compelling power of this enlarged vitality (Testament of Youth,
1933, 291–2).
I do not agree that honour is dishonest and glory meretricious in war,
but Brittain’s loss of fiancé, brother and close friends during the 1914–18
war gives her remarks an authority which has to be acknowledged and
accepted as her own reading of painful experience. The remainder of her
paragraph captures wonderfully the fascination and excitement of war,
and one of the elements of the Romantic period which this book is
intended to demonstrate is the extraordinary drama and intensity of the
Napoleonic Wars, and their continuing interest.
vii
viii Preface
I am very grateful to Dr Pamela Clemit for reading a draft of this book
and making many valuable suggestions, and to my son David, another
former soldier, for encouragement and help.
J.R. Watson
July 2002
Acknowledgement
I am grateful to Orion Publishing Group Ltd for permission to use the
paragraph from Vera Brittain, Testament of Youth, published by Victor
Gollancz in 1933.
ix