Nooilforpacifists's Reviews > Napoleon: A Life

Gushing bio--unusual for an Englishman. Roberts claims that newly available letters present a vastly more favorable portrait than previously available to scholars. "All too often historians have taken at face value the biographies written by people around Napoleon, whereas many of them were deeply compromised, to the point of being worthless unless co firmed by as second source." The problem is that although Roberts tries to be balanced, and points out the warts, his over-the-top admiration for his subject distorts the lens of otherwise excellent research.

One example--Roberts extols Napoleon's re-created nobility: "Unlike anywhere else in Europe, a French family's noble simply lapsed if the next generation hadn't done enough to deserve its passing on." A paragraph later, however, he describes the new hierarchy -- "a complete reordering of the system" -- from top to bottom without placing the new peers. Instead, he digresses into a discussion of the exact mix of liberty, equality and fraternity the new scheme supplied.

Similarly, Roberts's discussion on Napoleon and the Jews is muddled. On one page, he touts (reasonably enough) the Decree on Jews and Usury. A page later, Napoleon is upholding prosecutions of Jewish moneylenders, and the best Roberts can manage is that "Napoleon was personally prejudiced against Jews to much the same degree as the rest of his class and background."

While the book is readable, the writing is not page turning. Lots of facts; snippets of stirring writing (the best of which is when Roberts called something "yet another example of the luck that [Napoleon] was starting to mistake for Fate."). So far, most interesting thing I've learned is that Napoleon's autobiography "Le Mémorial de Sainte-Hélène" was the bestseller of the 19th Century, topping "Uncle Tom's Cabin".

In sum, Roberts is unparalleled as a researcher. But he doesn't provide the reader reasons why any particular piece of previously accepted Napoleonic legend should be rejected in favor of his new interpretation. And, although is writing is good enough, he's hardly a compelling read like a Ian Toll, Corrigan, Nicolson, Stephen Taylor or Donald Thomas; better than N.A.M. Rodger, however.

Born in quasi-obscurity on Corsica, Napoleon (a native Italian and Corsican speaker) was trucked off to learn French, then to a military academy. Napoleon not only was an excellent student but -- ill-dressed and awkward, with plenty of time on his hands-- he read of heroes and conquerors past: Caesar, Alexander the Great, etc. Napoleon's fascination (for the non-French) is in part because he may have been history's most successful autodidact. For that reason alone, more bios, and more reading, are justified.


"Napoleon represented the Enlightenment on horseback."… The ideas that underpin our modern world--meritocracy, equality before the law, property rights, religious toleration, modern secular education, sound finances and so on--were championed by Napoleon."


"An astonishing number of his letters throughout his career refer to providing footwear for his troops."


"One of the reasons why he maintained such a fluid campaign [in Italy] was that he had no resources for anything else."



"'The strength of the army', he stated, 'like power in mechanics, is the product of multiplying the mass by the velocity."


"Napoleon was capable of compartmentalizing his life, so that one set of concerns never spilled over into another -- probably a necessary attribute for any great statesman, but one he possessed to an extraordinary degree."



"'Severe to the officers,' was his his stated mantra, 'kindly to the men.'"



"'I have no doubt there will be lively criticism of the treaty I've just signed,' Napoleon wrote to Talleyrand the [day after signing the treaty of Campo Formio], but he argued that he only way to get a better deal was by going to war again and conquering 'two or three times more provinces than Austria. Was that possible? Yes. Probable? No' He sent Berthier and Monge to Paris with the treaty to expound its merits. They did such a good job, and so enthusiastic was the public enthusiasm [sic] for peace, that the Directory ratified it swiftly despite several of its members privately regretting the lack of republican solidarity shown to Venice. (It is said that when asked about the Venetian clauses, Napoleon explained 'I was playing vingt-et-un, and stopped at twenty.')"



Napoleon's general orders for army behavior in Egypt: "'Every soldier who shall enter into the houses of the inhabitants to steal horses or camels shall be punished,' he instructed. He was particularly careful to give no cause for jihad. 'Do not contradict them,' he ordered his men with regard to Muslims. 'Deal with them as we dealt with the Jews and the Italians. Respect their muftis and imams as you respected rabbis and bishops. . .The Roman legions protected all religions. . . The people here treat their wives differently from us, but in all countries the man who commits rape is a monster.'"


