Customer Reviews

MEMOIRS OF A CAVALIER.

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is obviously one of Defoe's more obscure works. Part I begins in 1630. A young English nobleman, a second son, though his father's favorite, decides to see something of the world and begins traveling on the continent with a friend. He signs on with the troops of Gustavus Adolphus, king of Sweden, who's aiding German Protestants against, I think, the Catholics. This ten-year period occurs near the end of the Thirty Years War. My knowledge of seventeenth-century European history is practically nonexistent, so I didn't really understand the issues involved and didn't learn much more from this book.

In Part II, our nameless hero returns to England, where the Civil War between the Cavaliers (the king's troops) and the Roundheads (Puritans) is about to get underway. (It was at the end of the Civil War that Charles I was beheaded, after which the Commonwealth took over for eleven years until the restoration of Charles II in 1660.) I thought this part might be more interesting, as I do know something about English history, and it was.

Like A JOURNAL OF THE PLAGUE YEAR, this book, too, has a fictional narrator in a historical setting. If you like Defoe, you will not dislike this book. If you don't like Defoe, this book won't change your mind.

Daniel Defoe's `hero' is a mercenary: `I confess, when I went into arms at the beginning of this war, I never troubled myself to examine sides. I was glad to hear the drums beat for soldiers, as if I had been a mere Swiss, that not cared which side went up or down, so I had my pay.'

He is full of admiration for the battle tactics of his masters. But, what happens after the battle is over doesn't bother him: towns delivered to the `fury of the soldiers', plundering, looting and slaughtering innocent women and children.

The soldier is amazed about the `prodigious stupid bigotry of the people' and `the entire empire of the priests over the souls and the bodies of people'. But he clearly sees that `religion is the pretence not the cause of war'. Behind the veil of religion lay the fundamental interests of the warring parties: the Protestant masters fighting the Catholics to keep their `privileges' (not paying the tithes to Rome and its clergy) and the Puritans fighting the King in order to restore the rights of their power base (Parliament).

This novel with all its massacres and diseases has only historical value as a picture of army life in the 17th century.

Only for historians and Defoe fans.