Britain Against Napoleon

Britain Against Napoleon PDF Author: Roger Knight
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0141977027
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 757

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Book Description
From Roger Knight, established by his multi-award winning book The Pursuit of Victory as 'an authority ... none of his rivals can match' (N.A.M. Rodger), Britain Against Napoleon is the first book to explain how the British state successfully organised itself to overcome Napoleon - and how very close it came to defeat. For more than twenty years after 1793, the French army was supreme in continental Europe, and the British population lived in fear of French invasion. How was it that despite multiple changes of government and the assassination of a Prime Minister, Britain survived and won a generation-long war against a regime which at its peak in 1807 commanded many times the resources and manpower? This book looks beyond the familiar exploits of the army and navy to the politicians and civil servants, and examines how they made it possible to continue the war at all. It shows the degree to which, as the demands of the war remorselessly grew, the whole British population had to play its part. The intelligence war was also central. Yet no participants were more important, Roger Knight argues, than the bankers and traders of the City of London, without whose financing the armies of Britain's allies could not have taken the field. The Duke of Wellington famously said that the battle which finally defeated Napoleon was 'the nearest run thing you ever saw in your life': this book shows how true that was for the Napoleonic War as a whole. Roger Knight was Deputy Director of the National Maritime Museum until 2000, and now teaches at the Greenwich Maritime Institute at the University of Greenwich. In 2005 he published, with Allen Lane/Penguin, The Pursuit of Victory: The Life and Achievement of Horatio Nelson, which won the Duke of Westminster's Medal for Military History, the Mountbatten Award and the Anderson Medal of the Society for Nautical Research. The present book is a culmination of his life-long interest in the workings of the late 18th-century British state.

Britain Against Napoleon

Britain Against Napoleon PDF Author: Roger Knight
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0141977027
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 757

Get Book Here

Book Description
From Roger Knight, established by his multi-award winning book The Pursuit of Victory as 'an authority ... none of his rivals can match' (N.A.M. Rodger), Britain Against Napoleon is the first book to explain how the British state successfully organised itself to overcome Napoleon - and how very close it came to defeat. For more than twenty years after 1793, the French army was supreme in continental Europe, and the British population lived in fear of French invasion. How was it that despite multiple changes of government and the assassination of a Prime Minister, Britain survived and won a generation-long war against a regime which at its peak in 1807 commanded many times the resources and manpower? This book looks beyond the familiar exploits of the army and navy to the politicians and civil servants, and examines how they made it possible to continue the war at all. It shows the degree to which, as the demands of the war remorselessly grew, the whole British population had to play its part. The intelligence war was also central. Yet no participants were more important, Roger Knight argues, than the bankers and traders of the City of London, without whose financing the armies of Britain's allies could not have taken the field. The Duke of Wellington famously said that the battle which finally defeated Napoleon was 'the nearest run thing you ever saw in your life': this book shows how true that was for the Napoleonic War as a whole. Roger Knight was Deputy Director of the National Maritime Museum until 2000, and now teaches at the Greenwich Maritime Institute at the University of Greenwich. In 2005 he published, with Allen Lane/Penguin, The Pursuit of Victory: The Life and Achievement of Horatio Nelson, which won the Duke of Westminster's Medal for Military History, the Mountbatten Award and the Anderson Medal of the Society for Nautical Research. The present book is a culmination of his life-long interest in the workings of the late 18th-century British state.

Tactics and the Experience of Battle in the Age of Napoleon

Tactics and the Experience of Battle in the Age of Napoleon PDF Author: Rory Muir
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300147686
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 502

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Book Description
This historical study of Napoleonic battles and tactics examines firsthand accounts from soldiers’ memoirs, diaries, and letters: “A major work” (David Seymour, Military Illustrated). In this illuminating volume, historian Rory Muir explores what actually happened in battle during the Napoleonic Wars, putting special focus on how the participants’ feelings and reactions influenced the outcome. Looking at the immediate dynamics of combat, Muir sheds new light on how Napoleon’s tactics worked. This analysis is enhanced with vivid accounts of those who were there—the frightened foot soldier, the general in command, the young cavalry officer whose boils made it impossible to ride, and the smartly dressed aide-de-camp, tripped up by his voluminous pantaloons. Muir considers the interaction of artillery, infantry, and cavalry; the role of the general, subordinate commanders, staff officers, and aides; morale, esprit de corps, soldiers’ attitudes toward death and feelings about the enemy; the plight of the wounded; the difficulty of surrendering; and the way victories were finally decided. He discusses the mechanics of musketry, artillery, and cavalry charges and shows how they influenced the morale, discipline, and resolution of the opposing armies. "Muir has filled an important gap in the study of the Napoleonic era."—Library Journal

Britain and the Defeat of Napoleon, 1807-1815

Britain and the Defeat of Napoleon, 1807-1815 PDF Author: Rory Muir
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780300064438
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 466

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Book Description
This account of the final years of Britain's long war against Revolutionary and Napoleonic France places the conflict in a new - and wholly modern - perspective. Rory Muir looks beyond the purely military aspects of the struggle to show how the entire British nation played a part in the victory. His book provides a total assessment of how politicians, the press, the crown, civilians, soldiers and commanders together defeated France. Beginning in 1807 when all of continental Europe was under Napoleon's control, the author traces the course of the war throughout the Spanish uprising of 1808, the campaigns of the Duke of Wellington and Sir John Moore in Portugal and Spain, and the crossing of the Pyrenees by the British army, to the invasion of southern France and the defeat of Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo. Muir sets Britain's military operations on the Iberian Peninsula within the context of the wider European conflict, and examines how diplomatic, financial, military and political considerations combined to shape policies and priorities. Just as political factors influenced strategic military decisions, Muir contends, fluctuations of the war affected British political decisions. The book is based on a comprehensive investigation of primary and secondary sources, and on a thorough examination of the vast archives left by the Duke of Wellington. Muir offers vivid new insights into the personalities of Canning, Castlereagh, Perceval, Lord Wellesley, Wellington and the Prince Regent, along with fresh information on the financial background of Britain's campaigns. This vigorous narrative account will appeal to general readers and military enthusiasts, as well as to students of early nineteenth-century British politics and military history.

