Goethe said of Napoleon: ‘His life was the stride of a demigod.’ For eighteen and a half years, from Rivoli to Waterloo, Napoleon branded an era of Europe’s history with his name. He was military conqueror and legislator, dynastic iconoclast and kingmaker, emancipator and tyrant. Yet the Age of Napoleon has a historic appeal far greater than the fluctuating fortunes of its central figure. These were the years when Russia emerged as a great European power, when national sentiment fired the imagination of the peoples of Germany and Italy, when Goya depicted the horrors of war in Spain and when Beethoven’s masterful Eroica revolutionized the classical symphony. Writers, artists and composers shook off the bonds of old disciplines, giving free rein to creative Romanticism, scientific discovery anticipated the Age of Steam, even the Age of Electricity.
An Encyclopaedia of Napoleon’s Europe is intended for people who are interested in the years 1797 to 1815 as a whole. The book contains plenty about Napoleon, his campaigns, his family and his marshals, but there are also short articles on great cities, on individual countries, on palaces and social life. There are biographical entries on all the leading political, military and naval figures in Britain and continental Europe - as well as on writers, philosophers, artists and composers. Alan Palmer provides, too, clear explanations of some contentious issues: the status of the Jews, Catholic Emancipation, serfdom, slavery, the Eastern Question. Cross references and a classified list of entries make this concise encyclopaedia easy to use. An Encyclopaedia of Napoleon’s Europe provides a lucid guide to a turbulent epoch for historians and non-historians alike.