Slander has always been a nasty business, Robert Darnton notes, but that is no reason to consider it a topic unworthy of inquiry. By destroying reputations, it has often helped to delegitimize regimes and bring down governments. Nowhere has this been more the case than in eighteenth-century France, [...]

An account of the reign and legacy of Napoleon covers his birth into poverty, rise to prominence after the French Revolution, military prowess, and twenty-year rule, during which he made significant changes in such areas as the social hierarchy, censorship, and culture. Reprint. 15,000 first printin[...]

Napoleon's Marshals led the troops of France in battles across Europe from 1804 to 1815. A mixed group of twenty-six men, some of the Marshals came from aristocratic backgrounds, some had originally pursued tradesmen careers as drapers and bakers, and others rose from total poverty to hold the highe[...]

Beginning with the earliest days of his meteoric rise to power at the turn of the nineteenth century and continuing into the post-soviet era, Napoleon Bonaparte has maintained a peculiar grip on Russian popular and literary imagination. Heralded as the Messiah, condemned as the Antichrist, and laude[...]

Napoleon's Hussars made their first real impact during the Napoleonic Wars in 1806, with their astonishing pursuit of the Prussians over 1,160km from the river Saale to the Oder in twenty-five days. They then capped this feat on arrival when, by dint of audacious demonstrations by the 500 men of the[...]

This title examines some of the most colourful and fanciful uniforms in military history, those of Napoleon's Guard Cavalry. The detailed text covers units such as the Grenadiers a Cheval; the Empress's Dragoons; the Chasseurs a Cheval; the Mamelukes; the Gardes d'Honneur; the Polish Lancers; the Du[...]

Reprinted due to popular demand, this classic biography traces Napoleon's career from his youthful days of Corsican nationalism; to the introduction to French warfare at Toulon, and his phenomenal rise to power through the military machine, when, at the age of thirty, he became the de facto ruler of[...]