Category: Livres anglais et trangers,History,Europe
Napoleon Bonaparte: A Life Details
A definitive biography of Bonaparte from his birth in Corsica to his death in exile on St Helena, this book examines all aspects of Bonaparte′s spectacular rise to power and his dizzying fall. It offers close examination of battlefield victories, personal torments, military genius, Bonaparte′s titanic ego and his relationships with the French government, Talleyrand, Wellington and Josephine. A consummate biography of a complex man.
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Reviews
For years I've hesitated to read the life of Napoleon. I've read about the French Revolution, books on Danton and Robespierre, Talleyrand and Murat. But I've always thought of Napoleon as the scum who'd sent hundred of thousands of lads to their deaths, handsome boys, perhaps, and, as the clich goes, perhaps budding Mozarts all.Luck led me to Alan Schom's NAPOLEON BONAPARTE in which I learn that Napoleon graduates at age 16 as a gunner and is called to defend the National Assembly (during the Revolution) where he ''opens fire and dozens of cannon tear huge red swaths through the mob,'' producing ''fourteen hundred corpses.'' At the National Assembly he's declared a hero by a leader who has the hots for his sister and ''as if by magic'' says a woman admirer, he becomes well known. In turn he has the hots for Rose, an illiterate slut who goes for anything between ''a chevalier and transient officers,'' creating a situation ''a bit complicated, even by French standards,'' says Schom. They marry, she adopts the name Josephine (one of her first names), then joins him 4 months later during maneuvers, escorted by a cadet 9 years her junior whom she sleeps with on the train and also during the next 2 years. In Italy he rules over ''an orgy of destruction, rapine and killing'', rounding ''up all the boys and men and murdering them'' while Josephine enjoys another kind of orgy in Venice.The French believe his Egyptian campaign was a success because he brought back a pretty obelisk, but it was a disaster during which ''hundreds of troops died of thirst, hunger, malaria and sunstroke,'' before going ''completely amok, slaughtering men, women and children.'' He took Jaffa, promising the lives of those who surrendered. He then had 2000 bayoneted (to save ammunition). He ordered Dr. Desgenettes to poison his own troops ''hundreds'' says Schom, those wounded or who had come down with dysentery. (Desgenettes resigned.) Schom concludes the chapter on Egypt: ''All his generals knew that in Napoleon Bonaparte they had a commander whose word and loyalty were worthless, a man who abandoned them to save his own skin.'' And we're only on page 180 out of 884!I may be prejudiced, but the pro-Napoleons I see on French t.v. (I'm French myself) look like pasty-faced Icabod Cranes, ugly and dying of old age, so different from the youths murdered by the Corsican butcher.
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