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Books > Humanities > History > European history > 1750 to 1900
The lives and careers of Sir Charles Stewart and his brother Lord
Castlereagh take in a grand stage, from Britain and Ireland to the
kingdoms and empires of western and central Europe. Throughout his
life Stewart played a key role in shaping Europe: his is a Regency
drama beyond anything imagined by Jane Austen: warfare, diplomacy,
affairs, royal scandal, a romantic and brilliant marriage, and a
brother's suicide. Stewart was at the heart of some of history's
greatest events which took him from the bloodiest actions of the
Napoleonic Wars to the palaces of Europe's ruling dynasties. For an
all too brief period, Stewart blazed across the battlefields and
chancelleries of Europe, enjoying a meteoric rise to the highest
positions and influence, in a career indelibly linked to his
brother's and one which is virtually unique. Stewart even found
time to enjoy his share of scandal, from affairs and parties in
Vienna to running a spy network which aimed to charge a Princess of
Wales with adultery. Reider Payne's book is international in its
scope and ambitions: with Stewart's military and diplomatic theatre
of operations including Portugal, Spain, Prussia, Saxony, France,
Austria and the Austrian territories in Italy. Stewart sat at the
heart of the intrigues and social circles of Regency England, and
his life story offers an unrivalled viewpoint into the competing
claims and demands of Europe's courts.
After Napoleon was defeated at the Battle of Waterloo, he was sent
into exile on St Helena, arriving in October 1815. For the six
years until his death, he was an 'eagle in a cage', reduced from
the most powerful figure in Europe to a prisoner on a rock in the
South Atlantic. But the fallen emperor was charmed and entertained
by Betsy Balcombe, the pretty teenage daughter of a local merchant.
Anne Whitehead brings to life Napoleon's time on St Helena and the
web of connections around the globe which framed his last years.
Betsy's father, William Balcombe, was well-connected in London, and
he smuggled letters and undertook a clandestine mission to Paris
for Napoleon. Betsy's friendship with Napoleon cast a shadow over
the rest of her colourful life. She married a Regency cad, who soon
left her and their daughter, and she travelled to Australia in 1823
with her father, who was appointed the first Colonial Treasurer of
New South Wales. After her father was exposed for fraud and the
family lost their fortune, she returned to London and published a
memoir which turned her into a celebrity. With her extraordinary
connections to royalty in London and to the Bonaparte family and
their courtiers, Betsy Balcombe led a life worthy of a Regency
romance. This new account reveals Napoleon at his most vulnerable,
human and reflective, and a woman caught in some of the most
dramatic events of her time.
The Franco-Austrian War of 1809 was Napoleon's last victorious war.
He would win many battles in his future campaigns, but never again
would one of Europe's great powers lie broken at his feet. In this
respect 1809 represents a high point of the First Empire yet at the
same time Napoleon's armies were declining in quality and he was
beginning to display the corrosive flaws that contributed to his
downfall five years later. In this volume Gill tackles the
political background to the war and the opening battles of
Abensberg, Eggmuhl and Regensberg. He explores the motivations that
prompted Austria to launch an offensive against France while
Napoleon and many of his veterans were distracted in Spain. Though
surprised by the timing of the Austrian attack on the 10th April,
the French Emperor completely reversed a dire strategic situation
with stunning blows that he called his 'most brilliant and most
skilful manoeuvres'. Following a breathless pursuit down the Danube
valley, Napoleon occupied the palaces of the Habsburgs for the
second time in four years. Basing his work on years of primary
research and battlefield visits, Gill provides a thorough analysis
replete with spectacular combat, diplomatic intrigue and the
illustrious cast of characters that populated this extraordinary
age. The concluding volumes will take the war to its conclusion,
including Napoleon's first unequivocal repulse at the Battle of
Espern-Essling, the titanic Battle of Wagram and the neglected
struggle at Znaim that led to armistice.
In the summer of 1812 Napoleon gathered his fearsome Grande Armee,
more than half a million strong, on the banks of the Niemen River.
