Napoleon: A Biography

commander to show outward deference to Venetian authority but keep real control in his own hands. Once again he showed himself t ...

Pauline's charms. Letizia also detested Josephine, but her ill-feelings were assuaged with the prospect of a triumph she enjoyed ...

CHAPTER EIGHT Napoleon's Italian campaign of 1796--- 97 has always provoked military historians to superlatives. His contemporar ...

Gribeauval's new artillery was at the technological forefront until r825, but the Revolution provided a new fillip after Valmy i ...

thought artillery was the key to winning battles. Although an expert marksman could get off five shots a minute, the average was ...

cavalry screens played into Napoleon's hands and proved useless against the combination of massed artillery and highly-trained s ...

advancement had already been choked off, but it still had meaning during the Directory. However, there was considerable irony in ...

Yet the brilliance of Napoleon lay in his understanding of human psychology. He realized that at root human beings are driven by ...

Each corps became in ef fect a miniature army, each with its own cavalry and artillery arm, and each capable of operating indepe ...

frontal attack at the 'hinge' of the enemy's weakened front so as to cut his army in two. This aspect of military tactics appeal ...

was always a second best to the golden dream of Cannae-style envelopment. From the Italian campaign evolved certain military pri ...

get into any head except that of a ge nius. Accident, hazard, chance, call it what you may, a mystery to ordinary minds, becomes ...

and work out how an enemy was likely to deploy on the ground. He particularly liked manoeuvring an opponent on to ground where g ...

stretched too far to explain the Bonapartist triumph. Napoleon's willpower should not be discounted as a factor in his success: ...

confiscated mines shows how the Bonapartist system worked. Napoleon himself received a million francs and his henchmen in the af ...

his wife's money, though everyone knew the Clarys did not have money on that scale. The rest of the Bonapartes received substant ...

presided over the creation of a Cispadane republic, incorporating Modena, Ferrara, Reggio and Bologna, to be confirmed by an ele ...

French one, complete with five Directors and a bicameral legislature of Ancients and Juniors. The murder of pro-French democrats ...

openly intrigued for a royalist restoration. In Paris signs of rightist reaction were palpable: churches were reopening, the tri ...

come within an ace of success, and was thwarted only by storms; Spain went over to the French side in the same year, causing the ...