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Napoleon: A Biography
Draws on current research to profile Napoleon as a military leader, lover, and emperor, tracing his career from his Corsican roots through the years of the French Revolution and battle triumphs, and chronicling his coronation and eventual defeat and imprisonment. Reprint. 12,500 first printing.
752 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1997
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About the author
Frank McLynn
39 books102 followersFrank McLynn is an English author, biographer, historian and journalist. He is noted for critically acclaimed biographies of Napoleon Bonaparte, Robert Louis Stevenson, Carl Jung, Richard Francis Burton and Henry Morton Stanley.
McLynn was educated at Wadham College, Oxford and the University of London. He was Alistair Horne Research Fellow at St Antony's College, Oxford (1987–88) and was visiting professor in the Department of Literature at the University of Strathclyde (1996–2001) and professorial fellow at Goldsmiths College London (2000 - 2002) before becoming a full-time writer.
McLynn was educated at Wadham College, Oxford and the University of London. He was Alistair Horne Research Fellow at St Antony's College, Oxford (1987–88) and was visiting professor in the Department of Literature at the University of Strathclyde (1996–2001) and professorial fellow at Goldsmiths College London (2000 - 2002) before becoming a full-time writer.
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February 15, 2015
While I was reading Andrew Roberts’ excellent 2014 biography of Napoleon Bonaparte, Napoleon: A Life, I was also reading Frank McLynn’s 1997 book Napoleon: A Biography on my Kindle. So I’ve been a little immersed in the Napoleonic era as of late, and I might be suffering from Napoleon overload. McLynn’s book isn’t as good as Roberts’, but it’s still an excellent treatment of a fascinating figure.
McLynn is a psychological biographer who published a biography of Carl Jung the same year Napoleon: A Biography came out. McLynn’s constant psychoanalyzing of Napoleon became tiring as the book went on, and I could have used a little less psychoanalytic theory. The book starts slowly, as McLynn spends a lot of time on Napoleon’s childhood. But the pace picks up once Napoleon’s life becomes more interesting. McLynn is not as strong a military historian as Roberts, but McLynn focuses more on Spain and the Peninsular War, and those chapters are excellent. McLynn sees the “Spanish ulcer” as being the moment when things began to go wrong for Napoleon. I agree with McLynn, Napoleon’s invasion of Spain in 1808 was a classic example of overreaching. Napoleon should have realized that just because you can do something doesn’t mean that it’s a good idea. Spain had a weak monarch, and it was easy for Napoleon to invade and claim Spain for his own, but it proved to be a foolish idea, as the Spanish began a fierce guerilla war that sapped money and soldiers from France at the same time that Russia was rearming and preparing to fight Napoleon again.
The strongest part of the book might be the chapters about Napoleon’s slow downfall. McLynn writes of Napoleon in 1807, “Until Eylau Napoleon had rarely put a foot wrong on a battlefield. After it, with some rare and brilliant exceptions, his touch was much less sure.” The 1812 Russian campaign was a slow descent into hell, and it is clear that Napoleon did not adequately plan for anything going wrong. McLynn writes, “But the worst mistake was the failure to think through logistical problems, admittedly almost insurmountable in an army of 600,000. Everything was underestimated: the speed at which armies could march, the amount of food that could be obtained en route, the poor state of the roads.” Incredibly, the French lost more men on the way to Moscow than on the retreat.
Napoleon’s time in exile on St. Helena is covered in detail, and those passages show us a man who still had his dignity, although everything else had been taken from him. Napoleon was peevish over the insistence of the British that he be addressed in exile as “General Bonaparte,” rather than “Emperor.” He once said, “They may as well call me Archbishop, for I was head of the Church as well as the army.” McLynn has some excellent quotes from Napoleon on St. Helena. Napoleon once said to one of his retinue, “Don’t you think that when I wake in the night I don’t have dark moments, when I remember what I was and what I am now?” When he was suffering from his final illness, showing his usual stoicism, he said, “I am quite happy not to have religion. I do not suffer from chimerical fears.” Although the official explanation for Napoleon’s death was stomach cancer, many historians have argued with this over the years. McLynn puts forward a theory that Napoleon was slowly poisoned by arsenic.
McLynn ably defends Bonaparte from charges of being a dictator, as he writes, “His sensibility was light years away from that of a Hitler or a Stalin, and indeed he can be faulted for not being ruthless enough at times. His indulgence of his worthless family and his repeated pardoning of the treacherous Bernadotte, the duplicitous Talleyrand and the treasonable Fouché are only the most obvious examples. Napoleon had the temperament of an old-style autocrat but not that of a modern totalitarian dictator.”
