'Tides of War' plunges into the characters who made history during the Peninsular War
When Americans think of the War of 1812, they think of "The Star-Spangled Banner," the Battle of New Orleans and, maybe, the burning of Washington, D.C., by British forces in August of 1814. But the War of 1812 was just a sideshow to the Napoleonic Wars in Europe and Russia. From that series of conflicts, Stella Tillyard takes as her subject the Peninsular War in Spain and Portugal. Tillyard has chosen to illuminate this perhaps strangely forgotten episode in the endless history of European conflicts because it might have been the first modern war. Certainly, she makes the case that the war in Spain and Portugal was marked by brutality, horror, insurgency and confusion about goals, aims and outcomes. Whether, as the subject of a novel, it is of compelling interest to Americans is a good question.
Tillyard adopts a panoramic structure, which is natural to a writer primarily known for works of history (in 2006, she published "A Royal Affair: George III and His Troublesome Siblings"). The time scale of "Tides of War" is about 31 / 2 years, and the principal figures mark places in the vast landscape: Among them we have Arthur Wellesley, the Duke of Wellington; his wife, Kitty; Nathan Mayer Rothschild, a founder of the Rothschild family banking legacy; Frederick Winsor, the inventor of street lighting by means of coal gas; and the painter Francisco Goya. These makers of history are surrounded by more conventional characters: Harriet, a young woman who marries James Raven just before he leaves for the war; Robert Heaton, who volunteers, is wounded in battle and recovers thanks to, perhaps, the first transfusion ever; and Thomas Orde, a weaver who returns from the horrors of battle to discover that the Industrial Revolution has put him out of a job.
The war makes or destroys all these people in specific ways. Perhaps the most interesting are Wellington and Rothschild, important historical figures who are humanized here -- their actions set into the context of inner lives that turn out to be as contradictory and routine as those of the lesser figures.
As a historian, Tillyard brings a good deal of expertise to her subject. She sees those tendrils of the war that have reached into our time: the effectiveness of guerrilla action, the perils of worker unrest, the appeal of technological innovation, the dangers and promises of medical curiosity. Above all, she depicts the drive toward independence by women of all classes and types. The classic happy ending of 19th-century British fiction -- a wedding in which love and money come together -- is not possible for any of these characters, and the marriages in "Tides of War" are, in fact, as likely as those we know in the 21st century to be mistakes.
The task of a novel such as this must be both to enlighten and to compel. New facts or theories (or forgotten ones rediscovered) make up the enlightening part, and enticing characters make up the compelling part. For this reason, historical novels can be risky business. Because of the book's structure, it takes a while for the reader to feel involved in "Tides of War." Harriet, for example, comes and goes too quickly to engage us in her dilemmas. When she does make an appearance, it is often more as an example of young English womanhood than as a distinct personality. Her husband, James, is even paler. Nathan Rothschild and the Duke of Wellington steal the show, in part because the ways in which their minds work demonstrate how they manage to distinguish themselves from their peers and therefore succeed. Tillyard seems to have a better feel for Dorothy Yallop, a good-natured and practical woman, and Robert Heaton, a man of style and mystery but also, we discover, substance. These characters work because they are friendly and appealing -- they don't have to be fascinating.
At first, Tillyard delivers on the battlefront. Her depiction of the sacking of the fortified city of Badajoz, which not only claimed many English lives but also resulted in an orgy of violent rape and pillage on the part of the British soldiers, is successfully horrifying. But because of the nature of war in this period (slow and intermittent), she can't achieve any momentum. And she can't exploit the inherent interest of the guerrilla campaigns because she doesn't adopt any guerrillas into her list of characters.
Tillyard is ambitious and precise in her knowledge of historical detail, but in spite of her readable style, she doesn't allow her large subject enough space to develop. As the Peninsular War expands, and her characters take shape, she addresses each issue ever more fleetingly. "Tides of War" is a likable novel, but if Tillyard had allowed herself to go deeper, it could have been much more than that.
Smiley is the author of "Private Life," "True Blue" and many other works of fiction and nonfiction.