Napoleon's 1796 Italian Campaign: "Bravo!"

Dr Konstantinos Travlos has written a nice 'annotated presentation' about the first Clausewitz volume Professor Murray and I translated and edited, 'Napoleon's 1796 Italian Campaign'.

Konstantinos rightly declares his conflict of interest in that he and I are friends and collaborators, notably on his own excellent wargame campaign book on the Balkan Wars of 1912-1913, 'Bloody Big Balkan Battles!'.

Nevertheless, he is a serious scholar of military history and his remarks merit attention. I therefore offer some of them here:

'The editorial job and translation are excellent.'

'The decision to include the notes of an earlier French translator (Colin) is brilliant [...]. It also makes reading the text more interesting as it calls on you to compare what Clausewitz wrote with what Colin and the translators/editors think he wrote.'

'Bravo!'

But I encourage you to read the full presentation, as Konstantinos provides a number of perceptive observations of his own on the lessons Clausewitz teaches.

I am grateful to Konstantinos for his kind words and for his thoughtful discussion of our work. I hope he will enjoy our forthcoming translations of the two volumes on the 1799 campaigns in Italy and Switzerland just as much.

(For other reviews of the 1796 book, see here.)