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At the start of the 19th century, the peasantry accounted for eighty percent of the French population. And although this silent majority has received very little attention from historians, the history of the rural classes is nevertheless rich in diversity, complexity, and even contradictions, both in the way…

Eighty percent of the Napoleonic Empire was rural, and yet the history of this huge slice of the population is little known, overshadowed as it is by the great deeds and more famous battles of the period. Generally clumped together into a large non-descript mass of peasants and countryside, the rural history of the Empire […]

The Napoleonic régime was largely occupied with the elaboration of a system competent to curb the unbridled individualism that the Revolution had evoked, and of which the great Corsican was himself the chief exponent. Such a system could be but slowly elaborated, and it is not strange that it was never fully applied; the parts […]

 From the publishers:Social welfare, increasingly extensive during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, was by the first third of the nineteenth under considerable, and growing, pressure, during a 'crisis' period when levels of poverty soared. This book examines the poor and their families during these final decades of the old Poor Law. It takes as a […]

Christmas and New Year Selection 2010-2011: an introduction The festive season is upon us once again, and as is our wont around this time, we have put together a list of the recent Napoleonic releases from the book and digital media world. Whether you use the advice in our Christmas and New Year Selection 2010-2011 for […]

 

On 7 April, 1810, an extraordinary event took place in a little village near Boulogne sur mer. The story goes that a violent storm threw onto the beach an horrific amphibious monster that proceeded to devour men and dig up corpses. After many fearful attacks, the monster was finally killed one night near the cemetery. […]

The insurrection of 1809 in the Tyrol is a fascinating episode in the history of Napoleon and the French Empire. A microcosm of what was taking place across Europe during the period, distilled into a very distinct geographical area at a very particular time, the…

The insurrection of 1809 in the Tyrol is a fascinating episode in the history of Napoleon and the French Empire. A microcosm of what was taking place across Europe during the period, distilled into a very distinct geographical area at a very particular time, the…