Waterloo revisited: four books marking the bicentenary of the Battle of Waterloo

 
Waterloo: Four Days that Changed Europe’s Destiny by Tim Clayton
Saul David2 October 2014

Waterloo: Four Days that Changed Europe’s Destiny by Tim Clayton (Little, Brown, £25)

The best of the many books commemorating next year’s 200th anniversary of Napoleon’s final defeat at the Battle of Waterloo is this colourful and revealing narrative of the four-day campaign. By using a huge number of previously unseen first-hand accounts from British and European archives, Clayton is able to give us a fully rounded picture from the perspective of all the combatants. This reminds us that nothing was pre-determined and that the Allies’ victory owed as much to luck, accident and weather as it did to planning and judgment.

The Longest Afternoon: The 400 Men who Decided the Battle of Waterloo by Brendan Simms (Allen Lane, £14.99)

Thekey engagement of the battle, argues Brendan Simms in this short but perfectly formed book, was not Hougoumont, the charge of the Household and Union Brigades, the repulse of the Imperial Guard or even the arrival of the Prussians.

It was instead the heroic defence of the fortified farmhouse of La Haye Sainte at the centre of the Allied line by 400 soldiers of the 2nd Light Battalion of the King’s German Legion.

Many books mention this action but few give worthwhile details. Simms has drawn on newly available sources, particularly in the Hanoverian archives, to give us a vivid and compelling account of a fight that for much of the afternoon was not merely a battle within a battle but was the battle itself.

Waterloo: The History of Four days, Three Armies and Three Battles by Bernard Cornwell (William Collins, £25)

Bernard Cornwell, creator of the Sharpe series, treats the Waterloo campaign as a “magnificent story” with a ready-made plot and great characters. It is also a cliffhanger, with the denouement uncertain until the last moment. “We might know how it ends,” he writes, “but like all good stories it bears repetition.” A lot of historians could learn from Cornwell’s approach. He sets the scene, fleshes out the main characters and lets the story unfold to its dramatic conclusion. An excellent first foray into non-fiction, and proof that good narrative history is no different from fiction — it’s all about the story.

Waterloo: The Aftermath by Paul O’Keeffe (Bodley Head, £25)

Paul O’Keeffe has come up with the canny idea of beginning his story as the fighting ends. This enables him to bring into much tighter focus the tragic consequences of war: the treatment of casualties; the ruthless behaviour of battlefield plunderers; the disposal of the corpses; the arrival of battlefield tourists (including Byron and the Wordsworths); the reaction in Britain and Paris; and the disintegration of Napoleon’s army in harrowing detail. A grim story — but well worth the telling.

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