Text And Illustrations By George F Nafziger
Privately Published Price: $35

This guide is the product of Desk Top Publishing, neatly spiral bound and consisting of approximately 300 A4 pages between soft covers. That deals with the width, what of the quality?

Those who know George Nafziger’s ground breaking series of articles on infantry regulations in Empires, Eagles and Lions some ten years ago, will find parts of this guide familiar. It is, however, much more than simply a review of regulations although that does form the heart of the work, the bibliography, for example, listing no less than 56 contemporary drill regulations, from 11 countries, 19 alone from France, for all three arms.

The guide is the result of some twelve years’ research and is simply packed full of detailed information about how the three arms went about their business, accompanied by illustrations of the various conversions described in the text. It is divided into 12 chapters, 6 of which deal with the infantry, the reader being taken from the basics through the various levels of command, the remaining chapters dealing with the other two arms and the final 2 describing combined arms operations and the grand tactical and strategic levels generally.

Combined with the comparatively dry nature of the regulations themselves, however, is George Nafziger’s analysis in the form of a comparative time and distance study together with examples and discussion of various manoeuvres and conversions in practice, taken, once again, essentially from primary sources. He shows, for example that the square was far from the static immobile formation we tend to view it as, but was actually as manoeuvrable as any column.

Think about it. A square is actually no more than a column with the middle missing. The myth of slow marching speeds is also dealt with, cadences around 75 paces to the minute being largely relics of the linear doctrine of the previous century. The question of firing by the third rank is also discussed, as is artillery effectiveness and so it goes on.

What can I find negative about this book? Well, it does suffer from the odd ‘thick finger’, evident in some keyboard errors. I am fairly certain that a miscalculation throws out the time over distance calculations in the Austrian section, making them overly slow and I am not convinced that the general analysis of changes in direction in the context of wheeling with and without moving pivots is entirely accurate, but this may be a matter of interpretation. I also felt that it might have been organised differently in places, but this is very much a subjective judgement.

Be that as it may this book is unique in the English language. Minor presentational shortcomings notwithstanding, the amount of information contained within its covers is simply breathtaking and just not available anywhere else unless, of course, one obtains copies of the relevant regulations, at approximately between £40 and £60 from those museums that have originals, and takes the trouble to translate them which, I would point out, is not necessarily the same as understanding them! I am astonished that George Nafziger’s usual publishers, Emperor’s Press, are not publishing this book. It really does deserves professional publication and presentation and I understand that Greenhill are considering doing so in the UK. They should be encouraged to.

In the meantime it can be obtained direct from George Nafziger, PO Box 1522, West Chester, OH 45069-1522 USA at $US35 plus postage and packing. This book is simply meat and drink to the serious Napoleonic wargamer and student of the period alike, indeed to anybody who wants to understand what was involved in moving bodies of troops around the early 19th Century battlefield.