Thank you for viewing this blog! My name is Bryan – I am the author of the undergraduate honours thesis that this blog has formed out of. I am currently a student at the University of Victoria, undertaking a Master’s degree in History and a Graduate Professional Certificate in Cultural Resource Management. My current research is actually much different than the topic of this blog – at the moment, I am researching information-technology systems as a means of delivering content and meeting educational benchmarks in museums. But, early modern France, re-vitalization of the classics, napoleonic-era tactics, and eighteenth-century military, social, and political trends in general are all topics of interest to me.I do not claim to be an expert on this topic. Readers should take my essay with a large grain of salt – as large a grain as can possibly be found, in fact. I was very lucky to have the research for this project sponsored by a grant from the University of Victoria under the Jamie Cassels Undergraduate Research Program, and was equally lucky to receive the Grotius Award in Modern History for Top Undergraduate Graduating Honours Essay for this work. Nevertheless, this – like all history – is an expression of my own interests and opinions. Readers will find footnotes and a bibliography with sources which they can, and perhaps should, check before coming to any conclusions.
Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions/concerns about this material: bl.smith@live.ca
