The Cambridge History of the Napoleonic Wars – serie

The Cambridge History of the Napoleonic Wars is a definitive history of the Napoleonic Wars drawing on a wealth of modern scholarship and leading expertise in the field. It offers a comprehensive account of the Wars from their origins in eighteenth-century diplomacy to the memory and political legacy they left behind. The three volumes cover the grand strategies of the combatants, the campaigns they fought, and the composition of the forces at their disposal; they analyse their conflicting ideologies, alliances and diplomacy, and the varieties of resistance and occupation; and they assess their legacy for future generations. They challenge conventional assumptions about the nature of war in the period and apply methodologies derived from social and cultural history as well as from the new military history of recent years. These volumes take full account of the latest research and present a history of the Napoleonic Wars for the twenty-first century.

The Napoleonic Wars saw almost two decades of brutal fighting. Fighting took place on an unprecedented scale, from the frozen wastelands of Russia to the rugged mountains of the Peninsula; from Egypt's Lower Nile to the bloody battlefield of New Orleans. Volume II of The Cambridge History of the Napoleonic Wars provides a comprehensive guide to the Napoleonic Wars and weaves together the four strands - military, naval, economic, and diplomatic - that intertwined to make up one of the greatest conflicts in history. Written by a team of the leading Napoleonic scholars, this volume provides an authoritative and comprehensive analysis of why the nations went to war, the challenges they faced and how the wars were funded and sustained. It sheds new light not only on the key battles and campaigns but also on questions of leadership, strategy, tactics, guerrilla warfare, recruitment, supply, and weaponry.

Volume III of the Cambridge History of the Napoleonic Wars moves away from the battlefield to explore broader questions of society and culture. Leading scholars from around the globe show how the conflict left its mark on virtually every aspect of society. They reflect on the experience of the soldiers who fought in them, examining such matters as military morale, ideas of honour and masculinity, the treatment of wounds and the fate of prisoners-of-war; and they explore social issues such as the role of civilians, women's experience, trans-border encounters and the roots of armed resistance. They also demonstrates how the experience of war was inextricably linked to empire and the wider world. Individual chapters discuss the depiction of the Wars in literature and the arts and their lasting impact on European culture. The volume concludes by examining the memory of the Wars and their legacy for the nineteenth-century world.