This fascinating study takes the reader from the early years of Napoleon’s career to his defeat at Waterloo. It is a penetrating look at the technology; tactics; logistics; strategy; and outstanding generalship that created an empire.
#1030548 in Books 2014-05-01Original language:EnglishPDF # 1 9.50 x 1.00 x 6.00l; 1.27 #File Name: 0752488775240 pages
Review
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful. An elegant and valuable contributionBy Larry DosseyWellington and Waterloo by R. E. Foster Like many Americans; I have had a longstanding fascination with Field Marshal Arthur Wellesley; the First Duke of Wellington (1769-1852); and his triumph over Napoleon at Waterloo in June 1815. Wellington has always seemed a kind of George Washington to many of us colonists (a terrible comparison for the English; I know); a kind of terrestrial Lord Nelson. As a confessed Anglophile; I’ve read my share of books on Wellington and Waterloo; “the nearest-run thing you ever saw in your life;†as the Iron Duke himself described the battle. R. E. Foster’s Wellington and Waterloo is an important contribution. Foster goes beyond the well-worn accounts of Wellington’s early successes in India and the Peninsular Campaign; in which he out-generaled and successfully drove Napoleon’s armies from the Iberian Peninsula in the run-up to Waterloo. As to the famous battle itself; Foster devotes only a single; but excellent; chapter to it. His primary quarry lies elsewhere; and therein rests the uniqueness and importance of this book. In peerless prose; seeded with humorous ambushes that are a reader’s delight; Foster exhumes the details that were occurring in English society leading up to and following the great battle. He is masterful in describing the ebb and flow of the societal tides and eddies that have shaped Wellington’s legacy down to the present day. Foster paints a canvas of Wellington; warts and all — and there are warts that have often been glossed over in many of the adoring accounts of the man. If you are new to the Wellington-Waterloo genre; perhaps this is not the first book on the subject that should claim your attention. But if you want more than military history and are interested in the role Wellington played in the complex events in England in the decades following Waterloo; and how and why his influence extends to the present day; this is your book. I know it was mine.~ Larry Dossey; MDAuthor (most recently): ONE MIND: How Our Consciousness Is Part of a Greater Mind and Why It Matters
