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 http://id.loc.gov/resources/hubs/a1b3203a-ac7e-5c64-5a26-35ef790f4a68. 1.

War, conflict, and the environment ; 1

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Napoleonic Wars, 1800-1815--Environmental aspects.

Napoleonic Wars, 1800-1815.

Napoleonic Wars, 1800-1815--Casualties.

War--Environmental aspects.

War.

Armed Forces--Mobilization.

Armed Forces.

Physical Description:

261 pages map 25 cm

maps.

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."--Page 4 of cover.

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.

ISBN:

9789087285043

9087285043

OCLC:

1583157873