Download or read book Waterloo Myth and Reality written by Gareth Glover and published by Pen and Sword. This book was released on 2014-09-01 with total page 506 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A radical re-assessment . . . This is fascinating stuff . . . a most useful addition to the Waterloo—and indeed Napoleonic—bookshelf.”—Military Modelling Magazine More has probably been written about the Waterloo campaign than almost any other in history. It was the climax of the Napoleonic Wars and forms a watershed in both European and world history. However, the lethal combination of national bias, willful distortion and simple error has unfortunately led to the constantly regurgitated traditional “accepted” version being significantly wrong regarding many episodes in the campaign. Oft-repeated claims have morphed into established fact, and it is high time that these are challenged and finally dismissed. Gareth Glover has spent a decade uncovering hundreds of previously unpublished eyewitness accounts of the battle and campaign, which have highlighted many of these myths and errors. In this groundbreaking history, based on extensive primary research of all the nations involved, he provides a very readable and beautifully balanced account of the entire campaign while challenging these distorted claims and myths, and he provides clear evidence to back his version of events. His thoughtful reassessment of this decisive episode in world history will be stimulating reading for those already familiar with the Napoleonic period, and it will form a fascinating introduction for readers who are discovering this extraordinary event for the first time. “An enjoyable and informative review of the battle that shaped Europe for the next two centuries.”—Firetrench

Download or read book Waterloo written by Gareth Glover and published by Pen and Sword. This book was released on 2014-09-01 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: More has probably been written about the Waterloo campaign than almost any other in history. It was the climax of the Napoleonic Wars and forms a watershed in both European and world history. However, the lethal combination of national bias, wilful distortion and simple error has unfortunately led to the constantly regurgitated traditional 'accepted' version being significantly wrong regarding many episodes in the campaign. Oft-repeated claims have morphed into established fact and, with the bicentenary of this famous battle soon to be commemorated, it is high time that these are challenged and finally dismissed.?Gareth Glover has spent a decade uncovering hundreds of previously unpublished eyewitness accounts of the battle and campaign, which have highlighted many of these myths and errors. In this ground-breaking history, based on extensive primary research of all the nations involved, he provides a very readable and beautifully balanced account of the entire campaign while challenging these distorted claims and myths, and he provides clear evidence to back his version of events. ?His thoughtful reassessment of this decisive episode in world history will be stimulating reading for those already familiar with the Napoleonic period and it will form a fascinating introduction for readers who are discovering this extraordinary event for the first time.

Download or read book The Long Shadow of Waterloo written by Timothy Fitzpatrick and published by Casemate Publishers. This book was released on 2019-03-19 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “[A] concise but authoritative narrative of the last action of the Napoleonic Wars” and its influence on French, British, German, and U.S. cultures (Military History Matters). The Battle of Waterloo ended a century of war between France and Great Britain and became a key part of their national identity, serving their political needs as the battle was refought throughout the 19th century in politics, books and art to create the myth of Waterloo. For Great Britain, Waterloo became a symbol of British hegemony while the multinational contribution to the battle was downplayed and for France it was remembered as a military disaster. Through looking at the battle’s significance in history, an insight is gained into how cultural myths and legends about a battle are made. Wellington and Napoleon both tried to shape the memory of the battle to their advantage. Wellington propagated the myth that the British won despite being outnumbered by a huge French army, while Napoleon chose to blame his subordinates for the loss, in particular Emmanuel de Grouchy. This book covers the battle’s influence on figures such as Jomini and Clausewitz, military theorists who wanted to find the objective truth of Waterloo and use it as a guide for future wars, as well as Victor Hugo (and Les Miserables) who challenged the myths of battle to transform it into a win for France from which the Republic would emerge. The way Waterloo was used for entertainment is also explored, as battlefield tourists came from all over the world to vicariously experience the legendary battle through visualizations such as the traveling panoramas in England and poetry of Sir Walter Scott.

