The archive · Volume III
Gunpowder
From Malplaquet in 1709 to Gettysburg in 1863, each battle with its documented history, its record and the full lyric.
Powder changed my work more than anything else in this archive. Before it, a man had to reach you to kill you. After it, the killing starts at a distance and arrives on a schedule, and the line is expected to stand in the open and wait its turn.
Malplaquet in 1709 is where that arithmetic first becomes plain. Fredericksburg and Gettysburg are where it stops being arguable.
Battles, oldest first
- 1709 The Battle of Malplaquet War of the Spanish Succession Allied victory at a cost that ended the campaign for it: the French army withdrew unbroken and in good order
- 1775 The Battle of Bunker Hill The American Revolutionary War A British victory that took the ground and settled nothing: the costliest single engagement the British fought in the entire war
- 1812 Napoleon's Retreat from Moscow The French invasion of Russia The destruction of the largest army Europe had ever assembled, mostly without a battle: about 112,000 of 612,000 recrossed the frontier
- 1836 The Battle of the Alamo The Texas Revolution The mission stormed before dawn on the thirteenth day; the garrison killed almost to the last man
- 1862 The Battle of Fredericksburg The American Civil War One of the most one-sided Union defeats of the war; no assault on the stone wall ever reached it
- 1863 The Battle of Gettysburg The American Civil War The assault reached the wall at one point and was destroyed there: the high-water mark of the Confederacy, and the end of the invasion of the North