For a little over twenty years, from the first campaigns of Revolutionary France in 1792 to the field of Waterloo in 1815, Europe was almost constantly at war. Armies marched from Lisbon to Moscow. Fleets fought from the Nile to Trafalgar. One man, a Corsican artillery officer, made himself emperor and redrew the map.
No other period has given historical fiction so many of its best loved heroes. Richard Sharpe, Jack Aubrey and Horatio Hornblower all belong to these years, and so do some of the greatest novels ever written, including War and Peace and Vanity Fair.
The appeal is easy to understand. This was the last great war fought with sail, horse and musket, close enough to be richly documented and distant enough to feel like another world. It offers battles on an epic scale and, at the same time, the small wooden world of a ship or the comradeship of a rifle company.
What Counts as Napoleonic Wars Fiction?
This hub covers novels set during the French Revolutionary Wars (1792 to 1802) and the Napoleonic Wars proper (1803 to 1815). Historians separate the two, but in fiction they form one long story, and many series begin in the 1790s and end at Waterloo.
That gives us four broad settings: the war at sea, the Peninsular War in Spain and Portugal, the great campaigns in central Europe and Russia, and the Hundred Days that ended at Waterloo. We also include the home front, since some of the best novels of the period never go near a battlefield.
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Top 10 Napoleonic Wars Novels
1. Sharpe’s Eagle (1981)
Author: Bernard Cornwell Setting: Spain, 1809, the Talavera campaign
Richard Sharpe is a rifleman who rose from the ranks, an officer without money, family or manners in an army run by gentlemen. In the summer of 1809 his company is attached to a new and badly led regiment marching into Spain.
When the regiment disgraces itself, Sharpe decides the only way to restore its honour, and save his own career, is to capture a French imperial eagle in battle.
This was the first Sharpe novel Cornwell wrote, and it is still one of the best places to begin. The battle writing is clear, fast and brutal. The complete series, in both publication and chronological order, is in our Sharpe series reading order.
2. Master and Commander (1969)
Author: Patrick O’Brian Setting: The Mediterranean, 1800
At a concert in Port Mahon, a Royal Navy lieutenant named Jack Aubrey annoys the man sitting next to him, a penniless physician called Stephen Maturin. By the next day Aubrey has his first command, the little brig Sophie, and Maturin is her surgeon.
Their friendship is the centre of twenty novels. Aubrey is bold and brilliant at sea, and hopeless on land. Maturin is a naturalist, a spy, and a far more dangerous man than he looks.
O’Brian’s prose is rich with period language, and the naval detail is unmatched. Give it fifty pages to settle and it becomes hard to put down. See our Aubrey-Maturin reading order and our Patrick O’Brian author page.
3. Mr. Midshipman Hornblower (1950)
Author: C.S. Forester Setting: The Channel, the Atlantic and Spain, 1794 to 1799
Horatio Hornblower joins the Royal Navy at seventeen: seasick, shy, friendless and convinced he is a coward. Over ten linked episodes he learns his trade, from his first prize to his first command.
Hornblower is the original Napoleonic naval hero, the model for almost everyone who came after. What makes him last is his self-doubt. He is brave because he forces himself to be, and nobody is harder on him than he is.
This is the first book in the story’s chronology and the ideal starting point. The full series is in our Hornblower reading order.
4. War and Peace (1869)
Author: Leo Tolstoy Setting: Russia and central Europe, 1805 to 1812
Tolstoy follows five aristocratic Russian families through the years between the battle of Austerlitz and Napoleon’s invasion of Russia. At the centre are the awkward, searching Pierre Bezukhov, the proud Prince Andrei Bolkonsky, and the young Natasha Rostova.
It is a war novel, a love story, a family saga and an argument about how history works, all at once. The battle scenes at Austerlitz and Borodino are some of the greatest ever written, and Tolstoy had interviewed veterans and walked the ground himself.
The length frightens people, but the chapters are short and the story moves. If you read one classic about this period, make it this one.
