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Books > History > European history > 1750 to 1900
This volume examines one of the central political questions of the
modern world, the uneasy and often violent relationship between the
forces of nationalism and democracy. This subject was one of
lifelong interest to the late Professor Harry Hearder of University
of Wales, Cardiff, to whom the book is dedicated. The focus is on
the nation-states of western Europe during the period 1985-1970.
Much of the content explores varieties of conflict and compromise
between these two 'cultures, ' which had in many aspects a
contradictory dynamic, but which nevertheless shared some basic
aspirations, and often contrived to coexist, both on the national
and international level.
In the summer of 1804, the eagle was chosen as the symbol of the
French Army by Napoleon himself. The Emperor's sculptor, Chaudet,
made the original model, and from this were cast bronze copies in
the workshop of Thomire, which would be proudly borne into battle
by many a French regiment. This fascinating work by Terence Wise
explores in depth the flags, colours and guidons of the Napoleonic
Wars (1799-1815), concentrating on France and her allies, and
covering every faction from Baden to Wurzburg. This book is a must
for anyone interested in this fascinating topic.
The End of Empire is a continuation of Nafziger's definitive
military studies of the Napoleonic era beginning with the 1812
campaign and progressing through the 1813 campaign. Having suffered
a massive reversal of fortunes in Russia Napoleon found himself
confronted, in Germany, by the combined forces of Russia, Prussia,
and Austria. After the disaster of Leipzig Napoleon's German allies
fell away and he was forced to fall back, beyond the borders of
France.Offered a negotiated peace on the basis of a return to the
pre-1792 borders, Napoleon chose to continue to fight, trusting in
his star. He was, however, desperate for troops and short of horses
and cash. Cornered and threatened by three armies invading from the
north, northeast, and east, every chance to stop the Allies had to
be taken and there was desperate battle after desperate battle. Of
all his campaigns, Napoleon's 1814 campaign was one of his most
brilliant. Eventually, after several terrible defeats, the Allies
refused to engage him in battle when he confronted them. Instead
they pushed their other two armies forward, slowly driving him back
as he rushed to block the advance of the other armies on Paris.
This strategy proved successful and eventually Napoleon was obliged
to abdicate when his marshals refused to fight further. The End of
Empire includes a detailed text, specially commissioned maps and
the author's trademark extensive orders of battle.
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.
Austria was one of the five major players of the Napoleonic Wars.
In early 19th century, the Austrian army
(Kaiserliche-KoeniglicheHeer) was the third largest and one of the
best-trained armies in the world.The individual regimentsperformed
well and were considered solid. However, hampered by the inherent
conservatism of the hierarchy, the Austrians had to face the most
modern army in Europe. Despite the many defeats suffered, the
Austrian soldiers performed with discipline and played a central
role in the coalitions against France, from the campaigns in 1790s,
to the Austerlitz campaign of 1805, the closely-balanced battles of
1809, and the final victorious campaigns of 1813-1814. Austrian
cavalry, in particular, was considered one of the best in Europe by
allies as well as enemies. For the first time, this topic is
introduced starting from the first campaign against France. The
book includesthe regimental histories of each unit after the
original sources, unpublished iconography, and is completed by
detailed illustrations depicting uniforms and equipment of the
mounted 'kaiserlich' white coats.
Leipzig dashed the dreams of a French Empire when the armies of
Prussia, Russia, Austria and Sweden converged on Napoleon and his
Grande Armee. It was the greatest battle of the Napoleonic Wars, so
decisive it would be called "the battle of the Nations". Smaller
countries like Poland and Saxony seemed to be submerged in the
titanic struggle and the battle shaped Europe for more than a
century. "Napoleon at Leipzig" not only covers this pivotal battle,
but also the manoeuvres that led up to it and the retreat that
followed. At Hanau, the Bavarians learned to their dismay the
Napoleon was still the master of the battlefield. The book includes
the campaigns of Marshal Davout in the north, and the fate of the
besieged French fortresses. From glittering field marshals to
ragged cossacks, in massive battles or small skirmishes, we see the
dramatic campaign unfold. George Nafziger's intensive research into
the 1813 campaign shows how the finest general of all time was
brought to bay. The greatest battle of the Napoleonic Wars, and the
campaign that led up to it, is thoroughly studied for the first
time in English in "Napoleon at Leipzig". This edition includes a
new set of images and newly-commissioned colour maps.
