"Waterloo Casulaties by Paul L Dawson" Topic

Hi
I just bought Paul's latest book.
Its very nicely presented with lots of casualty charts.
I have not had a chance to read it yet.
He claims to have found new information, diaries etc.

But like all of his books he wastes pages in his intro on what the phenomenon of not trusting soldiers reports as they often lost the memory of what happened or wrote just to push their own narrative.
That may be true, but why put this in a book that purports to show new info and data.
I would like to have had more details on where he got the research and where we can get more.
Thanks Paul for the hard work

a very good book in my view shows quite some interesting perspectives and provides good discussion. Though the author insists that Boney knew already at early hours of the 18th that the Prussians would arrive, he is not shy to publish Prussian accounts which express their surprise that seemingly the French were unaware of them (first time I see this in English). Also he covers Wellington's left flank, Papelotte, La Haye, Frichermont, then he throws in the losses of units engaged – a great read.

It feels like I have waded through something like this before?

Review from the "Project Hougoumont & Waterloo" website on the book at link The last paragraph is very telling!

"As Paul Dawson has done so much laudable work in the French archives and as a fellow researcher, I am a great admirer of his tireless efforts; I therefore looked forward to reading this book and its revelations regarding the loss of the battle from the French viewpoint. Paul makes a very valid and expansive explanation on the safety of memoirs and time, and how other influences can affect the memory and distort it, finally concluding that memoirs need to be treated with caution and only believed if a number independently verify the same occurrence and sequence of events. It is therefore a pity that Paul fails to take his own advice.

The material gleaned from the French archives, is as Paul himself admits, fragmentary and incomplete. The raw data regarding the losses of different units is of value and some of the material describing individuals and what happened to them, but as can only be expected, the returns made immediately after Waterloo record huge numbers of ‘missing' with no explanation of whether dead, wounded or captured. So far so good.

But here Paul goes further, suggesting his preferred scenario for each unit and explaining the ‘missing' as specifically either killed and wounded or prisoners, whichever fits best with his personal theory, but only making broad suppositions, with no corroboratory evidence of any kind supplied. He also hints at hundreds if not thousands of French prisoners ‘disappearing' in England, never to return, with only the evidence of missing prisoner records used to implicate a ‘cover up'

This, plus interminable lists of names of casualties with no further information regarding them bulks out the book without actually adding anything. At times Paul contradicts himself and it is clear that he never proof reads what he has written, as it is littered with annoyingly silly errors (for example La Haye near Papelotte has been accidentally been altered to La Haye Sainte throughout the work).

The book is subtitled ‘The truth at Last', indicating that a major new revelation has been discovered, I have completed reading the book and I am still looking for it.

Sadly, this book does not achieve what it set out to do. Such a pity with such fascinating archival material."

I have the book and found it interesting. One thing that came across was how vaguely some of the orders were written.

The narrative does jump back and forward a lot. A criticism is the lack of maps. There are a couple of hard-to-read contemporary ones in the illustrations section, but none in the text. Many places are referred to, so it would have been useful to see where they were. There are spare blank pages at the end of the book, so no problem fitting them in. Also concur about the proof readng.

Okay, I have waded through something like this before: what is the difference between "Waterloo Casualties" and "Waterloo: The Truth at Last", which mainly consists of archival casualty returns and then the author riffing on what they might mean?

At least it contains for me a lot of battle reports, eye witness accounts, casualty lists, etc., it helped at least me to understand much more about the Prussians and Wellington's left flank, as well as Drouet D'Erlon's behaviour at the 16th and how the attack was launched at the 18th, quite differently then the established hearsay history blurb.

okay, thanks von W, will give it a whirl.

also like it opened a bit my eyes to the accusation that Ney did throw away the French cavalry, he was under the impression that the army of Wellington was collapsing, funnily enough this was also the impression of the Prussian generals and there was a discussion between Blücher and Bülow when to intercept, Blücher wanted to do it early but Bülow objected and waited till he had at least two Prussian Brigades (in other armies they would be called divisions) to start his attack.

I am putting it on my next list

I am almost through with the book, Paul Dawson is providing good material, but I have to say I cannot agree with some of his hypothesis, I still have the opinion that Boney was unaware of the possibility of a Prussian arrival at the Belle Alliance, in case he was – his actions seem to be very odd in my view. Also like French 6th corps by no means did fight in prepared artillery and firing positions against the Prussians, Prussian eye witnesses observed how it had to change direction all of a sudden to confront them – in my view it was poised to attack Wellington's left flank.

Didn't finish .last book but got this on ebook

In Mr Dawson's defence, I believe that this was one of several items that he was working on when he was taken seriously ill (possibly COVID-related?) and which had to be finished off and/or edited by one of his researchers. When seen in this context, some of the shortcomings/errors listed above are more easily understood, if still somewhat frustrating.

In the same way that Napoleon was "under par" on the day, it seems that the completion of Mr Dawson's work may have been affected by the literary equivalent of having to spend the day in the saddle whilst suffering from piles…..