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Waterloo: The True Story of Four Days, Three Armies and Three Battles

Bernard Cornwell

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Why we're reading this: July 2015 book club selection.
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Jul 16, 2015 Nancy rated it liked it

Shelves: france, 2015-read, regency-napoleonic

This was a mixed bag for me. Starting with the good, as an idiot's (ie, moi) guide to the Battle of Waterloo, it was very good. Before reading it, all I knew about Waterloo, other than Wellington's winning it and Napoleon's being packed off to St. Helena, was dancing at the Duchess of Richmond's ball the night before and "The battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton." This was compact and for the most part, engagingly told. I now have a clear sense of the various battles, stands, This was a mixed bag for me. Starting with the good, as an idiot's (ie, moi) guide to the Battle of Waterloo, it was very good. Before reading it, all I knew about Waterloo, other than Wellington's winning it and Napoleon's being packed off to St. Helena, was dancing at the Duchess of Richmond's ball the night before and "The battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton." This was compact and for the most part, engagingly told. I now have a clear sense of the various battles, stands, and personalities, which is to the good.

Frankly, I expected something by a writer of Cornwell's stature to be better written. The frequent shifts in tense drove me nuts. In addition, he repeated anecdotes and analyses (I remember it from the first time, thankyouverymuch) and had another writing tic of ending up a section with a one sentence (and sometimes a sentence fragment) paragraph. That staled quickly. His diction could have been improved. I do not think prevarication means what he thinks it means. I suspect Cornwell is one of those writers who is too big to be edited, alas.

As I've said, I've no basis on which to criticize his historiography. My gut reaction says that Napoleon and Ney couldn't have been quite so incompetent as Cornwell portrays them, nor Wellington so god-like; it was a near thing, after all. It's a matter of the defects of its virtues, I suppose. I like footnotes, but this was clearly mostly compiled from secondary sources and his own vast store of knowledge about the period. Geared to the general reader, so lacking any real historical rigor. I thought the best parts, as in the most evocative, were the quotations from first-person accounts and the pictures; the book was worth reading for those alone.

One last reaction is that Cornwell is superb at protraying the carnage of war. As I get older, I find it harder and harder to understand why disagreements have to end in limbs flying and lives lost and ruined. Wouldn't tiddlywinks be a better choice? (I stole that from a Mad Magazine parody of Wellington and Napoleon remembered from my youth.) ...more

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Nov 04, 2015 Lisa marked it as to-read

May 19, 2016 WT Sharpe rated it really liked it · review of another edition

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