Vivid biography, both tragic and romantic. The author helps readers really climb into Napoleon's mind, revealing all facets of Napoleon's complicated personality. Quite a satisfying read.
Napoleon is one of history's rare exceptions to the expression "no man is a hero to his valet." Most leaders have a constructed public persona, with a tremendous difference between their public self and their actual self. When we see a king or a president, we see various carefully constructed illusions of "kingness" or "presidentness" while having absolutely no idea who the underlying person is. Napoleon, in stark contrast, really was his true self, and in some ways this was what was tragic about his fateful arc from obscurity to total power and back.
One also reads this book with a sinking, depressed feeling about our childlike and ignorant political leaders today, with their pathetically simplistic understanding of geopolitics, with no knowledge of the nuances of various countries' cultures, and with no competence in strategic or second-order thinking. Napoleon had a deep and refined understanding of all the geopolitical and sociocultural implications of everything he did, and when we compare him to, for example, George W. Bush delusionally invading Iraq and Afghanistan knowing nothing of these cultures, or VP Kamala Harris giggling and explaining "Ukraine is a country in Europe," it's impossible to see our leaders today as anything but tall children.
Notes: [Friendly warning: What follows is wayyyyy too long to read. Do yourself a favor and stop here.]
* Napoleon as a lonely, "foreign" kid, sent from Corsica to Paris for schooling. "No one tells us that he has ever seen this boy laugh."
* As a teenager, unbelievably conversant on geopolitics, geography, on military munitions; he keeps his own copy book where he carefully takes notes, remembers what he reads. Unbelievably mature for his age.
* Cashiered by the army, tries to foment a rebellion in Corsica, then has to join the Jacobins due to threats of trial for treason.
* The French revolution spread to Corsica, they had similar chaos there as in Paris. Napoleon eventually driven out of the island at age 23.
* Lucky encounter with a general, and the liberation of the fortress of Toulon.
* [See the French Revolution as model seen in other domains: in Soviet/Communist revolutions, even in COVID/vaccine policy and reaction: first there's the revolution, then repudiation/counter-revolution, then followed by pro-revolution forces regaining ground, then followed by repudiation, blaming- and buck-passing, and again counter-revolution, everyone massacring everyone else all along the way. Another interesting parallel in these examples: "moderates" are always reviled (by everyone) as cowards.]
* But what is happiness? Replies Buonaparte to a female companion: "Happiness? The highest possible development of my talents."
* Conflict with Austria in Italy: Napoleon is summoned to lead, and he already has intimate knowledge of all the territory, the Alpine passes, of weather, snows, etc.
* "The chance has come suddenly, for everything is sudden in this eruptive era." He gets a role in the French military operations department, which gives him access to all the secret reports concerning the armies of the Republic, plus the authority of having daily association with leading civilian figures in France.
* Fires on French civilians to control a mob. Becomes generalissimo, issues a decree against bearing arms and confiscates all civilian weapons. [That's always the first step, isn't it...?]
* He meets Josephine, born in Martinique. Her husband had been executed as a royalist, she had been jailed for some months. "To Destiny" written on their wedding ring.
* Sent to the Alps to fight Italy, he was seen as a threat to be gotten rid of. But then thanks to bold movement of his underfed army, Napoleon defeats Italy/Sardinia.
* Changes/Frenchifies his name from Napoleone Buonaparte to Napoléon Bonaparte.
* His indifference to hardships, and his youth at 27, contrasted to the dainty, cautious, slow-moving armies of the old nobles opposing him. Running war at a new, much faster tempo.
* His army becomes a sort of "travelling revolution" against various monarchic powers; Napoleon also surprisingly skilled at diplomacy, both when and when not to use it: "When the other side wanted to bargain, he took out his watch, name the hour at which he had decided to attack, and said they had better make up their minds quickly." Napoleon uses brilliant rhetoric for the states that he "liberates" from (monarchic) tyranny.