Napoleon: A Biography is full of insightful quotes and anecdotes. Three of my favorite quotes from the book are the following: (I don’t have page numbers because my Kindle only tells me what location I’m on in the book, and it seems somewhat silly to write, “Location 10245 of 15527.”)
When Jean-Andoche Junot’s father asked him, “Who is this unknown General Bonaparte?” Junot had replied: “He is the sort of man of whom Nature is sparing and who only appears on earth at intervals of centuries.”
“He was clearly the most extraordinary man I ever saw, and I believe the most extraordinary that has lived in our age, or for many ages.”-Charles Maurice Talleyrand, who ironically enough, was one of the most duplicitous members of Napoleon’s government.
Describing Emperor Francis of Austria, Napoleon’s future father-in-law, McLynn writes, “The Emperor Francis was a pathetic figure who spent his time making toffee or endlessly stamping blank sheets of parchment with specimens from his huge collection of seals.” Reading this quote really makes me want to learn more about Francis.
If you’re looking for a good one-volume cradle to grave study of the life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Napoleon: A Biography, is a very good place to start.
McLynn is a psychological biographer who published a biography of Carl Jung the same year Napoleon: A Biography came out. McLynn’s constant psychoanalyzing of Napoleon became tiring as the book went on, and I could have used a little less psychoanalytic theory. The book starts slowly, as McLynn spends a lot of time on Napoleon’s childhood. But the pace picks up once Napoleon’s life becomes more interesting. McLynn is not as strong a military historian as Roberts, but McLynn focuses more on Spain and the Peninsular War, and those chapters are excellent. McLynn sees the “Spanish ulcer” as being the moment when things began to go wrong for Napoleon. I agree with McLynn, Napoleon’s invasion of Spain in 1808 was a classic example of overreaching. Napoleon should have realized that just because you can do something doesn’t mean that it’s a good idea. Spain had a weak monarch, and it was easy for Napoleon to invade and claim Spain for his own, but it proved to be a foolish idea, as the Spanish began a fierce guerilla war that sapped money and soldiers from France at the same time that Russia was rearming and preparing to fight Napoleon again.
The strongest part of the book might be the chapters about Napoleon’s slow downfall. McLynn writes of Napoleon in 1807, “Until Eylau Napoleon had rarely put a foot wrong on a battlefield. After it, with some rare and brilliant exceptions, his touch was much less sure.” The 1812 Russian campaign was a slow descent into hell, and it is clear that Napoleon did not adequately plan for anything going wrong. McLynn writes, “But the worst mistake was the failure to think through logistical problems, admittedly almost insurmountable in an army of 600,000. Everything was underestimated: the speed at which armies could march, the amount of food that could be obtained en route, the poor state of the roads.” Incredibly, the French lost more men on the way to Moscow than on the retreat.
Napoleon’s time in exile on St. Helena is covered in detail, and those passages show us a man who still had his dignity, although everything else had been taken from him. Napoleon was peevish over the insistence of the British that he be addressed in exile as “General Bonaparte,” rather than “Emperor.” He once said, “They may as well call me Archbishop, for I was head of the Church as well as the army.” McLynn has some excellent quotes from Napoleon on St. Helena. Napoleon once said to one of his retinue, “Don’t you think that when I wake in the night I don’t have dark moments, when I remember what I was and what I am now?” When he was suffering from his final illness, showing his usual stoicism, he said, “I am quite happy not to have religion. I do not suffer from chimerical fears.” Although the official explanation for Napoleon’s death was stomach cancer, many historians have argued with this over the years. McLynn puts forward a theory that Napoleon was slowly poisoned by arsenic.
McLynn ably defends Bonaparte from charges of being a dictator, as he writes, “His sensibility was light years away from that of a Hitler or a Stalin, and indeed he can be faulted for not being ruthless enough at times. His indulgence of his worthless family and his repeated pardoning of the treacherous Bernadotte, the duplicitous Talleyrand and the treasonable Fouché are only the most obvious examples. Napoleon had the temperament of an old-style autocrat but not that of a modern totalitarian dictator.”
Napoleon: A Biography is full of insightful quotes and anecdotes. Three of my favorite quotes from the book are the following: (I don’t have page numbers because my Kindle only tells me what location I’m on in the book, and it seems somewhat silly to write, “Location 10245 of 15527.”)
When Jean-Andoche Junot’s father asked him, “Who is this unknown General Bonaparte?” Junot had replied: “He is the sort of man of whom Nature is sparing and who only appears on earth at intervals of centuries.”
“He was clearly the most extraordinary man I ever saw, and I believe the most extraordinary that has lived in our age, or for many ages.”-Charles Maurice Talleyrand, who ironically enough, was one of the most duplicitous members of Napoleon’s government.
