Edward Fraser – författare

This ebook is purpose built and is proof-read and re-type set from the original to provide an outstanding experience of reflowing text for an ebook reader.The eagle of Napoleon was a potent symbol of military might, men fought and died to possess the “cou-cou” that his regiments carried into battle. It represented the fidelity of a regiment to the cause of the French Empire, and more particularly the attachment of the brave warriors who fought beneath it to the greatest general of the age. To lose an eagle was to lose the honour of the regiment, a stain that could not be removed apart from rare cases of exceptional service. Edward Fraser chronicles the history of the Napoleonic eagle standard and the men who fought under them and against them until the final demise of the Napoleonic era after Waterloo in 1815. Napoleon was well aware of how to stimulate the esprit de corps of his armies with symbols and continuing his innovation of giving distinct standards to specific regiments and recording battle honours on them from his time with the army of Italy, he decided on giving each battalion or squadron and eagle based on his own imperial insignia. The eagle of the battalion was the rallying point for the men in adversity, and a stimulant on the attack guiding the men toward their objective.Napoleon’s enemies knew the power and cachet of capturing such a standard and fought hard to capture them on battlefields ranging from Borodino outside Moscow to the hot plains outside Cadiz in Spain. Fraser was a prominent historian of the period having written a number of books on the great battle of Trafalgar and Wellington’s soldiers in the Peninsula. This work was written just before the outbreak of the First World War, with the Entente Cordiale in place, and is therefore more balanced than some of the earlier English works on the period which tended to a more anti-French view.Text taken, whole and complete, from the 1912 edition, published in London, John Murray.Original –444 pagesIllustrations – 10 – all includedMaps – 7 – all includedAuthor – Edward Fraser – (????-????)Linked TOC. –the TOC includes the summary notes of each chapter.

This ebook is purpose built and is proof-read and re-type set from the original to provide an outstanding experience of reflowing text for an ebook reader.Of the many facets of the Napoleonic wars there are a vast number of books written in English on the climatic battle of the age of sail, perhaps only eclipsed by the wealth of material written on the Waterloo Campaign of 1815 as a single subject. However there is not a great deal written as to what went on on “the other side of the hill” or “the other side of the horizon”, amongst the French and Spanish commanders who faced Nelson and his band of brothers. Edward Fraser’s book goes a long way to redress that balance, and focuses on the many brave men that fought for the Napoleonic cause, some more willingly than others; men such as Don Miguel-Ricardo Alava, a Spanish nobleman who would have the rare distinction of being on the Anglo-Allied side at Waterloo and on the opposition side at Trafalgar.Edward Fraser was a prominent historian of the period having written a number of books on the great battle of Trafalgar and Wellington’s soldiers in the Peninsula. This work was written just before the outbreak of the First World War, with the Entente Cordiale in place, and is therefore more balanced than some of the earlier English works on the period which tended to a more anti-French view.A fine, detailed and very thoroughly researched account of what the enemy experienced during the battle of Trafalgar.Text taken, whole and complete, from the 1906 edition, published in London, Hodder and StoughtonOriginal –458 pagesIllustrations – 60 – all incudedAuthor – Edward Fraser – (????-????)Linked TOC. –the TOC includes the summary notes of each chapter.

The lot of a prisoner of war is well documented in more recent conflicts such as the Second World War, Korea, Vietnam and the Gulf conflicts, however the British prisoners of war during the Napoleonic period have received scant attention as whole. Edward Fraser, a noted author on the period set out to redress this balance in the literature of the period, offering a view of the trials, mistreatment and hardships of the British POWSDuring Napoleon’s campaigns, along with canon, and standards innumerable, he captured the soldiers of the opposing powers in vast numbers, according to best estimates around half a million men fell into his hands. Of this number only a small fraction were in fact British, some twelve to sixteen thousand, this for two main reasons; that Britain never put into the field the numbers of the conscript armies such as Austria, Prussia and Russia, secondly they were never involved in such disastrous campaigns on the scale of Austerlitz, Jena, or the initial campaigns in Spain. Of the prisoners that were captured, either as crews mainly via shipwreck or during the 1809 Coruña campaign, their lot was hard enough, but was much better than the lot that befall the prisoners of Napoleon’s continental enemies.However the tales of the British prisoners recall shootings, extortion, maltreatment and arbitrary punishments and are a powerful counterweight to the proposition of the supreme enlightenment of the French system. From the high rank of general Lord Blayney, captured in an abortive sortie on Fuengirola to the lowly Midshipman Edward Boyes, the British prisoner tell tales of their incarceration and abuse at the hands of various French authorities. In fairness the treatment of the more than one hundred thousand French prisoners in English hands was not a great deal better, as they were imprisoned on floating hulks.An excellent addition to the collection of Fraser’s books on the Napoleonic Wars.Illustrations – 12

