Describes the life, achievements, rise to power, and influences of the military leader who crowned himself Emperor of the French and established dominance over Europe.

Economic warfare during the Napoleonic era transformed international commerce; redirecting trade and generating illicit commerce. This volume re-evaluates the Continental System through urban and regional case studies that analyze the power triangle of the French, British and neutral powers and their strategies to adapt to trade restrictions.

The Crimean War was fought far from its namesake peninsula in Ukraine. Until now, accounts of Britain's and France's naval campaigns against Czarist Russia in the Baltic, White Sea, and Pacific have remained fragmented, minimized, or thinly-referenced. This book considers each campaign from an imperial perspective extending from South America to Finland. Ultimately, this regionally-focused approach reveals that even the smallest Anglo-French naval campaigns in the remote White Sea had significant consequences in fields ranging from medical advances to international maritime law. Considering the perspectives of neutral powers including China, Japan, and Sweden-Norway, allows Rath to examine the Crimean conflict's impact on major historical events ranging from the 'opening' of Tokugawa Japan to Russia's annexation of large swaths of Chinese territory. Complete with customized maps and an extensive reference section, this will become essential reading for a varied audience.

The Napoleonic Empire played a crucial role in reshaping global landscapes and in realigning international power structures on a worldwide scale. When Napoleon died, the map of many areas had completely changed, making room for Russia's ascendency and Britain's rise to world power.

This new political history of the Orthodox Church in the Ottoman Empire explains why Orthodoxy became the subject of acute political competition between the Great Powers during the mid 19th century. It also explores how such rivalries led, paradoxically, both to secularizing reforms and to Europe's last great war of religion - the Crimean War.

This volume explores how the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars (1793-1815) were experienced, perceived and narrated by contemporaries in Britain and Ireland. These conflicts have been described as the first modern or 'total' war with far-reaching consequences for military and civilian society and the development of modern identities. Yet in contrast to the innovative body of scholarship on the First and Second World Wars there has been little sustained analysis of the personal experiences of men and women involved directly or indirectly in these conflicts. Narratives of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars addresses this historiographical gap using letters, diaries and personal testimonies by soldiers, sailors and civilians to shed new light on the social and cultural history of the period and the history of warfare more broadly.

In August of 1838, in the middle of a devastating civil war, a grotesque figure arrived with the mail coach at Santiago de Compostela, the ancient pilgrimage town in the North-West of Spain. He was a former Swiss mercenary, who thirty years previously had heard a rumour about a massive hoard of church plate buried by the soldiers of Marshal Ney. A fantasy? A daydream? Just one of the many hollow legends of hidden gold that abound in Spain? Perhaps so. But, astonishingly, the Swiss vagrant did not come on his own errand. He came sponsored by Spain's savvy Minister of Finance, Don Alejandro Mon, who for some shadowy reason of his own lent credence to the tale. Like an historical Sherlock Holmes, Peter Missler traces the true tale of Benedict Mol, the treasure hunter, through the mists of time and a smoke-screen of cover-stories. It is a fascinating saga which takes us into Portugal with the looting French invaders, into the wildest mountains of Northern Spain with the brilliant polyglot George Borrow, and - by the hand of Mol - into the darkest nooks and corners of a hospital for syphilitics. No treasure was ever found, either in the first attempt, which toppled the government, or in the second one, which ended with the murder of two innocent peasants. Therefore, quite possibly, Ney's treasure still lies waiting elsewhere in a Santiago park...

The wars between 1792 and 1815 saw the making of the modern world, with Britain and Russia the key powers to emerge triumphant from a long period of bitter conflict. In this innovative book, Jeremy Black focuses on the strategic contexts and strategies involved, explaining their significance both at the time and subsequently. Reinterpreting French Revolutionary and Napoleonic warfare, strategy, and their consequences, he argues that Napoleon's failure owed much to his limitations as a strategist. Black uses this framework as a foundation to assess the nature of warfare, the character of strategy, and the eventual ascendance of Britain and Russia in this period. Rethinking the character of strategy, this is the first history to look holistically at the strategies of all the leading belligerents from a global perspective. It will be an essential read for military professionals, students, and history buffs alike.

Napoleon's conquests were spectacular, but behind his wars, is an enduring legacy. A new generation of historians have re-evaluated the Napoleonic era and found that his real achievement was the creation of modern Europe as we know it.

An exploration of the little-known yet historically important emigration of British army officers to the Australian colonies in the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars. The book looks at the significant impact they made at a time of great colonial expansion, particularly in new south Wales with its transition from a convict colony to a free society.

The Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars have been described as the first 'total war', which affected millions of people's lives and brought a whole continent into contact with armies and bloodshed. But the extent to which the constant state of war that existed between 1792 and 1815 shaped everyday experience has been much less studied, even although these wars, conducted by mass armies and often mobilized by patriotism, led to the circulation of millions of people throughout Europe and beyond. The changing nature of warfare had far-reaching consequences for civil society as well as for those directly engaged in fighting. This volume of essays by international scholars examines the formative experiences of men and women - soldiers, citizens and civilians - in the years 1792-1815, drawing particularly on their personal documents and social and cultural practices, to offer a perspective on the wars which is at some distance from broader and more familiar historical narratives.

"Boys at Sea" is a study of homoerotic life in the Royal Navy during the age of sail. It deals not only with sex among ordinary crewmen, but reveals that the most consistent feature of prosecutions for sodomy and indecency involved officers forcing their attentions on ships' boys. The book traces every feature of sexuality at sea, and provides a probing look at a dark and terrifying aspect of the lives of youngsters who served in Britain's warships.

How did Bismarck, Germany's greatest nineteenth century leader, extend and maintain his power? This new Profile examines his strengths as statesman and all the facets of his political career. His many direct achievements included the unification of Germany and the expansion of Prussia. In short, he was the architect of Germany's change from cultural region to political nation. In the end he combined egotism and brilliance exceptionally, yet it was still not enough to save him from dismissal by William II.

The Revolutionary and the Napoleonic Wars profoundly affected German Central Europe. Thousands of German and Austrian soldiers fought as enemies and allies of France in military campaigns that stretched from the sierras of Spain to the snowfields of Russia. Meanwhile, German and Austrian civilians found their lives touched by warfare in a way not seen for decades. The political geography of area was transformed as the thousand-year Holy Roman Empire collapsed and Napoleon redrew state borders. Millions found themselves forced to adapt to the political and military reality of French domination. This book traces the individual and collective experience of these momentous events in the letters, diaries and memoirs of contemporaries. It explores how soldiers and civilians wrote about both the horrors and pleasures of warfare and how these experiences were mediated by social status, sex, religion and geography. It suggests that despite the trauma of a generation of warfare, older, pre-Revolutionary interpretations of armed conflict remained important as eyewitnesses sought to explain and understand the turmoil around them.

The Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars had an enduring influence on the collective memory of all European nations and regions, and have given them an international dimension. These essays look at how the French Wars were remembered in personal diaries, paintings and literature, allowing a comparative analysis with atransnational perspective.