The French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars

All in all, with his latest book Black makes a highly significant and welcome contribution to the study of late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century war and of strategy in general. This book is a treat. Only someone with Black’s magisterial grasp of this period, the extraordinary breadth and depth of his knowledge and understanding of war, and his sharp antennae for historical connections could have attempted such a work. It is a book by a very clever fox, and it underlines, if underlining it needs, that history and strategy are best left to foxes. * The Critic *
Black’s The French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars will become a necessary read for any scholar who wants to examine Napoleonic strategy. Black successfully analyzes the complex strategic environment of this transformative period of European history while also offering a new explanation for the demise of Napoleon Bonaparte. * Journal of Military History *
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
A fresh take on the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, eschewing a grand, organizing narrative around dramatic, radical change or Napoleon’s alleged genius in favor 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
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
Jeremy Black has done it again! At last Napoleonic scholars and enthusiasts have a succinct yet comprehensive book that both incorporates and synthesizes worldwide national policies and strategies during the period. This work is a must-have for the Napoleonist as well as those involved in security studies. – Phillip Cuccia, US Army War College
Having written a work on strategy in the eighteenth century and a more general all-encompassing study on Military Strategy, a strategic study into the world wars at the end of the eighteenth, start of nineteenth centuries, seems an obvious corollary. But what Black has done with this excellent work is to look holistically at the strategies of all the leading belligerents from a global perspective and from the perspectives of national, international and military strategy today. In the end he draws the strings together and concludes that the political will that shapes national strategic context and conjecture is underpinned by national support… In terms of Grand Strategy of the period, and of military strategy through the period of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, this book is an essential addition. * Mars & Clio: The Bulletin of the British Commission for Military History *

Jeremy Black is professor emeritus of history at Exeter University. His recent books include The World at War and War and Its Causes.

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