Customer Reviews

The Napoleonic Wars (2): The Empires Fight Back 1808-1812 (Essential Histories) (v. 2)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book is another masterful piece of writing continuing the story of the Napoleonic era from 1808-1812. In less than 90 pages, it captures the political thought and military preparedness of each country. It explains why countries went to war. And it explains the campaigns, why they occurred, and summaries the battles in exciting, easy to read prose. It is an exceptionally well written summary of the political and military events of the period. If you want a good overview of the period, this is an excellent choice.

This book picks up where The Napoleonic Wars: The Rise of the Emperor 1805-1807 leaves off. As Napoleon defeats Austria with his customary ease he learns of betrayal by Russia. The single biggest mistake Napoleon ever made was his decision to invade Russia and march all the way to Moscow with an army that wasn't up to the Grand Armee of old. Even as Napoleon's army recorded success after success against the armies of Russia, Napoleon was stretching himself too thin and would eventually be brought low by disease and the elements.

Most of this book is taken up by the advance on Moscow, where brilliantly fought battles had the Russians back on their heels all the way past their capitol. Battle descriptions and artwork depicting the events of the time are excellent, similar to most others in the Essential Histories collection. The book also contains very interesting and concise descriptions of the political thinking of the time and of the cultural changes taking place. Overall, a great description of the start of Napoleon's fall.

I look forward to continuing the Napoleonic Wars set from Essential Histories.

Books in the Osprey "Essential History" series do a fairly good job at covering their topic assuming that that the conflict covered is rather short or of limited dimensions. A good example is the book in this series that covers the Russo-Japanese war. However, when the topic covers a prolonged period of time such as this one (five years of continuous conflict and diplomatic rangling among about half a dozen powers) the structure of the volumes, about 90 pages in length (about half of which are illustration), serious short falls inevitably result.

The main one is that the history of the major battles is very short. Too short to obtain an idea of what transpired and, more importantly, why. Another important problem involves the fact that there is no analysis as to how and why each battle led to the other. Other weak points are an inadequate overview of the major power's armies. This is in every respect including quality of troops, quality of middle and low ranking officer corps, training, weapons and morale (though the higher level commanders are covered adequately). There is also little discussion as to root causes of the actual conflict (i.e., France's invasion of Russia being prompted by Russia's disregard for the continental blockade of England). Other important issues and facts such as the Iberian drain on French military resources and English financial support of Russia are barely even mentioned. All and all too many gaps.

Why, then, would one ask that this book receive a three star rating as opposed to less? The reason is that, for extremely lenghty and complex subject, given its short 90 page length (i.e., an hour or two of reading), a reader can obtain a picture, albeit very short and with some gaps, into this subject.