Join me in a rousing chorus of “Johnny Has Gone for a Soldier,” if you like. Then we’ll jump right in.
Summary
Polly Perks cuts her hair, escapes her home out the back door, and goes to enlist in the army. She lives in Borogravia, where the watchful eye of the Duchess is always on citizens, and her family owns a bar in her name. She means to enlist after her brother left to do the same and never returned home. She meets Sergeant Jackrum and Corporal Strappi, who sign her up along with a few new, eager recruits. Sam Vimes is sitting in a castle on the border between Borogravia and Zlobenia—Borogravia destroyed its clacks towers on account of the war but also their religion, which follows the god Nuggan, who bans… pretty much everything in the form of “Abominations.” The Duchess is a figurehead who hasn’t been seen in decades, but people pray to her because she’s more reasonable than their god, but the Prince of Zlobenia is her nephew and clearly trying to move things along. Vimes is talking to the Zlobenian attaché Clarence Chinny, who will be advising him on how to continue, though Vimes has noted that Borogravia is likely to starve before anything comes to a head. Polly meets several new recruits, including an Igor, a black ribboner vampire named Maladict, and a troll named Carborundum.
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The new team sleeps in the shed with the rest of the group: “Tonker” Halter, “Shufti” Manickle, “Wazzer” Groom, and “Lofty” Tewt. She wakes in the wee hours and goes to pee, managing to do so standing up. Someone in the next stall hands over a pair of socks and tells her to shove it down her trousers—she doesn’t bulge where she should and people are bound to notice. They ask for paper in return, and Polly gives them a propaganda pamphlet from “the Mothers of Borogravia” to entice men to head to war (it had worked on her brother), and rushes out of the privy. Corporal Strappi calls out Polly for shaving with an officer’s mug that she shouldn’t have, and she has to explain that she got it from a soldier who died at her inn (which is all true, she just didn’t know it was a special piece of equipment). She hands over her dulled razor and mug to Tinker, who wants to have a go at it despite having no hair on his chin. They are lined up and asked who has experience with weapons, which Polly admits to. Strap insists on her demonstrating the skill and she headbutts him at the end, telling Jackrum that she learned it from Gummy Abbens, who Jackrum knows. Carborundum wakes and remembers he’s joined the army, and after they leave for the next town, the shed they slept in burns down.
Strappi tells the group that they’re fighting Zlobenia for attacking Lipz (which they might have attacked first), and the group go to sleep that night after arguing about who they were fighting for and what the point was. Polly remembers getting paints for her brother, who was interested in birds, and how he painted a picture of a wren that they both got in trouble for because pictures of living creatures were another Abomination under Nuggan. The group sets out again the next day and comes across a group of wounded soldiers, which Igor asks to see to. Polly goes to adjust her sock in the bushes and comes across Lofty—who also turns out to be a woman. Putting two and two together, Polly realizes that Lofty is always by Tonker and assumes she’s followed her man off to war. They march on and come across a group of refugees heading in the opposite direction. A copy of the Ankh-Morpork Times blows their way, and Polly gets a glimpse of a shredded article that seems to indicate they’re losing. When they arrive at the next town to get their uniforms and weapons, they are informed that they will head to the frontline without training and the lieutenant gives Jackrum his honorable discharge papers. Polly becomes the lieutenant’s batman. The group go to get their uniforms and weapons and find Corporal Threeparts Scallot, who has done the best he could with the kit, but there’s not much left on offer.
