Reprint of the original, first published in 1875.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1875.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1875.

On 16 May 1811, the small town of Albuera was the setting for one of the Peninsular War’s most bloody and desperate battles. A combined Spanish, British and Portuguese force of more than 30,000 men, under the command of Lord Beresford, stubbornly blocked the march of the French field marshal Soult, who was trying to reach the fortress of Badajoz, twelve miles to the north. However, after suffering losses of up to 7,000 men during the fighting, Wellington declared that, ‘Another such battle will ruin us’. One British regiment, the 57th Foot, suffered casualties of more than 50 per cent. Similarly, the French fought with enormous tenacity, and sustained almost equally heavy losses. The stories from those who fought in the battle on both sides make for both chilling and inspiring reading. These contemporaneous accounts include letters, diaries, official correspondence, army records, maps, newspaper reports and memoirs totaling over 100 contemporary accounts of the battle. They range from the comprehensive after-action reports of the British, Portuguese, Spanish and French commanders to casualty and prisoner lists and to recollections of individual soldiers from all the combatant armies. The purpose of this book is to tell the story of the battle exclusively by way of these primary sources, with English translations for foreign language sources, along with, in each case, a commentary identifying the source and its context. The heart of the work will be a vast number of first-hand accounts providing astonishing details of the intense fighting including the heroism of the Spanish troops, the massacre of Colborne’s brigade by Polish lancers, Beresford’s near-fatal indecisiveness, and the heroic charge of the Fusilier brigade. This presentation allows readers avid for detailed historical information to draw their own conclusions about how the events of the battle unfolded.

The campaigns fought against Napoleon in the Iberian peninsula, in France, Germany, Italy and Russia and across the rest of Europe have been described and analyzed in exhaustive detail, yet the history of the fighting in the Mediterranean has rarely been studied as a separate theater of the conflict. Gareth Glover sets this right with a compelling account of the struggle on land and at sea for control of a region that was critical for the outcome of the Napoleonic Wars. The story of this twenty-year conflict is illustrated with numerous quotes from a large number of primary sources, many of which are published here for the first time.

A fascinating social history of the guitar, reasserting its long-forgotten importance in Romantic England This book is the first to explore the popularity and novelty of the guitar in Georgian England, noting its impact on the social, cultural, and musical history of the period. The instrument possessed an imagery as rich as its uses were varied; it emerged as a potent symbol of Romanticism and was incorporated into poetry, portraiture, and drama. In addition, British and Irish soldiers returning from war in Spain and Portugal brought with them knowledge of the Spanish guitar and its connotations of stylish masculinity. Christopher Page presents entirely new scholarship in order to place the guitar within a multifaceted context, drawing from recently digitized original source material. The Guitar in Georgian England champions an instrument whose importance in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries is often overlooked.

The first book devoted to the composers, instrument makers and amateur players who advanced the great guitar vouge throughout Western Europe during the early decades of the nineteenth century.Contemporary critics viewed the fashion for the guitar with sheer hostility, seeing in it a rejection of true musical value. After all, such trends advanced against the grain of mainstream musical developments of ground-breaking (often Austro-German) repertoire for standard instruments. Yet amateur musicians throughout Europe persisted; many instruments were built to meet the demand, a substantial volume of music was published for amateurs to play, and soloist-composers moved freely between European cities. This book follows these lines of travel venturing as far as Moscow, and visiting all the great musical cities of the period, from London to Vienna, Madrid to Naples. The first section of the book looks at eighteenth-century precedents, the instrument - its makers and owners, amateur and professional musicians, printing and publishing, pedagogy, as well as aspects of repertoire. The second section explores the extensive repertoire for accompanied song and chamber music. A final substantive section assembles chapters on a wide array of the most significant soloist-composers of the time. The chapters evoke the guitar milieu in the various cities where each composer-player worked and offer a discussion of some representative works. This book, bringing together an international tally of contributors and never before examined sources, will be of interest to devotees of the guitar, as well as music historians of the Romantic period.