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 entered France and restored Louis XVIII to the throne, while Napoleon was exiled to the island of Saint Helena, where he later died. Waterloo was a resounding victory for the British Army and Allied forces, and it changed the course of European history. In this concise yet detailed account, historian Gregory Fremont-Barnes tells you everything you need to know about this critical battle.

Detailed investigation of the key role played by Admiral Saumarez in the continuing naval warfare against Napoleon. The maritime war against Napoleon did not end with the Battle of Trafalgar, but continued right up to 1815, with even more British ships and sailors deployed after 1805 than before. One key theatre was the Baltic, where the British commander was Admiral Saumarez. He had had a highly successful career as a post-Captain, notably at the two battles of Algeciras as a newly-promoted Rear-Admiral. For five years from 1808 as Commander-in-Chief of a large Balticfleet, he played a very skilful diplomatic role, combining firmness and restraint, and working with Sweden contrary to the instincts of his superiors in London, even when she declared war. Despite the determined efforts of Denmark's gunboats and privateers, he successfully kept British trade flowing in and out of the Baltic, undermining Napoleon's 'Continental System' - the economic blockade of Britain - and leading to Napoleon's fateful decision to invadeRussia in 1812. This book, based on extensive original research in both British and Scandinavian archives and making considerable use of Saumarez' unpublished correspondence, charts the maritime and political history of thewar in the Baltic. It illustrates the highly successful, highly esteemed role the Admiral played and looks at the nature and motivation of the man himself revealed in his letters and in the private letters of Count von Rosen, Governor of Gothenburg and chief link between Saumarez and former French Marshal Bernadotte, Crown Prince of Sweden, later to be crowned King Karl XIV Johan. TIM VOELCKER gained his PhD in maritime history at the University of Exeter.

During the Napoleon era, the Kingdom of Bavaria among the France's German allied states, provided the largest contingent with 30,000 soldiers and due to its size took part in decisive fighting in the 1809 and 1812 campaigns. In this book, the authors present a comprehensive work about the organization and individual branches of the Bavarian Army, their uniforms, the regulations for its deployment and the missions of the individual branches in the field, as well as the army's internal structure. These descriptions are supplemented by accounts of the Bavarians' combat engagements in the campaigns of 1806-07 against Prussia and Russia, of 1809 against Austria, of 1812 against Russia, as well as of 1813 against Prussia and Russia.

Jeffrey N. Cox reconsiders the history of British Romanticism, seeing the work of Byron, the Shelleys, and Keats responding not only to the 'first generation' Romantics led by Wordsworth, but more directly to the cultural innovations of the Napoleonic War years. Recreating in depth three moments of political crisis and cultural creativity - the Peace of Amiens, the Regency Crisis, and Napoleon's first abdication - Cox shows how 'second generation' Romanticism drew on cultural 'border raids', seeking a global culture at a time of global war. This book explores how the introduction on the London stage of melodrama in 1803 shaped Romantic drama, how Barbauld's prophetic satire Eighteen Hundred and Eleven prepares for the work of the Shelleys, and how Hunt's controversial Story of Rimini showed younger writers how to draw on the Italian cultural archive. Responding to world war, these writers sought to embrace a radically new vision of the world.

The Napoleonic Wars saw almost two decades of brutal fighting. Fighting took place on an unprecedented scale, from the frozen wastelands of Russia to the rugged mountains of the Peninsula; from Egypt's Lower Nile to the bloody battlefield of New Orleans. Volume II of The Cambridge History of the Napoleonic Wars provides a comprehensive guide to the Napoleonic Wars and weaves together the four strands - military, naval, economic, and diplomatic - that intertwined to make up one of the greatest conflicts in history. Written by a team of the leading Napoleonic scholars, this volume provides an authoritative and comprehensive analysis of why the nations went to war, the challenges they faced and how the wars were funded and sustained. It sheds new light not only on the key battles and campaigns but also on questions of leadership, strategy, tactics, guerrilla warfare, recruitment, supply, and weaponry.