John Hatsell (1733-1820) held the office of Clerk of the House of
Commons from 1768 to 1820. In his letters and Memorabilia entries -
published here for the first time - Hatsell brought to bear his
intimate familiarity with high politics during the reign of George
III. Hatsell's expertise in financial policy inspired him to offer
counsel to Pitt the Younger during Pitt's first premiership
(1783-1801). Hatsell's other correspondents include Henry Addington
(speaker 1789-1801 and prime minister 1801-1804), Charles Abbot
(speaker 1802-1817), and William Eden (diplomat and President of
the Board of Trade in the Ministry of All the Talents, 1806-1807).
Hatsell centres his attention on the enduring constitutional
significance of the changes he experienced in his public and
private life. Hatsell's wry humour is often on display as he
reveals the lighter side of social and political life in Great
Britain.
The Mediterranean was one of Napoleon's greatest spheres of
influence. With territory in Spain, Italy and, of course, France,
Napoleon's regime dominated the Great Sea for much of the early
nineteenth century. The 'Napoleonic Mediterranean' was composed of
almost the entirety of the western, European lands bordering its
northern shores, however tenuously many of those shores were held.
The disastrous attempt to conquer Egypt in 1798-99, and the rapid
loss of Malta to the British, sealed its eastward and southern
limits. None of Napoleon's Mediterranean possessions were easily
held; they were volatile societies which showed determined
resistance to the new state forged by the French Revolution. In
this book, acclaimed historian and biographer of Napoleon, Michael
Broers looks at the similarities and differences between Napoleon's
Mediterranean imperial possessions. He considers the process of
political, military and legal administration as well as the
challenges faced by Napoleon's Prefects in overcoming hostility in
the local population. With chapters covering a range of imperial
territories, this book is a unique and valuable addition to the
historical literature on Napoleonic Europe and the process and
practice of imperialism.
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.
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.
This beautifully illustrated guide by master draughtsman and
Napoleonic expert Carl Franklin draws together extensive research
and previously unpublished information to provide a new insight
into the field artillery and uniforms of the Napoleonic Wars. The
evolution of this new form of artillery is shown in full detail for
the first time, and its use is fully examined. Particular attention
is given to the ammunition, drills, harness, supporting equipment
and uniforms of the period, and each type of field artillery is
fully illustrated. 'Fire,' Napoleon himself proclaimed, 'is
everything; the rest does not matter.' British Napoleonic Field
Artillery helps to test the veracity of that statement and is an
essential reference for all those interested in Napoleonic history.
C.E. Franklin was born in London in 1934. He joined the Royal Air
Force in 1951, spending much of his later appointments as an
engineer specialising in guided weapons. On leaving the service in
1984 he joined British Aerospace. He retired in 1990 and now spends
most of his time in research and writing. He is the author of
British Rockets of the Napoleonic and Colonial Wars 1805-1901 and
British Napoleonic Uniforms: A Complete Illustrated Guide to
Uniforms, Facings and Lace. He lives in Lea, Lincolnshire.
