For centuries Spain had been the most feared and predatory power in Europe - it had the largest empire and one of the world's great navies to defend it. Nothing could have prepared the Spanish for the devastating implosion of 1805-14. Trafalgar destroyed its navy and the country degenerated into a brutalized shambles with French and British armies marching across it at will. The result was a war which killed over a million Spaniards and ended its empire.This book is the first in a g...

So great is the weight of reading on the subject of the Waterloo campaign that it might be thought there is nothing left to say about it, and from the military viewpoint, this is very much the case. But one critical aspect of the story has gone all but untold the French home front. Little has been written about the topic in English, and few works on Napoleon or Revolutionary and Napoleonic France pay it much attention. It is this conspicuous gap in the literature that Charles Esdaile explo...

No military figure in history has been quite as polarizing as Napoleon Bonaparte. Was he a monster, driven by an endless, ruinous quest for military glory? Or a social and political visionary brought down by petty, reactionary kings of Europe?In the most definitive account to date, respected historian Charles Esdaile argues that the chief motivating factor for Napoleon was his insatiable desire for fame. More than a myth-busting portrait of Napoleon, however, this volume offers a p...

Many books have been written about the British struggle against Napoleon in the Peninsula. A few recent studies have given a broader view of the ebb and flow of a long war that had a shattering impact on Spain and Portugal and marked the history of all the nations involved. But none of these books has concentrated on how these momentous events were perceived and understood by the people who experienced them. Charles Esdaile has brought together a vivid selection of contemporary accounts of...

The Wars of the French Revolution, 1792–1801 offers a comprehensive and jargon-free coverage of this turbulent period and unites political, social, military and international history in one volume.Carefully designed for undergraduate students, through twelve chapters this book offers an introduction to the origins and international context of the French Revolution as well as an in-depth examination of the reasons why war began. Aspects unpicked within the book include how ...

How Cavaliers and Roundheads in English ghost stories reflect historical trauma, integrating detailed regional history of the 1642-1651 conflicts. Cavaliers and Roundheads are figures who appear in hundreds of English ghost stories. In this innovative account, Charles Esdaile argues that such tales are in reality folk memories of an episode of English history that was second only to the Black Death in terms of individual and collective suffering alike, and, further, that they reveal import...

First published in 1995 to great critical acclaim, The Wars of Napoleon provides students with a comprehensive survey of the Napoleonic Wars around the central theme of the scale of French military power and its impact on other European states, from Portugal to Russia and from Scandinavia to Sicily.The book introduces the reader to the rise of Napoleon and the wider diplomatic and political context before analysing such subjects as how France came to dominate Europe; the i...

In the iconography of the Peninsular War of 1808–14, women are well represented—both as heroines, such as Agustina Zaragosa Domenech, and as victims, whether of starvation or of French brutality. In history, however, with its focus on high politics and military operations, they are invisible—a situation that Charles J. Esdaile seeks to address.In Women in the Peninsular War, Esdaile looks beyond the iconography. While a handful of Spanish and Portuguese women became Agusti...

Tour the Belgian battleground where Napoleon was defeated—with historical background, maps, archival images, and more.In this book, the acclaimed author of Napoleon's Wars provides a new guide to the Battle of Waterloo that presents the experience of the soldiers who took part in the battle in the most graphic and direct way possible—through their own words. In a series of walks, he describes in vivid detail what happened in each location on June 18, 1815 ...

The Spanish Civil War continues to attract attention as a brutal political and military struggle which foreshadowed the wider war across Europe that followed, and it has given rise to myths that have become commonplace since the war ended eighty years ago. Few of these myths are as potent as those associated with the International Brigades, the 45,000 volunteers from many countries who traveled to Spain to fight for the Second Republic. That is why this perceptive and original study by Cha...

The Spanish Civil War: A Military History takes a new, military approach to the conflict that tore Spain apart from 1936 to 1939.In many histories, the war has been treated as a primarily political event with the military narrative subsumed into a much broader picture of the Spain of 1936–9 in which the chief themes are revolution and counter-revolution. While remaining conscious of the politics of the struggle, this book looks at the war as above all a military event, and as one i...

Ensign Charles Paget’s previously unpublished diary of the Peninsular War is an important discovery for two reasons. The regiment in which he served – the 52nd Foot – was one of the three most famous in the Duke of Wellington’s army, yet it is covered sparsely in the spate of memoirs, diaries and collections of correspondence generated by the conflict. It is also the only genuine diary covering the Battle of Vimeiro and the campaign of Sir John Moore.The complete text of Paget’s diary is r...