Bøker av Charles Esdaile

Provides an introduction to the revolutionary and Napoleonic conflicts. This book discusses the expansion of France, the extent to which Napoleon was responsible for this success, and the events leading up to his subsequent exile. It also provides an examination of each of the coalitions which fought against France.

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. 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.

In the Napoleonic period warfare ceased to be a matter for armies alone, but also became an affair of the people. In Spain, Portugal, Italy, Germany and Russia outraged peasants and townsfolk rose against the French armies and fell upon them without mercy.

For centuries Spain had been the most feared and predatory power in Europe - it had the largest empire and one of the world's great navies to defend it. Nothing could have prepared the Spanish for the devastating implosion of 1805-14. Trafalgar destroyed its navy and the country degenerated into a brutalized shambles with French and British armies marching across it at will. The result was a war which killed over a million Spaniards and ended its empire.This book is the first in a generation to come to terms with this spectacular and terrible conflict, immortalised by Goya and the arena in which Wellington and his redcoats carved out one of the greatest episodes in British military history.