Scallot gives them advice, as Polly goes to talk to Lieutenant Blouse, who has been reading books and is determined to eat what the men are eating. She has a perilous (flirtatious) encounter with the maid Molly, then heads back to find Shufti sautéing the horse meat and teaching Scallot how to get more flavor out of the food they’ve got. Maladict calls Polly over, noting that he’s fairly sure Shufti and Lofty are women, and suggests Polly have a word with Shufti so he knows he’s not being subtle. The group tells Scallot that Jackrum was discharged, which is hilarious to him because Jackrum has been around forever and they’ve never been able to get him out. Jackrum comes in, says they’re setting out tomorrow and they all note Strappi is missing. Polly tells Shufti to be more careful and learns that she’s pregnant and following the father of her child. Then she notes Wazzer curtsies to his picture of the Duchess when he thinks no one is looking. Polly finds a letter Blouse wrote home and finds that he’s essentially an office worker promoted to command. The support group flee, knowing an invasion is coming and Jackrum leaves Polly to distract armed Zlobenians; she pretends to be the barmaid and knocks two out. Maladict tells her that Tonker took care of one too—he’s also a woman. They capture the group of invaders, and Jackrum begins interrogating them.
Commentary
So… we’ve got to start with the title, of course.
The title is a reference to The First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous Regiment of Women, a pamphlet written by John Knox in the 16th century, decrying the appearance of so many women monarchs, who were obviously destroying the natural hierarchy of men in authority. Using it to create the title of this book does two things—it gives you an idea of the themes the story means to tackle (namely dealing with gender roles and how people believe they play into leadership and authority), but it also says very plainly “this has been something folks have complained about for at least several centuries, and we’re clearly not stopping any time soon.”
There are excellent little threads out there online that will attest to this phenomenon around any number of subjects, among them; kids these days just don’t respect their elders; new technologies are the doom of us all; no one wants to work anymore and it’s a tragedy. Sharp folks with an interest in history will put together a sequence of headlines going back at least a century, but much often further, proving that this is a Thing that humans like to wring their hands over, whilst pointing out without having to say a word that… well, we’re still here, so it can’t be all that disastrous. There’s an excellent one on gender roles, in fact, where a plethora of headlines and articles panic over “masculine” women and “feminized” men ruining everything somehow.
Point being, this is a silly thing to fret over, but oh, do we tend to go on about the binary of gender and its immobility—or at least, that it should be immobile if everything was good and right in the world. Dogs and cats. Sun and moon. Logic and emotion. His and hers.
What we have instead is a nation in poverty, being lied to about what, who, and why they’re fighting, and the relative strictness of their gender roles leading to the only thing it can ever lead to: mass disobedience. And this is even with religion tossed into the mix (it’s relevant that Wazzer is incredibly religious here) because no human-based system of order can actually contain our uniqueness and difference. Gender is only one avenue in that, but it’s a good one to consider from that angle because it’s the most obviously awkward in our species’ collective attempts to control it.
Alongside that we’re dealing with the ways in which war breaks everything down to waste and leaves nothing behind, and how nationalism is promoted in order to convince the poor to die for people who care nothing for what happens to them. Vimes sees it. Polly is trying not to, but can’t really help it. Tonker sees it: “It’s only your country when they want you to get killed!”
But we’ve only just touched the outer edges of that image. And we’ve obviously got a lot more to learn about these young “lads” and their reasons for enlisting in an army that doesn’t want them.
Asides and little thoughts:
- Wild to find a “don’t ask, don’t tell” joke because it was, of course, still in place when this was written. Ouch.
- Thinking about Vimes being known as “Vimes the Butcher” outside Ankh-Morpork, which is a common epithet, though it’s usually attached to a place i.e. “The Butcher of [location].” Plenty of people have earned the epithet across the political spectrum throughout history, including Oliver Cromwell (who Vimes frequently has elements in common with), Che Guevara, King Leopold II of Belgium, and Saddam Hussein. However, the way it’s used with Vimes’s name is more in keeping with someone like William “Bill the Butcher” Poole, who led the Bowery Boys gang in New York City.
- Atmospherically, this book does an excellent job of making you feel as unwashed and underfed as its characters. I finished this section and immediately wanted a snack and a shower.
Pratchettisms:
With just a hint of ceremony, like a cocktail waiter dropping the little umbrella into a Double Entendre, Eyebrow let the copper fall.
