Author: Nofi,  A. A. Published: 1993 Publisher: Combined Books, Conshohocken,  PA Pages: 333 Price: $24.95 The market has two new works on the Waterloo campaign, this one and  another by Mr. Hamilton-Williams. This campaign is  and  probably always be, the most frequently written about of Napoleon's  campaigns in English. This is demonstrated by the near simultaneous release of these  two works. Mr. Noffi's work is well illustrated, the quality  of the reproduction of the illustrations being far superior to those  of Mr. Hamilton-Williams work. His command of English makes the work  an easy  and enjoyable read. His description of the battle  is  adequate and  supported by several maps. The text has  numerous  illuminating inserts on various topics, such as biographies or details on  warfare of the day. It is with these inserts that Mr. Noffi very quickly gets into trouble. In reading them I quickly became aware that Mr.  Noffi's expertise  is not the Napolenoic wars. What follows is a  quick  spot checking of various "facts" he presents: On  page 47 he describes the infantry battalion organization  of various  nations.  His first error is listing "light, heavy  and  line" companies  in battalions. Though I know what he means, there was  no such  thing  as a "heavy" company nor is the term  "line"  company  a proper  term  in this case. They should be  "grenadier"  and  either "center," "fusilier," "rifle" or "musketeer" companies. He states French infantry  companies had 100 men each. In fact, the Regulation  of  18 February 1808 set them at 121 men each. He does, however,  correctly list  the  guard infantry organization, erronously calling  the  guard companies "line." In his listing of battalion strengths he forgets that there were battalion and regimental staffs. He shows the Nassau battalions with companies of 260 men  each. In fact, by regulation there were 154 men. The average on the  field at  the  beginning of the battles around Waterloo was  858  men  per battalion  or  about 143 men per company. Most of the rest  of  his figures are equally suspect. On  page  49 every theoretical strength figure  shown  for  the French cavarly is in error. He shows Prussian landwehr cavalry type A and  B. I never heard of such a thing and his strength  figures  are wrong. On  page 73 he says that infantry carried 40 rounds  each.  In fact  the French carried only 30, but he could be talking about  some other, unidentified, army. On page 94 he provides the details of the 1790 Prussian  muske try accuracy trials and cites the accuracies at 70, 140, 200, and 300 meters  as 70%, 40%, 25%, and 20%. They are, in fact, 65%, 49%,  32% and 25%. On the next page he lists ranges for various muskets and I am  rather  surprised at that, since I've never  seen  such  "ranges" before. To be precise, he lists the Prussian 1782 musket as having a range  of  140 (he neglects to say what in the  chart).  My  surprise arises  because  the Prussian 1790 tests give an  accuracy  of  "Old Prussian 1782 Musket" of 42% at 300 meters. On  page 123 he lists the ratio of guns in the French  army  at the  start  of the campaign at 3.0:1. My documentation shows  it  at 3.7:1. On page 128 there is an amusing typographical error that  shows the  British having 90pdr guns. On page 129, in his  conversation  on British  artillery, he lists 12pdr guns, which the  British  abandoned around 1808. He also says that a 12pdr or 9pdr would have 200 round shot and 30 cannister and a 6pdr would have 300 ball and "about"  50 cannister. In fact, the British allocated 106 rounds per 9pdr gun and 194  for a 6pdr field gun, horse having slightly less. If he  intended this to address all nation's guns in ths period his figures are equally off the mark. On page 130 he lists French Guard and line horse batteries  with six cannon and two howitzers. In fact, they had four cannons and two howitzers.  He  also says that the Prussians had  several  batteries "composed entirely of howitzers." In fact, there was only one. I am surprised at his unusual use of his source documents.  He states  on  page  287 "The best published order of  battle  for  the campaign  is Scotty Bowden's Armies at Waterloo, but says he  doesn't agree with it. I'd like to know what source he used for his order  of battle.  He  doesn't list a date for his order of battle and  all  his strength figures end in either "0" or "5." I inherently distrust  such figures as estimates or guesses. An example is the 2/,3/1st  Guards, which  he says had 975 and 1,020 men respectively. Wellington, in  his correspondence,  lists them with 773 and 847. I dug  into  Gurwood's Wellington's  Correspondence,  Vol 12, pg 486 and  found  his  problem. This return is for 18 June 1815. Mr. Noffi's first error was not pick ing up the numbers of officers and NCOs. Those he ignored. Then  he took  the  "Total Rank and File" figures, ignored the  "present  under arms"  figure and began rounding. His figures, as a result, have  no officers  or NCOs included, and list every man who was assigned,  but absent  for any reason, including POWs, sick, and AWOL. This  is  not the  last of his errors either, but there are too many more to  list. He's right, Scotty still has the best published order of battle. This  addresses the question of Mr. Noffi's Napoleonic  technical expertise adequately, but there remain other problems with the  book. It  has no bibliography. It has a "Guide for the Interested  Reader," which I suppose is his substitute. In reviewing the books listed, none are in either French or German, which limits his research to tertiary sources. I have a suspicion that he may have had access to  Couderc de St. Chamant's Napoleon, Ses dernieres Armees, but he obviously  was limited  to looking at the charts and tables, as he  misses  important details contained within the text. As there are no footnotes, an error I  did commit in Napoleon's Invasion of Russia, I couldn't  review  the source  any  of his comments or figures. It does, however,  have  a short index. As  for  a recommendation, I think my opinion of  this  work  is already  quite clear. Mr. Noffi has continued his writing in the  same vein  as he did while writing for S&T. This book shows no  change  in his research style or quality. More Book Reviews Military Life Under Napoleon: The Memoirs of Captain Elzear Blaze The Waterloo Campaign Napoleon: An Intimate Account of the Years of Supremacy On the Napoleonic Wars Rod of Iron, French Counterinsurgency Policy in Aragon during  the  Peninsular War Back to Empire, Eagles, & Lions Table of Contents Vol. 2 No. 13 Back to EEL List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1995 by Emperor's Headquarters This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com