The March of Folly

“In
The March of Folly
, Barbara Tuchman, as usual, breaks all the rules. She sails forth with bold moral purpose at a time when most other popular historians hug the shores of biography and most academic historians are content to paddle quietly in small ponds.… Tuchman’s ‘special talent,’ as her fellow journalist and historian Frances Fitzgerald has written, ‘lies in her ability to wade through mountains of documentation and come out with Ariadne’s thread—the clean story line that permits her readers to follow her through a maze of events into the life of a period.’ … There is more to Tuchman’s appeal than superb storytelling. She also glories in unmasking deceit, cant, and pomposity.”

—
Newsweek

“The specter of this ultimate folly [nuclear war] hangs over Barbara Tuchman’s brilliant and troubling book,
The March of Folly
, like a ghost from the future. She addresses it not a word. She doesn’t have to. No one could read her accounts of the powerful of this world … without thinking of the solemn warnings since 1945 that we are building weapons of our own destruction. For Tuchman this is the essence of folly: disaster plainly foreseen by many in good time, ready and feasible alternatives, willfully ignored by men obsessed with power.”

—
Chicago Tribune

“The March of Folly
is, at one level, a glittering narrative of three “major events.… At another, it is a moral essay on the crimes and follies of governments and the misfortunes the governed suffered in consequence.”

—
The New York Times Book Review

“The specter of this ultimate folly [nuclear war] hangs over Barbara Tuchman’s brilliant and troubling book,
The March of Folly
, like a ghost from the future. She addresses to it not a word. She doesn’t have to. No one could read her accounts of the powerful of this world—corrupt Renaissance popes, the arrogant ministers of King George III of Britain who lost America, the confident Cold War mandarins of Washington … without thinking of the solemn warnings since 1945 that we are building the weapons of our own destruction. For Tuchman this is the essence of folly: disaster plainly foreseen by many in good time, ready and feasible alternatives, willfully ignored by men obsessed with power.”

Chicago Tribune

“The March of Folly
is, at one level, a glittering narrative of three major events.… At another, it is a moral essay on the crimes and follies of governments and the misfortunes the governed suffer in consequence.”

The New York Times Book Review

“Only one living writer of history has gained and held anything like such a general readership. Barbara Tuchman’s new book … shows us why.… She now sweeps us through thirty centuries, from the fall of Troy to the war in Vietnam, paying close attention along the way to how the Renaissance popes provoked the Reformation and England lost the American colonies—the four events she’s found to propel her idea that the disasters of history are the result of the folly of rulers. But even these thumping good stories are not quite enough for her. We are also asked to think of Montezuma, of the Visigoths in Spain, of Louis XIV and the Huguenots, of the Kaiser’s use of submarine warfare, of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor: folly upon absorbing folly.”

Vogue

“Like her past books, her new one is witty, intelligent and elegant. Tuchman without question is the most skilled popular historian in practice.”

The New Milford Times

A Ballantine Book
Published by The Random House Publishing Group
Copyright © 1984 by Barbara W. Tuchman

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of
The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random
House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random
House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

Grateful acknowledgment is made to The University of
Chicago Press for permission to reprint an excerpt from
The Iliad
, translated by Richmond Lattimore. Copyright 1951 by
the University of Chicago. All rights reserved.
Used by permission.

Ballantine and colophon are registered trademarks of
Random House, Inc.

www.ballantinebooks.com

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 84-45672

eISBN: 978-0-307-79856-5

This edition by arrangement with
Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., New York.

v3.1

“And I can see no reason why anyone should suppose that in the future the same motifs already heard will not be sounding still … put to use by reasonable men to reasonable ends, or by madmen to nonsense and disaster.”

J
OSEPH
C
AMPBELL
Foreword to
The Masks of God: Primitive Mythology, 1969

Source references will be found in the notes at the end of the book, located by page number and an identifying phrase from the text.

