|
Books > History > European history > 1750 to 1900
For the first time in print a book identifies each regiment and
illustrates the change in uniforms, the colour of the facings and
the nature and shape of the lace for the officers, NCOs and private
soldiers over the period of the Napoleonic War 1793-1815. In
British Napoleonic Uniforms, Carl Franklin's lavishly illustrated
third volume for The History Press, these changes to the uniforms
of all the numbered regiments of cavalry and infantry are discussed
in detail. It is illustrated with more than two hundred full-colour
plates of the uniforms and every aspect of their regimental
distinctions. The book is divided into four parts. Part One looks
at the commonalities of the cavalry and considers uniforms
appropriate to each regiment such as headwear, the evolution of the
uniforms and horse furniture. Part Two considers the uniforms of
the heavy and light cavalry regiments. It includes full-page colour
illustrations of the Household Cavalry, the Heavy Cavalry (Dragoon
Guards and Dragoons), and Light Cavalry (the Light Dragoons and
Hussars). Part Three shows the commonalties of the infantry and
considers the uniform appropriate to each regiment, such as those
of the Drummers and Highland Regiments, as well as their tartans.
Part Four discusses the uniforms and distinctions of the infantry,
including the regiments of Foot Guards and Infantry of the Line
(Fusiliers, Light Infantry, Riflemen and Highland Regiments). For
this revised edition Carl Franklin has updated many of the artworks
and provided a colour guide specifically for modellers.
Infectious disease, wounded and dying soldiers, and a shortage of
supplies were the daily realities faced by the nuns who nursed with
Florence Nightingale in the Crimean War. This study documents their
involvement in the conflict and how the nuns bore witness to the
effects of carnage and official indifference, in many cases
traumatized as a result. This book reflects on the initiative and
courage shown by the nuns and how their actions can be viewed as
part of a wider movement among women in the mid-19th century to
find fulfilment and assert control in their own lives.
Nightingale's Nuns and the Crimean War also sheds light on how
critics at the time accused many of the nuns of being secret agents
of the Catholic Church who preyed on vulnerable soldier patients;
there was a campaign in parliament to regulate and control
convents. Terry Tastard shows how the nuns attempted to neutralize
this anti-Catholicism, as well as charting the participation of
Anglican nuns who had just begun an astonishing project to revive
the religious life in the Church of England. Finally the book
reveals new insights into Florence Nightingale's relationships with
the nuns who nursed with her in Crimea and how these experiences
impacted Nightingale's own perspective.
A Woman's Empire explores a new dimension of Russian imperialism:
women actively engaged in the process of late imperial expansion.
The book investigates how women writers, travellers, and scientists
who journeyed to and beyond Central Asia participated in Russia's
"civilizing" and colonizing mission, utilizing newly found
educational opportunities while navigating powerful discourses of
femininity as well as male-dominated science. Katya Hokanson shows
how these Russian women resisted domestic roles in a variety of
ways. The women writers include a governor general's wife, a
fiction writer who lived in Turkestan, and a famous Theosophist,
among others. They make clear the perspectives of the ruling class
and outline the special role of women as describers and recorders
of information about local women, and as builders of "civilized"
colonial Russian society with its attendant performances and social
events. Although the bulk of the women's writings, drawings, and
photography is primarily noteworthy for its cultural and historical
value, A Woman's Empire demonstrates how the works also add
dimension and detail to the story of Russian imperial expansion and
illuminates how women encountered, imagined, and depicted Russia's
imperial Other during this period.
To coincide with the 2015 bicentennial of the Battle of Waterloo,
Osprey publishes "Waterloo 1815," a definitive three volume history
of the historic battle. Based on new research drawn from
unpublished first-hand accounts and illustrations, "Waterloo 1815"
provides a detailed resource for all aspects of the famous battle.
