French Revolution

The Scholarly Spies

By Tim Miller

Early in June 1940, refugees from northern France and the low Countries who had flooded Paris in May fled with the residents of the city as the German advance neared. Read more

French Revolution

The Baker Rifle: Why it was so Accurate, Deadly, and Dependable

By Arnold Blumberg

The European wars of the late 18th and early 19th centuries were characterized by large-scale clashes between similarly armed soldiers employing sabers, cannons, and weapons like the iconic Baker rifle. Read more

French Revolution

Napoleon’s Egyptian Adventure

By Jeremy E. Green

By the year 1798, the First Coalition was collapsing. Only Britain remained as France’s implacable foe. With the advent of relative peace, the governing body of France, the Directory, ever in need of cash, now sought new means of employment for the army and its general, Napoleon Bonaparte. Read more

French Revolution

Napoleon Bonaparte’s ‘Roland’: Marshal Jean Lannes

by Jeremy Green

Of all the celebrated generals commanding corps in the Grande Armée, none was more highly esteemed by Napoleon for his friendship, generalship, and personal bravery than Marshal Jean Lannes. Read more

French Revolution

The Duke of Wellington in Assaye in India

By Charles Hilbert

Years after he had saved the world from the ambitions of Napoleon, Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington, was asked by his friend, George William Chad, to recall the “best thing” he had ever done as a soldier. Read more

French Revolution

The Pen & the Sword: A Brief History of War Correspondents

By Roy Morris Jr.

Men have been reporting their wars almost as long as they have fighting them. The first prehistoric cave drawings depicted hunters bringing down wild animals, and spoken accounts of battles, large and small, formed the starting point for the oral tradition of history. Read more

French Revolution

Lust for Glory: Napoleon’s Egypt Campaigns Helped With Invading Europe

By Don Hollway

In May 1798 English spies in Toulon, on the French Mediterranean coast, stood aghast at the gathering of an invasion fleet three times the size of the Spanish Armada: 13 ships of the line, 40 frigates and smaller warships, and 130 cargo vessels bearing more than 17,000 troops, 700 horses, and 1,000 cannons. Read more

French Revolution

Napoleon’s Stunning Debut: The Italian Campaign

By Dana Lombardy

Barthélemy Schérer, commander of the French Army, gazed at the new military orders from Paris in disbelief. The grandoise strategy, detailing an advance on three fronts with the armies uniting in Tyrol for a concentrated thrust at Vienna, were far beyond the capabilities of the starving southern army he commanded along the French Riveria against the combined forces of Austria and Sardinia. Read more

French Revolution

Cannon Thunder at the Battle of Valmy

By David A. Norris

Wind lifted away the fog sheltering the French lines. Atop a low ridge where the French army was deployed, a lone windmill provided a vivid range marker for 58 Prussian cannons on the neighboring hills. Read more

French Revolution

The Glorious First of June

By David A. Norris

British Admiral Lord Richard Howe, standing on the quarterdeck of his 100-gun ship of the line Queen Charlotte, snapped his signal book shut on the morning of June 1, 1794. Read more

French Revolution

North Sea Duel at Camperdown

By Michael E. Haskew

By the autumn of 1797, revolutionary France had been at war with the combined forces of the First Coalition for four long years. Read more

French Revolution

Teutonic Knights Under Ulrich Fight The Strategic Battle of Tannenberg

By Michael D. Greaney

On the morning of July 15, 1410 two heralds approached the enormous host of Poles, Bohemians, Hungarians, Czechs, Cossacks, Tartars, Livonians—any and all who felt they had a grudge against the opposing force of Teutonic Knights and their allies, also gathered from all over Europe. Read more

French Revolution

Louis Antoine de Bougainville

By Joshua Shepherd

I can assure you that he has a military mind indeed and in adding experience to the theory he already has, he will become a person of distinction,” Maj. Read more

French Revolution

The Rise of Napoleon Bonaparte

By Michael Haskew

Born on the island of Corsica to parents of minor nobility on August 15, 1769, Napoleon Bonaparte, the future Emperor of France and one of the leading military strategists and tacticians in history, graduated from the French military academy, the prestigious École Militaire, in September 1785, ranking 42nd in a class of 58. Read more

French Revolution

Game Features: Europa Universalis IV: Art of War

by Brian Belko

The Thirty Years’ War was one of the longest and most destructive conflicts in European history. The final collapse of the old Roman Empire completely redrew the political and religious map of central Europe, and paved the way for sovereign states to emerge from the fighting. Read more