Napoleonic Wars

Kriege und moderne militärische Konflikte bergen das wirkmächtige Potential den Verlauf der Geschichte in einer derart gestauchten chronologischen Abfolge der Geschehnisse zu verändern, die es für Gesellschaften schwer macht, sie in ihrer Gesamtheit und ihren überaus komplexen Konsequenzen zu fassen. Mindestens ebenso schwierig ist es für kleinere sozialen Entitäten, die blutigen, schockierenden, traumatischen und tieftraurigen persönlichen Erfahrungen, die ein Krieg mit sich bringt, zu begreifen. Dennoch sind die Assoziationen, die mit dem historischen Ereignis und der Erfahrung Krieg einhergehen, vielfältiger und facettenreicher, als man zunächst annehmen könnte. Wie das Kriegsgeschehen und sein mittelbares sowie unmittelbares Nachspiel erlebt werden, ist abhängig davon, aus welcher Perspektive man einen Krieg und seinen Ausgang erlebt. Welche Motive ein Staat, eine Nation oder eine Gesellschaft gehabt hat, die Krieg führte, mit welchem Ergebnis dieser Krieg zu einem Ende kam und welche kollektiven oder auch persönlichen Erfahrungen mit ebendiesem Kriegsende verbunden waren, spielt daher die maßgebliche Rolle, wenn man über die Rezeptionsgeschichte und die Erinnerungskultur einer Nation an einen Krieg spricht und sich dieser Problematik mithilfe eines kunsthistorischen, archäologischen, architektonischen oder auch soziologischen Zugangs nähert.

Clausewitz è celeberrimo per la sua opera Vom Kriege (Della Guerra), unanimemente considerato uno dei classici imprescindibili dell'arte militare, ma pochi sanno che il Vom Kriege raccoglie solo i primi tre volumi dei lavori incompiuti del generale prussiano (Hinterlassene Werke über Krieg und Kriegführung), gli altri, secondo il principio, caro all'autore, che gli historische Beispiele machen Alles klar (gli esempi storici rendono tutto chiaro), essendone il complemento ed il sussidio. Infatti, nei volumi successivi, il riferimento corre continuamente alle enunciazioni dei primi tre volumi, per dimostrarne la validità e discutere i rischi della mancata applicazione dei princìpi, talvolta per emendarli, migliorarli ed adattarli alle situazioni specifiche, senza in ogni caso mai discostarsene. Questa opera, il primo dei restanti volumi, il quarto in generale, dunque non è solo il resoconto talvolta impietoso degli accadimenti militari e politici, ma una dettagliata ed acuta analisi dei processi decisionali e delle opzioni tattiche, degli errori e delle scelte corrette di entrambi i contendenti della prima Campagna d'Italia (1796-97). È anche un riconoscimento, spesso intriso di spunti polemici e malcelato odio, delle capacità del giovane generale Bonaparte, che al suo primo comando indipendente, trasformò un esercito di straccioni, indisciplinati e demotivati, privi di vestiario, vettovaglie e armamento, in un formidabile strumento di guerra, che non solo inflisse continue e ripetute sconfitte a due eserciti alleati, ma impose trattati di pace - qui riprodotti - con pesanti condizioni in termini economici, politici e territoriali a tutti gli altri stati italiani, cancellandone persino uno dalla mappa geografica. Nomi come Montenotte, Millesimo, Dego, Lodi, Lonato, Castiglione, Rovereto, Bassano, La Favorita, San Giorgio, Arcole, Rivoli, Mantova, non furono altro che le principali tappe di una delle campagne più decisive della storia e sancirono il mito di Napoleone come generale abilissimo, fortunato ed invincibile e l'inizio della sua parabola stupefacente, mossa da un'ambizione senza più limiti che portò guerra e distruzione, ma anche il fuoco inestinguibile dei valori rivoluzionari, in tutta l'Europa nel corso dei successivi vent'anni. In appendice, ad opera del curatore, una esaustiva cronologia, dieci ordini di battaglia, un dizionario dei principali protagonisti della campagna, una raccolta di trattati e armistizi, una corposa bibliografia.

NOW OUT OF PRINT 

Title: Prussian Napoleonic Landwehr Infantry and Cavalry 1813-15: Landsturm, Volunteer Cavalry and Streifkorps
Publisher: Partizan Press
Pages: 224 pages and over 380 colour illustrations.