* A complex dude: on one level he was unbelievably aggressive militarily, a genius military thinker and a brilliant leader of men, but at the same time he was a simp, pussy-whipped for his wife Josephine, who didn't really even like him all that much.
* Republican directors (The Directory) in Paris send another man to try to control Napoleon, a general named Clark, who promptly switches sides and considers Napoleon "the man of the future."
* "Europe is a mole-hill!" Already looking to the east...
* Napoleon's understanding of propaganda, in some ways her was centuries ahead of his time. See also the various paintings done by Jacques Louis David, propaganda as effective as anything in the 20th-21st centuries.
* "The people need[s] a chief, made resplendent by fame and victory; it does not want theories and governments, the phrases and the oratory of the ideologues."
* Tallyrand returns to France from the United States, a counterpart and (later) rival to Napoleon.
* Discovery of the Rosetta Stone while Napoleon was occupying Egypt. The English Navy destroyed his fleet, so he was stuck there for a while, then finally ran their blockade, made it back to Paris and began to take power in the vacuum there.
* It's constantly amazing to see such an unbelievably competent and aggressive man behave like such a mushy simp to Josephine.
* Napoleon: "The supreme art is to maintain the appearance of legality." The idea of a government spreading conspiracies, making up things, telling lies to its own people, etc., is nothing new. Of course our government today would never do this.
* Nov 9, 1799: Napoleon takes power, begins his coup d'etat. "This Republic is in danger, and I intend to save it." Great rhetoric, and of course ironic in that he would eventually make himself emperor...
* Later, as the coup starts to slip from his grasp politically, he begins using force, and furthermore blames others on resorting to violence first. Textbook step to take the (manufactured) high moral ground.
* "After Bonaparte's outstanding military successes, it was easy for him to win supreme power in the State. He would have won it without a struggle had he not been so stubborn in his desire to observe constitutional formalities." This was another thing that was interesting about the coup: Napoleon really wanted it to be "legitimate" to the point where he lost critical time and almost lost the whole thing.
* During the very first night after the coup d'etat Napoleon appointed committees to draft a legal code, Le Code Napoléon was the first act of his dictatorship!
* Napoleon is an absolute beast, capable of long hours of extraordinary work, attention to detail, very little sleep, a very competent ruler.
* "Security and property are only to be found in a country which is not subject to yearly changes in the rate of taxation." Stabilizing tax collections, the currency, and the bank of France, all done within months of the coup.
* Interesting how he deeply understands the French character, has both a degree of contempt for the people mixed with quite a bit of sympathy and a desire for their situation to be eased. He's also several steps ahead of other countries in all domains, particularly geopolitics, and yet he craved "legitimacy" and appealed to the people and the legislature in ways that made him look foolish and weak.
* After an assassination attempt, Napoleon creates a plot to expose a number of his enemies, both Royalists and Jacobins.
* Napoleon and his lack of a long-term goal to become an emperor, it was instead "an outgrowth of circumstances." Improvisation, and guilelessness, his genius, also he's a throwback to an ancient era... But see also his increasing grandiosity, even a Messianic complex, "I am the French revolution." Sounds a lot like Louis XIV's delusionally grandiose saying "L'etat, c'est moi." It also sounds strangely reminiscent of Anthony Fauci's discreditable phrase "I am the science."
* "He will not go far who knows from the first whither he is going."--Napoleon (note that a very similar quote is attributed to Oliver Cromwell).
* You see the beginning of so many of the patterns perfected in 20th century totalitarianism:
+ "Revolution" used as a perpetual term as a device of political control
+ Robespierre reaching an apogee replicated by Stalin
+ Royalists seen as the reactionaries of Napoléon's day, etc.
+ Total control of the media, government spying on the people, etc.
* England keeping not only spies in France but also caricaturists and journalists in Paris (drawing embarrassing images and writing embarrassing "news" stories about Napoleon) in that era's version of "Russian disinformation."
