The French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars

A fresh take on the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, eschewing a grand, organizing narrative around dramatic, radical change or Napoleon's alleged genius in favour of considering the nature, goals, course, and contemporary verdicts of the belligerents' strategies and how these influenced subsequent strategic thinking.--Peter H. Wilson, University of Oxford It takes a scholar of Jeremy Black's extraordinary width of knowledge to be able to place these titanic wars in their global contexts, drawing in places as far afield from their European cockpit as the United States, India, and the West Indies. Yet it also takes someone with his equally remarkable depth of knowledge to be able to drill down into the objectives, priorities, and capacities of all the major and minor players and the way these interacted with each other. No one will be able to write about the grand strategy of France and her opponents during this vital quarter of a century in history without reference to this book. Furthermore, the prose bears the reader along effortlessly.--Andrew Roberts, author of Napoleon the Great Though a master of battlefield tactics, Napoleon was no strategist as Jeremy Black shows in this critical reassessment of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. In a book that is notable for its crisp prose and clear judgment, Black argues that Napoleon failed to build diplomatic alliances or to understand the value of compromise, losing sight of strategic objectives in pursuit of success in a decisive battle. What possible strategy, he asks, can explain the invasion of Russia in 1812 or the last desperate campaigns of the Hundred Days?--Alan Forrest, University of York