The missing General Borstell

[Jonathan Gingerich]

So I’m reading Hussey’s first volume on Waterloo – bought the dirt cheap Kindle version for a recent long vacation air flight. Not even half way through so I don’t want to opine too much, but it’s very much a masterful refutation of Hofschroer. It does seem to take Wellington’s POV perhaps a bit too much and the Prussians (fairly, I think) come across grasping and nasty so far, but it’s very solid.
Anyway, he mentions that Gen. Borstell, commander of the II Corps was so offended by the heavy handed (7 or 8 executions) suppression of the Saxon protests that he voiced his objections and got dismissed, court-martialed, and imprisoned (till the end of the year), and replaced by Pirch-1. Funny, I didn’t remember that… So I check Hofschroer and the only thing I can find is a passing statement that Pirch was to take over the II Corps!-) Guess he couldn’t find a way to blame Wellington for it…

[Deleted User]

Jonathan Gingerich wrote:

So I check Hofschroer and the only thing I can find is a passing statement that Pirch was to take over the II Corps!-) Guess he couldn’t find a way to blame Wellington for it…

I don’t think Hoffy was as good as his fans made out nor as bad as his detractors claimed.

Leaving his private life out of the discussion, he did the research even if he had a discernable lean towards the Prussians. Being able to read German sources was a real boon. I found his writing style to be a bit dry but I would maintain his books are a “must read” for anyone interested in Waterloo. He, like a number of other Napoleonic authors, did themselves no favours by getting embroiled in internet forum flame wars.

Should he have mentioned Borstell’s removal? It does seem odd it didn’t get even a foot note in Hoffy’s lengthy & comprehensive books. I’m not going to formulate a conspiracy theory over it, though.

 

donald

[vtsaogames]

I always thought Hof’s work needed a good dash of salt because of his obvious bias. I’d like to know your take on David Hamilton-Williams (Waterloo New Perspectives) who is a  Bonaparte fan boy. In one of his less restrained online screeds, Hof called him mentally ill.

 

As for Borstell, he should have been mentioned but I’ve read other works about the Hundred Days that don’t mention him, even when they talk about the Saxon mutiny/protests.

It's never too late to have a happy childhood

[Jonathan Gingerich]

Well I got 75% through the book and BLAM! next page was the notes and I was done. I will try to open another thread on it once I get my thoughts together. There are some very good parts to the book and some less so…

But as for Hofschröer – I once exchanged e-mail with him. I forget exactly how the conversation went, but in his reply he stated that he could visualize Wellington standing at Frasnes, scheming exactly how to cheat the Prussians but was so frustrated he couldn’t prove it. I refrained from replying “You are taking this a bit too seriously don’t you think?”
For me, the biggest take-away from Hussey is that this was all thrashed out a century ago. Some number of nationalist Prussian historians advanced conspiracy theories and British and Prussian (and French) scholarship rebutted quite effectively. Everything was there: the magical 9AM message from Zieten; the De Lancey “Disposition”; the Frasnes letter; the Bussy meeting, and so forth. This solves a puzzlement for me. I couldn’t reconcile Hofschröer’s apparent sincerity with the cynicism of his arguments – which I thought he had constructed himself. But now I see that he likely read these, not illegitimate, German histories, noted that all these ideas had been rejected in the English narratives, and felt PEOPLE NEEDED TO KNOW! There are minds that are very susceptible to the idea of hidden knowledge and it does resonate in his sad personal troubles.
I am a bit taken aback by the amount of words wasted in various forums over his book and the apparent absence of anyone familiar with the past scholarship on Waterloo – such a popular topic! – to set things straight. Then again, perhaps I was just listening to the louder and more articulate voices and missed those truly informed. — Not that I’m going to go back and reread it all:-)

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