   
Olivier Chaline: The Battle of White Mountain
...Orest's other
reviews
Lacking the competence to review Olivier Chaline's La Bataille de la Montagne
Blanche (Paris: Noesis, 2000), I can only reflect a bit on it and prompt
others to read it for themselves.
Braudel's great thesis of 1949 on the Mediterranean in the sixteenth century
placed the Battle of Lepanto in a vast and dramatic setting that both recognized
and minimized the importance of the battle itself. Not drum-and-trumpet history,
Braudel's Lepanto narrative holds in tension the force of routine, the power
of accident, and the measure of both individual initiative and propaganda
on historical events. This narrative is something of a "set piece," not unlike
a practice battle for historians, in that efforts have been made to write
of other battles as brilliantly as Braudel did about Lepanto, but no one
has equaled it until now.
Mattingly notes his reflection about the Armada while on a U.S. naval vessel
off Britain in World War II, thus leaving the impression that Braudel's Lepanto
narrative probably influenced him little in his 1959 narrative of the Armada.
I do not recall any reference to it in the book, but....
The shadow of Braudel's narrative and Duby's work on the Battle of Bouvines
loom over Chaline's book, but in no way diminish the light of its profound
originality. The same might be said for Denis Crouzet's learned and very
important writings about religious, political and social comportements
in the sixteenth century. When reading Chaline, I was particularly pleased
to note that Gindely's writings are still pretty much state-of-the-art on
many of the aspects of the first decade of the Thirty Years' War. John B.
Wolf continually praised these works in Seminar.
* * *
Like Braudel, Chaline carefully analyzes what are almost structures of thought
and action; there is iconoclasm in general in the sixteenth century, and
there is the particular iconoclasm in Prague (?) that tore the painting of
the Virgin that the Spanish monk, Dominic de Jesus-Marie, presented before
the squabbling high command of the Catholic allies, thus mobilizing them
to actually do battle. The squabbling high command is itself also a "structure,"
as were the quite half-cocked Protestant plans of Anhalt that had actually
led Frederick of the Palatinate to accept the crown of Hungary. Structural
also were Maximilian's ambitions to become elector, etc., and the reality
of his role in the Battle of White Mountain. There are many more "structural
contexts" here that make this work a remarkable general history of Europe
in the early seventeenth century.
For Braudel, Mattingly — and I'm not sure here, perhaps Duby —
the diffusion of news of victory was largely a matter of the printed works
and sermons given across Europe (certainly not printing for Bouvines), but
in Chaline it is the celebration of, and the giving of thanks to the Almighty
through the pictorial that permits Chaline to analyze the battle itself,
as it appears in paintings, particularly in the sacristy of Santa Maria della
Vittoria in Rome. Any historian who sees these paintings is captivated by
them. They are true windows into the past. There is another major evocation
in the discalced Carmelites of Munich — in which there is a splendid
portrait of Dominic in prayerful study with a peacock just outside and someone
on horseback blowing a trumpet. Marjorie O'Rourke Boyle's learned and original
Loyola's Acts (Berkeley, 1997) has a deeper than the usual art-history
study of the of the meaning of the peacock : none other than John Calvin
had accused monks of being as vainglorious as peacocks! Here the bird does
not enter; Dominic declines glory. The trumpeter on horseback is another
matter! At first I thought the trumpeting was the glory given by history,
but Clio in not often on horseback!
There were specialists who remarked that Mattingly did not have his military
technology quite right. I would be the last to know if Chaline has his
description of muskets, etc., just right. I am impressed by the careful verbal
descriptions and the visual illustrations that confirm what is written about
military technology. Battle scenes in sacristies may have been more historically
accurate than what artisans and printers put together, e.g. Kuevenheuler.
Father Dominic was no doubt unique in his role. The mood was just right for
his messages to be heard and acted upon. The role of the clergy in battles
and in preparations for battle is, however, another subject — along
with the red calotte and cape, His Eminence wore steel-green armor
at La Rochelle — or was it at Pignerola? If I recall correctly, the
clergy only say prayers before each column at Blenheim. Another structural
role, ever the same, every changing, with that of Father Dominic being
unforgettable, and therefore glorious.
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