In the maelstrom of Napoleonic Europe, Britain remained defiant,
resisting French imperial ambitions. This Anglo-French rivalry was,
essentially, a politico-economic conflict for pre-eminence fought
on a global scale and it reached a zenith in 1806-1808 with
France's apparent dominance of Continental Europe. Britain reacted
swiftly and decisively to implement maritime-based strategies to
limit French military and commercial gains in Europe, while
protecting British overseas interests. The policy is particularly
evident in relations with Britain's "Ancient Ally": Portugal. That
country and, by association her South American empire, became the
front line in the battle between Napoleon's ambitions and British
maritime security. Shedding new light on British war aims and
maritime strategy, this is an essential work for scholars of the
Napoleonic Wars and British political, diplomatic, economic and
maritime/military history.
In 1815 Napoleon Bonaparte arrived on the island of St. Helena to
begin his imprisonment following Waterloo. By 1821 he was dead.
During his brief stay, he crossed paths with six medical men, all
of whom would be changed by the encounter, whether by court
martial, the shame of misdiagnosis, or resulting celebrity. What
would seem to be a straightforward post became entangled with
politics, as Governor Hudson Lowe became paranoid as to the
motivations of each doctor and brought their every move into
question. In Napoleon's Poisoned Chalice, Martin Howard addresses
the political pitfalls navigated with varying success by the men
who were assigned to care for the most famous man in Europe. The
hostility that sprang up between individuals thrown together in
isolation, the impossible situations the doctors found themselves
in and the fear of censure when Napoleon finally began to die.
The Peninsular War continues to be of great interest to students of
military history, but the various siege operations have tended to
be overlooked. However as Frederick Myatt demonstrates in British
Sieges of the Peninsular War, they are of no less interest than the
battles in the open fields, particularly in Spain where the
circumstances were so unusual. The British Army under Wellington
was hopelessly outnumbered by the French and could only keep the
field at all by virtue of the superior supply system which enabled
them to remain concentrated, whereas the French, who lived off the
country, were compelled to disperse widely in order to survive.
They were nevertheless capable of rapid concentration for a
particular object, so that any siege operation conducted by the
British inevitably ran the risk of being overwhelmed by sheer
weight of numbers of the relieving force. As a result, Wellington's
main preoccupation was not how long it would take to bring a siege
to a successful conclusion by normal means but rather what chance
he had of snatching success before the French overcame their supply
problems and arrived in front of him.
A leading expert examines one of Napoleon's most decisive but least
analysed victories In early July 1809 Napoleon crossed the Danube
with 187,000 men to confront the Austrian Archduke Charles and an
army of 145,000 men. The fighting that followed dwarfed in
intensity and scale any previous Napoleonic battlefield, perhaps
any in history: casualties on each side were over 30,000. The
Austrians fought with great determination, but eventually the
Emperor won a narrow victory. Wagram was decisive in that it
compelled Austria to make peace. It also heralded a new, altogether
greater order of warfare, anticipating the massed manpower and
weight of fire deployed much later in the battles of the American
Civil War and then at Verdun and on the Somme.
As 1794 opened, Revolutionary France stood on a knife's edge of
failure. Its army and navy had been shaken by the revolution, with
civil war and famine taking its toll on their resources. Seeking to
bring a revitalizing supply of food from its Caribbean colonies and
the United States, the French government decided to organize a
massive convoy to bring the New World's bounty to France. However,
in order to succeed in their mission, the French Navy would have to
make a deadly crossing over the North Atlantic, an ocean patrolled
by the Royal Navy, the most powerful navy force in the world, whose
sailors were eager to inflict a damaging defeat on Revolutionary
France and win their fortune in prize money. Illustrated throughout
with stunning full-colour artwork, this is the full story of the
only fleet action during the Age of Fighting Sail fought in the
open ocean, hundreds of miles from shore. Taking place over the
course of a month, the inevitable battle was to be a close-run
affair, with both sides claiming victory. To the French, it was le
Bataille du 13 prairial, a notable day in their new, scientific
Revolutionary calendar. For the British, it was the Glorious First
of June.
