Napoleonic Uniforms

Book excerpt: In 1993 The Macmillan Publishing Company set the Napoleonic enthusiast community alight when it produced the major two volume work, Napoleonic Uniforms by John R. Elting, featuring the superb works of the famous illustrator Herbert Knötel. Now, in an unprecedented transatlantic co-operation, Greenhill Books in London and Casemate Publishing in the USA are together bringing these books back into print after some 14 years. This new edition, as before, is sold as a two volume set. In addition, the new edition is presented in a cloth bound slipcase. Pagination and an index have been added, significantly enhancing its reference value. Napoleonic Uniforms is the only reference work of its kind to depict accurately the entire Grande Armée in detail. It portrays the French armies as seen by their contemporaries, and combines authoritative text with lavish illustrations, enabling the reader to experience the spectacle first hand. Napoleonic Uniforms also depicts the various types of soldiers within the various regiments of the Grande Armée - officers, sergeants, color-bearers, bandsmen, drummers and trumpeters, privates and surgeons. In addition the volumes contain material on lesser-known formations such as the Army of Egypt (1798 - 1801), the pre-Revolutionary French Army, and Napoleon's police and internal security organizations. Nine hundred and eighteen original watercolors by Herbert Knötel, an internationally acclaimed authority on military uniforms, with a special talent for depicting men and horses in action, bring the nineteenth-century French soldier to life. Together with the late Colonel John R. Elting's definitive captions, they preserve a significant aspect of this famous era for historians, researchers, teachers, students, model makers, "uniformologists", and the general reader interested in this historical period.