Download or read book The Battle of Waterloo Experience written by Peter Snow and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After Napoleon's defeat and exile on Elba in 1814, it looked as if his extraordinary military career had come to an end. But then the Emperor escaped and made a last stand, which climaxed on June 18, 1815, when almost 200,000 Prussian, British, and French soldiers clashed at Waterloo. Published to mark the 200th anniversary, The Battle of Waterloo Experience is a compelling new treatment of the Hundred Days campaign, beautifully illustrated and including reproductions of contemporary letters and documents that graphically portray the background to Napoleon's final overthrow.
Download or read book Waterloo written by Bernard Cornwell and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2015-05-05 with total page 245 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: #1 Bestseller in the U.K. From the New York Times bestselling author and master of martial fiction comes the definitive, illustrated history of one of the greatest battles ever fought—a riveting nonfiction chronicle published to commemorate the 200th anniversary of Napoleon’s last stand. On June 18, 1815 the armies of France, Britain and Prussia descended upon a quiet valley south of Brussels. In the previous three days, the French army had beaten the Prussians at Ligny and fought the British to a standstill at Quatre-Bras. The Allies were in retreat. The little village north of where they turned to fight the French army was called Waterloo. The blood-soaked battle to which it gave its name would become a landmark in European history. In his first work of nonfiction, Bernard Cornwell combines his storytelling skills with a meticulously researched history to give a riveting chronicle of every dramatic moment, from Napoleon’s daring escape from Elba to the smoke and gore of the three battlefields and their aftermath. Through quotes from the letters and diaries of Emperor Napoleon, the Duke of Wellington, and the ordinary officers and soldiers, he brings to life how it actually felt to fight those famous battles—as well as the moments of amazing bravery on both sides that left the actual outcome hanging in the balance until the bitter end. Published to coincide with the battle’s bicentennial in 2015, Waterloo is a tense and gripping story of heroism and tragedy—and of the final battle that determined the fate of nineteenth-century Europe.
Download or read book The Face of Battle written by John Keegan and published by Penguin. This book was released on 1983-01-27 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: John Keegan's groundbreaking portrayal of the common soldier in the heat of battle -- a masterpiece that explores the physical and mental aspects of warfare The Face of Battle is military history from the battlefield: a look at the direct experience of individuals at the "point of maximum danger." Without the myth-making elements of rhetoric and xenophobia, and breaking away from the stylized format of battle descriptions, John Keegan has written what is probably the definitive model for military historians. And in his scrupulous reassessment of three battles representative of three different time periods, he manages to convey what the experience of combat meant for the participants, whether they were facing the arrow cloud at the battle of Agincourt, the musket balls at Waterloo, or the steel rain of the Somme. The Face of Battle is a companion volume to John Keegan's classic study of the individual soldier, The Mask of Command: together they form a masterpiece of military and human history.
Download or read book The Longest Afternoon written by Brendan Simms and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2015-02-10 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the prizewinning author of Europe, a riveting account of the heroic Second Light Battalion, which held the line at Waterloo, defeating Napoleon and changing the course of history. In 1815, the deposed emperor Napoleon returned to France and threatened the already devastated and exhausted continent with yet another war. Near the small Belgian municipality of Waterloo, two large, hastily mobilized armies faced each other to decide the future of Europe-Napoleon's forces on one side, and the Duke of Wellington on the other. With so much at stake, neither commander could have predicted that the battle would be decided by the Second Light Battalion, King's German Legion, which was given the deceptively simple task of defending the Haye Sainte farmhouse, a crucial crossroads on the way to Brussels. In The Longest Afternoon, Brendan Simms captures the chaos of Waterloo in a minute-by-minute account that reveals how these 400-odd riflemen successfully beat back wave after wave of French infantry. The battalion suffered terrible casualties, but their fighting spirit and refusal to retreat ultimately decided the most influential battle in European history.
Download or read book Waterloo written by David Armine Howarth and published by . This book was released on 1968 with total page 239 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For eighteen years, Napoleon and his armies had overrun and terrorized more and more of Europe. Most of that time, the families of the British soldiers had lived in fear of invasion, and the younger soldiers themselves had been brought up with Napoleon as a familiar bogy. Then at last he had overreached himself and been beaten -- and Wellington and his British troops, fighting through the Spanish peninsula, had been able to claim a good share of the credit for his downfall. In April 1814, only just over a year before, Napoleon had been sent into exile on the island of Elba. - p. [5].
