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vejohnson's review
Had to stop at Ch. 3 — book just isn’t engaging. Dips too much into the weeds.
hadeanstars's review against another edition
4.0
Magisterial is doubtless the word for this immense biography, although it leaves me with very mixed feelings. I suppose the conclusion must be that Napoleon was a flawed genius. If you are a fan of war then this cannot be beat, and neither could he until he blundered into Russia and it was all downhill from there. If you’re a fan of peace, then he can be credited with a great deal too.
This is a fantastic read, much more easy going than you might think, and it surprisingly conveys some of the great man’s humanity too.
ASA biography alone this is not quite on equal terms with Goldsworhy’s biography of Caesar, although for sheer narrative whose story could ever compare with Caesar’s? Well worth your time (but warning: it’s vast).
This is a fantastic read, much more easy going than you might think, and it surprisingly conveys some of the great man’s humanity too.
ASA biography alone this is not quite on equal terms with Goldsworhy’s biography of Caesar, although for sheer narrative whose story could ever compare with Caesar’s? Well worth your time (but warning: it’s vast).
forgottensecret's review against another edition
5.0
'The reading of history very soon made me feel that I was capable of achieving as much as the men who are placed in the highest rank of our annals'
My edition is titled 'Napoleon the Great' and Andrew Roberts presents a man who deserves the title. There are notable exceptions in history who are not appointed the moniker: Elizabeth I, Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, and others. So the impact that one leaves on the world is not necessarily a surefire cause and effect. Napoleon's hero Alexander did, but I don't think any Roman emperor or Caesar ever received the title. Winston Churchill offers reason as to why Napoleon might deserve it: 'The greatest man of action born in Europe since Julius Caesar'.
Looking at modern France today, if you remove Napoleon from history, you would see a very different state. Coming to power from a military coup from Corsica, he was in effect a self-made man. Who else would have been able to effectively rise to First Consul at 30, after an entire country had scorned the idea of monarchy around a decade before? This was the promise of Napoleon, the military genius of Napoleon who almost drifted between the ancient world and his own: 'His constant references to the ancient world had the intended effect of giving ordinary soldiers that their lives mattered, that they were an integral part of a larger whole that would resonate through French history... Napoleon taught ordinary people that they could make history, and convinced his followers they were taking part in an adventure, a pageant, an experiment, an epic whose splendour would draw the attention of posterity for centuries to come.' I've come to realise that life is all a matter of changing lenses. This is easily testable by viewing the differences in perceptions of art or in the difficulty of suffering, where resilience can bounce wildly between people. Napoleon took what could have been hell on earth for soldiers (which it was at times, especially during the Russian campaign), and imbued it with a lens of a larger narrative. This sort of reframe is what separates the Lincolns from the Buchanans, both the fixture of a larger narrative and seeing further than anyone else can see.
Having been a soldier himself, there was a real sense of mutual camaraderie, where 'Napoleon genuinely spent time with his soldiers', he 'instinctively understood what soldiers wanted, and he gave it to them.' This keen sense of emotional intelligence naturally bred devotion to him amongst the soldiers. Where did he learn this? Again from the ancient world: 'Napoleon learned many essential leadership lessons from Julius Caesar, especially his practice of admonishing troops he considered to have fallen below expectations', and his 'rhetorical inspiration came mostly from the ancient world, but Shakespeare's St Crispin Day's speech from Henry V can be detected'. This combined with 'a phenomenal memory' endeared him to those he met, where for instance he 'asked about [a deputy of the Valais] his two little girls', ten years after he had met the deputy the first time. This sense of human decency, this Bill Clintonesque personability is really instructive as to how Napoleon managed to uplift so many.
