Biographies of Napoleon come thick and fast, and doubtless more will follow as we near the bicentenary of Waterloo. The latest is the work of the Conservative British historian Andrew Roberts, author of Napoleon and Wellington and Waterloo: Napoleon’s Last Gamble , who visited St Helena last year.
The publishers' blurb makes interesting reading:
It has become all too common for Napoleon Bonaparte's biographers to approach him as a figure to be reviled, bent on world domination, practically a proto-Hitler. Here, after years of study extending even to visits paid to St Helena and 53 of Napoleon's 56 battlefields, Andrew Roberts has created a true portrait of the mind, the life, and the military and above all political genius of a fundamentally constructive ruler. This is the Napoleon, Roberts reminds us, whose peacetime activity produced countless indispensable civic innovations - and whose Napoleonic Code provided the blueprint for civil law systems still in use around the world today.
Anybody with any awareness of epistemology and/or the philosophy of history would be a little uncomfortable with claims to have produced "a true portrait", but nevertheless it will be interesting to read Roberts' work alongside Soldier of Destiny by Michael Broers, published earlier this year.
I also notice that on October 8th a debate is to take place in London between Roberts and Adam Zamoyski, author of 1812. Napoleon’s Fatal March on Moscow and Rites of Peace. The Fall of Napoleon and the Congress of Vienna :
all mention of Napoleon as ‘great’, ‘hero’, ‘villain’ or ‘monster’ has Adam Zamoyski running for the hills, bemused why – in his opinion – this rather ordinary man excites such passion in otherwise level-head intelligent people.
The debate is to be chaired by Jeremy Paxman no less.
Timing is important. I am reading lots of journal articles and books on WW1 this year because 2014 is the 100th anniversary. Ditto Waterloo, I suspect.
ReplyDeleteI think the debate will be a useful one because we always have to ask a military genius for whom? a dictator for whom? did his peacetime activity produced countless indispensable civic innovations for all citizens? Roberts and Broers' books should also shed light on these questions.
Hi Hels
ReplyDeleteI have to admit that I have avoided all the World War I stuff, and will mostly do the same re Waterloo, but the Broers' and Roberts' books seem a cut above much of the stuff produced to take commercial advantage of centenaries.
cheers
John