* Napoleon, as an emperor, finds himself incorporating loyalists as well as people who would have voted for the king's execution in his government... worse, he finds that he needs to have a "court", he ends up retaining staff from the Bourbon era, including Josephine rehiring Marie Antoinette's lady in waiting! "Josephine, who at first is attended by no more than a few of the ladies of the former court, is at a loss as to the management of an empress's train. What has become of Marie Antoinette's lady-in-waiting? She is still alive, and keeps a school in Paris. Bring her fourth from her obscurity!"
* Napoleon has very difficult relationships with his siblings, they demand more and more from him; money, titles, land, power, etc. Also note the biographer's skilled foreshadowing on this subject, creating a narrative arc and extra suspense for the reader: "But for his trust in them, his relatives will repay him with ingratitude, and in the end his sister will betray him." The author drops little gems like these throughout the book.
* "Pourvu que cela doure." ("I hope it lasts" or "provided that it may last")--something Napoleon's mother Letizia says frequently about Napoleon's and their family's tremendous (and ultimately, temporary) improvement in circumstances.
* Napoleon's coronation is a strange parody of the Bourbon style royal formalities; inviting the Pope, crowning himself, etc.
* He starts a national "police," a sort of a semi-secret police run by Fouché. Talleyrand also works for the emperor, neither trust one other.
* England continues its subversive work towards restoring a Bourbon monarchy, "for talent enthroned in France sets so dangerous an example to all other countries." (In other words an incompetent France without Napoleon helps England global position far more.) War with England begins again: hot war alternating with a cold war of sanctions, blockades, attempts to limit Frances trade, etc.
* Just after losing his fleet to the English at Trafalgar, Napoleon destroys the Russian and Austrian armies at Austerlitz in his greatest military and diplomatic triumph. Napoleon, a genius of land war, was nowhere near as competent with naval strategy, while England's naval power continues to grow relative to France's.
* Next, Napoleon seeks to unify Europe (by force if necessary... hmmmm, sound familiar?) where Europe shall be governed by one emperor with kings of the various states as vassals. He installs a bunch of his family members in charge of many of these vassal states (Italy, German states, etc), and they produce various embarrassing outcomes.
* Napoleon gets involved in Poland's affairs; Austria controls it, Russia wants it, Napoleon seeks Independence for it. He then gets involved in fighting the Russian army in 1807 to a bloody stalemate. Napoleon also falls in love with Marie Walewska, a beautiful 18-year-old impoverished Polish countess. Engraved in a ring she gives to Napoleon: "If you cease to love me, forget not that I love you."
* What a beast he is!! Running France in absentia, while Polish territory, to an incredible level of detail, even inquiring as to the financial health of certain Paris theaters, writing letter after letter, etc. Incredible.
* He forges a peace with Russia's Tsar Alexander, which creates Poland as a buffer zone, carving out territory from Prussia, then returns to Paris and, weirdly, he gives out a bunch of royalesque titles, with land, etc., basically creating a new nobility class made up mostly of wealthy Parisian ne'er-do-wells. Ironic in that this resuscitated France's elitist past.
* Napoleon's mother as a sort of oracle about him: "He should be content with what he has. He tries to grasp too much, and will lose all!"
* Napoleon harshly lecturing his youngest brother who is governing in an inappropriate style in Germany: "I have read an order of the day issued by you, in which you make yourself ridiculous. You are king, and the emperor's brother! Fine qualities in war! In war, a man must be a soldier before everything. When I am in camp, I need neither ministers nor luxury. You must camp with the advanced guard, be in the saddle day and night, march with the advanced guard, so that you may get all the news without delay. If you don't like that, you had better stay at home in your palace! You make war like a satrap! God in heaven, you never learned that from me!"
* Attacking Spain, a degenerate dynasty. Eventually Napoleon would remark: "This is the stupidest thing I have ever done on my life!"
