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.

The French at Waterloo. Eyewitness Accounts

Andrew W. Field
This book, taken as a whole, is fascinating. Each of the twenty-eight eyewitness accounts is engaging and intriguing and the introduction offers wise guidance for any would be military historian. There are three accounts from Napoleon himself progressively ‘adjusted’ as time passed to cast himself in a better light and to place the blame for defeat on other shoulders. To a certain degree one would expect accounts from different sides of the battle to differ but these accounts are all from the same side and one wonders, in some cases, if they were in the same battle. A number of accounts have Hougoumont and La Hay Sainte both falling while others confuse the two. Somewhere in the midst of this confusion of first hand accounts lies the truth.
The text is support by a few photographs and a map of the disposition of French troops at the start of the battle. Also, before each account, there is a very useful potted biography of the writer and the source of the document.
A most enjoyable read which we highly recommend.

Pen & Sword Military, 2020