| Posted: 01 June 2016 at 5:07pm | IP Logged | 1
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WATERLOO by Bernard Cornwell. Cornwell had written about Waterloo before in the fictional context of his hero Sharpe's adventures, but this time he tackles the subject in a non-fiction account, and does very well with it.
Probably a defect of American education, but I got through schooling without much of an appreciation of just how big a deal the Duke of Wellington was in Great Britain; beyond knowing that he had beaten Napoleon at Waterloo, I knew little about him and was more or less blank on the battle of Waterloo; I knew more about Nelson at Trafalgar. What gradually changed my perception was reading Cornwell's Sharpe series, and somewhat contemporaneous with that, Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell by Susanna Clarke, then some of Clarke's short fiction, in which the Duke also figures.
This book is excellent, as are the Sharpe novels, for an unblinking portrait of the savagery of war. It didn't start in the 20th century, folks. Back then it was hard on men, but even harder on horses.
The book sketches a portrait of the generals on each side, gives a good sense of the overall strategy and tactics and who was successful and why, but also contains some wonderful closeups of actual soldiers, and sometimes their wives and chidren, and what they thought and felt about what befell them.
Edited by Robert Cosgrove on 01 June 2016 at 5:17pm
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