Against him stood the Royal Navy and the already legendary Admiral Horatio Nelson.On 21 October 1805, a massive naval battle off the coast of Spain decided mastery of the seas. Then, over the following days and nights, the battleships and their exhausted crews endured a gale of awesome fury. As Captain Charles Tyler wrote to his wife Margaret, 'the wind blew a perfect storm'.The authors of the bestselling FINEST HOUR tell this story not only through the diaries, letters and memoirs of the men who wrestled with the enemy and the elements, but also through the eyes of their wives and children. Whether you are already familiar with this period of history or are coming to it for the first time, TRAFALGAR is a book that will enthral as it illuminates an event whose repercussions still echo today.

    For more than five hours, sixty ships fought at close quarters as their occupants struggled under the constant barrage of cannon and musket fire, amid choking fumes and ear-splitting explosions. Nelson's navy was severely outgunned; twenty-seven British battleships carrying 2,150 guns faced thirty-three French and Spanish ships carrying 2,640 guns. Yet the British gunners, quicker and more disciplined, carried the day. While the men maneuvered the ships and kept the cannons firing, the women tended the sick and helped the boys carry gunpowder cartridges to the gun decks. When Nelson died in the midst of the battle, French Vice-Admiral Villeneuve remarked that "to any other nation the loss of a Nelson would have been irreparable, but in the British Fleet off Cadiz, every captain was a Nelson."" Adkins has drawn on a broad range of primary source material to write this powerful, unforgettably vivid history that captures as never before the harsh conditions in which sailors lived and died, the mechanics of nautical combat and the human costs of the conflict.

    Bonaparte had returned, and it would be just one hundred days before he met his enemies in a final, epic battle. In Napoleon and the Hundred Days, Stephen Coote vividly re-creates the rise and fall of Bonaparte's empire, and brings to life the characters who shaped it. With the eye of an historian and the dramatic style of a novelist, Coote describes how the path to war became inevitable and how, at the Battle of Waterloo, the fatigued but ever arrogant Napoleon met his match. This is a dazzling portrait of the legendary emperor, whose genius, courage, and tenacity won--and lost--him a vast empire.

    Inside you will read about... ✓ The Road to Yorktown ✓ Opening Moves ✓ The Troops in Motion ✓ The Battle at Sea ✓ The Calm Before the Storm ✓ The Siege Commences ✓ The Fall When Washington moved against Cornwallis, the entire world held its breath. And when surrender was offered

    Napoleon himself, expiring at 51 after a lifetime of robust health, suspected otherwise and ordered a thorough autopsy. His suspicions were well founded. So clever was the crime, however, that until recent developments in forensic science, it was impossible to prove a case of murder, let alone name the killer. Now, the authors of The Murder of Napoleon assert, it has been done-by a brilliant man whose 20-year inquest, a feat of detection, has produced one of history's greatest surprises. "Sensational...as gripping as a detective novel yet scrupulously observant of historical fact" (Publishers Weekly) Author Biography: David Hapgood was an editor and writer for The New York Times. He is author or co-author of The Murder of Napoleon, The Screwing of the Average Man, Monte Cassino, and Africa from Independence to Tomorrow. He is a graduate of Swarthmore College and lives in New York City.

    Within days a Royal Navy Task Force is assembled and British forces dispatched. This is the story of D Squadron, 22 SAS, commanded by Cedric Delves. The Squadron will be in at the start, at the repossession of South Georgia; and they will be there at the end, still going forward. Theirs will be the first Union Jack raised over Government House in Stanley, signifying the end of the war.This is more than a tale of derring-do, although the events and their relentless tempo defy belief. Angry seas, inhospitable glaciers, hurricane force winds, an Argentine submarine, helicopter crashes, raids behind enemy lines –– all these and more are in the mix. 'Across an Angry Sea' is a chronicle of daring. The Squadron prevails, but the cost is high. They lose a third of their fighting strength. This is a portrait of a tight knit SAS band of brothers at war. It doesn’t always go right. But the Squadron learns fast. They win through and at all times fight hard, with determination, skill and steadiness, never losing sight of their humanity.

