Napoleon: The Man Behind the Empire

Everyone has met Napoleon. The bicorne hat, the hand inside the coat, the small dark figure on the white horse, the porphyry sarcophagus beneath the gilded dome of the Invalides: the image is one of the most familiar in modern memory. And yet, behind the bronze, the man himself is one of the least examined of his rank. He has become, after two centuries of polishing on one side and debunking on the other, more easily named than known.

Napoleon: The Man Behind the Empire follows the actual life in order, from the small Italian-speaking child born in Ajaccio in 1769, the year after Corsica was sold to France, to the prisoner who died of stomach cancer in a damp room on a Saint Helena plateau in 1821. It follows the timid provincial boy to the royal military school of Brienne, the failed cadet of the artillery to the famous officer of Toulon, the young general to Italy and to Egypt, the First Consul to the Code Civil, the Emperor through Austerlitz, Tilsit, Bayonne, Wagram, Moscow, and Leipzig, the abdicator to Elba, the gambler back to Cannes and to Waterloo, the prisoner across the long voyage south to the rock that contained him at last.

Above all, this is an honest book. It is neither a veneration nor a debunking, and the world has had a great deal of both. It explains the modernizing achievements, the Civil Code, the prefectural state, the Bank of France, the Legion of Honor, the lycées, that still shape continental Europe, and shows why his administrative work is more deeply present in the daily life of a billion people than they generally suspect. But it also faces, squarely and without flinching, the difficult Napoleon: the restoration of slavery in 1802, the trap at Bayonne in 1808 and the war that bled the Spanish peninsula, the deadly miscalculation of Russia, the millions of dead across the Continental Wars, the deserted armies in Egypt and on the road home from Russia, the imprisonment of the Pope, the cult of family that placed unfit brothers on European thrones.

Written in clear, jargon-free prose for the curious general reader, with no prior knowledge of European history assumed and every term explained, this is a vivid and trustworthy introduction to one of the most consequential, and one of the most contested, human beings of the modern age.

What you will find in this book

• A clear, ordered account of Napoleon's life, from his birth at Ajaccio in 1769 to his death on Saint Helena in 1821.

• The making of a leader: Brienne, the École Militaire, Toulon, the 13 Vendémiaire, and the Italian and Egyptian campaigns explained step by step.

• The reforms of the Consulate: the Bank of France, the prefects, the Concordat with Rome, and the Code Civil that still structures continental civil law two centuries later.

• The great victories explained in plain language: Marengo, Austerlitz, Jena, Friedland, Wagram, with attention to what they accomplished and what they cost.

• The fatal mistakes: the restoration of slavery, the trap at Bayonne, the Spanish ulcer that bled the Empire for six years, and the Russian campaign of 1812.

• The collapse: Leipzig, the campaign of France, the first abdication, the year on Elba, the Hundred Days, and Waterloo.

• The private man: Joséphine and the divorce, Marie-Louise and the Austrian marriage, the King of Rome, the brothers placed on European thrones, the long quarrel with Pope Pius VII.

• The final years on Saint Helena: Longwood House, the household, Governor Hudson Lowe, the dictation of the Mémorial, and the death of 1821.

• The return of the ashes in 1840 and the long aftermath: the cult, the historiographical debates, the place of Napoleon in modern European memory.

• An honest reckoning with the moral ledger: the codes and institutions on one side, the wars and the slavery and the looting on the other, with both kept in view.

• A detailed chronology, a guide to the key figures, a glossary of terms, and a note on the sources for readers who wish to go further.

Who this book is for

This book is written for readers of general culture who are curious about Napoleon, about the European nineteenth century, about war and statecraft and the slow making of the modern state, but who are not specialists in any of those fields. It assumes no prior knowledge and explains every term it uses. It will appeal to anyone who has seen the famous image of the man on horseback and wondered what kind of human being, and what kind of life, actually stood behind it.