Description
Oxford Napoleon On War 2017 Edition by Bruno Colson
This is the book on war that
Napoleon never had the time or the will to complete.
In exile on the island of Saint-Helena, the
deposed Emperor of the French mused about a great treatise on the art of war,
but in the end changed his mind and ordered the destruction of the materials he
had collected for the volume. Thus was lost what would have been one of the
most interesting and important books on the art of war ever written, by one of
the most famous and successful military leaders of all time.
In the two centuries since, several attempts have
been made to gather together some of Napoleon's 'military maxims', with varying
degrees of success. But not until now has there been a systematic attempt to
put Napoleon's thinking on war and strategy into a single authoritative volume,
reflecting both the full spectrum of his thinking on these matters as well as
the almost unparalleled range of his military experience, from heavy cavalry
charges in the plains of Russia or Saxony to
counter-insurgency operations in Egypt or Spain.
To gather the material for this book, military
historian Bruno Colson spent years researching Napoleon's correspondence and
other writings, including a painstaking examination of perhaps the single most
interesting source for his thinking about war: the copy-book of General
Bertrand, the Emperor's most trusted companion on Saint-Helena, in which he
unearthed a Napoleonic definition of strategy which is published here for the
first time.
The huge amount of material brought together for
this ground-breaking volume has been carefully organized to follow the
framework of Carl von Clausewitz's classic On War, allowing a fascinating
comparison between Napoleon's ideas and those of his great Prussian interpreter
and adversary, and highlighting the intriguing similarities between these two
founders of modern strategic thinking.
Introduction
1: On the Nature of War
2: The Theory of War
3: On Strategy in General
4: The Engagement
5: Military Forces
6: Defence
7: Attack
8: War Plans
Conclusion
Notes
Sources and Bibliography
Index