'If it had not been for you English, I should have been Emperor of the East; but wherever there is water to float a ship, we are sure to find you in our way.' Emperor Napoleon But just thirty-five years earlier, Britain lacked any major continental allies, and was wracked by crises and corruption. Many thought that she would follow France into revolution. The British elite had no such troubling illusions: defeat was not a possibility. Since not all shared that certainty, the resumption of the conflict and its pursuit through years of Napoleonic dominance is a remarkable story of aristocratic confidence and assertion of national superiority. Winning these wars meant ruthless imperialist expansion, spiteful political combat, working under a mad king and forging the most united national effort since the days of the Armada. And it meant setting the foundations for the greatest empire the world has ever known.

Published in the 200th Anniversary year of the Battle of Waterloo a witty look at how the French still think they won, by Stephen Clarke, author of 1000 Years of Annoying the French and A Year in the Merde. Two centuries after the Battle of Waterloo, the French are still in denial. If Napoleon lost on 18 June 1815 (and that's a big 'if'), then whoever rules the universe got it wrong. As soon as the cannons stopped firing, French historians began re-writing history. The Duke of Wellington was beaten, they say, and then the Prussians jumped into the boxing ring, breaking all the rules of battle. In essence, the French cannot bear the idea that Napoleon, their greatest-ever national hero, was in any way a loser. Especially not against the traditional enemy - les Anglais. Stephen Clarke has studied the French version of Waterloo, as told by battle veterans, novelists, historians - right up to today's politicians, and he has uncovered a story of pain, patriotism and sheer perversion ...

This volume follows Metternich's career up to the restoration of the Bourbons in France. Originally published in 1963. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Waterloo is one of the most famous battles in history and it has given rise to a vast and varied literature. The strategy and tactics of the battle and the entire Waterloo campaign have been analysed at length. The commanders, manoeuvres and critical episodes, and the intense experiences of the men who took part, have all been recorded in minute detail. But the organization, structure and fighting strength of the armies that fought in the battle have received less attention, and this is the subject of Philip Haythornthwaite's detailed, authoritative and engaging study. Through a close description of the structure and personnel of each of the armies he builds up a fascinating picture of their makeup, their methods and their capabilities. The insight he offers into the contrasting styles and national characteristics of the forces that came together on the Waterloo battlefield gives a fresh perspective on the extraordinary clash of arms that ended the Napoleonic era.

In October 1813, the soldiers of one of Napoleon's staunchest Allies, Saxony, defected en masse in the midst of battle at Leipzig. Almost immediately III German Army Corps was formed with these same soldiers as its nucleus and augmented with returning former prisoners of war, volunteers and militia. Commanded by the Duke of Saxe-Weimar the Corps was sent to the Southern Netherlands to take part in the final defeat of Napoleon amidst of a constant changing command of control structure, in which the Swedish Crown Prince Bernadotte played a major and dubious role. Although for the greater part inexperienced and badly armed, fighting against the much superior French I Corps which even contained Imperial Guard units, III Corps struggled to prove that it could be trusted, paying a major role to protect the Netherlands against the French as these regions tried to regain their own identity after decades of French rule.

In 2013, Germany celebrated the bicentennial of the so-called Wars of Liberation (1813 1815). These wars were the culmination of the Prussian struggle against Napoleon between 1806 and 1815, which occupied a key position in German national historiography and memory. Although these conflicts have been analyzed in thousands of books and articles, much of the focus has been on the military campaigns and alliances. Karen Hagemann argues that we cannot achieve a comprehensive understanding of these wars and their importance in collective memory without recognizing how the interaction of politics, culture, and gender influenced these historical events and continue to shape later recollections of them. She thus explores the highly contested discourses and symbolic practices by which individuals and groups interpreted these wars and made political claims, beginning with the period itself and ending with the centenary in 1913."

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.

The Napoleonic Wars saw almost two decades of brutal fighting. Fighting took place on an unprecedented scale, from the frozen wastelands of Russia to the rugged mountains of the Peninsula; from Egypt's Lower Nile to the bloody battlefield of New Orleans. Volume II of The Cambridge History of the Napoleonic Wars provides a comprehensive guide to the Napoleonic Wars and weaves together the four strands - military, naval, economic, and diplomatic - that intertwined to make up one of the greatest conflicts in history. Written by a team of the leading Napoleonic scholars, this volume provides an authoritative and comprehensive analysis of why the nations went to war, the challenges they faced and how the wars were funded and sustained. It sheds new light not only on the key battles and campaigns but also on questions of leadership, strategy, tactics, guerrilla warfare, recruitment, supply, and weaponry.

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 flintlock or firelock musket is one of the most iconic weapons in history: used on the battlefields of the English Civil War, it was then carried by both sides at Blenheim, Bunker Hill, Waterloo and the Alamo, and dominated warfare for more than 150 years, with military service as late as the American Civil War in the 1860s. Featuring specially commissioned full-colour artwork, this engaging study examines the role that the flintlock played in close-order combat on European and other battlefields around the world. Employing first-hand accounts to show how tactical doctrines were successfully developed to overcome the weapon's inherent limitations, Stuart Reid offers a comprehensive analysis of the flintlock's lasting impact as the first truly universal soldier's weapon.

