Greenhill Books sent the following press release--RL.

THE GREENHILL NAPOLEONIC WARS DATA BOOK by Digby Smith.

Colonel John R. Elting saw the manuscript of this important new project, and writes:-

"This genuinely impressive work comes into current Napoleonic publications something like a foraging elephant through a cabbage patch. If its size is impressive, its contents are more so. Digby SmIth has made an earnest effort to chronicle every sizeable European military engagement, including the forces involved and their losses, from 1792 through 1815. His listing of these exchanges of ball cartridge even covers the constant Turkish-Russian Balkan squabbles and Czar Alexander's gracious extension of Russian rule into Finland - conflicts which left scant and dubious records.

The author's comments on serious actions will no doubt stimulate the sniping proclivities of some of our more specialised historians. None the less, this is a valuable reference work, honestly conceived and conscientiously assembled. It has the great advantage of placing the reader in the nineteenth-century equivalent of a head of state's war room - you can follow both the general progress of their wars and the overall military situation at any given time.

This is especially effective in the book's coverage of the Peninsular War. Here, Wellington's long-and-loud-trumpeted successes in western Spain can be plainly contrasted with the repeated English defeats along the eastern coast, showing how the French could long hope for eventual success. Of course, you can get this same information by reading through Oman's HISTORY OF THE PENINSULAR WAR, but here this information comes quickly and handily and in sharper, immediate contrast.

Whenever possible, the author has included orders of battle, some of them very detailed.

This should be a fixture in every library specialising in military history. Serious students of the Napoleonic period will find it a good volume to have handy."

THE GREENHILL NAPOLEONIC WARS DATA BOOK has 592 pages, format 264 x 204mm, price £ 40 (US: $69.95), and is published by:

GREENHILL BOOKS
Park House
1 Russell Gardens
London NW11 9NN
Tel: 0181 458 6314
Fax: 0181 905 5245
E-mail: LionelLeventhal@compuserve.com

Stackpole Books
5067 Ritter Road
Mechanicsburg, PA 17055
GREENHILL NAPOLEONIC WARS BOOK NEWS IS INFORMATION FROM GREENHILL BOOKS, LONDON (LionelLeventhal@compuserve.com)

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