Napoleon's 1807 campaign against the Russians came close to being his first defeat. At Eylau the Emperor was outnumbered by the army of the Russian commander Bennigsen, yet he accepted battle. His reputation was saved by the flamboyant Murat, who led one of the greatest cavalry charges in history. Christopher Summerville's gripping account of this bitterly fought clash and of Napoleon's subsequent triumph at Friedland is the first extensive study of the campaign to be published for a century. The story is told in the concise, clear Campaign Chronicles format which records the action in vivid detail, day by day, hour by hour. Included are full orders of battle showing the chain of command and the fighting capabilities of the opposing armies.

The Polish partisan army, the largest in Europe, fought with extraordinary tenacity against the Wehrmacht during the Warsaw Uprising. This was the most famous manifestation of organized, large-scale, armed resistance to Hitler's rule. Yet the wider story of the Polish underground movement, which fought the Nazi and Soviet occupying powers, has rarely been told. As David Williamson demonstrates in this concise and authoritative new study, a reassessment of the actions, the impact and the legacy of Polish resistance is long overdue. He tells a fascinating, often tragic story. The resistance movement sprang up rapidly after the shock of defeat of 1939, and the network grew and adapted as the war progressed. It took many forms – propaganda, spying, assassination, disruption, sabotage and guerrilla warfare. Many different groups – some with conflicting aims and loyalties - were involved. There were isolated partisan bands, the Jewish resistance which fought defiantly against deportation to the death camps, and the Home Army which confronted the Germans in Warsaw with such disastrous consequences in 1944. The scale and intensity of the resistance movement, which was fighting against overwhelming odds, were quite remarkable. David Williamson's graphic account goes beyond the formal end of the Second World War, for Poland remained in a state of flux as a clandestine civil war was waged between the Communists and former members of the Home Army until the Communist regime took power in 1947. His study offers an absorbing insight into the plight of Poland during the war and into its immediate post-war history.

An in-depth history of the attack that began World War II, and one country’s courageous fight against two unstoppable forces. Hitler’s military offensive against Poland on September 1, 1939 was the brutal act that triggered the start of World War II, wreaking six years of death and bloodshed around the world. But the campaign is often overshadowed by the momentous struggle that followed across the rest of Europe. In this thought-provoking study, each stage of the battle is reconstructed in graphic detail. The author examines the precarious situation Poland was in, caught between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. He also reconsiders the pre-war policies of the other European powers—particularly France and Britain—and assesses the evolving scenario in a vivid, fast-moving narrative. Included throughout are first-hand accounts of soldiers and civilians who were caught up in the war as well as the Polish capitulation and its tragic aftermath.

In Napoleon and the Operational Art of War, the leading scholars of Napoleonic military history provide the most authoritative analysis of Napoleon’s battlefield success and ultimate failure in a work that features the very best of campaign military history.

After his crushing defeat of Prussia in 1806, Napoleon marched into Poland to forestall any Russian attempts to come to the aid of their ally. There then followed the bloody battle in a blizzard at Eylau on 8 February 1807, which decimated both armies. Operations resumed in the spring and on 14 June Napoleon wrecked the Russian field army at Friedland. Napoleon and Emperor Alexander met at Tiltsit, and French mastery of north-west Europe was confirmed.??This is the first book to bring together dozens of Russian letters, memoirs and diaries, with authors ranging from the commander-in-chief (Benningsen) to NCOs. We see the brutal conditions of the winter campaign at first hand, and gain fresh insight into the infamous Treaty of Tiltsit and the diplomatic manoeuvring that followed it.