Robert Southey (1774-1843), Romantic poet and friend of Coleridge, was Poet Laureate from 1813 to 1843. He also wrote historical works and was a noted scholar of Portuguese. (His three-volume history of Brazil is also reissued in this series.) As Southey himself states, many lives of Nelson had been written since the hero's death at Trafalgar in 1805, but what he is attempting in these two volumes, published in 1813, is a work 'clear and concise enough to become a manual for the young sailor ... till he has treasured up the example in his memory and in his heart'. In this 'eulogy', Volume 1 describes Nelson's boyhood and early experience of the sea, his service on both sides of the Atlantic and in the Arctic, his uneasy relationship with the Admiralty, and his role in the Napoleonic Wars up to the battle of the Nile.

Robert Southey (1774-1843), Romantic poet and friend of Coleridge, was Poet Laureate from 1813 to 1843. He also wrote historical works and was a noted scholar of Portuguese. (His three-volume history of Brazil is also reissued in this series.) As Southey himself states, many lives of Nelson had been written since the hero's death at Trafalgar in 1805, but what he is attempting in these two volumes, published in 1813, is a work 'clear and concise enough to become a manual for the young sailor ... till he has treasured up the example in his memory and in his heart'. In this 'eulogy', Volume 2 continues the story from Nelson's return from Egypt to the battle of Copenhagen, and the subsequent brief respite of the Peace of Amiens, until his appointment as supreme commander of the British fleet, and his death in the hour of victory.

'Glorious... Scurr is one of the most gifted non-fiction writers alive' Simon Schama, Financial Times A revelatory portrait of Napoleon written for our own time, exploring his love of nature and the gardens that gave his revolutionary life its light and shade. Napoleon's gardens range from his childhood olive groves in Corsica, to Josephine's menageries in Paris, to the walled garden of Hougoumont at the battle of Waterloo, and ultimately to St Helena, where he could sit and scan the sea in his final months. In this innovative biography, Ruth Scurr follows the dramatic trajectory of Napoleon's life through the land he cultivated and that offered him retreat from the manifold frustrations of war and politics. Seen through the eyes of those who knew him in the shade of his gardens, Napoleon emerges a giant figure made human - both as the Emperor hunting for glory and the man in an old straw hat, leaning on his spade. 'Immensely satisfying and captivating... Charming and intelligent' Andrew Roberts, TLS 'Grippingly original' The Times 'A delight to read' Daily Telegraph * A Book of the Year in The Times, Sunday Times, Daily Telegraph, Financial Times, Sunday Telegraph and History Today * Winner of a Society for Military History Distinguished Book Award 2022

Waterloo is one of the defining campaigns of European history. The name conjures up images of the terrible scale and grandeur of the Napoleonic Wars and the incredible combined effort that finally ended Napoleon's aspirations of power in Europe. Drawn from unpublished first-hand accounts, and using detailed illustrations, this comprehensive volume is the ideal resource for studying the intense fighting at the battles of Waterloo and Wavre, the final, decisive engagements of the Waterloo campaign. Those two battles are at the heart of this study, which explores the action at Mont St Jean where Wellington managed to hold the French at bay until the arrival of the Prussians under Blucher saw the Allies secure a hard-fought victory at the dramatic climax of the 'Hundred days'.

Originally published in 1910, this book explores the hypothesis that Napoleon's decrees were intended as an attack on British credit immediately before the outbreak of the final Napoleonic War. Cunningham examines French pamphlets and Napoleon's correspondence to reveal the French opinion on the state of Britain's credit and how unstable finances could be used to undermine an enemy before an actual conflict arose. This book will be of value to economic historians and anyone with an interest in Napoleonic propaganda.

Frances Isabella Duberly (1829 1902) accompanied her officer husband to the Crimea as the only woman on the front line. Her letters home to her sister, highlighting the incompetence and negligence of the generals, and describing the appalling conditions in which the men were fighting, appeared anonymously in the press and, along with W. H. Russell's reports, helped stir public opinion against the prosecution of the war. This reaction persuaded Duberly to ask her brother-in-law to edit her diary, and it provoked a sensation when published in 1855. Although she occasionally conveys some of the elation of victory, the journal is more often a stark and disturbing document: following the battle of Balaclava she writes that 'even my closed eyelids were filled with the ruddy glare of blood'. No history of this brutal campaign can ignore this journal, and it stands comparison with any account of the horrors of war.

