The Battle of Waterloo

the long version

From a period that reveled in portraying splendor and heroism has come massive, often magnificent documentation--portraits, battle panoramas, caricatures, quick sketches--for Christopher Herold's crisp account of the Hundred Days in the context of Napoleon's career; as with his (and their) earlier Horizon Book of the Age of Napoleon, the format is the function. It works well: here (in prose and pictures) is Napoleon cowering on the way to Elba, cocking an ear to the Congress of Vienna, turning young lads into military marionettes; here are the heavily cloaked wounded led through the streets, a conscript laden with plunder, still, pale faces on the battlefield at midnight. This has a larger historical interest and less immediate, tactical involvement than the volume in the Macmillan Battle Books series, but the maps assist the narrative in following the action.