5. An Infamous Army (1937)
Author: Georgette Heyer Setting: Brussels and Waterloo, 1815
In the spring of 1815, Brussels is full of British officers and fashionable society, all waiting to see what Napoleon will do. Colonel Charles Audley, a member of Wellington’s staff, falls for the scandalous young widow Lady Barbara Childe.
Heyer is best known for her Regency romances, but this is a serious historical novel. The second half is a detailed account of the battle of Waterloo, hour by hour, built on Wellington’s own dispatches and the memoirs of men who fought there.
It has long been admired for the accuracy of its battle writing. Readers who come for the romance usually stay for the squares at Mont-Saint-Jean.
6. Vanity Fair (1848)
Author: William Makepeace Thackeray Setting: London, Brussels and beyond, around 1813 to 1830
Becky Sharp is clever, charming, penniless and entirely without scruples. Her friend Amelia Sedley is gentle, wealthy and naive. Thackeray follows both women from school into marriage and through the upheaval of 1815.
The famous Brussels chapters show the war from the point of view of the people left behind in the city, listening to the guns. Thackeray was writing more than thirty years after the events, looking back on his parents’ generation.
It is a satire rather than a war novel, and Becky is one of the great characters of English fiction. It also shows how deeply Waterloo marked British society.
7. Désirée (1951)
Author: Annemarie Selinko Setting: France and Sweden, 1794 to 1829
Désirée Clary was the daughter of a silk merchant in Marseille, and as a girl she was engaged to a young, unknown general called Napoleon Bonaparte. He left her for Josephine. She went on to marry one of his marshals and, remarkably, to become Queen of Sweden.
Selinko tells this true story as Désirée’s diary, which lets us watch Napoleon’s rise and fall through the eyes of someone who knew him before he was famous.
The novel was an international bestseller and was filmed in 1954 with Marlon Brando as Napoleon. It is a warm, readable way to see the era from the French side.
8. The Exploits of Brigadier Gerard (1896)
Author: Arthur Conan Doyle Setting: Across Napoleon’s Europe, 1807 to 1815
Etienne Gerard is an officer of French hussars, the finest swordsman and horseman in the Grande Armée, at least by his own account. As an old man he tells the stories of his adventures in the service of the emperor.
Gerard is vain, gallant and not very bright, and the comedy comes from the gap between what he says and what the reader understands. Conan Doyle drew on the memoirs of real French officers, and the period detail is excellent.
These short stories are funny, quick and far less known than Sherlock Holmes. They are also a rare English view of the war from the French saddle.
9. The Gun (1933)
Author: C.S. Forester Setting: Spain, during the Peninsular War
Before Hornblower, Forester wrote this short, hard novel about the war in Spain. Its hero is not a person but a huge bronze siege gun, abandoned by a retreating Spanish army and found by guerrillas.
As the gun passes from one band to another, it changes the fortunes of everyone who uses it. Forester shows the guerrilla war in all its cruelty, with none of the glamour of the regular campaigns.
The novel was filmed as The Pride and the Passion in 1957. It is a fine companion to the Sharpe books, showing the same war from the Spanish side.
10. Kydd (2001)
Author: Julian Stockwin Setting: England and at sea, 1793
Thomas Kydd is a young wig-maker from Guildford, seized by the press gang and sent aboard a ship of the line. He knows nothing about the sea, and he has no choice but to learn.
Most naval fiction is told from the quarterdeck. Stockwin, who served in the Royal Navy himself, begins on the lower deck among the ordinary seamen, and shows how the ship really worked.
It is the first book of a long series that follows Kydd up through the ranks. Readers who have finished Hornblower and Aubrey will find a fresh point of view here.
Fiction by Theatre of War
The War at Sea
The naval war has produced more series than any other part of the conflict. Start with Hornblower for pace and clarity, then move to Patrick O’Brian for depth. Both are covered in full in our Hornblower reading order and Aubrey-Maturin reading order.
