His peace principles contrasted oddly with his passion for military history, a passion which prompted many vacation journeys to battlefields all over Europe, from Salamanca to Austerlitz. He had followed the campaigns of Napoleon through Piedmont and Lombardy, through Germany and Austria, as well as those of Wellington in Spain and Southern France.[57] This taste is not uncommon in men of peace. Freeman had it; J. R. Green and S. R. Gardiner had it; and the historical works of Sir George Trevelyan and Dr. Thomas Hodgkin prove that it lives in those genial breasts also. It was a pleasure to be led over a battlefield by Bowen, for he had a good eye for ground, he knew the movements of the armies down to the smallest detail, and he could explain with perfect lucidity the positions of the combatants and the tactical moves in the game. Twice only did he come across actual fighting, once at Dueppel in 1864, during the Schleswig-Holstein war, and again in Paris during the siege of the Communards by the forces that obeyed Thiers and the Assembly sitting at Versailles. He maintained that the Commune had been unfairly judged by Englishmen, and wrote a singularly interesting description of what he saw while risking his life in the beleaguered city. There was in him a great spirit of adventure, though the circumstances of his life gave it little scope. Travel was one of his chief pleasures, but it was, if possible, a still greater pleasure to his fellow-travellers, for he was the most agreeable of companions, fertile in suggestion, candid in discussion, swift in decision. He cared nothing for luxury and very little for comfort; he was absolutely unselfish and imperturbably good-humoured; he could get enjoyment out of the smallest incidents of travel, and his curiosity to see the surface of the earth as well as the cities of men was inexhaustible. He loved the unexpected, and if one had written proposing an expedition to explore Tibet, he would have telegraphed back, "Start to-night: do we meet Charing Cross or Victoria?"