The First Total War: Napoleon's Europe and the Birth of Warfare as We Know It

by David A. Bell

Book Overview

"A mesmerizing account that illuminates not just the Napoleonic wars but all of modern history . . . It reads like a novel" (Lynn Hunt, Eugen Weber Professor of Modern European History, UCLA).

The twentieth century is usually seen as the century of total war. But as the historian David Bell argues in this landmark work, the phenomenon actually began much earlier, in the era of muskets, cannons, and sailing ships--in the age...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0618919813
• ISBN13: 9780618919819
• Release Date: January 2008
• Publisher: Mariner Books
• Length: 432 Pages
• Weight: 0.68 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 5.3" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

A Compelling Study of a Fundamental Cultural Shift

Enlightenment produced new currents of thoughts that repudiated the military culture of the old regime as merely pursuit of honor and glory. According to Bell, since the religious wars, modern European states and its concomitant aristocratic culture `placed surprising limits on war' by mutually agreeing to a code of conduct to protect POWs, enemy noncombatants, etc. In a sense, the aristocratic wars were really `large-scale duels with moral issues subordinated to the thirst for honor and glory' that treated enemy as `honorable adversaries' and recoiled from inflicting needless human sufferings. Hence, Louis XIV's razing of the Palatinate particularly outraged and courted collective condemnation. Bell singled out Fenelon and his work, Telemachus, for corroding the adhesion to the aristocratic war culture. Its exhortation of the aged-old `claims of conscience, denunciation of war and Christian pacifism' gained a huge following in France. D'Holbach's The System of Nature, another bestseller, proposed a theory of history to explain the persistence of warfare as an `incomplete embrace of modernity - to remnants of barbarism.' War was just a stage in the progress to universal peace. In the minds of the reading public, these works `transformed peace from a moral imperative to a historical one... and opened the door to the idea that in the name of future peace, any and all means might be justified - including even exterminatory war.' The cataclysmic social transformation of the French Revolution opened an opportunity for the execution and reinterpretation of those ideals. The Assembly debate on war and peace at the Manege underscored an acute shift from aristocratic concept of wars. Bell observed that new leaders such as Brissot `saw international relations in idealistic terms straight out of Telemachus.' The Girondins successfully made a declaration of peace but simultaneously asserted that `peoples had the right to defend themselves vigorously if attacked.' War rhetoric took a fanatical turn: `A coming `worldwide war of liberation was a holy cause; we will only be "regenerated" by blood; we need strong explosions to expel strong poison in the body of France.' The Revolution spurred the conviction that war was `a matter of morality and not science or aristocratic art,' no longer the `chess piece maneuvers of the aristocrats.' The democratization of the hitherto aristocratic monopoly of glory and honor formed the plank of the modern culture of war. Individual soldiers and military leaders could enjoy upward mobility by battlefield achievements. The immediate consequence was the rise of `political generals,' with Napoleon being its chief representative. The glorification of war successes underscored the military's moral superiority, the heart of militarism, which 'imposed the values and customs of the military on the civilian society.' For example, the Battle of Valmy gained legendary status that reverberated in the civilian society.

Great book by a leading historian

David Bell provides an interesting thesis through an intellectual look at the French Revolution and Napoleonic wars and their effect on European culture and thinking. The rise of militarism and the move towards modernity in the army is categorized well throughout and supported by looking at actions from Vendee, Italy, Egypt, Prussia and Spain. From brutalizing campaigns where the limited warfare of the old regime was cast aside in favor of not only large scale relentless battles but guerilla actions. The book is not simply a recasting of the great battles but combines the results of these battles with popular works of literature and theater at the time and the shifts in beliefs from the intellectuals down to the masses. Bell as always delivers a fresh look at a tired topic by utilizing the aspects of intellectual history and using them as a lens to view various events. In this case we see the development of a new type of warfare and how it crystallized in the Napoleonic era. The reason that I use the word interesting and disagree with various reviewers is that Bell thesis is not flawed but the fact that this warfare did not stick and went back to a traditional European model means it did not become dominant until later on. It planted the idea that this type of war could be waged and laid the groundwork for some of the great military minds to publish works such as On War creating new tactics and strategies to shape future wars. Overall well worth the time for those who enjoy military history or the exciting things that intellectual history can unlock when looking at a topic.