This is the companion volume to the successful two volumes on the Prussian Infantry 1808-1840.

The Landwehr and volunteers were essential in the success of the Prussian Army during the Wars of Liberation (1813-1815) against Napoleon. Their participation permitted the army to quadruple in size by August 1813 and become the cutting edge of the Allied Armies.

This unique work is the companion to the author’s two volume reference on the Prussian Infantry 1808-1840. It documents the campaign history, organisation, uniforms, horse furniture and their commanders, whether Landwehr (infantry and cavalry), Landsturm, Civil Guard, National Cavalry or Volunteers (Freiwilliger Jäger, Freikorps, and Streifkorps). For the first time in one volume the great diversity of their uniforms are lavishly illustrated and explored in detail, not previously attempted even in German.

The work draws upon all the essential sources on Prussian uniforms, including the contemporary works of Elberfeld and Genty. The 380+ colour illustrations include 331 of uniforms after Hans, Brauer, Woldemar Friedrich, Herbert Knötel, Richard Knötel, Bob Marrion, Carl Röchling and Moritz Ruhl plus 18 tables, 12 order of battles, 110 uniform details, saddlecloths and lance pennants.

Despite the popular aphorism, ‘the Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton,’ historians have been slow to appreciate the value Georgian elites vested in their public schools and public school sport. In fact, the stereotype of these schools as anarchic and pedagogically insignificant still endures. I argue that the schools of this period came to enjoy a growing popularity precisely because of their rough nature. Contemporaries praised the violence of both the dormitories and the playing fields as productive of vigorous, future leaders, capable of defending Britain in a world at war. Such rhetoric, I argue, anticipated the late Victorian cults of sport and manliness.

Many books, articles and programmes have been produced about the Battle of Waterloo. Recent authors and researchers have started to take a wider perspective of this iconic struggle, which virtually ended the prolonged war against Republican and Imperial France. Whilst not the most sanguinary conflict of these wars, there were thousands of dead and damaged men left on the battlefields, between the 15th and 18th June 1815. The medical services provided at and after the battle, left a good deal to be desired and some lessons learnt in the Peninsular campaigns had been forgotten. 

As Britain and Europe approach the bicentenary of this great event and as we continue to lose men in conflict, it is appropriate to remember their sacrifice and the medical men who helped them, albeit in their limited capacity. 

Medical perspectives of the battles from the 16th to the 18th June 1815, anecdotal casualties, explanations of medical ranking, with a comprehensive list of medical men, who served at the battle and their career paths, add an unusual dimension to the story of the Battle of Waterloo.

SHORNCLIFFE LECTURES BOOK 5
Book 5 of the Shorncliffe Lectures series explores the development of the Baker Rifle and the Experimental Corps of Riflemen of Colonel Coote-Manningham that became the 95th Rifles. This was the first permanent light infantry and completely rifle armed regiment in the British Army. There are 20 Maps, 27 Orders of Battle (OOBs), 93 Tables and over 110 illustrations including 56 of rifles, sword bayonets and bayonets. The themes of the book are:-
  1. The origins (Chapter 1) and formation (Chapter 8) of the 95th Rifles as the Experimental Corps of Riflemen under Colonel Coote Manningham.
  2. The development of the Baker Rifle and its use (Chapters 2-6),
  3. The barracks (Chapter 7), the training in Essex, Kent and Sussex (Chapter 8, 10, 14-15), their drilling of the  Volunteer Riflemen (Chapter 16) and the formation of the 2/95th in Canterbury on 1805 (Chapter 17).
  4. The early campaigns over the first seven years of their existence (Chapters 9, 11-12 and 18-20), and their campaign medals (Chapter 21).
  5. Selected articles from the Regulations for the Rifle Corps (Chapter 22) and the Shorncliffe Lectures of 1803 are printed in full (Chapter 23).

