What do the twelve most formative battles in Western history tell us? And how did they create the world we know today -- and what lessons have we forgotten from them?

Author Michael Walsh presents them in his new book A Rage to Conquer, detailing the fascinating lessons from The Iliad all the way to the World Trade Center. Michael and I discuss some of the connecting threads between these battles, why Napoleon Bonaparte gave us modern Europe, and how a return to masculine virtue and martial spirit is essential for Western survival. 

Michael and I talked on Thursday afternoon about his new book, as well as his previous books The Devil’s Pleasure Palace: The Cult of Critical Theory and the Subversion of the West and Last Stands: Why Men Fight When All Is LostLast Stands: Why Men Fight When All Is Lost. HIs new book A Rage to Conquer acts a little as a sequel to Last Stands, or perhaps better put, an extension of his historical analysis. 

I had just received the book when we set this interview up, so I didn't have much of a chance to do anything except skim through, and look at the table of contents and index. Michael has a funny barb when I tell him that, which I won't spoil here, but I had wondered if he had included Thermopylae in the battles. I tend to think that gets overplayed, but Michael disagreed -- although it's not one of the chapters for a good reason. (Transcript excerpts are edited for clarity.)

Ed: ... the Battle of Thermopylae is not one of the 12 battles that changed the course of Western history. ... It has its place, but it isn't really something that I would consider to be a history changer, sort of a history prep. And so it's not that you don't mention it, you mentioned it a few times in the book, Thermopylae does come up in your book.

So first off, why not Thermopylae?

Michael: Well, because it was in Last Stands, which was the book before this one. It was an easy answer. You set me up for an easy layup there. It's actually the opening of Last Stands, which came out four years ago, and was a surprise bestseller. I mean, it was an enormous bestseller. And it appealed to people who like military history, but who like cultural history, too.

Michael and I discuss a few of these battles in our podcast interview, but I want to leave the detail to the readers -- including myself. A couple of the battles held a specific interest for me, including Austerlitz, which Michael notes is considered Napoleon's masterpiece. The book tells the story of the battle that made Napoleon an emperor, but also how it transformed Europe:

Ed: But one of the interesting things about Napoleon, Austerlitz, you know, for Waterloo, for that matter, is that this is early 19th century, when all this is taking place. And at the time, France was unified, but the German states were [not unified], Italy was a series of states. ... How much did Austerlitz contribute to the later momentum towards uniting the German states and uniting the Italian states?

Michael: A lot, because remember, Napoleon's done by 1815. Right. He's done. He gets sucked into Russia in 1812, kind of sort of wins the Battle of Borodino, but that's another poison pond. So he chases it to Moscow, the Russians say, okay, we got tons of territory, we'll just leave, and you can have an empty city, which by the way, we're gonna set on fire too. And then he had to retreat back to France. But what Napoleon did up until the defeat at Leipzig, which really finished him.

Waterloo comes a little bit later, and that's just a coda to his career, but he unified all the other European states against him. There was a series of things called the First Coalition, Second Coalition, Third Coalition, in which states with common interests found themselves opposing Napoleonic expansionism. And that did lead to the unification of the German states around the time of Bismarck.

Ed: And the Risorgimento [in Italy] happens at almost the exact same time. 

Michael: ... The slogan, as they were unifying Italy under Vittorio Emanuele, was Viva Verdi. Verdi, the great composer, but V-E-R-D-I also stood for Vittorio Emanuele, Rei d'Italia. And it was a slogan that you could write, say, yeah, I love that, Rigoletto, that's great music, man. But you're actually a revolutionary wanting Italy to be united under a single king. And that's a good example of why you can't just look at these battles as military encounters, because that doesn't tell you anything beyond the tactical level.

However, the crux of the book, as with Last Stands, is the masculine nature of war and the role that faith plays in national defense -- lessons that the West has forgotten at its own peril. We talk about the new administration's focus on lethality over social engineering at the Pentagon and what Pete Hegseth could do to restore a warrior culture necessary to prevent defeat in future conflicts. And there will always be future conflicts:

Ed: I got a chance to know [Hegseth] a little bit. He's a smart guy. He's a sharp guy. Very friendly. But he has a very particular view that aligns with what you say, which is that,to quote Rush Limbaugh, the purpose of a military is to kill people and break things. And anything that the military is doing that isn't focused on killing people and breaking things, preparing readiness for killing people and breaking things, is counterproductive to the entire reason you have a military.

Michael: And I'm glad to hear him use the word lethality, because that's the point. That's the toxic masculinity in quotes that I've been talking about in both of these books. Now, in Last Stance, the prior book to this one, the last chapter was devoted to my own father's service at the Battle of the Chosin Reservoir in Korea, which he fought in 1950, and I'd been born a few months before that. So I kind of grew up in a household of what does duty, honor, and country mean?

And this has been denigrated and mocked by the left for a good chunk of my life, and I'm 75 now, and he's 99. He ain't going nowhere. He's perfectly fine, thank you very much. But it's good to see people like Hegseth, whom I've never met, talking that way, that we're seeing a restoration of kind of classic masculinity, which is making the left go nuts because they hate it so much. It threatens their entire worldview in a very visceral way.

We have plenty more in our conversation below. I certainly hope you enjoy it, and be sure to order A Rage to Conquer: Twelve Battles That Changed the Course of Western History too.

The Ed Morrissey Show is now a fully downloadable and streamable show at  Spotify, Apple Podcasts, the TEMS Podcast YouTube channel, and on Rumble and our own in-house portal at the #TEMS page!