Napoleon’s Infantry Handbook: An Essential Guide to Life in the Grand Army Available to Purchase

The aim of this book is succinctly stated by the author in his foreword: “How can we really understand what it was like to be a soldier for Napoleon?” He points out that though there are several well-known memoirs by veterans of the Grande Armeé, they do not mention many of the routine affairs of everyday life, which they considered that their contemporary readers would already know: but 200 years later, we do not. The answer, he tells us, is to be found in the Manuel de l’infanterie and other works published at the time by Colonel Étienne-Alexandre Bardin,...