Autor podejmuje próbę udowodnienia tezy, że kwestie narodowe na Dolnym i Górnym Śląsku w istotny sposób znalazły swój początek w dobie wojen napoleońskich. Podczas gdy w 1807 górnośląscy autochtoni zachowywali się wobec pruskich Hohenzollernów lojalnie, to w tym samym czasie na Dolnym Śląsku wojska w barwach napoleońskich witano entuzjastycznie. W 1813 na Dolnym Śląsku nastroje się zmieniły, a pruskim elitom udało się tę niechęć przekuć w zupełnie na tej ziemi nowy, pruski narodowy entuzjazm. Wojny napoleońskie stały się wręcz mitem założycielskim krystalizującej się niemieckiej świadomości narodowej. Na Górnym Śląsku wypadki potoczyły się dokładnie w odwrotnym kierunku. W 1811 roku wybuchło tu powstanie przeciwko panującym socjalnym niesprawiedliwościom. Zostało krwawo stłumione przez wojska pruskie, co wywołało głęboką nienawiść do Hohenzollernów. Rebelia ta stała się fundamentem napięć społecznych i narodowych w XIX wieku, które znalazły swój finał w powstaniach
śląskich 1919-1921.

Stella Ghervas, "The Vienna Peace Settlements: From a Balance of Power to a Balance of Negotiation".

What were the innovations of the Congress of Vienna? It has been traditional to affirm that the European peace and security system established in the course of the Congress of Vienna had been an achievement of the political model of the balance of power. Historical reality was however more complex than that. Despite conflicting agendas, the statesmen and diplomats who drafted the settlements of 1814-15 genuinely sought to establish a lasting peace, after the long and bloody wars against Napoleon. In doing so, they effectively banned war among themselves for nearly four decades, until the outbreak of the Crimean War (1853).

Az 1809-es osztrák–francia háború Ausztriában és Magyarországon is számos innovatív, de
hosszabb időtartamban szemlélve kivételesnek számító megoldást hozott a „népi-nemzeti háború”
gondolata jegyében minél szélesebb körben végrehajtani kívánt katonai mozgósítás és
az ennek szolgálatába állított hivatalos propaganda tekintetében. Különösen Ausztriát illetően
az újítások szervezeti és ideológiai értelemben is számos ponton tetten érthetők a korábbi
és későbbi francia háborúk mobilizációihoz képest. Szervezetileg mindenekelőtt a közvetlen
kormányzati irányítás és finanszírozás megléte és a változatos propagandatechnikák komplex,
extenzív alkalmazása érdemel figyelmet, különös tekintettel a nyomtatás térhódítására. Ideológiai
értelemben pedig a patrióta-nemzeti beszédmód különféle regisztereinek az egyes technikákhoz
kötődő párhuzamos és szegmentált használatát szükséges kiemelni. Az alkotmányos
különállására, tradicionális hadszervezetére (inszurrekció) és a nemesi politikai nemzet kollektív
identitására tekintettel sajátos helyzetben lévő Magyar Királyságban az osztrák-birodalmi
hivatalos propaganda által alkalmazott technikák és ideológiai megoldások is adaptációra
szorultak. A dolgozat célkitűzése, hogy a magyarországi, s mindenekelőtt az inszurrekcióra
irányuló hivatalos propaganda felépítését és működését a Habsburg monarchia szélesebb kontextusában
vázolja fel.

Dem Themenfeld ,,Heer und Demokratie" in Beziehung zum Selbstverständnis des Soldaten als Militär und Christ soll hier anhand der Epoche der Napoleonischen Kriege nachgegangen werden. Die Vorstellungen von Krieg und Frieden sowie frühdemokratische Ideen prägten die Heeresstruktur der Befreiungskriege.

In 2007 the facsimile edition of an original manuscript written by a French soldier of Bonaparte’s Expedition in Egypt was published. Illustrated by naive coloured plates by the hand of the author, this document relates, almost day after day, the French Expedition in Egypt and Syria. It describes the main battles between the French troops and the English and Mameluks forces, but also the discovery of an exotic country and its culture at the end of the18th century, from a young revolutionary French soldier’s point of view. The purpose of this paper is to highlight a second version of this personal Description de l'Egypte, probably written shortly after the first one. A preliminary study shows that this variant, still unpublished and mentioned here for the first time, is longer and more detailed. Future research will have to explain why those two versions were written and now coexist.

Heeringen, R.M. van/A. Vissinga, 2016: Archeologisch vooronderzoek in het oostelijk deel van het camp d’Utrecht, een Frans legerkamp uit de periode van het Bataafs Gemenebest in Austerlitz. Een inventariserend veldonderzoek onder het protocol proefsleuven tussen Hubertweg 31 en Kamperlinie (Dorpsplan Austerlitz), gemeente Zeist, Amersfoort (Vestigia-rapport V1359).