He was about to undertake the most daring of all his many
campaigns: the invasion of Russia. Meeting only sporadic opposition
and defeating it easily along the way, the huge army moved forward,
advancing ineluctably on Moscow through the long hot days of
summer. On September 14, Napoleon entered the Russian capital,
fully anticipating the Czar's surrender. Instead he encountered an
eerily deserted city--and silence. The French army sacked the city,
and by October, with Moscow in ruins and his supply lines
overextended, and with the Russian winter upon him, Napoleon had no
choice but to turn back. One of the greatest military debacles of
all time had only just begun.
In this famous memoir, Philippe-Paul de Segur, a young
aide-de-camp to Napoleon, tells the story of the unfolding disaster
with the keen eye of a crack reporter and an astute grasp of human
character. His book, a fundamental inspiration for Tolstoy's "War
and Peace," is a masterpiece of military history that teaches an
all-too-timely lesson about imperial hubris and its risks.
Napoleon's campaigns were the most complex military undertakings in
history before the nineteenth century. But the defining battles of
Austerlitz, Borodino, and Waterloo changed more than the nature of
warfare. Concepts of chance, contingency, and probability became
permanent fixtures in the West's understanding of how the world
works. Empire of Chance examines anew the place of war in the
history of Western thought, showing how the Napoleonic Wars
inspired a new discourse on knowledge. Soldiers returning from the
battlefields were forced to reconsider basic questions about what
it is possible to know and how decisions are made in a fog of
imperfect knowledge. Artists and intellectuals came to see war as
embodying modernity itself. The theory of war espoused in Carl von
Clausewitz's classic treatise responded to contemporary
developments in mathematics and philosophy, and the tools for
solving military problems-maps, games, and simulations-became
models for how to manage chance. On the other hand, the realist
novels of Balzac, Stendhal, and Tolstoy questioned whether chance
and contingency could ever be described or controlled. As Anders
Engberg-Pedersen makes clear, after Napoleon the state of war no
longer appeared exceptional but normative. It became a prism that
revealed the underlying operative logic determining the way society
is ordered and unfolds.
The mid-nineteenth century's Crimean War is frequently dismissed as
an embarrassment, an event marred by blunders and an occasion
better forgotten. In The Crimean War and its Afterlife Lara Kriegel
sets out to rescue the Crimean War from the shadows. Kriegel offers
a fresh account of the conflict and its afterlife: revisiting
beloved figures like Florence Nightingale and hallowed events like
the Charge of the Light Brigade, while also turning attention to
newer worthies, including Mary Seacole. In this book a series of
six case studies transport us from the mid-Victorian moment to the
current day, focusing on the heroes, institutions, and values
wrought out of the crucible of the war. Time and again, ordinary
Britons looked to the war as a template for social formation and a
lodestone for national belonging. With lucid prose and rich
illustrations, this book vividly demonstrates the uncanny
persistence of a Victorian war in the making of modern Britain.
This book provides a concise, lively, up-to-date portrait of
Napoleon Bonaparte's character and career, including his most
important battles, while situating him firmly in historical
context. David Bell emphasizes the astonishing sense of human
possibility - for both good and ill - that Napoleon represented. By
his late twenties, Napoleon was already one of the greatest
generals in European history. At thirty, he had become absolute
master of Europe's most powerful country. In his early forties, he
ruled a European empire more powerful than any since Rome, fighting
wars that changed the shape of the continent and brought death to
millions. Then everything collapsed, leading him to spend his last
years in miserable exile in the South Atlantic. Bell underlines the
importance of the French Revolution of 1789 in understanding
Napoleon's career. It was the Revolution that made possible the
unprecedented concentration of political authority that Napoleon
developed, as well as his unprecedented success in mobilizing human
and material resources. The Revolution gave birth to the radically
new, intense form of warfare that Napoleon later practiced. Without
the political changes brought about by the Revolution, Napoleon
could not have fought his wars. Without the wars, he could not have
seized and held onto power. He did betray much of the Revolution's
heritage of liberty and equality, and ruled as a virtual dictator.
But his life and career were, nonetheless, revolutionary.
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