a very good book on a battle and campaign that is fascinating to read about. There always seems to be another bit of Wellington's campaigns that in whatever book i read - excellent ( )

If you're a fan of the regency historical period then you might, like me, find yourself needing to know a lot more about just what happened in the Peninsular Wars and at Waterloo, not to mention about Napoleon and how these things fit together. I listened to Cornwell's book and he read the prologue and afterward and another reader the rest and they were both excellent. I've read enough at this point that I knew the basics already which helped the interest factor and visualizing the events. I can also recommend the 1970 movie *Waterloo*. And there are some good 'action' maps on Youtube showing how the battle progressed over the three days (counting the first action on the 16th as the first day.) ****1/2 ( )

I became familiar with Bernard Cornwell through his Sharpe TV series, with Sean Bean. His passion for Napoleonic subject matter is clear, so getting a chance to read his non-fictional account of the battle of Waterloo is a treat.

Mr. Cornwell's telling of the story of Quatre Bras is quite good, even if his telling of the battle of Ligny feels somewhat weaker. Still, he does a good job of explaining Napoleon's failures here in chasing down and destroying the Prussian army, which ultimately enabled his defeat at Waterloo.

This was my first major dive into the history of the Napoleonic era, but the intimacy and brutality of the fighting of this era is fascinating and captures my imagination. It's no surprise that so many soldiers (from each of the three armies) were left unaccounted for after the battle of Waterloo. It must have been simply terrifying.
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It was expected to be a lively account, and it was. The mapping is quite good, and the references are adequate. Cornwell does take advantage of many eyewitnesses' accounts, and has grace enough to place some caveats in the text were there are large discrepances between the various sources. His assumptions of the processes of Napoleon's thinking on that day are reasonable, and he assumes Napoleon was in relatively good health, and free of mental confusions. His view of the relationship with the Prussians as seen by wellington, seems reasonable, though a bit on the pro-Duke side. A good read, and it does convey a good feeling of being present on that abused farmland in the brief moment of the history of the period. ( )

I usually don't get much from blow-by-blow battle descriptions. For one thing, the maps are hardly ever enough to know what's going on. The positive reviews of Cornwell's "Waterloo" convinced me that this would be different. It mostly wasn't. Still, there were some very entertaining descriptions, as well as light discussions of points of controversy around the battle of which I had not been aware.

> Napoleon’s riposte is famous: Because you’ve been beaten by Wellington you consider him to be a good general! And now I tell you that Wellington is a bad general, that the English are bad soldiers, and that this affair will be over before lunch!

> The bore was smaller, and this meant that French infantry could not use British cartridges which they might find on their dead or wounded enemies, while British troops could, and did, use scavenged French ammunition. French powder was of significantly worse quality than British, which led to quicker fouling of the barrel and touch-hole. The normal way to rid a barrel of caked powder was to swill it out with hot water, but urine was almost as effective.

> It marched at dawn and almost immediately it ran into problems because a baker lighting his oven in Wavre managed to set his house and shop on fire. The only road wide enough to take the guns and ammunition wagons ran past the burning house. The town’s two fire engines, manual pumps, were dragged to the scene, and Prussian soldiers assisted in extinguishing the flames, but the fire delayed the march by at least two hours because the inferno was too hot to allow the ammunition wagons to pass safely

> The whole campaign was predicated on an alliance, on the knowledge that neither Wellington nor Blücher could defeat the Emperor alone, and that they must therefore combine their armies. By exposing Blücher to defeat the Duke ensures the defeat of his own army. In the event Blücher was defeated, but the campaign survived by the skin of its teeth because the Prussians were not routed and so lived to fight another day. Victory came because Blücher made the brave decision to retreat to Wavre instead of Liège, which he would only have done if he was convinced Wellington was prepared to fight, and because Wellington made a desperate defence of the ridge at Mont St Jean, which he would only have done if he was convinced Blücher was coming to his aid. In brief the campaign was successful because Blücher and Wellington trusted each other, and to suggest that Wellington would have risked that trust by deceiving his ally is to fly in the face of probability and everything we know about Wellington’s character. So did he promise to come to Blücher’s aid at Ligny? The answer is simple, yes, but only if he was not attacked himself. He was attacked and so there was no possible chance to help the Prussians. ( )