The Longest Afternoon

From the prizewinning author of Europe, a riveting account of the heroic
Second Light Battalion, which held the line at Waterloo, defeating Napoleon
and changing the course of history.

In 1815, the deposed emperor Napoleon returned to France and threatened the
already devastated and exhausted continent with yet another war. Near the
small Belgian municipality of Waterloo, two large, hastily mobilized armies
faced each other to decide the future of Europe-Napoleon's forces on one side,
and the Duke of Wellington on the other.

With so much at stake, neither commander could have predicted that the battle
would be decided by the Second Light Battalion, King's German Legion, which
was given the deceptively simple task of defending the Haye Sainte farmhouse,
a crucial crossroads on the way to Brussels. In The Longest Afternoon, Brendan
Simms captures the chaos of Waterloo in a minute-by-minute account that
reveals how these 400-odd riflemen successfully beat back wave after wave of
French infantry. The battalion suffered terrible casualties, but their
fighting spirit and refusal to retreat ultimately decided the most influential
battle in European history.