Originally published in 1910, this book explores the hypothesis that Napoleon's decrees were intended as an attack on British credit immediately before the outbreak of the final Napoleonic War. Cunningham examines French pamphlets and Napoleon's correspondence to reveal the French opinion on the state of Britain's credit and how unstable finances could be used to undermine an enemy before an actual conflict arose. This book will be of value to economic historians and anyone with an interest in Napoleonic propaganda.

Frances Isabella Duberly (1829 1902) accompanied her officer husband to the Crimea as the only woman on the front line. Her letters home to her sister, highlighting the incompetence and negligence of the generals, and describing the appalling conditions in which the men were fighting, appeared anonymously in the press and, along with W. H. Russell's reports, helped stir public opinion against the prosecution of the war. This reaction persuaded Duberly to ask her brother-in-law to edit her diary, and it provoked a sensation when published in 1855. Although she occasionally conveys some of the elation of victory, the journal is more often a stark and disturbing document: following the battle of Balaclava she writes that 'even my closed eyelids were filled with the ruddy glare of blood'. No history of this brutal campaign can ignore this journal, and it stands comparison with any account of the horrors of war.

A Woman's Empire explores a new dimension of Russian imperialism: women actively engaged in the process of late imperial expansion. The book investigates how women writers, travellers, and scientists who journeyed to and beyond Central Asia participated in Russia's "civilizing" and colonizing mission, utilizing newly found educational opportunities while navigating powerful discourses of femininity as well as male-dominated science. Katya Hokanson shows how these Russian women resisted domestic roles in a variety of ways. The women writers include a governor general's wife, a fiction writer who lived in Turkestan, and a famous Theosophist, among others. They make clear the perspectives of the ruling class and outline the special role of women as describers and recorders of information about local women, and as builders of "civilized" colonial Russian society with its attendant performances and social events. Although the bulk of the women's writings, drawings, and photography is primarily noteworthy for its cultural and historical value, A Woman's Empire demonstrates how the works also add dimension and detail to the story of Russian imperial expansion and illuminates how women encountered, imagined, and depicted Russia's imperial Other during this period.

Between two attempts in 1800 and 1804 to assassinate Napoleon Bonaparte, the British government launched a campaign of black propaganda of unprecedented scope and intensity to persuade George III's reluctant subjects to fight the Napoleonic War, a war to the death against one man: the Corsican usurper and tyrant. This Dark Business tells the story of the British government's determination to destroy Napoleon Bonaparte by any means possible. We have been taught to think of Napoleon as the aggressor - a man with an unquenchable thirst for war and glory - but what if this story masked the real truth: that the British refusal to make peace either with revolutionary France or with the man who claimed to personify the revolution was the reason this Great War continued for more than twenty years? At this pivotal moment when it consolidated its place as number one world power Britain was uncompromising. To secure the continuing rule of Church and King, the British invented an evil enemy, the perpetrator of any number of dark deeds; and having blackened Napoleon's name, with the help of networks of French royalist spies and hitmen, they also tried to assassinate him. This Dark Business plunges the reader into the hidden underworld of Georgian politics in which, faced with the terrifying prospect of revolution, bribery and coercion are the normal means to secure compliance, a ruthless world of spies, plots and lies.

The Crimean War (1854-6) was the first to be fought in the era of modern communications, and it had a profound influence on British literary culture, bringing about significant shifts in perceptions of heroism and national identity. In this book, Stefanie Markovits explores how mid-Victorian writers and artists reacted to an unpopular war: one in which home-front reaction was conditioned by an unprecedented barrage of information arriving from the front. This history had formal consequences. How does patriotic poetry translate the blunders of the Crimea into verse? How does the shape of literary heroism adjust to a war that produced not only heroes but a heroine, Florence Nightingale? How does the predominant mode of journalism affect artistic representations of 'the real'? By looking at the journalism, novels, poetry, and visual art produced in response to the war, Stefanie Markovits demonstrates the tremendous cultural force of this relatively short conflict.

To give political legitimacy to his Empire, in just fifteen years Emperor Napoleon I created an enduring image of Napoleonic France as the contemporary equivalent of Imperial Rome. He did this by the deft use of iconography and what today would be called 'branding', which he applied to every aspect of his family, the government, the military, the monuments to his achievements, his palaces and their furnishings. The tangible remains of this grand, imperial 'theatre' has excited royal and other collectors ever since. The Imperial Impresario take a wholly new look at Napoleon and the First Empire by interpreting the era in theatrical terms: the players, the sets, the props, the costumes, the tours and the script, much of which has survived. The fully illustrated book includes a wide range of Napoleonica in royal, national, regimental and private collections, as well as lost treasures such as the Emperor's campaign carriage, captured in the immediate aftermath of Waterloo and destroyed in a fire at Madame Tussaud's in 1925. For readers coming to the subject for the first time, The Imperial Impresario is a fascinating and informative introduction to the Napoleonic era; for those already steeped in the period, it is an invaluable companion to existing books about Napoleon and his Empire.

