Seize the Fire: Heroism, Duty, and the Battle of TrafalgarHarper Collins, 9 sie 2005 - 341 In Seize the Fire, Adam Nicolson, author of the widely acclaimed God's Secretaries, takes the great naval battle of Trafalgar, fought between the British and Franco-Spanish fleets in October 1805, and uses it to examine our idea of heroism and the heroic. Is violence a necessary aspect of the hero? And daring? Why did the cult of the hero flower in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in a way it hadn't for two hundred years? Was the figure of Nelson—intemperate, charming, theatrical, anxious, impetuous, considerate, indifferent to death and danger, inspirational to those around him, and, above all, fixed on attack and victory—an aberration in Enlightenment England? Or was the greatest of all English military heroes simply the product of his time, "the conjurer of violence" that England, at some level, deeply needed? It is a story rich with modern resonance. This was a battle fought for the control of a global commercial empire. It was won by the emerging British world power, which was widely condemned on the continent of Europe as "the arrogant usurper of the freedom of the seas." Seize the Fire not only vividly describes the brutal realities of battle but enters the hearts and minds of the men who were there; it is a portrait of a moment, a close and passionately engaged depiction of a frame of mind at a turning point in world history. |
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... October 1805, just as dawn was coming up, the look-outs high on the mainmasts of the British fleet spied the enemy, about twelve miles away downwind. They had been tracking them for a day and a night, the body of their force kept ...
... October 1804, when Spain was reluctantly in alliance with France but not yet formally at war with Britain, and which established the British fleet in Spanish eyes as little more than state- sponsored pirates. A powerful group of four ...
... October 1805, Villeneuve, the French commander, was in despair about his Spanish allies. Their ships were in such poor condition, he reported to his friend Denis Decrès, Minister of Marine in Paris, that they should never have been sent ...
... October 1805. Spanish gun crews were able to fire one round every five minutes from each of their 32lb cannon. Most British crews could manage a round every ninety seconds. The best could reduce that time by a third. The Spanish ...
... October, Gravina listed the men on board his flagship, the Principe de Asturias: Infantry troops 382; marine artillerymen 172; officers and men 609. Even nominally, without taking into account the goatherds and the sweepings of Cadiz ...
Spis treści
3 | |
Order and Anxiety | 49 |
Honour | 93 |
Love | 130 |
Boldness | 157 |
Violence | 209 |
Humanity | 239 |
Nobility | 275 |
bibliography | 319 |
index | 327 |
Inne wydania - Wyświetl wszystko
Seize the Fire: Heroism, Duty, and Nelson's Battle of Trafalgar Adam Nicolson Ograniczony podgląd - 2009 |
Seize the Fire: Heroism, Duty, and Nelson's Battle of Trafalgar Adam Nicolson Podgląd niedostępny - 2006 |