Napoleon's Invasion of Russia

Napoleon's Invasion of Russia PDF Author: George Nafziger
Publisher: Presidio Press
ISBN: 0307538818
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 705

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Book Description
“An impressive source book on the conflict, high on information and data.”—Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research September 7, 1812, is by itself one of the most cataclysmic days in the history of war: 74,000 casualties at the Battle of Borodino. And this was well before the invention of weaspons of mass destruction like machine guns or breech-loading rifles. In this detailed study of one of the most fascinating military campaigns in history, George Nazfiger includes a clear exposition on the power structure in Europe at the time leading up to Napoleon’s fateful decision to attempt what turned out to be impossible: the conquest of Russia. Also featured are complete orders of battle and detailed descriptions of the opposing forces.

In These Times

In These Times PDF Author: Jenny Uglow
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
ISBN: 1466828226
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 524

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Book Description
A beautifully observed history of the British home front during the Napoleonic Wars by a celebrated historian We know the thrilling, terrible stories of the battles of the Napoleonic Wars—but what of those left behind? The people on a Norfolk farm, in a Yorkshire mill, a Welsh iron foundry, an Irish village, a London bank, a Scottish mountain? The aristocrats and paupers, old and young, butchers and bakers and candlestick makers—how did the war touch their lives? Jenny Uglow, the prizewinning author of The Lunar Men and Nature's Engraver, follows the gripping back-and-forth of the first global war but turns the news upside down, seeing how it reached the people. Illustrated by the satires of Gillray and Rowlandson and the paintings of Turner and Constable, and combining the familiar voices of Austen, Wordsworth, Scott, and Byron with others lost in the crowd, In These Times delves into the archives to tell the moving story of how people lived and loved and sang and wrote, struggling through hard times and opening new horizons that would change their country for a century.

The Napoleonic Wars

The Napoleonic Wars PDF Author: Alexander Mikaberidze
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199394067
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 977

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Book Description
Austerlitz, Wagram, Borodino, Trafalgar, Leipzig, Waterloo: these are the places most closely associated with the era of the Napoleonic Wars. But how did this period of nearly continuous conflict affect the world beyond Europe? The immensity of the fighting waged by France against England, Prussia, Austria, and Russia, and the immediate consequences of the tremors that spread throughout the world. In this ambitious and far-ranging work, Alexander Mikaberidze argues that the Napoleonic Wars can only be fully understood in an international perspective. France struggled for dominance not only on the plains of Europe but also in the Americas, West and South Africa, Ottoman Empire, Iran, India, Indonesia, the Philippines, Mediterranean Sea, and the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. Taking specific regions in turn, Mikaberidze discusses major political-military events around the world and situates geopolitical decision-making within its long- and short-term contexts. From the British expeditions to Argentina and South Africa to the Franco-Russian maneuvering in the Ottoman Empire, the effects of the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars would shape international affairs well into the next century. In Egypt, the wars led to the rise of Mehmed Ali and the emergence of a powerful state; in North America, the period transformed and enlarged the newly established United States; and in South America, the Spanish colonial empire witnessed the start of national-liberation movements that ultimately ended imperial control. Skillfully narrated and deeply researched, here at last is the global history of the period, one that expands our view of the Napoleonic Wars and their role in laying the foundations of the modern world.

Trafalgar

Trafalgar PDF Author: Nicholas Best
Publisher: Phoenix Press (CA)
ISBN: 9780753820957
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 362

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Book Description
An account of the most famous sea fight in history.

Narrative of Events During the Invasion of Russia by Napoleon Bonaparte and the Retreat of the French Army, 1812

Narrative of Events During the Invasion of Russia by Napoleon Bonaparte and the Retreat of the French Army, 1812 PDF Author: Sir Robert Thomas Wilson
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Napoleonic Wars, 1800-1815
Languages : en
Pages : 490

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Book Description


British Strategy in the Napoleonic War, 1803-15

British Strategy in the Napoleonic War, 1803-15 PDF Author: Christopher David Hall
Publisher: Manchester University Press
ISBN: 9780719036064
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
Collects together the best articles by key historians, literary critics, and anthropologists on the cultures of colonialism in the British Empire in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.. A substantial introduction by the distinguished historian, Professor Catherine Hall, discusses new approaches to the history of empire and establishes a narrative frame through which to read the essays which follow.. The volume is clearly divided into three sections: theoretical, emphasising concepts and approaches; the colonisers 'at home', focusing on how empire was lived in Britain; and 'away' - the attempt to construct new cultures through which the colonisers defined themselves and others in varied colonial sites. A useful guide to recent scholarship on the culture of imperialism.

The Napoleonic Wars: A Very Short Introduction

The Napoleonic Wars: A Very Short Introduction PDF Author: Mike Rapport
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191642517
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 168

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Book Description
The Napoleonic Wars have an important place in the history of Europe, leaving their mark on European and world societies in a variety of ways. In many European countries they provided the stimulus for radical social and political change - particularly in Spain, Germany, and Italy - and are frequently viewed in these places as the starting point of their modern histories. In this Very Short Introduction, Mike Rapport provides a brief outline of the wars, introducing the tactics, strategies, and weaponry of the time. Presented in three parts, he considers the origins and course of the wars, the ways and means in which it was fought, and the social and political legacy it has left to the world today. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.