Featured battle : Friedland

Part of The French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars

Date : 14 June 1807

Bennigson's Russians had concentrated at Friedland in East Prussia after the battle at Heilsberg. Napoleon sent Lannes and 17,000 men to delay him, and prevent him withdrawing further while he concentrated his own forces. Lannes held the Russians for most of the day until around 5:30, by which time Napoleon had around 80,000 men to oppose Bennigsen's 60,000 and launched his main offensive. Ney led the attack on the Russian left, crushing it and driving them back into the city. The right however held out and although suffering heavy losses were able to fall back beyond the river. The victory for the French was such that Tzar Alexander asked for terms, and the treaty of Tilsit brought the War of the Fourth Coalition to an end.

Yangtze Showdown. China and the ordeal of HMS Amethyst

Brian Izzard
Cover to cover a really good read. This is the story of the Yangtze incident in the round, the military and political machinations prior to, during and after the event. If you know the gung-ho 1957 film with hero Richard Todd then prepared to be shocked by the truth. There are action heroes a plenty but there are also ‘politicos’ who are anything but heroes.
The first sentence of the book is ‘A couple of shells whistled overhead and a group of sailors on board HMS Amethyst came to the same conclusion “They couldn’t hit a barn door”. The story goes on with the same engaging vitality. As for the Chinese hitting barn doors I remember newspaper photographs at the time rechristening HMS Amethyst as HMS Pepperpot.
Supporting the text are two useful maps and an informative set of photographs. Also the set of five appendices complete the information given in the story.
Well researched and beautifully written this book will be informative to military buffs and students of cold war politics. But more than those people we highly recommended it to the much wider audience of anyone who enjoy a good read.

Seaforth Publishing, 2020