Napoleon's Infantry

This volume presents a comprehensive, illustrated overview of the history, organization, and uniforms of the French infantry during the Napoleonic Period.

With fascinating and authoritative detail, historian Gabriele Esposito covers the infantry units of Napoleon’s Imperial Army, during the early nineteenth century. When the future Emperor assumed control of France, the infantry of his army was disorganized and poorly equipped; it lacked discipline and was trained in a quite old-fashioned way. Napoleon acted very rapidly to resolve these issues by giving his foot troops a new structure and teaching them new tactics. By 1805, the French infantry had the best combat capabilities in the world.

Napoleon’s Infantry covers every type of infantry unit: line regiments, light regiments, foreign corps and special corps. It is often overlooked that the French infantry of 1800–1815 included large numbers of foreign soldiers and even an Irish Legion. Esposito takes all these little-known corps into consideration, together with several special corps like Corsican light infantry and mountain infantry. The entire volume is beautifully illustrated with rare contemporary uniform plates that have never been published before.