Review: Charles J. Esdaile, Napoleon, France and Waterloo: The Eagle Rejected. Barnsley: Pen & Sword Military, 2016. xiv + 257 pp. Illustrations, notes, select bibliography, and index. $39.95 U.S. (hb). ISBN-10 1473870828.
Review by Matthew D. Zareczny, John Carroll University.

"...while over the past two centuries many, many books have dealt with the various military aspects of the battle, what has been missing from the historiography is an authoritative and reputable account by a top scholar of what was transpiring on the French home front amongst civilians....Charles J. Esdaile in his Napoleon, France and Waterloo masterfully fills in a critical missing piece of our understanding of French attitudes towards their emperor in 1814 and 1815 by going to the firsthand accounts of both civilians and soldiers residing in France before, during, and after that desperate period known as the Hundred Days during which the Battle of Waterloo was fought and an empire was lost....Esdaile acknowledges “that popular support for Napoleon was far from non-existent” (p. 186), and yet it was still insufficient....This book is excellent and a must read for anyone interested in Napoleonic history but also for those generally interested in the counterfactual genre."

http://www.h-france.net/vol18reviews/vol18no17zareczny.pdf