Author: Captain William Siborne Pages: 656 Illustrations: 29 black and white reproductions of period engravings. Maps: 3 diagrammatic overhead views of the strongpoints La Haye Sainte and Hougomont; plus a cross-section diagram showing the relative altitudes of Mt. St. Jean (behind Wellington's line), La Haye Sainte, La Belle Alliance, Rossomme, and La Caillou (Napoleon's headquarters). Footnotes: 399, with footnote text at the bottom of the page. Appendices: A Supplement, describing the operations of the other forces allied with Great Britain in 1815; 49 Appendices, containing the text of various Allied and French declarations, treaties, strength returns for the British, French, and Prussian forces, important orders, and lists of wounded and killed for the Allied forces. Bibliography: None Index: None Publisher: Greenhill Books, London (available through Stackpole Books, Pennsylvania, in the U.S.A.) Publication Date: 1995 facsimile edition of the 1848 third edition originally published in London. Binding: Cloth (hardbound) ISBN: 1-85367-069-3 Price: $50.00 Summary: Captain Siborne's History of the Waterloo Campaign, first published in 1844, was the definitive work on the Waterloo campaign in the English language for at least 50 years and remains an important resource today. Greenhill's reprint of the third and final edition provides readers with access to an important Napoleonic work, but unfortunately omits the eleven valuable maps published in the original editions. Siborne served in the British Army in France during 1815, but was not present at Waterloo. He based his history on the written recollections of participants collected during his research for the large dioramas that he constructed several years prior to writing this book. History of the Waterloo Campaign is very comprehensive and covers details on the British forces often to the regiment and battery level. It spans the period from the landing of Napoleon in France after his escape from Elba to the cessation of hostilities in July. While the focus is on the operations in Belgium and northern France, there is a supplement discussing the activities of the Allied armies in the other theaters of operation in 1815. The Greenhill reprint of History of the Waterloo Campaign is of the book's third and final edition, published in 1848. The second edition was printed a year after the first (Siborne says the first sold out in a matter of days) and contained only a few corrections "to points of trivial interest". The third edition appears to have had its type completely re-set using a smaller size and with less space between the lines. This economy on the part of the printers resulted in a shorter book with very dense type. More significantly, Siborne included a considerable amount of new data in response to comments and complaints from various sources. It is this new material that makes the third edition the most useful to the historian. Siborne researched and wrote his history of the campaign using standards of scholarship that were undoubtedly considered acceptable for his time. Unfortunately, readers today may quickly recognize a lack of objectivity in the author's account. For example, Siborne typically refers to the French as "the enemy". Siborne focused his efforts on collecting eye-witness reports from the British, Prussian, and other Allied forces. There was no attempt to balance these with French accounts. While the French may have been slighted in Siborne's work, the allies of the British received better treatment. Many Britons believed that their army had won the campaign single-handed, but Captain Siborne did not share this view. Peter Hofschr6er, a Napoleonic scholar who recently wrote the controversial 1815: The Waterloo Campaign [to be reviewed in the next issue - Editor] wrote that the Prussian General Staff publicly approved of Siborne's treatment of the Prussian efforts in the campaign. This positive review from the General Staff resulted in Siborne's book being translated into German in 1846. The Prussian review apparently said that the book was free of historical bias (at least with respect to the Prussians). This resulted in a series of letters between Siborne and members of the Prussian General Staff over various points where the Prussians felt Siborne had erred. They even supplied copies of various documents from their archives to buttress their arguments. At that time, correspondence between individuals in Prussia and Great Britain was very uncommon. Siborne and members of the Prussian General Staff used the diplomatic mail through the Prussian ambassador in London as their conduit. Siborne, to his credit, did accept some of the Prussian arguments even though they were contradictory to positions taken by Wellington. Regardless, the work does not cover the Prussian actions in much depth - the focus is primarily on the British forces. Recently, several historians have questioned the accuracy of the accounts gathered by Siborne. The primary sources of Siborne's material were letters from various eye-witnesses to the events, written two to three decades after the campaign. After that much time, how reliable are the memories of participants? It is likely that at least some of the information collected was provided to Siborne in an "edited" form leaving out information that might embarrass or detract from the reputations of officers or their commands. Most accounts in English of the Waterloo campaign written since Siborne's work are based largely on his now classic book. Regardless of these alleged weaknesses, Siborne's History of the Waterloo Campaign is an essential reference for anyone studying the campaign of 1815. Unfortunately, the Greenhill reprint omitted the eleven maps originally included in each edition. It is difficult to read Greenhill's reprint without using some battlefield atlas. Despite this omission, the Greenhill reprint provides access to this important work since original copies of Siborne's book are both scarce and expensive. Siborne's summary of the 1815 campaign is unique. It was written by an officer who served in one of the armies of the period, collected from a large number of British, Prussian, and Allied eye- witness reports. Parts of it are based on material supplied to Siborne from now-lost Prussian archives. Siborne's History of the Waterloo Campaign is certainly not recommended for someone's first book about the Waterloo campaign. However, it remains an important resource for anyone wanting to research the details of the British and to some extent the Prussian and Allied forces during Napoleon's final campaign. More Book Reviews Book Review: Tactics and the Experience of Battle in the Age of Napoleon Book Review: Castiglione 1796 Book Review: Swords Around a Throne: Napoleon's Grande Armee Book Review: History of the Waterloo Campaign Back to Table of Contents -- Napoleon #13 Back to Napoleon List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1998 by Napoleon LLC. This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. The full text and graphics from other military history magazines and gaming magazines are available at http://www.magweb.com Order Napoleon magazine direct