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Books > History > European history > 1750 to 1900
Any miniature wargame is greatly enhanced by realistic and
evocative scenery and buildings, but commercial ready-made pieces
can be expensive. Building your own can be a cost-effective and
very rewarding alternative, another hobby in itself, but it can be
hard to know where to start. Wargames Terrain and Buildings is a
series of books aimed at giving wargamers the skills, techniques
and guidance they need to create their own stunning and practical
model buildings. In this volume, master modeller Tony Hardwood
shares his years of experience and presents the reader with a wide
range of projects for the Napoleonic era. With the aid of
step-by-step photographs, he guides the reader through building and
finishing each of these models, which are organized in three
sections of increasing complexity and encompass a range of scales
and different materials. Nine projects are included but the
techniques and skills demonstrated along the way, along with
valuable advice on tools, construction materials and paints, can be
adapted and applied to a much wider range of structures to grace
your battlefields.
Making extensive use of previously unpublished material this book
gives an unprecedented view of the Waterloo Campaign from the
viewpoint of a single regiment. It reveals the preparations that
preceded the battle, the role of the regiment in the battle, and
the long months spent in France after Paris fell, until the
regiment finally returned home in December 1815. An Order Book for
the year, and letters and diaries of several officers, shed light
on the internal life of the regiment and their - occasionally
humorous - social life.
In the second volume of this epic work, John H. Gill traces
Napoleon's progress as he sought to complete his victory over the
Habsburgs. The war had erupted on April 10th with Austria's
invasion of Germany and Italy. After just two weeks, Napoleon had
battered the Habsburg Archduke Charles in a series of bruising
defeats. This volume begins with Napoleon astride the Danube at
Regensburg. He faced a critical strategic choice - whether to
pursue the injured Austrian main army into Bohemia or march
directly for Vienna, the seat of Habsburg power. After electing to
target Vienna, his troops defeated the Austrians in the brutal
Battle of Ebelsberg, allowing him to enter the city on May 13th.
However on the far side of the Danube, he then suffered a dramatic
loss at the gruelling, two-day Battle of Aspern. While his Danube
forces recovered from this setback, the Emperor cleared trouble
from his strategic flanks. Gill describes in vivid detail the
hopeful Habsburg invasion of Italy, led by the 27-year-old Archduke
Johann, and the fierce French counter-offensive under Napoleon's
stepson, Eugene de Beauharnais (also aged 27). In a series of
encounters across Italy, de Beauharnais rebounded from initial
defeat to advance triumphantly into Austrian territory, shattering
and scattering Johann's army. In the wake of Aspern, while the
Austrians vacillated, Napoleon gathered every man, horse and gun
around Vienna, setting the stage for the gigantic spectacle of the
Battle of Wagram, the final chapter in the story of the 1809 war.
Carl von Clausewitz (1780-1831) is best known for his masterpiece
of military theory On War, yet that work formed only the first
three of his ten-volume published writings. The others, historical
analyses of the wars that roiled Europe from 1789 through 1815,
informed and shaped Clausewitz's military thought, so they offer
invaluable insight into his dialectical, often difficult
theoretical masterwork. Among these historical works, one of the
most important is Der Feldzug von 1799 in Italien und der Schweiz,
which covers an important phase of the French Revolutionary Wars.
Napoleon Absent, Coalition Ascendant covers the period of
Napoleon's invasion of Egypt and focuses on the Second Coalition's
campaign in Italy and their victories under Suvorov's dynamic
leadership that carried the tide of battle up against the French
frontier. Moving from strategy to battle scene to analysis, this
first English translation of volume 5 of Clausewitz's collected
works nimbly conveys the character of Clausewitz's writing in all
its registers: the brisk, often powerful description of events as
they unfolded and the critical reflections on strategic theory and
its implications. Napoleon Absent, Coalition Ascendant includes the
major battles of Trebbia and Novi and will expand readers'
experience and understanding of not only this critical moment in
European history but also the thought and writings of the modern
master of military philosophy.
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