He was born one of thirteen children, between 1765 and 1786, eight of who survived infancy. In the first half of the 19th century, 'they were eventually to number an emperor, three kings, a queen and two sovereign princesses.' An 'uneducated woman from a good family', and a father who was 'tall, handsome, popular and a fine horseman' would produce children that would rule over much of Continental Europe. Although choosing his siblings for such important roles would be one of the greatest errors Napoleon would make. He in particular was 'a precocious and prodigious reader, drawn at an early age to history and biography... he stayed by himself and didn't come down very often, even to eat with his family. Up there, he read constantly, especially history books.' This utilising the past to guide him in the present, he would later try to install in his junior officers, urging them 'to read and re-read the campaigns of Alexander the Great, Hannibal, Julius Caesar, Gustavus Adolfus, Prince Eugene and Frederick the Great. This is the only way to become a great captain.' One could easily re-purpose this and state, that the only way to become a great human is to read and re-read the lives of great people. If I leap into a pond, I take on the wetness of the pond; if I leap into the parchment of history, do I take on the greatness of the inhabitants? To manage such a transformation, there would have to be a sustained inner change where you almost are an actor. You die to the former person that you once were, and arise in the traits and actions of the other person. This ties into the idea of Todd Herman's 'Alter Ego Effect', and also the turnaround of Malcolm X while he was in prison.
The man who would eventually lead France, had a native language of Corsican, was taught Italian before learning French when he 'was nearly ten, which he always spoke with a heavy Corsican accent.' Being a maths student at university myself, I was happy to read that 'Napoleon excelled at mathematics. 'To be a good general you must know mathematics'. His military school at Brienne taught what Napoleon intuitively had grasped earlier, whose prospectus read: 'History could become for a young man the school of morality and virtue'. It was during this time that he borrowed from the school library books from 'Caesar, Cicero, Voltaire, Diderot ... as well as Eutropius, Livy, Phaedrus, Sallust, Virgil and the first century BC Cornelius Nepos' Lives of the Great Captains, which included chapters of Themistocles, Lysander, Alcibiades and Hannibal.' He did this 'while his contemporaries played sports outside, he would read everything he could about the most ambitious leaders of the ancient world. For Napoleon, the desire to emulate Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar was not strange. His schooling opened to him the possibility that he might one day stand alongside the giants of the past.' It intrigues me to wonder, what if I had read history or biography as voraciously when I was at school? I loved fiction at that age, but I can't help but wonder if that was introduced earlier, would one become more incentivised to go into politics, become a diplomat or simply raise their standards, foregoing the accepted norms of their culture? If a person feels themselves inseparable from the people they are reading about, do those people become for them what most parents become, or friends, how does your orientation shift?
At Brienne he excelled intellectually, becoming one of only 14 who were invited to enter the artillery, and he was 'the first Corsican to attend the Ecole Royale Militaire'. After becoming an officer, he like Obama spent extra money on books: 'his room had only a bed, table an armchair - and sometimes he had to skip meals in order to afford books'. We can gleam more of his personality from the novellas he wrote, describing characters 'with a fervent imagination' presumably him, and it is oddly amusing to see his manifestations of Romanticism in these romantic novellas, which contrast heavily with his pragmatism.
It was in Italy that he first makes his name, and also where we see an also Potemkin like letter writing: 'You do not love me anymore. I have only to die... would it were possible!' This was one of many such letters to Josephine who he would eventually divorce. It was almost contradictory how such a man can be so self-assured in battle, defeat coalitions of Austrians and Russians, yet still be assailed by insecurity. To be sure though, he was correct about Josephine. He sent 'these overwrought letters to Josephine, who was so bound up in her own love affair that she scarcely bothered to send more than two or three lines once a fortnight'. Eventually he took on many mistresses of his own. How did he manage to not allow this to infect his decisions during other parts of his life? 'Napoleon was capable of compartmentalising his life, so that one set of concerns never spilled over into another... 'Different subjects and different affairs are arranged in my head as in a cupboard, when I wish to interrupt one train of thought, I shut that drawer and open another'
