The First Total War: Napoleon's Europe and the Birth of Warfare as We Know itHoughton Mifflin Harcourt, 2007 - 420 pages The twentieth century is usually seen as "the century of total war." But as the historian David Bell argues in this landmark work, the phenomenon acutally began much earlier, in the era of muskets, cannons, and sailing ships -- in the age of Napoleon. In a sweeping, evocative narrative, Bell takes us from campaigns of "extermination" in the blood-soaked fields of western France to savage street fighting in ruined Spanish cities to central European battlefields where tens of thousands died in a single day. Between 1792 and 1815, Europe plunged into an abyss of destruction. It was during this time, Bell argues, that our modern attitudes toward war were born. In the eighteenth century, educated Europeans thought war was disappearing from the civilized world. So when large-scale conflict broke out during the French Revolution, they could not resist treating it as "the last war" -- a final, terrible spasm of redemptive violence that would usher in a reign of perpetual peace. As this brilliant interpretive history shows, a war for such stakes could only be apocalyptic, fought without restraint or mercy. Ever since, the dream of perpetual peace and the nightmare of total war have been bound tightly together in the Western world -- right down to the present day, in which the hopes for an "end to history" after the cold war quickly gave way to renewed fears of full-scale slaughter. With a historian's keen insight and a journalist's flair for detail, Bell exposes the surprising parallels between Napoleon's day and our own -- including the way that ambition "wars of liberation," such as the one in Iraq, can degenerate into a gruesome guerrilla conflict. The result is a book that is as timely and important as it is unforgettable. |
From inside the book
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Page 4
... lives that are lost every two and a half weeks in road accidents on American highways . It is the same number of lives that the Soviet Union lost every six hours , for four agonizing years , during World War II . Our opponents in this ...
... lives that are lost every two and a half weeks in road accidents on American highways . It is the same number of lives that the Soviet Union lost every six hours , for four agonizing years , during World War II . Our opponents in this ...
Page 5
... lives and values were put on display , amid splendor , polish , gallantry , and shows of utter self - assurance . European elites of the eighteenth century assumed that this world would last indefinitely . They did not realize that it ...
... lives and values were put on display , amid splendor , polish , gallantry , and shows of utter self - assurance . European elites of the eighteenth century assumed that this world would last indefinitely . They did not realize that it ...
Page 7
... society's resources to achieve the abso- lute destruction of an enemy , with all distinction erased between com- batants and noncombatants . This formulation seems , at first , clear enough . But can any real war live up to INTRODUCTION 7.
... society's resources to achieve the abso- lute destruction of an enemy , with all distinction erased between com- batants and noncombatants . This formulation seems , at first , clear enough . But can any real war live up to INTRODUCTION 7.
Page 8
... live up to this ideal standard ? ( Even a massive thermonuclear exchange would not involve the mobilization of all of a society's resources ! ) And if not , what determines which wars come sufficiently close to the ideal to qualify ...
... live up to this ideal standard ? ( Even a massive thermonuclear exchange would not involve the mobilization of all of a society's resources ! ) And if not , what determines which wars come sufficiently close to the ideal to qualify ...
Page 10
... live up to its reputation . The ill - trained and ill - equipped soldiers of the levée en masse did matter because of their sheer numbers , but they helped the French war effort much less than contemporaries claimed . Similar attempts ...
... live up to its reputation . The ill - trained and ill - equipped soldiers of the levée en masse did matter because of their sheer numbers , but they helped the French war effort much less than contemporaries claimed . Similar attempts ...
Common terms and phrases
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