Introduction

The French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars loomed large in the lives of contemporaries. On 1 February 1973, France declared war on Britain after Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger dismissed the French ambassador in his horror over the news of Louis XVI’s execution. Excluding the short-lived peace of the Treaty of Amiens in 1802, Britain was to find itself at war with the armies of the republic, and later the empire, until 1815. The number of dead, per capita, was on a similar scale to the First World War, albeit stretched out over a much longer period. France was to enjoy unprecedented military success in the 1790s.