Waterloo

This is a novel book. Often as the campaign of Waterloo has been described by historians and frequently as it has been celebrated in fiction it has rarely been narrated from the stand-point of a private soldier participating in it and telling only what he saw. That this limitation, however, does not exclude events of the greatest importance and incidents of the most intensely dramatic interest is abundantly proved by the narrative of the Conscript who makes another campaign in this volume and describes it with his customary painstaking fulness and fidelity. But what renders 'Waterloo' still more interesting is the picture it presents of the state of affairs after the first Bourbon restoration, and its description of how gradually but surely the way was prepared by the stupidity of the new régime for that return to power of Napoleon which seems so dramatically sudden and unexpected to a superficial view of the events of the time. In this respect 'Waterloo' deserves to rank very high as a chapter of familiar history, or at least of historical commentary.