Napoleon Bonaparte dominated the public life of Europe like no other individual before him. Not surprisingly, the story of the man himself has usually swamped he stories of his subjects. This book looks at the history of the Napoleonic Empire from an entirely new perspective - that of the ruled rather than the ruler. Michael Broers concentrates on the experience of the people of Europe - particularly the vast majority of Napoleon's subjects who were neither French nor willing participants in the great events of the period - during the dynamic but short-lived career of Napoleon, when half of the European content fell under his rule.

Michael Broers is Professor of Western European History at the University of Oxford, UK. He is the author of several books about revolutionary and Napoleonic Europe, including the two-volume biography Napoleon (2014 and 2018); Napoleon's Other War: Bandits, Rebels and their Pursuers in the Age of Revolutions (2010); and The Napoleonic Empire in Italy, 1796-1814 (2005), winner of the Grand Prix Napoléon prize, 2006.

List of Maps
Preface to the First Edition
Preface to the Second Edition

Introduction
Conquest, 1799-1807
Consolidation 1799-1807
Collaboration and Resistance: The Napoleonic State and the People of Western Europe, 1799-1808
Crisis 1808-1811
Coercion: The Europe of the Grand Empire 1810-1814
Collapse: The Fall of the Empire 1812-1814
Conclusion

Notes
Select Bibliography
Index