1815 - The Roads to Waterloo
by Gregor Dallas,
544 pages, illus., hardback.
Published by Richard Cohen Books, London.
Price £25.00

Generally speaking, historians of 1815 write either on the military events, or on the diplomatic, and these two perspectives are not usually mixed in one account. Webster's works on the Congress of Vienna, published shortly after the First World War, remain the standard account, superseded only in part by Kraehe's more recent outline. Of the numerous military histories, this reviewer is unaware of any that cover the political background to those events in more than passing. Dallas, however, combines a diplomatic history with an account of the military events, showing the close relationship between the two. This approach makes for interesting reading.

The style used by this author is most readable, and it is rare to find a history that is both well written and factually correct, as this work, on the whole, is. Dallas brings the events in Vienna very much to life, describing the personalities involved, their relationships and the effects of these associations on those events. Reading this work is essential to gain an understand of much of what later happened in the Waterloo Campaign. In terms of the factual information presented, Dallas' work ranks almost as highly as Pflugk-Harttung, who, in his "Vorgeschichte", presented the results of several years of archive research. Dallas, although he used some primary sources, draws much of his information from more recently published secondary works.

One opportunity missed by this author was to deal with an issue which affected all the participating nations in the campaign except perhaps Britain, that is the conflict of interests that many participants felt in 1815. The French army and government was divided between Royalists and Bonapartists; the German forces contained many officers and men who had previously served under Napoleon, and were affected by the wrangling over the future of certain states which led to, for instance, the rebellion of the Saxon army; the army of the new-created Kingdom of Netherlands was affected by linguistic, religious, cultural and economic differences, and, being the most affected by these conflicts of interest, had potentially the most problems. Instead of dealing with these issues, Dallas unfortunately dismisses the troops of the Netherlands army as "unreliable Dutch-Belgians". Such ill-considered comments mar an otherwise fine work, and it is a shame that they were made.

One also notices that certain standard works on the political background to the campaign are not included in the author's bibliography. Not only Pflugk-Harttung's "Vorgeschichte", as mentioned above, but also Griewank's and Kluber's accounts of the Congress are not listed, and it is a shame that these valuable sources were not used. However, these few omissions do not detract from the work as a whole.

Dallas' book is probably the most significant addition to Waterloo literature published this side of the First World War and can be ranked among the great works published on the subject in English, making suitable supplementary reading to such classics as Siborne, Chesney and Ropes. As such, it should be read by everybody interested in these events. In all, this is a first rate work on the subject and is highly recommended.

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