"Soldiers! You came to this country to save the inhabitants from barbarism, to bring civilization to the Orient and subtract this beautiful part of the world from the domination of England [sic--England was not running Egypt at the time]. From the top of those pyramids, forty centuries are contemplating you."



The closest Napoleon came to being killed was in Israel, while crossing the Red Sea, as the tide came in: "[T]hey got lost as night fell, and wandered through the low lying marshy sea-shore as the tide rose: 'Soon we were bogged down to the bellies of our mounts, who were struggling and having great difficulty in pulling themselves free. . . It was nine at night and the tide had already risen three feet. We were in a terrible situation, when it was announced that a ford had been found. General Bonaparte was among the first to cross; guides were situated at various points to direct the rest. . . We were happy not to have to have shared the fate of the Pharaoh's soldiers.'"




"Even if Acre had fallen, and the Druze Christians and Jews had all joined him, the logistics and demographics would not have permitted an invasion of either Turkey or India"



"Long accused afterwards of deserting his men, in fact he was marching to the sound of the guns, for it was absurd to have France's best general stuck in a strategic sideshow in the Orient when France itself was under threat of invasion."




"The greatest long-term achievements of Napoleon's Egyptian campaign were not military or strategic, but intellectual, cultural and artistic. The first volume of Vivant Denon's l'Égypte was published in 1809, it's title pag proclaiming that it was 'published by the order of His Majesty Emperor Napoleon the Great'. . .although not politically triumphalist, the multiple volumes of the Description de l'Égypte represent an apogee of French, indeed Napoleonic, civilization, and had a profound effect on the artistic, architectural, aesthetic and design sensibilities of Europe. . . Tragically, the Institut near Trahir Square in Cairo was burned down during the Arab Spring uprising on December 17, 2011, and almost all 192,000 books, journals, and other manuscripts -- including the only handwritten manuscript of Denon's Description de l'Égypt -- were destroyed.



"he forgave Josephine totally, and never made allusion to her infidelity again, either to her or anyone else."



"only two letters of his survive for the twenty-three days between his arrival in Paris on October 16 and the 18 Brumaire when the coup was launched, neither of which was compromising. For a man who wrote an average of fifteen letters a day, this time everything was to be done by word of mouth."


"They put the orders of the officers under which which they had served . . . . before those of their elected officials. When it came down to a choice between obeying those giants of their profession or the politicians baying for their arrest in the Orangerey, there was simply no contest."



"Talleyrand was characteristically profiting from the situation. When Napoleon years later asked him how he had made his fortune, he insouciantly replied 'Nothing simpler; I bought rentes [government securities] on the 17th and sold them on the 19th.'"



"In his first week as First Consul, Napoleon wrote two letters proposing peace to Emperor Francis of Austria and to Britain’s King George III. ‘I venture to declare that the fate of all civilized nations is concerned in the termination of a war which kindles a conflagration over the whole world,’ he told the latter. When the British foreign secretary, Lord Grenville, responded by saying that Napoleon should restore the Bourbons, Napoleon replied that if the same principle were applied to Britain it would result in the restoration of the Stuarts."



"'A newly born government must dazzle and astonish,' he told Bourrienne at this time. 'When it ceases to do that it fails.'"



"Within a week of Brumaire, as a result of the new sense of stability, efficiency and sheer competence, the franc-dollar and franc-pound exchange rate rates had doubled."



"The art of policing is punishing infrequently and severely."



"In November 1799, some 40 percent of France was under martial law, but within three years it was safe to travel around France again, and trade could be resumed. Not even His Italian victories brought Napoleon more popularity."



"Napoleon took a deep personal interest in the strategic dissemination of news. ‘Spread the following reports in an official manner,’ he once instructed Fouché. ‘They are, however, true. Spread them first in the salons, and then put them in the papers.’"



