Download or read book The British Army Against Napoleon written by Bob Burnham and published by Frontline Books. This book was released on 2010-08-09 with total page 366 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Despite the bewildering number of tomes devoted to the Napoleonic wars, much basic data as been hitherto unavailable to anyone other than the most ardent scholars. McGuigan and Burnham have collected a tremendous treasure trove of information in a readily accessible form. Other books may tell you how many regiments were sent on the expedition to Hanover in 1805, but The British Army against Napoleon will tell you where every single regiment in the British army was stationed, who were their honorary colonels, and give you a list of all the barracks in Britain with the number of men they were designed to hold. Where else will you find not just the pay of different ranked officers but the amount of income tax they paid, as well as all the other deductions and stoppages that reduced their actual receipts to a fraction of their nominal (and generally quite low) pay? Or pension charts for widows? There are tables that list all the recipients of the honours and awards issued, casualties in action and disease, seniority of officers of the numerous expeditions and campaigns (a matter not just of curiosity but of major significance, for the date of rank of an officer determined who commanded the force and all of its sub-units.) The material in these tables has been collected from countless primary sources and official publications such as the Army List, London Gazette, Wellington s Dispatches, regimental histories, artillery manuals, and handbooks.

Download or read book Britain Against Napoleon written by Roger Knight and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2013-10-24 with total page 757 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Roger Knight, established by his multi-award winning book The Pursuit of Victory as 'an authority ... none of his rivals can match' (N.A.M. Rodger), Britain Against Napoleon is the first book to explain how the British state successfully organised itself to overcome Napoleon - and how very close it came to defeat. For more than twenty years after 1793, the French army was supreme in continental Europe, and the British population lived in fear of French invasion. How was it that despite multiple changes of government and the assassination of a Prime Minister, Britain survived and won a generation-long war against a regime which at its peak in 1807 commanded many times the resources and manpower? This book looks beyond the familiar exploits of the army and navy to the politicians and civil servants, and examines how they made it possible to continue the war at all. It shows the degree to which, as the demands of the war remorselessly grew, the whole British population had to play its part. The intelligence war was also central. Yet no participants were more important, Roger Knight argues, than the bankers and traders of the City of London, without whose financing the armies of Britain's allies could not have taken the field. The Duke of Wellington famously said that the battle which finally defeated Napoleon was 'the nearest run thing you ever saw in your life': this book shows how true that was for the Napoleonic War as a whole. Roger Knight was Deputy Director of the National Maritime Museum until 2000, and now teaches at the Greenwich Maritime Institute at the University of Greenwich. In 2005 he published, with Allen Lane/Penguin, The Pursuit of Victory: The Life and Achievement of Horatio Nelson, which won the Duke of Westminster's Medal for Military History, the Mountbatten Award and the Anderson Medal of the Society for Nautical Research. The present book is a culmination of his life-long interest in the workings of the late 18th-century British state.

Download or read book British Strategy in the Napoleonic War 1803 15 written by Christopher David Hall and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 1992 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Collects together the best articles by key historians, literary critics, and anthropologists on the cultures of colonialism in the British Empire in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.. A substantial introduction by the distinguished historian, Professor Catherine Hall, discusses new approaches to the history of empire and establishes a narrative frame through which to read the essays which follow.. The volume is clearly divided into three sections: theoretical, emphasising concepts and approaches; the colonisers 'at home', focusing on how empire was lived in Britain; and 'away' - the attempt to construct new cultures through which the colonisers defined themselves and others in varied colonial sites. A useful guide to recent scholarship on the culture of imperialism.

