Napoleonic Wars Books in Order

The Napoleonic Wars series offers a long look at the British Army's struggle against Napoleon, told through the eyes of the 106th Regiment of Foot. The unit is fictional, but the campaigns, from Portugal and Spain onward, are drawn from the historical record.

The story begins in 1808 with True Soldier Gentlemen, where Hamish Williams joins as a gentleman volunteer, socially caught between officers and men. As the regiment sails for Portugal, readers meet a mix of ambitious young subalterns, steady veterans and misfits who all see the war as a chance to reinvent themselves.

Across Beat the Drums Slowly, Send Me Safely Back Again and All in Scarlet Uniform the 106th is tested by freezing marches, chaotic retreats and desperate battles. Famous actions like Corunna and Talavera appear in the background, but the focus is on what those set pieces feel like to a handful of companies on the ground.

Goldsworthy also shifts the camera away from formal battle lines. The books spend time on recruiting parties back home, training depots stuffed with nervous volunteers, and Spanish fortresses where British officers try to turn half-starved levies into soldiers while watching the horizon for French columns.

By Run Them Ashore and Whose Business is to Die, guerrilla war and big set-piece engagements blend together. Williams fights alongside Spanish partisans near Cádiz, stalks suspected traitors among his own allies and marches to the grinding slaughter at Albuera, where promotion, survival and honour all hang by a very thin thread.

The series is steeped in the nuts and bolts of Napoleonic soldiering, from uniforms and weapons to the politics of buying commissions, yet it never forgets that these are young men far from home. If you like battle scenes that feel earned by pages of character work, this is a rewarding place to settle in.