She located the men’s privy, which, indeed, stank of inaccuracy.
She’d done Blouse’s laundry, and of course you went through the pockets before you washed things, because anyone who’d ever tried to unroll a soggy, bleached sausage that’d once been a banknote never wanted to do it twice.
He gave her what is known as an old-fashioned look; this one had dinosaurs in it.
Next week we’ll read up to:
Otto shrugged. “Find someone who vill.”
Hey folks, we’re (clearly) experiencing some technical difficulties with this post. Thanks for your patience as we get this issue resolved.
ETA: Should be fixed now!
The title is a reference to The First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous Regiment of Women,
The title is actually a pun – by “Regiment” Knox meant “rule” or “government”, not “military unit” or “large crowd”. (A pun also found in “1066 and All That” which Pratchett unquestionably had read.) And, spoiler alert, we’ll find that it applies in Knox’s sense as well to a surprisingly high level in Borogravia…
Thinking about Vimes being known as “Vimes the Butcher” outside Ankh-Morpork
In a military context, by far the best known example would be Air Marshal Harris, who led RAF Bomber Command in the Second World War, known to outsiders as Bomber Harris, and to his aircrew as Butcher Harris because of his perceived lack of concern for aircrew losses.
Wild to find a “don’t ask, don’t tell” joke because it was, of course, still in place when this was written.
In place in the US: in the UK openly LGBT people had been allowed in the armed forces since 2000 – but the sheer ludicrousness of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” made it the butt of several jokes over here.
I think it’s a mistake to lump Knox’s work into the “things change, things get worse” category. Knox was the head of the Church (Kirk) of Scotland and his work was a religious polemic. Here it’s Nuggan’s Church that’s oppressing women (and chocolate). Polly goes after her brother because Nuggan decreed that a woman could not inherit property.
I find this one of the hardest Discworld books to reread because I already know the ending and I don’t want to give away too much. In this part of the book we meet the cast and listen to the banter. A slight note – I believe this is the first time Pratchett specifically mentioned lesbians.
One other thing that Pratchett rubs our nose in is the devastation of an ongoing war. Not just the sights, sounds, and smells of a battlefield but the destruction of crops and houses and the terror of fleeing peasants. It brings to mind recent images of Roundworld conflicts
I think it’s a fairly localized (to places near Uberwald) epithet, a callback to the thirty men and a dog he supposedly killed outside Bonk back in Fifth Elephant.
written in 1558 when Knox, a staunch protestant, was trying to get to Scotland from mainland Europe. He was particularly against Queen Mary of England and Mary of Guise who was regent of Scotland for her daughter Mary Queen of Scots. All were Catholic and all were blocking his return. His timing was awful as Mary of England died that year to be followed by her protestant sister, Elizabeth. Elizabeth was not amused by his polemic since it called into question her own right to rule and refused him permission to go through England.
6.last: and, notice, it’s definitely the sights and sounds of a modern war, not a mediaeval one. Discworld is an Early Modern world now, has been since “The Truth” or “The Last Hero” – Polly isn’t wearing a breastplate and a pot helmet, she’s in a red coat and a shako, and she’s been conscripted into a uniformed state army with long serving officers and even a General Staff, not a feudal levy. The constant hunger and destruction are straight out of Brecht or Grimmelshausen writing about rhe Thirty Years War.
@9 – I agree. This is not Jingo with lords creating regiments and recruiting peasants to serve in them. This is the concept of a modern army.
Dating it in Roundworld terms is problematic. I had mentally pictured more of the American Civil War era due to the clacks / telegraph and (a very minor spoiler for the next part) airborne surveillance.
@9
Breastplates are theoretically standard issue, supply just hadn’t got any worth wearing anymore.
There was discussion in the last book but one that Vimes keeping an Igor away from his wife during birth is a good thing because the Igor had just been dealing with dead bodies and was presumably far from sterile. Here we see that at least one Igor knows what germs are.
