Customer Reviews

The Napoleonic Wars: The Peninsular War 1807-1814 (Essential Histories, No 17)

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While not the most exciting volume (or the most exciting part of the war itself) in the excellent Napoleonic Wars series by Essential Histories, this book succeeds in its mission to be both informative and entertaining. As with most of Essential Histories books, this one gives you a good overview of the topic, including causes and outcomes of the conflict, pertinent economic results, key figures involved, and global significance of the battles within. Of course, the individual battles fought during the time and location focused on are covered to a fair degree of depth, critiquing strategies of all of the involved parties. The most memorable aspect to this volume has got to be the in depth analysis of Wellington, the star of the Peninsular War. His tactics, leadership ability, foresight, and brilliance earned him the title of Britain's most exalted general, and those aspects of him are covered nicely and succinctly here.

So, while not standing out as one of the best Essential Histories I've read, this is more than adequate at covering the task. Just what you expect from a volume in the Essential Histories collection.

This book provides a very good introduction to the Penninsular War for those who wish to get up to speed in only an hour and a half or so of reading. It goes not only into how the war evolved in the Iberian Pennisula but also how it came to be, the strengths and weaknesses of each army, the guerrila war, its impact on France's eventual defeat and the main leaders involved. All these are touched upon in a very good manner even though the book is only 96 pages in length (about one third of which are illustration). The book is weak, however, in terms of providing strategic maps showing how the campaign progressed through Portugal and Spain (ironically despite the fact that it has good tactical level maps of the major battles). Hence it is a little difficult for those who are not familiar with Spain to follow, strategically, how the war progressed. There are also, amonsgst the many illustrations in the book, none that show how the typical infanttryman (or cavalry, etc.) looked or were armed.