Articles : 1400
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ArticleBook selection Summer 2007
Military BELL David A., The First Total War: Napoleon's Europe and the Birth of Warfare as We Know ItBOERI Giancarlo, ILARI Virgilio, CROCIANI Pietro, (eds) Storia Militare del Regno Murattiano, 1806-1815BUTTERY David, Wellington Against Massena: The Third Invasion of Portugal 1810-1811HOWARD Michael, PARET Peter, CLAUSEWITZ Carl von, HEUSER Beatrice, On WarLLOYD Clive, A History of […]
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ArticleNapoleonic Pages: The Life of Napoleon Buonaparte, Emperor of the French. With a Preliminary View of the French Revolution. By the Author of "Waverley", &c., de Walter Scott
Of all the “historical” biographies of Napoleon, the one most often forgotten but one which played an important part in the creation of the Napoleonic legend was Sir Walter Scott's nine-volume 'Life of Napoleon Buonaparte'. After his success as a writer of fiction (who can forget Ivanhoe or Quentin Durward, not to mention Waverley, Rob Roy […]
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ArticleFrom Eylau to Friedland
After the drama at Eylau, the exhausted adversaries were driven to seek their winter quarters.In March, Bennigsen and Lestocq attempted an attack but on its failure, let it drop.At the end of May, Danzig capitulated. Napoleon then decided to go back on the offensive in the last days of June but Bennigsen once again acts […]
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ArticleFRIEDLAND or the consecration of Marshal VictorOn 10 June, 1807, Victor replaced the twice-wounded Bernadotte at the head of the 1st corps. Bernadotte’s poor health was thus responsible for Victor chance for glory.
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ArticleFrom Eylau to Friedland, or what happened to the "Fourth Coalition"
After the battle of Eylau, Napoleon was faced with two imperatives: one, to take his army into the safety of winter-quarters and to rebuild the health and confidence of the army after the difficult encounter in the snow of February 1807; and two, to protect the army's supply lines and situation so far from France […]
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ArticleDakar, a French town in May 1857
At the mid point in the 19th century, French occupation in Senegal was reduced to a few trading posts, for which fees had to be paid to local chiefs. There were two strategically important points controlling the coastline of Senega, Saint-Louis and the island of Gorea, discovered by the Portuguese in the 15th century, taken […]
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ArticleThe Pleyel Piano Factory
As a renowned composer and player, not to mention music publisher, Ignaz Pleyel took the next logical step in cornering the market in the music business, in 1807, by entering the piano building industry. With composers such as Beethoven pushing contemporary pianos technical capacities to the limit, Pleyel thought it the right time to produce […]
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ArticleNapoleonic Pages: Marchand’s memoirs
Louis Marchand entered service in the Imperial Household in 1811 as garçon d'appartement (house servant), subsequently becoming Premier valet de chambre (First Valet of the Emperor's Chamber). He followed Napoleon to Elba and then St Helena, becoming one of the key figures in creation of the legend around the fallen emperor. Marchand returned to France […]
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ArticleNapoleon and his court
The coup d'état of 18 Brumaire was a watershed. ‘The Revolution is ended' trumpeted proudly the proclamation accompanying the great Constitution of An VIII, which was to form the bedrock of the new regime right up to 1814. Whilst much ink has been spilt on the question as to whether the Revolution did in fact […]
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ArticleNapoleonic pages : Les origines de la légende napoléonienne: l’œuvre historique de Napoléon à Sainte-Hélène (English title: The exile of St Helena: the last phase in fact and fiction) by Philippe Gonnard (Paris, 1906)
This book found its origin in the author's PhD thesis and was to remain a work of reference, both in positive and negative terms, for all those studying the Napoleon myth and Napoleonic historiography. Philippe Gonnard took a single starting point: namely that the Napoleonic legend, broadly speaking the interpretation of the events as propagated by […]