Often as the campaign of Waterloo has been described by historians and
frequently as it has been celebrated in fiction it has rarely been
narrated from the stand-point of a private soldier participating in it
and telling only what he saw. That this limitation, however, does not
exclude events of the greatest importance and incidents of the most
intensely dramatic interest is abundantly proved by the narrative of
the Conscript who makes another campaign in this volume and describes
it with his customary painstaking fulness and fidelity. But what
renders "Waterloo" still more interesting is the picture it presents of
the state of affairs after the first Bourbon restoration, and its
description of how gradually but surely the way was prepared by the
stupidity of the new _regime_ for that return to power of Napoleon
which seems so dramatically sudden and unexpected to a superficial view
of the events of the time. In this respect "Waterloo" deserves to rank
very high as a chapter of familiar history, or at least of historical
commentary.