At a time when Napoleon needed all his forces to reassert French dominance in Central Europe, why did he fixate on the Prussian capital of Berlin? Instead of concentrating his forces for a decisive showdown with the enemy, he repeatedly detached large numbers of troops, under ineffective commanders, toward the capture of Berlin. In Napoleon and Berlin, Michael V. Leggiere explores Napoleon's almost obsessive desire to capture Berlin and how this strategy ultimately lost him all of Germany.

Napoleon's motives have remained a subject of controversy from his own day until...

From a recognized authority on the High Plains Indians wars comes this narrative history blending both American Indian and U.S. Army perspectives on the attack that destroyed the village of Northern Cheyenne chief Morning Star. Of momentous significance for the Cheyennes as well as the army, this November 1876 encounter, coming exactly six months to the day after the Custer debacle at the Little Bighorn, was part of the Powder River Expedition waged by Brigadier General George Crook against the Indians. Vital to the larger context of the Great Sioux War, the attack on Morning Star's...

The Upper South--Arkansas, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Virginia--was the scene of the most destructive war ever fought on American soil. Contending armies swept across the region from the outset of the Civil War until its end, marking their passage at Pea Ridge, Shiloh, Perryville, and Manassas. Alongside this much-studied conflict, the Confederacy also waged an irregular war, based on nineteenth-century principles of unconventional warfare. In The Uncivil War, Robert R. Mackey outlines the Southern strategy of waging war across an entire region, measures the Northern response, and...

Best known as the founder of a major religion, Muhammad was also Islam's first great general. While there have been numerous accounts of Muhammad the Prophet, this is the first military biography of the man.

In "Muhammad: Islam's First Great General," Richard A. Gabriel shows us a warrior never before seen in antiquity--a leader of an all-new religious movement who in a single decade fought eight major battles, led eighteen...

When the Second Boer War erupted in South Africa in 1899, Great Britain was confident that victory would come quickly and decisively. Instead, the war lasted for three grueling years. To achieve final victory, the British government was forced to depend not only on its Regular Army but also on a large volunteer force. This book spotlights Britain's "citizen army" to show who these volunteers were, why they enlisted, how they were trained--and how they quickly became disillusioned when they found themselves committed not to the supposed glories of conventional battle but instead to a...

A dedicated career soldier and excellent division and corps commander, Dominique Vandamme was a thorn in the side of practically every officer he served. Outspoken to a fault, he even criticized Napoleon, whom he never forgave for not appointing him marshal. His military prowess so impressed the emperor, however, that he returned Vandamme to command time and again.

In this first book-length study of Vandamme in English, John G. Gallaher traces the career of one of Napoleon s most successful midrank officers. He describes Vandamme s rise from a provincial youth with neither fortune nor...

"The Far Reaches of Empire" chronicles the half century of Anglo-American efforts to establish dominion in Nova Scotia, an important French foothold in the New World. John Grenier examines the conflict of cultures and peoples in the colonial Northeast through the lens of military history as he tells how Britons and Yankees waged a tremendously efficient counterinsurgency that ultimately crushed every remnant of Acadian, Indian, and French resistance in Nova Scotia.

The author demonstrates the importance of warfare in the Anglo-French competition for North America, showing especially how...

On November 27, 1868, the U.S. Seventh Cavalry under Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer attacked a Southern Cheyenne village along the Washita River in present-day western Oklahoma. The subsequent U.S. victory signaled the end of the Cheyennes' traditional way of life and resulted in the death of Black Kettle, their most prominent peace chief.

In this remarkably balanced history, Jerome A. Greene describes the causes, conduct, and consequences of the event even as he addresses the multiple controversies surrounding the conflict. As Greene explains, the engagement brought both praise and...