This would be extremely important over the years, as French dominance would lead to victories over the Russians, Austrians and Germans, with five coalitions failing in their objective to defeat him. What is important to note is that in many of these cases 'Napoleon didn't actively want war with Russia, any more than he wanted it with Austria in 1805 or 1809, but he was not about to avoid it through concessions that he feared might compromise his empire.' So, it wasn't some sort of colonial hunger to greedily expand French reach, but most of the time he would have preferred peace if the conditions were favourable. It is during 1811 that Napoleon also has his first child, to his second wife, Marie Louise, the daughter of Napoleon's former rival Austrian's Emperor Francis II. But even in his desire for a child he instructed that 'if it came to a choice the Empress's life must be saved rather than the baby's'. One thing I found remarkable was how Britain managed to allay countries against France, and the principal reason was by giving them money. It's as if you are watching that HBO show Barry, where you can hire a killer for you for the right fee. Similarly, Britain bought allies. It wasn't the union of morality against a common enemy as it was in the Gulf War, but rather countries assisted the highest bidder. Another intriguing aspect of Napoleon is when he went on a campaign to a new country, he would demand so much small detail information, and would buy say for the Russia campaign: 'all the books he could find on Lithuania and Russia... including Voltaire's, of Charles XII of Sweden's catastrophic invasion of Russia in 1709 and the annihilation of his army at the battle of Poltava'. Napoleon didn't have a Somme like, throw the soldiers at the wall and see what glues, he was truly a genius in military matters. So much so, as the years progressed, 'he [didn't] recognise how much his enemies had learnt from him: the deep-seated military reforms instituted by Archduke Charles in Austria, Barclay de Tolly in Russia and von Scharhorst in Prussia were a tribute to him and his way of waging war'. It was really only when 'he had too large an army personally to be able to oversee its every aspect, as in Russia in 1812' that he didn't succeed as much as in earlier campaigns. That isn't to say Napoleon was a one-man director, he did really depend on his commanders, and his aide-de camp Berthier. Some of whom proved that they were capable of independently winning battles, but who sadly reduced in number as he increasingly approached his final battles. One area where Napoleon was deficient was his understanding of naval warfare, 'he never understood naval manoeuvres, and even after the disaster at Trafalgar he still believed that he could build an invasion fleet'.
An overarching reason why Napoleon should be considered great is that his accomplishments didn't reside solely in his military achievements, but in fact 'his civil achievements equalled his military ones, and far outlasted them.' Goethe commended him, saying that 'he was always enlightened by reason', and this led do 'During his sixteen years in power, many of the best ideas that underpin and actuate modern democratic politics - meritocracy, equality before the law, property rights, religious toleration, secular education, sound finances, efficient administration, and so on - were rescued from the Revolutionary maelstrom and protected, codified and consolidated.' 50 years before the US, he abolished slavery through the French colonies. 'The Napoleonic Code forms the basis of much of European law today, which various aspects of it have been adopted by forty countries only all five inhabited continents.' So although Napoleon is lauded for his military genius, perhaps there should be be more an association in terms of civil reform like FDR or HH Asquith.
Ultimately, Russia was his undoing, but even this wasn't for expansionist reasons, but rather he 'merely wanted to force the Tsar to go back to honouring the economic blockade commitments he had made at Tilsit five years ago.' Additionally, he didn't predict how far Russia would go, 'the sheer level of scorched earth defence... to the extent of burning Moscow themselves'. These strategies are reminiscent of Sherman's march through Georgia during the Civil War. By the time Waterloo came around, after his Tom Hanks Cast Away escape from the Island of Elba (prior to which he attempted suicide), a 'stout' shape compared to what he once was ruling over Elba he organised 'regular rubbish collections', passed laws, 'set up a court of appeal', described by Campbell as 'I have never seen a man in any situation of life with so much personal activity and restless perseverance', he eventually raised up an army for Waterloo, the second costliest battle after Borodino. How did he lose? Mainly, too small an army and not following his own military maxims which had worked so well for him in the past. After fleeing from Elba, the British relocated to him to St Helena where he lived the rest of his five and a half years. It is here where he wrote the biography of Caesar, and he also used the ancient world to muse on the rightness of suicide which he admonished Cato for doing.
In all of this great life, a life that echoes a distorted Disney fairy tale: an unknown man who rises up to be Emperor, disrupting a continent and defeated entrenched monarchies who banded together to defeat him. It seems improbable, it is improbable. And we may wonder if it is just fortune, if there isn't anything to replicate here; that in his decisions he is guided by an ancient hand, the ghost of Alexander directing his decisions. Napoleon gratefully has an answer for us in a letter he wrote to Roederer in March 1809: 'I am always working, and I meditate a great deal. If I appear always ready to answer for everything and to meet everything, it is because, before entering on an undertaking, I have meditated for a long time, and have foreseen what might happen. It is not genius which reveals to me suddenly, secretly, what I have to say or do in a circumstance unexpected by other people: it is reflection, meditation.'
