Victor Hugo had the 19th-Century habit of putting too much into a book. He had plenty to say about the Battle of Waterloo, some I dare say correct, but he had small excuse for putting it all into Les Miserables. (And then there's the long excursion on convents, which the Penguin edition displaces to an appendix, but that's an argument for another day.)

John Keegan gives it a very readable treatment in The Day of Battle.