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The Napoleonic Wars

Gunther Rothenberg

When darkness fell on 2 December 1805, the battle of Austerlitz drew to a close. From his command post Emperor Napoleon watched the rout of the Austrian and Russian troops south of the Pratzen Heights. Further north, the sounds of combat were fading as a Russian corps disengaged. The enemy army had ceased to exist as an effective force and the will of his opponents to continue the war had been destroyed.

Austerlitz, often described as Napoleon's greatest victory, epitomizes Napoleonic warfare: mobile, offensive and totally ruthless. This highly illustrated book, written by a leading authority, narrates the rise, astonishing success and eventual downfall of Napoleon, whose genius changed the face of warfare for ever. Gunther Rothenberg covers the complete history of the Napoleonic Wars, from their origins in the French Revolution and the Italian Campaign through to Napoleon's final defeat in 1815.

Before the French Revolution wars were often pursued with limited means and objectives, but the Revolution showed how armies could be used to achieve greater goals. Napoleon went on to transform warfare into a system of conquest on a scale not seen since the Roman Empire.

In Italy in 1797 he defeated the Habsburg armies against all the odds and changed the balance of power in Europe.

In 1805, over the course of three extraordinary months, he ruthlessly projected his army from the English Channel into the heart of central Europe, destroying the Austrian and Russian armies. By the end of 1809 he dominated from the Pyrenees to the Russian border.

But not even Napoleon's genius could maintain such success indefinitely. Wellington, the British Army and Spanish guerrillas in the Iberian Peninsular kept Spain and Portugal beyond his reach. But it was the March on Moscow in 1812, and the subsequent destruction of the Grande Armee, that led to France's defeat in 1814. Napoleon's escape from exile and the astonishing events leading to the climax of Waterloo finally ended this extraordinary career.

This book is amply illustrated with colour representations of battlefields, maps of the theatres and of the commanders and armies.