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Greenhill Napoleonic Wars Data Book

Book Review

by Scott Bowman

In Napoleon #14 a review of The Greenhill Napoleonic Wars Data Book by Digby Smith noted that Smith had "succeeded in compiling a useful database of nearly every military action." We also received this commentary from Scott Bowden, author of Armies at Waterloo and Napoleon and Austerlitz.

English compiler Digby Smith has attempted a daunting task: a chronological listing of each action in every campaign of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars in Europe and the Middle East, as well as a compilation of all forces present, including losses and other data. Such an undertaking is so massive that this writer compares Mr. Smith's goal to that legendary undertaking by Georges Six to detail the careers and accomplishments of every French marshal, general, and admiral of the same period.

Unlike Six, who researched his information from the French army archives, Digby Smith's latest offering, The Greenhill Napoleonic Wars Data Book, is an assemblage of often unreliable data gleaned from an extremely limited and disappointing list of secondary sources. This does not mean that Mr. Smith's lengthy compilation is not without some value.

The chronological listing of the various actions and the commanding officers will be helpful to most Napoleonic enthusiasts in the form of a quick reference guide. It is, as your reviewer hinted, past this superficial information that the reliability of Mr. Smith's data suffers. Why? His chosen sources are far from the best available. As a result, Mr. Smith's information on units present, their strength, number of battalions or squadrons in the units, etc., must be utilized with the greatest caution.

Given your reviewer's mild admonitions concerning the reliability of the numbers, I could not resist the temptation to spot-check the Data Book's treatment of the 1805 Ulm-Austerlitz campaign. In comparing Mr. Smith's 19th-century sources against the archives, it is not surprising that the Data Book suffers from such scrutiny. Consider the following example. For the Austrians at the Battle of Elchingen, 14 October 1805, Smith says that the Habsburg forces fielded 14 battalions of infantry with 8,000 present when documents in the archives in Vienna show Austrian commander Riesch had 32 battalions of infantry totaling 15,000. The information presented for the French at Elchingen is equally inaccurate. Information on Austerlitz lists the same old exaggerated Allied strengths repeated in many works, plus a note that the Grande Armée fielded 282 guns at Austerlitz when it had only 157 — an error of almost 80%! Further spot-checks of Smith's information on selected battles in 1796, 1797, 1800, 1809, 1813 and 1815 reveal similar, significant shortcomings.

If Mr. Smith wanted to compile such a list and limit his sources to secondary works, why did he not avail himself of the excellent Spanish sources for the battles in the Peninsula? Why did he ignore the superb early 20th-century French histories that would have included accurate orders of battle obtained from the French army archives? Why were many recent and significant contributions to the body of Napoleonic history by noted American, French, German and Italian historians considered by Mr. Smith to have "fallen outside the very selective criteria I have set for this present work"?

While Mr. Smith's Data Book may be considered by some as a good start towards such a massive undertaking, the goals of this compilation project seem simply too ambitious given the limited types of sources the author elected to use. By failing to obtain archival information, Digby Smith's The Greenhill Napoleonic Wars Data Book is risky for those who seek accurate information on this fascinating era.

Napoleonic Library

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