AWARDED THE PRIX DU JURY DES GRANDS PRIX DE LA FONDATION NAPOLEON 2014 From Andr
ew Roberts, author of the Sunday Times bestseller The Storm of War, this is the
definitive modern biography of Napoleon Napoleon Bonaparte lived one of the most
extraordinary of all human lives. In the space of just twenty years, from Octob
er 1795 when as a young artillery captain he cleared the streets of Paris of ins
urrectionists, to his final defeat at the (horribly mismanaged) battle of Waterl
oo in June 1815, Napoleon transformed France and Europe. After seizing power in
a coup d'etat he ended the corruption and incompetence into which the Revolution
had descended. In a series of dazzling battles he reinvented the art of warfare
; in peace, he completely remade the laws of France, modernised her systems of e
ducation and administration, and presided over a flourishing of the beautiful 'E
mpire style' in the arts. The impossibility of defeating his most persistent ene
my, Great Britain, led him to make draining and ultimately fatal expeditions int
o Spain and Russia, where half a million Frenchmen died and his Empire began to
unravel. More than any other modern biographer, Andrew Roberts conveys Napoleon'
s tremendous energy, both physical and intellectual, and the attractiveness of h
is personality, even to his enemies. He has walked 53 of Napoleon's 60 battlefie
lds, and has absorbed the gigantic new French edition of Napoleon's letters, whi
ch allows a complete re-evaluation of this exceptional man. He overturns many re
ceived opinions, including the myth of a great romance with Josephine: she took
a lover immediately after their marriage, and, as Roberts shows, he had three ti
mes as many mistresses as he acknowledged. Of the climactic Battle of Leipzig in
1813, as the fighting closed around them, a French sergeant-major wrote, 'No-on
e who has not experienced it can have any idea of the enthusiasm that burst fort
h among the half-starved, exhausted soldiers when the Emperor was there in perso
n. If all were demoralised and he appeared, his presence was like an electric sh
ock. All shouted "Vive l'Empereur!" and everyone charged blindly into the fire.'
The reader of this biography will understand why this was so.
