Search results for ""Author Alan Forrest""
John Wiley and Sons Ltd The French Revolution
This book provides an interpretation of the French Revolution that is both thematic and accessible to the general reader. The discussion includes an analysis of the historiography of the subject, and reviews the range of literature produced around the recent Bicentenary. Insisting that the French Revolution had an important social dimension, Alan Forrest demonstrates that the revolutionaries, even the most extreme of them, were committed to an ordered society. He argues that in destroying the political institutions and the corporate structures of the Ancien Regime, they were conscious of the need to invent a new order of their own, one that would be consistent with their ideology. Chapters focus on the initial crisis of 1789, on the political and social experiments of the revolutionary years, and on the impact of war and counter-revolution. The study covers the period up to 1799, looking forward where appropriate to the Napoleonic Empire. The author's succinct and penetrating overview of events ensures that The French Revolution will be welcomed by all students of this fascinating and turbulent period in European history.
£37.95
Oxford University Press Waterloo: Great Battles
Waterloo was the last battle fought by Napoleon and the one which finally ended his imperial dreams. It involved the deployment of huge armies and incurred heavy losses on both sides; for those who fought in it, Dutch and Belgians, Prussians and Hanoverians as well as British and French troops, it was a murderous struggle. It was a battle that would be remembered very differently across Europe. In Britain it would be seen as an iconic battle whose memory would be enmeshed in British national identity across the following century. In London news of the victory unleashed an outburst of patriotic celebration and captured the imagination of the public. The Duke of Wellington would go on to build his political career on it, and towns and cities across Britain and the Empire raised statues and memorials to the victor. But it was only in Britain that Waterloo acquired this iconic status. In Prussia and Holland its memory was muted - in Prussia overshadowed by the Battle of the Nations at Leipzig, in Holland a simple appendage to the prestige of the House of Orange. And in France it would be portrayed as the very epitome of heroic defeat. Encapsulated in the bravery of General Cambronne and the last stand of the Old Guard, remembered movingly in the lines of Stendhal and Victor Hugo, the memory of Waterloo served to sustain the romantic legend of the Napoleonic Wars - and contributed to the growing cult of Napoleon himself.
£20.99
Oxford University Press Waterloo: Great Battles
Waterloo was the last battle fought by Napoleon and the one which finally ended his imperial dreams. It involved the deployment of huge armies and incurred heavy losses on both sides; for those who fought in it, Dutch and Belgians, Prussians and Hanoverians as well as British and French troops, it was a murderous struggle. It was a battle that would be remembered very differently across Europe. In Britain it would be seen as an iconic battle whose memory would be enmeshed in
£14.78
Quercus Publishing Napoleon
On a cold December day in 1840 Parisians turned out in force to watch as the body of Napoleon was solemnly carried on a riverboat from Courbevoie on its final journey to the Invalides. In this book Alan Forrest tells the remarkable story of how the son of a Corsican attorney became the most powerful man in Europe: a man whose charisma and legacy have endured since his lonely death on the Island of St Helena. Forrest cuts away the many layers of myth that have grown up around Napoleon, a man who mixed history and legend promiscuously. Drawing on original research and his own distinguished background in French history, Forrest undercuts the 'Great Man' theory of history to demonstrate that Napoleon was as much a product of his times as he was their creator.
£11.69
Duke University Press Soldiers of the French Revolution
In this work Alan Forrest brings together some of the recent research on the Revolutionary army that has been undertaken on both sides of the Atlantic by younger historians, many of whom look to the influential work of Braudel for a model. Forrest places the armies of the Revolution in a broader social and political context by presenting the effects of war and militarization on French society and government in the Revolutionary period.Revolutionary idealists thought of the French soldier as a willing volunteer sacrificing himself for the principles of the Revolution; Forrest examines the convergence of these ideals with the ordinary, and often dreadful, experience of protracted warfare that the soldier endured.
£21.99