I picked up the paper back edition of this book by French Historian Henry Houssaye quite inexpensively on Amazon. With the anniversaries of the 1814 battles upcoming, I figure that I should do at least one of them. This is a part of the Napoleonic Wars that I have not gamed thus far, and I was looking for source material and inspiration. Subtitled "The Classic History of the End of the Napoleonic Epoch", the date of publication is not given, but the translation was done in 1914 - one hundred years ago! I found the book to be a reasonable read. It certainly covers the Military aspects, but really goes into comparatively little detail. There are basic orders of battle provided for several stages of the campaign, but the most detailed they ever get is strengths at the Brigade level, and mostly at the Divisional level or higher. The big thing the book is missing, though, is... maps. Not only is there not a single map of any of the battles discussed, far worse, there is not even a basic map of the theater of war! There is nothing more frustrating than trying to appreciate the strategic moves of the multiple armies and corps without a single map! Granted, I could hunt up a map of France to use with the book, but what excuse is there for publishing a book and translation that is already in the public domain without at least an operational map? The book does a much better job of covering the very complex politics and intrigues between the various Allied powers, Fouche, Talleyrand, the Royalists, etc., as well as the various peace negotiations, which neither side really ever took seriously until Napoleon's abdication ended the conflict.
Overall, I don't regret buying or reading the account, but I will need to look elsewhere for information usable to recreate any of the actions of the 1814 campaign. The 1814 chapters of Chandler's The Campaigns of Napoleon are far more useful for our purposes... and they do come with maps!
ADD August 20, 2013: see the comment by James about versions of this book with the maps, including free pdf's. Avoid this publisher's version (if you want maps)!
Strange no maps were included, you need them just to get an idea what's going on where??
ReplyDeleteObviously, I agree!
DeleteI hate when I get a decent enough book, but there are no maps!! But I can usually supplement with Eltig's Atlas.
ReplyDeleteAgreed, but really shouldn't be necessary, eh?
DeleteEven a Napoleonic history without maps is still a good read. Houssaye seems to have a good reputation.
ReplyDeleteFor OB detail, look at this: http://books.google.com/books?id=bFguAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA356#v=onepage&q&f=false
I'm creating my OB for the Battle of Paris over the next few weeks.
No argument it was a reasonable read, especially for one written 100 years ago! He tries to be reasonably objective, and succeeds while commenting that it is perhaps understandable if he cheers a bit more at French victories and feels the pain of French defeats more, being a Frenchman himself.
DeleteI really enjoyed this one when I read it a couple of years ago. It provided me with an excellent overview of the campaign, which was one of the more confusing ones of the period with all that marching and counter-marching. My version, a reprint from Naval and Military Press of the 1888 publication, has maps of La Rothiere, the campaign area in north-eastern France, Montmirail, Champaubert & Vauchamps, Craone, Laon, Arcis-sur-Aube and Paris and environs.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately many of these 'low cost publications' are just that and seem to involve merely obtaining the original facsimile of out-of-copyright books, printing them to a fairly ordinary standard and putting a soft-cover cover on them. Leonaur seem to be one of the worst offenders. I purchased Petre's account of the 1814 campaign from them and they had left the maps out of that too. I downloaded a pdf of the original from archive.org and got a much better version!
This are a few versions of this book on there too
http://archive.org/search.php?query=creator%3A%22Houssaye%2C+Henry%2C+1848-1911%22
There is the French edition of the one that you have the English translation of (i.e. sans les cartes!), but also an English translation from 1914 that does have maps
http://archive.org/details/napoleoncampaign00housuoft
Thanks so very much for the information, James! I see that care is necessary in the future to avoid getting less than what you thought you were paying for ("caveat emptor"). The maps you cite would make this far more useful - I shall pursue the links and seek out the cartography!
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