The Face of Battle The Face of Battle The Face of Battle is a 1976 non-fiction book on military history by the English military historian John Keegan. It deals first with the structure of historical writing about battles, the strengths and weaknesses of the "battle piece," and then with the structure of warfare in three time periods—medieval Europe, the Napoleonic Era, and World War I—by analyzing three battles: Agincourt, Waterloo, and the Somme, all of which involved English soldiers and occurred in approximately the same geographical area. When published, the work was groundbreaking. It does not examine the battles only from the point of
Battle of the Herrings numbering between 3,000 and 4,000, confronted the much smaller English force who had set up defensive positions by drawing up the supply wagons into a makeshift fortification. The entire defensive formation was then further protected by the placement of sharpened spikes all around to prevent the French cavalry from charging, a tactic which had been employed, with great success, at the Battle of Agincourt. The French attack began with a bombardment using gunpowder artillery, a relatively new weapon for the time and one whose proper usage was not well understood although it was damaging to the wagons and caused English