What is rare are books like Frederick Kagan’s End of the Old Order. It is not the size, though the book is notable for being 750-plus pages and just the first of a promised quartet. It is the ambition and the scope: “The goal of this and subsequent volumes is to present an integrated diplomatic, military, and political history of the Napoleonic period worthy of Clausewitz’s insight [referring to the Prussian thinker’s insistence that the study of war cannot be divorced from the study of national politics].” Kagan’s desire is no less than a redefinition of the pathways of our understanding of one of the torrid eras of world history. My immediate reaction was to assume this was hyperbole or hubris. But Kagan has an important point to make and a steady command of a great deal of material in quite a number of languages. . . .

The strength of Kagan’s book is the mix of diplomatic and political investigation, but I don’t wish to slight what is a very fine and full account of the battles. Here is a Napoleon perturbed by his situation before Austerlitz—deep in Moravia after an already long and hard campaign, facing large numbers of enemy troops—trying to find his way through to the victorious stroke. He is more than ready to negotiate, and Kagan gives him realistic credit for the victory: “Napoleon’s role in the Battle of Austerlitz was not that of an omniscient war god but a skillful general seizing on and magnifying his enemy’s mistakes.” . . .

When the new year of 1806 dawned, a Corsican artilleryman was in all essences master of Europe. How he fell from the sunny heights will be Kagan’s story. I look forward to the next volumes.