It is the bicentennial of Waterloo and we have SO MANY Waterloo books coming in! It’s wonderful! If you are a history fanatic, then this book is for you.
Brendan Simms is famous for writing a giant, 720 page book on Europe, and now he is back with this itty bitty book about Waterloo. The Longest Afternoon is less than 140 pages, but man is it dense!
This book is basically about the defense of a little farmhouse compound called La Haye Sainte, in Brussels. If you look at Waterloo on a larger scale, La Haye Sainte was just one stop in Napoleon’s second, final defeat. Most books would prefer to focus on the Duke of Wellington’s march, but La Haye Saint, and the men who defended it, were extremely important.
The men who defended this patch of land were the Second Light Battalion, called the King’s German Legion, because they were a German group under the British King. Simms goes into detail about who these men were, and why they kind of did not clearly belong to any of the Allied countries. As you get to know these men, The Longest Afternoon becomes a bit of a ragtag underdog story. The Second Light Battalion was made up of soldiers of the German Region of Hanover, which had been taken over by Napoleon. But since King George was the heredity ruler of Hanover, the soldiers were exiled and taken under King George’s wing.
The battle itself is beautifully described, like something of a novel. Take a look at this line:
“Against the leaden skies and the thunder and lightening of the elements, the flash and crash or artillery continued the to light up the horizon and reverberate across the fields.”
Is The Longest Afternoon worth reading? Yes! But I must warn you; this book is short and very focused on one particular part of Waterloo. So The Longest Afternoon assumes you know a bit about Waterloo, Napoleon, the Duke of Wellington, etc. This book is for the history freaks out there, those of us looking for something fresh and new among many Waterloo books. If you have not read about Waterloo or Napoleon before, I recommend reading a more general historical overview of it, like Waterloo by Gordon Corrigan or Napoleon by Andrew Roberts. (Both of which we have in the store!)
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