Download or read book Napoleon France and Waterloo written by Charles Esdaile and published by Pen and Sword. This book was released on 2016-11-30 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: So great is the weight of reading on the subject of the Waterloo campaign that it might be thought there is nothing left to say about it, and from the military viewpoint, this is very much the case. But one critical aspect of the story has gone all but untold the French home front. Little has been written about the topic in English, and few works on Napoleon or Revolutionary and Napoleonic France pay it much attention. It is this conspicuous gap in the literature that Charles Esdaile explores in this erudite and absorbing study. Drawing on the vivid, revealing material that is available in the French archives, in the writings of soldiers who fought in France in 1814 and 1815 and in the memoirs of civilians who witnessed the fall of Napoleon or the Hundred Days, he gives us a fascinating new insight into the military and domestic context of the Waterloo campaign, the Napoleonic legend and the wider situation across Europe.

Download or read book Who Owned Waterloo written by Luke Reynolds and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2022-06-06 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Between 1815 and the Duke of Wellington's death in 1852, the Battle of Waterloo became much more than simply a military victory. While other countries marked the battle and its anniversary, only Britain actively incorporated the victory into their national identity, guaranteeing that it would become a ubiquitous and multi-layered presence in British culture. By examining various forms of commemoration, celebration, and recreation, Who Owned Waterloo? demonstrates that Waterloo's significance to Britain's national psyche resulted in a different kind of war altogether: one in which civilian and military groups fought over and established their own claims on different aspects of the battle and its remembrance. By weaponizing everything from memoirs, monuments, rituals, and relics to hippodramas, panoramas, and even shades of blue, veterans pushed back against civilian claims of ownership; English, Scottish, and Irish interests staked their claims; and conservatives and radicals duelled over the direction of the country. Even as ownership was contested among certain groups, large portions of the British population purchased souvenirs, flocked to spectacles and exhibitions, visited the battlefield itself, and engaged in a startling variety of forms of performative patriotism, guaranteeing not only the further nationalization of Waterloo, but its permanent place in nineteenth century British popular and consumer culture.

Download or read book A Scots Grey at Waterloo written by Gareth Glover and published by Pen and Sword. This book was released on 2017-10-30 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: William Clarke of Prestonpans, Scotland, joined the 2nd Royal North British Dragoons, the Scots Greys, in 1803. Clarke had risen to the rank of sergeant by the time the regiment was ordered to Belgium on the news that Napoleon had escaped from Elba. Forming part of what became known as the Union Brigade, the Scots Greys played a key role in Napoleons defeat at Waterloo.The John Rylands Library, Manchester, recently acquired William Clarkes 600-page, handwritten memoir describing his enlistment and military career, the highlight of which was the Waterloo campaign, which he describes in unusual detail in the vernacular of the day, presented and annotated by the renowned historian Garth Glover.Thanks to this rare discovery, the reader can follow the movements of the Scots Greys at every stage of the action throughout the three days from Quatre-Bras to that climatic encounter on the Mont St Jean. Clarke naturally portrays the charge of the Union Brigade in dramatic and heroic terms, but he claims that the man who led the charge, Major General William Ponsonby, was killed by a musket ball and not cut down by French cavalry, as is usually stated, for recklessly charging too far.After the battle, Clarke was part of the Burial Party. He then graphically describes the sad scene as he does the trail of the defeated French army as the pursuing Prussians cut a merciless path on their way to Paris.A Scots Grey at Waterloo provides the reader with an exceptionally in-depth account of the actions of the cavalry at Waterloo that will mark this memoir out as one of the most significant to have been published in the last 200 years.

Download or read book The Waterloo Archive written by Gareth Glover and published by Frontline Books. This book was released on 2014-10-30 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: So much has been written on the subject of the Battle of Waterloo and the campaign that surrounds it that the reader might think that there is simply nothing new to tell. However, the archives of Europe are teeming with fascinating documents personal letters to family and friends, private journals and official reports that have been virtually ignored in many standard histories of the period. In the ground-breaking Waterloo Archive series Gareth Glover has set out to unearth this buried material and to finally expose it to public scrutiny. In doing so he brings the human aspect of war and military campaigning to the fore: the humor and exhilaration, the fears and miseries, the starvation and exhaustion, the horror and the joy. He also provides an invaluable new source which will challenge preconceptions, disprove theories, destroy myths and allow for a complete re-evaluation of many key aspects of the campaign. In this sixth and final volume in the series, published to coincide with the two hundredth anniversary of the campaign, Glover has again turned his attention to the British sources.

