How Far From Austerlitz?: Napoleon 1805-1815 [Paperback]

Alistair Horne (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 15, 1998

A London Sunday Times Book of the Year
A Daily Telegraph Book of the Year

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

In How Far from Austerlitz? accomplished military historian Alistair Horne covers the pivotal decade of Napoleon's career. Starting with the victories at Ulm and Austerlitz and concluding with the defeat at Waterloo, Horne treats his subject like the hero of a Greek tragedy, full of the hubris that ultimately will cause his downfall. He shows, for instance, that once the conquering begins, it can rarely stop. One victory demands a second to protect the gains of the first, and so on. Before long, resources are spread thin and the empire topples. That's essentially what happened to Napoleon, and Horne tells the tale well. In addition, he draws interesting parallels between the French emperor and Hitler: both were more or less confined to the European continent by British naval power, both launched a doomed invasion of Russia, and both had an fatal thirst for conquest. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

"The new volume shows Mr. Horne doing what he does best: writing lively, interesting, anecdote-enriched, and scholarly popular history. How Far from Austerlitz? is what popular history should be, fascinating and edifying, a rattling yet also sobering good story."--The New York Times

"An engrossing work by a master historian."--William F. Buckley, Jr., The National Review

"Concise and vivid...Mr. Horne's skill as a writer keeps the story fresh and intriguing."--The Washington Times

"A delight."--The Los Angeles Times

"Few military historians have given me more enjoyment than Alistair Horne; his newest book does not disappoint."--The Military History Quarterly (Editor's Choice)

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Product Details

• Paperback: 464 pages
• Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin (July 15, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312187246
• ISBN-13: 978-0312187248
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.2 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (23 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #571,164 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A starter full of anecdotes, August 3, 2001

By 

Richard P Marsden (Scottsdale, Arizona United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: How Far from Austerlitz?: Napoleon 1805-1815 (Hardcover)

For someone just starting out in a study of the Napoleonic Era, "How Far From Austerlitz?" is an amazingly easy and engaging book to read. There are no endless statistics, no long percise accounts of how much powder a 12 pounder cannon used, no long commentaries on this Marshal or that. Instead the book is a quick run through Napoleon's career. The book opens many doors for the reader, which will lead to further study. It is not intended to be the "End all be all" tome concerning Napoleon. It is an introduction to the era an nothing more. What makes this book better than other introductionary works about Napoleon is Horne's anecdotes. The book is filled with interesting anecdotes, stories, and facts which are far more memorable than the weight in kilograms of a French Officer's kit. In turn, Horne's anecdotes makes the book memorable if not very detailed or in depth. Furthermore Horne's personal opinions about Napoleon and his corrolations with contemporary times, such as World War Two, made the book much more lively. It does not matter what one thinks about his opinions, the fact his book has opinions makes it more intriguing than other more statistical, but lifeless works.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Popular History of the Fall of Napoleon, September 16, 2006

By 

D. S. Thurlow (Alaska) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: How Far From Austerlitz?: Napoleon 1805-1815 (Paperback)

Alistair Horne's "How Far From Austerlitz" traces the career of Napoleon from the apogee of his glory as victor of the battle of Austerlitz in 1805 to his final defeat and exile to St. Helena in 1815. Horne, a marvellously gifted writer and practiced popular historian, provides a highly readable account accessible to the general reader and the historical buff alike.

Horne opens with a quick review of Napoleon's dramatic rise to power and to the circumstances that led him and the Grande Armee to Austerlitz in 1805. The account of the battle itself reveals Napoleon at the peak of his powers as a political leader and general; the aftermath makes clear his failings as a diplomat and strategic thinker.

The ten years between Austerlitz and Waterloo would be marked by increasingly costly and less decisive battles and by an inability to orchestrate a general peace in Europe. Napoleon, as portrayed by Horne, is his own worst enemy in this endeavor. Repeated success in battle feeds a growing meglomania that makes him incapable of the kind of "soft" peace that might have been available to him. Napoleon will overreach himself in Spain, and more dramatically, in Russia, ultimately depriving himself of the forces necessary to defeat the coalitions he called into being by his invasions.

Horne's narrative is enourmously readable; Napoleon's fall is presented as the Greek tragedy of a gifted leader undone by his pride. Horne has the good journalist's sense for place and for people. The book is punctuated with thumbnail sketches of the various personalities who played key parts in the drama of 1805-1815, including Napoleon's marshals, his family, the other crowned heads of Europe, and his various military opponents.

This book is highly recommended to the general reader with an interest in Napoleon and his era.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars How far from Austerlitz: a victory in prose, September 20, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: How Far from Austerlitz?: Napoleon 1805-1815 (Hardcover)

If you want an entertaining experience of Napoleon, then read Alastair Horne's book. Informative and intruiging, it covers military, psychological, and personal matters of Napoleon and France smoothly, and normally in just the right amount of detail. Special attention is paid to the battle of Austerlitz itself. This, it must be said, is odd, considering that the issue the book pursues is essentially the corrupting influence of power, not a comparison of troop deployment between Austerlitz and, say, Borodino. The book has a momentum, a force of its own in which I was carried along, arresting only at Napoleon's second journey into exile. Thus the book was certainly never tedious, and was indeed exciting. Thus I believe the slight loosening of Horne's hold on the matter of inter-state and internal power relationships is made up for by his literary skill.