Many writers, and not least among them Marshal Foch, have
dealt with Napoleon's first and perhaps most wonderful campaign—in Northern Italy in 1796. Yet Professor Spenser Wilkinson's compact study of The Rise of General Bonaparte (Clarendon Press, 12s. 6d.) throws new light on the subject. He emphasizes the excellence of the young gunner's training and the debt which he owed to the French military historians who described the Italian campaigns of 1742-48 and to Guibert's revolutionary work on the art of war. In a singularly lucid account of the four weeks' campaign from Montenotte to Lodi, in which the Austrians were severed from the Sardinians and both beaten in turn, the author shows again and again how Bonaparte applied with rare skill the lessons that he had learned from books. In all military history there is no more perfect example of the application of superior force at the right time and place, so that victory was quickly and cheaply gained. Professor Wilkinson's volume completes his admirable trilogy, beginning with The Defence of Pied. mmt and continued in The French Army before Napoleon. * * *
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