A colourful British general, Robert Wilson (1777 1849) was knighted many times over by crowned heads, but never by his own monarch. Described by Wellington as 'a very slippery fellow', he fought in the Peninsular and Napoleonic wars, and his published account of the Egyptian campaign resulted in Napoleon complaining to the British government about accusations of his cruelty towards prisoners and his own men. Following the invasion of Russia, Wilson was seconded to Kutuzov's army, and was present at all the major engagements. Edited by his nephew and published in 1860, this second edition of Wilson's journal includes personal and official correspondence from Tsar Alexander I and his generals, and gives not only detailed accounts of troop movements and strategy, but also vivid descriptions of the savagery meted out by both sides. It remains an essential source of information on one of history's most famous military retreats.

From Napoleon's invasion of 1812 to the Wars of Liberation and beyond, seen from the common Russian soldier's perspective. This volume is composed of three accounts previously unavailable in English. Detailed annotations illuminate a seldom understood army and nation during one of the pivotal episodes in European history. Pamfil Nazarov was a peasant from Tver who was conscripted in 1812 but rather than head east to join the army in its campaign against Napoleon, he travelled to St. Petersburg and was selected for the Russian Imperial Guard. As a Jager of the Finland Regiment he went on to witness such events as the Battle of Leipzig and the fall of Paris. Nazarov's memoirs also briefly describe the Russo-Turkish War of 1828, the Polish Uprising of 1830, and culminate in his voluntary induction into the monastic ranks of the Orthodox Church. Ivan "Menshoy" Ostroukhov similarly came from the peasantry of Tula and had prospects as a merchant before his household was chosen to produce a conscript. Also like Nazarov, he was inducted into the Guard, serving with the Uhlans as a choral singer in its reserve squadron. His autobiography ends prematurely, possibly due to the author's death. Rafail Zotov, on the other hand, was a formally educated noble from St. Petersburg who could speak German and was familiar with astronomy and literature. He volunteered to serve as a junior officer in the militia when the French invaded. His preconceived notions of war and military service were challenged, and his abilities as a leader tested by his experiences on the hard marches through the north to the battles of Polotsk and Berezina and on to the siege of Danzig in 1813. Russia has a long and rich history and its self-identity is built on many episodes and myths, but none are so often dramatized, by Russians and Westerners alike, as Napoleon's invasion in 1812. Now for the first time the voice of the common Russian caught up in those continental events is available in the English language. Contains an introduction by the translator, footnotes throughout with citations and bibliography, and multiple illustrations of relevant persons and events.

The Crimean War (1854-6) was the first to be fought in the era of modern communications, and it had a profound influence on British literary culture, bringing about significant shifts in perceptions of heroism and national identity. In this book, Stefanie Markovits explores how mid-Victorian writers and artists reacted to an unpopular war: one in which home-front reaction was conditioned by an unprecedented barrage of information arriving from the front. This history had formal consequences. How does patriotic poetry translate the blunders of the Crimea into verse? How does the shape of literary heroism adjust to a war that produced not only heroes but a heroine, Florence Nightingale? How does the predominant mode of journalism affect artistic representations of 'the real'? By looking at the journalism, novels, poetry, and visual art produced in response to the war, Stefanie Markovits demonstrates the tremendous cultural force of this relatively short conflict.

The Battle of Austerlitz is almost universally regarded as the most impressive of Napoleon s many victories. The magnitude of the French achievement against a larger army was unprecedented, the great victory being met by sheer amazement and delirium in Paris, where just days earlier the nation had been teetering on the brink of financial collapse. In this insightful study, the author analyses the planning of the opposing forces and details the course of the battle hour by hour, describing the fierce see-saw battle around Sokolnitz, the epic struggle for the Pratzen Heights, the dramatic engagement between the legendary Lannes and Bagration in the north, and the widely misunderstood clash of Napoleon s Imperial Guard and Alexander s Imperial Leib-Guard. The author has produced a detailed and balanced assessment of the battle that for the first time places familiar French accounts in their proper perspective and exposes many myths regarding the battle that have been perpetuated and even embellished in recent books.With 1805: Austerlitz, the reader is left with a thorough appreciation of Napoleon and his Grande Arm e of 1805, an army that decisively defeated not a hapless relic of the ancien regime but rather a formidable professional army that had fought the French armies on equal terms five years earlier.

