From Booklist
This summary narrative supplies basic data about Waterloo and evaluates mistakes by both Wellington and Napoleon that make the historic battle one of the most worked-over topics for speculation in military history. A Saturday Night Live skit once parodied the phenomenon by wondering, What if Napoleon had a B-52 at the Battle of Waterloo? Roberts' original contribution to historical contingency--for such an exhaustively studied battle, his research, amazingly enough, turned up new evidence--is that a cavalry charge by Marshal Ney, possibly the gravest error the French made during the battle, was a spontaneous assault rather than an intended one. Smoothly integrating the what-ifs into the chronology, Roberts joins the essential facts about Waterloo, such as its area and relief, to the morale of individual units involved. Emphasizing the courage and fear that rippled over the battlefield during its daylong course, Roberts instills an appreciation for Waterloo as a horrific experience saturated with alternative possible outcomes. A must for the military shelf. Gilbert Taylor
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John Lukacs, author of Five Days in London
"A small masterpiece. Waterloo is a military history of a high order."
Paul Johnson, author of Modern Times
"Andrew Roberts has produced the most convincing description of that fearsome day I have ever read."
Book Description
The epic career of Napoleon was brought to a shattering end on the evening of June 18, 1815, when his hastily formed legions faced the Anglo-Allied armies under the command of the Duke of Wellington. It was the only time these men -- the two greatest captains of their age -- fought against each other. Waterloo, once it was over, put an end to twenty-two years of French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, and led to a century of relative peace and progress in Europe.
When the wars of the future did come, they were fought with infinitely more appalling methods by a constantly changing balance of powers. At Waterloo, the honor of bold, lavish uniforms and, at least initially, the aesthetic beauty of battle were still intact.
With precision and elegance, Andrew Roberts lucidly sets the political, strategic, and historical scene before offering a breathtaking account of each successive stage of the battle.
He also draws on a recently discovered document from 1854 that casts new light on just how the battle was lost. It is a confession from a French officer that helps to explain why the French cavalry charged when it did -- unsupported by infantry or artillery, and headlong at well-defended British squares. It shows that accident rather than design may have led to the debacle that lost Napoleon the battle, the campaign, and the war.
Authoritative and engrossing, Waterloo is a brilliant portrait of a legendary turning point in modern history, after which the balance of world power, the legend of Napoleon, and the art of war were never the same.
Waterloo: June 18, 1815: The Battle for Modern Europe FROM THE PUBLISHER
"The epic career of Napoleon was brought to a shattering end on the evening of June 18, 1815, when his hastily formed legions faced the Anglo-Allied armies under the command of the Duke of Wellington. It was the only time these men - the two greatest captains of their age - fought against each other. Waterloo, once it was over, put an end to twenty-two years of French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, and led to a century of relative peace and progress in Europe." "Andrew Roberts sets the political, strategic, and historical scene before offering an account of each successive stage of the battle. He also draws on a recently discovered document from 1854 that casts new light on just how the battle was lost. It is a confession from a French officer that helps to explain why the French cavalry charged when it did - unsupported by infantry or artillery, and headlong at well-defended British squares. It shows that accident rather than design may have led to the debacle that lost Napoleon the battle, the campaign, and the war." Waterloo is a portrait of a legendary turning point in modern history, after which the balance of world power, the legend of Napoleon, and the art of war were never the same.
FROM THE CRITICS
Kirkus Reviews
A deceptively slender, richly nuanced overview of the battle that, suggests British historian Roberts (Napoleon and Wellington, 2002, etc.), marks the beginning of the modern era. Though it took place well into the 19th century, Waterloo "was nonetheless an eighteenth-century phenomenon," Roberts writes-and not only in its deployment of brilliantly outfitted men in straight, easy-to-mow-down lines across wide fields of fire. It was resolutely modern, though, in its scale: Waterloo involved perhaps half a million soldiers distributed among the armies of France, England, Prussia, and lesser principalities and territories, and Napoleon Bonaparte seems to have nursed a born revolutionist's hope that victory against his enemies would inspire the Belgians to rise against the Dutch, the French to resume control of Europe, and the Tory government of England to collapse. A reasonable desire, perhaps, but in attempting to realize it Napoleon made some curious and even "strategically inept" errors that betrayed some of his carefully pronounced principles, dividing his forces and allowing the enemy to gain control of the high ground; "the topography across which Wellington had chosen to receive Napoleon's attacks could hardly have been better suited for infantry" against advancing artillery, cavalry, and ground forces, Roberts notes. Wellington made a few miscalculations himself. But, like Napoleon, and far from placing himself at a safe distance as some historians have maintained, Wellington was everywhere at once, keeping careful control over his side of the battle. The battle, Roberts insists, was never a foregone conclusion, and it could have turned decisively for Napoleon at many points; evenin failure, had he withdrawn just a bit earlier, Napoleon might have saved some of his army and with it resisted an invasion of France itself. But he didn't, and the carnage was fearful: taken together with satellite battles and skirmishes, Waterloo cost the lives of 120,300 men, a staggering figure that only raised the bar for subsequent slaughters. A vivid, thoughtful, and blessedly concise account of one of history's signal events.
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