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From 1808 to 1814, women fought alongside men in the Spanish War of Independence against Napoleon. The extent to which this was a ‘people’s war’ has been exaggerated. Nevertheless, the involvement of hundreds of female combatants in Madrid, Gerona, Zaragoza and elsewhere shocked the French and surprised the Spanish, and was taken by both sides as a sign that the war in Spain was not like other wars. In Zaragoza, female militancy was initially associated with the bellicose Virgin of the Pillar, a rather traditional symbol. Yet, the fact that women found themselves deeply involved in the resistance movement – both in Zaragoza and elsewhere in Spain – created a small space in which women could begin to challenge traditional gender roles. Ironically, however, as illustrated in the story of Agustina Aragón, the greatest of the ‘Amazons’ of Zaragoza, liberation from France brought with it a counter-revolution, at least as far as her personal liberation was concerned.

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Book Reviews many references to people, events, and institutions that the author does not explain in detail. Woloch does, however, give some warning of this fact in his introduction by stating that his book should be read after digesting a fullscale biography of Napoleon. The author adroitly examines the political machine that Napoleon used to run France and focuses on the most influential politicians in the government. While Talleyrand and Fouché, Napoleon's two most famous civilian officials, are given their rightful place in the text, they are not the main focus. Woloch illuminates a host of officials from the Directory and Consulate governments as well as the Imperial Senate and Legislative Corps who can be shown to have been crucial to Napoleon's success. The author chose to focus on men like: Boulay de Meurthe, Théophile Berlier, Antoine Thibaudeau, Regnaud de St. Jean d'Angely, Lazare Carnot, and most important, Jean-Jacques-Régis Cambacérès. His goal of exposing the reader to a generally unknown aspect of the Napoleonic period is ambitious and could easily have led to a quagmire of stories of petty political dealings. Woloch escapes this fate with a clear writing style and a level of detail that is comprehensive without stifling the flow of the narrative. Woloch's sources are excellent. He uses numerous files from the Archives Nationales in Paris that are the logical choices for accurate primary documentation and supplements these by consulting a number of memoirs and collections from the private papers of the participants dealt with in his accounts. His documentation is concise and careful with an average of sixty endnotes per chapter. Anyone looking for a military or diplomatic history of the era should look elsewhere. However, for the reader interested in acquiring a better understanding of the Napoleonic regime or the larger issue of how nascent republics can be led to dictatorship, this is a worthwhile addition to the field of study.