This collection of essays provides a broad strategic interpretation of European warfare from 1792-1815. Unlike traditional military histories which focus on a revolution in military affairs from the French view, this volume offers a general European perspective, placing the armies and the wars in historical context, while addressing substantive changes to respective military systems.

This edited volume explores conscription in the Napoleonic era, tracing the roots of European conscription and exploring the many methods that states used to obtain the manpower they needed to prosecute their wars.

The levee-en-masse of the French Revolution has often been cited as a Revolution in Military Affairs, but was it truly a revolutionary break with past European practices of raising armies, or an intensification of the scope and scale of practices already inherent in the European military system? This international collection of scholars demonstrate that European conscription has far deeper roots than has been previously acknowledged, and that its intensification during the Napoleonic era was more an evolutionary than revolutionary change.

This book will be of much interest to students of Military History, Strategic Studies, Strategic History and European History.

This edited volume explores conscription in the Napoleonic era, tracing the roots of European conscription and exploring the many methods that states used to obtain the manpower they needed to prosecute their wars.

The levA(c)e-en-masse of the French Revolution has often been cited as a a ~Revolution in Military Affairsa (TM), but was it truly a a ~revolutionarya (TM) break with past European practices of raising armies, or an intensification of the scope and scale of practices already inherent in the European military system? This international collection of scholars demonstrate that European conscription has far deeper roots than has been previously acknowledged, and that its intensification during the Napoleonic era was more an a ~evolutionarya (TM) than a ~revolutionarya (TM) change.

This book will be of much interest to students of Military History, Strategic Studies, Strategic History and European History.

Poised to strike at England in the summer of 1805, Napoleon found himself facing a coalition of European powers determined to limit his territorial ambitions. Still, in less than one hundred days, Napoleon's armies marched from the English Channel to Central Europe, crushing the armies of Austria and Russia—the first step in his conquest of Europe. In this telling new account, Schneid demonstrates how this was possible. Schneid details how Napoleon's victory over the Third Coalition was the product of years of diplomatic preparation and the formation of French alliances. He played upon the prevailing conditions of the European state system and the internal politics of the Holy Roman Empire to improve France's strategic position. This war must be understood in the context of the French Revolution and its influence on major and minor European states. In some cases, Napoleonic diplomacy returned to France's traditional and historic relationships; in others, he capitalized upon longstanding competition and animosities to gather allies and create wedges. Schneid approaches the campaign from a broad diplomatic, economic, and military perspective, including not only the French perspective, but the points of view of the other powers involved as well. This telling account reveals that the road to Vienna was paved long before Napoleon's armies marched upon the enemies arrayed against them.

The French Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars raged in Italy for 23 years. In that time, no fewer than eight campaigns involving hundred of thousands of troops were mounted in the Italian peninsula, as France and Austria struggled over this secondary, but still vitally important theater of war. As Frederick Schneid demonstrates in this groundbreaking work, control of Italy was rightly seen by Napoleon as an important means of applying strategic pressure on the Austrians, while simultaneously providing security for France's vulnerable southern flank. As the first in-depth consideration of the struggle for strategically key region, this book places the Italian campaigns into their proper historical context.

Beginning with a geo-strategic overview of the Italian peninsula and its place in French and Austrian calculations, Schneid moves on to a careful consideration of the major campaigns that began in 1805, 1809, and 1813. These include studies of the battles at Caldiero, Wagram, and Mincio. The book also provides appendices with complete orders of battle for each campaign.

The three intervening decades between the Congress of Vienna and the Revolutions of 1848 are marked by enormous social, political, economic and cultural change. Liberalism, nationalism, romanticism and industrialism profoundly affected the course of Europe and compelled conservative monarchies to accept the principles of collective action and military force to curb political revolution. In the years immediately following 1815, the Quadruple and Holy Alliances served the dual purpose of preventing a restoration of Bonapartism and suppressing revolutions. By the 1820s these international associations dissipated, but the principles upon which they were founded informed the decisions of the respective governments through 1848. The classic articles and papers collected in this volume attempt to illustrate that despite the substantial changes to European society which occurred during these thirty years, European powers accepted common principles which influenced their state's domestic and foreign policies.