L'infanterie de ligne 1776-1820

For Napoleon, the infantry was “the soul of the army”. Indeed, it consisted of nearly all the combatants in the army. In this book we study these poussecailloux (pebble-pushers) who marched across Europe in all directions for nearly a quarter of a century. Apart from the special case of the Imperial Guard, during the Empire, the infantry was divided into two big categories: the infantry of the line and the light infantry. The former made up the bigger part of this fighting mass. This book is a compilation of two dossiers to be published in Nos 15 and 16 of the magazine Soldat and has never been published before in France. The 120 plates drawn by André Jouineau and commented by Jean-Marie Mongin present the soldiers of the Infantry of the Line, the king of the battlefields, from Louis XVI’s fantassins to those of Charles X not to forget, naturally, the Revolution’s infantry and the Emperor’s Grognards. A beautiful book – precise, clear, logical and visual, a real vade-mecum for amateurs of a rarely studied part of military history and intended both for the history buffs of the period as for figurine fans.