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[New York: MacMillan Publishing Co., Inc., 1980]

As far as I'm concerned, the subtitle of this book really ought to be "The Agony and the Ecstasy." Since I was a teenager (many, many years ago...), I've been casually reading any book on the Southern Campaign I happened to stumble over, but since I started this site, I've been actively looking for them. And, believe me, I'm starting to feel like a certain cynical Greek with a lamp. I just hadn't realized how bad RevWar fiction is, over all, until I read a lot of it in a short period of time.

Then along comes Cato's War, which is the first (and likely doomed to be the last) novel I've found which meets the two major criteria I would've named for a good RevWar novel. It presents the situation as a true Civil War and it portrays most of the major people involved, on both sides, in an honest and reasonable fashion. Whether it be Lord Rawdon or Charles O'Hara, Francis Marion or Billy Washington, Wheeler has -- with a very few isolated reservations -- done a decent job of bringing them to life as the men one meets in their letters and contemporary journals. Even better for my personal interests, it features Banastre Tarleton (clearly distinct from Bloody Tarleton, evilwickednastyhorrible Butcher of the Waxhaws) in a decent-sized supporting role.

Let the bells ring out and the birdies sing...Except that I can't honestly say it's a good book on the "storytelling" level, so whether you should consider it as "highly recommended" or otherwise depends entirely on what sort of mechanical flaws bug you as an individual reader. I'm thoroughly delighted to find a story where Tarleton has a quirky sense of humor, Rawdon is well-meaning and awkward, Marion hangs a few of his own men, and O'Hara and Washington seem doomed to vie for the title of "funniest man in the campaign," to the point where the book's problems seem easy to ignore. Other readers may, and no doubt will, disagree.

This is the tale of Colonel Philip Cato, late of the North British Dragoons, and how he almost won the American Revolution singlehandedly. (The book suffers a rather severe case of Richard Sharpe Syndrome. More on that later.) Cato, who is living in comfortable retirement in Somerset, is called to London for a meeting with Lord George Germain. Germain and the King convince him of the need to head off to South Carolina to rendezvous with Sir Henry Clinton's forces just as they capture Charleston. Ostensibly, the job is to train provincial cavalry recruits, though upon arrival Cato discovers that Clinton has a different purpose in mind, not to mention having requested a different man for the post. What he really wants is a trustworthy spy on the southern command staff, to keep him informed of Cornwallis's actions once he returns to New York. Since he's a long-time friend of Charles Cornwallis, and can't stand Clinton, Cato -- just what the campaign needs, another "C" name -- refuses.

He ends up staying on in his original capacity -- it would have been a very short novel if he hadn't -- and participates in the whole campaign, from Camden to Yorktown, in a weird kind of intrusive non-intrusive way. He always manages to be in the interesting places just as something is about to happen, orders men to do what history tells us they would've done anyway, sagely warns people of their upcoming mistakes, but never quite manages to make any difference in the outcome. When he isn't telling Tarleton what he should have done at Cowpens or having dinner under flag with his distant cousin Billy Washington, Cato carries on an unfortunate affair with the daughter of a woman he loved in his youth, and tries to remain philosophical about the differences between his own Whig/Foxite political beliefs in the rights of the colonies, and the chaos and animalistic violence he sees around him.

The author was a career soldier, who, according to the blurb on the jacket, has an impressive resume including time spent as a diplomatic attaché. That background gives the novel its greatest strength: a knowledgeable presentation of the military mind set. It also gives it something of the feel of a Cold War novel, from the school of Allbeury or Deighton. Wheeler presents a world view where professional soldiers find more in common with their opposite numbers in the enemy's camp than with the civilians who sent them to war. There are some absolute gems of scenes sprinkled throughout. A glimpse into the thoughts of a cavalry commander, sitting in front of his formed-up troop, waiting for the artillery fire to stop and the order to come to charge. Sage -- and surprisingly tricky -- advice on how to improve one's chances of surviving a duel. A view of the stresses of life inside Yorktown under siege.

I will subjectively add to the list of gems any scene Tarleton is in, except the one at Cowpens, but of course I'm entirely prejudiced so take it with a proper layer of salt. It's not a sympathetic presentation, but it's a fair one, showing his strengths and his lighter side as well as his weaknesses as a man and his talents for the art of war. The only bit that annoyed me was that Wheeler attributes the defeat at Cowpens purely to Tarleton's military incompetence, but that was the common view when he would've been doing his research, and as a professional soldier it's not surprising that he isn't patient with such failures. He shows the same intolerance for Sir Henry Clinton's whole style of command -- in fact, Clinton has far more to complain about than Tarleton in terms of how he's presented.

Wheeler's sense of period occasionally falls into the too-modern, but is generally pretty comfortable. The potholes in the research highway which tripped me up as I was reading are mostly obscure (e.g. O'Hara's inability to speak French, which in reality he spoke fluently) or trivial (e.g. a reference to "Major Tarleton of the Royal Dragoon Guards", and passing mentions of the Union Flag and "Mad Anthony" Wayne). In general, they don't affect the dynamics of the story. As writers do, Wheeler shifts time around here and there for his convenience, and I have some bones to pick with his interpretations of individual items such as Cornwallis's political viewpoint, but that's a subjective complaint. I'd have to say that the biggest problem I had was his presentation of Christian Huck as a thuggish, middle-aged lowland Scot. Still, having gone in search of information on the real Huck (a youngish German immigrant), I can attest that it doesn't make itself readily available.

As for the potholes in the storytelling itself, at the very top of the list we have the Richard Sharpe's Syndrome. Anyone who has read Bernard Cornwell's Sharpe's saga, or watched the TV movie adaptations, will understand what I mean when I say that, in Cornwell's universe, the soon-to-be Duke of Wellington and his entire army may as well have gone off to some nice spot by the seaside, sat under beach umbrellas and had tea. The Napoleonic Wars were fought and won, all but singlehandedly, by the heroics of Richard Sharpe. It's always a fine line in thriller/adventure fiction as to how heroic, courageous, all-seeing and all-conquering an author can make his hero before he becomes a tad self-spoofing. To my mind Philip Cato is, if not over the line, at least precariously balanced on the edge of it. And there's a rebel militiaman or three tiptoeing up behind him to give him a push. The only reason Cato failed to win the Southern Campaign, if not the whole Rebellion, and deliver America to King George on a plate with parsley and an orange slice, is that he was unfortunately wounded at Cowpens which put him out of action for a critical period. Otherwise, he'd've had it all sewn up. Guaranteed.

Still, he's not an unlikable guy (except when he's staring moon-faced at a moronic woman half his age), so what the heck. I think it's just one symptom of the author losing his footing when he gets off on his own, away from the support structure of history. When he's playing puppet master to O'Hara or Tarleton, he has research to guide him. When he has to manipulate original characters and events, he's...shall we say uncomfortable. And I really want to believe that the "romance" was foisted upon him by his agent, who claimed that it is impossible to sell a book unless it has a girl in it. That whole subplot is more than uncomfortable.

So, all in all, an uneven book, with both fantastic highlights and segments I plan to skip entirely if I ever reread it. It's far from being one of the best written books on my list, but even so it's a breath of fresh air on so many levels that I found it to be one of the most enjoyable.

[Endless thanks to Bruce Lander for giving me the heads-up on this one.]