Download or read book Redcoats written by Philip Haythornthwaite and published by Casemate Publishers. This book was released on 2012-08-19 with total page 343 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What was a British soldiers life like during the Napoleonic Wars? How was he recruited and trained? How did he live on home service and during service abroad? And what was his experience of battle? In this landmark book Philip Haythornthwaite traces the career of a British soldier from enlistment, through the key stages of his path through the military system, including combat, all the way to his eventual discharge. His fascinating account shows how varied the recruits of the day were, from urban dwellers and weavers to plowboys and laborers, and they came from all regions of the British Isles including Ireland and Scotland. Some of them may have justified the Duke of Wellingtons famous description of them as the scum of the earth. Yet these common soldiers were capable of extraordinary feats on campaign and on the battlefield that eventually turned the course of the war against Napoleon.

Download or read book All for the King s Shilling written by Edward J Coss and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2012-10-11 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The British troops who fought so successfully under the Duke of Wellington during his Peninsular Campaign against Napoleon have long been branded by the duke’s own words—“scum of the earth”—and assumed to have been society’s ne’er-do-wells or criminals who enlisted to escape justice. Now Edward J. Coss shows to the contrary that most of these redcoats were respectable laborers and tradesmen and that it was mainly their working-class status that prompted the duke’s derision. Driven into the army by unemployment in the wake of Britain’s industrial revolution, they confronted wartime hardship with ethical values and became formidable soldiers in the bargain These men depended on the king’s shilling for survival, yet pay was erratic and provisions were scant. Fed worse even than sixteenth-century Spanish galley slaves, they often marched for days without adequate food; and if during the campaign they did steal from Portuguese and Spanish civilians, the theft was attributable not to any criminal leanings but to hunger and the paltry rations provided by the army. Coss draws on a comprehensive database on British soldiers as well as first-person accounts of Peninsular War participants to offer a better understanding of their backgrounds and daily lives. He describes how these neglected and abused soldiers came to rely increasingly on the emotional and physical support of comrades and developed their own moral and behavioral code. Their cohesiveness, Coss argues, was a major factor in their legendary triumphs over Napoleon’s battle-hardened troops. The first work to closely examine the social composition of Wellington’s rank and file through the lens of military psychology, All for the King’s Shilling transcends the Napoleonic battlefield to help explain the motivation and behavior of all soldiers under the stress of combat.

Download or read book British Napoleonic Infantry Tactics 1792 1815 written by Philip Haythornthwaite and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2012-05-20 with total page 66 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The British Army that faced Napoleon in the Peninsula was small by continental standards, but it consistently out-fought larger French armies, never losing a major open-field action. Its cavalry and artillery were standard; but its infantry achieved unique results, as their tactics were brought to a peak of professional perfection by Wellington. Using contemporary instruction manuals, first-hand accounts and in-depth analysis of individual actions, this book examines exactly how Wellington was able to convert a rabble of volunteers and criminals into a well-oiled, highly disciplined and professional war-winning machine. With a detailed look at the effective use of terrain, line rather than column manoeuvres and fortification assaults, Philip Haythornthwaite reveals the crucial tactics of Wellington's army, illustrated with comprehensive maps, images and full-colour artwork.

Download or read book Redcoats Against Napoleon written by Carole Divall and published by Casemate Publishers. This book was released on 2009-04-19 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Military histories of the struggle against the French armies of the Revolution and Napoleon often focus on the exploits of elite units and famous individuals, ignoring the essential contribution made by the ordinary soldiers the bulk of the British army. Carole Divall, in this graphic and painstakingly researched account, tells the story of one such hitherto ignored group of fighting men, the 30th Regiment of the Line. She takes their story from one of the opening clashes of the long war, the Siege of Toulon in 1793, to the decisive Battle of Waterloo in 1815. She gives us a fresh perspective on key events the men took part in Massenas retreat from the Lines of Torres Vedras, the bloody storming of Badajoz, the retreat from Burgos, the ordeal of the troops holding the centre of Wellingtons Waterloo position. The regiments history which she describes using some hitherto unpublished and vivid memoirs left by the men themselves and those they fought alongside offers a fascinating insight into the life of British soldiers two centuries ago.