    What made Arthur Duke of Wellington the military genius who was never defeated in battle? Peter Snow recalls how Wellington evolved from a backward, sensitive schoolboy into the aloof but brilliant commander.

    Now, taking advantage of never- before-seen documents from the Russian archives, Lieven upends much of the conventional wisdom about the events that formed the backdrop of Tolstoy's masterpiece, War & Peace. Lieven's riveting narrative sweeps readers thru epic battles, tense diplomatic exchanges on which the fate of nations hung & the rise of Russia from near-ruin to Europe's liberator. Rich in detail, Russia Against Napoleon is a groundbreaking masterwork.

    In this fascinating account of Cochrane's life, David Cordingly, author of the bestselling Under the Black Flag and The Billy Ruffian, unearths startling new details about the real-life Master and Commander, from his daring exploits against the French navy to his role in the liberation of Chile, Peru, and Brazil, and the shock exchange scandal that forced him out of England and almost ended his naval career. Drawing on previously unpublished papers, his own travels, wide reading, and the kind of original research that distinguished The Billy Ruffian, Cordingly tells the rip-roaring story of the archetypal Romantic hero who conquered the seas and, in the process, defined his era.

    Now this legendary battle is re-created in a groundbreaking book by an eminent British military historian making his major American debut. Revealing how and why Napoleon fell in Belgium in June 1815, The Battle of Waterloo definitively clears away the fog that has, over time, obscured the truth.With fresh details and interpretations, Jeremy Black places Waterloo within the context of the warfare of the period, showing that Napoleon’s modern army was beaten by Britain and Prussia with techniques as old as those of antiquity, including close-quarter combat. Here are the fateful early stages, from Napoleon’s strategy of surprise attack—perhaps spoiled by the defection of one of his own commanders—to his younger brother’s wasteful efforts assaulting the farm called Hougoumont. And here is the endgame, including Commander Michel Ney’s botched cavalry charge against the Anglo-Dutch line and the solid British resistance against a series of French cavalry strikes, with Napoleon “repeating defeat and reinforcing failure.”More than a masterly guide to an armed conflict, The Battle of Waterloo is a brilliant portrait of the men who fought it: Napoleon, the bold emperor who had bullied other rulers and worn down his own army with too many wars, and the steadfast Duke of Wellington, who used superior firepower and a flexible generalship in his march to victory.With bold analysis of the battle’s impact on history and its lessons for building lasting alliances in today’s world, The Battle of Waterloo is a small volume bound to have a big impact on global scholarship.

    Fighting and thieving their way across Europe, they are clearly no ordinary troops. The 95th are in fact the first British soldiers to take aim at their targets, to take cover when being shot at, to move tactically by fire and manoeuvre. And by the end of the six-year campaign they have not only proved themselves the toughest fighters in the army, they have also - at huge personal cost - created the modern notion of the infantryman.In an exhilarating work of narrative military history, Mark Urban traces the story of the 95th Rifles, the toughest and deadliest sharpshooters of Wellington's Army.'If you like Sharpe, then this book is a must, your Christmas present solved.' Bernard Cornwell, Daily Mail'Urban writes history the way it should be written, alive and exciting.' Andy McNab

    The historian John Sugden charts the period of Nelson's career neglected by earlier writers-from childhood to his breathtaking victory against the Spanish fleet at Cape St. Vincent when he became an admiral, lost an arm, and won international fame. Like Alexander of Macedon, Nelson led from the front (not always a sensible custom). But he was a natural leader and a genuine hero, and his actions invariably raised his stock with his men, who trusted him as a commander willing to share their dangers.Nelson combines groundbreaking scholarship with a vivid and compelling narrative style. Detailing every facet of Nelson's crowded life, the author offers the only full account of Nelson's early voyages and the first complete analysis of the formative incidents in his career. Throughout there are revealing and startling discoveries about Nelson's relationships with family, patrons, officers, and men-and with his women. Previous biographies have failed to penetrate the mythology encrusting one of the world's greatest naval heroes, and none has been based on a thorough examination of original sources.Nelson will immediately become the benchmark against which all subsequent books about Nelson will be judged. It is a biography of the best sort: compelling, authoritative, and thrillingly alive.

