We received the following press release--RL

The new book THE NAPOLEON OPTIONS contains ten scenarios looking at the great ‘what ifs?’ of the Napoleonic Wars and plays out, in dramatic, detailed chapters, some of the very real possibilities of that great conflict.

To give you an idea of the style and content, we present below an extract from John Elting’s chapter on June 1815. This describes the moment when the French begin to rally after Waterloo and change the tide of victory in the 1815 campaign.

“Generalleutenant Graf August von Gneisenau, Prussian chief of staff, was a man of frustrations. But now, with the French at last cleared from Genappe, he saw opportunity and seized it.

It was exciting, exhilarating riding down the moonlit highway – squealing fugitives falling under Prussian sabre strokes, begging mercy or scattering blindly from the road. There were occasional blocks – bayonet-bristling cores of regiments tight around their eagles, men who knew it was both dishonour and death to break ranks and so held together – but the Prussians flowed past these seeking easy prey. There were isolated guns and caissons, drivers vainly flogging their horses, vainly trying to defend themselves; knots of horsemen, overtaken and lanced from behind.

He passed a farm at a crossroads – Quatre Bras already! Then, a mile or so beyond, the flow of flight and pursuit slowed – a patter of shots and wounded troopers dropping back. Wagons across the road, they said, some French seemed to be trying to rally.

‘Fools!’ Gneisenau turned to his aide-de-camp riding at his elbow. ‘Infantry to the front! We’ll –’

With one obliterating crash, his sky fell in.

Cavalry, even solid regiments, could be a skittery thing, especially after dark. No competent commander used it either for rearguard or advance guard after dusk. And Blücher’s cavalry, with its high proportion of landwehr and recently reorganised units, was not solid.

In that sudden blaze and blast of short-range fire, panic gripped and maddened horse and man alike. Gneisenau’s command stampeded back toward Genappe, riding down the hapless infantry that had accompanied it, troopers from the leading regiments literally sabering their way through the less damaged ones behind. French prisoners broke free, French stragglers in woods and farms along the road took heart and began firing into the tormented column. French gunners worked their guns furiously, 12-pdr shot richocheting down the hard surface of the Brussels road, 6-pdrs belching canister, until those six rounds were fired and French infantry swarmed across the highway, mopping up. Gneisenau, wounded and pinned under his horse, was captured.

Out of the shadowed Nivelle road, Merle swang his grab-bag squadron onto the fleeing Prussians, the old wolf-yell, 'Vive l’Empereur’ ringing above the hoof-roar and tumult, trumpeters lustily sounding charge.

Genappe was a trap, its narrow bridge and main street still cluttered with abandoned wagons and now filled with units from all the Prussian corps, slowly fumbling their way through it. Into this jumble poured the Prussian cavalry, flogging their horses, striking at anyone in their way. They jammed the bridge; some went into the river on either side of it, splashing through the shallow water – and God help the man whose horse stumbled.

Marshal Blücher had established a makeshift headquarters in genappe. Exhausted, bruised, jubilant with honest pride, he was enjoying a hastily-prepared meal and a large tumbler of brandy when the cannon opened at Quatre Bras. Then, louder and louder, came the uproar of retreat, yells of ‘Raus! Raus!’ until the room’s walls shook. Furious, Blücher went out of the door, shaking off officers who tried to hold him back, and into the street, sword in hand, cursing expertly, throwing himself into the rout with thunderous orders to rally.

It was hopeless. The old hussar had used up his luck at Ligny. In the dark nobody recognised him – he was ridden down and trampled under. The aide who had saved him at Ligny tried a second rescue, but fell under flailing sabres – whether Prussian or French, nobody knows. Spilling northward out of Genappe, the confused mob – cavalry, infantry, and what-not – rolled towards Wellington’s bivouacs.”

Chapters in THE NAPOLEON OPTIONS include:

That Most Vulnerable, and, at the same time, Most Mortal Part by Paddy Griffith

Bonaparte’s Campaign in Egypt by Charles S. Grant

Junot’s Victory in Portugal, 1808 by Philip Haythornthwaite

Decision in Bavaria: The Austrian Invasion of 1809 by John H. Gill

The Russians at Borodino by Digby Smith

The Race for the Borisov Bridge by Jonathan North

Napoleon and the Allies, 1813 by John Gallaher

Wellington and Quatre Bras by Peter Hofschröer

Napoleon and Waterloo by Andrew Uffindell

Ambush at Quatre Bras – Napoleon and 19 June 1815 by John R. Elting

THE NAPOLEON OPTIONS, edited by Jonathan North, will be published in February 2000 (in time for the Napoleonic Fair) priced £17.99 ($34.95). It has 224 pages, 25 illustrations and 11 maps. ISBN 1-85367-388-9.

Published by:

Greenhill Books,
Park House,
1 Russell Gardens,
London NW11 9NN.
Tel: 0181 458 6314
Fax: 0181 905 5245
E-mail: Greenhill Books

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