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spacerHistorical odds & ends from the 18th century & the Napoleonic era

Introduction


This site contains some fairly obscure information relating to the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic eras. It was collected by the author during his researches into Napoleon's first campaign in northern Italy (1796-7).

Some of the fruit of this research went into the author's book, The Road to Rivoli: Napoleon's First Campaign, Road to Rivoli paperback coverwhich was published by Cassell & Co in January 2001. However, much material remained that could not be incorporated into a book of publishable size.

Rather than waste this material, the author decided to make it available by means of the internet in the hope that it might prove useful to somebody. The demands of a full-time job have meant that the author has only been able to place a small amount of material on the site, but he continues to hope that he may find time to make more of it available.

In the five years that the site has been running it has clocked up over a quarter of a million requests for pages or images, and it presently gets about 250 requests per day. Whether or not the visitors find what they were looking for is another matter. We can only hope so.


What's On the Other Pages?

Options:

search the site using Atomz. Fully configurable search.

Bibliographies:

the main source works for The Road to Rivoli. Several hundred books and articles listed.

Biographies:

the lives and careers of some 110 people who are connected (sometimes very loosely) with Napoleon's 1796-7 campaign.

Chronologies:

twenty-one pages, listing prominent events from the 1600s to the 1820s. Emphasis on the military history of the period.

Maps:

a detail from the same edition of map that Napoleon used at the start of his 1796 campaign, a modern contour map of Montenotte, and another of San Michele and La Bicocca.

Miscellaneous:

conversion tables for weights and measures in use during the Napoleonic period. A few links to other Napoleonic sites.

Pictures:

sub-divided into three sections: one each on portraits, uniforms, and paintings of battles.

Places:

photographs of important sites of the 1796 campaign. There is also a photographic panorama of the field of Rivoli.

Texts:

some letters from Napoleon's official correspondence, and two from General Joubert dealing with operations in the Alps. Also a few links to other sources of texts.

Unless otherwise credited, original text, translations and photographs on this site are © 2001 Martin Boycott-Brown