Major Olivier Lapray Books

The fifth and final volume of this rich saga of the French Imperial Guard, Andre Jouineau presents the last troops in the Garde: the Horse Artillery, the Health Service, the crew trains, the artillery and artillery trains. A chapter about the headquarters staff closes the story of these glorious units.

After the defeat in 1940, the Vichy Government started reforming the army which the occupier had been good enough to let it keep. At the same time in England, General de Gaulle got down to setting up a unit for all the volunteers drifting in from all over the Empire.

This, the thirteenth book in the Officers & Soldiers series, shows the French Army during the Phoney War and the French campaign in May-June 1940.

This volume covers the last horse troops of the French Imperial Guard: gendarmes, honor guards and horse artillery, not forgetting the Lithuanian tartars, last proof of Napoleon's will to make out of his Guard a model of a Greater Europe.

TEXT IN FRENCH From the Capture of Algiers to the disbanding of the REP, through the Carlist Wars in Spain, Camerone, the Great War, Bir-Hakeim or Indochina, this book retraces the history of the most famous corps in military history over the last two centuries.

TEXT IN FRENCH If there's one conflict that was remarkable from a lot of points of view, it was the American Civil War, better known in France as the War of Secession.

On 14 June 1800, during the second Italian campaign, Napoleon narrowly won the battle of Marengo (Piedmont). This famous battle put 28,000 French soldiers against 31,000 Austrian soldiers under the command of General Melas. At first dominated, the French had to retreat nearly seven miles back.

This book traces the glorious history of the elite French cavalry.

Dès le début, la Suisse a mis en place un véritable commerce de mercenaires. Par des capitulations, chaque canton pouvait recruter des unités militaires au nom d'un État voisin avec ses propres officiers et règles. La Révolution française a rencontré la loyauté des Suisses au service du roi de France. Le célèbre massacre de la Garde suisse le 10 août 1792 aux Tuileries fut le plus sanglant. Après cela, les régiments suisses de l'infanterie de ligne furent dissous. La France, réorganisant l'Europe entre 1793 et 1813, a transformé la Suisse qui fournissait, non toujours dans les meilleures conditions, son voisin en troupes de grande valeur pour la Révolution et pour l'Empire. Ce livre traite des troupes suisses qui ont servi la Monarchie, la République, le Consulat, l'Empire et le Second Empire.