Very accessible and interesting book

David Bell is a leading academic historian who specializes in early modern European history with an emphasis on the French revolution. I purchased this book on a whim since the price was right. I thought it would be too technical compared to the history books that I usually read. I was surprised by how accessible and gripping the book was. My only quibble was that I felt that he should have reserved the comparisons between the current Iraq war (lots of mistakes) with the Napoleonic wars for the afterward. In my opinion they interrupted the flow of the book. On the other hand, there weren't too many of these asides. This summer, I gave my copy to a nephew who is also a history buff.

An Intellectual History of the Napoleonic Wars

We have grown accustomed to viewing the World Wars of the 20th century as the first total wars in modern history, for they required the total mobilization and militarization of the societies involved. Their accompanying ideologies, fascism and communism, were appropriately called totalitarian since they left no aspect of society unaffected. Now historian David A Bell has written a new and different history of the Napoleonic Wars (1792 - 1815) arguing that they were in fact the first total wars. In his introduction, Bell tells us that he is borrowing techniques from intellectual history to write a military history. Traditionally military historians have restricted themselves to accounts of battlefield tactics and weapon systems. Bell is attempting to go further in showing that the ideals of the Enlightenment played a role in what he calls the first total war. He believes that the French Revolution - the apotheosis of the Enlightenment - radicalized people's ideas about how and why wars should be fought. During the time of the ancien regime - which is Bell's main standard of comparison - wars were limited and short-lived. They were fought according to established rules and usually to defend the honor of this or that aristocrat; in fact, many times the armies were made up of mercenaries. The philosophes of the Enlightenment such as Kant, Diderot, d'Alembert, and the Marquis de Condorcet were certain that with the advent of reason wars would be a thing of the past. As late as 1790 Robespierre was declaring in the Assembly that the French nation had no desire to engage in war, that to invade another country and make it adopt their laws and constitution was the furthest thing from their minds. Much changed in two years. By 1792 there was growing opposition to the revolutionary government in Paris, especially in Vendee. The government decided to put down this rebellion with a degree of brutality not seen before. They conducted a scorched-earth policy that spared no one. They made no distinction between combattants and non-combattants. The dogs of war had been unleashed to save the revolution and to obliterate any dissent. Bell explores the nature of total war and how it feeds on itself. Once the military becomes front and center of the government, war becomes unstoppable. All of the nations resources and efforts went to the Grand Armee to create an empire in places as far as Egypt and Russia. In his retelling of the Spanish campaign, Bell attempts to draw a parallel with America's intervention in Iraq. To an extent there are some parallels. Napoleon claimed to be bringing Enlightenment ideals and reform to Spain, yet the insurgency would have none of it. This, however, is a distraction from Bell's thesis; whatever else it is doing in Iraq, America is not conducting a total war. This is a very restrained and cautious use of military power. In fact, Napoleon's excursion into Spain was somewhat cautious to be called total war. Whe

An interesting but flawed thesis

David Bell has written an interesting but somewhat flawed book which states that the Napoleonic Wars was the first total war in European history. According to Bell the intellectual origins of the Napoleanic wars occurred with the writings of elightenment philosophers who wanted to go back to the Classical period in which all the citizens of the republic were part of the army. This theory about the armed republic became reality during the French revolution in which mass conscription took place. As a result of the Napoleonic wars, accroding to Bell, aristocrats soon lost their place with the French army and later in the nineteenth century with other Eurpean armies. As a result classes that taught aristcratic values for army officers were soon replaced by those that stressed technical skills. Also every citizen was judged a combatant and this led to massacres committed by French forces during the Vendee and in Spain and Italy. The are two main weaknesses in Bell's case that the Napoleonic Wars was the first truly modern war in history. The first is Bell's belief that aristocrats and royals were eliminated from the army but this was not the case with the German army in the First World War which included the Bavarian Prince Ruppert as a commander of the main German armies and the Tsarist army of the same time period who had Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolayevich and Tsar Nicholas II as head of the army. Also the Napoleonic wars as being a precursor to the atrocities committed during the two world wars seems to be flawed in that the genocides that occurred in the first half of the twentieth century were based on the physical elimination of class and ethinc groups unlike the massacres in Spain,France, and Italy in the early nineteenth century. Despite these major flaws this book is still an interesting book to read.