The book details the rise and fall of the Army of Hindustan. Containing detailed organizational tables and pay scales. Campaign and battles narratives. Details of the European soldiers of fortune who raised and led these 'Trained Brigades' in the service of the House of Scindia and the Maratha Confederacy.

'Lord Wellington don't know how to lose a battle.' The view of an anonymous soldier at Waterloo became the judgement of the world on the man who was hailed as the first general of his age. At Waterloo he defeated Napoleon, the master of war, and finally checked the disruptive forces of the French Revolution that had troubled Europe for over twenty years. Wellington taught himself the art of war in India where his hard-fought victories helped lay the foundations of the British raj. His armies liberated Portugal and Spain, shattered the myth of French invincibility and inspired the people of Europe to resist Napoleon. Largely drawn from original sources, Lawrence James's biography follows the life of Wellington the soldier and explains how he waged war and why he won battles. This is also the story of a humane, intelligent and acerbic aristocrat who believed that his kind were predestined to lead. It shows how he stamped his iron will on the men he commanded and how they responded. It reveals Wellington the professional fighting man who created the remarkable intelligence and logistical services that were the keys to his victories. But it was as the national hero who beat Napoleon, gave Europe peace and adhered resolutely to the path of duty that he was honoured by his countrymen who saw him as 'the highest incarnation of English character'.

THE TOP 5 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER ONE OF BARACK OBAMA'S BEST BOOKS OF 2019 THE TIMES HISTORY BOOK OF THE YEAR FINALIST FOR THE CUNDILL HISTORY PRIZE 2020 LONGLISTED FOR THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION 2019 A FINANCIAL TIMES, OBSERVER, DAILY TELEGRAPH, WALL STREET JOURNAL AND TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR 'Dalrymple is a superb historian with a visceral understanding of India ... A book of beauty' – Gerard DeGroot, The Times In August 1765 the East India Company defeated the young Mughal emperor and forced him to establish a new administration in his richest provinces. Run by English merchants who collected taxes using a ruthless private army, this new regime saw the East India Company transform itself from an international trading corporation into something much more unusual: an aggressive colonial power in the guise of a multinational business. William Dalrymple tells the remarkable story of the East India Company as it has never been told before, unfolding a timely cautionary tale of the first global corporate power.

A compelling history of the British Army in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries—showing how the military gathered knowledge from campaigns across the globe “Superb analysis.”—William Anthony Hay, Wall Street Journal At the outbreak of the War of Austrian Succession in 1742, the British Army’s military tactics were tired and outdated, stultified after three decades of peace. The army’s leadership was conservative, resistant to change, and unable to match new military techniques developing on the continent. Losses were cataclysmic and the force was in dire need of modernization—both in terms of strategy and in leadership and technology. In this wide-ranging and highly original account, Huw J. Davies traces the British Army’s accumulation of military knowledge across the following century. An essentially global force, British armies and soldiers continually gleaned and synthesized strategy from war zones the world over: from Europe to the Americas, Africa, and Asia. Davies records how the army and its officers put this globally acquired knowledge to use, exchanging information and developing into a remarkable vehicle of innovation—leading to the pinnacle of its military prowess in the nineteenth century.

This book, first published in 1943, sets forth the history of the rise and development of the states of princely India from the end of the eighteenth century until the beginning of nineteenth. This was also the formative period for the East India Company and thus for India itself. It describes the processes, military and political, whereby modern India was formed.

It is commonplace that warfare was integral to the European expansion, pitting the superiorities of the European against the inferiorities of the ’native’. The aim of this book is to look deeper, and to examine the technological, political and economic structures and capacities of the competing forces that shaped their ability to wage war, and the impact that colonial wars had on European and non-European states and societies alike. Questions of the extent to which one side could adapt its military institutions, tactics and technology to those of its opponents figure prominently. This was far from an inevitable one-way process, and environment and disease remained vital factors. The studies also situate these conflicts within the broader debate concerning the so-called military revolution, and show that our ideas of this need to be reconsidered in the light of what was happening outside Europe.

During the American Revolution, British light infantry and grenadier battalions figured prominently in almost every battle and campaign. They are routinely mentioned in campaign studies, usually with no context to explain what these battalions were. In an army that employed regiments as the primary deployable assets, the most active battlefield elements were temporary battalions created after the war began and disbanded when it ended. This work is the first operational study of these battalions during the entire war, looking at their creation, evolution and employment from the first day of hostilities through their disbandment at the end of the conflict. It examines how and why these battalions were created, how they were maintained at optimal strength over eight years of war, how they were deployed tactically and managed administratively. Most importantly, it looks at the individual officers and soldiers who served in them. Using first-hand accounts and other primary sources, These Distinguished Corps describes life in the grenadiers and light infantry on a personal level, from Canada to the Caribbean and from barracks to battlefield.