Book overview
Part of the acclaimed "Special Campaign" series of works intended for serious professional students of military history, each volume is interspersed with strategical and tactical comments and illustrated by numerous sketches. Napoleon Bonaparte's fame as a military commander can be dated back to his campaign in Italy in 1796-97, where as a relatively unknown commander of a ragged and poorly supported army he managed to defeat a series of much larger Austrian and allied armies, conquer most of northern Italy, and force the Austrians to the negotiating table. A key goal of Napoleon's foreign policy was to regain control of Northern Italy, which was reverting to Austrian control after the military defeats inflicted by Austrian and Russian forces in 1799, and the Austrian invasion of Lombardy and Liguria in April 1800. In the second Italian campaign, Napoleon's strategy was brilliantly imaginative. He led the Reserve Army of some 50,000 men over the Swiss Alps into Northern Italy where they would emerge unexpectedly behind Austrian lines, the campaign culminating in the Battle of Marengo. Print size 21x29.7 cm to accommodate the oversized maps.
