Mass mortality, military movement, and the forces of nature in the Napoleonic Wars / Joseph Horan

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Horan, Joseph, author.

Series:

War, conflict, and the environment ; 1.

War, conflict, and the environment ; 1

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Napoleonic Wars, 1800-1815.

War--Environmental aspects.

War.

Physical Description:

1 online resource

Place of Publication:

Leiden : Leiden University Press, [2026]

Summary:

"This book examines the environmental history of the Napoleonic Wars through the lens of everyday military mobility, demonstrating that warfare created distinctive “militarized landscapes” along the roads traversed by armies on the march. These environments shaped wartime experience in fundamental ways, above all by leaving both soldiers and civilians vulnerable to the effects of exposure, hunger, and epidemic disease. France itself experienced these miseries during the opening years of the conflict in the 1790s, but Napoleon’s victories opened the path for a strategy of displacing the zone of conflict as much as possible from French soil. The rise and fall of Napoleon’s empire ultimately hinged on the movement of people, plants, animals, and the microbes responsible for epidemic disease, and a closer look at this example reveals that potential for a better understanding of wartime environments as dynamic landscapes shaped by the everyday mobility of a wide range of human and non-human actors"-- JSTOR

Contents:

The momentum of war

Lethal velocities

Insurgent movements

Paths to glory

Routes of infection

Afflictions of empire

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 245-256) and index

Online resource; title from PDF title page (JSTOR, viewed May 27, 2026)

Other Format:

Print version: Horan, Joseph Mass mortality, military movement, and the forces of nature in the Napoleonic Wars

ISBN:

9789400605671

9400605676

9789400605688

8400605683

9400605684

9788400605681

OCLC:

1589866253

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license