'This is the most convincing study of the shifting ideas of meritocracy in the officer corps of the French army in this period, straddling contrasting political regimes from the Bourbon monarchy, through the Revolution and Empire, to the Restoration. Rafe Blaufarb illuminates the reforms of the Revolutionary period by framing them in their wider context.'

Professor Alan Forrest, University of York

'Blaufarb's book is a study with wider implications, providing keen insights into the evolution of ideals from the last years of the Old Regime through the Napoleonic era.'
Michael P. Fitzsimmons, Auburn University Montgomery, The Journal of Modern History Vol 77, No 2, June 2005