War and Society in Revolutionary Europe 1770-1870 (War and European Society Series) (Volume 3);

Beginning with the eve of the French Revolution, Geoffrey Best explains in lively detail the vast armed forces and militarized societies of the Napoleonic Age. He then proceeds to analyse the contest between Europe's continuing revolutionary underground and the armies of reactionary and alien governments that culminated with the revolutions and wars of national liberation of 1848-66. Under the banners of Napoleon Bonaparte and other warrior heroes of the epoch, a military stamp was set on the European mind, the consequences of which Best critically assesses.