ISBN: 9781898594925
Book Type: paperback
Number of Pages: 188
Book Dimensions: 210mm by 148mm
Images: 5 black & white maps
About (taken from the blurb of The Battle of Waterloo – A Foregone Conclusion?):
In the 200 years since the Battle of Waterloo was fought in Belgium on Sunday 18th June 1815, it has featured in hundreds of accounts. Some cover that day only, some cover each of the four battles fought over the four-day campaign as former Emperor, Napoleon Bonaparte, sought to re-establish himself by capturing Brussels.
Some specialist accounts deal with the exploits of a single fighting unit, while others concentrate on one particular engagement, but almost all have had two features in common. They recognise Waterloo as an iconic event, and they base themselves on the seemingly unchallengeable theory that it was a touch-and-go affair. For as everyone 'knows', the Duke of Wellington stated that the Battle of Waterloo was a near-run-thing. So it was reported in the newspapers immediately afterwards, and the Duke never contradicted it.
As a scientist, author Professor Pointon's training is to test theories, not against how many times have been repeated or against the eminence of those repeating them, but against hard logic and hard facts.
His present account was stimulated when, reviewing the events of that Sunday from a French angle, he felt compelled to check the actual positions of the troops involved. Looking at the hard facts of the four-day campaign in no way diminishes its nail-biting excitement, but it does tend to correct the fictions which historians have allowed to persist.