For something different, Naomi Novik’s His Majesty’s Dragon (2006) replays the naval war with an air force of dragons. It is alternate history rather than straight historical fiction, but the period feel is superb. See our Temeraire series reading order.
The Peninsular War
The long campaign in Portugal and Spain (1808 to 1814) belongs to Bernard Cornwell. The Sharpe novels follow Wellington’s army through nearly every major battle, and our Bernard Cornwell author page covers the rest of his work.
Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (2004) sends an English magician to serve under Wellington in Spain. It is a fantasy, but its footnoted, Austen-like voice is one of the best pastiches of the period ever written.
Egypt, Italy and the Rise of Napoleon
William Dietrich’s Napoleon’s Pyramids (2007) follows Ethan Gage, an American adventurer who wins a mysterious medallion at cards in Paris and ends up with Napoleon’s expedition to Egypt in 1798. It is a light, fast adventure in the Indiana Jones tradition.
Joseph Conrad’s short novel The Duel (1908) follows two French cavalry officers who fight a series of duels across the whole span of Napoleon’s wars. It was filmed by Ridley Scott as The Duellists.
Jeanette Winterson’s The Passion (1987) is a short, dreamlike novel about a young French soldier who serves in Napoleon’s kitchen and a Venetian woman with a secret. It is literary fiction with a touch of magic, and nothing else on this page is like it.
Waterloo and the Hundred Days
Waterloo has its own shelf. Besides An Infamous Army and Vanity Fair, there is Sharpe’s Waterloo (1990), in which Cornwell puts his hero at the centre of the four days of the campaign.
Winston Graham’s The Twisted Sword (1990) brings the Poldark family to 1815, with members of the younger generation serving in the army. It is the eleventh book of twelve, so start at the beginning with our Poldark reading order.
Authors to Explore
- Bernard Cornwell: the Sharpe series, plus a nonfiction history of Waterloo
- Patrick O’Brian: the twenty Aubrey-Maturin novels
- Naomi Novik: the Temeraire series, the Napoleonic Wars with dragons
- C.S. Forester: the Hornblower novels and The Gun
- Georgette Heyer: An Infamous Army and The Spanish Bride
- Julian Stockwin: the Kydd series
Related Best-Of Lists
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the best novel about the Napoleonic Wars?
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy is the greatest novel of the Napoleonic Wars. For adventure, most readers choose Bernard Cornwell’s Sharpe series for the war on land, or Patrick O’Brian’s Master and Commander and C.S. Forester’s Hornblower novels for the war at sea.
What years did the Napoleonic Wars cover?
The Napoleonic Wars ran from 1803 to 1815, ending at the battle of Waterloo. They followed directly from the French Revolutionary Wars of 1792 to 1802, and most historical fiction treats the two as a single period.
Should I read Hornblower or Aubrey-Maturin first?
Hornblower is the easier starting point, with shorter books, a fast pace and clear explanations. The Aubrey-Maturin novels by Patrick O’Brian are richer and more demanding. Many readers begin with Hornblower and then move on to O’Brian.
Which Sharpe book should I start with?
Sharpe’s Eagle, the first Sharpe novel Bernard Cornwell wrote, is a good place to start. Readers who prefer chronological order can begin with Sharpe’s Tiger, which is set in India in 1799.
Are there Napoleonic Wars novels from the French point of view?
Yes. Désirée by Annemarie Selinko follows a woman who was once engaged to Napoleon, The Exploits of Brigadier Gerard by Arthur Conan Doyle is narrated by a French hussar, and The Duel by Joseph Conrad follows two French cavalry officers.
What are the best novels about the battle of Waterloo?
An Infamous Army by Georgette Heyer and Sharpe’s Waterloo by Bernard Cornwell both describe the battle in detail. Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray shows it from Brussels, among the civilians waiting for news.
Is there fantasy or alternate history set in the Napoleonic Wars?
Yes. Naomi Novik’s Temeraire series adds dragons to the war, beginning with His Majesty’s Dragon, and Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke imagines English magicians serving in the conflict.