Customer Reviews

Hussar General (Wordsworth Military Library)

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The Hussar General by Roger Parkinson proves to be a pretty interesting military biography on the Prussian Field Marshal Blucher who was crucial in winning the Waterloo campaign along with Duke of Wellington.

Since there isn't much written about Blucher in English language, I found this book to be quite enlightening and interesting. As stated in the previous review, the book is quite short but I thought the author was successful in capturing Blucher's character and personality as a military leader as well as giving us some insight into his personal life as well. I thought the author did a pretty good creating a balance picture of Blucher - his mental disstablization that he suffered from time to time as well as his single minded pursuit for victory over Napoleon and his French Empire.

If there was anything wrong with this biography, I would say that the author was perhaps too kind to Blucher in many of the military fisacos he managed to get himself into due to his over aggressive and careless nature. Scharnhorst and Gneisenau get too little credit for the positive influence they had on Blucher since they were the ones who turned Blucher from a hussar general to a field commander.

Overall, this book come highly recommended for anyone interested in the Napoleonic period. According to the author, only two biographies have beeen written on Blucher since 1815 and I haven't seen any modern ones outside of this one.

Roger Parkinson's short but highly readable biography of Field Marshal Blucher, "The Hussar General" is a great story. Originally published in 1975 and although only 264 pages in length he still manages to tell an interesting and fast paced account of this most interesting Prussian General. The book is packed with accounts of the battles and skirmishes that Blucher participated in during the battles of the French Revolutionary Wars and the later on during the Napoleonic Wars.

This is not an in-depth biography so don't expect too much detail in relation to the early life of Blucher, its mainly a military biography and covers that aspect of this great man's life adequately. To the military reader this book will provide an exciting story of a general that fought more battles against Napoleon Bonaparte than any other General. The narrative comes alive with accounts from participants in this exciting and horrifying but fascinating and bloody, period.

The book covers all his major actions and offers the reader a decent overview of his career. The story is well told and a number of maps are provided to assist the reader to follow the narrative although they are not of a high standard. Overall this is a great introduction to the life and times of General Gebhard Leberecht von Blucher.