How Soviet scientists and pseudoscientists pursued telepathic
research, cybernetic simulations, and mass hyptonism over
television to control the minds of citizens. In October 1989, as
the Cold War was ending and the Berlin Wall about to crumble,
television viewers in the Soviet Union tuned in to the first of a
series of unusual broadcasts. "Relax, let your thoughts wander
free..." intoned the host, the physician and clinical
psychotherapist Anatoly Mikhailovich Kashpirovsky. Moscow's Channel
One was attempting mass hypnosis over television, a therapeutic
session aimed at reassuring citizens panicked over the ongoing
political upheaval-and aimed at taking control of their responses
to it. Incredibly enough, this last-ditch effort to rally the
citizenry was the culmination of decades of official telepathic
research, cybernetic simulations, and coded messages undertaken to
reinforce ideological conformity. In Homo Sovieticus, the art and
media scholar Wladimir Velminski explores these scientific and
pseudoscientific efforts at mind control. In a fascinating series
of anecdotes, Velminski describes such phenomena as the conflation
of mental energy and electromagnetism; the investigation of aura
fields through the "Aurathron"; a laboratory that practiced mind
control methods on dogs; and attempts to calibrate the thought
processes of laborers. "Scientific" diagrams from the period
accompany the text. In all of the experimental methods for
implanting thoughts into a brain, Velminski finds political and
metaphorical contaminations. These apparently technological
experiments in telepathy and telekinesis were deployed for purely
political purposes.
At Talavera an Anglo-Spanish army under Sir Arthur Wellesley
combined with a Spanish army in operations against French-occupied
Madrid. After fierce fighting the French army's attacks were
repulsed several times before withdrawing from the field. Wellesley
was ennobled as 'Viscount Wellington of Talavera' for the action.
Napoleonic expert Digby Smith covers the uniforms, colours and
standards, organization and tactics of the three armies involved,
their orders of battle and losses. The strategic background to the
battle, including Napoleon's disastrous 'management by puppet'
policy, which was to bedevil the efforts of all French commanders
in Spain and Portugal for the rest of the war. The artillery
systems used are examined, including ballistic performance. The
progress of the battle is analysed in detail, interspersed with
personal accounts of participants at critical points. There will be
a complete display of the losses involved as well as an account of
the aftermath of the action and its effects on Wellesley's
subsequent performance.
This is a translation of one of the very few Russian serfs'
memoirs. Savva Purlevskii recollects his life in Russian serfdom
and the lives of his grandparents, parents, and fellow villagers.
He describes family communal life and the serfs' daily interaction
with landlords and authorities. Purlevskii came from an initially
prosperous family that later became impoverished. Early in his
childhood, he lost his father. Purlevskii did not have a chance to
gain a formal education. He lived under serfdom until 1831 when at
the age of 30, he escaped his servitude.
The period 1750-1820 saw the death of royal absolutism, the rise
and fall of successive revolutionary regimes, the consolidation of
Napoleonic rule and the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy after
the Empire's final collapse. This volume examines the
transformation of the French military profession during this
momentous time. Based on a wealth of archival sources, it is as
much a social history of ideas such as equality, talent and merit
as a military history. It provides an analysis of shifts in the
idea and practice of merit before, during and after 1789, crossing
the chronological boundary of 1789 to bring the histories of the
Old Regime, Revolution, Empire and Restoration together. It also
makes available a comprehensive examination of the changes in
military personnel and institutions that laid the basis for
Napoleon's armies.
Portraits were the most widely commissioned paintings in
18th-century France, but most portraits were produced for private
consumption, and were therefore seen as inferior to art designed
for public exhibition. The French Revolution endowed private values
with an unprecedented significance, and the way people responded to
portraits changed as a result. This is an area which has largely
been ignored by art historians, who have concentrated on art
associated with the public events of the Revolution. Seen from the
perspective of portrait production, the history of art during the
Revolution looks very different, and the significance of the
Revolution for attitudes to art and artists in the 19th century and
beyond becomes clearer.
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