наполеоновские войны

This article examines the history of the liberation of General L. L. Bennigsen in the spring of 1814 the city-state of Hamburg from soldiers of the Great Army of Napoleon. After a grueling, almost year-long occupation of a crowded city that has survived the destruction of entire districts, the looting of a local bank, the expulsion of part of the local population from the city, an epidemic of typhus, which claimed the lives of several thousand people, the citizens welcomed the Allied Coalition Forces in the vicinity of their city again.

This article explores the irretrievable losses of the French army during the Napoleonic wars through analysis of the service records of soldiers stored in the French military archive (SHD, Vincennes, 20 YC). This source allows to estimate military losses much more accurately than individual reports, which help to sum up these losses. During the study, service records of the main part of the Napoleonic army, without guards and foreign regiments were reviewed. This is about 8,431 people.

The article shows the Anglo-French confrontation on the Iberian Peninsula as an important stage of the Second Hundred years’ War. The example of remote action of the British expeditionary force demonstrates the «English style» of war: the operation of army troops with the active support of the Royal Navy. The author comes to the conclusion that the Pyrenean wars of the beginning of the XIX century have a certain significance in the system of Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars.

The two-volume biography of Napoleon, written by the famous Saratov historian N. A. Troitsky, will undoubtedly attract the attention of readers. They will be able to appreciate its thoughtful structure, impressive completeness, lively and imaginative language, polemical sharpness of some conclusions. The reviewer also draws attention to many errors involved by the author’s insufficient acquaintance with the history and culture of Western countries, the topical issues of research on the history of the French Revolution.