* Tallyrand begins treasonous behavior, starts sending communiques to Russian, German and English leaders. "Napoleon never plumbed the depths of the treason the Tallyrand was preparing."
* Goethe and Napoleon meet: "Voilà un home!" was Goethe's reaction. Reminsicent of the meeting between Diogenes and Alexander:
Napoleon: "I do not like the end of your romance (referring to The Sorrows of Young Werther)."
Goethe: "I can well believe that, Sire. You would rather that a romance had no end."
* All of Europe begins to turn against him, Austria, Russia, England, Turkey, Spain, Italy, etc... The pope even excommunicates him.
* Napoleon becoming increasingly frustrated with all of his key leaders and even more frustrated with the incompetence and impecuniousness of his family members: "I ought never to have had Murat and my brothers crowned. Live and learn!"
* Napoleon was 41 when his first-born son was born, to his second wife, the Austrian Marie Louise.
* Napoleon becomes bent on the world domination, plans to make multiple naval fleets, to attack India, and to have a tremendous war with Russia: "This war will break out in spite of the Tsar, in spite of me, and in spite of the interests of the two empires." This is part of what's tragic about Napoleon: it's as if he pretends that he has no agency or responsibility while carrying out military endeavors that can only be seen as pure, delusional grandiosity, and he'll burn up Europe in the process. "How can I help it if a great power drives me on to become dictator of the world?"
* "We need a European legal code, a European court of appeal, a unified coinage, a common system of weights and measures. The same law must run throughout Europe. I shall fuse all the nations into one." Now Europeans have faceless, unimpeachable, unanswerable bureaucrats in Brussels taking care of all this for them, I'm sure that's far, far better.
* Talleyrand receives payment from Alexander, and reveals French preparations for war and details on the army's advance.
* Napoleon unfortunately knows very little about the land beyond Poland; he thinks he can quarter and supply his men there:
"How far is it from Danzig to Cadiz?"
"How far is it from Danzig to Cadiz?"
"Too far, Sire!"
"I can see, gentlemen, that you no longer have any taste for fighting."
* "The cumberous multitude he has collected for the present campaign is symptomatic of his own increasing age, and of the lust for power which makes him pile up weight..." Napoleon would have done better with a smaller army, and the old days he would have used 40,000 men to defeat an enemy far greater, now he's using numerical superiority with the tradeoff of struggling to feed these men.
* The Russians retreat and evade, deeper into their own territory. Napoleon loses 1/3 of his men (to disease etc.) without any fighting at all.
* Before engaging the Russians Napoleon receives word that the English won a decisive victory near Salamanca.
* Finally Napoleon engages Russian troops, and he's down to 100,000 men vs the half million-strong "Grande Armée" he started with. Then at the battle of Smolensk Napoleon is down to 50k men, a tenth of what he started with... then he gets lured into Moscow and can't even reach the Tsar at all to discuss terms... then the retreat begins, the French army crosses the Beresina river, now with 25k men. Napoleon then leaves his army to return to France, deluding himself and others about the army's status.
* Strange that this book does not contain a single mention of the Louisiana purchase, which gives an indication of how (un)important the new United States Republic was in Europe's eyes!!
* Various princes across Europe (particularly Germany/Prussia) begin to intrigue and resist Napoleon's control, including even some of his own siblings who are enthroned in some of these principalities.
* Napoleon strikes a deal with Pope Pius the 7th, who writes a new Concordat reconciling Napoleon back with the church, thus allowing him to recruit new Catholic soldiers. A week later the Pope changes his mind, wishing to revoke this Concorde. "The emperor says with a smile, 'Your Holiness, being infallible, cannot have made a mistake in entering into the arrangement!'"
* All Europe unites against him now... including even his siblings.
* Goethe writes quite a beautiful poem about Napoleon's decline (p 417):
He who feels courage in his royal breast
knows no shudderings, treads gladly
the undermined road leading to the steps of the throne,
knows the danger and nevertheless mounts confidently.
