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Author Stites, Richard, 1931-2010.

Title The four horsemen : riding to liberty in post-Napoleonic Europe / Richard Stites
Published Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, 2014

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Description 1 online resource (xiii, 439 pages)
Contents 1 Before the Barricades Went Up 3 -- 2 Rafael del Riego: The Ride Through Andalusia 28 -- 3 Guglielmo Pepe: Marching into Naples 121 -- 4 Alexandros Ypsilanti: Across the River Pruth 186 -- 5 Sergei Muraviev-Apostol: Into the Steppe 240 -- 6 The Torn Cloth of Memory 322
Summary "In a series of revolts starting in 1820, four military officers rode forth on horseback from obscure European towns to bring political freedom and a constitution to Spain, Naples, and Russia; and national independence to the Greeks. The men who launched these exploits from Andalusia to the snowy fields of Ukraine--Colonel Rafael del Riego, General Guglielmo Pepe, General Alexandros Ypsilanti, and Colonel Sergei Muraviev-Apostol--all hoped to overturn the old order. Over the next six years, their revolutions ended in failure. The men who led them became martyrs. In The Four Horsemen, the late, eminent historian Richard Stites offers a compelling narrative history of these four revolutions. Stites sets the stories side by side, allowing him to compare events and movements and so illuminate such topics as the transfer of ideas and peoples across frontiers, the formation of an international community of revolutionaries, and the appropriation of Christian symbols and language for secular purposes. He shows how expressive behavior and artifacts of all kinds--art, popular festivities, propaganda, and religion--worked their way to various degrees into all the revolutionary movements and regimes. And he documents as well the corruption, abandonment of liberal values, and outright betrayal of the revolution that emerged in Spain and Naples; the clash of ambitions and ideas that wracked the unity of the Decembrists' cause; and civil war that erupted in the midst of the Greek struggle for independence. Richard Stites was one of the most imaginative and broad-ranging historians working in the United States. This book is his last work, a classic example of his dazzling knowledge and idiosyncratic yet accessible writing style. The culmination of an esteemed career, The Four Horsemen promises to enthrall anyone interested in nineteenth-century Europe and the history of revolutions"-- Provided by publisher
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 395-417) and index
Notes Print version record
Subject Riego y Núñez, Rafael del, 1784-1823.
Pepe, Guglielmo, 1783-1855.
Hypsēlantēs, Alexandros, 1792-1828.
Muravʹev-Apostol, Sergeĭ Ivanovich, 1796-1826.
SUBJECT Hypsēlantēs, Alexandros, 1792-1828 fast
Muravʹev-Apostol, Sergeĭ Ivanovich, 1796-1826 fast
Pepe, Guglielmo, 1783-1855 fast
Riego y Núñez, Rafael del, 1784-1823 fast
Subject Revolutions -- Europe -- History -- 19th century
Revolutionaries -- Europe -- Biography
HISTORY -- Modern -- 19th Century.
HISTORY -- Europe -- Western.
BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY -- Historical.
Revolutionaries
Revolutions
SUBJECT Europe -- History -- 1815-1848. http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85045708
Spain -- History -- Revolution, 1820-1823. http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85126092
Kingdom of the Two Sicilies -- History -- Revolution, 1820-1821. http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85089745
Greece -- History -- War of Independence, 1821-1829. http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85057095
Russia -- History -- December Uprising, 1825. http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85125798
Subject Europe
Kingdom of the Two Sicilies
Greece
Russia
Spain
Genre/Form Biographies
History
Biographies.
Biographies.
Form Electronic book
ISBN 9780199981472
0199981477