WATERLOO LECTURES: A STUDY OF THE CAMPAIGN OF 1815. BY LIEUT.-COLONEL CHARLES C. CHESNEY, R.E. LATE PROFESSOR OF MILITARY ART AND HISTORY IN THE STAFF COLLEGE. THECA. LONDON: LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 223. i. 47. PREFACE. IT has been the practice at the Institution which the Author lately quitted, to commence the course of Military Art and History by the critical study of a single great campaign; that of Waterloo being, for obvious reasons, generally selected. In perusing much literature bearing on the subject, he has been constantly led to make two observations: the one, that critics of Napoleon and of the Allies are alike apt to build up theories upon inaccurate and superficial study of the facts; the other, that the key to the whole, the great strokes of strategy upon which the world's fate hung for a brief space, are apt to be lost, or greatly obscured, beneath a mass of pictorial details, interesting for the day to the families or friends of those who shared in the actions, but of little real importance to the general result. In addition to these tendencies, there is the third and more dangerous error of the socalled national historians, who wilfully pander to the passions of their countrymen at the expense of historical truth. In laying before the world the result of his own study, the Author desires to claim no more credit for it than that he has striven for impartiality, and sought to apply to the narratives he has used the proper test of evidence. If, in doing this, it has been necessary to do battle specially with certain brilliant falsehoods, it is because these have their influence over millions of his fellow-men, and for that reason the more need to be thoroughly exposed. He has endeavoured to confine his own criticisms, so far as is possible, to matters of actual Where comments go beyond evidence and fact. these, he has sought rather to point to those of authors who have shown themselves practical soldiers as well as sound critics, than to offer observations which might reasonably be rejected as the mere dogmas of a Professor. R. E. ESTABLISHMENT, CHATHAM: October 24, 1868. |