@9: Polly is wearing a shako because the helmets in stock are a mess, and she looks at a couple of breastplates in the quartermaster’s stock and decides they’re useless. The correspondence of times isn’t simple; the Roundworld equivalent to clacks was invented at the very end of the 18th century, long after the countries best at dominating others had replaced pikes and swords (for fighting on foot, not ceremony or cavalry) with muskets. Some of this may reflect Borogravia being a poor, “less-developed” country.
A few more Pratchettisms:
“You take a bunch of people who don’t seem any different from you and me, but when you add them all together you get this huge sort of raving maniac with national borders and an anthem.”
“Whoms” were likely to be far more trouble than your common everyday “who.” I still remember being drilled over “who” vs “whom” — in the 11th grade! At some point cases disappear.
She’d be funny just as long as she was useless, and safe as long as she was funny. In a nutshell….
“It’s only your country when they want you to get killed!” Pratchett would surely also have read Kipling: It’s Tommy this, and Tommy that, and “Chuck ‘im out, the brute!”/But it’s “saviour of his country” when the guns begin to shoot.” But Kipling hardly had the last word; cf “No VC ever called me [n-word]”.
…for a moment at least, summer was back — moist and sticky and mildly unpleasant, like a party guest who won’t go home.
This book largely has little in common with The Wee Free Men. But in addition to the subplot of a girl going forth to retrieve her brother, they share a feature that’s fairly unusual in Discworld books — a tightly limited perspective. TWFM is almost entirely Tiffany’s POV (and memories), with a bit at the beginning that could be termed omniscient or Miss Tick, and of course the footnotes. If I recall correctly, this book is almost entirely Polly’s POV, with occasional Vimes interludes and omniscient bits about, e.g., buildings burning after the squad leaves. This is important for the gradual revealing of many secrets throughout the book, which would be different if we were seeing into more of the minds involved. It contributes to the especially real and grounded feel of the narrative — mostly a series of events as experienced by one person, the way it would be for any of us.
I’ve seen someone suggest that the Duchess’s name, Annagovia, is a play on Anastasia (Ana-stays-ia).
Pratchettisms:
‘The building hung over the end of town like a threat’
‘The four lesser Apocalyptical Horsemen of Panic, Bewilderment, Ignorance, and Shouting took control of the room, to Corporal Strappi’s obscene glee.‘ [I don’t know if the capitalization is accurate; I’m listening to the book.]
12: yes, there are good in-story reasons why Polly ends up looking like a Peninsular War soldier, not a mediaeval pikeman. But Pratchett wrote those reasons into the story so that she did!
I agree with 9 that there’s no simple correspondence. The uniforms say 1810 or so, as does the telegraph (a big feature of Napoleonic war) but the feel of Borogrovia is the 30 Years War or the Triple Alliance…
A nit wrt the summary: Polly escapes out the window; Oliver continues the escape out the back door. (I’m torn between “She would have given herself more cover by picking a blunter name.” and “Smart of her to pick a name similar enough that she can correct if she slips when asked her name.”)
@12 –
Muskets vs. Pikes. – I think this is more a function of Pratchett wanting to avoid the gonne in Discworld’s evolution. Thus pikes and swords replace fixed bayonets and bows and crossbows replace muskets and pistols.
A minor point. It was Dr. Lawn, not Vimes, who ordered Igor out (unless he was boiled).
they share a feature that’s fairly unusual in Discworld books — a tightly limited perspective
interesting point! It isn’t completely unheard of – I think Mort and Pyramids are almost entirely from Mort’s and Teppic’s perspectives. (Hmm, those are coming-of-age narratives as well, aren’t they?)
Mostly, though, Discworld books have multiple perspectives…
@9 I’m not exactly a military history buff, but for me, the first war that sprang to mind reading this book was WO I, considering the emphasis on death and disfigurement of the soldiers. Part of the (very morbid) joke, after all, is that the last regiment sent to the front are all girls – because all the men are already fighting (or dead, or disabled).
