The First Total War

Napoleon's Europe and the Birth of Warfare as We Know It

David A. Bell

• Publisher: Mariner Books
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9780618919819
• eBook ISBN: 9780547525297
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: French History
• Index: History

"A mesmerizing account that illuminates not just the Napoleonic wars but all of modern history . . . It reads like a novel" (Lynn Hunt, Eugen Weber Professor of modern European history, UCLA).
 
The twentieth century is usually seen as "the century of total war." But as the historian David A. Bell argues in this landmark work, the phenomenon actually began much earlier, in the era of muskets, cannons, and sailing ships—in the age of Napoleon.
 
In a sweeping, evocative narrative, Bell takes us from campaigns of "extermination" in the blood-soaked fields of western France to savage street fighting in ruined Spanish cities to central European battlefields where tens of thousands died in a single day. Between 1792 and 1815, Europe plunged into an abyss of destruction.
 
It was during this time, Bell argues, that our modern attitudes toward war were born. Ever since, the dream of perpetual peace and the nightmare of total war have been bound tightly together in the Western world—right down to the present day, in which the hopes for an "end to history" after the cold war quickly gave way to renewed fears of full-scale slaughter.
 
With a historian's keen insight and a journalist's flair for detail, Bell exposes the surprising parallels between Napoleon's day and our own—including the way that ambitious "wars of liberation," such as the one in Iraq, can degenerate into a gruesome guerrilla conflict. The result is a book that is as timely and important as it is unforgettable.
 
"Thoughtful and original . . . Bell has mapped what is a virtually new field of inquiry: the culture of war." —Steven L. Kaplan, Goldwin Smith Professor of European history, Cornell University
 

Index

A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z

A

Aboukir, Napoleon crushes Ottoman Turks at, 209

Aboukir Bay, battle of, 17, 209

“Absolute enmity,” 15, 265, 280, 287, 289

Académie Française, and “great Frenchmen,” 201

Acre, French attack on, 209

Addison, Joseph, 43

Alembert, Jean le Rond d’, 68

Alexander I (tsar of Russia), 235, 239, 256, 257, 308

Alexander the Great

and Napoleon’s aspirations, 187, 211, 213

and Russia, 257

and royalist newspaper on Napoleon, 219

Alliances

between France and Austria, 112, 262

challenge to idea of (Lévis), 98

Family Pact, 88, 109

France’s withdrawal from system of, 109

Holy Alliance, 308

as impediment to war (Chastellux), 71

National Assembly’s rejection of, 108

between France and Prussia, 238, 253, 262

between France and Russia, 239–40

All Quiet on the Western Front (Remarque), 41

Ambition, and Napoleon, 189, 206, 223, 231, 249

Napoleon quoted on, 186

American Historical Review, 15

American Revolution, 23

battle of Saratoga, 25

and Chastellux in, 71

Lauzun’s experience of, 41–42

and new European soldier, 123

Spanish intervention in, 88

Amey, François-Pierre-Joseph, 288, 343

Angell, Norman, 310, 315

Angers (Western French town), 159, 169, 176

“Annales school” of social history, 15

d’Anterroches, comte, 35

Architecture, initiated by Napoleon, 245–46

Arcola, battle of, 188, 194, 200

Arc de Triomphe, 183, 246, 309

D

d’Argenson, René-Louis de Voyer de Paulmy, marquis de, 41, 44

Argonne forest, 132–33

Aristocracy and aristocratic culture, 31

and debate on king’s war powers, 95

in 18th-century ...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Contents
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Officers, Gentlemen, and Poets
• Conscience, Commerce, and History
• Declaring Peace; Declaring War
• The Last Crusade
• The Exterminating Angels
• The Lure of the Eagle
• Days of Glory
• War’s Red Altar
• Epilogue
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• About the Author
• Connect with HMH