The journalist William Howard Russell (1820 1907) is sometimes regarded as being the first war correspondent, and his reports from the conflict in the Crimea are also credited with being a cause of reforms in the British military system. This account of his time there, first published in 1858 and expanded in this 1895 edition, explains how Russell was sent by The Times of London in 1854 to join British troops stationed in Malta. He spent the next two years witnessing some of the key moments of the war, including the battle of Balaclava and the ill-fated Charge of the Light Brigade. His newspaper reports of the fighting and of the living conditions for the troops were widely read and very influential. In this retrospective work, Russell gives a more personal narrative of his experiences, making this an important account of one the most brutal wars of the nineteenth century.

The journalist William Howard Russell (1820 1907) is sometimes regarded as being the first war correspondent, and his reports from the conflict in the Crimea are also credited with being a cause of reforms made to the British military system. This 1865 book began as a review in The Times of the five-volume work of General Eduard Todleben (or Totleben), the military engineer and Russian Army General, whose work in creating and continually adapting the land defences of Sevastopol in 1854 5 made him a hero and enabled the fortress to hold out against British bombardment for a whole year. Russell added extracts from the original book to his review, and enlarged his commentary on the Russian text, producing a thorough and accurate synthesis, but always highlighting the central importance of the Russian work to any student of the history of the Sevastopol siege.

Thomas Creevey (1768-1838) was a Whig politician, diarist and letter-writer, whose papers provide an important source for the history of the early nineteenth century. Although a relatively poor man, he was adept at making friends with important people, and received hospitality and financial help from them. His letters are full of gossip, often indiscreet, giving a vivid picture of the society and politics of the day. They form an interesting comparison with the papers of his contemporaries, J. W. Croker, who as a Tory was in power for most of the period in question, and Charles Greville (both available in this series). Living in Brussels at the time of Waterloo, Creevey is perhaps best remembered for his description of life there during Napoleon's 'Hundred Days'. This two-volume work edited by Sir Herbert Maxwell (1845-1937) was first published in 1903. Volume 1 covers the Napoleonic Wars and the Regency.

Thomas Creevey (1768 1838) was a Whig politician, diarist and letter-writer, whose papers provide an important source for the history of the early nineteenth century. Although a relatively poor man, he was adept at making friends with important people, and received hospitality and financial help from them. His letters are full of gossip, often indiscreet, giving a vivid picture of the society and politics of the day. They form an interesting comparison with the papers of his contemporaries, J. W. Croker, who as a Tory was in power for most of the period in question, and Charles Greville (both available in this series). Creevey is perhaps best remembered for his description of Brussels during Napoleon's 'Hundred Days'. This two-volume work edited by Sir Herbert Maxwell (1845 1937) was first published in 1903. Volume 2 covers the period 1820 37, and the accession of Victoria, described here as a 'homely little being'.

A masterly and concise reinterpretation of one of the seminal events in modern history, by one of the world's foremost military historians. The battle on Sunday 18th June 1815, near Waterloo, Belgium was to be Napoleon's greatest triumph - but it ended in one of the greatest military upsets of all time. Waterloo became a legend overnight and remains one of the most argued-over battles in history. Lord Wellington immortally dubbed it 'the nearest-run thing you ever saw in your life,' but the British victory became iconic, a triumph of endurance that ensured a 19th century world in which Britain played the key role; it was also a defining moment for the French, bringing Napoleon I's reign to an end and closing the second Hundred Years' War. Alongside the great drama and powerful characters, Jeremy Black gives readers a fascinating look at where this battle belongs in the larger story of the tectonic power shifts in Europe, and the story of military modernisation. The result is a revelatory view of Waterloo's place in the broader historical arc.

France, early summer 1794. The French Revolution has been hijacked by the extreme Jacobins and is in the grip of The Terror. While the guillotine relentlessly takes the heads of innocents, two vast French and British fleets meet in the mid-Atlantic following a week of skirmishing. After fierce fighting, both sides claim victory. In The Glorious First of June Sam Willis not only tells, with thrilling immediacy and masterly clarity, the story of an epic and complex battle, he also places it within the context of The Terror, the survival of the French Revolution and the growth of British sea-power.