Download or read book Lines of Red Blue written by Robert M Blackwood and published by Leonaur Limited. This book was released on 2017-09-04 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The French at British Armies in battle during the Napoleonic Age The French revolution, which broke out during the later 18th century, set the nation on a course of conflict which would set Europe and parts of the wider world ablaze for almost thirty years. Revolutionary and Consulate armies would, in time, become those of the First Empire of the French under the command of the incomparable military genius of Napoleon Bonaparte. Inevitably Britain would join the fray and the dominance of the Royal Navy in securing the seaways would ensure that the soldiers dressed in red would become implacable enemies of those who marched in blue under the tricolour. Among the British, almost incredibly, another great soldier emerged who had the presence and skill to turn back the blue tide. The Duke of Wellington was the finest commander his nation had produced since Marlborough and one who would become Napoleon's nemesis. This unique Leonaur edition describes twenty-five renowned battles of the period in detail--principally fought between British and French forces--the first describes the Battle of Alexandria in 1801, and the last, of course, the Battle of Waterloo in 1815, and is enhanced by the inclusion of battlefield maps and attractive black and white illustrations. The Battle of Assaye, 1803, has been included by virtue of its importance to Wellington's career, and the capture of the Cape of Good Hope, 1806, is also included for interest and context. Leonaur editions are newly typeset and are not facsimiles; each title is available in softcover and hardback with dustjacket; our hardbacks are cloth bound and feature gold foil lettering on their spines and fabric head and tail bands.

Download or read book Death Before Glory written by Martin Howard and published by Pen and Sword. This book was released on 2015-09-30 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Death Before Glory! is a highly readable, thoroughly researched and comprehensive study of the British army's campaigns in the West Indies during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic period and of the extraordinary experiences of the soldiers who served there. Rich in sugar, cotton, coffee and slaves, the region was a key to British prosperity and it was perhaps even more important to her greatest enemy Ð France. Yet, until now, the history of this vital theatre of the Napoleonic Wars has been seriously neglected. Not only does Martin Howard describe, in graphic detail, the entirety of the British campaigns in the region between 1793 and 1815, he also focuses on the human experience of the men Ð the climate and living conditions, the rations and diet, military discipline and training, the treatment of the wounded and the impact of disease. Martin Howard's thoroughgoing and original work is the essential account of this fascinating but often overlooked aspect of the history of the British army and the Napoleonic Wars.

Download or read book The British Army of the Napoleonic Wars written by Gabriele Esposito and published by Historic Armies. This book was released on 2024-01-30 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After the Peace of Amiens was broken in 1803, Great Britain found herself at war with an old enemy (France) but also with a new competitor (Napoleon): the latter was the greatest military commander of his times, a man who was able to transform the French Army into the most lethal fighting machine of the early 19th century. The war experiences of 1793-1803 had not been very positive ones for the British Army; the latter was still recovering from the crushing defeats suffered during the American War of Independence and badly needed to be reformed in order to become more efficient and modern. At the turn of the new century, Great Britain was still the greatest colonial power of the world and could count on the most formidable navy of the world; on land, however, her army was too weak to confront the French one on almost equal terms. The British land forces did not have a great leader comparable to Napoleon and were still influenced by tactical models that had been outclassed by the events. During the Napoleonic Wars the British military apparatus did of its best to improve, especially thanks to the guidance of intelligent officers who belonged to a "new generation". These innovative and capable men reformed the British Army, by improving its standards of service and by creating a new relationship (based on mutual trust) with the men under their command. Wellington was the greatest of these officers and one of the few European generals who had the personal capabilities to contrast Napoleon in an effective way: it was him who "forged" the new British Army, by fighting against the French in the Iberian Peninsula during 1808-1814. After learning from experience, the British soldiers were finally able to face Napoleon on the Belgian fields of Waterloo and thus they wrote the last page of a glorious military epic. Waterloo, however, was just the final result of a long process.

