Additional Edition: Suspicions Confirmed

 

If anyone is expecting a comprehensive book review then I'm afraid I have to disappoint. This wonderful tome arrived yesterday and I'm already getting ahead of a backed up reading list in flicking through and browsing it for information. Good grief ... what a great edition to my library. It's also a high quality print and as heavy as a coffee table atlas.

A glance inside the dust jacket and Paul Dawson's credentials are hopelessly impeccable (as Michael Caine says in The Eagle Has Landed). It's also clear from the introduction and by the forward by none other than Professor Tony Pollard that this has been a Herculean research effort from hitherto untapped French and English archives.

It also dives very deep into the sort of minutia that I didn't think possible and I'm delighted to have some of my own preconceptions confirmed. Now as I said, I've only started to tap into these pages but Dawson and his team gives us a regiment by regiment account of uniform and equipment for the Armee du Nord and it is clear at least for the first two regiments I am fielding for my Waterloo game  (85 and 95th regiment of the line) that they were fully uniformed for the campaign.

I couldn't be happier that my purchases of Front Rank fully uniformed French infantry has been fully vindicated. To quote Dawson's findings for the 85th regiment, "... virtually every man under arms on 1 January 1815 had recieved, or would receive, a new beige capote, a new habit and new pantalons du tricot. In many respects, the regiment was dressed as new at Waterloo." Giddy-up! Unfortunately it also seems likely my drummers should be in blue, not green ... but I'll get over it.