Download or read book Waterloo written by Paul O'Keeffe and published by Abrams. This book was released on 2017-01-24 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The consequences of Napoleon’s most famous defeat are explored in this “highly readable, richly anecdotal retelling of the battle’s devastating results” (Kirkus). In the early morning hours of June 19, 1815, more than 50,000 men and 7,000 horses lay dead and wounded on a battlefield just south of Brussels. In the hours, days, weeks, and months that followed, news of the battle would begin to shape the consciousness of an age; the battlegrounds would be looted and cleared, its dead buried or burned, its ground and ruins overrun by tourists; the victorious British and Prussian armies would invade France and occupy Paris. And for Napoleon, there was no avenue ahead but surrender, exile and captivity. In this dramatic account of the aftermath of the Battle of Waterloo, Paul O'Keeffe employs a multiplicity of contemporary sources and viewpoints to create a reading experience that brings into focus as never before the sights, sounds, and smells of the battlefield, of conquest and defeat, of celebration and riot.
Download or read book The Battle of Waterloo written by Jeremy Black and published by Random House. This book was released on 2010-03-16 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Went the Day Well written by David Crane and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2015-04-28 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In these pages, acclaimed historian David Crane gives us an astonishing, intimate snapshot of the people and places surrounding the battle that changed the course of world history. Switching perspectives between Britain and Belgium, prison and palace, poet and pauper, husband and wife, Went the Day Well? offers a highly original view of Waterloo, showing how the battle was not only a military landmark, but also a cultural watershed that drew the line between the rural, reactionary age of the past and the urban, innovative era to come. Lyrically rendered in Crane’s signature prose style, this essential account freeze-frames the ordinary men and women of 1815 who went about their business, attended lectures, worked in fields and factories—all on the cusp of a new, unforeseeable age.
Download or read book The Battle written by Alessandro Barbero and published by Atlantic Books. This book was released on 2015-01-01 with total page 519 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At Waterloo, some 70,000 men under Napoleon and an equal number under Wellington faced one another in a titanic battle. Alessandro Barbero's majestic account combines British and French histories to give voice to all nations involved. The Battle is a masterpiece of military history.
Download or read book Waterloo written by David Armine Howarth and published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson. This book was released on 1997 with total page 156 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Vivid, violent, almost impossible to put down unfinished, this is a particularly welcome reprint of a masterpiece' The Good Book Guide
Download or read book Armies of the Napoleonic Wars written by Gregory Fremont-Barnes and published by Casemate Publishers. This book was released on 2011-02-07 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The armies of the Napoleonic Wars fought in a series of devastating campaigns that disturbed the peace of Europe for twelve years, yet the composition, organization and fighting efficiency of these forces receive too little attention. Each force tends to be examined in isolation or in the context of an individual battle or campaign or as the instrument of a famous commander. Rarely have these armies been studied together in a single volume as they are in this authoritative and fascinating reassessment edited by Gregory Fremont-Barnes.Leading experts on the Napoleonic Wars have been specially commissioned to produce chapters on each of the armed forces that took part in this momentous era in European history. The result is a vivid comparative portrait of ten of the most significant armies of the period, and of military service and warfare in the early nineteenth century. The book will be essential reading and reference for all students of the Napoleonic era.Covers the armies of Austria, Britain, the Confederation of the Rhine, the Duchy of Warsaw, France, the Kingdom of Italy, Portugal, Prussia, Russia and Spain.
Download or read book Dancing into Battle written by Nick Foulkes and published by Phoenix. This book was released on 2007-09-05 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The social backdrop, vividly described, to one of the greatest battles in European history, Waterloo 1815 The summer of 1815 saw the final and desperate efforts of European powers to usurp Napoleon's reign over France. The pivotal moment was unfolding in an age where war was a social occasion; the military urgency was matched only by the soldiers and their wives' frantic efforts to keep apace of the lavish balls which were being thrown. The intention to deny war with frivolity persevered until 15 June, when the tension broke, and troops exchanged dance partners for weapons and prepared for battle. Nick Foulkes captures the sense of what it was like to be at the very hub of events when the fate of Europe seemed to hang in the balance.
Download or read book Napoleon and Wellington written by Andrew Roberts and published by Hachette UK. This book was released on 2010-12-16 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A dual biography of the greatest opposing generals of their age who ultimately became fixated on one another, by a bestselling historian. 'Thoroughly enjoyable, beautifully written and meticulously researched' Observer On the morning of the battle of Waterloo, the Emperor Napoleon declared that the Duke of Wellington was a bad general, the British were bad soldiers and that France could not fail to win an easy victory. Forever afterwards historians have accused him of gross overconfidence, and massively underestimating the calibre of the British commander opposed to him. Andrew Roberts presents an original, highly revisionist view of the relationship between the two greatest captains of their age. Napoleon, who was born in the same year as Wellington - 1769 - fought Wellington by proxy years earlier in the Peninsula War, praising his ruthlessness in private while publicly deriding him as a mere 'sepoy general'. In contrast, Wellington publicly lauded Napoleon, saying that his presence on a battlefield was worth forty thousand men, but privately wrote long memoranda lambasting Napoleon's campaigning techniques. Although Wellington saved Napoleon from execution after Waterloo, Napoleon left money in his will to the man who had tried to assassinate Wellington. Wellington in turn amassed a series of Napoleonic trophies of his great victory, even sleeping with two of the Emperor's mistresses.
