Selected Websites with Primary Sources on the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars
Websites with Primary Sources
For an extensive Webography on the Age of Revolutionary Wars with several websites that offer primary document collections go here.
Institution: Brigham Young University, Harald B. Lee Library, Provo, UT
This open access website by the Brigham Young University Harald B. Lee Library is available to all. The section Euro Docs, France, 1789–1971 focuses on the French history between French Revolution and Paris Commune. Links connect to European primary historical documents that are transcribed, reproduced in facsimile, or translated. In addition, users will find video or sound files, maps, photographs or other imagery, databases, and other documentation. The sources cover a broad range of historical happenings (political, economic, social and cultural). The order of documents is chronological wherever possible.
Institution: German Historical Institute, Washington D.C.
Initiated by the German Historical Institute in Washington, DC, German History in Documents and Images provides primary sources on German history dating back to the early-modern period. The collection is divided into thematic sections, each curated by scholars, framed by introductory essays, and accompanied by primary sources (including English–language sources), as well as maps and images. Subjects include government and administration, military, economics, gender and family, and more. Materials are text-searchable and fully translated. The section From Absolutism to Napoleon (1648–1815) includes several documents, images and maps on the period of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars.
Institution: Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA, and American Social History Project, City University of New York
Created by the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media at George Mason University and with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Social History Project, and the Florence Gould Foundation, the project Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité: Exploring the French Revolution includes both essays introducing the subject, a timeline of events, and a glossary of terms. Associated primary documents include 338 texts and 245 images, as well as maps and songs. First launched in 2001 under the guidance of historians Lynn Hunt (University of California, Los Angeles) and Jack Censer George Mason University), the site continues to function.
Institution: Fondation Napoléon, Paris
The Fondation Napoléon, a historical foundation located in Paris and since 2000 led by the historian Thierry Lentz, is made up of professionals and specialists in military history, the history of the arts and library and information science. This team created the website napoleon.org that includes a History of the two Empires with timelines, biographies, paintings etc., a section for Young Historrians, and Napoleonica Research dedicated above all to primary sources on the era of the Napoleonic Empire (1804–1815) to the disposal of researchers and historians via the Internet, using the key word search. In addition, visitors to the site will find information about the Code Civil, printed working documents of the conseil d’etat, letters from Napoléon I to Bigot de Préameneu and drawings from the Collection Houdetot. Especially interesting is the subsite with 8.664 online documents.
Institution: Christopher Newport University, Trible Library, Newport News, VA
This site by the Library of the Christopher Newport University provides book sources and links to several websites on the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars.
Institution: University of Washington, University Libraries, Seattle, WA
This collection by the University Libraries of the University of Washington, Seattle, WA, showcases 83 satirical prints, or caricatures, from the Napoleonic period, all giving political commentary on events of the period. Fifty of the prints were created by French artists, and thirty-three by English artists. Nearly all of the French prints date from the last two years of Napoleon's reign, but the English prints represent a broader time period ranging from 1793 to 1815. The prints are primarily original etchings with other printing methods represented. Most of them have been hand-colored. The original collection is in good physical condition, although a few pieces have been trimmed to the edge of the plate impression or even the edge of the image.
Institution: National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh, United Kingdom
This collection by the National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh provides 78 Scottish chapbooks recounting events from the late 1790s to the Battle of Waterloo in 1815. Cheap print booklets mostly containing ballads about the military conflicts. The material also give insights into contemporary views of Napoleon Bonaparte, Josephine de Beauharnais, Horatio Nelson and the Duke of Wellington and other well known people of the time.