'Napoleon's Other War' by Dr Broers

Dr Michael Broers, LMH Fellow and Tutor in History, has published a new book Napoleon's Other War. Bandits, Rebels and their Pursuers in the Age of Revolutions.

The wars of Napoleon are among the best-known and most exciting episodes in world history.  Less known is the uproar the armies stirred up in their path, and even more, the chaos they left in their wake.

The 'knock-on effect' of Napoleon's sweep across Europe went further than is often remembered: his invasion of Spain triggered the collapse of the Spanish Empire in Latin America, and his meddling in the Balkans destabilised the Ottomans.

Behind the battle fronts raged other conflicts, 'little wars' - the guerrilla (the term was born in these years) - and bigger ones, where whole provinces rose up in arms.  Bandits often stood at the centre of these 'dirty wars' of ambushes, night raids, living hard in tough terrain, of plunder, rapine and early, violent death, which spread across the whole western world from Constantinople to Chile.  Everywhere, they threw up unlikely characters - ordinary men who emerged as leaders, bandits who became presidents, priests who became warriors, lawyers who became murdering criminals.
 
In studying these varying fortunes, Dr Broers provides an insight into a lost world of peasant life, a world Napoleon did so much to sweep away.