Download or read book Waterloo The Campaign of 1815 Volume 2 written by John Hussey and published by Pen and Sword. This book was released on 2017-09-30 with total page 492 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the 2019 RUSI Duke of Wellington Medal for Military HistoryWinner of the 2017 Society for Army Historical Research Templer MedalShortlisted for Military History Monthly's "Book of the Year" AwardThe first of two groundbreaking volumes on the Waterloo campaign, this book is based upon a detailed analysis of sources old and new in four languages. It highlights the political stresses between the Allies, and their resolution; it studies the problems of feeding and paying for 250,000 Allied forces assembling in Belgium during the undeclared war, and how a strategy was thrashed out. It studies the neglected topic of how the slow and discordant Allies beyond the Rhine hampered the plans of Blcher and Wellington, thus allowing Napoleon to snatch the initiative from them. Napoleons operational plan is analyzed (and Soult's mistakes in executing it). Accounts from both sides help provide a vivid impression of the fighting on the first day, 15 June, and the volume ends with the joint battles of Ligny and Quatre Bras the next day.

Download or read book Walking Waterloo written by Charles J. Esdaile and published by Casemate Publishers. This book was released on 2019-06-30 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tour the Belgian battleground where Napoleon was defeated—with historical background, maps, archival images, and more. In this book, the acclaimed author of Napoleon’s Wars provides a new guide to the Battle of Waterloo that presents the experience of the soldiers who took part in the battle in the most graphic and direct way possible—through their own words. In a series of walks, he describes in vivid detail what happened in each location on June 18, 1815 and quotes at length from eyewitness accounts of the men who were there. Each phase of the action during that momentous day is covered, from the initial French attacks and the intense fighting at Hougoumont and La Haye Sainte to the charges of the French cavalry against the British squares and the final, doomed attack of Napoleon’s Imperial Guard. This innovative guide to this historic site is fully illustrated with a selection of archive images from the War Heritage Institute in Brussels, modern color photographs of the battlefield as it appears today, and specially commissioned maps that allow those who visit in person to follow the course of the battle on the ground.

Download or read book Waterloo 1815 written by Gregory Fremont-Barnes and published by The History Press. This book was released on 2012-01-31 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the most decisive battles in military history, Waterloo saw the culmination of a generation of war to bring a definitive end to French hegemony and imperial ambitions in Europe. Both sides fought bitterly and Wellington later remarked that 'it was the nearest-run thing you ever saw in your life'. In this bloody engagement, more than 20,000 men were lost on the battlefield that day by each side, but it was the Anglo-Allies who emerged victorious. Their forces entered France and restored Louis XVIII to the throne, while Napoleon was exiled to the island of Saint Helena, where he later died. Waterloo was a resounding victory for the British Army and Allied forces, and it changed the course of European history. In this concise yet detailed account, historian Gregory Fremont-Barnes tells you everything you need to know about this critical battle.

Download or read book The Great Waterloo Controversy written by Gareth Glover and published by Frontline Books. This book was released on 2020-12-02 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As the Battle of Waterloo reached its momentous climax, Napoleon’s Imperial Guard marched towards the Duke of Wellington’s thinning red line. The Imperial Guard had never tasted defeat and nothing, it seemed, could stop it smashing through the British ranks. But it was the Imperial Guard that was sent reeling back in disorder, its columns ravaged by the steady volleys of the British infantry. The credit for defeating the Imperial Guard went to the 1st Foot Guards, which was consequently honored for its actions by being renamed the Grenadier Guards. The story did not stop there, however, as the 52nd Foot also contributed to the defeat of the Imperial Guard yet received no comparable recognition. The controversy of which corps deserved the credit for defeating the Imperial Guard has continued down the decades and has rightly become a highly contentious subject over which much ink has been spilled. But now, thanks to the uncovering of the previously unpublished journal of Charles Holman of the 52nd Foot, Gareth Glover is able to piece together the exact sequence of events in those final, fatal moments of the great battle. Along with numerous other firsthand accounts, Gareth Glover has been able to understand the most likely sequence of events, the reaction to these events immediately after the battle and how it was seen within the army in the days after the victory. Who did Wellington honor at the time? How did the Foot Guards gain much of the credit in London? Was there an establishment cover-up? Were the 52nd robbed of their glory? Do the recent much-publicized arguments stand up to impartial scrutiny? The Great Waterloo Controversy is the definitive answer to these questions and will finally end this centuries-old conundrum.

