Napoleonic Era

While Britain was engrossed in the struggle with Napoleon, writes J. Mackay Hitsman, a defensive war with the United States was fought along the frontiers of Upper and Lower Canada.

The Treaty of Fontainebleau saw Napoleon exiled to Elba. Why was he treated so lightly?

Though the Duke did not pretend to be a highly educated man, he had a real respect for books, and made resolute attempts to supervise the education of his son and heir. By Elizabeth Longford.

Of the British officers who fell at Waterloo, writes Antony Brett-James, none was more distinguished than General Sir Thomas Picton.

“Treat the Pope as though he had an army of 200,000 men"—Napoleon. By E.E.Y. Hales.

At the crisis of the battle Napoleon withheld the Imperial Guard, writes Michael Barthorp, only to commit it piecemeal at a later stage to its first and last defeat.

General and trooper alike, Napoleon's cavalry brought a superb panache to the drab business of war. James Lunt describes how, for fifteen years, there was “hardly a village in Europe between Moscow and Madrid” through which these dashing horsemen did not ride.

Napoleon’s attempt to form a second and more liberal empire was, like Waterloo, a close-run thing and “came nearer to success than is usually allowed.”

William Allan introduces the Napoleonic military genius; in Napier’s words, ‘the best loved Frenchman England ever fought’.

At the end of the Napoleonic Wars, Britain acquired the tiny island of Heligoland in the North Sea. Ashley Cooper and Stephen Cooper describe how, as the European rivalries shifted in the 19th century, it came to be used as a bargaining chip with Germany.