I've read, over the years, a few books on Napoleon and the wars he fought. In many ways, this book is an essential primer, or at least a very useful tool for the reader who's not an expert on Napoleon, but who nonetheless wishes to know something about warfare during the era, at a nuts-and-bolts level. The book is divided into five chapters, covering infantry; cavalry; command and control; artillery, engineers and sieges; and naval warfare. Each of these chapters is lavishly illustrated with pictures, both color plates and black and white drawings. Each chapter includes a discussion of several battles, which illustrate what the text is saying. For instance, the chapter on artillery tactics includes several pages on the Battle of Friedland, where the French artillery literally blasted a hole in the middle of the Russian front. Each of these accounts of a battle is accompanied by a two-page 3D map of the battlefield showing the maneuvers of the units involved.
So what are my reservations? I'm not an expert on Napoleon, so I can't comment on the authenticity of the opinions expressed, but I did have some reservations about how the material was presented. For one thing, there's no forward, introduction, preface, or anything like that. The bibliography is rather sparse, there are no acknowledgments, no footnotes or other sourcing. The book literally starts on the first page discussing infantry tactics, and on the last page concludes its discussion of Naval warfare on the Great Lakes during the War of 1812. One serious annoyance involves the maps: there are a lot of them, and there should be a standardized key for them. There isn't, for some reason, and somebody should be shot: in some of the maps, the French forces are represented by blue arrows and icons, in others they're red. This makes things extremely confusing, especially if you're not an expert on the era, and can't just glance at a map and tell which side is which. If you *can* do that, you probably don't need this book that much anyway.
Those misgivings aside, this is an interesting book, full of information that's not available elsewhere, and I would recommend it.
Fighting Techniques of the Napoleonic Age 1792-1815. Equipment, Combat Skills, and Tactics
By Robert B. Bruce, Iain Dickie, Kevin Kiley, Michael F. Pavkovic, Frederick C. Schneid
Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books
Release Date: Apr 15, 2008
ISBN: 0312375875
Язык: english
Формат: pdf в rar
Страниц: 261 pages
Размер файла: 107 mb
Скачать бесплатно / free download
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