David G. Chandler

In this “engrossing,” (The New Yorker) vivid, and intensively researched volume, esteemed Napoleon scholar David Chandler outlines the military strategy that led the famous French emperor to his greatest victories—and to his ultimate downfall. Napoleonic war was nothing if not complex—an ever-shifting kaleidoscope of moves and intentions, which by themselves went a long way towards baffling and dazing his conventionally minded opponents into that state of disconcerting moral disequilibrium which so often resulted in their catastrophic defeat.

The Campaigns of Napoleon is a masterful analysis and insightful critique of Napoleon's art of war as he himself developed and perfected it in the major military campaigns of his career. Napoleon disavowed any suggestion that he worked from formula (“Je n'ai jamais eu un plan d'opérations”), but military historian David Chandler demonstrates this was at best only a half-truth. To be sure, every operation Napoleon conducted contained unique improvisatory features. But there were from the first to the last certain basic principles of strategic maneuver and battlefield planning that he almost invariably put into practice. To clarify these underlying methods, as well as the style of Napoleon's fabulous intellect, Chandler examines in detail each campaign mounted and personally conducted by Napoleon, analyzing the strategies employed, revealing wherever possible the probable sources of his subject's military ideas. “Writing clearly and vividly, [Chandler] turns dozens of persons besides Napoleon from mere wooden soldiers into three- dimensional characters” (The Boston Globe) and this definitive work is “a fine book for the historian, the student, and the intelligent reader” (The New York Review of Books).

This is a distillation of the knowledge, intuition and wisdom of history's greatest military commander. Napoleon's success was built upon practical experience combined with his own study of classical warfare and his natural grasp of the key principles of war. His thoughts, theories and commentaries on the subject are here presented in the form of accessible and readable maxims and these, with explanatory comments, reveal the fundamentals of Napoleon's art of waging war.

David Chandler has added to the explanatory comments and provided the necessary context for modern readers to compare Napoleon's principles with the experience of war in the modern age. This revealing guide presents Napoleon's principles of war and his art of conducting statecraft; it is a fascinating insight into a great mind and a unique collection of tenets on warfare in the Napoleonic era.

Illustrated entries record the important soldiers, strategies, armaments, and battles of Napoleon's military campaigns plus such related events as the peninsula wars and the AngloAmerican War.