goes to sea with the Terrain Mat.
An artist's impression of the 1815 Waterloo Campaign
1815 Limited have been most fortunate to have commissioned Gerry Embleton, the renowned military illustrator, to create artwork for the new series of books on Waterloo. His knowledge and experience on the subject and the many issues have added an exciting dimension to the study, as he describes briefly:
When John Franklin first asked me to illustrate his amazing series, I was delighted to accept the challenge. More than 100 color plates and over 200 black-and-white sketches of the campaign! How to treat this subject? Realistically, we wanted to avoid as far as possible a Victorian heroic approach. Heroism and courage there certainly was, but carnage little different to the Western Front one hundred years later. We wanted to cover the uniforms and equipment, the main events and the many small ones that made up most soldiers' experiences, and the conditions during the campaign.
The sources dictated what we should do. Uniformity of dress was a relative condition, most participants were unaware of the main events until after the battle. Many eye witnesses were as unreliable and contradictory as eye witnesses always are. What we have are a thousand vivid impressions of the participants' own experiences so we decided to let the black-and-white illustrations attempt to convey them, and to try to untangle the confusing and contradictory information on dress and weapons in a series of detailed publications purely on uniforms and equipment.
I don't believe that a work on this scale has ever been attempted before, and I must say that my own enthusiasm is constantly fired as John Franklin's research brings more material to light.