Napoleon's wars - Charles Esdaile

No other soldier has provoked as much argument as Napoleon Bonaparte.
Was Napoleon a monster, driven on by an endless, ruinous quest for military glory - or was he a social and political visionary brought down by the petty, reactionary kings and emperors, clinging to their privileges?

Napoleon's Wars is a book which has no doubt about Napoleon's insatiable greed for military glory, but it is interested in far more than that. Charles Esdaile is profoundly interested in a pan-European context: what was it that made the countries of Europe fight each other, for so long and with such devastating results. The battles themselves he sees as almost side-effects; the consequence of rulers being willing to take the immense risks of fighting or supporting Napoleon - risks which resulted in the extinction of entire countries.

This is history on the grandest and most ambitious scale: a superb reassessment of a tumultuous era.