Overview

July 22, 1812. Salamanca, Spain. Frustrated at their first advance, British forces under Wellington's command have spent the last four days manoeuvering and retreating from the French army. Patient and cautious, Wellington is determined not to make a fatal mistake. He glimpses a moment of opportunity and grasps it, committing all of his troops to a sudden devastating attack. At the end of the day, the French army is broken, panic-stricken and reeling; Wellington has achieved the finest victory of his brilliant military career. This book examines in unprecedented detail the battle of Salamanca, the critical British victory that proved crushing to French pride and morale during the Peninsular War (1808-1814). Focusing on the day of the battle, Rory Muir skilfully conveys the experience of ordinary soldiers on both sides, dissects each phase of the fighting, and explores the crucial decisions made by each commander. He employs wide-ranging British and French sources, many unpublished or deeply obscure, to reconstruct every aspect of the battle. Having walked the battlefield itself, a site which remains today much as it was in 1812, Muir relates the ebb and flow of the battle with particular vividness. In separate commentary sections he evaluates the sources and indicates the inevitable contradictions and gaps in evidence that have emerged during his research. Complete with maps, battleground plans and other illustrations, this compelling book focuses acute analysis on a single day in Salamanca that changed European history.

Full Product Details

9780300087192

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Reviews

Detailed history of the 1812 battle at Salamanca, Spain, where Lord Wellington proved his tactical virtuosity by defeating French forces under the command of Marshal Marmont. Historian Muir ( Britain and the Defeat of Napoleon, 1807-1815 , not reviewed) uncovers enough new material to justify academic reconsideration of Wellington's near rout of the French army during the Napoleonic Peninsular War. He chooses a traditional structural approach, revealing a conflict between opposing commanders with contrasting personalities leading armies of roughly equal size and power. Muir quickly sets the stage of how Marmont, the impetuous and aggressive French commander, spent the days leading up to the decisive battle trying to maneuver cautious Wellington's allied army into an exposed position. The elaborate reconstruction of the resulting day-long conflict is unprecedented among existing scholarship about the battle. In addition to conventionally relating the opposing armies' battlefield dispositions and walking the reader through Wellington's brilliant decision to attack Marmont's weakened left flank, he also captures the day's chaotic and desperate atmosphere with dozens of eyewitness accounts of carnage as the French retreat threatened to become full-fledged panic. Adding further authenticity to the narrative, Muir offers important insights about Wellington's tactical decisions gleaned from walking the battlefield himself. The combination of rigorous research, obscure eyewitness accounts, and personal insight results in moments of keen appreciation for Wellington's genius. More often, however, they overwhelm the reader with minute and often conflicting details that obfuscate rather than clarify important aspects of the battle. While Muir presents his reconstruction in too much detail to hold a general history reader's attention, students and enthusiasts of Napoleonic warfare will feast on the thoroughness of his research and the accuracy of his scholarship. (20 detailed battle maps) (Kirkus Reviews)

Author Information

Rory Muir is visiting research fellow in the department of history, University of Adelaide. His previous books include Tactics and the Experience of Battle in the Age of Napoleon (0 300 08270 3, pb. 11.95) and Britain and the Defeat of Napoleon, 1807-1815 (0 300 06443 8, 35.00), both published by Yale University Press.

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