Volume 52, Number 17 · November 3, 2005
The Return of the Imperial Hero
By John Brewer
Trafalgar: The Men, the Battle, the Storm
by Tim Clayton and Phil Craig
London: Hodder and Stoughton, 464 pp., £20.00; £8.99 (paper)
Nelson: The New Letters
edited by Colin White
Boydell, 525 pp., $39.95
Seize the Fire: Heroism, Duty, and the Battle of Trafalgar
by Adam Nicolson
HarperCollins, 341 pp., $26.95
Admiral Lord Nelson: Context and Legacy
edited by David Cannadine
Palgrave Macmillan, 201 pp., $32.95
The French Revolution of 1789 not only overthrew the monarchy, established a republic, and plunged the nation into a sanguinary civil war, but it also inaugurated more than twenty years of European warfare. The monarchies of Europe, notably Prussia and Austria, were appalled by the radicalism and atheism of the new French regime and set out to suppress and contain what they saw as France's poisonous republicanism. Their failure to do so was largely attributable to the military genius of the young Corsican general Napoleon Bonaparte, who for more than a generation won battle after battle against France's enemies. Harnessing the popular energies of the Revolution, Napoleon mobilized and coordinated huge armies, waging warfare on a new scale. Originally a Jacobin revolutionary, he used his successes to establish a new autocracy and a family dynasty that came to occupy several of the thrones of Europe. In the eyes of its enemies, French democracy and the cult of reason had spawned a monster—an aggressive imperial war machine led by an upstart autocrat.
Review, 5149 words
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