the Day Column Broke

On the morning of 11 May 1745, the finest infantry in Europe marched into a trap four months in the building. At Fontenoy in the Austrian Netherlands, the British and Hanoverian column advanced through a prepared killing zone - between a fortified village and a forest held by elite skirmishers, absorbing enfilading fire from a redoubt they did not know existed - and drove three hundred yards into the French camp before the Irish Brigade finally broke them. They had lost. They had also performed, in defeat, one of the most extraordinary infantry feats of the century.The Day the Column Broke is narrative history at the highest level - the full story of Fontenoy and its consequences, told with the pace of a novel and the rigour of serious scholarship. Maurice de Saxe, the dying Marshal-General who designed the position from a wicker litter. William Augustus, the twenty-four-year-old Duke of Cumberland, facing the greatest operational commander of his era. The Irish Brigade charging across the debris of a morning's fighting. And the chain of consequence that ran from the Scheldt valley to the Scottish Highlands - from Bonnie Prince Charlie's landing at Glenfinnan to Culloden and the destruction of the Highland clan system.This is how the modern world was made.