In this compelling book, Richard Holmes tells the exhilarating story of the Duke of Wellington, Britain's greatest ever soldier.

1812 was the year in which the Peninsular War swung in the favor of the combined forces of the British, the Spanish and the Portuguese. The Battle of Salamanca, on 22 July, saw some 50,000 French troops arrayed against a similar number of allies. This was the result of a series of victories over the French gained by the allied armies under Wellingt

This “superb account of the British Army under Wellington in India reads like one of Bernard Cornwell’s Sharpe novels, or, better still, a Flashman novel” (Books Monthly). The Peninsular War and the Napoleonic Wars across Europe are subjects of such enduring interest that they have prompted extensive research and writing. Yet other campaigns, in what was a global war, have been largely ignored. Such is the case for the war in India which persisted for much of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic periods and peaked in the years 1798-1805 with the campaigns of Arthur Wellesley—later the Duke of Wellington—and General Lake in the Deccan and Hindustan. That is why this new study by Martin Howard is so timely and important. While it fully acknowledges Wellington’s vital role, it also addresses the nature of the warring armies, the significance of the campaigns of Lake in North India, and leaves the reader with an understanding of the human experience of war in the region. For this was a brutal conflict in which British armies clashed with the formidable forces of the Sultan of Mysore and the Maratha princes. There were dramatic pitched battles at Assaye, Argaum, Delhi and Laswari, and epic sieges at Seringapatam, Gawilghur and Bhurtpore. The British success was not universal. “An absorbing account of Wellesley/Lord Wellington which shows how his actions in India had a significant effect on the development of the British Empire and events through to the modern era.—Highly Recommended.” —Firetrench “An eye opener on the power and influence of the East India Company at this time. A jolly good read.” —Clash of Steel

The Battle of Waterloo has been studied and dissected so extensively that one might assume little more on the subject could be discovered. Now historian Peter Hofschröer brings forward a long-repressed commentary written by Carl von Clausewitz, the author of On War. Clausewitz, the Western world’s most renowned military theorist, participated in the Waterloo campaign as a senior staff officer in the Prussian army. His appraisal, offered here in an up-to-date and readable translation, criticized the Duke of Wellington’s actions. Lord Liverpool sent his translation of the manuscript to Wellington, who pronounced it a “lying work.” The translated commentary was quickly buried in Wellington’s private papers, where it languished for a century and a half. Now published for the first time in English, Hofschröer brings Clausewitz’s critique back into view with thorough annotation and contextual explanation. Peter Hofschröer, long recognized as a leading scholar of the Napoleonic Wars, shows how the Duke prevented the account’s publication during his lifetime—a manipulation of history so successful that almost two centuries passed before Clausewitz’s work reemerged, finally permitting a reappraisal of key events in the campaign. In addition to translating and annotating Clausewitz’s critique, Hofschröer also includes an order of battle and an extensive bibliography.

The British troops who fought so successfully under the Duke of Wellington during his Peninsular Campaign against Napoleon have long been branded by the duke’s own words—“scum of the earth”—and assumed to have been society’s ne’er-do-wells or criminals who enlisted to escape justice. Now Edward J. Coss shows to the contrary that most of these redcoats were respectable laborers and tradesmen and that it was mainly their working-class status that prompted the duke’s derision. Driven into the army by unemployment in the wake of Britain’s industrial revolution, they confronted wartime hardship with ethical values and became formidable soldiers in the bargain These men depended on the king’s shilling for survival, yet pay was erratic and provisions were scant. Fed worse even than sixteenth-century Spanish galley slaves, they often marched for days without adequate food; and if during the campaign they did steal from Portuguese and Spanish civilians, the theft was attributable not to any criminal leanings but to hunger and the paltry rations provided by the army. Coss draws on a comprehensive database on British soldiers as well as first-person accounts of Peninsular War participants to offer a better understanding of their backgrounds and daily lives. He describes how these neglected and abused soldiers came to rely increasingly on the emotional and physical support of comrades and developed their own moral and behavioral code. Their cohesiveness, Coss argues, was a major factor in their legendary triumphs over Napoleon’s battle-hardened troops. The first work to closely examine the social composition of Wellington’s rank and file through the lens of military psychology, All for the King’s Shilling transcends the Napoleonic battlefield to help explain the motivation and behavior of all soldiers under the stress of combat.

#1 Bestseller in the U.K. From the New York Times bestselling author and master of martial fiction comes the definitive, illustrated history of one of the greatest battles ever fought—a riveting nonfiction chronicle published to commemorate the 200th anniversary of Napoleon’s last stand. On June 18, 1815 the armies of France, Britain and Prussia descended upon a quiet valley south of Brussels. In the previous three days, the French army had beaten the Prussians at Ligny and fought the British to a standstill at Quatre-Bras. The Allies were in retreat. The little village north of where they turned to fight the French army was called Waterloo. The blood-soaked battle to which it gave its name would become a landmark in European history. In his first work of nonfiction, Bernard Cornwell combines his storytelling skills with a meticulously researched history to give a riveting chronicle of every dramatic moment, from Napoleon’s daring escape from Elba to the smoke and gore of the three battlefields and their aftermath. Through quotes from the letters and diaries of Emperor Napoleon, the Duke of Wellington, and the ordinary officers and soldiers, he brings to life how it actually felt to fight those famous battles—as well as the moments of amazing bravery on both sides that left the actual outcome hanging in the balance until the bitter end. Published to coincide with the battle’s bicentennial in 2015, Waterloo is a tense and gripping story of heroism and tragedy—and of the final battle that determined the fate of nineteenth-century Europe.