Suchergebnisse

A compelling history of the British Army in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries—showing how the military gathered knowledge from campaigns across the globe At the outbreak of the War of Austrian Succession in 1742, the British Army's military tactics were tired and outdated, stultified after three decades of peace. The army's leadership was conservative, resistant to change, and unable to match new military techniques developing on the continent. Losses were cataclysmic and the force was in dire need of modernization—both in terms of strategy and in leadership and technology. In this wide-ranging and highly original account, Huw Davies traces the British Army's accumulation of military knowledge across the following century. An essentially global force, British armies and soldiers continually gleaned and synthesized strategy from warzones the world over: from Europe to the Americas, Africa, and Asia. Davies records how the army and its officers put this globally acquired knowledge to use, exchanging information and developing into a remarkable vehicle of innovation—leading to the pinnacle of its military prowess in the nineteenth century

Intro -- Contents -- Illustrations and Maps -- Preface A Military Genius? -- Chapter 1 An Introduction to War and Politics: Arthur Wellesley in Europe and India, 1794-1799 -- Chapter 2 Command Apprenticeship: The Campaign Against Dhoondiah Vagh, 1800 -- Chapter 3 Learning the Wrong Lessons: War with the Marathas, 1801-1803 -- Chapter 4 From India to the Peninsula 1804-1808 -- Chapter 5 The Search for a Strategy: The Defence of Portugal, 1809-1810 -- Chapter 6 England's Oldest Ally: The Liberation of Portugal, 1811 -- Chapter 7 England's Essential Ally: The Invasion of Spain, 1812 -- Chapter 8 'I Will Beat Them Out, and with Great Ease': The Liberation of Spain and the Invasion of France, 1813-1814 -- Chapter 9 Wellington's Waterloo: The Battle for the Balance of Power in Europe, 1814-1815 -- Conclusion: From Sepoy General to Military Statesman -- Abbreviations -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index.