Comparative Waterloo Reviews
I own four Waterloo books. Now that I've read them all, let's kick off Waterloo Week by comparing them.
Andrew Roberts, Waterloo. HarperCollinsPublishers, 2005.
This is the most beginner friendly look at Waterloo if you're only casually interested and want an overview. It's short: including appendices, notes, and the index, it's only 143 pages. There's a chapter summarizing the events leading up to the battle, the battle itself, and a conclusion. Roberts takes the five phases approach to describing the combat, which gives a clearer mental picture (possibly deceptively clear, but not a horrible thing for building a mental scaffold). You get some details and good quotes, it gives a brief overview of the 15th-17th, but it's not overwhelming. My only qualm is that it advances a theory about Ney's cavalry charge that isn't in the others. If this was the newest of the four I would discard it, but Black's is newer. Not to say Roberts is wrong, just that I haven't seen it in other places. Roberts does have two decent maps and an insert of portraits of the major figures and some Waterloo paintings, which give visual references. I liked that he had parts of Wellington's despatch in one of the appendicies, but not that it wasn't the full thing.
Christopher Hibbert, Waterloo: Napoleon’s Last Campaign. Mentor Books, 1967.
Although this was the one I first bought and read, having read the others, I wouldn't recommend this to beginners. Although there is a lot of useful background information on Napoleon, Wellington, and Blucher, there aren't any images or maps. I've found it's much easier to come to grips with the battlefield if you have a map of some kind readily at hand. Hibbert also relies on extensive extracts and quotes from other sources, some primary and some secondary. The formatting makes it difficult to tell what is Hibbert's writing and what isn't. As far as length, my copy is 280 pages all told, with smaller pages and smaller writing, because it packs in so much more information. Hibbert probably has the most detail on the days before the campaign and the Battles of Ligny and Quatre Bras. His organization of Waterloo is Morning in one chapter and Afternoon and Evening in another. He also has a good account of the night after the battle and the days to come. His account is pretty well balanced for the most part between the two sides. I think a reader who has a book or some other research under their belt would find this one interesting.
Jeremy Black, The Battle of Waterloo. Random House, 2015.
This is the book for advanced readers and history scholars. Black is the most academic of the lot and spends time contextualizing Waterloo in the warfare of the 18th and 19th centuries as well as talking about ideas of modernity. This leads to a broader overview than the others. Black addresses the background of the French and British systems and armies more than the others, with less biography of the individual leaders than Hibbert. There are no maps. Black, much like Hibbert, divides the battle between two chapters, early and late. It was an interesting read, but it's not the one I go to first for looking things up and it's probably the one I consult the least. It's 236 pages, so longer than Roberts, and it's probably the densest. While it's discussing the Battle of Waterloo, it wants to weave it into the bigger picture rather than isolating it as an interesting battle.
Jac Weller, Wellington at Waterloo. Greenhill Publishing, 1967.
This is the book if you're a Wellington fan and you don't so much care about what the French army or Napoleon was up to, because you only get as much of them as is necessary to understand the rest. If that's all you want, you can skip right to this one because it's probably the most beginner friendly, particularly if you're a visual learner. Weller's biggest advantage is that he has maps and pictures of the terrain that he has marked the positions of on the maps, so that you can look at a photo and know where it was taken. He has references to these in the text itself. The only downside of the maps is they are drawn upside-down, that is, with the north to the bottom of the page, because it's focused on the British perspective. This can be a bit disconcerting at first. The book is divided into two parts. The first focuses primarily on the battles themselves. It sets up the armies, discusses Quatre Bras, the retreat, and then Waterloo. Weller more or less uses the five phases to separate his chapters but doesn't call them that and integrates them better than some. The second part contains analyses of each army's mistakes and useful information on the composition of the armies and cavalry vs artillery formations. There's also a chapter that is essentially a guide to exploring the modern terrain of the era (circa 1967) and what changes can affect your ability to explore the area yourself. There's even a list comparing town sizes. There are even two indexes, a general index as well as one by place. It is one of the longer books on this list-- it's over 250 pages-- but it's meant to be easily accessible and you can skip a lot of the second part if you're not interested in some of the details. I think this one is going to be a useful reference going forward, especially because of its indexes.
I really wish Weller and Hibbert were in dialogue with each other, because they do seem to disagree on points despite drawing from many of the same sources. Unfortunately, the books came out the same year, 1967. Roberts mentions both Weller and Hibbert in his further reading section, while Black only mentions Weller.
Not all of these books agree as to who made mistakes and who should be absolved of them. Hibbert is probably the most critical, while Weller absolves nearly everyone. Troops numbers vary, as no one agrees on those.
Anyway, if you're interested in the Battle of Waterloo, I hope this comparison helps you find the book that's right for you. And if you know of another book on the subject, please mention it. I don't need a fifth book on the subject, but that's never stopped me before. Though, fair warning, I can only read the English ones.