Just because you're dealing with a scholarly discipline that's usually reported in a style of dry pedantry is no reason why you shouldn't write in good fresh English.
I know it's a weird thing to say about other historians, but this sort of battle, this mad battle pedantry when you cannot possibly know just fills me with total bewilderment.
Even the most distant town he visits is clean " to the point of pedantry." As in the metropole, so also here, the British cannily combine brute force with cultural influence.
I skimmed a page to see how he wrote. His style was scholarly, but lucid and easy. There was nothing in it of the pretentiousness or the pedantry that too often characterizes the writing of the amateur.
" Oh yes, the Duke of Luxembourg at Montmorency, used to accompany a Coindet from the neighbourhood of Paris, " went on Mademoiselle de la Mole, with all the pleasure and enthusiasm of her first flush of pedantry.