Customer Reviews

Charge!: Great Cavalry Charges of the Napoleonic Wars

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When one first glances at the title, great expectations are evoked. While the book indeed covers selected cavalry charges, it mostly is just another outlet for a rabid Napoleon hater. He doesn't let an opportunity go by without insulting Napoleon --which is sad when one considers that a historian is supposed to above such childishness.

For OOBs, the author uses the Austrian method of listing Infantry Regiments as "IR" for French (as well as other nation's) infantry regiments. For some odd reason, he doesn't use the Austrian method for British units.

Some maps are clearly unintuitive and hard to read at times. The map for the Battle of Fere-Champenoise is a great example. What should have been put onto 3 or 4 maps is crushed into a single map leaving the reader to have to decypher it.

Given the above, the book is not totally worthless. The narrative adds "some" historical background and the OOBs can be used if you can overlook his obvious anti-French bias. Lastly, the bargain bin is a great place for this book.

Can a book be both overdone and underdone? Yup, this one. Digby Smith aka Otto von Pivka slapped this together to add to his pile of Nappy publications, some 50+ at this point. You wouldn't be able to guess from this book that France under Napoleon beat the crap out of everybody for 12 years and that the French cavalry had a lot to do with it. Even in France's decline the cavalry under Murat performs terrifically at Dresden, but this is not mentioned in this book. A huge amount of space goes into explaining the run up to Marengo, much of which is tangential to the subject of the title.

Want to find out how the various participants' cavalries perform at Waterloo? Read Barbero's 'The Battle, a New History of Waterloo'.

This book is an enjoyable read where the author takes the reader through various Napoleonic battles and examines the use of cavalry at each. The introduction and 1st chapter introduces the reader to the various types of cavalry, their uses and tactics and points out that the cavalry losses in the disastrous Russian campaign hit the French hard because it takes at least 5 years before a foal is ready for military training. The resulting shortage of horses impacted on Napoleon's subsequent campaigns as he was unable to effectively conduct reconnaissance and keep contact with the enemy and his own forces.

The author gives diverse coverage of battles from Italy to the Peninsular, to Prussia and Russia and includes some famous battles like Marengo, Austerlitz, Borodino, Waterloo and some lessor known ones like Fere-Champenoise. For each battle and encounter the author first outlines the strategic situation before examining the tactical use of cavalry. As Digby Smith points out, this is to give the reader an overall understanding of the context of each situation.

The author has carefully choosen battles to show the different situations faced by cavalry and to show how effective or ineffective it could be depending on how it was utlilized. Therefore the battles and encounters examined show: cavalry decimating infantry in line, cavalry been squandered in attempting to break solid infantry in square, cavalry successfully breaking tired infantry in square, cavalry trying to hold positions without support and cavalry vs cavalry clashes. The author has drawn on various sources of reference and has also included some 1st hand accounts from soldiers/cavalrymen from the period that brings the book to life.

Some people may find that the 20 odd pages per battle is not enough to give any real indepth analysis. I however found each chapter of battle to give a good sharp account that was thoroughly enjoyable and enticed the reader to read on to the next battle. The book includes a beautiful book jacket.

Digby Smith's CHARGE! GREAT CAVALRY CHARGES OF THE NAPOLEONIC WARS will also appeal to specialty military holdings in focusing on the cavalry charges of the Napoleonic Wars at a time when cavalry ruled the battlefield. Battles could be decided solely on mastering of cavalry: chapters here focus on key battles and consider offensive and defensive strategies within the cavalry routine.

This book is an anthology of selected charges in the Napoleonic wars. I didn't really enjoy the book due to the writing style.