The golden circlet's tremendous burden,
he does not try its weight; resolute and calm,
he presses it gladly on his bold brow,
and bears it lightly, as if it were a laurel crown.
Thus didst thou. What seemed so far away,
thou hast tranquilly learned to make thine own;
and whatever fierce obstacles might block the path,
thou sawest them, contemplated them, and understood them.
A joyful day dawned, it summoned thee,
thou wast summoned, and thus it came to pass. . . .
And thou still standest despite all that has happened to thee,
despite the foe, who, with war and death
threatens thee from without and from within. . . .
The peoples are agape, they chatter, they are full of vain
imaginings—
What do they care for, but games ? . . .
The false world, it woos us for our treasure,
for our favour, for our position,
and, even if one makes one's lover one's equal,
love does not suffice him, he wants the whole kingdom.
So was it with this man!—And now, declare it abroad,
even if it cost you your life:
To every man, be he whom he may,
there comes a last happiness and a last day.
* As the walls closed in around him, as the European allies begin to crush his army, Napoleon becomes more more indecisive, more and more rash, oscillating between sacrificing himself and defending Paris to the last man. Like Hitler in his bunker... "Should Paris be taken, I shall no longer continue to live."
* Napoleon agrees to abdicate, he is exiled to the Italian island of Elba. Within eleven months he escapes, sails to Cannes, and then when he meets his first soldiers on route to Paris, he says, "Soldiers of the Fifth Army Corps! Don't you know me? If there is one among you who wishes to kill his Emperor, let him come forward and do so. Here I am!"
* On his way to Paris, the restored Bourbon King runs away: "France has a hearty laugh at this fat old gentleman, who had been escorted from England to Paris by enemy soldiers, and now makes all speed back to England with the soldiers of France chasing him." Most of France immediately goes over to Napoleon's side.
* A fascinating run of headlines from the Paris press as Napoleon makes his journey from Elba to Paris. It's an excellent example of narrative-shifting in the media just like what we see in our media today as events move far faster than our media's ability to fit them to the existing narrative:
+ The monster has escaped from his place of exile.
+ The Corsican werewolf has landed at Cannes.
+ The tiger appeared at Gap, troops were sent against him, the wretched adventurer ended his career in the mountains.
+ The fiend has actually, thanks to treachery, been able to get as far as Grenoble.
+ The tyrant has reached Lyons, where horror paralyzed all attempts at resistance.
+ The usurper has dared to advance within a hundred and fifty miles of the capital.
+ Bonaparte moves northward with rapid strides, but he will never reach Paris.
+ Tomorrow Napoleon will be at our gates
+ "His majesty is at Fontainebleau."
The arc of these headlines is hilarious! Napoleon evolves from "The usurper" to "His majesty" in a matter of days.
* After returning to Paris he governs essentially through the chamber, the existing government, kind of like a constitutional monarchy. Napoleon adapts to the demands of practical politics. "I am no longer a conqueror: I can no longer be a conqueror. I know what is possible and what is impossible. My sole mission now is to set France on her feet once more and to give her a constitution adapted to the temperament of her people."
* [Napoleon tried to create a United States of Europe by force, it failed; Europe this century created a United States of Europe and is trying to hold it together by force; will it fail?]
* Waterloo: Napoleon is slow to attack, does not do so until noon, while a younger, more aggressive and more decisive Napoleon would have attacked at four in the morning. The older Napoleon was waiting for the ground to dry, the younger would never have done this. Likewise, Napoleon was slow to attack Wellington when his army was near collapse, he had an opportunity to win the engagement before the Prussians arrived.
* "Have you forgotten where the bones of our sons and our brothers whiten? In Africa, on the Tagus, on the Vistula, amid the snows of Russia. Two million have been the victims of this one man who wanted to fight all Europe! Enough!" Lafayette speaking in front of the chamber, shortly thereafter the chamber of demands Napoleon's abdication.
