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It is said that the literature on Napoleon Bonaparte is rivaled in size only by those dealing with Christ, Lincoln and Beethoven. And in all four cases the flood continues, with no sign of abatement.
This latest contribution to Napoleonic studies is a massively documented study of the man himself, but perhaps more searchingly of the motives that drove him, the means he used to gain his ends and the times that he dominated so thoroughly. Steven Englund repeatedly compares the Corsican warrior on all these points to Charlemagne and Frederick the Great, but his most frequent reference point is Julius Caesar.
Englund attempts no single set-piece portrait of Napoleon the man, but one emerges anyway through the book's complex web of quotations from Napoleon's conversations and writings, appraisals by his friends and enemies and the judgments of historians who have tried to take his measure over the 200-plus years since he burst on the world stage in the last years of the eighteenth century.
Englund, who has lived and taught in France for many years, indulges his lifelong fascination with his subject (he dates it back to his junior high school years in Los Angeles), and goes at his task with what one can only describe as unflagging, almost obsessive zeal. His book is a staggering feat of historical scholarship, but one that will appeal more to other scholars than to the general reader. It is exhaustive, it is thorough --- but it is not a consistently easy book to read.
Napoleon Bonaparte emerged from military schools in France to become a full general at the age of 24. There were brilliant tactical maneuvers in France, Italy and Egypt early in his career, which played out against the confused aftermath of the French Revolution. Englund sees him as a "born autodidact," a man who simply seized opportunities as they arose and converted them into brilliant personal triumphs. He was not, in the author's view, a man who hewed to any systematic "line" of party adherence or military doctrine. Englund's best summing-up: "Napoleon Bonaparte was a self-made man, and he worshipped his
creator." He wished "to be free to do what he liked --- but 'legally.'"
In 1799 Napoleon and two other men took over the reins of government, replacing the ineffectual five-man Directory of the time. Before long Napoleon was "First Consul," then "Consul for Life" and, in 1804, "Emperor" (he crowned himself in an elaborate ceremony while the Pope, who was present, looked on). He was deeply concerned to establish his "legitimacy" as ruler, a concept that Englund worries over like a dog gnawing at a bone. This illustrates Englund's habit of pausing in his narrative to explore at length anstractions like "nation" and "glory." When these sidetrips come along --- and there are a number of them --- the narrative grinds to a halt while the historian does his "historianly" thing. One is tempted to say that if Englund were not so good a historian, he might be a better writer.
All the great Napoleonic battles get their due in this book -- Lodi, Austerlitz, Marengo, Waterloo --- but they are not at the center of Englund's story. That center is always Napoleon as shaper of his times, as a brilliant and erratic man, a loose cannon, but certainly a powerful one whose roar still echoes down the ages.
When the tide turns against Napoleon, with the famous retreat from Moscow in 1812, the book's pace quickens markedly. The last nine years of Napoleon's life --- deposition from power, exile on Elba, return for the "hundred days," final exile on St. Helena --- are disposed of with rather less historical hairsplitting. And Englund demolishes the idea that Napoleon was somehow a precursor of Hitler and Stalin. Then he ends with a cogent summary of Napoleon's enduring influence down to the present day.
This book is a searching and serious examination, carried out with incredible diligence. It will, however, appeal more to Englund's historian peers than to the general reading public.
--- Reviewed by Robert Finn
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