When was Britain’s finest hour? For most readers the answer is easy: the summer of 1940, when Britain stood alone in defiance of the Third Reich, urged on by the soaring rhetoric of Winston Churchill. Chris Bambery disagrees.
Napoleonic
Nelson’s Trafalgar sketch discovered in scrapbook
All great military tacticians plan their campaigns carefully, but only very rarely do those plans survive. Now a sketch showing Admiral Lord Nelson’s proposed route to victory at the Battle of Trafalgar has been discovered.
War of Words – ‘Waterloo’
‘Waterloo’ – and especially variations of the phrase ‘to meet one’s Waterloo’ – have come to signify a firm, conclusive end to a person or a thing.
The Military History Behind the Vagrancy Act
The 1824 Vagrancy Act – which criminalises rough sleeping – has become the subject of public debate after Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the UK’s Labour Party, committed to repeal it in the event of a Labour government. A parliamentary debate on the Act, organised by Liberal Democrat MP Layla Moran, is due to take place in March. With the recent rise in homelessness across the […]
Jane Austen: a wartime writer?
War and violence are the last things one would associate with that 19th-century doyenne of English literature, Jane Austen. Ambles in the countryside, flirtatious glances, frocks with lace and frills, and the relentless pursuit of wealthy bachelors are the more likely images conjured by her name.
Yet conventional interpretations of the novelist’s work lack reference to a crucial context – that of war. For most of Jane Austen’s life, Britain was involved in conflicts of varying existential significance across the globe.
Battlefield Medicine: Wellington’s medical service at Waterloo
There were around 50 hospital staff in Brussels before Waterloo, some of whom had recently been on campaign elsewhere in the Low Countries. Other regimental doctors came over with their battalions, as did other hospital staff members (physicians, apothecaries, purveyors, and dispensers). At the time of Waterloo, there was no anaesthesia, no knowledge of or […]
Waterloo – map of troop manoeuvres
This map explains the movements of the French, British, and Prussian forces from the 15 to the 18 June, 1815. Napoleon seized the initiative in the Hundred Days campaign by marching his army across the frontier and into Belgium on 15 June. He struck Blücher’s Prussians with his main force at Ligny on 16 June, but his […]
Battle of Waterloo: The Battle for Hougoumont – Map of Hougoumont farm complex
The Battle of Waterloo raged all day, but in most sectors, there were lulls in the fighting. Only at Hougoumont was the struggle more or less continuous from 11.30 in the morning until 7.30 at night. To read the full article, see Issue 6 of Military times
Map of the Wellington's Lines of Torres Vedras – from September 1809
The lines of the Torres Vedras were lines of forts secretly built by the British from around September 1809-1812 to protect Lisbon during the Peninsular War. The landscape was remodelled wholesale to make it more defensible. Every approach was covered by at least one fort, and all forts were mutually supporting. Trench-lines covered some of […]
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