Osprey is a publishing house in the United Kingdom that should be a household name to the swarms of us modelers. Osprey continues to expand they’re not so old Weapon series with the 59th book. The weapons series covers select weapons based on Innovation, lethality, impact and how they determined how warfare was changed in today’s combat environment.

For the Weapons series, the chapters are organized as follows:

• Introduction
• Development
• Use
• Impact
• Conclusion
• Glossary
• Bibliography
• Index

The development of cavalry firearms and the widespread disappearance of armor from the European battlefield saw a decline in the use of the cavalry lance in early modern warfare. However, by 1800 the lance, much changed from its medieval predecessors in both form and function, was back.

During the next century the use of the lance spread to the armed forces of almost every Western country, seeing action in every major conflict from the Napoleonic Wars to World War I including the Crimean and Franco-Prussian wars and across the Atlantic in the American Civil War. The lance even reached the colonial conflicts of the Anglo-Sikh and Boer wars. It was not until the disappearance of the mounted warrior from the battlefield that the lance was consigned to history. Featuring specially commissioned artwork and drawing upon a variety of sources, this is the engaging story of the cavalry lance at war during the 19th and 20th centuries, from Waterloo to the Somme.

While early in their development and use in combat the lance was a devastating weapon in the hands of skilled mounted cavalryman but was soon surely finding itself victim to the old saying of “you don’t bring a knife to a gun fight”. It was a very informative book and cavalry combat and ceremonies are still rehearsed and displayed to this date albeit a non-combat role it is a widely respected for of drill and ceremony and a true site to see.

My thanks to IPMS/USA and Osprey Publishing for giving me the opportunity to review this book. I appreciated this book and it seems like with every Osprey book I get my hands on I am able to find out something on a topic I already had limited knowledge of down to learning something completely new and broadening my intelligence.