Waterloo: The History of Four Days, Three Armies and Three Battles
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LC Class | DC242.C667 2014 |
Waterloo: The History of Four Days, Three Armies and Three Battles
According to the book's jacket, the book was commissioned to commemorate the Battle's 200th anniversary.[3]
The book includes a number of full colour illustrations, including maps and colour portraits of the major figures involved, including
The book should not be confused with Cornwell's novel
Foreword
In his foreword, Cornwell acknowledges that there is already an extensive library of work on the Battle of Waterloo, but one of his reasons for writing the book is to attempt to narrate the battle from the perspectives of the "ordinary" soldiers who participated in it.
Why another book on Waterloo? It is a good question. There is no shortage of accounts of the battle, indeed it is one of the most studied and written-about battles in history... Yet the Duke of Wellington was surely right when he said that a man might as well tell the history of a ball, meaning a dance, as write the story of a battle. Everyone who attends a ball has a different memory of the event, some happy, some disappointing, and how, in the swirl of music and ball gowns and flirtations could anyone hope to make a coherent account of exactly what happened and when and to whom?
...
There is an agreed story. Napoleon attacks Wellington's right in an attempt to draw the Duke's reserves to that part of the battlefield, then launches a massive attack on the Duke's left. That attack fails. Act Two is the great cavalry assault on the Duke's centre-right, and Act Three, as the Prussians arrive stage left, is the desperate last assault by the undefeated Imperial Guard. To those can be added the subplots of the assaults on Hougoumont and the fall of La Haie Sainte. As a framework that has some merit, but the battle was far more complicated than that simple story suggests. To the men who were present it did not seem simple, or explicable, and one reason to write this book is to try and give an impression of what it was like to be on that field on that confusing day.".[4]
To that end, Cornwell's narrative is intercut with excerpts from letters and memoirs written by soldiers of all ranks, in all three of the participating armies (French, Anglo-Dutch, and Prussian). These first-person narratives come not only from the high commanders, such as
, and many others.Audiobook
Waterloo was released as an audiobook by
References
- ^ "WATERLOO; The History of Four Days, Three Armies and Three Battles".
- ^ "WATERLOO; The History of Four Days, Three Armies and Three Battles".
- ISBN 978-0062312051, Jacket description.
- ISBN 978-0062312051, Foreword, page 1.
- ^ "Amazon.com: Waterloo: The History of Four Days, Three Armies, and Three Battles (Audible Audio Edition): Bernard Cornwell, Dugald Bruce Lockhart, HarperAudio: Books".