COURAGE, BLOOD AND LUCK: Poems of Waterloo

Following in the tradition of the great poets Kipling and Tennyson, Harry Turner includes brief portraits of the three towering and brilliant historic personalities in his retelling of the story of the Battle of Waterloo in verse. The eve of Waterloo, the Duchess of Richmond's Ball 15th June 1815. 'Beneath a soaring, vaulted roof a thousand candles gleam, it is that fateful, balmy night, of Thursday, June 15th...' At around 11.30am on a Sunday morning in 1815, a few shots rang out as the curtain-raiser to one of Europe's most titanic military clashes. By late afternoon at the close of the Battle of Waterloo, nearly 40,000 men lay dead or wounded. Until that day the army of Napoleon Boneparte seemed almost invincible. Indeed by mid afternoon victory for the French seemed a distinct possibility. But the Allied army led by the Duke of Wellington, and ably assisted by the Prussian prince and general Marshall Blücher, finally delivered a fatal blow that not only defeated the French forces, but destroyed forever Napoleon's dreams of conquest and glory, in which he would stand astride Europe like a colossus. Events of that day confirm the Duke of Wellington as a military genius, and Blücher as an eccentric but loyal ally (he did once believe he was pregnant with an elephant.) For the British, the Battle of Waterloo was one of our greatest ever victories and the story of that extraordinary day still fascinates. Also includes abridged extracts from the Duke of Wellington's despatch to Earl Bathurst, Secretary for War. Illus. and maps, 72pp.