The Eagle’s Rise: Napoleon Bonaparte’s First Campaign and the Birth of Napoleonic Warfare

Authors

Berke Gursoy, Cornell University

Abstract

Traditionally, the study of Napoleonic warfare has been approached through the lens of the massive battles of the French Empire and Emperor Napoleon, but little attention has been paid to those campaigns of General Bonaparte, specifically, on Napoleon’s first campaign, the Italian Campaign. This paper argues that the Italian campaign should be understood not only amongst Napoleon’s greatest but amongst history’s greatest demonstrations of the art of war. This thesis is advanced by an overview of the core elements of Napoleonic warfare and a demonstration of their implementation in Italy. Using both primary and secondary sources, this paper conducts an operational and tactical analysis of the campaign, focusing on the case studies of the Battles of Montenotte and Castiglione.

First Page

17

Last Page

32

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

Recommended Citation

Gursoy, Berke (2019) "The Eagle’s Rise: Napoleon Bonaparte’s First Campaign and the Birth of Napoleonic Warfare," Armstrong Undergraduate Journal of History: Vol. 9: Iss. 1, Article 2.
DOI: 10.20429/aujh.2019.090102
Available at: https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/aujh/vol9/iss1/2