Napoleon’s Swiss Troops - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Napoleon’s Swiss Troops write by David Greentree. This book was released on 2012-03-20. Napoleon’s Swiss Troops available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Ever since the 15th century Switzerland had been exporting professional soldiers to serve as mercenaries for foreign monarchies. Napoleon, therefore, was not the first to make full use of the martial qualities of the Swiss and obtained Swiss agreement to expand the recruitment of regiments for service in the French Army. Napoleon would use Swiss troops on the battlefields of Italy and Spain, and in 1812 re-organize the four original regiments into a single division for the invasion of Russia, with each regiment having three full-strength battalions. In November of 1812, meeting up with Napoleon's main force retreating from Moscow at the Berezina River, the Swiss on the west bank guarded the approaches to the pontoon bridges from the Russian attack to the south. Just 1,200 Swiss out of the approximately 8,000 that entered Russia were left to face, along with 8,000 other remnants of other units, the 30,000-strong Russian army. The Swiss held their ground and when their ammunition ran out they charged the Russians with bayonets. This book reveals the proud combat history of the Swiss troops of Napoleon's army as well as the colourful uniforms they wore.
Napoleon's Mercenaries
Napoleon's Mercenaries - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Napoleon's Mercenaries write by Guy Dempsey. This book was released on 2016-02-29. Napoleon's Mercenaries available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. This superb and comprehensive book details the foreign units which formed such an important part of Napoleon's forces. It examines each non-French unit in turn, giving an overview of the unit's origins, its organizational and combat history, its uniforms and standards, and details of the unit's eventual fate. Colourful accounts, taken from contemporary reports and memoirs, emphasize the qualities of the unit and throw light on what life was like for many of the foreign soldiers recruited into the Grande Armée. In total more than 100 different foreign units that served in the French Army are investigated in detail in this ambitious publication. Some foreign units fought and flourished throughout the Consulate and Empire, whilst others lasted for just a few months. Covers Polish, German, Swiss, Italian, Spanish, and other units in the French Army and presents a combat history and details uniforms for each regiment. Napoleon's Mercenaries is the best single-volume study of this aspect of Napoleon s army and a vital reference for every Napoleonic enthusiast. Little can be found on the foreign units that were an integral part of the French army ... For a long time a gap has existed, but now Napoleon s Mercenaries fills this gap. Robert Burnham, Napoleonic Series
The Swiss in French Service
The Swiss in French Service - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook The Swiss in French Service write by Didier Davin. This book was released on 2012. The Swiss in French Service available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. That association of mountainous territories shut in among the European powers, Switzerland solved part of its financial problems as early as the Renaissance by developing a truly mercenary industry. Each canton could sign a contract (a capitulation) to recruit military units with their own officers and regulations in exchange for pay and equipment for a neighboring state. On the eve of the Revolution there were therefore Swiss units in the government guards or the troops of the Line in France, the Italian States, Spain and the United Provinces. The revolutionary process in France ran up against their loyalty to their employer: the King, and the sad events of the massacre of the Swiss Guard on 10 August 1792 whereas the Swiss regiments of the Line were disbanded. During the vast European reorganization led by France between 1793 and 1813, Switzerland was politically and geographically transformed and furnished its big neighbor whether it liked it or not with troops of great worth who upheld their favorite motto "Honneur et Fidélité". A lot has already been written on the Swiss regiments. The book skims over the Swiss troops in service with the King on the eve of the Revolution to concentrate on those who served the Republic, the Consulate and then the Empire, focusing on less well-known aspects.
Nationalizing France's Army
Nationalizing France's Army - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Nationalizing France's Army write by Christopher J. Tozzi. This book was released on 2016-05-30. Nationalizing France's Army available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Before the French Revolution, tens of thousands of foreigners served in France’s army. They included troops from not only all parts of Europe but also places as far away as Madagascar, West Africa, and New York City. Beginning in 1789, the French revolutionaries, driven by a new political ideology that placed "the nation" at the center of sovereignty, began aggressively purging the army of men they did not consider French, even if those troops supported the new regime. Such efforts proved much more difficult than the revolutionaries anticipated, however, owing to both their need for soldiers as France waged war against much of the rest of Europe and the difficulty of defining nationality cleanly at the dawn of the modern era. Napoleon later faced the same conundrums as he vacillated between policies favoring and rejecting foreigners from his army. It was not until the Bourbon Restoration, when the modern French Foreign Legion appeared, that the French state established an enduring policy on the place of foreigners within its armed forces. By telling the story of France’s noncitizen soldiers—who included men born abroad as well as Jews and blacks whose citizenship rights were subject to contestation—Christopher Tozzi sheds new light on the roots of revolutionary France’s inability to integrate its national community despite the inclusionary promise of French republicanism. Drawing on a range of original, unpublished archival sources, Tozzi also highlights the linguistic, religious, cultural, and racial differences that France’s experiments with noncitizen soldiers introduced to eighteenth- and nineteenth-century French society. Winner of the Walker Cowen Memorial Prize for an Outstanding Work of Scholarship in Eighteenth-Century Studies
Stories of the French Revolution
Stories of the French Revolution - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Stories of the French Revolution write by Walter Montgomery. This book was released on 2018-01-30. Stories of the French Revolution available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. About eight miles from Paris is the town of Versailles, which was but a poor little village when a great king took a fancy to it and built there a palace. His son was passionately fond of state and grandeur, and he resolved to add to the palace, room after room and gallery after gallery, until he had made it the most superb house in all the world. It is said the cost was so frightful that he never let anyone know what the sum total amounted to, but threw the accounts into the fire. This was Louis XIV., called by Frenchmen "Le grand Monarque." He reigned seventy-two years, having been a mere child when called to the throne.
