http://nova.newcastle.edu.au/vital/access/services/Feed ${session.getAttribute("locale")} 5 http://nova.newcastle.edu.au/vital/access/manager/Repository/uon:9811 Just as there was nothing inevitable about the coup that brought Napoleon to power in November 1799, so, too, there was nothing inevitable about the establishment of the Empire in May 1804. It was the culmination of a process that took a number of years to complete, and which in some respects harks back to the first Italian campaign. Miot de Melito, a French commissaire attached to the army in Italy during that campaign, is often quoted as overhearing Napoleon uttering the prophetic words: 'Do you believe that I triumph in Italy for the likes of Carnot and Barras? ... I wish to undermine the Republican party, but only for my own profit and not that of the former dynasty ... As for me, my dear Miot, I have tasted authority and I will not give it up.' This does not mean, of course, that Napoleon was already bent on introducing some form of monarchical power during his years in Italy; but it is remarkable that in the summer of 1797, at the chateau of Mombello just outside Milan, he should have held court in a manner that was entirely out of keeping with Republican generals of the time. 2012-01-17T03:20:04.625Z ]]> http://nova.newcastle.edu.au/vital/access/manager/Repository/uon:9294 The French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars resulted in an explosion of personal recollections on a scale never before witnessed, some published in the author’s lifetime, many not. These memoirs, and the stories and anecdotes told in them, shaped the images surrounding the wars for generations to come. Given the distance that often separated the writing from the event, the memoirs almost always contained projections, evasions, myths, and outright fantasies. But that is exactly where their value lies. It allows the historian to establish the extent to which those who took part in the wars began to romanticize or indeed contest them and the man most responsible for them—Napoléon—and the degree to which they engaged in the political and cultural debates of the day. 2011-11-09T04:30:05.102Z ]]> http://nova.newcastle.edu.au/vital/access/manager/Repository/uon:8012 Review of: OLAF JESSEN. 'Preußens Napoleon?', Ernst von Rüchel, 1754-1823: Krieg im Zeitalter der Venunft. Paderborn: Verlag Ferdinand Schoningh, 2007. Pp. 490. 2011-06-30T05:40:10.784Z ]]> http://nova.newcastle.edu.au/vital/access/manager/Repository/uon:5382 This essay re-examines coalition warfare during the Napoleonic era by looking at the three eastern European powers - Austria, Prussia and Russia - how they interacted over time with France as well as each other, and how they managed French preponderance on the Continent. Before 1812, coalition warfare was dominated by eighteenth-century military and diplomatic attitudes: overall foreign political goals were ill-defined and were characterised by deep mistrust. The result was that the eastern powers pursued their own interests with little regard to coalition cohesion. If the coalition held together in 1813 and 1814, on the other hand, it was largely because individual powers' self-interest coincided with the overall objectives of the coalition - an increased determination to defeat Napoleon - along with a never before seen numerical superiority in allied troops. In this, Austria and especially Chancellor Metternich's role in juggling conflicting interests between the allies so that they could present, for the first time, a united front against France was fundamental. 2010-04-27T04:37:28.173Z ]]>