Book Review: The Battle, Alessandro Barbero

Comprehensive and well laid out, The Battle really benefits from Barbero's use of short pithy chapters. Each is enjoyably punchy and succinct, and the large number, and rapid progress you can make through them, make for a galloping good read.

I'd have liked a glossary, 'cast list' and order of battle. Regarding the latter, he explains, as indeed do most recent writers on such subjects, that armies on the ground never matched their theoretical or 'paper' strengths. But even so, a concentrated listing of units and numbers involved (perhaps as an appendix?), even if approximate, would have made for a reference as handy, and to my mind as essential, as good maps. 

Talking of maps, the maps here are all grouped together near the front of the book, and are okay, although I've seen clearer/better. The inclusion of a portion of the Ferrari & Capitaine map - see image below - as used by Boney (and also the source for Wellington's maps), is a nice touch. There are also a good number of evocative illustrations.

There's an immense amount of interesting and indeed often exciting detail, as the concentrated carnage ebbs and flows along what remains an unusually contracted front, given the overall numbers that were involved at Waterloo. Barbero's writing is excellent, and he does a superb job of evoking the excitement of the battle, capturing it in all it's horrifying and gory glory. 

The grand scale of this intense battle is humanised by Barbero's liberal peppering of his narrative with piquant observations from participants, making for a gripping read. This is the sort of exciting history that can kickstart a lifelong passion for a subject. I was glued to The Battle from start to finish, and thoroughly enjoyed it, so I'd recommend it highly.

Barbero.

Waterloo 200th - Battlefield meet-up, 19th June?

A view of La Haye Sainte, from the Lion Mound, Sept. 2014. 

Hello

My wife and I have just finished making our arrangements for a short stay in Belgium near Waterloo over the bicentennial period. We - or rather I - left it pretty late, but it's all sorted now... phew!

I noticed, thanks to a post over at TMP, that bloggers had met up at Salute 2015. I was miffed that I hadn't known about that, as I'm new to wargame blogging, having only stared last year, and would love to have met up with fellow bloggers at Salute.

A detail from Louis DuMoulin's superb Lion Mound

panorama painting.

A French cuirassier's cuirass, sword and scabbard; 

can't recall if this was at La Caillou or the Wellington

Museum now; can anyone else put me right?

Fantastic! Or perhaps I should say 'superbe'!?

So, I thought I'd tentatively extend the furry hand of friendship in relation to our Waterloo trip. My vague thoughts at this stage are to perhaps suggest a meeting somewhere the day after the battle, the 19th June, to chat about and compare notes re the 18th. Please contact me here via my blog if this would be of interest, or to let us know if something like this is already being arranged by someone else, so we don't miss out on this as well!

We visited Plancenoit. This is the church there.

I found this plaque on the wall of the above church.

We went to Waterloo and environs last year, as a kind of recce I guess. There is (or was?)* a pub/restaurant at the Lion Mound hamlet, and a café nearby. Mind you, they are neither the greatest of venues. At least the pub is quite large. The café is tiny! Does anyone with better local knowledge have any suggestions as to the best (nicest) potential site for a meet-up? My memory's hazy at this time of the morning, but isn't one of the buildings on the central road a café/restaurant now?

Anyhoo...I'd be interested to hear from anyone else who'll be making the pilgrimage, and I do hope some of us can meet and share our enthusiasm on the battlefield.

Regards

Sebastian

* The whole site's being redeveloped; I'm not sure what changes have been made, other than there being a new larger (underground!?) visitor centre.

UPDATE: Since first posting on this topic I found out, via a thread I'd started at TMP, that the re-enactment events at the Waterloo bicentenary were ticketed. After an initial panic I was able to book tickets - almost all of which had, by then, sold out. I think we probably would've been ok just being in the area at the time. But as I'd been intending to watch the battle it would've been disappointing not to have had access to the battlefield. As it turns out we'll have access to the 'bivouac' area on the evening of the 18th, after which there's an opening ceremony (a rather showbiz looking affair called 'inferno'!), and our tickets include that as well. They also include a 'French attack' re-enactment on the 19th, which I'm very much looking forward to.

PS - I thought I'd jazz up this post with a few pics from our September 2014 visit.

One of several small dioramas in the Waterloo battlefield area.

I forget where we saw this one. Probably at the Wellington

Museum in Waterloo itself. Can anyone confirm?

This is where we stayed (they advertise themselves as 'residence

Brussels South') on our 2014 visit. We would've stayed here

again, only we appear to have left it too late, as all the rooms

were already booked.

Waterloo Dioramas - Pt II: Royal Green Jackets Museum, Winchester

The Diorama

Although this isn't the sharpest image, I like the busy, crowded sense of action. The lighting almost mimics sunlight through broken cloud cover. Certainly this image also conveys the intensity of the action depicted on the superb RGJ Museum Waterloo diorama.

Whilst I'm calling this part II of my series on Waterloo dioramas, it's actually, strictly speaking, my fourth post on subject. But I'm not counting the first two, both on Siborne's models, as I plan to revisit them, take much better pictures, and write much fuller accounts of both.

In the mean time, after my wife and I recently visited Winchester, I now have a load of pics of the Royal green jackets Museum Waterloo diorama. So to day I'll start work on documenting that trip, or rather the model itself. The museum were kind enough to allow me to take a few pics with some of the glass protective doors open. Some of these shots were taken before I worked up the courage to ask, some after. Can you tell which are which?

The Commanders

All three commanders are depicted on the field in this model. Below I show Boney, with his 'grognards' of the Old Guard, Wellington, by 'his' tree, and Blücher, riding into the action (despite his earlier fall at Ligny) in the south-eastern corner.

It was pointed out to me, and observant viewers might've noted this already, that Blücher and his ADCs are a lot crisper and brighter than most of the other figures. This is because they're new additions. I was also told that the model is set to undergo a major refurb. It'll be interesting to see how things change.

The above two pictures are of a French battery near Hougoumont, on the Frnech left, at the western end of the model. I think the lines, in the upper photo, where the guns have rolled back, are a nice touch.

I hope the above two pictures convey that 'big battalions feel. The sweep of the advancing Old Guard grenadiers is quite a nice effect, I think. Whilst the line infantry moving past caissons have a good authentic battlefield vibe

 Above are two views from the british side of the field: a battalion in square, and another advancing into the fray, though the messy rear of the lines. There are all kinds of lovely little vignettes, such as the one below, with wounded troops who've been taken to the rear resting amongst trees and being attended to.

These two pictures of the road, littered with wounded men and abandoned wagons, strewn with battlefield detritus, are, i think, very evocative. And their slight lack of clarity actually give them a bit of atmosphere, almost like those vintage coloured photographs of yesteryear, such as one sometimes sees under the banner of 'WWII in colour', or such like.

The following pictures are from the sharp end, where the bloody melee is at its fiercest. The scene is the Grand Battery, near the French center, at the extreme point where the Union Brigade cavalry reached, before retiring in a tattered, bloodied mess.

I like the next three as a sequence, zooming out from a close-up of the French officer and Scots Grey, locked in single combat, to a wide-sreen view of the ragged carnage of battle, again just in front of the Grand Battery (and not too far from where Boney and his guard reserves are).

I like this last one, not because it's great photo... it's pretty poor, obviously. but with a tiny bit of adjustment to the brightness and contrast, I think it comes out looking like an old-fashioned hand tinted black and white photograph.

This is just a quick upload, to get the post live; I hope to add more information to this post, as time allows.