Other parts:
Egypt, Spain and Portugal campaigns
Bloodless Brumaire coup
Jena, Prussia
My edition is titled 'Napoleon the Great' and Andrew Roberts presents a man who deserves the title. There are notable exceptions in history who are not appointed the moniker: Elizabeth I, Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, and others. So the impact that one leaves on the world is not necessarily a surefire cause and effect. Napoleon's hero Alexander did, but I don't think any Roman emperor or Caesar ever received the title. Winston Churchill offers reason as to why Napoleon might deserve it: 'The greatest man of action born in Europe since Julius Caesar'.
Looking at modern France today, if you remove Napoleon from history, you would see a very different state. Coming to power from a military coup from Corsica, he was in effect a self-made man. Who else would have been able to effectively rise to First Consul at 30, after an entire country had scorned the idea of monarchy around a decade before? This was the promise of Napoleon, the military genius of Napoleon who almost drifted between the ancient world and his own: 'His constant references to the ancient world had the intended effect of giving ordinary soldiers that their lives mattered, that they were an integral part of a larger whole that would resonate through French history... Napoleon taught ordinary people that they could make history, and convinced his followers they were taking part in an adventure, a pageant, an experiment, an epic whose splendour would draw the attention of posterity for centuries to come.' I've come to realise that life is all a matter of changing lenses. This is easily testable by viewing the differences in perceptions of art or in the difficulty of suffering, where resilience can bounce wildly between people. Napoleon took what could have been hell on earth for soldiers (which it was at times, especially during the Russian campaign), and imbued it with a lens of a larger narrative. This sort of reframe is what separates the Lincolns from the Buchanans, both the fixture of a larger narrative and seeing further than anyone else can see.
Having been a soldier himself, there was a real sense of mutual camaraderie, where 'Napoleon genuinely spent time with his soldiers', he 'instinctively understood what soldiers wanted, and he gave it to them.' This keen sense of emotional intelligence naturally bred devotion to him amongst the soldiers. Where did he learn this? Again from the ancient world: 'Napoleon learned many essential leadership lessons from Julius Caesar, especially his practice of admonishing troops he considered to have fallen below expectations', and his 'rhetorical inspiration came mostly from the ancient world, but Shakespeare's St Crispin Day's speech from Henry V can be detected'. This combined with 'a phenomenal memory' endeared him to those he met, where for instance he 'asked about [a deputy of the Valais] his two little girls', ten years after he had met the deputy the first time. This sense of human decency, this Bill Clintonesque personability is really instructive as to how Napoleon managed to uplift so many.
He was born one of thirteen children, between 1765 and 1786, eight of who survived infancy. In the first half of the 19th century, 'they were eventually to number an emperor, three kings, a queen and two sovereign princesses.' An 'uneducated woman from a good family', and a father who was 'tall, handsome, popular and a fine horseman' would produce children that would rule over much of Continental Europe. Although choosing his siblings for such important roles would be one of the greatest errors Napoleon would make. He in particular was 'a precocious and prodigious reader, drawn at an early age to history and biography... he stayed by himself and didn't come down very often, even to eat with his family. Up there, he read constantly, especially history books.' This utilising the past to guide him in the present, he would later try to install in his junior officers, urging them 'to read and re-read the campaigns of Alexander the Great, Hannibal, Julius Caesar, Gustavus Adolfus, Prince Eugene and Frederick the Great. This is the only way to become a great captain.' One could easily re-purpose this and state, that the only way to become a great human is to read and re-read the lives of great people. If I leap into a pond, I take on the wetness of the pond; if I leap into the parchment of history, do I take on the greatness of the inhabitants? To manage such a transformation, there would have to be a sustained inner change where you almost are an actor. You die to the former person that you once were, and arise in the traits and actions of the other person. This ties into the idea of Todd Herman's 'Alter Ego Effect', and also the turnaround of Malcolm X while he was in prison.
