Customer Reviews

Fighting Techniques of the Napoleonic Age 1792– - 1815: Equipment, Combat Skills, and Tactics

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I have recently bought this book along with a couple of Osprey on British and French infantry tactics during Napoleonic wars.

Put it very briefly, get this book instead of the Ospreys. It covers not only infantry, cavalry, artillery but also naval warfare. The book gives numerous lively examples and accounts about the different achievements of each arm. One can find numerous battles explained with maps, each detailing the successes of a particular use of cavalry, artillery or infantry.

This little book does extremely well in its own modest and pedagogical way what others more convoluted writings fail to achieve: inspire!

As a conclusion: a well written and engaging entry level book. Happy with it and will read it again with pleasure.

I sought this book as an introduction to the fighting techniques of the Napoleonic era, and was reasonably satisfied. For serious study, however, it is lacking. I am left with quite a few more questions than answers after reading this book. There are several excellent anecdotes concerning the historic personages of the era, but unfortunately the real "meat" of the subject is sadly missing. The battle descriptions are average and the maps downright confusing (they mix colors from battle to battle). The battles are meant as illustrations of the techniques described in the chapters, but they come off as loosely related and do not adequately convey the intended lesson. Perhaps I was searching for something a bit more scholarly.

In 1813 Allied sovereigns formed a coalition that ultimately delivered victory over Napoleon at 'The Battle of Nations'. Now, one hundred ninety-five years later, five authors: Robert Bruce, Iain Dickie, Kevin Kiley, Michael Pavkovic, and Frederick Scheid, have joined forces to produce this fine volume on the tactics of Napoleonic warfare.

Memory of those days is now confined to dusty books and dingy paintings, but the sheer scale of battle, the drama, and the pivotal importance in the wars guarantee their enduring grip on history buff's imaginations.

The authors bring together their narrative and analytical skills in the traditional genre of military history, concentrating on questions of command, strategy, tactics and the changing technologies of warfare.

Each chapter focuses on a different arm: infantry, cavalry, artillery, command and control -- chapter five covers naval warfare. The text is bolstered by color artwork. Eighteen birds-eye-view battle field maps are included to demonstrate the tactics.

The author's command of Napoleonic period forces enables them to sketch with considerable skill each armies' Grenadiers, Hussars and artillerymen with vivid precision. They know the weapons and their employment.

In describing these times, the authors are obliged by the scale of the subject matter to stick to the bare bones of the story. However, they scatter their text with vignettes and insights that will surprise even those well-versed in the history of these wars.

It is to their credit that they can both offer the reader a detailed account of these ­terrible and complicated battles and step back to give due summaries. Their scholarship seems to me worthy, their prose clear, their judgments fair.

The author's narrate in a conversational style, making all the moves and counter moves understandable. When they narrow the focus, the action comes alive, as in the violent and unforgettable tales of Caulaincourt's Cuirassiers storming the great redoubt at Borodino or with Senarmont's battery that "inflicted some 4000 casualties and gutted the Russian center at the Battle of Friedland."

Concise and readable, "Fighting Techniques" is a birds-eye-view of military operations. For anyone who wishes to understand Napoleonic warfare, this book is essential reading.

I have read critiques about the books in this collection being too shallow, but I find it interesting. Of course, I would like to know more about the subject, but this is a quite good introduction for a period of warfare of which I knew practically nothing. I plan to get all the titles in the series.

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.

The previous reviews rated this book with 5 stars, but I would rather rate it with 4. For their rating the previews reviews were based on comparison of this book with the Ospreys Nap French Inf. Tactics finding the latter too schematic. However I would say that both books have some flaws - the main one for the Osprey's is that the book mainly is dealing with inf. Tactics, but otherwise the books gives the reader very good detail allowing him to visualize how actually the maneuvers were carried out technically on the field (just for example there is a picture of inf. squad changing direction pivoting on the NCO and showing one of the men in the front tumbling down barring the way of the one following behind and how meanwhile the men on the farthest end of the squad are speeding up to catch with the one closest to the NCO). The reader could easily imagine how difficult actually it should have been to exercise this maneuver on company or battalion level even more under fire. On the other hand the present book covers all arms and gives more complex picture. The book is not so vivid regarding the technical details of the maneuvers but rather allows the reader to realize how the
different maneuvers were applied in actual battles of the Napoleonic era. So I can conclude that both books are useful and mutually complementing giving the reader different perspective.

I bought the book.Yesterday.just made a brief review.Look at the page 241-242.Author is describing battle of Reunion !!!!.This is not Reunion this is Mauritius (Ile de France)!!!!
the autor should get back to school learn geography and ....history
I am afraid what i will find more