Napoleon's wars

Description

No other soldier has provoked as much argument as Napoleon Bonaparte. Was Napoleon a monster, driven on by an endless, ruinous quest for military glory - or was he a social and political visionary brought down by the petty, reactionary kings and emperors, clinging to their privileges?Napoleon's Wars is a book which has no doubt about Napoleon's insatiable greed for military glory, but it is interested in far more than that. Charles Esdaile is profoundly interested in a pan-European context: what was it that made the countries of Europe fight each other, for so long and with such devastating results. The battles themselves he sees as almost side-effects; the consequence of rulers being willing to take the immense risks of fighting or supporting Napoleon - risks which resulted in the extinction of entire countries.This is history on the grandest and most ambitious scale: a superb reassessment of a tumultuous era. Napoleon Bonaparte was not just the ultimate warlord -- a man who would have been nothing without war and conquest -- but he was never capable of setting the same limits on himself as the rulers and statesmen who had waged the conflilct of the eighteenth century. However the Napoleonic Wars are explained, it was the emperor's determination to eschew compromise, to flex his muscles on every possible occasion and to push matters to extremes that made them what they were. No military figure in history has been quite as polarizing as Napoleon Bonaparte. Was he a monster driven by an endless, ruinous quest for military glory? Or a social and political visionary brought down by the petty, reactionary kings of Europe? In Napoleon's Wars, the most definitive account to date of the violent conflicts that set Europe ablaze between 1803 and 1815, respected historian Charles Esdaile argues that the chief motivating factor for Napoleon was his insatiable desire for fame. More than a myth-busting portrait of Napoleon, however, this volume offers a panoramic view of the armed conflicts that spread so quickly out of revolutionary France to countries as remote as Sweden and Egypt. Napoleon's Wars seeks to answer the question: What was it that made the nations of Europe fight one another for so long and with such devastating results? Moving through conflicts from Russia to Spain, from the Balkans to the Baltic, Esdaile portrays the European battles as the consequences of rulers who were willing to take the immense risks of either fighting or supporting Napoleon -- risks that resulted in the extinction of entire countries. Napoleon's Wars is history writing equal to its subject -- grand and ambitious -- that will reframe the way this tumultuous ere in European history is understood. - Jacket flap.

Description

"No other soldier has provoked as much anger or as much fervour as Napoleon Bonaparte. Was he a monster, driven on by an endless, ruinous quest for military adventure - or was he a social and political visionary, brought down by petty reactionaries clinging to their privileges?" "Charles Esdaile's major new work reframes our understanding of Napoleon. Napoleon's Wars looks beyond the insatiable greed for glory to create a new, genuinely international context for Napoleon's career. What was it that made the countries of Europe fight each other, for so long and with such devastating results? The battles themselves Esdaile sees as almost side-effects, the consequences of rulers being willing to take the immense risks of fighting or supporting Napoleon - risks that could result in the extinction of entire countries and regimes." "These events ultimately reached into almost every part of the continent, and Esdaile, while giving due weight to the titanic struggle in the central European heartland, Russia and Spain, is as interesting and surprising on the less well-known aspects of the wars, from the Balkans to the Baltic." "Napoleon's Wars will be as fascinating for those steeped in the subject as for those coming to it for the first time. It makes these astonishing events vivid and disturbing once more."--BOOK JACKET.

Subjects

Other Editions

• Napoleon's wars: an international history, 1803-1815Allen Lane2007-01-01
• Napoleon's warsAllen Lane2007-01-01
• Napoleon's warsAllen Lane2007-01-01
• Napoleon's Wars (Allen Lane History)HardcoverAllen Lane2007-10-25
• Napoleon's WarsElectronic resourcePenguin Group UK2008-01-01