Bøger om Napoleonic Empire

The Fifth Battalion lasted from 1797-1818 and served with distinction through the whole of the Peninsular War. Its troops were so effective that Sir Arthur Wellesley described them as the "most useful, active and brave troops in the field".

Subito dopo l'entrata di Napoleone in Italia, il 10 aprile 1796, le truppe francesi occuparono i territori sotto il dominio austriaco, ovvero il Ducato di Milano, i territori del Ducato di Modena e Reggio, e parte dello Stato della Chiesa, ossia Ferrara e Bologna. Con l'appoggio dei simpatizzanti italiani della rivoluzione (localmente chiamati "giacobini") sorsero quindi nella penisola, tra il 1796 e il 1799, una serie di Stati repubblicani sul modello francese: Repubblica di Alba, Repubblica Anconitana, Repubblica Bergamasca, Repubblica Bolognese, Repubblica Bresciana, Repubblica Cremasca, Repubblica Astese, Repubblica Piemontese, Repubblica Reggiana, Repubblica Tiberina e Repubblica Ligure.contro l'Austria. Molte di queste repubbliche l'anno successivo si unirono nella Repubblica Cisalpina con capitale Milano. Nacque proprio in questo ambito la bandiera tricolore italiana che prendeva ad esempio il tricolore rivoluzionario francese adottando i colori verde bianco e rosso. La repubblica diverrà poi il Regno Italico sempre gravitante nella sfera napoleonica.

Draws from historic publications, eyewitness accounts, military records and contemporary studies to trace the evolution of Prussia from its rise under Grand Elector Friedrich Wilhelm to the wars against Napoleon over 150 years later.

British regimental wives marched with the troops and endured all the hardships of campaigning from hunger and childbirth to sickness and capture. Often undisciplined and sometimes drunk, they were expert plunderers. They washed, cooked and helped their men, and in tending the wounded they were often heroines of the battlefield.

Discover the complex relationship between a legendary man and one of the most beautiful cities in the world. Paris shaped Napoleon as much as Napoleon transformed Paris. This souvenir catalogue chronicles the ways in which the city set the scene for his meteoric rise and fall, and gives a sense of how its inhabitants experienced the turning points of the era. Personal objects and furniture provide an intimate look at the luxury enjoyed by the Emperor and his inner circle, and place the savoir faire of Parisian artisans in the limelight. A wealth of paintings and architectural drawings allow us to catch glimpses of Napoleon's capital ? both as it was, and as it could have been.

One of The Christian Science Monitor's Ten Best Books of May"A highly original work of history . . . [Saltzman] has written a distinctive study that transcends both art and history and forces us to explore the connections between the two." -Roger Lowenstein, The Wall Street JournalA captivating study of Napoleon's plundering of Europe's art for the Louvre, told through the story of a Renaissance masterpiece seized from VeniceCynthia Saltzman's Plunder recounts the fate of Veronese's Wedding Feast at Cana, a vast, sublime canvas that the French, under the command of a young Napoleon Bonaparte, tore from a wall of the monastery of San Giorgio Maggiore, on an island in Venice, in 1797. Painted in 1563, the Renaissance picture had been immediately hailed as a masterpiece. Veronese had spread the scene across the end wall of the monastery's refectory and filled it with some 130 figures, lavishing color on the canvas to build the illusion that the biblical banquet was taking place on a terrace in sixteenth-century Venice. Once it was pulled from its frame, the canvas crossed the Mediterranean rolled on a cylinder, bound for Paris; soon after, artworks commandeered in Venice and Rome were triumphantly brought to the French capital. In 1801, the Veronese went on exhibition at the Louvre, the new public art museum founded during the Revolution, in the former palace of the French kings.As Saltzman tells the larger story of Napoleon's looting of Italian art and its role in the creation of the Louvre, she reveals defining traits of his character: his desire for greatness and his ruthlessness in getting whatever he sought. After Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo in 1815, the Duke of Wellington and the Allies forced the French to return many of the paintings and sculptures they had seized. Nevertheless, the French resisted sending The Wedding Feast at Cana back to Venice, and the painting remains in Paris to this day, hanging directly opposite the Mona Lisa.Expertly researched and deftly told, Plunder chronicles one of the most spectacular art-appropriation campaigns in history, shedding light on a seminal historical figure and the complex origins of one of the world's great museums.

Napoleon dominated nearly all of Europe by 1810, largely succeeding in his aim to reign over the civilized world. But Britain eluded him. To conquer the island nation, he needed Russia's Tsar Alexander's help. The Tsar refused, and Napoleon vowed to teach him a lesson by intimidation and force. The ensuing invasion of Russia, during the frigid winter of 1812, would mark the beginning of the end of Napoleon's empire. Although his army captured Moscow after a brutal march deep into hostile territory, it was a hollow victory for the demoralized troops. Napoleon's men were eventually turned back, and their defeat was a momentous turning point in world affairs. Dramatic, insightful, and enormously absorbing, Moscow 1812 is a masterful work of history.

This authoritative and enthralling book describes and analyzes Napoleon's most powerful weapon-the Grande Armee, which at its peak numbered over a million soldiers, and without which his military genius would have accomplished little. Elting examines every facet of this incredibly complex human machine: its organization, command system, logistics, weapons, tactics, discipline, recreation, mobile hospitals, camp followers, and more

In this “engrossing,” (The New Yorker) vivid, and intensively researched volume, esteemed Napoleon scholar David Chandler outlines the military strategy that led the famous French emperor to his greatest victories—and to his ultimate downfall.Napoleonic war was nothing if not complex—an ever-shifting kaleidoscope of moves and intentions, which by themselves went a long way towards baffling and dazing his conventionally minded opponents into that state of disconcerting moral disequilibrium which so often resulted in their catastrophic defeat. The Campaigns of Napoleon is a masterful analysis and insightful critique of Napoleon's art of war as he himself developed and perfected it in the major military campaigns of his career. Napoleon disavowed any suggestion that he worked from formula (“Je n'ai jamais eu un plan d'opérations”), but military historian David Chandler demonstrates this was at best only a half-truth. To be sure, every operation Napoleon conducted contained unique improvisatory features. But there were from the first to the last certain basic principles of strategic maneuver and battlefield planning that he almost invariably put into practice. To clarify these underlying methods, as well as the style of Napoleon's fabulous intellect, Chandler examines in detail each campaign mounted and personally conducted by Napoleon, analyzing the strategies employed, revealing wherever possible the probable sources of his subject's military ideas. “Writing clearly and vividly, [Chandler] turns dozens of persons besides Napoleon from mere wooden soldiers into three- dimensional characters” (The Boston Globe) and this definitive work is “a fine book for the historian, the student, and the intelligent reader” (The New York Review of Books).