A Matter of Honour: The Life, Campaigns and Generalship of Isaac Brock/The Astonishing General: The Life and Legacy of Sir Isaac Brock

History Jonathon Riley, A Matter of Honour: The Life, Campaigns and Generalship of Isaac Brock (London: Frontline Books, 2011), 352 pp. Paper. £19.99. ISBN 978-1-896941-65-3. Wesley B. Turner, The Astonishing General: The Life and Legacy of Sir Isaac Brock (Toronto: Dundurn Press, 2011), 376 pp. Cased. $35. ISBN 978-1-55488-777-4. As the bicentenary of the War of 1812 approaches, we are likely to be inundated with a flood of studies of generals on both sides of the conflict. Not surprisingly the first to appear are two biographies of one of the great 'Canadian' heroes of the War: General Sir Isaac Brock. In some ways Brock is a strange choice for canonization. He spent only four years in Canada in a subordinate position and he participated in only two battles during the War of 1812. He did win a decisive victory at Detroit in August 1812, but he was killed a few months later at the beginning of the battle of Queenston Heights. Yet he is perhaps the best remembered of the generals on either side of the American-Canadian border. These two biographies of General Isaac Brock cover much the same ground, using very similar sources. Indeed, they come to very similar conclusions. But they approach their topic very differently. Lieutenant-General Jonathon Riley, the author of A Matter of Honour: The Life, Campaigns and Generalship of Isaac Brock, is himself a distinguished soldier. He has spent 36 years in the British Army and served in a variety of military commands, but he is also a scholar who has written extensively about the history of the British army. His biography is by far the stronger on Brock's early life and military career. As Donald E. Graves notes in his foreword to the book, 'when Jonathon Riley discourses about the art of command, the principles of leadership, the conduct of operations and the effect of terrain and weapons capability on tactics, his words have not only the ring of truth but experience' (p. viii). In the early chapters of the book we learn a good deal about the British army and the context in which Brock functioned. In the early nineteenth century, Riley points out, little was required of a British officer other than that he took care of his men, maintained discipline and showed personal bravery. Brock scored highly on all these points. Riley clearly empathizes with Brock, but he is not an uncritical admirer. He recognizes that Brock, an aggressive general prepared to take risks, was lucky, at least at first. He notes that if Brock had faced the bettertrained and much better-led American army that took the field in 1814, he probably would not have been successful in the dangerous gamble he took at Detroit in 1812. One of the questions which led Riley to undertake his study was to understand why Brock, the general officer commanding all the British and Canadian troops in Upper Canada, met his death at the Battle of Queenston Heights doing the job of a captain. Riley argues that it is 'downright wrong' to criticize Brock for the decision he took to lead the charge against the Americans, for Brock took the decision 'according to the available information and exer- cising his own intuitive judgment' (p. …

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