Andrew Roberts’ spectacular new biography, “Napoleon: A Life” shows how Napoleon Bonaparte won his battles, engineered his own political ascent and left an enduring imprint on the modern world.
‘Napoleon: A Life’
by Andrew Roberts
Viking, 926 pp., $45
Napoleon Bonaparte, France’s early 19th century self-declared “emperor” was certainly extraordinary. But whether he was an extraordinarily talented executive who laid the foundations of modern France (and beyond) or an extraordinarily egotistic despot responsible for death and destruction on a scale almost unmatched in European history (until the rise of Nazi Germany) is a debate that continues to flourish to this day.
Andrew Roberts’ “Napoleon: A Life” is a stunning 920-page overview of Napoleon’s rise and almost as dramatic fall. Although there surely are as many biographies of Napoleon as years since his death, Roberts is the first biographer to utilize the recent publication of Napoleon’s 33,000 surviving letters. His careful scholarship is breathtaking. He researched the book in 69 archives, libraries and museums in 15 countries and personally walked 53 of Napoleon’s 60 battlefields. That meticulous research pays off in a fascinating study of Napoleon’s contributions to the modern world (for better or worse).
Born on Aug. 15, 1769, in Ajaccio, Corsica, Napoleon won a royal scholarship to a military school in France and ultimately was commissioned into an artillery regiment in 1785. He embraced the French Revolution and won recognition by recapturing Toulon from French Royalists. He rose quickly through the military ranks, ultimately taking command (at 26 years old) of the French Army of Italy against the Austrians, crushing them with a brilliant display of strategic deployment of his forces.
He led the French invasion of Egypt and, aided by a decidedly one-sided propaganda campaign, returned to Paris to a thunderous hero’s welcome. With unmatched political finesse, he engineered a coup that installed him as one of three members of the ruling Consulate, then as First Counsel, and ultimately as Emperor.
Along the way he married Josephine de Beauharnais, the widow of a guillotined royalist. She was older, far more sexually experienced, and neither loyal nor discreet. But Napoleon adored her anyway and forgave her, even after he discovered her numerous affairs. Napoleon enjoyed the company of more than 22 mistresses, so he hardly had grounds to complain.
Napoleon’s staggering impact on the modern world is difficult to overstate. As Roberts notes, “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, consolidated, codified and geographically extended by Napoleon.” He rationalized local government administration, encouraged science and the arts, abolished feudalism and codified the law.
But above all, Napoleon was a warrior. Although often criticized for his boundless ambition and ego, war was declared on him far more often that he declared war on others. His military campaigns and strategy are studied to this day. His decision to invade Russia in 1812 was a fatal mistake, but hardly irrational. The French had defeated the Russians three times between 1799 and 1812, he had fought and won in blizzard conditions, and had won battles at the far end of long lines of communications at Austerlitz and Friedland. But he lost 400,000 of his men in Russia, more than 100,000 of them from a typhus epidemic. It was the sheer size and ferocity of his army that led the Russians to strategically retreat, avoiding battle and drawing Napoleon and his army ever deeper into the Russian heartland — and winter.
This book is simply spectacular. Roberts writes beautifully and, aided by meticulous historical research, brings Napoleon alive before the reader, with grapeshot and cannon fire splattering across the page.
Napoleon never lacked confidence. After his defeat at Waterloo and banishment to St. Helena, he was asked why he had not taken Frederick the Great’s sword when he was in Russia. He replied, “Because I had my own.”
