Waterloo 1815: The Birth of Modern Europe

By Geoff Wootten

Osprey's study of the most famous battle of the Napoleonic Wars (1799-1815). Waterloo holds a special place among the great battles of history. The climax of more than twenty years of war, it was indeed a close-run affair, matching two of the world's greatest generals - Napoleon and Wellington. This volume covers the entire campaign including the battles of Quatre Bras, Ligny and Wavre, with five full-colour maps and three highly detailed bird's eye views showing decisive moments in the action. An excellent sense of the closeness of the battle is communicated - Wellington himself claimed it was "the nearest thing you ever saw in your life" - and this gripping account shows the full justice of that statement.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: Oct 23, 2012
• ISBN: 9781782005070

Reviews for Waterloo 1815

[johnphelan-2 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

As a kid I knew that there was a station named after it and I knew that people who came a cropper were said to have met it. I knew that Wellington and Napoleon had fought at it and that Wellington had won. I knew that the impressively mounted movie about it made a complete hash of conveying the sequence of events. And that was about all I knew about the battle of Waterloo so I turned to this short book to fill in the gaps. It is still the best short account of the battle I've read, and has inspired in me a lifelong fascination both with military history and, specifically, with the events in a field south of Brussels on June 18th, 1815.