Britannia Sickens : Sir Arthur Wellesley and the Convention of Cintra

London England: Leo Cooper. Very Good/Very Good. 1970. First Edition. Cloth. 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall 0850520479 Harback Hardback. Price clipped to D/J. Deprived of his command after the battle of Vimeiro, Sir Arthur Wellesley was forced to stand helplessly by while the laurels of victory were snatched from his hand. The unbelievably inept diplomacy of Sir Hew Dalrymple and Sir Harry Burrard, the ageing commanders sent to to supersede 'so young a Lieutenant-General', as the Duke of York described Wellesley, is a terrible indictment of the system of military appointments at the time, and one is bound to speculate upon what would have been the course of European history if Wellesley had been permitted to exploit his victory to the full. In this book, the author does far more that to tell the story of a higherto scantily-recorded episode in the early career of the Duke of Wellington. The all-too-familiar human trafedy of a brilliant young man thwarted by the incompetence and jealousy of his superiors combined with the author's undoubted scholarship add immeasurably to the readability of this important and carefully researched book. Illustrated. 208 pp. ( We carry a wide selection of titles in The Arts, Theology, History, Politics, Social and Physical Sciences. academic and scholarly books and Modern First Editions etc.) .