The man who would eventually lead France, had a native language of Corsican, was taught Italian before learning French when he 'was nearly ten, which he always spoke with a heavy Corsican accent.' Being a maths student at university myself, I was happy to read that 'Napoleon excelled at mathematics. 'To be a good general you must know mathematics'. His military school at Brienne taught what Napoleon intuitively had grasped earlier, whose prospectus read: 'History could become for a young man the school of morality and virtue'. It was during this time that he borrowed from the school library books from 'Caesar, Cicero, Voltaire, Diderot ... as well as Eutropius, Livy, Phaedrus, Sallust, Virgil and the first century BC Cornelius Nepos' Lives of the Great Captains, which included chapters of Themistocles, Lysander, Alcibiades and Hannibal.' He did this 'while his contemporaries played sports outside, he would read everything he could about the most ambitious leaders of the ancient world. For Napoleon, the desire to emulate Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar was not strange. His schooling opened to him the possibility that he might one day stand alongside the giants of the past.' It intrigues me to wonder, what if I had read history or biography as voraciously when I was at school? I loved fiction at that age, but I can't help but wonder if that was introduced earlier, would one become more incentivised to go into politics, become a diplomat or simply raise their standards, foregoing the accepted norms of their culture? If a person feels themselves inseparable from the people they are reading about, do those people become for them what most parents become, or friends, how does your orientation shift?
At Brienne he excelled intellectually, becoming one of only 14 who were invited to enter the artillery, and he was 'the first Corsican to attend the Ecole Royale Militaire'. After becoming an officer, he like Obama spent extra money on books: 'his room had only a bed, table an armchair - and sometimes he had to skip meals in order to afford books'. We can gleam more of his personality from the novellas he wrote, describing characters 'with a fervent imagination' presumably him, and it is oddly amusing to see his manifestations of Romanticism in these romantic novellas, which contrast heavily with his pragmatism.
It was in Italy that he first makes his name, and also where we see an also Potemkin like letter writing: 'You do not love me anymore. I have only to die... would it were possible!' This was one of many such letters to Josephine who he would eventually divorce. It was almost contradictory how such a man can be so self-assured in battle, defeat coalitions of Austrians and Russians, yet still be assailed by insecurity. To be sure though, he was correct about Josephine. He sent 'these overwrought letters to Josephine, who was so bound up in her own love affair that she scarcely bothered to send more than two or three lines once a fortnight'. Eventually he took on many mistresses of his own. How did he manage to not allow this to infect his decisions during other parts of his life? 'Napoleon was capable of compartmentalising his life, so that one set of concerns never spilled over into another... 'Different subjects and different affairs are arranged in my head as in a cupboard, when I wish to interrupt one train of thought, I shut that drawer and open another'
This would be extremely important over the years, as French dominance would lead to victories over the Russians, Austrians and Germans, with five coalitions failing in their objective to defeat him. What is important to note is that in many of these cases 'Napoleon didn't actively want war with Russia, any more than he wanted it with Austria in 1805 or 1809, but he was not about to avoid it through concessions that he feared might compromise his empire.' So, it wasn't some sort of colonial hunger to greedily expand French reach, but most of the time he would have preferred peace if the conditions were favourable. It is during 1811 that Napoleon also has his first child, to his second wife, Marie Louise, the daughter of Napoleon's former rival Austrian's Emperor Francis II. But even in his desire for a child he instructed that 'if it came to a choice the Empress's life must be saved rather than the baby's'. One thing I found remarkable was how Britain managed to allay countries against France, and the principal reason was by giving them money. It's as if you are watching that HBO show Barry, where you can hire a killer for you for the right fee. Similarly, Britain bought allies. It wasn't the union of morality against a common enemy as it was in the Gulf War, but rather countries assisted the highest bidder. Another intriguing aspect of Napoleon is when he went on a campaign to a new country, he would demand so much small detail information, and would buy say for the Russia campaign: 'all the books he could find on Lithuania and Russia... including Voltaire's, of Charles XII of Sweden's catastrophic invasion of Russia in 1709 and the annihilation of his army at the battle of Poltava'. Napoleon didn't have a Somme like, throw the soldiers at the wall and see what glues, he was truly a genius in military matters. So much so, as the years progressed, 'he [didn't] recognise how much his enemies had learnt from him: the deep-seated military reforms instituted by Archduke Charles in Austria, Barclay de Tolly in Russia and von Scharhorst in Prussia were a tribute to him and his way of waging war'. It was really only when 'he had too large an army personally to be able to oversee its every aspect, as in Russia in 1812' that he didn't succeed as much as in earlier campaigns. That isn't to say Napoleon was a one-man director, he did really depend on his commanders, and his aide-de camp Berthier. Some of whom proved that they were capable of independently winning battles, but who sadly reduced in number as he increasingly approached his final battles. One area where Napoleon was deficient was his understanding of naval warfare, 'he never understood naval manoeuvres, and even after the disaster at Trafalgar he still believed that he could build an invasion fleet'.
