A history of a British Army regiment, the Royal Welch Fusiliers, recounts the battles, tactics, leadership, and day-to-day living of soldiers during the American Revolution, from Lexington and Concord to the final battle at Yorktown.

Illustrated with 9 figures and 11 maps of the campaign and engagements at Perryville. The battle of Perryville symbolized the high-water mark of the Confederacy in the western theater of operations. In Aug. 1862 General Braxton Bragg and Major General (MG) Edmund Kirby Smith led separate armies into Kentucky to wrest the state from the Union and install a Confederate governor. They initially met success and captured the state capital, simultaneously shifting the war in the west from northern Mississippi and Alabama to Kentucky. In response the North raised additional forces to protect Cincinnati and Louisville while MG Don Carlos Buell halted his offensive against Chattanooga and marched his Army of the Ohio back to Kentucky. On 8 Oct. 1862 Buell’s army clashed with Bragg’s at Perryville. The Confederates achieved a tactical success in a hard-fought engagement that generated more than 7,000 casualties. Of the regiments engaged, 10 suffered losses between 40 and 60 percent. However, outnumbered by three to one, Bragg’s army could not sustain its victory and withdrew. Within days of the battle, all of the invading Southern forces retired from the state. Kentucky remained firmly in the Union and secure from Confederate invasion for the war’s duration. Despite its importance to the course of the war in the west, Perryville does not benefit from the high visibility accorded the better-known Civil War sites such as Manassas, Gettysburg, Antietam, and Chickamauga. Although more than 70,000 Union and Confederate soldiers deployed in and around Perryville, understanding of the battle and its significance to the overall course of the war remains poor. For staff ride purposes this unfamiliarity can be a benefit. It forces the participants to study and think about the situation facing their Civil War counterparts without the preconceived notions that surround the more popular sites.

A compact volume on Cornwallis's Pyrrhic victory in North Carolina, featuring illustrations throughout. By the Spring of 1781, the American Revolutionary War had dragged on for almost six years and the outcome still hung in the balance. When the British commander Lord Cornwallis launched his invasion of North Carolina in early 1781, his objective was to destroy General Nathaniel Greene's American army. At Guilford Courthouse on 15 March 1781 the two armies met. In a desperately hard-fought battle the small but professional British army succeeded in fighting its way through three separate lines of American troops – but at a dreadful cost. Cornwallis lost over a quarter of his command. When news of the 'victory' reached Britain, a politician remarked; 'Another such victory would ruin the British army'. With the help of maps and illustrations throughout, Angus Konstam goes through the battle and its aftermath in detail.

Despite its important role in the early years of the Civil War, the Army of the Ohio remains one of the least studied of all Union commands. With All for the Regiment, Gerald Prokopowicz deftly fills this surprising gap. He offers an engaging history of the army from its formation in 1861 to its costly triumph at Shiloh and its failure at Perryville in 1862. Prokopowicz shows how the amateur soldiers who formed the Army of the Ohio organized themselves into individual regiments of remarkable strength and cohesion. Successive commanders Robert Anderson, William T. Sherman, and Don Carlos Buell all failed to integrate those regiments into an effective organization, however. The result was a decentralized and elastic army that was easily disrupted and difficult to command--but also nearly impossible to destroy in combat. Exploring the army's behavior at minor engagements such as Rowlett's Station and Logan's Cross Roads, as well as major battles such as Shiloh and Perryville, Prokopowicz reveals how its regiment-oriented culture prevented the army from experiencing decisive results--either complete victory or catastrophic defeat--on the battlefield. Regimental solidarity was at once the Army of the Ohio's greatest strength, he argues, and its most dangerous vulnerability.