Waterloo: The Aftermath - Hardcover

I was gripped by the wealth of detail and humanity in the book. . . . This is how the tales of battles should be told, whatever the time, place or outcome.--Emily Mayhew, author of Wounded

O'Keeffe describes these fraught, uncertain days with skill and a touch for ground-level detail...O'Keeffe has told in vivid colors a story that is often passed over in most narratives, but that is alive with drama and human tragedy.

In the early morning hours of June 19, 1815, more than 50,000 men and 7,000 horses lay dead and wounded on a battlefield just south of Brussels. In the hours, days, weeks and months that followed, news of the battle would begin to shape the consciousness of an age; the battlegrounds would be looted and cleared, its dead buried or burned, its ground and ruins overrun by voyeuristic tourists; the victorious British and Prussian armies would invade France and occupy Paris. And as his enemies within and without France closed in, Napoleon saw no avenue ahead but surrender, exile and captivity. In this dramatic account of the aftermath of the battle of Waterloo, Paul O'Keeffe employs a multiplicity of contemporary sources and viewpoints to create a reading experience that brings into focus as never before the sights, sounds, and smells of the battlefield, of conquest and defeat, of celebration and riot.