"All the leading French admirals -- Genteaume, Eustche Bruix, Laurent Trugent, Pierre de Villeneuve, as well as Decès -- opposed the English expedition."
III



"[T]he duke [d'Enghien] had offered to serve in the British army, was receiving large amounts of money from London, was paying British gold to other émigrés, and was hoping to follow the Austrians into France should they invade. He had also corresponded with William Wickham . . . that is, the British secret service. [A]lthough he was not specifically aware of the Cadoudal-Pichegru plot [to assassinate Napoleon], he was clearly holding himself in readiness. It hardly constituted strong enough grounds to have him executed, however, except as a ruthless message to Louis XVIII to call off my further plots."



Roberts's absurd justification for Napoleon's becoming Emperor: "France was de facto an empire by 1804, and it was only acknowledging that fact that Napoleon declared himself an emperor de jure, just as Queen Victoria would become for the British Empire in 1877." Roberts ignores what made Napoleon an illegitimate ruler, much less Emperor: the regicide, the phony plebiscites, and the fact that -- at the time -- France had little territory beyond today's hexagram: part of the Rhineland, and Northern Italy (the latter of which hardly counts since it was stolen from the chinless Hapsburgs).



The Emperor "took the somewhat convoluted and seemingly contradictory style 'Napoleon, through the grace of God and the Constitution of the Republic, Emperor of the French.'"



Preparing for the coronation, "Napoleon ordered his officials to treat the pontiff as though he had 200,000 troops at has back, just about his greatest complement."



Roberts says, contrary to most other sources, "Although [Napoleon] lifted the Charlemagne replica over his own head, as previously rehearsed with the Pope, he didn't actually place it on top because he was already was wearing the [crown of laurels, meant to invoke Rome]. He did, however, crown Josephine."




"He never did understand that a fleet which spent seven-eighths of its time in port simply could not gain the seamanship necessary to take on the Royal Navy at the height of its operational capacity."




"The fall of Berlin came so quickly that shopkeepers did t have time to take down the numerous satirical caricatures of Napoleon from their window."



After the battle of Friedland: "Soldiers! On 5 June we were attacked in our cantonments by the Russian army, which misconstrued the causes of our inactivity. It perceived, too late, that our repose was that of the lion, now it does penance for its mistake… From the shores of the Vistula, we have reached those of the Nieman with the rapidity of the eagle."



In establishing brother Jérôme as King of Westphalia, Napoleon wrote, "It is essential that your people enjoy a liberty, an equally, a well-being unknown in Germany…The population of Germany anxiously awaits the moment when those who are not of noble birth but who are talented, have an equal right to be considered for jobs; for the abolition of all serfdom as well as intermediaries between the people and their sovereign."




"As the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars progressed, the casualty rates in battles increased exponentially [sic]: at Fleurus they were 6% of the total number of men engaged, at Austerlitz, 15%, at Eylau 26%, at Borodino 31% and at Waterloo 45%."



At the famous meeting in the middle of the river at Tilsit--"The Tsar's first words were ' I will be your second against England'"…Napoleon immediately appreciated that a wide-ranging agreement would be possible -- indeed, as he put it later, 'Those words changed everything.'"



It was the late-night conversations about philosophy, politics and strategy that shaped Napoleon's relationship with the Tsar.



Years later, Napoleon said--"Perhaps I was happiest at Tilsit. I had just surmounted many vicissitudes, many anxieties, at Eylau for instance; and I found myself victorious, dictating laws, having emperors and kings pay me court."



"The simple fact that Napoleon had missed was also the most obvious one: its vast size made Russia impossible to invade much beyond Vilnius in a single campaign. His military administration was incapable of dealing with the enormous strain that he was putting on it. Each day, in his desperation for a decisive battle, he had fallen further into Barclay's trap."



"In retrospect, it would have been better for the French had [Moscow] been razed to the ground, as that would have forced and immediate retreat.…Napoleon eventually chose what turned out to be the worst possible option: to return to the a Kremlin, which had survived the fire, on September 18, to see whether Alexander would agree to end the war."




"[T]he real significance of the rain was that his artillery commander, General Drouot, suggested waiting for the ground to dry before starting the battle the next day, so that he could get his guns into place more easily and the cannonballs would bounce further when fired. It was advice that Drouot was to regret for the rest of his life."



"'If it had not been for you English, I should have been Emperor of the East; but wherever there is water to float a ship we are sure to find you in our way.'"