The Fatal Knot
The Fatal Knot

Author: John Lawrence Tone

Publisher: UNC Press Books

Published: 1994

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 9780807821695

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From 1808 to 1814, Spaniards waged a guerrilla war against the French Empire, turning Spain into a nightmare for Napoleon's armies and making the Peninsular War one of the most violent conflicts of the nineteenth century. In The Fatal Knot, John Tone recounts the events of this conflict from the perspective of the Spanish guerrillas, whose story has long been ignored in histories centered on Wellington and the French marshals. Focusing on the insurgent army of Francisco Espoz y Mina, Tone offers a new interpretation of the origins and motives of this first guerrilla force and describes the devastating impact of Mina's guerrillas on Napoleon's troops. Tone argues that traditional explanations for the guerrillas' resistance are inadequate. The insurgents were neither bandits in search of booty nor patriots fighting for king, country, and church. Rather, they were landowning peasants who fought to protect their own interests within the old regime in Navarre, a regime that was marked by something like a true "moral economy," reflected in the economic and institutional empowerment of the peasantry. It was this social order and the guerrilla movement it generated that constituted Napoleon's "fatal knot."

Compound Warfare: That Fatal Knot
Compound Warfare: That Fatal Knot

Author:

Publisher: DIANE Publishing

Published: 2002

Total Pages: 334

ISBN-13: 1428910905

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In the long history of warfare, a recurring theme is the combined use of regular and irregular forces to pursue victory. The practice of employing regular and irregular forces together was not only applied, but also instrumental in bringing victory to the side that at the beginning of the conflict seemed clearly inferior to its opponent. The term “compound warfare” is used to describe this phenomenon of regular and irregular forces fighting in concert. This book is a compilation of examples of this pattern of warfare in many other times and places. Knowing how the dynamics of compound warfare have affected the outcome of past conflicts will better prepare us to meet both present crises and future challenges of a similar nature.

Blood Knots
Blood Knots

Author: Luke Jennings

Publisher: Skyhorse

Published: 2012-05-15

Total Pages: 193

ISBN-13: 1620872951

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Blood Knots is a brilliant and dramatic memoir of an angler’s life. It places Jennings in the front rank of natural history writers. As a child in the 1960s, he was fascinated by the rivers and lakes around his home. Beneath their surfaces waited alien and mysterious worlds. With library books as his guide, he applied himself to the task of learning to fish. His progress was slow, and for years, he caught nothing. But then a series of teachers presented themselves, including an inspirational young intelligence officer, from whom he learned stealth, deception, and the art of dry-fly fishing. So began an enlightening but often dark-shadowed journey of discovery. It would lead to bright streams and wild country, but would end with his mentor’s capture, torture, and execution by the IRA. Blood Knots is about angling, about great fish caught and lost, but it is also about friendship, honor, and coming of age. As an adult, Jennings has sought out lost and secretive waterways, probing waters at dead of night in search of giant pike. The quest, as always, is for more than the living quarry. For only by searching far beneath the surface, he suggests in this most moving and thought-provoking of memoirs, can you connect with your own deep history. Jennings offers here a striking, elegiac narrative for lovers of unique memoirs and the finest fly-fishing literature.

War and Genocide in Cuba, 1895-1898
War and Genocide in Cuba, 1895-1898

Author: John Lawrence Tone

Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press

Published: 2006-12-08

Total Pages: 353

ISBN-13: 0807877301

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From 1895 to 1898, Cuban insurgents fought to free their homeland from Spanish rule. Though often overshadowed by the "Splendid Little War" of the Americans in 1898, according to John Tone, the longer Spanish-Cuban conflict was in fact more remarkable, foreshadowing the wars of decolonization in the twentieth century. Employing newly released evidence--including hospital records, intercepted Cuban letters, battle diaries from both sides, and Spanish administrative records--Tone offers new answers to old questions concerning the war. He examines the origin of Spain's genocidal policy of "reconcentration"; the causes of Spain's military difficulties; the condition, effectiveness, and popularity of the Cuban insurgency; the necessity of American intervention; and Spain's supposed foreknowledge of defeat. The Spanish-Cuban-American war proved pivotal in the histories of all three countries involved. Tone's fresh analysis will provoke new discussions and debates among historians and human rights scholars as they reexamine the war in which the concentration camp was invented, Cuba was born, Spain lost its empire, and America gained an overseas empire.