The Duke of Wellington is credited with saying that the Battle of Waterloo was "won on the playing fields of Eton." It is hard to believe he did say it, for Wellington knew better than most that this was not the case. The knowledge and training that defeated Napoleon Bonaparte and revolutionary France were won in earlier battles for the woods of North America, the plains of India, and the hills of Spain and Portugal.
The Wandering Army is a detailed reconstruction of how, in the decades between the start of the Seven Years War (1756-1763) and the end of the long war against France (1794-1815), a European army became an imperial one, and an early modern army became a modern one. It would be tempting to surrender to the mood of the age Huw J. Davies describes and identify a "revolution" in these changes, but the actual story is one of erratic alterations, lessons missed or misunderstood, slow professionalization, and irregular institutional reform and development. This might not sound as exciting, but it is in many ways more interesting.