This first volume of the trilogy, "Quatre Bras," focuses on the
lead-up to Waterloo itself. Two days before the main battle, an
initial 8,000 Allied troops faced the 48,000 men of the French
Armee du Nord under Marshal Ney at the strategically vital
crossroads of Quatre Bras. Having been tricked by Napolean who was
trying to drive a wedge between the Prussians and the Anglo-allied
army, Wellington concentrated his troops at Quatre Bras, hoping to
link up with the Prussians. There Wellington just managed to hold
off Ney's attacks. The battle ended in a tactical stalemate but,
because he was unable to join with Blucher's Prussians, Wellington
retreated back along the road to Brussels to new positions at a
small Belgian village called Waterloo, and thus set the stage for
one of the greatest battles of all time.
With detailed maps, illustrations and battlefield dispositions,
"Quatre Bras" will lay the groundwork for any student of the Battle
of Waterloo.
The wars between 1792 and 1815 saw the making of the modern world,
with Britain and Russia the key powers to emerge triumphant from a
long period of bitter conflict. In this innovative book, Jeremy
Black focuses on the strategic contexts and strategies involved,
explaining their significance both at the time and subsequently.
Reinterpreting French Revolutionary and Napoleonic warfare,
strategy, and their consequences, he argues that Napoleon's failure
owed much to his limitations as a strategist. Black uses this
framework as a foundation to assess the nature of warfare, the
character of strategy, and the eventual ascendance of Britain and
Russia in this period. Rethinking the character of strategy, this
is the first history to look holistically at the strategies of all
the leading belligerents from a global perspective. It will be an
essential read for military professionals, students, and history
buffs alike.
Beyond Nightingale is the first book to explore the inception of
modern nursing from a transnational perspective, studying the
development of the new military nursing in the five Crimean War
armies. The story is told within the broader context of the
different political, social and economic cultures from which modern
nursing arose. Although the Russians were battling industrialised
armies with their pre-industrial, agrarian economy it was they who
developed the most innovative system of nursing. The book
illustrates the barriers, some of which still exist today, which
nurses had to overcome to gain recognition of the crucial role they
played in the war. The significant contributions allied and Russian
nurses made working directly under fire during the Russians'
brilliant defence of Sevastopol make a wonderfully exciting story
during which these mid-nineteenth century nurses proved their
extraordinary competencies. -- .
Britain was France's most implacable enemy during the Napoleonic
Wars yet was able to resist the need for conscription to fill the
ranks of its army and sustain Wellington's campaigns in Portugal
and Spain. This new study explains how the men were found to
replenish Wellington's army, and the consequences on Britain's
government, army and society.
The eighteenth century brought a period of tumultuous change to the
Ottoman Empire. While the Empire sought modernization through
military and administrative reform, it also lost much of its
influence on the European stage through war and revolt. In this
book, Ethan L. Menchinger sheds light on intellectual life,
politics, and reform in the Empire through the study of one of its
leading intellectuals and statesmen, Ahmed Vasif. Vasif's life
reveals new aspects of Ottoman letters - heated debates over moral
renewal, war and peace, justice, and free will - but it also forces
the reappraisal of Ottoman political reform, showing a vital
response that was deeply enmeshed in Islamic philosophy, ethics,
and statecraft. Tracing Vasif's role through the turn of the
nineteenth century, this book opens the debate on modernity and
intellectualism for those students and researchers studying the
Ottoman Empire, intellectual history, the Enlightenment, and
Napoleonic Europe.
As the wars of Napoleon ravage Europe, chaos and fear reign and the
darkness that once clung to the shadows has been emboldened.
Supernatural creatures - vampires, werewolves, ghouls, and worse
take advantage of the havoc, striking out at isolated farms,
villages, and even military units. Whether they are pursuing some
master plan or simply revelling in their newfound freedom is
unknown. Most people dismiss reports of these slaughters as the
rantings of madmen or the lies of deserters, but a few know
better... The Silver Bayonet is a skirmish wargame of gothic horror
set during the Napoleonic Wars. Each player forms an elite band of
monster hunters drawn from the ranks of one of the great powers.