An overarching reason why Napoleon should be considered great is that his accomplishments didn't reside solely in his military achievements, but in fact 'his civil achievements equalled his military ones, and far outlasted them.' Goethe commended him, saying that 'he was always enlightened by reason', and this led do 'During his sixteen years in power, many of the best ideas that underpin and actuate modern democratic politics - meritocracy, equality before the law, property rights, religious toleration, secular education, sound finances, efficient administration, and so on - were rescued from the Revolutionary maelstrom and protected, codified and consolidated.' 50 years before the US, he abolished slavery through the French colonies. 'The Napoleonic Code forms the basis of much of European law today, which various aspects of it have been adopted by forty countries only all five inhabited continents.' So although Napoleon is lauded for his military genius, perhaps there should be be more an association in terms of civil reform like FDR or HH Asquith.
Ultimately, Russia was his undoing, but even this wasn't for expansionist reasons, but rather he 'merely wanted to force the Tsar to go back to honouring the economic blockade commitments he had made at Tilsit five years ago.' Additionally, he didn't predict how far Russia would go, 'the sheer level of scorched earth defence... to the extent of burning Moscow themselves'. These strategies are reminiscent of Sherman's march through Georgia during the Civil War. By the time Waterloo came around, after his Tom Hanks Cast Away escape from the Island of Elba (prior to which he attempted suicide), a 'stout' shape compared to what he once was ruling over Elba he organised 'regular rubbish collections', passed laws, 'set up a court of appeal', described by Campbell as 'I have never seen a man in any situation of life with so much personal activity and restless perseverance', he eventually raised up an army for Waterloo, the second costliest battle after Borodino. How did he lose? Mainly, too small an army and not following his own military maxims which had worked so well for him in the past. After fleeing from Elba, the British relocated to him to St Helena where he lived the rest of his five and a half years. It is here where he wrote the biography of Caesar, and he also used the ancient world to muse on the rightness of suicide which he admonished Cato for doing.
In all of this great life, a life that echoes a distorted Disney fairy tale: an unknown man who rises up to be Emperor, disrupting a continent and defeated entrenched monarchies who banded together to defeat him. It seems improbable, it is improbable. And we may wonder if it is just fortune, if there isn't anything to replicate here; that in his decisions he is guided by an ancient hand, the ghost of Alexander directing his decisions. Napoleon gratefully has an answer for us in a letter he wrote to Roederer in March 1809: 'I am always working, and I meditate a great deal. If I appear always ready to answer for everything and to meet everything, it is because, before entering on an undertaking, I have meditated for a long time, and have foreseen what might happen. It is not genius which reveals to me suddenly, secretly, what I have to say or do in a circumstance unexpected by other people: it is reflection, meditation.'
Other parts:
Egypt, Spain and Portugal campaigns
Bloodless Brumaire coup
Jena, Prussia
cherrick8's review against another edition
5.0
I'm giving this one 5 stars. Very deeply researched. The author covers many details, if the rating slips to 4.5 stars it would only be because he used a few too many quotes or veered off topic slightly on some things, but it is definitely a good read about Napoleon.