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Books > History > European history > 1750 to 1900
This book was written to provide an in-depth study of the Danish
and Norwegian armies of the Napoleonic Wars. The goal was to
provide a working document which is as accurate as possible,
covering the uniforms of these armies, their weapons and their
evolution as well as their colours and a look at their basic
tactics. Although this is principally a uniform book, historical
background is also provided to place the details in their context.
This second volume looks in depth at the regular cavalry and field
artillery covering all aspects, organisation, uniforms, arms and
equipment, in particular cannon, limbers, and wagons, with 54
original full colour plates. The fortress and coastal artillery are
not forgotten, as with one of the longest coastlines in Europe
compared to the size of the country it was more important than in
most countries. Unlike the few other works in English this book has
been conducted with the assistance of respected Danish historians,
as well as Norwegian and German historians.
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.
Making extensive use of previously unpublished material this book
gives an unprecedented view of the Waterloo Campaign from the
viewpoint of a single regiment. It reveals the preparations that
preceded the battle, the role of the regiment in the battle, and
the long months spent in France after Paris fell, until the
regiment finally returned home in December 1815. An Order Book for
the year, and letters and diaries of several officers, shed light
on the internal life of the regiment and their - occasionally
humorous - social life.
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 seven-year campaign that saved Europe from Napoleon told by
those who were there. What made Arthur Duke of Wellington the
military genius who was never defeated in battle? In the vivid
narrative style that is his trademark, Peter Snow recalls how
Wellington evolved from a backward, sensitive schoolboy into the
aloof but brilliant commander. He tracks the development of
Wellington's leadership and his relationship with the extraordinary
band of men he led from Portugal in 1808 to their final destruction
of Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo seven years. Having described
his soldiers as the 'scum of the earth' Wellington transformed them
into the finest fighting force of their time. Digging deep into the
rich treasure house of diaries and journals that make this war the
first in history to be so well recorded, Snow examines how
Wellington won the devotion of generals such as the irascible
Thomas Picton and the starry but reckless 'Black Bob' Crauford and
soldiers like Rifleman Benjamin Harris and Irishman Ned Costello.
Through many first-hand accounts, Snow brings to life the horrors
and all of the humanity of life in and out of battle, as well as
shows the way that Wellington mastered the battlefield to outsmart
the French and change the future of Europe. To War with Wellington
is the gripping account of a very human story about a remarkable
leader and his men.
In October 1810, the Third French invasion of Portugal under
Marechal Massena arrived at the Lines of Torres Vedras and his
triumphal march into Lisbon came to an abrupt halt. Five months
later a thoroughly demoralised and defeated French army retreated
from Portugal and never returned. The Lines played a vital role in
enabling the allied army to operate against a more numerous enemy.
When threatened, there was a safe place for the allies to retire
to, and from this secure base, Wellington eventually liberated the
Iberian Peninsula. France, Portugal and Britain developed plans for
the defence of Lisbon in 1808 and 1809. In November 1809, the
British proposal was commenced and became the Lines of Torres
Vedras. The Memorandum on the construction was written in October
1809 but was more of an outline. The design and construction was
completed over the next 18 months, the bulk being completed before
the arrival of the French in October 1810. The initial design was
expanded through 1810 as more time became available and the
construction in October 1810 was significantly different to the
original memorandum. The book takes the reader through events in
1809 that led to the need for the construction of defences. The
construction work is detailed and illustrated through several maps
to explain the position and purpose of the several defences. The
French invasion of 1810 is summarised through to the time when the
French arrived at the Lines. The operations and movements over the
next month are again detailed along with the continuing
construction work on the Lines. One of the unusual elements of the
defences was the construction of a telegraph system and this is
described in great detail. One of the lesser-known facts about the
Lines, is the position of the opposing forces between October 1810
and March 1811. They were only facing each other at the Lines for a
few weeks during this period and most French troops never
approached them. The operations and defences were spread over a
much larger area. This book uses many new sources to prove a new,
in-depth, English language account of the massive engineering
exercise that built the Lines with the help of thousands of
Portuguese civilians. Without the construction of the Lines, it is
likely that Portugal would have been lost and history would tell a
very different story.
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.
The Sunday Times bestselling account of Napoleon's invasion of
Russia and eventual retreat from Moscow, events that had a profound
effect on the subsequent course of Russian and European history.
Moscow has both fascinated military historians and captured the
imagination of millions on an emotional and human level. 1812 tells
the story of how the most powerful man on earth met his doom, and
how the greatest fighting force ever assembled was wiped out. Over
400,000 French and Allied troops died on the disastrous Russian
campaign, with the vast majority of the casualties occuring during
the frigid winter retreat. Adam Zamoyski tells their story with
incredible detail and sympathy, drawing on a wealth of first-hand
accounts of the tragedy to create a vivid portrait of an
unimaginable catastrophe. power. His intention was to destroy
Britain through a total blockade, the Continental System. But Tsar
Alexander of Russia refused to apply the blockade, and Napoleon
decided to bring him to heel. ramifications on Russian, French,
German and, indeed, European history and culture cannot be
understated. Adam Zamoyski's epic, enthralling narrative is the
definitive account of the events of that dramatic year.
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.
'A Napoleonic triumph of a book, irresistibly galloping with the
momentum of a cavalry charge' Simon Sebag Montefiore 'Simply
dynamite' Bernard Cornwell From Andrew Roberts, author of the
bestsellers The Storm of War and Churchill: Walking with Destiny,
this is the definitive modern biography of Napoleon. Napoleon
Bonaparte lived one of the most extraordinary of all human lives.
In the space of just twenty years, from October 1795 when as a
young artillery captain he cleared the streets of Paris of
insurrectionists, to his final defeat at the (horribly mismanaged)
battle of Waterloo in June 1815, Napoleon transformed France and
Europe. After seizing power in a coup d'etat he ended the
corruption and incompetence into which the Revolution had
descended. In a series of dazzling battles he reinvented the art of
warfare; in peace, he completely remade the laws of France,
modernised her systems of education and administration, and
presided over a flourishing of the beautiful 'Empire style' in the
arts. The impossibility of defeating his most persistent enemy,
Great Britain, led him to make draining and ultimately fatal
expeditions into Spain and Russia, where half a million Frenchmen
died and his Empire began to unravel. More than any other modern
biographer, Andrew Roberts conveys Napoleon's tremendous energy,
both physical and intellectual, and the attractiveness of his
personality, even to his enemies. He has walked 53 of Napoleon's 60
battlefields, and has absorbed the gigantic new French edition of
Napoleon's letters, which allows a complete re-evaluation of this
exceptional man. He overturns many received opinions, including the
myth of a great romance with Josephine: she took a lover
immediately after their marriage, and, as Roberts shows, he had
three times as many mistresses as he acknowledged. Of the climactic
Battle of Leipzig in 1813, as the fighting closed around them, a
French sergeant-major wrote, 'No-one who has not experienced it can
have any idea of the enthusiasm that burst forth among the
half-starved, exhausted soldiers when the Emperor was there in
person. If all were demoralised and he appeared, his presence was
like an electric shock. All shouted "Vive l'Empereur!" and everyone
charged blindly into the fire.' The reader of this biography will
understand why this was so.
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