And WO I was particularly devastating for the UK, in wiping out a good part of an entire generation of men. Don’t ask me where, but I even remember reading that Terry Pratchett based the character of Lady Sybil on the type of women who were left behind and had to keep the estates running after the men in their families were killed in WO I.
@18: Farah Mendlesohn made that argument about Sybil at a Pratchett panel at Wiscon ~15 years ago; I’ve probably repeated it here, trusting in her English perspective for something I can’t comment on directly, but it may also have spread through Terry Pratchett: Guilty of Literature (which she coedited). But the injuries shown here are typical of wars for some centuries; I’d say this story is less connected to WW1 than to earlier wars because all the injuries could be impact traumas — there are no chains of people blinded or breathless due to gas.
History vs. Pratchett
The basis of the uniform and tactics date back to the New Model Army of the mid-1600s. The foot regiments would have had pikes, a pot helmet and a red uniform (chosen because Venitian Red was the cheapest dye). In battle they formed a line to protect the musketeers behind them from cavalry.
In Pratchett’s gun-less Discworld, the guns are replaced by bows and crossbows.
Technology is evident in the clacks, photography, and (in the next part) airborne surveillance. These developments put it in our mid-1800s. The war that involved all of these aspects is the American Civil War.
Devastation is a product of all wars but I feel Pratchett was primarily influenced by WW I for his description of the effects of the number of soldiers’ deaths vis-a-vis a small nation’s population and for his description of the war’s effects on refugees, villages, and farms suffered on the Continent.
To me this definitely isn’t WW 1 because that was actually a big war. This war is important to the people fighting but barely a ripple to the rest of the world.
21: hence the War of the Triple Alliance which killed 80% of the male population of Paraguay but is not really known outside the region.
I’d say it’s not based on any specific war, but certainly draws from many wars where society was drastically changed by it.
This was from an interview during the Night Watch press tour when we was working on MR which mentions an American Civil War book being inspirational.
@15: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweet_Polly_Oliver may be relevant. :-)
@20: as chip137 and ajay point out, the Chappe optical telegraph existed before the Napoleonic Wars started, and airborne surveillance was also used by Revolutionary France (and then everyone gave up on it for 50 years). There was no photography in the Napoleonic era – or at least, no photography that wasn’t taking place in labs and taking hours of stillness. But Discworld has no trains at this point, which were a defining feature of the ACW: we really can’t pin it to a particular Roundworld era (no guns is one thing, but no artillery would be _huge_ for Napoleonic warfare). Still, ajay is definitely right that Discworld has moved forward in history.
Regarding beer: “The contents smelled like something she wouldn’t feed to pigs. She took a sip and completely changed her opinion. She would feed it to pigs.”
I don’t quite get the joke here.
25: not too complex a joke. Beer tastes terrible to Polly but not quite as bad as it smells.
I can’t believe it took me so long to notice this joke:
There’s a running joke throughout the book about military men being called after items of clothing. Lieutenant Blouse we’ve already met and we’ll meet General Froc (of the Froc coat) later, along with many others. (The real life originals of this joke are the wellington boot, the cardigan, the Sidcot suit and the Sam Browne belt.)
But until the penny dropped just now I hadn’t realised that Corporal Strappi is obviously the namesake of the Strappi top, or possibly the Strappi sandal.
Polly isn’t wearing a breastplate and a pot helmet, she’s in a red coat and a shako, and she’s been conscripted into a uniformed state army with long serving officers and even a General Staff, not a feudal levy.
I should correct myself here. Polly has not been conscripted – she’s volunteered. In fact, none of the Monstrous Regiment have been conscripted, and as far as we know Borogravia doesn’t have conscription. Paul volunteered because he thought it would be fun. Sergeant Jackrum is a recruiting sergeant, not the head of a press-gang.
