Customer Reviews

Napoleon's Conquest Of Prussia-Hardbound (Napoleonic Library)

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First published in 1907 in the United Kingdom, `Napoleon's Conquest of Prussia 1806' by Loraine Petre is a classic military history of one of Napoleon's great campaigns. The author has written five books on Napoleon and his campaigns and is recognised as one of the pre-eminent military historians of the early twentieth century. In this book, as in the others, he has utilised many first-hand accounts from the various participants to put together an interesting and detailed military study of Napoleons campaign.

This book is his first in the series of five titles published and in over 300 pages of narrative he tells the story of Napoleon's victory at Jena and Marshal Davout's triumph at Auerstadt on the 14th of October, 1806. The book then follows Napoleon's three-week relentless pursuit of the defeated Prussian forces in a classic military movement to destroy the armed might of Prussia once and for all. At the end of the campaign two-thirds of the Prussian army had been killed or made prisoner and four-fifths of Prussia was under Napoleon's control.

Bearing in mind that the book was written at the start of the twentieth century the style of writing contained in the narrative takes a little bit of getting use to but once you have adjusted to that period of time you find you are reading a classic military study. The book is supplied with three large fold-out maps to follow the different stages of the campaign and a number of black and white plates are also provided in the centre of the book.

Overall this is an interesting and enjoyable account of Napoleon's Prussian campaign of 1806 and as one previous reviewer has mentioned it makes a good starting point for further reading. For myself I enjoyed the book so much that I intend to read all five of the author's work.

With this book Petre can be credited with having written a solid work on the subject matter. The book is a detailed and I feel throughly researched piece that more than covers the essentials of Napoleons 1806 Prussian adventure. It is a great starting point for people who already have a reasonable knowledge of the Napoleonic era to delve deeper into the Prussian war of 1806. Despite the books richness of information, it is not engaging to those who do not have a great interest in the subject and is very dry, factual, and to the point. It shows small signs of bias at several points, but these can be easily overlooked and scoffed away. They do not take away from the historial value of the book. To conclude, Petres work is well done and recommended to those willing to read this dry if not mundane book.