It seems apt that the paperback edition of Andrew Lambert’s gripping analysis in No More Napoleons should be published as Britain’s contribution to the preservation of the security of the continent of Europe, and indeed the wider world, is under debate and our very commitment under question. Criticism from the President of the United States is ironic in the light of the final paragraph in this book. It notes the vital part that this maritime power played in the twentieth-century alliances that frustrated ‘two Napoleons, a Kaiser, a Führer and the Soviet leadership’, at colossal  human, economic and political cost. The diminished resources that arguably constrain the current government are a reflection of a collapse which ‘American policymakers had intended’.

The retrenchment in the armed services in 1815 fully matched that in 1945, and the demand for relief after two decades of war in which Britain had often stood alone was as strong as the feeling that brought in a Labour government to introduce the Welfare State, or the demand for a ‘Peace Dividend’ at the end of the Cold War. How then did ‘Britain, a relatively small state in the European system’ achieve the management of security on the continent through a century marked by cycles of revolution and reactionary repression and by regime change in the nearest neighbouring states? What lessons are there for today’s statesmen?

Firstly, the historic national strategy explained so brilliantly in Andrew Lambert’s other key texts, Seapower States and The British Way of War, was sustained in ‘the Wellington System’, named for the statesman who as a soldier had understood the nation’s maritime policy. Financial strength based on sea trade funded alliances whilst the Royal Navy’s superiority imposed strangling blockade and provided the amphibious agility which he had prized in the Iberian campaign. Unlike today, naval capability was ‘sustained by continuous and substantial funding’. Thus, in 1870, Gladstone could apply the system with a warning to the continental belligerents that a British force was ready to deploy to the Scheldt, the focal point for British security.

Secondly, the statesmen respected the advice of well-educated military and naval men who were far-removed from the blimps of mythology. The Hydrographic Service provided information and intelligence. John Ross, John Hoseason and Henry Chads exemplified alertness to fresh opportunities in the fields of steam propulsion and gunnery in an era of profound technological change. Here perhaps, the current quiet activity of the British Armed Services to assess and adopt unmanned vehicles, as in the Royal Navy’s focus on security of seabed communication and power distribution, bears comparison.

As ongoing conflicts raise questions over prized warfare capabilities such as land armour and manned aircraft, Andrew Lambert’s critique of military arguments at several junctures, but most injuriously in the Committee of Imperial Defence in 1911, should be heeded: ‘The status of the organisation mattered more than the national interest.’ The clear political direction and effective civil/military teamwork which Britain sustained for most of the period between Waterloo and World War One merit close attention.