@27 – Don’t forget that Blouse also speculated on having a recipe named after him. Besides being a reference to Beef Wellington, this is a shoutback to The Last Continent where Rincewind invents Peach Nellie (Melba).
@27
Also Lords Jersey and Raglan; I once encountered a reference to those to along with Cardigan as the “knitwear lords.”
@29
Although Beef Wellington is only indirectly named for Arthur, Lord Wellington. The dish is named for the city of Wellington, New Zealand, which is on turn named for the general.
@30 Jersey knitwear is named after the island, not after any member of the Villiers family.
30: I admit I hadn’t ever heard of a Lord Jersey who was a famous military man. They seem to have mostly been politicians. But, yes, both the peer and the sweater are named after the island.
A raglan sleeve is just a particular cut of sleeve – doesn’t have to be knitwear and indeed often isn’t – but it was actually named after Lord Raglan (the commander in the Crimea). The Crimea also gave us the balaclava (known to Americans as a ski mask).
No one seems to know where Beef Wellington comes from – there’s no record of it ever being cooked (at least under that name) while the Duke was alive. I’d be interested in seeing a source that says it was named after Wellington in New Zealand rather than after the Duke.
And, nitpick: he is not “Arthur, Lord Wellington”. A marquess or baron would be referred to as “Lord X” or “Firstname, Lord X” – like the poet Alfred Tennyson, who on becoming the first Baron Tennyson became “Alfred, Lord Tennyson”. But a duke is different – he’s “Arthur, Duke of Wellington”.
“Lord Arthur Wellington” would be someone completely different again… F/SF systems of nobility tend to be far simpler than actual systems because otherwise it becomes unmanageably complicated.
@7: Given Vimes’s comment about Borogravia not understanding “the fine art of propaganda”, it’s more likely that they just slapped the name on him, but didn’t think to come up with any suitably horrifying atrocities to go with it.
@24: today, 10,000. Fascinating!
The “obvious” joke of the title is that approximately all of the recruits except for Polly are not conventionally human; to be crude, they are a regiment of monsters. You don’t have to have heard of John Knox to appreciate that. If you have heard of John Knox, another meaning emerges, but you still think Mr Pratchett is just going for the pun…
Noting Rudyard Kipling, there’s a reasonably long history of literature about how lousy war is. I expect there are English ballads and maybe satirical Egyptian tomb hieroglyphics, indeed TV Tropes’s page “Recruiters Always Lie” invites me to consider “Instructions of the Scribe Wenemdiamun”, and I could drag in the story of Uriah the Hittite. In the genre of science fiction or fantasy that isn’t by H. G. Wells, Wikipedia says that “Harry Harrison reports having been approached by a Vietnam veteran who described it as ‘the only book that’s true about the military’. Terry Pratchett once said: ‘I don’t think The Hitchhiker’s Guide was the funniest Science Fiction novel ever written.'” What they’re referring to is Harry Harrison’s “Bill the Galactic Hero” (1965). There are sequels, whose quality varies, as does authorship.
ISTM that’s a little extreme; IIRC, the most “inhuman” at least one other member of this group gets is channeling (for real) the Duchess. (Would you argue that Magrat is unhuman for channeling a past warrior queen? Or that she didn’t really channel?)
YMMV; to my taste, Bill uses a club all the time, even when a scalpel might work better. OTOH, I was raised on Gilbert&Sullivan, so the English-absurd style of HHG may feel more comfortable to me than to others.
@35
Most of them are perfectly ordinary humans, although having a vampire and a troll in the same squad is unusual enough to be noted in-universe. Igors are generally accepted as human, just very odd humans, and he rest are uquestionably as human as you or me.
@36 re: Bill: yeah. I think the speed the book moves and sheer density of jokes – like the parody of The Man Who Was Thursday happening in a parody Trantor because there’s not enough book to do them separately – helps, though; the pacing feels a bit like a Mel Brooks movie.