author: Al Nofi

I received this book as one of my choices for joining the Military Book Club and it should be available at most book stores.

The Waterloo Campaign, for those historically inept, is Napoleon's last bid for power. Although most everyone can tell you Napoleon lost at Waterloo (really Mont St. Jean for us really accurate people)' they probably couldn't tell you why. After reading this book, I had a better understanding of the campaign and the events that led up to Napoleon's defeat.

The book points out a lot of the errors made by the French Marshals, the biggest of which was not assaulting Quatre Bras en force. The French could have easily swept through the town's meager defenders with a grand charge, then the cavalry and advancing French infantry could have broken and decimated the retreating allies along with destroying their supporters who were marching towards Quatre Bras for support. Thi s one error corrected on the spot could have won the French army the campaign. Married with Napoleon's victory at Ligny, the campaign could have been over in a few days.

The book also shows how the French wasted their time sitting about instead of marching to battle. This I would consider their second big mistake. Even with all these errors Napoleon still almost won.

I really like this book. It is easy to read and had me cheering the French. It has a lot of reference material encapsulated in sidebars. I thought there were too many of these and they should have been placed in a chapter all by themselves, if only to make the reading of the rest of the book easier. The sidebars have everything from biographies to weapons tables.

In the back of the book was an order of battle for the entire campaign, this alone would interest me to purchase the book. My biggest problem with the book was the maps, they are lightly printed, hard to figure out if you are just browsing them, and look like someone used a magic marker on a transparency. Over all these did not detract from the book's content, and I am looking forward to getting other books in the Great Campaigns series.

I would highly recommend this book to novice and expert Napoleonic students or even a browser. Le livre et tres bien.