Download or read book The Battle of Waterloo written by Peter Snow and published by . This book was released on 2017-06-15 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A visually stunning examination of the battle that changed Europe forever: Napoleon's last stand at Waterloo. In 1814, with Napoleon in exile, it looked as if his career was over. Then the Emperor escaped and made a last stand, which climaxed on June 18, 1815, at Waterloo. This compelling and richly illustrated treatment of the Hundred Days campaign includes reproductions of contemporary letters and documents that graphically portray Napoleon's final overthrow, as well as information on the armies, commanders, battlefield topography, and the campaign's consequences for Europe.
Download or read book Waterloo written by Andrew W. Field and published by Pen and Sword. This book was released on 2012-10-24 with total page 403 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the author of Talavera, an extensive history of the Battle of Waterloo from the losing side’s point of view. The story of the Battle of Waterloo—of the ultimate defeat of Napoleon and the French, the triumph of Wellington, Blücher, and their allied armies—is most often told from the viewpoint of the victors, not the vanquished. Even after 200 years of intensive research and the publication of hundreds of books and articles on the battle, the French perspective and many of the primary French sources are under-represented in the written record. So, it is high time this weakness in the literature—and in our understanding of the battle—was addressed, and that is the purpose of Andrew Field’s thought-provoking new study. He has tracked down over ninety first-hand French accounts, many of which have never been previously published in English, and he has combined them with accounts from the other participants in order to create a graphic new narrative of one of the world’s decisive battles. Virtually all of the hitherto unpublished testimony provides fascinating new detail on the battle and many of the accounts are vivid, revealing, and exciting.
Download or read book Britain and the Defeat of Napoleon 1807 1815 written by Rory Muir and published by . This book was released on 1996 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This account of the final years of Britain's long war against Revolutionary and Napoleonic France places the conflict in a new - and wholly modern - perspective. Rory Muir looks beyond the purely military aspects of the struggle to show how the entire British nation played a part in the victory. His book provides a total assessment of how politicians, the press, the crown, civilians, soldiers and commanders together defeated France. Beginning in 1807 when all of continental Europe was under Napoleon's control, the author traces the course of the war throughout the Spanish uprising of 1808, the campaigns of the Duke of Wellington and Sir John Moore in Portugal and Spain, and the crossing of the Pyrenees by the British army, to the invasion of southern France and the defeat of Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo. Muir sets Britain's military operations on the Iberian Peninsula within the context of the wider European conflict, and examines how diplomatic, financial, military and political considerations combined to shape policies and priorities.Just as political factors influenced strategic military decisions, Muir contends, fluctuations of the war affected British political decisions. The book is based on a comprehensive investigation of primary and secondary sources, and on a thorough examination of the vast archives left by the Duke of Wellington. Muir offers vivid new insights into the personalities of Canning, Castlereagh, Perceval, Lord Wellesly, Wellington and the Prince Regent, along with fresh information on the financial background of Britain's campaigns. This vigorous narrative account will appeal to general readers and military enthusiasts, as well as to students of early nineteenth-century British politics and military history. Rory Muir is the author of 'Salamanca 1812' and 'Tactics and the Experience of Battle in the Age of Napoleon', both also published by Yale University Press.
Download or read book Prelude to Waterloo Quatre Bras written by Andrew W. Field and published by Pen and Sword. This book was released on 2014-07-30 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “As a piece of historical research, this is a force majeure . . . a must read for anyone interested in the Napoleonic Wars” by the author of Waterloo (Federation of Family History Societies). The Battle of Quatre Bras was critical to the outcome of the Waterloo campaign—to the victory of the allied armies of Wellington and Blücher, the defeat of the French and the fall of Napoleon. But it has been overshadowed by the two larger-scale engagements at Ligny and at Waterloo itself. And too often the clash at Quatre Bras has been seen mainly through the eyes of the British and their allies—the viewpoint of the French has been neglected. It is this weakness in the history of the battle that Andrew Field focuses on in this original and highly readable new study. Drawing on French eyewitness recollections and later commentary, he reconstructs the French experience of the battle—and the French interpretation of it. He quotes extensively, and subjects to critical analysis, the conflicting accounts written by Napoleon and his subordinates as they sought justify their decisions and actions at this pivotal moment in the campaign. “Andrew Field writes with a light touch that makes a very detailed discussion of this significant event of the Hundred Days campaign a pleasure to read. This volume is an ideal companion to his previous book on Waterloo and to Robinson’s account of Quatre Bras.”—Miniature Wargames Magazine “Offer[s] a new perspective of this significant confrontation that is often overshadowed by Ligny and Waterloo.”—Gloire & Empire
