The French Revolutionary Wars [Hardcover]

Gregory Fremont-Barnes (Author)

Book Description

Series: Essential Histories | Publication Date: November 1, 2001

Europe's great powers formed two powerful coalitions against France, yet force of numbers, superior leadership and the patriotic fervor of France's citizen-soldiers not only defeated each in turn, but closed the era of small, professional armies fighting for limited political objectives. This period produced commanders such as Napoleon and Nelson, whose names remain a by-word for excellence to this day. From Italy to Egypt Napoleon demonstrated his strategic genius and mastery of tactics in battles including Rivoli, the Pyramids and Marengo. Nelson's spectacular sea victories at the Nile and Copenhagen were foretastes of a century of British naval supremacy.

Editorial Reviews

Review

A very useful resource, especially, but by no means exclusively, in school and college libraries...these books offer very useful standardised accounts and are presented in very attractive and approachable volumes.
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From the Publisher

This unique series studies every major war in history looking at all the aspects of war, from how it felt to be a soldier to the lasting impact of the conflict on the world around it. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 96 pages
• Publisher: Routledge; New edition edition (November 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1579583652
• ISBN-13: 978-1579583651
• Product Dimensions: 9.8 x 6.9 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #6,979,064 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Starting Point, November 7, 2001

By 

Jeffrey Hayes (Annapolis MD) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The French Revolutionary Wars (Essential Histories) (Paperback)

I was pleasantly surprised by this volume in Osprey's Essential Histories series. In a scant one hundred pages the author does an excellent job of capturing the essential facts relating to these conflicts sprinkled with useful maps and chronologies as well as some superb representational pieces of period art. I enjoyed the two interesting sidebars, one on a British naval officer and another on Nelson's ladylove, Emma Hamilton. The short bibliography lists two of my favorites, Paddy Griffith's ART of WAR of REVOLUTIONARY FRANCE and T.C.W.Blanning's THE FRENCH REVOLUTIONARY WARS. Fremont-Barnes has done a very good job on supplying the interested reader an introduction to an extremely colorful and fascinating period.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good Overview, December 14, 2008

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Roo "Roo" (Whitestone, NY United States) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: The French Revolutionary Wars (Essential Histories) (Paperback)

This period is really extensively complicated by alot of fascinating events. A purely Military History view would still be 1000 pages, because the French Revolutionary Wars were just such a fascinating time, with so many campaigns, battles, skirmishes, sieges.
This book attempts to give it a concise shape, and does a good job a the operational level of untangling the web of campaigns. Its difficult to find, in English, good stuff about this war. On Napoleon, there is an avalanche of books, even on specific battles. But not so much about this period, besides the Italian campaigns of Napoleon that ended these wars.
At the operational, it gives a good account, however, it lacks just due to the space about what occurred at the unit level at each of the battles, since each battle was its own story within a story. The way a Civil War book would spend a few pages on Antietam, Bull Run, and 5 pages on Gettysburg alone. There are 3-4 fronts at any given moment in this period, and untangling them all is done in a pretty decent way. The reader has a solid picture of what had transpired before Napoleon enters the stage. From than on, well, most of you have probably read a good deal on Napoleon already.
For those who haven't gotten a Napoleonic military history background, the Smithsonian History of War - Napoleonic Wars is a great starting point. Too bad it skips everything before Napoleon's Italian Campaign, which is why I own this book. This series also has a very good 7 years war and Spanish Succession books about the wars of Frederick the Great.

4.0 out of 5 stars Good, succinct introduction to the topic, February 10, 2010

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Yoda (Hadera, Israel) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The French Revolutionary Wars (Essential Histories) (Paperback)

This book provides a good introduction to its topic for those with only about 2 hours to invest in reading its 96 page length. The book starts out by providing the geopolitical balance of power prevailing before the wars and a description of the militaries of each of Europe's major combatants. Then it goes into how the wars played out covering not only military campaigns but how the militaries themselves evolved during the course of the war, the role of ideologies and the after effects of the war. All and all a very good introduction.