A critical introduction to the revolutionary and Napoleonic conflicts. The book illuminates the less well-known areas of the subject, such as the changing atttitude of the French people towards Napoleon, as well as providing a balanced account of the campaigns of Wellington and Napoleon. Based on contemporary historiography, this book discusses the expansion of France, the extent to which Napoleon was responsible for this success, and the events leading up to his subsequent exile. It also provides a clear examination of each of the coalitions which fought against France.

This book is the first single volume history of modern Spain to appear in over 30 years. It describes Spain's emergence in the nineteenth century as the first modern post-imperial power and examines the vast social and economic changes which Spain witnessed during this period. In lucid and accessible prose, the author provides a gripping account of 131 years of politics, warfare and social conflict.

Charles Esdaile places particular emphasis on crucial periods in the history of modern Spain. He shows how nineteenth century Spain was in many ways shaped by the Peninsular War of...

In the Napoleonic period warfare ceased to be a matter for armies alone, but also became an affair of the people. So, at least, runs the usual claim. In Spain, Portugal, Italy, Germany and Russia outraged peasants and townsfolk rose against the French armies and fell upon them without mercy. From these insurrections we get the modern word 'guerrilla', but did armed civilians really play an important a role in the struggle? In this collection of essays a group of specialists on the Napoleonic epoch tease out the question, and arrive at some startling conclusions.

For centuries Spain had been the most feared and predatory power in Europe - it had one of the world's great navies to defend it. Trafalgar destroyed its navy and 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 presents this terrible conflict.

Napoleon s forces invaded Spain in 1808, but two years went by before they overran the southern region of Andalucia. Situated at the farthest frontier of Napoleon s outer empire, Andalucia remained under French control only briefly for two-and-a-half years and never experienced the normal functions of French rule. In this groundbreaking examination of the Peninsular War, Charles J. Esdaile moves beyond traditional military history to examine the French occupation of Andalucia and the origins and results of the region s complex and chaotic response.
Disillusioned by the Spanish provisional...

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 Agustina-like heroines, a multitude became victims, and here both of these groups receive their due. But...

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 explores in this erudite and absorbing study.

Drawing on the vivid, revealing material that is...