Download or read book Waterloo 1815 written by John Grehan and published by Frontline Books. This book was released on 2015-05-30 with total page 489 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For more than twenty years Europe had been torn apart by war. Dynasties had crumbled, new states had been created and a generation had lost its young men. When it seemed that peace might at last settle across Europe, terrible news was received Napoleon had escaped from exile and was marching upon Paris. Europe braced itself once again for war. The allied nations agreed to combine against Napoleon and in May 1815 they began to mass on France's frontiers. The scene was set for the greatest battle the world had yet seen.Composed of more than 300 eyewitness accounts, official documents, parliamentary debates and newspaper reports, Voices from the Past tells the story of Napoleon's last battles as they were experienced and reported by the men and women involved. Heroic cavalry charges, devastating artillery bombardments, terrible injuries, heart-breaking encounters, and amusing anecdotes, written by aristocratic officers and humble privates alike, fill the pages of this ambitious publication. Many of these reports have not been reproduced for almost 200 years.

Download or read book Waterloo 1815 The British Army s Day of Destiny written by Gregory Fremont-Barnes and published by The History Press. This book was released on 2014-11-03 with total page 594 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Writing to his mother the day after the fighting, Captain Thomas Wildman of the 7th Hussars described 'a victory so splendid & important that you may search the annals of history in vain for its parallel'. Little wonder, for Waterloo was widely recognised – even in its immediate wake – as one of the most decisive battles in history: after more than twenty years of uninterrupted conflict, this single day's encounter finally put paid to French aspirations for European hegemony. The culminating point of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, Waterloo also witnessed levels of determination and bravery by both sides which far exceeded anything experienced by the veterans of Wellington's recent campaigns in Spain and Portugal. Indeed, it was that unconquerable spirit which left over 50,000 men dead on the field of battle and tens of thousands of others wounded. This thoroughly researched and highly detailed account of one of history's greatest human dramas looks first at the wider strategic picture before focusing on the tactical roles played by individual British units – all meticulously examined with the benefit of an extensive array of hitherto unexploited primary sources which reveal the battlefield experience of officers and soldiers as never before. Refusing simply to repeat the same unchallenged accounts and to commit the same errors of previous historians, this work relies exclusively on hundreds of first-hand accounts, by men of all ranks and from practically every British regiment and corps present on that fateful day, to provide a fresh and revised perspective on one of the most pivotal events of modern times.

Download or read book Wellington Waterloo and the Fortunes of Peace 1814 1852 written by Rory Muir and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2015-06-09 with total page 761 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The preeminent Wellington biographer presents a fascinating reassessment of the Duke’s most famous victory and his political career after Waterloo. The Duke of Wellington’s momentous victory over Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo was the culminating point of a brilliant military career. Yet Wellington’s achievements were far from over. He commanded the allied army of occupation in France to the end of 1818, returned home to a seat in Lord Liverpool’s cabinet, and became prime minister in 1828. He later served as a senior minister in Robert Peel’s government and remained Commander-in-Chief of the Army for a decade until his death in 1852. In this richly detailed work, the second and concluding volume of Rory Muir’s definitive biography, the author offers a substantial reassessment of Wellington’s significance as a politician and a nuanced view of the private man behind the legendary hero. Muir presents new insights into Wellington’s determination to keep peace at home and abroad, achieved by maintaining good relations with the Continental powers, resisting radical agitation, and granting political equality to the Catholics in Ireland. Countering one-dimensional image of Wellington as a national hero, Muir paints a nuanced portrait of a man whose austere public demeanor belied his entertaining, gossipy, generous, and unpretentious private self.

Download or read book Waterloo The Defeat of Napoleon s Imperial Guard written by Gareth Glover and published by Frontline Books. This book was released on 2015-05-30 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the most detailed account of the 2nd Division at Waterloo ever published. It is based on the papers of its commander Sir Henry Clinton and it reveals for the first time the previously unrecognised vital role this division made in the defeat of Napoleon. ??They Swept the Field Clear explains how the division was placed ahead of the main allied squares thus impeding the charges of the French cavalry, and how the 2nd Division supported the defence of Hougoumont, considered by the Duke of Wellington as the key to his victory on 18 June 1815.??Perhaps the most significant aspect of this book is the description of the defeat of Napoleon's Imperial Guard. Just who and how the incomparable Guard was stopped and the driven from the battlefield is explained in detail. Once and for all, this 200-year controversy is finally resolved.

