Episode 11: Napoleon Bonaparte: Soldier, Strategist, Emperor

Napoleon’s ‘system of war’ remained the point of reference for generations, interpreted and publicised by Jomini and Clausewitz.

Professor Alan Forrest joins Beatrice and Paul for this episode. A graduate of Aberdeen and Oxford, he was formerly the Chair of Modern History at York University, where he taught from 1989 to 2012. A prolific author, he is the general editor of a 2023 three-volume Cambridge History of the Napoleonic Wars.

Alan Forrest (ed.), Cambridge History of the Napoleonic Wars, Cambridge University Press. Vols. 1 & 3, 2022; Vol. 2, 2023.

Alan Forrest, “Napoleon”, in Isabelle Duyvesteyn and Beatrice Heuser Heuser (eds.): The Cambridge History of Strategy, Cambridge University Press, 2023, Vol. 2.

Marc Belissa & Patrice Leclerq, “The revolutionary period, 1789 – 1802” in Anja Hartmann, Anja & Beatrice Heuser Heuser (eds): War, Peace, and world orders in European History, Routledge, 2001.

Charles Esdaile, “De-constructing the French Wars: Napoleon as anti-Strategist”, Journal of Strategic Studies Vol. 31 No. 4, 2008, pp.512-552.

Franklin Ford, “The Revolutionary-Napoleonic Era: How Much of a Watershed?”, American Historical Review Vol. 69, 1963/64, pp.18-29.

Owen Connelly, The wars of the French Revolution and Napoleon, 1792-1815 (London: Routledge, 2006)

Charles Esdaile, The Wars of Napoleon, Longman, 1995.