On the Fields of Glory
The Battlefields
of the 1815 Campaign

Book Review

Reviewed by Ed Wimble

Authors: Andrew Uffindell and Michael Corum
Pages: 360
Illustrations: 55 black and white photos and illustrations, plus 23 diagrams and drawings.
Maps: 32, showing troop positions (some down to individual battalion deployments), battlefield manuevers, and locations of historic sites and monuments.
Footnotes: 698
Appendices: 3, including one with Orders of Battle for all three armies down to regiments (personnel and gun strengths are given for corps), museum addresses and opening times, and sources (bibliography).
Bibliography: Offers the "best"45 titles from the bibliographies in the Waterloo books by Anthony Brett-James and Jac Weller, plus additional books are listed in the footnotes.
Index: Approximately 1,000
Publisher: Greenhill Books, London. Available in the U.S. through Stackpole Books of Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania.
Publication Date: 1996
Binding: Cloth (hardbound)
ISBN: 1-85367-232-7
Price: $44.95
Summary: On the Fields of Glory does an excellent job of weaving anecdotal narrative and eyewitness accounts with descriptions of the battlefield as it exists today. This gives the reader a rare sense of place as well as time. With all the books available on Waterloo today why choose this one? Perhaps no better reason can be given than On the Fields of Glory imparts a new sense of urgency. The battlefield is once more in the downward cycle of neglect and disrepair. Appreciation is the first step in the process of preservation. No other book enables its reader to tread this ground so respectfully as does On the Fields of Glory.

The sub-title of this book, The Battlefields of the 1815 Campaign, is a bit of a misnomer. The authors deal only in depth with the events of 18-20 June, that is, Waterloo and Wavre, and Marshal Grouchy's retreat through Namur afterwards. The other battles of the 1815 campaign, the opening skirmish at Charleroi, followed by Ligny and Quatre Bras on the 16th, are not dealt with, nor are battles in other theaters. Possibly the publisher assumed that the reader will reference Uffindell's previous work, The Eagle's Last Triumph, also published by Greenhill, which dealt with Napoleon's victory at Ligny. In any case, events leading up to Napoleon's fateful encounter with Wellington are summed up in first chapter of On the Fields of Glory.

The second chapter, entitled "On the Field of Honour: Waterloo Today" prepares the reader for what sets this book apart from all previous works on the subject. This difference in feeling is difficult to characterize, but it can perhaps be described as the experience of visiting the battlefield through reading the book.

For instance, a typical visitor to Waterloo will probably climb the famed Lion Mound, then tour the visitor's center, paying admission to see the electric map and the short film. Surprisingly, it is the film which can make the greatest impression. It depicts a group of school children playing soldier on the various sites which witnessed the most intense fighting at Waterloo. As the children become separated from each other in the course of their game, the actual events are dramatically revealed to them. They are, of course, horrified by the reality of violence and bloodshed. This ruins their game, but they are also wiser as they are unlikley to pass this way again without thinking about the carnage and sacrifice to which this ground, with its few monuments, bears witness.

In essence, On the Fields of Glory is a stand in for the film. The reader, like the tourist, begins his sojourn at the Lion Mound, looking at the battlefield from its great height. Then, descending from this point, he begins pacing the distance between each significant event. Because the Lion Mound is at the center of the Anglo-Allied line of battle, On the Fields of Glory begins its narrative there in Part Two. The reader moves to the west a few hundred meters and tours the Chateau of Hougoumont, with the book providing historical revelations much the way the film does. Today you see a few trees, fields of crops, old buildings surrounded by a wall, a gate, an enclosed pasture. The authors give a history of the Chateau, who built it and when. Then they call attention to the windows over-lookng the gardner's house, or the loopholes still in the garden wall. Specters begin to appear. Over there stood the orchard, and it was from beyond that small rise that Prince Jerome's French infantry came on in a mass of skirmishers.

The authors expertly splice in eyewitness accounts. The reader can almost hear the muskets popping, men shouting; someone is crawling across the cobblestones to the door of the little chapel. The place is on fire...more screaming! The action builds to a crescendo then subsides.

The battle has moved on to another place, but the authors do not, taking time to complete the story that many other narratives ignore: burying the dead. More anecdotes reveal how the well was filled with cadavers for want of a convenient burial ground. For years, no one could drink from it, until it was finally filled and capped. A sunken lane was used as a ready made mass grave, piled full with bodies and then the sides toppled to cover the corpses. Too many French dead lie around Hougoumont, so they are stacked like cordwood and burned. As the authors figuratively take the reader on a walk amidst the battered brick of this famous farm, it is difficult not to be moved emotionally by the experience.

The authors bring you back to the base of the Lion Mound, to the cyclorama. You are now in the midst of Marshal Ney's cavalry charges. The French cavalry play themselves out as La Haye Sainte falls late in the battle. At dusk you look towards La Belle Alliance and see the dark, hollow squares of the French Middle Guard advancing. Napoleon's final gamble approaches.

Part Three shifts the reader's attention to Napoleon's vantage point where these same events are elaborated and embellished upon using French sources. Part Four opens with Blücher and his Prussians slogging their way through muddy and narrow tracks on their way from Wavre to Plancenoit to attack the French right rear and force Napoleon to commit precious reserves, including units of the Imperial Guard, to prevent disaster.

The book then takes a sudden turn toward Brussels. So much has been written about the Duchess of Richmond's ball where Wellington first heard of the French advance into Belgium that I was hesitant to read another account. But this is a surprising chapter.

We stand on the ramparts of the city rather than on the streets. We watch the Scottish infantry march off in the early hours of 16 June to the plaintive sound of their bagpipes. Now it is later in the day. We hear the sound of cannon some twenty miles distant. Rumors tell of fighting at a place called Quatre Bras, and that Blücher will get the best of the French at Sombreffe [Ligny]. The next morning, we observe frantic wives searching for their husbands among the newly arrived wounded. Things apparently did not go well for the Allies. On the north side of the city, along the Antwerp road, there are scenes of pandemonium as British non-combatants flee toward their ships. Look, there goes the mayor of the city! Isn't it odd that his bulletin of the next day is still addressed as coming from city hall?

Lastly, the authors take a look at the battle of Wavre and Marshal Grouchy's retreat through Namur during his harrowing withdrawal to France (here there is the only significant typo — the maps on pages 290 and 293 are transposed).

With regard to the book's historical accuracy, one can find little to criticize. (Though it should be noted that Borodino in Russia is not the only other Napoleonic battlefield with a cyclorama besides Waterloo. There is one in Innsbrück, Austria, celebrating Andreas Hofer's battle of the Berg-Isel, 13 August, 1809, during the Tyrolean uprising.)

On the Fields of Glory presents a strong message: Waterloo is one big cemetery that should be respected and preserved as such. The battlefield is a testament to all the suffering and dying that took place there nearly 200 years ago; hallowed ground that should remain inviolable, regardless of which side won or lost.

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