Riflemen, swordsmen, and engineers fight side-by-side with mystics,
occultists, and even those few supernatural creatures that can be
controlled or reasoned with enough to make common cause. The game
can be played solo, co-operatively, or competitively, with players
progressing through a series of interlinked adventures with their
soldiers gaining experience and suffering grievous wounds, and
their units triumphing... or falling in the face of the shadows. It
is a game of action and adventure, where musket and sabre meet
tooth and claw.
For over 20 years France was the dominating, controlling and
conquering power of the western world, a result not only of
Napoleon's inspired leadership, but of the efforts of almost an
entire generation of Frenchmen under arms. The French Revolution
heralded both social change and a seismic shift in how armies were
organized, trained and deployed.
This book provides an analysis of the preparation of French troops
from manual regulations to the training ground, studying the
changing quality of command and control within the army, which
initially ensured that the French infantry were virtually
unstoppable. Paddy Griffith not only explores the role of the
French infantry at the apex of their powers and their actions in
key battles, but also provides a detailed explanation of their
eventual decline leading to defeat at Waterloo, providing a
critical overview of French Napoleonic infantry tactics.
In the early 1930s, approximately 6,500 Finns from Canada and the
United States moved to Soviet Karelia, on the border of Finland, to
build a Finnish workers' society. They were recruited by the Soviet
leadership for their North American mechanical and lumber
expertise, their familiarity with the socialist cause, and their
Finnish language and ethnicity. By 1936, however, Finnish culture
and language came under attack and ethnic Finns became the region's
primary targets in the Stalinist Great Terror. Building That Bright
Future relies on the personal letters and memoirs of these Finnish
migrants to build a history of everyday life during a transitional
period for both North American socialism and Soviet policy.
Highlighting the voices of men, women, and children, the book
follows the migrants from North America to the Soviet Union,
providing vivid descriptions of daily life. Samira Saramo brings
readers into personal contact with Finnish North Americans and
their complex and intimate negotiations of self and belonging.
Through letters and memoirs, Building That Bright Future explores
the multiple strategies these migrants used to make sense of their
rapidly shifting positions in the Soviet hierarchy and the
relationships that rooted them to multiple places and times.
Giuseppe Mazzini's Young Europe and the Birth of Modern Nationalism
in the Slavic World examines the intellectual currents in Eastern
Europe that attracted educated youth after the Polish Revolution of
1830-1. Focusing on the political ideas brought to the Slavic world
from the West by Polish emigre conspirators, Anna Procyk explores
the core message that the Polish revolutionaries carried, a message
based on the democratic principles espoused by Young Europe's
founder, Giuseppe Mazzini. Based on archival sources as well as
well-documented publications in Eastern Europe, this study
highlights that the national awakening among the Czechs, Slovaks,
and Galician Ukrainians was not just cultural, as is typically
assumed, but political as well. The documentary sources testify
that at its inception the political nationalism in Eastern Europe,
founded on the humanistic ideals promoted by Mazzini, was
republican-democratic in nature and that the clandestine groups in
Eastern Europe were cooperating with one another through
underground channels. It was through this cooperation during the
1830s that the better-educated Poles and Ukrainians in the
political underground tied to Young Europe became aware that the
interests of their nations, bound together by the forces of history
and political necessity, were best served when they worked closely
together.
In the years 1803-5 Napoleon Bonaparte built 4 new harbours on his
channel coast and assembled enough landing craft to put an army of
over 165,000 men ashore on English beaches. Was this threat to
Britain really serious and should we dismiss it as pure Bluff? Why
was it never revived after Bonaparte's continental wars against the
Russians, Austrians and Prussians? What did the English do about
defending themselves? This book, originally published in 1973
tackles these questions. It shows why Bonaparte's flotilla was no
Bluff but something the British were right to take seriously and
also how their preparations to defend the beaches within reach of
its bases made a revival of the flotilla after 1807 pointless.
Though recognising the importance of Trafalgar the book rejects the
fallacy that this victory ended Britain's danger. The book covers
the background of the war, Britain's defence organisation, the
Royal Navy's tasks, Bonaparte's preparations and how the British
made ready to meet him.
|
|