Saturday, May 5, 2012

Currently reading

Barnes & Noble.

I decided to take a break from my usual reading and checked Robert Asprey's The Reign of Napoleon Bonaparte from the local library. I hadn't actually planned to check this out, since it was the second book in Asprey's duology and the library lacked the first, but I started reading the first chapter and the next thing I knew, I was already into the second. To continue the Napoleonic theme, I also picked up Mark Urban's The Man Who Broke Napoleon's Codes.

Barnes & Noble.
The book is about George Scovell, who worked as a codebreaker in the British Army during the Napoleonic War, breaking both codes used by the French, including the formidable Great Paris Code.

Tuesday, May 1, 2012

Welp, here we are

Welcome to A Matter of Expedients, a blog with a focus on military history and warfare. I used to run the now defunct History Nerd blog, but after noticing that the majority of my posts were of a military nature, I decided to replace it with a blog focused on that subject. The title itself comes from a variant of a quote by Helmuth von Moltke the Elder, an officer who served in both the Prussian and later, the German militaries. The original quote goes:
Strategy is a system of expedients; it is more than a mere scholarly discipline. It is the translation of knowledge to practical life, the improvement of the original leading thought in accordance with continually changing situations.
The variant I used is "War is a matter of expedients."

With this blog, I'll try and cover all eras of warfare, military figures, battles, weapons, etc. I hope you'll enjoy.