Introduction

There is a saying that one writes the book one wants to read. In preparing a chapter for an academic book a few years ago, I read the classic works old and new on Chartism and the Chartists. I kept running into references to General Charles Napier. The consensus in what I read was that he did a surprisingly humane job as the commander of the army that faced the Chartist protesters in the north of England at the beginning of the 1840s. He may have saved England from revolution, and at the very least he saved some of the members of the working class from massacre. The key to his success in the north of England seemed to be that he agreed with the Chartists about most things. When he was waiting to take over his command he wrote a book accusing the factory owners of the systematic murder of children – the very factory owners he was about to defend from the Chartists.