Download or read book The Napoleonic Wars written by Alexander Mikaberidze and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2020-01-13 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Austerlitz, Wagram, Borodino, Trafalgar, Leipzig, Waterloo: these are the places most closely associated with the era of the Napoleonic Wars. But how did this period of nearly continuous conflict affect the world beyond Europe? The immensity of the fighting waged by France against England, Prussia, Austria, and Russia, and the immediate consequences of the tremors that spread throughout the world. In this ambitious and far-ranging work, Alexander Mikaberidze argues that the Napoleonic Wars can only be fully understood in an international perspective. France struggled for dominance not only on the plains of Europe but also in the Americas, West and South Africa, Ottoman Empire, Iran, India, Indonesia, the Philippines, Mediterranean Sea, and the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. Taking specific regions in turn, Mikaberidze discusses major political-military events around the world and situates geopolitical decision-making within its long- and short-term contexts. From the British expeditions to Argentina and South Africa to the Franco-Russian maneuvering in the Ottoman Empire, the effects of the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars would shape international affairs well into the next century. In Egypt, the wars led to the rise of Mehmed Ali and the emergence of a powerful state; in North America, the period transformed and enlarged the newly established United States; and in South America, the Spanish colonial empire witnessed the start of national-liberation movements that ultimately ended imperial control. Skillfully narrated and deeply researched, here at last is the global history of the period, one that expands our view of the Napoleonic Wars and their role in laying the foundations of the modern world.

Download or read book Napoleon written by Michael Broers and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2022-08-30 with total page 564 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An accomplished Oxford scholar delivers a dynamic new history covering the last chapter of the emperor's life—from his defeat in Russia and the drama of Waterloo to his final exile—as the world Napoleon has created begins to crumble around him. In 1811, Napoleon stood at his zenith. He had defeated all his continental rivals, come to an entente with Russia, and his blockade of Britain seemed, at long last, to be a success. The emperor had an heir on the way with his new wife, Marie-Louise, the young daughter of the Emperor of Austria. His personal life, too, was calm and secure for the first time in many years. It was a moment of unprecedented peace and hope, built on the foundations of emphatic military victories. But in less than two years, all of this was in peril. In four years, it was gone, swept away by the tides of war against the most powerful alliance in European history. The rest of his life was passed on a barren island. This is not a story any novelist could create; it is reality as epic. Napoleon: The Decline and Fall of an Empire traces this story through the dramatic narrative of the years 1811-1821 and explores the ever-bloodier conflicts, the disintegration and reforging of the bonds among the Bonaparte family, and the serpentine diplomacy that shaped the fate of Europe. At the heart of the story is Napoleon’s own sense of history, the tensions in his own character, and the shared vision of a family dynasty to rule Europe. Drawing on the remarkable resource of the new edition of Napoleon’s personal correspondence produced by the Fondation Napoleon in Paris, Michael Broers dynamic new history follows Napoleon’s thoughts and feelings, his hopes and ambitions, as he fought to preserve the world he had created. Much of this turns on his relationship with Tsar Alexander of Russia, in so many respects his alter ego, and eventual nemesis. His inability to understand this complex man, the only person with the power to destroy him, is key to tracing the roots of his disastrous decision to invade Russia—and his inability to face diplomatic and military reality thereafter. Even his defeat in Russia was not the end. The last years of the Napoleonic Empire reveal its innate strength, but it now faced hopeless odds. The last phase of the Napoleonic Wars saw the convergence of the most powerful of forces in European history to date: Russian manpower and British money. The sheer determination of Tsar Alexander and the British to bring Napoleon down is a story of compromise and sacrifice. The horrors and heroism of war are omnipresent in these years, from Lisbon to Moscow, in the life of the common solider. The core of this new book reveals how these men pushed Napoleon back from Moscow to St Helena. Among this generation, there was no more remarkable persona than Napoleon. His defeat forged his myth—as well as his living tomb on St Helena. The audacious enterprise of the 100 Days, reaching its crescendo at the Battle of Waterloo, marked the spectacular end of an unprecedented public life. From the ruins of a life—and an empire—came a new continent and a legend that haunts Europe still.