by Frederick C. Schneid
Westport, Ct.: Praeger, 2002. xviii, 228.
Maps, append., notes, biblio., index. $64.95. ISBN:0-275-96875-8
In contrast to most treatments of Napoleon’s career, which rarely deal with events in which he himself was not personally in command,
Napoleon’s Italian Campaigns, deals with military events in a theater that, after 1801, saw no operations by the “Corsican Ogre.” The author thus literally “rescues” from virtual oblivion the long neglected events in Italy, where several major campaigns occurred. Prof. Schneid treats the 1805, 1809, and 1813-1814 campaigns against Austria, and the Conquest of Naples, 1805-1806, and the subsequent guerrilla war that left that kingdom unsettled throughout the period, as well as Murat’s quixotic bid for domination of the Peninsula in 1815. Beyond question the most complete one volume treatment of the Napoleonic era in Italy.