King and commonwealth

“We advise all Americans to read it carefully, and judge for themselves if ‘the future historian of our war,’ of whom we have heard so much, be not already arrived in the Comte de Paris. The translation is very good.”—The Nation, New York.

“It is so superior to all those preceding it that there is not one in America or Europe worthy to be placed in the same class.”—Saturday Review, London, England.

“Cannot but prove most valuable and interesting to the American reader. I find it very good, indeed.”—W. T. Sherman, General.

“It is by far the best work which has as yet been given to the world in connection with the subject of which it treats.... The Comte de Paris challenges the admiration of even the Southerners, by the fair and philosophical spirit in which he describes events, and sets forth their relations to each other.... He has done for the military institutions and aptitudes of the American people what De Tocqueville has done for their political institutions; and he has written in a more liberal and hopeful spirit.... In all cases his criticisms are moderate and apparently unprejudiced.”—Maj.-Gen. J. H. Wilson, in the International Review.

“We may accredit it with a truthfulness that will entitle it to a place amongst the most valuable books of the present day.”—The Times, New York.

“It becomes continually clearer that this is destined to be the generally received history of the war. It will be deservedly so, for the author, by virtue of being a foreigner, has an impartiality which it would be hard for one of us to acquire; he has a satisfactory knowledge of both the great principles and the minutiæ of the great struggle, and he spares no pains in search of thoroughness and accuracy. More than this, he is so completely master of his subject that he makes clear the most complicated campaigns, and he tells his story in the most lucid way. His position throughout is that of a judge and not that of an advocate, which is all the more commendable in view of the recentness of the events he describes; compared in this respect with Kinglake’s History of the Crimean War, for instance, the superiority of this history is very plain.... The work of translation has been well done.”—The Atlantic Monthly, Boston.

“Most Americans understand, in a vague way, that our fighting was different from that common on European soil, and that a foreign army would have to learn war anew before it could hope to ‘whip us.’ From this book they can learn just what the difference was, and will find that the notion they hold so vaguely has its basis of truth.... We would like to see this history have a wide circulation among Americans. It gives a succinct account of the more important conflicts in which we have been engaged, and is in reality a history of the United States Army, the Civil War being its most extended detail.... The presentation of political events is fair in spirit and moderate in expression.... The work shows great care, and the errors of statement are remarkably few and unimportant. The translation is well made.”—The Galaxy, New York.

“In this, the first part of his great work on the American War, the head of the Orleans family has put pen to paper with excellent result.... Our present impression is that it will form by far the best history of the American War. The translation reads well.”—The Athenæum, London, England.

“The fact that I have been engaged for several years in gathering material and making other preparation for the writing of a history of our civil war has led me to read the Comte de Paris’s work with greater care and much more critically than I should otherwise have done, and I regard it as the only one yet written which is, in a proper sense, a history of the Civil War in America. It is a thoroughly good history of the War, very much better, indeed, than I had thought it possible for any one to write at present.

“The Comte de Paris had two especial dangers to encounter in his effort to write impartially of our war. His personal impressions of the quarrel and of the men who were engaged in it were received while he was an officer upon one side, actively engaged in military service, and there was every reason to apprehend prejudice upon his part against the people whom he was bound to regard as enemies. He was a member of the staff of a general officer who was afterward a candidate for political preferment and it would have been natural enough for him to espouse the personal cause of this chief in all matters pertaining to his campaigns. Both of these dangers the Comte de Paris seems to me to have escaped, and his perfect fairness is not less remarkable than his singular accuracy of perception in matters of character and motive. His candor and impartiality must add largely to the acceptability of his work, both at the North and at the South, and it is these qualifications, more than any others, which distinguish his history from the many treatises we have from American writers on the subject.”—Geo. Cary Eggleston, late of Gen. J. E. B. Stuart’s Cavalry, Confederate Army, author of “A Rebel’s Recollections,” etc.