Content area
Full Text
Il Principe Eugenio di Savoia [Prince Eugene of Savoy], By Giro Paoletti. Rome: Stato Maggiore dell'Esercito/Ufficio Storico, 2001. ISBN not known. Illustrations. Notes. Bibliography. Indexes. Pp. 638. Price not known.
Giro Paoletti knows the eighteenth century and is as comfortable discussing politics, diplomacy, and finance, as he is describing maneuvers and orders of battle. He acknowledges his debt to Natale Pentimalli, who spent twenty years studying Prince Eugene and whose notes Paoletti has used as the basis for this work. But this is very much Paoletti's book. He has searched Italian and Vatican archives, added notes and a bibliography, polished Pentimalli's prose, and written forty-two of the book's sixty chapters. He has placed notes at the end of each of the book's five major sections; included two indexes, one for places, another for names; and arranged the bibliography by subject. While long, the book is usable. Its only weakness is its small maps.
But that is a quibble. Paoletti offers his reader a thorough study of tactics and...