The Battle of Waterloo
-
- $7.99
-
- $7.99
Publisher Description
The name Waterloo has become synonymous with final, crushing defeat. Now this legendary battle is re-created in a groundbreaking book by an eminent British military historian making his major American debut. Revealing how and why Napoleon fell in Belgium in June 1815, The Battle of Waterloo definitively clears away the fog that has, over time, obscured the truth.
With fresh details and interpretations, Jeremy Black places Waterloo within the context of the warfare of the period, showing that Napoleon’s modern army was beaten by Britain and Prussia with techniques as old as those of antiquity, including close-quarter combat. Here are the fateful early stages, from Napoleon’s strategy of surprise attack—perhaps spoiled by the defection of one of his own commanders—to his younger brother’s wasteful efforts assaulting the farm called Hougoumont. And here is the endgame, including Commander Michel Ney’s botched cavalry charge against the Anglo-Dutch line and the solid British resistance against a series of French cavalry strikes, with Napoleon “repeating defeat and reinforcing failure.”
More than a masterly guide to an armed conflict, The Battle of Waterloo is a brilliant portrait of the men who fought it: Napoleon, the bold emperor who had bullied other rulers and worn down his own army with too many wars, and the steadfast Duke of Wellington, who used superior firepower and a flexible generalship in his march to victory.
With bold analysis of the battle’s impact on history and its lessons for building lasting alliances in today’s world, The Battle of Waterloo is a small volume bound to have a big impact on global scholarship.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Cool British resolve defeats heavy-handed Gallic bluster in this probing study of the famous battle. University of Exeter military historian Black gives a lucid, if sometimes disjointed, narrative of the 1815 Waterloo campaign, set within a canny analysis of the grand strategy of the Napoleonic wars and of technological and organizational developments in 18th-century warfare. The author is disdainful of Napoleon's generalship in his last battle. In Black's reckoning, the French emperor is overconfident and lethargic, sitting in the rear and launching masses of infantry, artillery, and cavalry in unimaginative frontal assaults. Wellington, by contrast, is brave, shrewd, and energetic, always up front and under fire, encouraging his men and waiting for an opening to counterattack. Black paints a well-balanced portrait of the time, moving easily from the level of operations where generals plan and blunder to the firing line where common soldiers slaughter each other. He's at his most provocative in assessing Waterloo's world-historical import. Wellington's triumph is often judged a victory of reaction over revolution, but Black argues the opposite:the British, he cogently insists, were the era's real agents of change and progress, clearing away the "dead end"of Napoleon's bloody adventurism.