     A shepherd’s son is enlisted as a soldier of the Army of Reserve. His name is Benjamin Randell Harris, private of the 95th Regiment of Foot. The Recollections of Benjamin Harris are the classic memoirs of a foot soldier during the Napoleonic Wars, originally published in 1848. With personal anecdotes, quick wit and vivid descriptions, The Recollections of Benjamin Harris is one of the few surviving accounts of military service from the Napoleonic era. The memoir charts Harris’s years of active service from joining the 95th Rifles in Ireland, to the Peninsular Wars of Northern Spain. Harris recollects the gripping campaign at Copenhagen, the engagement at the Battle of Rolica, the gruelling march to Salamanca and, finally, culminates with the Battle of Corunna. The Recollections of Benjamin Harris is a personal military account from the eyes of a foot soldier, and offers military history fans a unique insight into the Napoleonic wars. Praise for The Recollections of Benjamin Harris: “Wonderful memoirs... A piercing eye, a talent for description, and a constant good humour” – Bernard Cornwell Albion Press is an imprint of Endeavour Press. Endeavour Press is the UK's leading independent publisher of digital books.

    In this remarkably rich and eminently readable historical account, acclaimed author Paul Strathern reconstructs a mission of conquest inspired by glory, executed in haste, and bound for disaster.In 1798, Napoleon Bonaparte, only twenty-eight, mounted the most audacious military campaign of his already spectacular career. With 335 ships, 40,000 soldiers, and a collection of scholars, artists, scientists, and inventors, he set sail for Egypt to establish an Eastern empire in emulation of Alexander the Great. Like everything Napoleon ever attempted, it was a plan marked by unquenchable ambition, heroic romanticism, and not a little madness. Napoleon saw himself as a liberator, freeing the Egyptians from the oppression of their Mameluke overlords. But while Napoleon thought his army would be welcomed as heroes, he tragically misunderstood Muslim culture and grossly overestimated the “gratitude” he could expect from those he’d come to save. Instead Napoleon and his men would face a grim war of attrition against an ad hoc army of Muslims led by the feared Murad Bey. Marching across seemingly endless deserts in the shadow of the pyramids, suffering extremes of heat and thirst, and pushed to the limits of human endurance, they would be plagued by mirages, suicides, and the constant threat of ambush. A crusade begun in honor and intended for glory would degenerate toward chaos and atrocity.But Napoleon’s grand failure in Egypt also yielded vast treasures of knowledge about a culture largely lost to the West, and through the recovery of artifacts like the Rosetta Stone, it prepared the way for the translation of hieroglyphics and modern Egyptology. And it tempered the complex leader who believed it his destiny to conquer the world. A story of war, adventure, politics, and a clash of cultures, Paul Strathern’s Napoleon in Egypt is history at once relevant and impossible to put down.From the Hardcover edition.

    Between 1792 and 1815, Europe plunged into an abyss of destruction.It was during this time, Bell argues, that our modern attitudes toward war were born. In the eighteenth century, educated Europeans thought war was disappearing from the civilized world. So when large-scale conflict broke out during the French Revolution, they could not resist treating it as "the last war" -- a final, terrible spasm of redemptive violence that would usher in a reign of perpetual peace. As this brilliant interpretive history shows, a war for such stakes could only be apocalyptic, fought without restraint or mercy.Ever since, the dream of perpetual peace and the nightmare of total war have been bound tightly together in the Western world -- right down to the present day, in which the hopes for an "end to history" after the cold war quickly gave way to renewed fears of full-scale slaughter.With a historian's keen insight and a journalist's flair for detail, Bell exposes the surprising parallels between Napoleon's day and our own -- including the way that ambition "wars of liberation," such as the one in Iraq, can degenerate into a gruesome guerrilla conflict. The result is a book that is as timely and important as it is unforgettable.