Waterloo Lectures: A Study of the Campaign of 1815 (The Napoleonic Library)

‘One of the primary texts on Waterloo. It deserves to be on the bookshelf of any student of the campaign’.
Journal of The Royal United Services Institution

Charles Chesney's Waterloo Lectures is one of the most outstanding of the many works written on the great battles of 1815. Colonel Chesney brilliantly realized his aim of presenting and analyzing all the available facts in an impartial and accurate way, at a time when other historians were more concerned with painting the picture most flattering to national pride.

Colonel Chesney consulted English, German, Belgian and French sources on the battle, and brought a logical and objective mind to bear on them. Waterloo Lectures was quickly translated into German and French, and approved by such renowned soldiers as Moltke the Elder. A number of German and French authorities subsequently offered further evidence that Chesney was able to include in the later English editions that were published. This edition of Waterloo Lectures is the last, best and most complete.

Colonel Chesney's standards for judging the evidence were so scrupulous, and his arguments so clear and precise, that Waterloo Lectures remains one of the great classics on the subject.

Colonel Charles C. Chesney (1826¬-1876) was an officer of the Royal Engineers and Professor of Military History at Sandhurst and the Imperial Staff College.