Frederick C. Schneid

It is only in the past two decades that English-speaking scholars have fully breached European language barriers, permitting a comprehensive reexamination of the Napoleonic Wars beyond the limitations of English-, French-, and German-dependent works. This new volume in the Essential Bibliography Series examines the changing nature of Napoleonic historiography and provides the student and scholar an invaluable guide to those changes.

The culmination of decades of nationalist aspiration and cynical Realpolitik, the Second War of Italian Unification saw Italy transformed from a patchwork of minor states dominated by the Habsburg Austrians into a unified kingdom under the Piedmontese House of Savoy. Unlike many existing accounts, which approach the events of 1859–61 from a predominantly French perspective, this study draws upon a huge breadth of sources to examine the conflict as a critical event in Italian history. A concise explanation of the origins of the war is followed by a wide-ranging survey of the forces deployed and the nature and course of the fighting – on land and at sea – and the consequences for those involved are investigated. This is a groundbreaking study of a conflict that was of critical significance not only for Italian history but also for the development of 19th-century warfare.

Divided into five sections, the text first examines the individual components of the early modern army, the foot soldier and the mounted soldier, the equipment they wore and used, and how they fought together as a unit. Using colour and black and white artworks, this book shows the ways by which armies gained and lost ascendancy.

Poised to strike at England in the summer of 1805, Napoleon found himself facing a coalition of European powers determined to limit his territorial ambitions. Still, in less than one hundred days, Napoleon's armies marched from the English Channel to Central Europe, crushing the armies of Austria and Russia—the first step in his conquest of Europe. In this telling new account, Schneid demonstrates how this was possible. Schneid details how Napoleon's victory over the Third Coalition was the product of years of diplomatic preparation and the formation of French alliances. He played upon the prevailing conditions of the European state system and the internal politics of the Holy Roman Empire to improve France's strategic position. This war must be understood in the context of the French Revolution and its influence on major and minor European states. In some cases, Napoleonic diplomacy returned to France's traditional and historic relationships; in others, he capitalized upon longstanding competition and animosities to gather allies and create wedges. Schneid approaches the campaign from a broad diplomatic, economic, and military perspective, including not only the French perspective, but the points of view of the other powers involved as well. This telling account reveals that the road to Vienna was paved long before Napoleon's armies marched upon the enemies arrayed against them.

The French Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars raged in Italy for 23 years. In that time, no fewer than eight campaigns involving hundred of thousands of troops were mounted in the Italian peninsula, as France and Austria struggled over this secondary, but still vitally important theater of war. As Frederick Schneid demonstrates in this groundbreaking work, control of Italy was rightly seen by Napoleon as an important means of applying strategic pressure on the Austrians, while simultaneously providing security for France's vulnerable southern flank. As the first in-depth consideration of the struggle for strategically key region, this book places the Italian campaigns into their proper historical context. Beginning with a geo-strategic overview of the Italian peninsula and its place in French and Austrian calculations, Schneid moves on to a careful consideration of the major campaigns that began in 1805, 1809, and 1813. These include studies of the battles at Caldiero, Wagram, and Mincio. The book also provides appendices with complete orders of battle for each campaign.