by Philip Haythornthwaite, illustrated by
Michael Chappell. (7 1/2" x 5 1/2"; 188 pages; 64
full-page coloured plates; 5 pages black-and-white
plates. Hippocrene Color Guides and Blandf ord Press
Ltd - $7.95
This seems to be a joint venture between some old friends in England and a very go-ahead American publisher - which is a good thing because these Blandford colour series are too good to have a relatively restricted U.K. circulation only. The author and artist are well known as being first class in their field and both can be justly proud of this book.
It covers the period from the Battle of Waterloo until 1850, commonly termed "the long peace" but punctuated by a series of small wars, revolutions and insurrections that rocked Europe, the Americas and British Colonies overseas. it illustrates over 130 uniforms of some 27 armies, both their full-dress and active dress uniforms worn on such widely-differing campaigns as European revolutions, the Spanish Carlist War, the Sikh Wars, the US/Mexican War, the War of Texan Independence, the campaigns of Bolivar and San Martin in South America and many others. Probably rightly claimed to be the first book ever to deal solely with this period, it is undoubtedly of great interest with out necessarily being completely indispensable to the wargamer whose interest in many of the campaigns described will be minimal.
However, there are certainly two campaigns described in the book and the uniforms illustrated, which can make for wargaming material that hitherto have been neglected.
These are the Sikh Wars - certainly the fiercest fighting that the British Army was ever engaged in in India - and the US/Mexican War 1846-47 where small and colourful armies of American Volunteers overcame immense odds and territorial difficulties to defeat the numerically superior and gorgeously arrayed Mexican forces. If you are looking for off-beat wars to wargame and you want some information on the uniforms, then you will find them in this book (if you want information on the wars themselves you will find them in "At Them With The Bayonet" and "All For A Shilling a Day" and Volume III of "Wargames Through The Ages" by Don Featherstone).
Philip Haythornhwaite is a mine of information and gets it down on paper in competent fashion. Here he briefly eals with the history of the wars and then describes the uniforms so capably illustrated by Michael Chappell. His uniform descriptions also include some interesting little tidbits of information which make them more than just the usual ecital of the facing colours, epaulettes and the like.
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© Copyright 1976 by Donald Featherstone.
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