TEXT IN FRENCH
If there's one conflict that was remarkable from a lot of points of
view, it was the American Civil War, better known in France as the War
of Secession.
In this war the armies of the South opposed those of the North - the
Union - of the almost hundred-years old republic of the United States of
(North) America; it remains in the annals as the last classic war - in
certain aspects the heir to the Napoleonic wars - and the first real
modern war of the 20th Century in which "state of the art" technologies
were used for the first time on a massive and intensive scale.
This bloody conflict was the result of a long chain of political,
economic and ideological compromises between two civilizations which
barely concealed the differences opposing them. The ferocious appetites
of the North against the principles of independence of the Southern
States could only lead to an explosion.
Four years of relentless, bloody and total war during which Johnny Reb
gave no quarter to his brother Billy Yank. Everything has been said and
written about this war: the joie de vivre of the South, its elegance,
its chivalrous spirit, its attachment to secular traditions including
slavery, facing the North's industrial war machine, its humanist values,
its small-minded courage, but also its avidity and its implacable spirit
of organization. From Gone with the wind to Birth of a nation, all the
clichés have been used.
This book gives you as big a panorama as possible of the uniforms worn
by the belligerents during this conflict. The most characteristic
silhouettes and the principles of basic organization, as circumstances
dictated, are shown in the now celebrated form of Heimdal's books.