The definitive biography of the great soldier-statesman by the New York Times bestselling author of The Storm of War—winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Biography and the Grand Prix of the Fondation Napoleon Austerlitz, Borodino, Waterloo: his battles are among the greatest in history, but Napoleon Bonaparte was far more than a military genius and astute leader of men. Like George Washington and his own hero Julius Caesar, he was one of the greatest soldier-statesmen of all times. Andrew Roberts’s Napoleon is the first one-volume biography to take advantage of the recent publication of Napoleon’s thirty-three thousand letters, which radically transform our understanding of his character and motivation. At last we see him as he was: protean multitasker, decisive, surprisingly willing to forgive his enemies and his errant wife Josephine. Like Churchill, he understood the strategic importance of telling his own story, and his memoirs, dictated from exile on St. Helena, became the single bestselling book of the nineteenth century. An award-winning historian, Roberts traveled to fifty-three of Napoleon’s sixty battle sites, discovered crucial new documents in archives, and even made the long trip by boat to St. Helena. He is as acute in his understanding of politics as he is of military history. Here at last is a biography worthy of its subject: magisterial, insightful, beautifully written, by one of our foremost historians.

This book provides a concise, accurate, and lively portrait of Napoleon Bonaparte's character and career, situating him firmly in historical context. David Bell emphasizes the astonishing sense of human possibility--for both good and ill--that Napoleon represented. By his late twenties, Napoleon was already one of the greatest generals in European history. At thirty, he had become absolute master of Europe's most powerful country. In his early forties, he ruled a European empire more powerful than any since Rome, fighting wars that changed the shape of the continent and brought death to millions. Then everything collapsed, leading him to spend his last years in miserable exile in the South Atlantic. Bell emphasizes the importance of the French Revolution in understanding Napoleon's career. The revolution made possible the unprecedented concentration of political authority that Napoleon accrued, and his success in mobilizing human and material resources. Without the political changes brought about by the revolution, Napoleon could not have fought his wars. Without the wars, he could not have seized and held onto power. Though his virtual dictatorship betrayed the ideals of liberty and equality, his life and career were revolutionary.

The full story of Napoleon’s legendary escape from Russia under seemingly impossible odds is recounted in this thrillingly vivid military history. In the winter of 1812, Napoleon's army retreated from Moscow under appalling conditions, hunted by three separate Russian armies. By late November, Napoleon had reached the banks of the River Berezina—the last natural obstacle between his army and the safety of the Polish frontier. But instead of finding the river frozen solid enough to march his men across, an unseasonable thaw had turned the Berezina into an icy torrent. Having already ordered the burning of his bridging equipment, Napoleon's predicament was serious enough: but with the army of Admiral Chichagov holding the opposite bank, and those of Kutusov and Wittgenstein closing fast, it was critical. In a gripping narrative that draws on contemporary sources—including letters, diaries and memoirs—Alexander Mikaberidze describes how Napoleon rose from the pit of despair to execute one of the greatest escapes in military history.

This easy-to-use reference explores the people and events that shaped Russian military history—and impacted Europe, Asia, and the world—over the past eight centuries. Russian military history is an often-overlooked field. Yet Russia is and has long been an important player in global politics, and its military exploits have been central to its role on the world stage. This study of Russia's military past provides insights into European and U.S. history, including the conduct of the two World Wars and the Cold War, and will help readers better appreciate the current geopolitical situation. This work covers major events and figures in Russian military history from the end of Mongol domination in the 14th century to the present day. More than 650 entries by scores of expert contributors detail events, individuals, organizations, and ideas that have influenced Russian warfare over 800 years. Two alphabetically arranged volumes explore such conflicts as the Russo-Polish Wars, the Great Northern War, the Russo-Turkish Wars, the Napoleonic Wars, the Crimean War, the Russo-Japanese War, World War I, World War II, and the Cold War, including the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Cross references and further readings in each entry serve as jumping-off points for further exploration.

In 1800, Europeans governed about one-third of the world's land surface; by the start of World War I in 1914, Europeans had imposed some form of political or economic ascendancy on over 80 percent of the globe. The basic structure of global and European politics in the twentieth century was fashioned in the previous century out of the clash of competing imperial interests and the effects, both beneficial and harmful, of the imperial powers on the societies they dominated. This encyclopedia offers current, detailed information on the major world powers and their global empires, as well as on the people, events, ideas, and movements, both European and non-European, that shaped the Age of Imperialism.