The journalist William Howard Russell (1820 1907) is sometimes regarded as being the first war correspondent, and his reports from the conflict in the Crimea are also credited with being a cause of reforms in the British military system. This account of his time there, first published in 1858 and expanded in this 1895 edition, explains how Russell was sent by The Times of London in 1854 to join British troops stationed in Malta. He spent the next two years witnessing some of the key moments of the war, including the battle of Balaclava and the ill-fated Charge of the Light Brigade. His newspaper reports of the fighting and of the living conditions for the troops were widely read and very influential. In this retrospective work, Russell gives a more personal narrative of his experiences, making this an important account of one the most brutal wars of the nineteenth century.

The journalist William Howard Russell (1820 1907) is sometimes regarded as being the first war correspondent, and his reports from the conflict in the Crimea are also credited with being a cause of reforms made to the British military system. This 1865 book began as a review in The Times of the five-volume work of General Eduard Todleben (or Totleben), the military engineer and Russian Army General, whose work in creating and continually adapting the land defences of Sevastopol in 1854 5 made him a hero and enabled the fortress to hold out against British bombardment for a whole year. Russell added extracts from the original book to his review, and enlarged his commentary on the Russian text, producing a thorough and accurate synthesis, but always highlighting the central importance of the Russian work to any student of the history of the Sevastopol siege.

Thomas Creevey (1768-1838) was a Whig politician, diarist and letter-writer, whose papers provide an important source for the history of the early nineteenth century. Although a relatively poor man, he was adept at making friends with important people, and received hospitality and financial help from them. His letters are full of gossip, often indiscreet, giving a vivid picture of the society and politics of the day. They form an interesting comparison with the papers of his contemporaries, J. W. Croker, who as a Tory was in power for most of the period in question, and Charles Greville (both available in this series). Living in Brussels at the time of Waterloo, Creevey is perhaps best remembered for his description of life there during Napoleon's 'Hundred Days'. This two-volume work edited by Sir Herbert Maxwell (1845-1937) was first published in 1903. Volume 1 covers the Napoleonic Wars and the Regency.

Thomas Creevey (1768 1838) was a Whig politician, diarist and letter-writer, whose papers provide an important source for the history of the early nineteenth century. Although a relatively poor man, he was adept at making friends with important people, and received hospitality and financial help from them. His letters are full of gossip, often indiscreet, giving a vivid picture of the society and politics of the day. They form an interesting comparison with the papers of his contemporaries, J. W. Croker, who as a Tory was in power for most of the period in question, and Charles Greville (both available in this series). Creevey is perhaps best remembered for his description of Brussels during Napoleon's 'Hundred Days'. This two-volume work edited by Sir Herbert Maxwell (1845 1937) was first published in 1903. Volume 2 covers the period 1820 37, and the accession of Victoria, described here as a 'homely little being'.

THE GREATEST OF BATTLESThe defining military engagement of the nineteenth century. The epic battle that forever ended one man's dreams of a European empire unified under his rule. THE GREATEST OF RIVALSThis epoch-defining conflict would ultimately be remembered for the showdown between two of history's most legendary commanders: the Duke of Wellington, and Napoleon Bonaparte. THE DEFINITIVE ACCOUNTDivided into three parts, Christopher Hibbert masterfully depicts first Napoleon and his rise to power, then a portrait of Wellington and the allied armies, and lastly the steps leading up to and the battle itself, the final clash on the fields of Waterloo. A gripping, succinct and panoramic survey of this legendary battle, the history surrounding the conflict, and the personalities that defined both the battle itself, and a generation.

In October 1810, the Third French invasion of Portugal under Marechal Massena arrived at the Lines of Torres Vedras and his triumphal march into Lisbon came to an abrupt halt. Five months later a thoroughly demoralised and defeated French army retreated from Portugal and never returned. The Lines played a vital role in enabling the allied army to operate against a more numerous enemy. When threatened, there was a safe place for the allies to retire to, and from this secure base, Wellington eventually liberated the Iberian Peninsula. France, Portugal and Britain developed plans for the defence of Lisbon in 1808 and 1809. In November 1809, the British proposal was commenced and became the Lines of Torres Vedras. The Memorandum on the construction was written in October 1809 but was more of an outline. The design and construction was completed over the next 18 months, the bulk being completed before the arrival of the French in October 1810. The initial design was expanded through 1810 as more time became available and the construction in October 1810 was significantly different to the original memorandum. The book takes the reader through events in 1809 that led to the need for the construction of defences. The construction work is detailed and illustrated through several maps to explain the position and purpose of the several defences. The French invasion of 1810 is summarised through to the time when the French arrived at the Lines. The operations and movements over the next month are again detailed along with the continuing construction work on the Lines. One of the unusual elements of the defences was the construction of a telegraph system and this is described in great detail. One of the lesser-known facts about the Lines, is the position of the opposing forces between October 1810 and March 1811. They were only facing each other at the Lines for a few weeks during this period and most French troops never approached them. The operations and defences were spread over a much larger area. This book uses many new sources to prove a new, in-depth, English language account of the massive engineering exercise that built the Lines with the help of thousands of Portuguese civilians. Without the construction of the Lines, it is likely that Portugal would have been lost and history would tell a very different story.