Download or read book Napoleonic Lives written by Carole Divall and published by Pen and Sword. This book was released on 2012-06-19 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Two hundred years ago the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars convulsed the whole of Europe. These were key events in the history of the continent, and for Britain, and they are a fascinating field for historical and family history research. More records than ever are available on the men who served in the British army during the wars and on their families - and Carole Divalls new book is the perfect guide to how to locate and understand these sources - and get the most out of them. She gives a vivid insight into what soldiers lives were like during the period and shows how much of their experience can be recovered from the records. Using the full range of sources - contemporary military records, correspondence, diaries, memoirs she reconstructs in detail the stories of a representative group of individuals who took part in the wars - a soldier who saw action as a marine in the Mediterranean fleet, a Gordon Highlander who was taken prisoner, riflemen who served at Walcheren, in the Peninsula and at Waterloo, artillery men who played a crucial role in battles and in sieges, a gentry family whose sons served as officers in the Peninsula and in India, and two remarkable women who were among the many who went to war with the men. Carole Divalls informative and accessible book will be essential reading and reference for anyone who wants to find out about the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars and is keen to understand the part an ancestor played in them.

Download or read book Fighting the British written by Bernard Wilkin and published by Pen & Sword Military. This book was released on 2018 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cover -- Title -- Copyright -- Contents -- List of Illustrations -- Acknowledgements -- Introduction -- 1. Understanding the French Perspective -- 1. The Revolutionary Wars and the First Napoleonic Campaigns -- The Siege of Toulon -- The French Campaign in Egypt -- 2. War at Sea -- The Battle of the Nile -- From Egypt to Trafalgar -- 3. The Struggle for Europe -- The French Expeditions to Ireland in 1796 and 1798 -- Planning the Invasion of Britain -- The War in Italy -- 4. Portugal and Spain -- The First Invasion of Portugal -- The War Spreads to Spain -- Invading Portugal Again -- Wellington in Spain -- The Third Invasion of Portugal -- War on the Border -- Plate section -- 5. The Invasion of France, the Hundred Days and Occupation -- The First Invasion of France -- The Hundred Days -- Defeat and Occupation -- 6. Captivity in Britain -- Capture and Transportation to Britain -- Life in Britain -- Conclusion -- Bibliography -- Archives -- Newspapers -- Printed Primary Sources -- Secondary Sources -- Index

Download or read book Fighting Napoleon written by Gareth Glover and published by Grub Street Publishers. This book was released on 2017-01-30 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “These lively and entertaining memoirs provide an intriguing counterpoint to Wellington’s better-known operations in the Iberian Peninsula” (Julian Stockwin, author of the Thomas Kydd series). It is often forgotten that Britain’s struggle against Napoleon ranged across the continents, and the extensive operations of the Royal Navy and the British Army in the Mediterranean were key battlegrounds in this prolonged war of attrition. Even when Napoleon considered himself the master of Europe, he was unable to control the Mediterranean. Lt. John Hildebrand arrived in the Mediterranean as part of the garrison of Malta in 1810. He was then involved in the defense of the island of Sicily; the campaign to capture the Ionian Islands; the siege of Ragusa; and the Occupation of Corfu. With the war ending in 1814, John and his regiment returned home, only to be sent to Belgium when Napoleon escaped from Elba in 1815. The regiment was not involved at Waterloo, but was at Hal, where it guarded Wellington’s flank during the battle. He then marched to Paris with the army. “Napoleonic students will enjoy this refreshingly different slant on Napoleonic warfare.” —Stuart Asquith, author of Stuart Asquith’s Wargaming 18th Century Battles “Essential reading for military historians and collectors of Napoleonic War era artifacts and militaria.” —The Armourer Incorporating Classic Arms & Militaria

Download or read book The Waterloo Roll Call written by Charles Dalton and published by . This book was released on 1890 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Lists and Indexes written by Great Britain. Public Record Office and published by . This book was released on 1894 with total page 96 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Wellington The Iron Duke Text Only written by Richard Holmes and published by HarperCollins UK. This book was released on 2012-06-28 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this compelling book, Richard Holmes tells the exhilarating story of the Duke of Wellington, Britain's greatest ever soldier.

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.