Edward Coss attempts to reveal Wellington’s army’s sinews of victory during the Peninsular campaign in “the science” (193, quoting S. L. A. Marshall) of military management and in doing so he addresses four related notions. First, British soldiers were not “the scum of the earth” as Wellington famously said, and—according to Coss—historians have frequently repeated. Instead, he shows that the soldiers suffered extremely harsh conditions and stole food to survive, suggests that reports of their bad behavior in sieges are inconclusive evidence of criminality, and claims that what kept them effective was the cohesion of mess and regiment. All this is presented as new, but most is not. Coss tends to ignore contrary evidence in his sources, as not all of them actually charge that private soldiers were “criminals” (289). Charles Oman (Wellington’s Army, 1809–1814 [1913], 213) describes a “small percentage of irreclaimables”; Corelli Barnet (Britain and Her Army, 1509–1970 [1970], 241) states that only “later in the [Napoleonic] war did the ‘respectable’ working classes join the army in large numbers via the militia.” Coss adds that unemployment was a major motivation for enlistment, but he is unaware of the practice of “drilling to death” drafted militiamen to coerce then into enlisting.

The best part of the book shows that privates did not get enough food on campaign. Although this point has been made before, the author provides much additional evidence. Yet Coss uncritically accepts mentions of hunger as evidence that “meals … were infrequent” (14). However, as the otherwise quoted Letters of Private Wheeler (1951) states, “we were sometimes badly off for biscuit, but … no army could be supplied better” (231).

Coss compares punishment statistics with British civilian crime data (and other armies), but this exercise has limited value, considering the difficulties of calculating actual crime rates on campaign. He concludes that since eyewitness accounts of soldiers’ criminality during sieges differ, their negative reputation is overrated. Yet eyewitnesses vary greatly in emphasis, ignoring and highlighting what suits them both on the scene and afterward, and it is hardly fair to cite the usual, violent postsiege chaos to argue that soldier criminality was “normal” or otherwise. Coss notes that in extremely bloody, nasty Napoleonic siege warfare, privates often got so drunk while looting that they accidently shot each other, and such mayhem would probably have been committed by many soldiers under these harsh and extreme conditions. Private Wheeler declared: “If you knew the hundredth part of the atrocities committed by … British soldiers, it would chill your blood” (Letters of Private Wheeler, 231). Coss also presumes that in an army so notoriously despised, hated, and feared by British civilians, where brutally harsh discipline and a hideous torture—flogging—was often normal for minor offenses, these respectable recruits changed the army, rather than it changing them.

Coss provides much evidence for the strong solidarity of mess and regiment—hardly surprising—but he goes further, arguing that this solidarity was decisive, together with Wellington’s extraordinary generalship, in winning battlefield victories. Yet the Peninsular War was atypical in significant ways and that muddies these waters considerably. British regiments composed the army’s fighting core, but half of it was foreign: Spanish, Portuguese, the King’s German Legion, mercenaries, and guerrillas. Coss ignores the increasingly decisive results of Wellington’s code breakers, as shown by Mark Urban in The Man Who Broke Napoleon’s Codes (New York, 2001). Also virtually ignored is the role of the Spanish guerrillas, who delivered these captured communications, and their constant skirmishing against French supply and communications, which tied up huge numbers of troops. That brilliant general Wellington believed guerrillas important enough to make certain that they had arms and ammunition, despite the serious supply problems that Coss highlights so abundantly. Scholars of armed conflict make a serious oversight by ignoring the military effectiveness of guerrillas. Coss also ignores the major advantage of the Royal Navy’s dominance at sea.

There is nothing like repeated victories to boost morale; yet how did British soldiers perform when victory was not always forthcoming? How did these units fare in battle? The exclusive Peninsula focus, however important, is implied as constituting an appropriate survey to uncover the mysteries of victory, but the thesis is eroded by focusing on this one theater. Addressing contemporary unit performance elsewhere in Europe, the Mideast, South and Southeast Asia, the Caribbean, and the Americas would have strengthened this book.

One source—Sergeant William Lawrence’s autobiography—receives extraordinary weight: written by “an actual soldier,” Coss’s “narrative … revolves around” it as “a guide of sorts … a frame of reference” (51), since his “quintessential … experiences mirror those of the British soldier writ large” and “such an approach is necessary” (12–13). “Necessary” because his primary source evidence is thin: nineteen archival regimental reports and four pages of published sources from the broader 1803–15 era. Likewise, conjecture appears frequently: “must have been” (166), “appear to have” (30), and “likely” (21) form a few examples of many instances, and with long paragraphs lacking any evidence, thus highlighting its scantiness and relying much on secondary sources beyond 1803–15 and from other countries’ armies. Several dozens of published writings by eyewitnesses, including privates, are available and should have been consulted, including recent and older published sources, and especially the important “Gareth Glover Series” of British army Napoleonic-era manuscripts and reprints by Ken Trotman Ltd., and publications by Leonaur, Naval and Military Press, and others.

Coss accepts army figures for enlistees’ ages uncritically, yet frauds were normal. Although regimental practices varied, he often presumes a piece of evidence refers to the whole army rather than to the writer’s unit. He is unaware that officers did not always dine in one mess or that privates collectively punished offenders in their own unofficial “courts.” He wrongly assumes that recruiting crimps operated in this era and that the Luddites wanted “a return to the past” (63) when they wanted employment.

Coss’s work is part of the “why soldiers fight” literature, which has argued extensively and convincingly that soldiers fight for each other, not lofty ideals. This theme is most topical now for the “Anglo-American … context” (xxi), and especially those modern, trillion-dollar filibustering expeditions in the name of justice and freedom. But Coss’s book primarily echoes received wisdom rather than contributing significantly to knowledge of combat effectiveness or British army history.