Featured battle : Ball's Bluff

Part of American Civil War

Date : 21 October 1861

General Stone, commanding Union forces on the Maryland side of the Potomac sent 2 Massachusetts regiments across the river at Harrison's Island, near Leesburg, to harry Joe Johnson's Confederates, who were thought to be evacuating Leesburg itself. They scaled the high, wooded Virginia bank at Ball's Bluff, but found themselves hemmed in and trapped by four regiments of Mississippians and Virginians under 'Shanks' Evans who allowed them to walk into the trap, then forced them, literally, right back over the bluff and into the Potomac. One of the most prominent casualties was the Union Colonel Edward Baker, Senator for Oregon and personal friend of Pres. Lincoln.

Marengo

T. E. Crowdy
We have always known the plot of the story of the battle of Marengo reads more like fiction than fact. By 1630hrs on the 14th June 1800 the Austrians had won the battle of Marengo, their Commander in Chief left the battlefield to his deputy. By 2300hrs the Austrians had been routed and the French had won. Here, by the skin of his teeth, the myth of Napoleon’s invincibility was born. The hero triumphs in the end.
T. E. Crowdy’s Marengo is not a novel but an excellent factual account. However he fills out the facts with detail and evocative descriptions which grip the reader as a good novel should. For example, pg.168, as he writes about Napoleon’s guards he can ‘see’ them and then the reader can too. It is obvious that Crowdy has done a massive amount of research and tried to place it before the reader with integrity and where necessary he has explained his dilemma. His note 4 to chapter 10 should be mandatory in every account of Napoleonic battles.
The book has 316 pages, 41 appropriate mono or coloured plates, a useful set of end notes and an extensive bibliography. As to the maps, 17 of them, I can only make my usual criticism of the absence of scale for the first six. Also included are five and a half pages of description of the topography of the battle field which gives the third dimension to the maps. Who can see what from where is an important factor on any battlefield.
This is a book has both story and information it can be both studied and enjoyed. We highly recommend it to all levels of readership

Pen & Sword Military, 2018