* Napoleon: "I have accustomed them to great victories, and now they do not know how to endure a single day of adversity... I have done what I could."
* Napoleon: "Suicide, like Hannibal? Leave that to weaklings and persons of disordered mind! Whatever fate may hold in store for me, I would never deliberately shorten my life by a single day."
* The final part of the book is a broad (and sometimes windy) analysis of Napoleon's nature, on his traits, tendencies, idiosyncrasies, etc.
+ His constant calculating, understanding rations for an army for his horses etc,
+ Also his constant activity, driving his associates as well as himself: "Activity! Speed!"
+ A freakish memory for military and geographic details. "On his way back to Paris from the camp at Boulogne, Napoleon encounters a troop of soldiers who have lost their way, asks the number of their regiment, whence they set out, and when. He tells them their line of march! 'Your battalion will be at H. this evening.' At this time, two hundred thousand men were on the march close at hand!"
+ And it's quite striking how observant, aware, and accurate Napoleon is about his own reputation, about his legacy; he is assiduous about remembering both his mistakes and his successes. "Waterloo will wipe out the memory of so many victories; the last act makes one forget the first."
* Finally, Napoleon is really exiled: England sends him under guard to the island of St. Helena, west of Africa in the middle of the Atlantic. The island had a horrible climate, people tended to die of disease there.
* Trapped with his thoughts, past his prime, stuck mostly on his own, nothing to do but dwell on the past, dictate memoirs, etc. An interesting aspect of the punishment of exile and the arc of his life.
Vocab:
Sedulous: showing dedication and diligence
Assignat: a bill issued as currency by the French Revolutionary government (1789–96) on the security of expropriated lands
Vaticination: something foretold, a prediction; the act of prophesying
Extemporize: improvise, made up on the spot
Cocotte: a prostitute; a shallow individual baking dish usually with one or two handles.
Peculation: embezzlement
Anent: about, concerning
Amourette: a love affair
Cozenage: the practice of deception; trickery, "stories of cozenage and disguise"
Inamorata: one's female lover
Lorgnette: a pair of opera glasses held in front of a person's eyes by a long handle at one side
Whilom: formerly, former, in the past
Fal-lals: a piece of frippery or finery; a showy article of dress or personal adornment (chiefly in plural); a frivolous or unnecessary addition or embellishment; affectation or pretentiousness in manner
Souteneur: pimp, (literally: supporter)
Dubiety: doubtfulness, uncertainty
Excursus: a detailed discussion of a particular point in a book, usually in an appendix.
Accoucheur: a (male) midwife; [female would be sage-femme]
Hecatomb: (in ancient Greece or Rome) a great public sacrifice, originally of a hundred oxen; an extensive loss of life for some cause. "they perished in the hecatomb arranged by the government"
Chaffer: haggle about the terms of an agreement or price of something.
Moriturus: about to die (Latin: future active participle of morior)
Escutcheon: a shield or emblem bearing a coat of arms; a flat piece of metal for protection and often ornamentation around a keyhole, door handle, or light switch.
Exiguity: scanty
Hodman: one whose duties are mere routine assistance: a hack
Repine: feel or express discontent; fret
Raree show: a peep show or peep box, an exhibition of pictures or objects (or a combination of both), viewed through a small hole or magnifying glass. In 17th and 18th century Europe, it was a popular form of entertainment provided by wandering showmen.
Pettifogging: placing undue emphasis on petty details.
Defalcation: misappropriation of funds by a person trusted with their charge; the act of misappropriation.
To Read:
Plutarch: Lives
James MacPherson: Ossian/Fingal (poetical works)
Louis Antoine Favelet de Bourienne: Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte
Goethe: The Sorrows of Young Werther
Arrian: The Anabasis of Alexander
Euripides: Orestes
Euripides: Andromache
Euripides: Iphigenia in Aulis
Friedrich Schiller: The Robbers
Voltaire: La Mort de César