Customer Reviews

Napoleon In The Holy Land-Hardbound

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Anyone interested in the Napoleonic period would know for starters that this book covers a campaign given scant attention elsewhere. What came as a pleasant surprise to me was that this is also one of the most enjoyable of books written on any of Napoleon's campaigns. Its a very fast read, has good maps, and gets right to the action. Clear, concise, and impartial is Schur's style. The book has a useful appendix of eyewitness reports, and the bibliography includes many works unavailable in English. I am no student of the Middle East, but I would think this book would be of value to anyone interested in the history of Palestine, or the Ottoman Empire. From the Napoleonic angle the only thing I bring into this is the experience of reading several dozen books on the man's campaigns, and frankly most of them are just not fun to read. This one is.

The book is very interesting and contains a lot of material from the Israeli historian point of wiev. N. Schur argues that the French historians are disregarding the eyewitness' material and accounts of the events. However, the author disregarded the military structure and organization of the French Army of the Orient - there were no brigades or regiments back then, but always demi-brigades by regalement of 1794; the rank colonel been restored by Napoleon only in 1803, and so on. When citing the magnificent work of la Jonquere, it is always good to check additional references, and specifically the articles published by the French military historian Rigo ( in various issues of Tradition or Uniformes magazines).