DAVID G. CHANDLER

In this engrossing, (The New Yorker) vivid, and intensively researched volume, esteemed Napoleon scholar David Chandler outlines the military strategy that led the famous French emperor to his greatest victoriesand to his ultimate downfall.Napoleonic war was nothing if not complexan ever-shifting kaleidoscope of moves and intentions, which by themselves went a long way towards baffling and dazing his conventionally minded opponents into that state of disconcerting moral disequilibrium which so often resulted in their catastrophic defeat.The Campaigns of Napoleon is a masterful analysis and insightful critique of Napoleons art of war as he himself developed and perfected it in the major military campaigns of his career. Napoleon disavowed any suggestion that he worked from formula (Je nai jamais eu un plan doperations), but military historian David Chandler demonstrates this was at best only a half-truth. To be sure, every operation Napoleon conducted contained unique improvisatory features. But there were from the first to the last certain basic principles of strategic maneuver and battlefield planning that he almost invariably put into practice. To clarify these underlying methods, as well as the style of Napoleons fabulous intellect, Chandler examines in detail each campaign mounted and personally conducted by Napoleon, analyzing the strategies employed, revealing wherever possible the probable sources of his subjects military ideas.Writing clearly and vividly, [Chandler] turns dozens of persons besides Napoleon from mere wooden soldiers into three- dimensional characters (The Boston Globe) and this definitive work is a fine book for the historian, the student, and the intelligent reader (The New York Review of Books).

Más de 250.000 libros publicados dan fe de la relevancia de Napoleón Bonaparte, pero éste es el primero que se sumerge por completo en todas y cada una de las batallas y operaciones militares que dirigio el mismo en persona, desde Tolon a Waterloo, pasando por las campañas de Italia, Egipto y Rusia. David Chandler, uno de los mas destacados investigadores en el ambito de la historia militar, ha escrito una obra definitiva, de la maxima altura cientifica pero accesible a todos los lectores, sobre la carrera completa de Napoleon, que nos permite comprender las estrategias belicas que le llevaron a disfrutar de tantos años de victorias y que tambien le condujeron a la derrota final.Napoleon afirmo una vez: Jamas he tenido un plan de operaciones, pero como Chandler nos revela en estas paginas, se trataba de un comentario engañoso. Todas las empresas que asumio contienen multitud de rasgos unicos, pero responden, ademas, a ciertos principios basicos que seguia casi invariablemente. Puede sorprender, pero habia muy pocas cosas nuevas en el pensamiento militar del Emperador: su particular genio se debia a la capacidad de aplicar, de forma original y brillante, las ideas de otros que le precedieron como comandante en el teatro de operaciones.