Redcoat: The British Soldier in the Age of Horse and Musket |
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 | The battlefield museum of Waterloo, Richard Holmes comments in Redcoat, tells us much about Napoleon, Wellington and their senior commanders but far less about the men they led. Holmes aims, in this massively researched history, to redress the balance. He does so by piling up facts, information and anecdotes, many of them culled from memoirs of the period, to illustrate the everyday life of British soldiers in the 18th and 19th centuries, from the Battle of Blenheim to the Crimean War. In the hands of a less gifted historian this might have made for a dry, daunting and overpowering text. Holmes, however, has a sharp eye for the telling details and the memorable stories that bring the past to life. He pays as much attention to the small-scale as to the larger picture: a soldier is promoted because "his beautiful black eyes and whiskers had attracted the notice of his colonel's lady"; Crimea-bound infantrymen play cricket in "what the scorebook calls Sultan's Valley, Asia Minor"; black ... read more.
Written by Richard Holmes.
Published 05 August 2002.
Published by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
rrp £9.99.
400 pages Paperback.
ISBN: 0006531520
ISBN-13: 9780006531524 | |
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