Legacy of Glory

Book Review

by Don Featherstone

LEGACY OF GLORY by Michael Glover. (9 1/2" x 6 1/4"; 353 pages; 12 illustrations; 4 maps. Charles Scribner, New York).

This book, published in U.S.A. in 1971, is available from British bookseller A.A.Johnston of Pitney, Langport, Somerset, and wargamers interested in the Peninsular War will be strongly advised to get a copy while stocks last. When speeding comfortably along today's vastly improved roads of Spain and Portugal, one realises with a considerable sense of awe and admiration that the British, French, Portugese and Spanish troops of 165 years ago marched every step of the way. A glance at a map of the Peninsular reveals the vast distances between well known battlefields like Albuera, Burgos, Salamanca, Vitoria, Busaco, Vimeiro and all the others. The sequence of events are well known to all of us - but less familiar from the French viewpoint. In this book, Michael Glover, tells how Napoleon's overpowering personality affected all those around him, and how the tide turned so that his brother, Joseph the puppet King of Spain, and his Marshals all failed in their turn to change Wellington's victorious march We know the background the reactions of the British to their unchanging course of victory - but here one can read of the same emotions and the aftermath of defeat as experienced by the French. The author has a first-class track-record in this period and therefore it is understandable that he should make a first-class job of approaching a familiar war from an unfamiliar angle.

Book Review

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© Copyright 1975 by Donald Featherstone.
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