Aleksey Yermolov is a legend in Russia. A man who rose from obscurity to command armies and conquer provinces, he was the epitome of a military man of action. To his enemies he was a byword for brutality, but, to his homeland, a hero.

His memoirs are as dramatic as his rise to fame and fortune. Disgraced and exiled by the mad Czar Paul he was brought back into service only to witness Russian defeat at the battle of Austerlitz in 1805. Honoured and advanced by his new patron, the dashing Czar Alexander, Yermolov then made rapid progress. He witnessed at firsthand Napoleon's invasion of Russia in 1812 but went on to see revenge completed when the Russians marched into Paris in April 1814.

When peace was declared in Europe, this hard and capable soldier was sent into the Caucasus to conquer Chechnya, sparking Russia's long and complex struggle to govern this unstable region.

Yermolov was a talented general who captured the spirit of his times in his brilliant and engaging memoirs. His acidic wit, acute powers of observation and grasp of drama make this book stand out as a unique source on the wars which defeated Napoleon and made Russia a superpower.

This work was originally presented at a meeting of Consortium on Revolutionary Europe.  It was later published in the edited papers of the conference under the title, "Consortium on Revolutionary Europe: Selected Papers, 2003, 80-88."
© 2003 The Consortium on Revolutionary Europe. 0092-2574/74-15970 
All Rights Reserved.

Fascinating things can turn up in genealogical research.  I was reminded of this a few years ago while studying some of my colonial New England ancestors.  As a historian specializing in the American Revolution, I am always eager to learn about relatives who participated in that conflict.  Recently, while researching my Revolutionary War ties to one family – the Lorings of Massachusetts – I was surprised to discover a relationship to Admiral Sir John Wentworth Loring, known for his distinguished Royal Navy service during the Age of Nelson and beyond.  What intrigued me about this Boston-area native was how he began his career as a destitute, Loyalist exile, but ended it as an affluent and respected Royal Navy leader.  Moreover, Loring excelled in both operational and administrative commands, earning admiration from his peers and knighthoods from King William IV and Queen Victoria. 

Despite these achievements, modern historians have not really examined Loring in any great depth.  He has been mentioned as a minor reference in published works about his parents, Joshua Loring Jr. and Elizabeth Lloyd “Betsey” Loring, or other close relatives.  What follows here is a brief biographical sketch that provides a closer, more detailed, look at this compelling Royal Navy leader.  It is part of a more complete study of Loring and his family that is currently underway.

This article will challenge the currently accepted notions of weak British consular presence, influence and activity in the southern Mediterranean during the period 1795–1832 through a case study of the careers of three successive consuls in the Regency of Tripoli: Simon Lucas, William Wass Langford and Hanmer Warrington. Utilising the official correspondence of these agents, the extent of the consular bridgehead in the capital, Tripoli, will be investigated, and how, through these consular and diplomatic agents, it served to define imperial interests and activity at the frontiers of empire. Moreover, the overlapping personal and professional networks within which the consuls embedded themselves, the role of enterprising missions and the development of an intelligence-gathering network will be of central significance in understanding the consequent ruptures in the social and political fabric of the Regency of Tripoli. British imperial interest in North Africa during and immediately post the Napoleonic era remains under-studied and misunderstood within both British diplomatic and imperial history. This article challenges the existing literature that underestimates the diplomatic as well as consular power exercised by the British consuls to Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli, as well as the importance of these three Barbary regencies to wider strategic interests in the Mediterranean.

In this paper, the draft evasion during the Napoleonic periode is examined. It has its focus on the Departement de l'Escaut, which is almost the same area as the current Belgian province Eastern Flanders. Several methods of draft evasion were common, such as (self-)mutilation and forgery. The complicity of civilians in draft evasion is extensively examined, as well as the response of the Napoleonic government to the problem.

Es el año de 1815, cuando transcurre en Bélgica la última de las batallas del gran Napoleón Bonaparte, emperador de una Francia que abarcaba media Europa. Justo había regresado de su cautiverio en la isla de Elba para recuperar su trono imperial y ya las demás monarquías se habían organizado mediante un congreso en la capital austriaca para restablecer la paz y el viejo orden en Europa.

