Wellington's Heavy Cavalry

Wellington considered the British cavalry to be technically inferior to the French, although paradoxically he also said that one British squadron would be a match for two of the enemy. His main concern was that although the British cavalry lacked neither courage nor dash, they lacked discipline, in that they invariably failed to rally and re-form once they had charged home. At Waterloo, although the cavalry generally performed superbly well, the endemic faults which Wellington had already identified were repeated more than once, resulting in the decimation of several fine regiments. Bryan Fosten explores the history, organisation and uniforms of Wellington's Heavy Cavalry.

Bryan Fosten was born in 1928, the son of a Master Military Embroiderer and a Court Embroidress. He served in the army in Egypt and Palestine and returned to follow the printing trade. Since 1973 he has devoted himself to military research and illustration. He is the founding editor of the innovative magazine Tradition and has written and illustrated many books, often in collaboration with his late brother, Donald Fosten.