The Battle of Waterloo: The 400 Men Who Decided the Fate of Europe in The Longest Afternoon

Mr. Gee: Very good book, just incredibly short, which you already know going in, as it only covers part of the battle. But would still definitely recommend.

United Kingdom on Oct 19, 2023

Tom Ironside: Excellent reading about a largely forgotten episode in the carnage of the Waterloo the last battle against Napoleon.
Excellent read

United Kingdom on Aug 23, 2023

Amazon Customer: Anyone interested in military history should read this and consider how a key .6% in the right place, with the right drive and professionalism can dramatically shift the outcome for the other 99.4%

United Kingdom on Mar 02, 2023

John: It gave me an insight of the KGL why it was started and the battle itself, how it help the allies defeat the Napoleon.

United States on Dec 12, 2022

George R Dekle: There is an old saying that the Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton. The battle was really won in the muck and the mud surrounding La Haye Sainte and Hougoumont, two strongholds on the battlefield which stymied the French attack, delaying it long enough to allow the Prussian army to arrive and take Napoleon in the flank.

This book is the story of the 400 men of the King's German Legion who held La Haye Sainte against repeated assaults by thousands of Napoleon's soldiers. I would rank their gallant defense on a par with the more famous defenses of Thermopylae, the Alamo, and Rorke's Drift.

The King's German Legion were expatriate Hanoverian soldiers who fled their country for England when Napoleon was rampaging through Eastern Europe. They fought in the service of England throughout the Napoleonic Wars and acquitted themselves with distinction throughout. The assault on La Haye Sainte was probably their finest hour.

United States on Dec 09, 2016

ellgee: A strong effort about the defense of La Haye Sainte. I have read many books on Waterloo and the battles within the battles but this is easily the most detailed and devoted I've seen to La Haye Sainte.
I have seen people irate that Waterloo has been treated as an English victory or as a French loss, but the German effort is an afterthought. That is not the case here, as the book gives excellent detail to the King's Legion and their resolve to hold the farmhouse against overwhelming odds.
It's a quick read, but a lot of ground is covered. It combines the big picture of the battle while painting a picture of the men who were fighting at La Haye Sainte, and how they survived or died.

United States on Feb 18, 2016

Gary B: Highly recommended not just for students of history but to those who like a good historical action-adventure novel. This wonderful book reads like a movie script, the narrative is so well-written. Rather than starting out with the background history of this unique unit comprised mostly of displaced Hanoverian Germans in the British Army, the action begins the night prior to the battle, to suck you into the narrative. Author Brendan Simms then introduces just enough background to appreciate the action taking place. Easily read and understood, the events of that long afternoon at Waterloo are both remarkable and thrilling. Simms then concludes with a mature, balanced ending which thankfully includes what happened to his protagonists as they either perished or lived out the rest of their lives in history. Never dull, every paragraph on point, this is one of the best books I have read in a long time, and the quality of the writing reminds me of Shelby Foote's magnificent The Civil War: A Narrative. I sincerely wish someone would make a movie of it like the 1964 film Zulu (although that movie has some historical flaws) or with the high quality of the fictional 2003 film Master and...

United States on Jul 10, 2015

Theodore A. Rushton: The history book on the shelf is always repeating itself.
- - Abba

Why read yet another "history" about the Battle of Waterloo? Well, Abba's wail repeats like an old scratched vinyl record stuck in a groove. History is different.

Amost every history book is new because instead of repeating the same old tunes, every writer sifts through old papers to uncover new ideas to affirm the new author's original brilliance. For example, consider Wellington's asssertion that the Battle of Waterloo was "the nearest run thing you ever saw in your life."

Simms concisely proves Wellington's comment.

In most battles between matched forces, the outcome is due to a crucial tipping point. Bunker Hill in the American War of Independence "taught" the British to be so unduly cautious that they lost the war; the Plains of Abraham and Lundy's Lane shaped Canada; Little Round Top was the crucial U.S. Civil War battle; Bastogne was the rock that broke the last gasp of the Wehrmacht.

At Waterloo, the only major battle ever fought by a de facto 'NATO' army (long before NATO was formed), the crucial hinge was La Haye Sainte farm held by the 2nd Light Battalion of the...

United States on Feb 23, 2015

O. G. M. Morgan: I'm not entirely convinced that the defenders of the farmhouse of La Haye Sainte really decided the Battle of Waterloo, but they certainly fought incredibly bravely and were a very significant thorn in the side of the French army that day. As members of the King's German Legion, they were regarded as among the elite of Wellington's army. They had been in battle before, in the Peninsula, whereas many of the British and Hanoverian troops at Waterloo had never seen action. A few of Wellington's more experienced troops at Waterloo may have acquired their expertise by fighting alongside the French, although the Dutch who were conscripted for the Russian campaign mainly didn't come back. The soldiers of the King's German Legion were united by a hatred of the French - they never fought for Napoleon.

The KGL had ordinary line battalions, who looked the same as British units and used the same tactics. There were also KGL light cavalry, also well regarded by Wellington (whose view of the cavalry was otherwise pretty scathing), who relied on light dragoons for intelligence-gathering.

La Haye Sainte, however, was all about riflemen. The soldiers defending the farmhouse used the...

United Kingdom on Jan 05, 2015

Michael Howard: This work is an elegant but small scale addition to the lengthening list revealing injustices by neglect or default to the huge dramatis personae of individuals and formations, of Waterloo. Small scale, first because the format is 14.4 x 22.2 cm and runs to only 127 pages, of which 79 only bear the text proper, the remaining 48 being devoted to appendices, bibliography, notes and index - indicating the scale of dedicated research which has gone into it. Not above 45,000 words, then small scale too, because apart from setting it briefly in broader context, it is dedicated to a penetrating detailed minute by minute examination of the defence of the farm of La Haye (or Haie) Sainte, standing as it did in the very epicentre of the battlefield. Not a bad choice then, if one is so to narrow one's focus, in terms of location, and duration, and to the defence in particular by the 2nd Light Battalion of the King's German Legion. An episode, long drawn out, but, sub specie aeternitatis, the eternity of Waterloo, an episode
This brings us to a subtext, the author's scarcely concealed hobby-horse, the contribution of German soldiers to the British forces, individually and corporately,...

United Kingdom on Nov 14, 2014