Chapter 4 - Sacrifice

Summary

This chapter describes the emergence of a new kind of sacrificial military hero, rooted in Christian rather than classical precedents. This development appears in the context of wars involving supposedly savage peoples--the Scottish Highlanders encountered in the Jacobite rebellion of 1745, and the indigenous peoples encountered as allies and enemies in North America and Canada. The figure of the devout Colonel Gardiner, killed at the Battle of Prestonpans, and looted by Highlanders, is compared with the brutal figure of the Duke of Cumberland (the victorious hero and butcher of Culloden). And responses to the death of General Braddock, killed in an ambush in the American wilds, and believed to have been left unburied, are compared with responses to the death of General James Wolfe, who died victorious at the Battle of Quebec (and who was sometimes represented as a Christian martyr). The hero-as-martyr was used to justify violence as part of a civilizing and Christianizing project.