Arrogant armies : great military disasters and the generals behind them / James M. Perry.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. General Edward Braddock and the French and Indian War (1754-1763) -- 2. Brigadier General Josiah Harmar and Major General Arthur St. Clair and the Indian Wars on the Northwest Frontier (1790-1791) -- 3. British and French Generals and Their Disastrous Efforts to Restore Slavery to Haiti (1791-1804) -- 4. General Charles MacCarthy and the First Ashanti War (1824) -- 5. Major General William George Keith Elphinstone and the First Afghan War (1839-1842) -- 6. Major General Sir George Pomeroy-Colley and the First Boer War (1880-1881) -- 7. Major General Charles "Chinese" Gordon and the Fall of Khartoum (1884-1885) -- 8. General Oreste Baratieri and the First Ethiopian War (1895-1896) -- 9. Major General William R. Shafter and the Spanish-American War (1898) -- 10. Major General Charles Vere Ferrers Townshend and the Mesopotamian Campaign in World War I (1915-1916) -- 11. Major General Manuel Fernandez Silvestre and the Riffian Rebellion in Morocco (1921-1926) --

Conclusion: American Mini-disaster in Somalia (1993).

Spanning more than two hundred years of martial adventurism, aggression, and outright blundering, Arrogant Armies chronicles the profoundly misguided and utterly calamitous military expeditions of the great empire builders and overconfident expeditionary forces. From colonial America to South Africa, from Mesopotamia to Khartoum, an extraordinary number of presumably superior armies grievously underestimated native forces.

Using contemporary newspaper accounts, military memoirs, diaries of soldiers who fought in the battles, and other firsthand letters and papers, noted journalist James Perry brings a sense of urgency and immediacy to these historic defeats. At times devastating, at times hilarious, his vast panorama of human folly is peopled by frightened soldiers, zealous native resistance, and, of course, a colorful gallery of arrogant, often inept officers.

Many of them received their ultimate comeuppance in these battles: Generals Edward Braddock, Charles MacCarthy, William R. Shafter, Charles Vere Ferrers Townshend, Charles "Chinese" Gordon, William George Keith Elphinstone, Manuel Fernandez Silvestre, and others.