Today I finally surrendered to temptation and bought a couple of books from Amazon.
They are "Prussia's Glory" (following a word of praise from Bill P.) and "Instrument of War", both by Prof. Christopher Duffy. The former is an analysis of Rossbach and Leuthen, the latter a masterly in-depth survey of the administration and organsation of the Royal and Imperial Austro-Hungarian Army.
I'm looking forward to these! To go with "Instrument of War" one day I'd love to get my hands on Lee Kennett's 1967 treatment of the French Army as an institution. I read -and photocopied large chunks of it - at university in the late eighties.
While I'm on the subject of books, would anyone care to recommend a fairly modern work on the war of the Austrian Succession? Always been very interested in the conflict, but works on the subject are a bit thin here in Australia.
On the toy soldier front, I'm hoping to take delivery in a few weeks of a bag each of advancing French infantry and charging chevaux-legere from DPC. The Infantry will go towards the Volontaires de St Victor I mentioned earlier along with a few in the stand-and-fire and kneel-and-fire poses to give the less formal look I imagine the light corps of this era had. The cavalry, well, let's say that I have been rather inspired by a certain large cavalry "brigade" that has just had an airing in the USA.
Jim P. reckons DPC are thinking of doing some additional command figures (I'd love some french Officers and NCOs with pole-arms) and in addition, they are finding the odd Steve Hezzlewood mould they never knew they had. One being a seige howitzer. To my eyes this is of course rather opportune.
The sooner these items make the catalogue the better!
It's been brought to my attention this blog is getting recommended as one of the places to go for pix of the DPC 7YW range. I'll have to a) get some better pix up - I recognise that my photography skills weren't worth much in the earlier parts of this Blog and b) hit on DPC for some freebies!
3 comments:
Hi, Greg
Hope you enjoy Browning's book. It struck me that there are a couple of single battle books that you should be able to pick up quite cheaply. One is from the Knight's Battles for Wargamers series and is on Dettingen - can't remember the author, and all my books are in store. The other is by Charles Grant and is on Fontenoy, including the wargame of the battle.
John
Hi John,
I have the Grant book on Fontenoy (Just an OSW completist, me!) and always enjoy re-reading it.
I'll cast about for others and see what I can find.
I have to admit, I do find the WAS more interesting then the 7YW. Perhaps it's the greater complexity of the shifting alliances, perhaps it's because the Saxons get more of a showing, or that the Bavarians are replaying their alliances from the WSS. I've also been captured by the drama of the French breakout from Prague - almost (but not quite) shades of 1812!
All the best,
Greg
18th century military texts online - for April only...
This came from the Blenhem discussion list but it is so useful I thought in case anyone didnt know about this - basically a whole load of useful military texts are online only in April. I found some useful things indeed... Kane, Blands - all the drillbooks - translations of works of Frederick II etc
http://www.napoleon-series.org/cgi-bin/forum/webbbs_config.pl?read=58594
It is an overwhelmingly rich collection of nearly everything published in Britain throughout whole 18th Century.
To us there are numerous military instructions, manuals, essays, memoirs etc.
The free access is open only in April.
Go to Web site:
http://www.accessmylibrary.com/
Hit: “Access Now”
Hit: “Others”
Hit: ‘History Biography and Literature”
Hit: “Eighteenth Century Collections Online”
Input your search type, etc.
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