In February 1793, in the wake of the War of American Independence and one year after British prime minister William Pitt the Younger had predicted fifteen years of peace, the National Convention of Revolutionary France declared war on Great Britain and the Netherlands. France thus initiated nearly a quarter century of armed conflict with Britain. During this fraught and still-contested period, historian Nathaniel Jarrett suggests, Pitt and his ministers forged a diplomatic policy and military strategy that envisioned an international system anticipating the Vienna settlement of 1815. Examining Pitt's foreign policy from 1783 to 1797-the years before and during the War of the First Coalition against Revolutionary France-Jarrett considers a question that has long vexed historians: Did Pitt adhere to the "blue water" school, imagining a globe-trotting navy, or did he favor engagement nearer to shore and on the European Continent? And was this approach grounded in precedent, or was it something new? While acknowledging the complexities within this dichotomy, The Lion at Dawn argues that the prime minister consistently subordinated colonial to continental concerns and pursued a new vision rather than merely honoring past glories. Deliberately, not simply in reaction to the French Revolution, Pitt developed and pursued a grand strategy that sought British security through a novel collective European system-one ultimately realized by his successors in 1815. The Lion at Dawn opens a critical new perspective on the emergence of modern Britain and its empire and on its early effort to create a stable and peaceful international system, an ideal debated to this day.

After midnight, 19 June 1815... On the battlefield more than 50,000 men and 7,000 horses lie dead and wounded; the wreckage of a once proud French Grande Armee struggles in abject disorder to the Belgian frontier pursued by murderous Prussian lancers; and Napoleon Bonaparte, exhausted and stunned at the scale of his defeat, rode through the darkness towards Paris, abdication and captivity. In the days, weeks and months that followed, news of the battle shaped the consciousness of an age. Drawing on a multiplicity of contemporary voices and viewpoints, Paul O'Keeffe brings into focus as never before the sights, sounds and smells of the battlefield, of conquest and defeat, of celebration and riot.

This book offers an innovative discussion of the role of ordinary people in some of the turning-points of European history.

After Napoleon's victories over Austria and Prussia, he rearranged the map of Germany. In 1807, he created the Kingdom of Westphalia as a model state within the Confederation of the Rhine. The Kingdom, with its French-based internal organization, was supposed to serve as a model for the desired structures of the other member states of the Confederation of the Rhine. Napoleon's brother, Jerome Bonaparte, was installed as Westphalia's king. The Kingdom was essentially assembled from the conquered lands of the Electoral Principality of Hesse, the Principality of Brunswick-Wolfenbuttel and the Prussian territories east of the Elbe River. In 1810, the territories of the former Electoral Principality of Hanover were added. Because Napoleon considered the Confederation of the Rhine to be primarily a military alliance, the Westphalian Army was of special importance. Its army was also organized completely on the French model. The authors describe the army's structure and its employment, including its operations in Spain, Germany, and Russia. Yet the focus of the book is on providing a comprehensive depiction of the colorful uniforms of the individual units, as well as their military actions. Along with that, it addresses in detail the branches that are usually overlooked, like administration, medical service, national guard, gendarmerie, etc. The book draws on all the available sources in order to put together this very comprehensive overview. It is, without doubt, the definitive work on the Westphalian army. It is extensively illustrated with Peter Bunde's uniform graphics, contemporary images, maps, and photos of museum pieces (uniforms, equipment, etc.). It also contains order of battle, generals' biographies and other information drawn from myriad sources.