In all of the major military campaigns of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, including the “American War of Independence” and the Napoleonic Wars, both the Royal Navy and the Crown regiments of the British Army employed Black servicemen. The Royal Navy employed Black and Asian men as ratings on their vessels, before, during and after the Battle of Trafalgar (1805).(1) The British Army’s Black rankers served before, during and after the Battle of Waterloo (1815).(2) (Neither service seems to have made any distinction between men of African or Asian origin, simply referring to them as either “Black” or “of colour”).
Peter (Perry) Brookings, was born in Barbados c.1791-1793, and between 1810 and 1833 he served in both the Royal Navy and the 40th Foot of the British Army. (Nothing is known of his early life and throughout his military and civilian records, his forename alternated between Peter and Perry). His twenty-three years of service to the Crown included the Napoleonic War against France, the “War of “1812” against the United States (with the Royal Navy), and service in Britain, France, Ireland, Australia and India (with the 40th).

Pál Kray’s memorandum on outpost service
The source publication presents a memorandum of 5th April 1800, written by Paul Kray (1735-1804), an Imperial and Royal Feldzeugmeister of Hungarian origin. The memorandum was circulated among the generals and the regimental commanders under the feldzeugmeister, who was commander-in-chief of the Imperial and Royal army in Germany. The Notes on Outpost Service gives an excellent insight not only into the practice of securing an army, giving guard service and dispatching patrols, but it also contributes to our knowledge on small war tactics. It contains instructions about conducting an orderly withdrawal, about reconnaissance, intelligence agents, urban warfare and many other details which official regulations and military history works generally do not discuss. This practical-minded guide is fully authenticated by the forty-year-long military career of Feldzeugmeister Pál Kray and by the successes he had in the Turkish and French wars first as the commander of small and big independent units, then as the commander of the advance guard of the whole army.

Texto en el que se resume un pleito relativo al abastecimiento de vino por parte de las tropas napoleónicas dirigidas por el mariscal Jean-Baptiste Bessières en el verano de 1808, acantonadas en Mayorga (Valladolid). Tomaron varios acopios de vino de las bodegas de Gordoncillo (León).

After five years of occupation (from 1809 exactly) by Portuguese troops come from Brazil, French Guiana was supposed to be retroceded to France after the fall of Napoleon and the first Treaty of Paris of may 1814. After the flight of the Eagle and the Hundred Days, however, the territory was to remain occupied by the Portuguese troops up to the end of the year 1817 when new French authorities could eventually be re-established in the colony. In my presentation here today, I will only stress some of the problems of this three year period of hesitations between de facto annexation to the Portuguese Empire of Brazil and de jure return to French sovereignty. • first, I focus on what it seems to be : a matter of rivalry between two colonial powers on the South American Continent – including the British, who were deeply interested in the new settlements of 1815 in the Eastern Caribbean, the Guiana plateau, and the Brazilian Empire. • second, I focus on the destiny of the slaves. Some of them were emancipated thanks to the conquest by the Portugueses, but for the most part of them, their condition was not changed by the new rulers of the colony. There was anyway a major interference, I mean the ban on the Atlantic slave trade edicted by the British in 1807 and confirmed by the Congress of Vienna in 1815. The colonial lobby in Paris claimed for new attempts to provision Guiana with African, Brazilian and Caribbean slaves, and so did the plantation owners disadvantaged by foreign occupation.  • third, the conclusion of this period of occupation by the Portuguese is also the issue of the territory situated southwest of the river Oyapock, which was reconfigured by the re-drawing of frontiers in 1814-1817 into a Franco-Brazilian disputed zone for more or less a century : the so-called " contesté " finally obtained by Brazil at the beginining of the twentieth century after an international arbitration ruled by Switzerland.

This paper evolves the diferent fortification proyets on the El Rastrillar mountain (Laredo municipality), since the end of XVIth century, and decrives the diferent elements, which have came into ours days, most dated in the middle of XIXth century. El Rastrillar establishs one of de best and the most coherent fortified ensemble of Cantabria.

In January 2018 a cross belt plate of the Devizes
Loyal Volunteers was found in Potterne by Mark
Flitton (Figure 1). The find was reported to the
Portable Antiquities Scheme (WILT-19531D)
and subsequently donated to Wiltshire Museum,
Devizes. The belt plate dates to AD 1799–1808.
The front face is decorated with the Devizes coat of
arms, depicting a castle with a crown above, flanked
by the letters G R. It features an inscription, reading
DEVIZES LOYAL VOLUNTEERS. The bent
spike at the top of the belt plate’s reverse side is
incomplete and measures 4.8mm wide at the break.
At the bottom of the reverse are two circular studs
with flattened tops, 12.9mm in diameter.

