Book Reviews 459

politics and a theology and a science which put a stress on reason. What is also interesting is Gascoigne’s attempts to demonstrate the potential vitality within educational circles of this alliance; here his work echoes the findings of the recent monumental History of the University of Oxford,2 that educational provision and initiative in the universities of the ancien regime was significantly higher than their nineteenth century detractors allowed. At Cambridge the rise of the honours system, often seen as part of the new reformed university structure, was established in essentials as early as 1753. Gascoigne links this directly to the rise of the mathematical sciences within the university since it was deemed easier to classify and rank candidates in a subject which lent itself to a system of numerical grades. But by the end of the eighteenth century the alliance broke down for a variety of political, social and intellectual factors. The establishment in Church and State itself seemed to be attacked by those who claimed, like Price and Priestly, to use reason to question the status quo. In the face of this threat even erst-while liberals within Cambridge politics gave up their quest for educational and religious reform and moved to a more conservative position. As part of this increasing suspicion of reason and science there was a renewed interest in revealed theology. This allowed theology to find other supports apart from natural philosophy and by the mid-nineteenth century, with the pro- fessionalisation of both the clerical and scientific worlds, the role of Cambridge as a clerical seminary and as a vehicle for meshing science and religion collapsed. In general Gascoigne’s points are convincing. It might have been worth paying more attention to the meaning of ‘natural theology’. For in some respects those clerics he mentions, such as Hutchinsonians, who stood against the grain of Newtonian dominance, were, in their own way, interested in the natural world as part of the theological order. Indeed there was a long tradition of sacramentalism in those who stressed revealed religion which deserves more attention from historians of ideas. And while many nineteenth-century high churchmen certainly looked with suspicion on the alliance between religion and natural philosophy as it had existed in the previous century, they were by no means uninterested in the natural world as the sacramental poetry of Keble, Newman and Hopkins shows. His study also raises a broader question which will be asked by readers of this journal. Is the phenomenon Gascoigne is describing purely an English one, or is the alliance between science and theology a more fundamental feature of the European intellectual landscape in the eighteenth century? This book provides a model for how scholars working on other countries might pursue their research in finding an answer.

Newcastle Polytechnic, U.K. Jeremy Gregory

NOTES

1. M.C. Jacob, The Newtonians and the English revolution (Hassocks, Sussex, 1981). 2. L.S. Sutherland and L.G. Mitchell(eds), TheHistory of the University of Oxford. Vol. V:

The Eighteenth Century (Oxford, 1986).

Military Thought in the French Army, 181541, Paddy Griffith, War, Armed Forces and Society (Manchester University Press/d&r. St Martin’s Press, 1989), viii +236 pp., $65.00, cloth.

In this vigorously argued, authoritative and persuasive monograph, Dr Griffith has sought to expound and clarify the sources of intellectual vitality in the French Army

460 Book Reviews

before the Crimean War. He suggests that this period has been neglected, or written off, mainly because it lacks the Bonapartist drama and glamour of the earlier period under Napoleon, or the shame and catastrophe of the later period under his nephew, Napoleon III. Whatever the dubious glamour imparted by the Napoleonic presence, or their transitory and hollow triumphs, both of these periods ended in singular failure. Dr Griffith points out that the French Army between the Bonapartes was, on the whole, successful in what it set out to do. It ‘was a perfectly-forged instrument for the roles it was intended to fulfil’(p. 167). The French Army, moreover, was cost-effective. No other great military power spent less on defence, yet, ‘throughout this period the army was used for limited operations probably more successfully and intelligently than by any other nation’ (p. 150). Indeed, during the French invasion of Spain in 1823, not only did the Due d’Angoul&me, commanding 100,000 men, occupy the country, an object which had eluded Napoleon himself in 1808-9, but he even seized Cadiz, which had defied Napoleon’s marshals throughout the Peninsular War. Why, then, has this period been so unjustly neglected? The answer surely lies in the teleology determined by reading history back to front in an attempt to find scapegoats for the humiliation of the France-Prussian War. Griffith has some astringent comments on this process. It is indeed interesting how great, dramatic events focus our attention, inspire the energies of historians and participants and demark periods of history, irrespective of the continuities which might characterise institutions. They tend to distort our vision and may blind us to the strength and vitality of institutions especially if we are determined to discover what was ‘wrong’ with a defeated army, when that defeat may have hinged on the caprice of chance rather than on any profound, structural defects.

This teleology arising from the results of the France-Prussian War has even been extended to wars preceding 1870-71. Thus in the 1950s a school of American historians led by T. Harry Williams considered that the Confederate command system in 1861-65 had been modelled on the French, and was therefore by definition anachronistic and ill- organised. That of the Union resembled the Prussian and was therefore modern and efficient. Griffith thrusts all these stereotypes aside. In shrewd and illuminating chapters, he traces the threads of French military thought through the articles and books written by officers, its effect on regimental life and training, and the way it was taught in the military schools and applied by policy-makers. The impression is ofan army which was intellectually alert and brisk. The most interesting aspects refer to training, leadership and morale-particularly on the motivation of the soldier in battle. At the higher levels, the writing is more ponderous and unimaginative. The French staff was certainly less ‘general’ than the Prussian, and less influential. Consequently, as at West Point in the United States, the study of fortification, topography and gunnery was more important than the attention given to the art of war. In this weakness, the French Army reflected features of other armies, and cannot be singled out as a unique, obscurantist and obsolescent organisation compared with the triumphant Prussian Army. At one point Griffith quotes an officer discovering ‘that in our profession one must learn a lot and then unlearn it a little’ (p. 123). After reading this illuminating book, scholars of military developments in the nineteenth century will have to go through a similar process. If they may have to unlearn some things, they will certainly learn a lot of new things. Griffith’s book will surely become the standard work on the subject in the English language.

King’s College, London

Brian Holden Reid