This ebook is purpose built and is proof-read and re-type set from the original to provide an outstanding experience of reflowing text for an ebook reader.Edward Fraser contributed a number of works on the Napoleonic period ranging from the Eagle-bearers of Napoleon to the sailors of the fleets of Nelson, Gravina and Villeneuve at Trafalgar, this volume focuses on the exploits of the soldiers who fought under Wellington in the Peninsular War between 1808 and 1814.Artfully interwoven into a short history of the war itself, Fraser focuses on the many daring and brave exploits of the British soldiers, and their Portuguese and Spanish allies during a conflict that was described by Napoleon as the “Spanish Ulcer”. Ranging from the passage of the Douro in 1809 to the battle of Vittoria in 1814 the epic deeds are recounted in detail using the eye-witness accounts that survived; Talavera, Salamanca, Garcia Hernadez and the sieges of Badajoz and Cuidad Rodrigo are vivid colour. A pacy, account of hard-fighting against the veteran and gallant armies of Napoleon.Text taken, whole and complete, from the 1913 edition, published by Methuen and Co Ltd., London.Original –382 pagesIllustrations – 12 – all includedMaps – 5 – all includedAuthor – Edward Fraser – (????-????)Linked TOC.

This ebook is purpose built and is proof-read and re-type set from the original to provide an outstanding experience of reflowing text for an ebook reader.Of the many famous, courageous leaders of the Napoleonic Wars, and on sea beyond that era, few stand as high in estimation as Horatio Nelson, lauded by his countrymen, respected by his enemies, and despite his lack of understanding of warfare on the waves by the Emperor Napoleon himself. His tale of glory was short but blazingly bright, terminating at Trafalgar in 1805, having made his name at the battle of the Nile and Copenhagen earlier in the wars. However, the wars with France thereafter did not terminate until 1815, with a brief respite in 1814; how then, without Nelson, was the supremacy of the Royal Navy maintained? Edward Fraser provides a good deal of the answer in his book, which seeks to sketch a picture of the captains, officers, and sailors who executed Nelson’s orders with gusto, determination and, in many cases, with some of their own flair.The “Band of Brothers” that Nelson led and inspired are described in detail - their actions and deeds, which may have been outshone by those of their leader - but they were great fighting men in their own right, Codrington, Suamarez, Troubridge et al. Fraser is adept at using the sources of all ranks and includes the ordinary seaman’s view as well as more junior officers, to complete the view of the sailors who fought and won the war on the seas.Highly recommended.Text taken, whole and complete, from the 1913 edition, published by Methuen and Co Ltd., London.Original –353 pagesIllustrations – 16 – all includedMaps – 4 – all includedAuthor – Edward Fraser – (????-????)Linked TOC.

This book was first published in 1925 and was intended to be a dictionary of first world war slang. In the 1920s, “the war to end all wars” was still fresh in everyone’s minds and the authors were commissioned to capture the combatants’ sayings and expressions.Interestingly, although written nearly fifteen years before the next global conflict, the term “first world war” appears. Colonel Repington named his published history of the war as such. He did not want to flatter “the Boche” by calling it the “German War” so instead chose what became the prescient or perhaps pessimistic “first world war”.This book was primarily designed as a Dictionary of War Slang at the instance of the authorities of the Imperial War Museum, using materials contributed by officers and men of all branches of the Service who had served with the British and Dominion forces. A large proportion of the slang of the war, however, comprised old pre-War Army and Navy expressions, which, in the War, were either adopted as they stood, so to speak, or else were altered and adapted to suit existing circumstances, and the enlargement of the original plan became unavoidable. The scope of the work has also been further extended to include a considerable number of Service terms, familiar among people in general, as being of interest in themselves or through their origins.A number of American service words and expressions, particularly some that became familiar among British troops during the war, have been included.