Napoleonic Era

“How different were our feelings” wrote a Scottish sergeant, “from many of our countrymen at home, whose ideas of the French character were drawn from servile newspapers and caricatures in print shops.”

For more than four years after the death of Nelson, Admiral Collingwood held naval command from the southern tip of Portugal to the Dardanelles. Piers Mackay writes how, in that time, Collingwood became the prime and sole Minister of England, acting upon the sea.

Although Canning resigned in 1809, writes Cedric Collyer, the fruits of his foreign policy, and the confirmation of the principles on which it rested, were already apparent by 1812 in the changing face and prospects of the war.

Michael Rapport describes the last days of the old Revolutionary regime and the circumstances leading to the young general’s triumph at the coup of 18-19 Brumaire.

Glenda Sluga explains the influence of a remarkable group of women as Europe’s elite gathered in Vienna in 1814.

Stella Ghervas examines the 1815 Congress of Vienna, the Great Powers’ attempt to create a new European order following the defeat of Napoleon.

‘Why not seize Malta?’ Napoleon asked Talleyrand, ‘We could be masters of the Mediterranean’. By Christopher Hibbert. 

Harold Kurtz describes how for nearly ten years, in two spells of office, the Republican Fouché was the virtual head of the internal government of France under the increasing Traditionalism of Napoleon’s rule.

For five years, writes Owen S. Connolly, Jnr., in the face of Allied intervention, Napoleon's talented and amiable older brother attempted to govern the Spanish people.

Having lost hope of invading the British Isles, in 1797 the French Directory made a bold attempt to cut off their enemy's East-Indian trade routes. The agent they chose was Napoleon Bonaparte, a brilliant young general, D.G. Chandler writes, already fascinated by the Eastern scene.