Featured battle : Tudela

Part of The French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars

Date : 23 November 1808

Another classic example of poor generalship/coordination on the Spanish side. Two Spanish armies [of Aragon commanded by Palafox; of The Centre commanded by La Peña] allowed themselves to be engaged as separate entiies by the French III Corps commanded by Marshal Lannes. While he held La Peña at arms length with one division he used the remainder of his corps to crush Palafox. La Peña's loss was about 200 men, Palafox's were over 4,000.

Battle Understanding Conflict Hastings to Helmand

Graeme Callister & Rachael Whitbread
This is a rather different sort of book in not being about a war, campaign or battle but rather about all battles. It gives the reader a framework through which to assess any particular battle or conflict. The authors make the case that every conflict has a number of contributing factors which add or subtract from the outcome. Their approach is to give each of these factors a chapter which concludes with an account of one or two battles in which the particular factor was significant. They do stress that all the factors have a part to play to a greater or lesser degree in every battle. They also point out the ever present difficulty of finding accurate information about these matters.
The aim of the book is to aid in the understanding of battles and in this it succeeds very well indeed.
We highly recommend this book to anyone wishing to understand battles of any place or period.

Pen & Sword Military, 2022