1
. Amphora showing the Wooden Horse, 670
B.C
. (
Mykonos Museum, Deutsches Archäologisches Institut, Athens
)

2
. Wall painting from Pompeii, c. 1st century
B.C
. (
Museo Nazionale, Naples; Photo: Fogg Art Museum
)

3
. Bas-relief depicting an Assyrian siege engine, 884–860
B.C
. (
British Museum
)

4
. Laocoon, Roman,
C.A.D
. 50 (
Museo Pio-Clementino, Belvedere, Vatican
)

1
. Sixtus IV, by Melozzo da Forli (
Vatican Museum; Photo: Scala
)

2
. Innocent VIII, by Antonio del Pollaiuolo (
St. Peter’s; Photo: Scala
)

3
. Alexander VI, by Pinturicchio (
Vatican; Photo: Scala
)

4
.
The Mass of Bolsena
, showing Julius II, by Raphael (
Vatican; Photo: Scala
)

5
. Leo X, by Raphael (
Uffizi, Florence; Photo: Scala
)

6
. Clement VII, by Sebastiano del Piombo (
Museo di Capodimonte, Naples; Photo: Scala
)

7
.
The Battle of Pavia
, Brussels tapestry (
Museo di Capodimonte, Naples; Photo: Scala
)

8
. The traffic of indulgences, by Hans Holbein the Younger (
Metropolitan Museum of Art, Dick Fund 1936
)

9
. Lutheran satire on papal reform (
American Heritage
)

1
. The House of Commons during the reign of George III, by Karl Anton Hickel (
National Portrait Gallery
)

2
. William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham, by Richard Brompton (
National Portrait Gallery
)

3
. George III, from the studio of Allan Ramsay (
National Portrait Gallery
)

4
. Charles Townshend, British School, painter unknown (
Collection of the Duke of Buccleuch and Queensberry, K.T., Drumlanrig Castle, Dumfriesshire; Photo: Tom Scott
)

5
. Augustus Henry Fitzroy, 3rd Duke of Grafton, by Pompeo Batoni (
British Museum
)

6
. Edmund Burke, from the studio of Sir Joshua Reynolds (
National Portrait Gallery
)

7
. Charles Watson-Wentworth, 2nd Marquess of Rockingham, from the studio of Sir Joshua Reynolds (
National Portrait Gallery
)

8
. Racehorses belonging to Charles Lennox, 3rd Duke of Richmond, exercising under the eye of the Duke and Duchess, by George Stubbs (
Duke of Richmond and Trustees of Goodwood House
)

9
. Frederick, Lord North, by Nathaniel Dance (
National Portrait Gallery
)

10
. Lord George Germain, after George Romney (
British Museum
)

11
.
The Able Doctor
, from the
London Magazine (Library of Congress
)

12
.
The Wise Men of Gotham and Their Goose (Library of Congress
)

1
. “How would another mistake help?” Cartoon by Fitzpatrick, 8 June 1954 (
Fitzpatrick and the St. Louis
Post-Dispatch)

2
. “What’s so funny, monsieur? I’m only trying to find my way.” Cartoon by Mauldin, 23 November 1964 (
Bill Mauldin and Wil-Jo Associates, Inc.
)

3
. “Prisoners of War,” by Herblock, 21 July 1966 (
Washington
Post)

4
. “… and, voilà, we haul out a dove … a dove … I’ll have to ask you to imagine this is a dove!” Cartoon by Oliphant, 7 March 1969 (
Universal Press Syndicate
)

5
. “Remember now, you’re under strict orders not to hit any dikes, hospitals, schools or other civilian targets!” Cartoon by Sanders, 14 March 1972 (
Bill Sanders and Milwaukee
Journal)

6
. “He’s trying to save face.” Cartoon by Auth, 1972 (
Washington
Post)

7
. John Foster Dulles at the Geneva Conference, April 1954 (UPI)

8
. Fact-finding mission, Saigon, October 1961 (
Wide World Photos
)

9
. Operation Rolling Thunder, on the U.S. aircraft carrier
Independence
, 18 July 1965 (
Wide World Photos
)

10
. The Fulbright Hearings, February 1966 (
Wide World Photos
)

11
. Antiwar demonstration on the steps of the Pentagon, 21 October 1967 (
Wide World Photos
)

12
. The Tuesday lunch at the White House, October 1967 (
White House Photo, Lyndon B. Johnson Library
)