Kategoria BISAC: History >> Wars & Conflicts - Napoleonic Wars

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...

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...

#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....

In an age when infantry units maneuvered and fought in rigid blocks, the idea of encouraging initiative and allowing a unit to "skirmish" was regarded as revolutionary and fell out of favor in the years following the French-Indian and American Revolutionary wars. It was revived by far-sighted British and foreign-mercenary officers, who observed the way in which French Revolutionary armies deployed skirmishers to prepare the way for their assault columns.

Offering a detailed analysis of tactics, this book is studded with period "battle descriptions" quoted from eye-witness accounts,...