The Crimean War (1854 6) was the first to be fought in the era of modern communications, and it had a profound influence on British literary culture, bringing about significant shifts in perceptions of heroism and national identity. In this 2009 book, Stefanie Markovits explores how mid-Victorian writers and artists reacted to an unpopular war: one in which home-front reaction was conditioned by an unprecedented barrage of information arriving from the front. This history had formal consequences. How does patriotic poetry translate the blunders of the Crimea into verse? How does the shape of literary heroism adjust to a war that produced not only heroes but a heroine, Florence Nightingale? How does the predominant mode of journalism affect artistic representations of 'the real'? By looking at the journalism, novels, poetry, and visual art produced in response to the war, Stefanie Markovits demonstrates the tremendous cultural force of this relatively short conflict.

During the Napoleonic Wars, Sicily was of some tactical importance, and a British garrison was established there in 1806. For the next five years domestic and diplomatic affairs became increasingly complicated, and at last, in 1811, Lord William Bentinck was sent out to restore order. Dr Rosselli's account of his unsuccessful mission is a story of strange people and strange events. The main characters in the drama are colourful enough: King Ferdinand, lazy, irresponsible and likely to withdraw at the sign of trouble to his shooting lodge at La Ficuzza, leaving the affairs of state in the hands of his son; Queen Maria-Carolina, devoid of all common sense, enfeebled by opium and full of violent distrust of British interference; Prince Francis, a broken reed, weak-willed, vacillating, afraid of his parents, as much as of Bentinck; and the politicians of Palermo, occasionally scheming and ambitious, but more often too naive to be reliable.

The French Prefectoral Corps was Napoleon's creation. Building on the framework of local government inherited from the Revolution, he installed a rigidly centralized administrative system, running from the Sub-Prefect in the arrondissement, through the Prefect in the department, to the Minister in Paris. The return of the Bourbons threatened this organization. There was the upheaval of the years 1814 15, and as the mechanics of parliamentary government evolved in the years after the Second Restoration, the Corps acquired a political importance which necessarily affected the prefectoral career. There was also a change in rectruitment. To staff this indispensable organ of government the Bourbons called on men of their own choice and service, in particular members of the pre-revolutionary nobility. Dr Richardson has analysed the history of the Prefectoral Corps during the sixteen years of the Restoration.

Battles, blockades, convoys, raids: how the indefatigable British Royal Navy ensured Napoleon's ultimate defeat Horatio Nelson's celebrated victory over the French at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805 presented Britain with an unprecedented command of the seas. Yet the Royal Navy's role in the struggle against Napoleonic France was far from over. This groundbreaking book asserts that, contrary to the accepted notion that the Battle of Trafalgar essentially completed the Navy's task, the war at sea actually intensified over the next decade, ceasing only with Napoleon's final surrender. In this dramatic account of naval contributions between 1803 and 1815, James Davey offers original and exciting insights into the Napoleonic wars and Britain's maritime history. Encompassing Trafalgar, the Peninsular War, the War of 1812, the final campaign against Napoleon, and many lesser known but likewise crucial moments, the book sheds light on the experiences of individuals high and low, from admiral and captain to sailor and cabin boy. The cast of characters also includes others from across Britain-dockyard workers, politicians, civilians-who made fundamental contributions to the war effort, and in so doing, both saved the nation and shaped Britain's history.

This book tells the story of the invasion of France at the twilight of Napoleon??'s empire. With over a million men under arms throughout central Europe, Coalition forces poured over the Rhine River to invade France between late November 1813 and early January 1814. Three principle army groups drove across the great German landmark, smashing the exhausted French forces that attempted to defend the eastern frontier. In less than a month, French forces ingloriously retreated from the Rhine to the Marne; Allied forces were within one week of reaching Paris. This book provides the first complete, English-language study of the invasion of France along a front that extended from Holland to Switzerland.

Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and William Faulkner stand as the American voice of the Great War. But was it warfare that drove them to write? Not according to Keith Gandal, who argues that the authors' famous postwar novels were motivated not by their experiences of the horrors of war but rather by their failure to have those experiences. These 'quintessential' male American novelists of the 1920s were all, for different reasons, deemed unsuitable as candidates for full military service or command. As a result, Gandal contends, they felt themselves emasculated--not, as the usual story goes, due to their encounters with trench warfare, but because they got nowhere near the real action. Bringing to light previously unexamined Army records, including new information about the intelligence tests, The Gun and the Pen demonstrates that the authors' frustrated military ambitions took place in the forgotten context of the unprecedented U.S. mobilization for the Great War, a radical effort to transform the Army into a meritocratic institution, indifferent to ethnic and class difference (though not to racial difference). For these Lost Generation writers, the humiliating failure vis-a-vis the Army meant an embarrassment before women and an inability to compete successfully in a rising social order, against a new set of people. The Gun and the Pen restores these seminal novels to their proper historical context and offers a major revision of our understanding of America's postwar literature."

Naples and Napoleon rewrites the history of Italy in the age of the European revolutions from the perspective of the South. In contrast to later images of southern backwardness and immobility, Davis portrays the South as a precocious theatre for political and economic upheavals that sooner or later would challenge the survival of all the pre-Unification states. Focusing on the years of French rule from 1806 to 1815, when southern Italy became the arena for one of the most ambitious reform projects in Napoleonic Europe, Davis argues that this owed less to Napoleon than to the forces unleashed by the crisis of the Ancien Regime. However, an examination of the earlier Republic and the popular counter-revolutions of 1799, along with the later revolutions in Naples and Sicily in 1820-1, reveals that the impact of these changes was deeply contradictory.
This major reinterpretation of the history of the South before Unification significantly reshapes our understanding of how the Italian states came to be unified, while Davis also shows why long after Unification not just the South but Italy as a whole would remain vulnerable to the continuing challenges of the new age

The Napoleonic wars did not end with Waterloo. That famous battle was just the beginning of a long, complex transition to peace. After a massive invasion of France by more than a million soldiers from across Europe, the Allied powers insisted on a long-term occupation of the country to guarantee that the defeated nation rebuild itself and pay substantial reparations to its conquerors. Our Friends the Enemies provides the first comprehensive history of the post-Napoleonic occupation of France and its innovative approach to peacemaking. From 1815 to 1818, a multinational force of 150,000 men under the command of the Duke of Wellington occupied northeastern France. From military, political, and cultural perspectives, Christine Haynes reconstructs the experience of the occupiers and the occupied in Paris and across the French countryside. The occupation involved some violence, but it also promoted considerable exchange and reconciliation between the French and their former enemies. By forcing the restored monarchy to undertake reforms to meet its financial obligations, this early peacekeeping operation played a pivotal role in the economic and political reconstruction of France after twenty-five years of revolution and war. Transforming former European enemies into allies, the mission established Paris as a cosmopolitan capital and foreshadowed efforts at postwar reconstruction in the twentieth century.

In this groundbreaking work of literary and historical scholarship, Keith Gandal shows that Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and William Faulkner were motivated, in their famous postwar novels, not by their experiences of the horrors of war but rather by their failure to have those experiences.
These "quintessential" male American novelists of the 1920s were all, for different reasons, deemed unsuitable as candidates for full military service or command and the result was, Gandal contends, that they felt themselves emasculated--not, as the usual story goes, due to their encounters with trench warfare, but because they got nowhere near the trenches or the real action. By bringing to light previously unexamined archival records of the Army, The Gun and the Pen demonstrates that the frustration of these authors' military ambitions took place in the forgotten context of a whole new set of methods employed in the mobilization for the Great War--unprecedented procedures that aimed to transform the Army into a meritocratic institution, indifferent to ethnic and class difference (though not racial, or black-white, difference). For these Lost Generation writers, the humiliating failure vis-a-vis the Army became a failure to compete successfully in a rising social order and against a new set of people. And it is that social order and those people--these effects of mobilization, and not other effects of the war--that the novels considered here both register and re-imagine.
Gandal's incisive readings of the famous fiction of this era against the backdrop of ethnicity, meritocracy, and sexuality closes with a coda on selected works from the 1930s, including prose by Djuna Barnes, Nathaniel West, and Henry Miller. Provocative and original, The Gun and the Pen restores these seminal novels to their proper historical context and proffers a radical revision of our understanding of the impact of World War I on twentieth-century American literature.

This book examines Prussia's response to Napoleon and Napoleonic expansionism in the years before the crushing defeats of Auerstadt and Jena, a period of German history as untypical as it was dramatic. Events are analyzed at the level of high politics, foreign policy and the reform of the executive. The book also addresses matters of general theoretical concern such as high politics, geopolitics and the "primacy of foreign policy". In doing so it goes beyond anything that has been attempted before, and presents a comprehensive and nuanced picture of Prussia before 1806.