At the end of a chapter describing the development of the use of canons on board European ships from Vasco da Gama in the very late 15th c. to the Napoleonic Wars, he has the following striking passage:
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| Vasco da Gama, 1469-1524 |
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| Horatio Nelson, 1758-1805 |
"Sea battles are almost invariably wrapped in a cloak of glory. Horatio Nelson, who helped hone fighting tactics to a peak of brutality, now stands in state on his oversized pillar in Trafalgar Square. Yet few events, even in war, match the naval fight of the gunpowder era for sheer madness. That two bands of poor, illiterate, scurvy-ridden men, kidnapped & driven by the whip, should be induced to fire at each other from point-blank range with massive guns - it was a ritual of almost incomprehensible savagery & barbarism. That it should have continued & reached its apogee in the Age of Enlightenment is a deep paradox that any theory of political conflict is feeble to explain."
- Gunpowder , p. 107
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| Nelson's Column |
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