The Most Monstrous of Wars: The Napoleonic Guerrilla War in Southern Italy, 1806-1811

The Most Monstrous of Wars recounts the unprecedented brutality that turned the seemingly simple task of subduing a remote Italian province into one of the most grisly, demoralizing struggles Napoleon ever encountered. Seasoned by victories in Prussia and Austria, the French military met an enemy in Italy for which it was totally unprepared – the Calabrian peasant. The vicious contest that ensued illustrates the ability of primitively armed guerrillas to cripple a modern, well-equipped, and previously invincible army. In the first full-length study of the Calabrian War, Milton Finley depicts the conflict – in all its gory detail – as a turning point in the Napoleonic wars and as the prototype for twentieth-century guerrilla warfare.
Drawing on material from military archives and from soldiers’ memoirs, Finley offers a narrative that is as much social history as military chronicle. He portrays both the Calabrian and French perspectives, from the Calabrian warriors who were motivated by religious fanaticism to pay any price in defense of their province, to the French soldiers who, when faced with an enemy who excelled in atrocities, responded in kind. Finley explores the dehumanizing effects of the bloody contest that killed 20,000 French soldiers, depleted Napoleon’s treasury, and escalated to a level of savagery unmatched even in twentieth-century combat. As he underscores the general futility of partisan warfare, Finley blames Napoleon for failing to learn the lesson of Calabria and for becoming embroiled in a similar quagmire in Spain, which ultimately cost him his throne.