The final fourth volume concludes the series on the "Uniforms of the Armies of Waterloo". After presenting the Allied side in the previous volumes, the fourth part deals with their opponent - the French Armée du Nord under the command of Napoleon I. This northern army, despite its short existence after Napoleon's return to the imperial throne of France, consisted of numerous experienced soldiers from his earlier campaigns, with the restriction that their uniforms did not always conform to the statutes due to the short mobilisation time .
As in the three previous volumes, the two editors, Markus Gärtner and Markus Stein, take the opportunity afforded by the plates produced by Charles Lyall to evaluate the uniforms presented there in accordance with current knowledge on the appearance of French troops in 1815. Due to the special position attributed to the French Imperial Guard, especially in England, many of Lyall's plates deal with Guard troops. However, some of the units depicted had already been disbanded before 1815, nevertheless the editors have decided to include them in this volume with a short commentary. As in the other volumes, an Ordre de Bataille of the Northern Army as well as supplementary descriptions of the organisation and uniforming, of the troop units deployed in the Netherlands complete the visual picture of the plates. Finally, the account of the Battle of Waterloo begun in the first volume and continued in the subsequent volumes is taken up again and continued to the end, the retreat of the French from the battlefield. This description is accompanied by two further maps from William Siborne's atlas on the History of the Waterloo Campaign.
Group
Books (first-hand)
Title
Uniformen der Armeen von Waterloo. Band 4: Französische Armee