The origins of Napoleon's world-beating army lay in that of the French Revolution. The re-organization of regiments and tactics to weld together the bones of the old professional Royal army - with the mass of enthusiastc but untrained Revolutionary manpower - produced a military machine which bafled the traditional armies that attempted to strangle the young Republic at birth. This book explains the actual procedures used to produce this result. Events are discussed from the fall of the Bastille, through the great battles on the Rhine and in the Low Countries, the vicious "counter-revolutionary" war of the Vendee in the west of France, to the failed landings in Wales and Ireland in 1797-98.

Illustrated by: Patrice Courcelle