The French side of the Napoleonic Wars is often seen from a strategic point of view, or in terms of military organization and battlefield tactics, or through officers’ memoirs. It is rarely seen from the perspective of the lowest ranks of the army, and the experience of the ordinary soldiers is less well known and is often misunderstood. That is why this account, based on more than 1,600 letters written by French soldiers of the Napoleonic armies, is of such value. It adds to the existing literature by exploring every aspect of the life of a French soldier during the period 1799-1815.

The book will be fascinating and informative reading for military and cultural historians, but it will also appeal to anyone who is interested in the war experience of common soldiers. It offers the English-speaking audience a French view of a conflict which is too often limited to the traditional memoirs of Captain Coignet, Colonel Marbot or Sergeant Bourgogne.

In British shipping in the Mediterranean Katerina Galani investigates the impact of the French and Napoleonic wars on British maritime economic activity. Due to the close cooperation of the public and private sector at sea, the British adopted flexible business strategies to mitigate economic warfare and sustain shipping and trade in the Mediterranean.
The book offers a comprehensive approach by combining the study of international relations, ports, ships, business organisation, deep-sea voyages and intra-Mediterranean navigation. Katerina Galani conceptualises the Mediterranean as an economic entity and she insightfully examines, for the first time, free traders along with the chartered Levant Company. Her analysis draws upon a unique collection of British and Mediterranean sources to construct a multifaceted view of British maritime activity.

Ignacy Prądzyński - a participant of Napoleonic Wars, general and quartermaster general of our army during the November Uprising - belongs to the most eminent Polish military theoreticians. He is the author of 60 works from the field of the art of war. Most of them were published in print. An abundant treatise On the art of war occupies a significant place in Prądzyński's literary output. His Course of tactics  for years remained a manuscript. This book is its critical edition. It is an unfinished manual for the officers of the army of the Kingdom of Poland and, at the same time, a great source on the author's knowledge and views.

Wer war Andreas Hofer? Jeder Tiroler weiß es oder glaubt zumindest, es zu wissen. Schon in der Volksschule war das schicksalsträchtige Jahr 1809 Thema: die „heldenhafte Verteidigung Tirols“ gegen die napoleonischen und bayerischen Truppen, die in ganz Europa Aufsehen hervorrief. Andreas Hofer, der Sandwirt aus dem Passeiertal und kurzzeitige Oberkommandant von Tirol, stand dabei im Mittelpunkt. In dieser neuen Hofer-Biographie wird insbesondere das „private“ Leben des „Helden“, der „vormilitärische Hofer“ sozusagen, ins Blickfeld gerückt. Der Sandwirt war ja auch Bauer, Gastwirt, Pferde-, Wein- und Branntweinhändler, Ehemann und Familienvater. Andreas Oberhofer streift den Ballast der Mythen und Legendenbildung von der Hofer-Figur ab und erzählt auf der Grundlage der sozial- und wirtschaftshistorischen Gegebenheiten die Geschichte eines Mannes, der für wenige Monate, zwischen April 1809 und Februar 1810, in das Scheinwerferlicht der „großen“ Politik geriet.

This essay is dedicated to cartography and the effects Napoleon's campaigns had on the representation of terrain. The reader is invited to consider Napoleon's particular style of cartography and its way of representing geographical features visually, as well as its establishment of the norms for modern cartography.
Despite the great development that scientific studies on the Napoleon­ic cartography of ltaly have had since the 1980s, we are still far from having an overview like the 'interpretative' Atlas designed twenty years ago by Anne God­lewska. This study ain1s to contribute to a first, non-exhaustive, list of the main cartographic campaigns carried out in ltaly by French military geographers during the wars of French Revolution and Empire. Tue reader is invited to consider the particular ain1s and style of the new ltalian cartography produced by the French Dépòt général de la Guerre as well as by the topographic offices of Milan and Naples.

Situated just to the north of the château/farm of Hougoumont on the Waterloo battlefield, the Bois d’Hougoumont seldom gets a mention in the history books. Many authors have assumed that the wood was cut down well before the battle, but Alasdair White’s recent research into the age of some of the trees in the wood show that they pre-date the Battle of Waterloo, suggesting that the Bois d’Hougoumont may well have existed at the time of the battle thus explaining some of the events that took place.