The Greenhill Napoleonic Wars Data Book: Actions and Losses in Personnel, Colours, Standards and Artillery [Hardcover]

Digby George Smith (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 600 pages
• Publisher: Greenhill Books; 1St Edition edition (May 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1853672769
• ISBN-13: 978-1853672767
• Product Dimensions: 10.4 x 8.5 x 2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,571,427 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Good, not Great, July 2, 2000

By 

Kevin F. Kiley - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Greenhill Napoleonic Wars Data Book: Actions and Losses in Personnel, Colours, Standards and Artillery (Hardcover)

I have a love/hate relationship with this book. I really wanted to get it and use it, as well as have it on hand, but I don't fully trust it. It is exhaustive, has a veritable treasure trove of information in it, but it isn't that easy to use, and at times is a little confusing.

Arranged by year and date, the battles, sieges, actions, and combats are arranged so that it is relatively easy to look up, but the information doesn't always agree with standard works on the period.

For, example, Durenstein is listed as an allied victory in 1805, and elsewhere it is called a French one; Davout's victory over Bagration in 1812, a rather significant one, isn't even listed. Bottom line, in my opinion, there needs to be a revision, and soon.

This book is recommended, and it is very useful; however, it is not the Holy Grail, and it is definitely not a definitive work.

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An Impressive Achievement, April 14, 2001

By 

Robert Zebian "Bob Zebian" (Colleyville, TX USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Greenhill Napoleonic Wars Data Book: Actions and Losses in Personnel, Colours, Standards and Artillery (Hardcover)

This book takes on the daunting and rather thankless task of compiling the losses throughut the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars and presenting them systematically. For the most part, it achieves this goal.

The chronological order of the book makes it easy to find particular engagements. However the author also provides links from battles to battle, so that you can follow the path of a campaign. When I bought this book I thought I would use it strictly as an occasional reference tool. Instead, I now find myself browsing through it, following a campaign's ebb and flow. Of course the major battles are here, but the real gems are the small skirmishes and engagements; struggles where men bled, suffered, and died 200 years ago, but long since rolled over by history.

One can always criticize the accuracy of some of the book's sources. However, given that era's lack of record keeping, as well as the inflated (or delated) casualty claims after battles, in total this book's accuracy is commendable. The author points out the unreliability of the source data in the introduction, which is a refreshing contrast to other authors who believe their sources are the be-all-and-end-all.

My only complaint about this book is I wish the data was presented more consistently. The differing amounts of available data make this impossible throughout the book, but even when consistent data is available the information is occasionally presented differently. For example, the Anglo-Allied and Prussian losses at Waterloo are given by battalion, brigade, and division. However, the Prussian losses have a grand total, the Anglo-Allied losses do not. While one can easily add the Anglo-Allied numbers to arrive at the total losses, the reader should not have to do this in a work this detailed and ambitious.

But this is a quibble. Overall, this is an impressive achievement and should be part of any Napoleonic library.

6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars A Starting Point ONLY---NO MORE!, March 6, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Greenhill Napoleonic Wars Data Book: Actions and Losses in Personnel, Colours, Standards and Artillery (Hardcover)

Digby Smith's compilation was a big undertaking, and I have found it useful for the listings of actions and dates. However, there are so many errors existing in the listed orders of battle, including units that were not present, units that were not even in the field or theater of war, and so forth, that one cannot be sure what unit listings are correct and what are not. It is regretable that Mr Smith, as does almost every British writer, relies on faulty secondary works written by other British writers, rather than better sources authored by folks from outside the British isles. The complete absence of footnotes is a very serious weakness that cannot be overstated. For these numerous and considerable shortcomings, the book rates only 1 star.