In 1792 France unleashed a new form of warfare in Europe. Faced with the well-drilled Austrian and Prussian armies, the French introduced the tactic of mass skirmishing by tirailleurs. Soldiers were thrown forwards and told to fight in open order. Moving quickly and making use of cover, they fired on the enemy line, annoying it, goading it, and all the time distracting it from the infantry columns coming up behind, bristling with bayonets, ready for the charge and a shock action. Of these tirailleurs, the best were the professional chasseur light infantry battalions, raised and trained in the army of Louis XVI; but they were too few in number. A patriotic appeal for light infantry volunteers was made, and within two years the original twelve battalions became ninety strong. By the time of Napoleon's invasion of Russia in 1812, there were 185 battalions of light infantry in service, with hundreds of voltigeur light companies attached to the regular line infantry battalions. Although all infantrymen could fight as tirailleurs, specialist light infantry did it best, and were clearly an important part of Napoleon's armies. Why was this? In this book Terry Crowdy explores the origins of the light infantry in the century before Napoleon came to power. From bands of irregular partisans, to sharpshooters and scouts, the book follows France's early experiments with this arm. Drawing on contemporary documents, including the French parliamentary archives, this book charts the expansion of the light infantry arm, reviews the reasons behind organisational changes, and analyses the tactics employed by light infantry in meticulous detail. Lavishly illustrated, this book is an essential reference for students and hobbyists of the Napoleonic Wars.

Waterloo was the last battle fought by Napoleon and the one which finally ended his imperial dreams. It involved the deployment of huge armies and incurred heavy losses on both sides; for those who fought in it, Dutch and Belgians, Prussians and Hanoverians as well as British and French troops, it was a murderous struggle. It was a battle that would be remembered very differently across Europe. In Britain it would be seen as an iconic battle whose memory would be enmeshed in British national identity across the following century. In London news of the victory unleashed an outburst of patriotic celebration and captured the imagination of the public. The Duke of Wellington would go on to build his political career on it, and towns and cities across Britain and the Empire raised statues and memorials to the victor. But it was only in Britain that Waterloo acquired this iconic status. In Prussia and Holland its memory was muted - in Prussia overshadowed by the Battle of the Nations at Leipzig, in Holland a simple appendage to the prestige of the House of Orange. And in France it would be portrayed as the very epitome of heroic defeat. Encapsulated in the bravery of General Cambronne and the last stand of the Old Guard, remembered movingly in the lines of Stendhal and Victor Hugo, the memory of Waterloo served to sustain the romantic legend of the Napoleonic Wars - and contributed to the growing cult of Napoleon himself.

The vivid and exciting accounts written from the front line, taking the story of the British war with Napoleon from its desperate beginnings in Portugal to the final triumph at Waterloo The Duke of Wellington was not only an incomparable battle commander but a remarkably expressive, fluent and powerful writer. His dispatches have long been viewed as classics of military literature and have been pillaged by all writers on the Peninsular War and the final campaigns in France and Belgium ever since they were published. This new selection allows the reader to follow the extraordinary epic in Wellington's own words - from the tentative beginnings in 1808, clinging to a small area of Portugal in the face of overwhelming French power across the whole of the rest of Europe, to the campaigns that over six years devastated opponent after opponent. The book ends with Wellington's invasion of France and the coda of 'the 100 days' that ended with Napoleon's final defeat at Waterloo.

This is the first comprehensive studyof Gerhard Scharnhorst in any language. Other than the author's The Enlightened Soldier: Scharnhorst and the Militarische Gesellschaft in Berlin, 1801-1805 (1989), there exists no other work on Scharnhorst in English. Of the major German works, Das Leben des Generals von Scharnhorst (1869/71), written by Hanoverian historian Georg Heinrich Klippel,was a popular biography with no critical analysis. In keeping with the political correctness of his time, Klippel failed to include a single document from Scharnhorst's voluminous papers that was disparaging toward the social, political, and military cultures in Hanover. Seventeen years later, Prussian historian Max Lehmann published his study of Scharnhorst (1886/87), which corrected many of the flaws in Klippel's work, but failed to provide any critical analysis of Scharnhorst's modernization, especially as it applied to Prussia. Like Klippel, Lehmann complied with the political correctness of his time in Prussia and Germany. Rudolf Stadelmann, Scharnhorst: Schicksal und Geistige Welt (1952), is an incomplete fragment that offers some interesting insights. Scharnhorst: The Formative Years uses the previous German studies as a starting point to present many unpublished discoveries about his youth, his education and training, his extensive service in Hanover, and the modernization program Scharnhorst sought to implement in Hanover, and later realized in part in Prussia.

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 second volume shines a light on the cultural and social changes that took place during the epoch of European Restorations, when the death of the Napoleonic empire existed as a crucial moment for contemporaries. Expanding the transnational approach of Volume I, the chapters focus on the transmutation of ordinary experiences of war into folklore and popular culture, the emergence of grassroots radical politics and conspiracies on the Left and Right, and the relationship between literacy and religion, with new cases included from Spain, Norway and Russia. A wide-ranging and impressive work, this book completes a collection on the history of the European Restorations.