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.

Great Military Leaders - A Bibliography with Vignettes

The long war with Revolutionary France had a fundamental impact on British political culture. The most dramatic example of this is the mass mobilisation of the British people in response to French invasion threats throughout the last years of the century but, most spectacularly, in the period 1803-5, after the collapse of the Peace of Amiens, and the massing of an invasion fleet by Napoleon. The preparations for the threatened invasion had many dimensions including military and naval mobilization, the development of defensive earthworks and fortifications on the British Coast, the surveillance and monitoring of radicals identified with the French cause, the incitement of loyalist sentiment through caricature, newspapers, tracts and broadsides, and loyalist songs, and the construction of Napoleon as the prime enemy of British interests. Although aspects of these issues have been studied, this book is the first time that they have been brought together systematically. By bringing together historians of Britain and France to examine the dynamics of the military conflict between the two nations in this period, this book measures its impact on their domestic political cultures, and its effect on their perceptions of each other. In so doing it will encourage scholars to further examine aspects of popular mobilisation which have hitherto been largely ignored, such as the resurgence of loyalism in 1803, and to see their contributions in the light of the dual contexts of domestic political conflict and their war with each other. By allowing scholars to focus their attention on this period of heightened tension, the book contributes both new detail to our understanding of the period and a better overall understanding of the complex place which each nation came to occupy in the consciousness of the other.

"This is interdisciplinary scholarship at its best."--Frank Paul Bowman "Nothing less than a total rewriting of the grand history of French painting . . . from a series of fascinating new angles."--Robert Rosenblum, New York University "This is interdisciplinary scholarship at its best."--Frank Paul Bowman

Ian Haywood explores the 'Golden Age' of caricature through the close reading of key, iconic prints by artists including James Gillray, George and Robert Cruikshank, and Thomas Rowlandson. This approach both illuminates the visual and ideological complexity of graphic satire and demonstrates how this art form transformed Romantic-era politics into a unique and compelling spectacle of corruption, monstrosity and resistance. New light is cast on major Romantic controversies including the 'revolution debate' of the 1790s, the impact of Thomas Paine's 'infidel' Age of Reason, the introduction of paper money and the resulting explosion of executions for forgery, the propaganda campaign against Napoleon, the revolution in Spain, the Peterloo massacre, the Queen Caroline scandal, and the Reform Bill crisis. Overall, the volume offers important new insights into the relationship between art, satire and politics in a key period of history.

From Alan Forrest, a preeminent British scholar, comes an exceedingly readable account of the man and his legend On a cold December day in 1840 Parisians turned out in force to watch as the body of Napoleon was solemnly carried on a riverboat from Courbevoie on its final journey to the Invalides. The return of their long-dead emperor's corpse from the island of St. Helena was a moment that Paris had eagerly awaited, though many feared that the memories stirred would serve to further destabilize a country that had struggled for order and direction since he had been sent into exile. In this book Alan Forrest tells the remarkable story of how the son of a Corsican attorney became the most powerful man in Europe, a man whose charisma and legacy endured after his lonely death many thousands of miles from the country whose fate had become so entwined with his own. Along the way, Forrest also cuts away the many layers of myth and counter myth that have grown up around Napoleon, a man who mixed history and legend promiscuously. Drawing on original research and his own distinguished background in French history, Forrest demonstrates that Napoleon was as much a product of his times as their creator.