This, the fourth volume in Andrew Field's highly praised study of the Waterloo campaign from the French perspective, depicts in vivid detail the often neglected final phase the rout and retreat of Napoleon's army. The text is based exclusively on French eyewitness accounts which give an inside view of the immediate aftermath of the battle and carry the story through to the army's disbandment in late 1815. Many French officers and soldiers wrote more about the retreat than they did about th...

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 ...

John Churchill was born in 1650, the son of a defeated Cavalier captain, in a household which had been ravaged and rendered almost destitute by the English Civil War. Yet by the time of his death in 1722 he was among the richest men in the country, with a dukedom, a palace and a principality to call his own.His rise to power came through a combination of good luck, astute political manoeuvring, and a brilliance on the battlefield that made him easily the most successful general of ...

PULITZER PRIZE WINNER • “A brilliant piece of military history which proves up to the hilt the force of Winston Churchill’s statement that the first month of World War I was ‘a drama never surpassed.’”—NewsweekSelected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best nonfiction books of all timeIn this landmark account, renowned historian Barbara W. Tuchman re-creates the first month of World War I: thirty days in the summer of 1914 th...

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 ...

Napoleon. The passage of time has not dimmed the power of his name. A century and a half after his death, Napoleon remains the greatest military genius of the modern world. Yet unlike Machiavelli, Clausewitz, or Sun Tzu, his name has not crowned any single literary work. The subject of thousands of biographies and treatises on warfare, he is the author of none. Until now.The great general and conqueror of Europe may not have written any books, but he was a prolific writer. Thousands...

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 pers...

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, sho...

In this “engrossing,” (The New Yorker) vivid, and intensively researched volume, esteemed Napoleon scholar David Chandler outlines the military strategy that led the famous French emperor to his greatest victories—and to his ultimate downfall.Napoleonic war was nothing if not complex—an ever-shifting kaleidoscope of moves and intentions, which by themselves went a long way towards baffling and dazing his conventionally minded opponents into that state of d...

A stirring biography of the fiery marshal who led Napoleon's forces—from his swift rise to fame to his tragic fall from grace and death by firing squad.A.H. Atteridge's biography of Michel Ney, Napoleon's most famous marshal, is a classic work of its kind. He describes Ney's meteoric career in vivid detail, from his enlistment as a hussar in the army of Louis XVI, his rapid promotion through the ranks of the revolutionary armies and his long service under Napoleon. ...

Napoleon Bonaparte is renowned as one of the great military commanders in history, and the central figure in so many of the events of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars.Throughout the first decade of the 19th century he won battle after battle by wielding the Grande Armée decisively against the other powers of Europe – Prussia, Austria and Russia. Yet his fortunes changed in 1812 when the invasion of Russia wrecked his forces, and Napoleon suffered his fi...

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' ObserverOn 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 ha...