Describing Emperor Francis of Austria, Napoleon’s future father-in-law, McLynn writes, “The Emperor Francis was a pathetic figure who spent his time making toffee or endlessly stamping blank sheets of parchment with specimens from his huge collection of seals.” Reading this quote really makes me want to learn more about Francis.
If you’re looking for a good one-volume cradle to grave study of the life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Napoleon: A Biography, is a very good place to start.
December 2, 2012
I could only get through the first four chapters before I had to put this aside. While I was very interested in learning more about Napoleon and his times, this book was not for me.
First of all, it seems to assume that you already have a good understanding of the general history of France during Napoleon's life, which I don't; I was hoping this book would help with that as well, but many important bits, like, say, the French Revolution, are glossed over. Since McLynn argues that Napoleon was a very political person and had changing reactions to the Revolution, a better account of what was supposedly influencing him would have been useful.
Had this been all, I would have kept reading. It is well written (if a bit formal), and I could have supplemented what I felt was missing with other sources. But what convinced me to put this down is the author's endless Freudian speculations on what made Napoleon who he was: his relationship with his mother; his struggles regarding his own sexuality and his hatred of homosexuals; his need to "kill the father to become the father", ad nauseam.
Perhaps I'll return to this later, but for now, I'm off to find something else.
First of all, it seems to assume that you already have a good understanding of the general history of France during Napoleon's life, which I don't; I was hoping this book would help with that as well, but many important bits, like, say, the French Revolution, are glossed over. Since McLynn argues that Napoleon was a very political person and had changing reactions to the Revolution, a better account of what was supposedly influencing him would have been useful.
Had this been all, I would have kept reading. It is well written (if a bit formal), and I could have supplemented what I felt was missing with other sources. But what convinced me to put this down is the author's endless Freudian speculations on what made Napoleon who he was: his relationship with his mother; his struggles regarding his own sexuality and his hatred of homosexuals; his need to "kill the father to become the father", ad nauseam.
Perhaps I'll return to this later, but for now, I'm off to find something else.
November 24, 2021
On one hand I know a good deal about Napoleon. On the other hand, this took me 4 months to read and I know far more about Napoleon’s sexual preferences than I think is necessary.
December 15, 2021
Napoleon was first a highly skilled artilleryman. He would sleep at 10pm to save candles and wake at 4am. He ate one meal a day at 3pm. He hated the crowd and the mob and was a huge believer in hierarchy and order. After his Toulon engagement, Napoleon went from being a major to brigadier general. Napoleon acted for decades as a total stud muffin and one of his conquests was a 32-year-old “with teeth so bad and blackened (they were described as being like ‘cloves’) that she had trained herself to smile without showing them”. Nice score, Napoleon Dynamite.
Napoleon’s big love was Josephine who would spend a lot of time cuckolding him. In return, Napoleon would tell aghast strangers, “She has the prettiest little cunt in the world.” Ever the poet, Napoleon wrote Josephine that he longed to visit her “black forest.” He treated badly faithful women who loved him in favor of errant Josephine. Josephine preferred to cat around with men who could make her laugh and who lasted longer in bed. Napoleon loots Italy and takes the famed lion of Venice and the four bronze horses of St. Marks. He sends paintings by Michelangelo, Titian, and Raphael to Paris.
His four greatest skills were: the tech he used, his men’s morale, “the effects of the French Revolution” and his genius at tactics and strategy. Napoleon could never have had his meteoric rise without the French Revolution; the same with his generals like Davout. Regarding healthy troop morale, Napoleon won a lot, “he clothed and equipped them well, paid them in specie, and turned a blind eye to their pillaging expeditions. Winning a battle meant riches. Napoleon knew how men liked the rewards of money, honorific titles, and flattery. Back then, a sharpshooter needed to be under one hundred yards away to hit an individual. Reloading took a while; five rounds a minute was the fastest an expert could shoot, and more common was one to two rounds per minute with varying accuracy. This is why Napoleon favored artillery. Shooting practice was uncommon because ammunition was hard to get and guns sometimes blew up (burst barrel) in the face of the shooter. Deaths by bayonet were few. When you were close enough see the whites of your opponent’s eyes, gun accuracy went way up. Napoleon hated frontal attacks and far preferred to turn, or envelope, the enemy by attacking its flanks closest to their point of retreat. Show up at the right time and the right place. He liked to camp two nights away from the battle zone and then pull a night march and arrive a day earlier than the opponent expects. If he screwed up, he was a great improvisor, but not much of an innovator. Stendhal said Napoleon’s Italian Campaign was his greatest success. The best estimate is that only 1/5 of the Italian stolen art made its way to the Directory. The Directory was corrupt and so were the Generals, including Napoleon.
Napoleon knew that to invade England, it would take a minimum of eight hours just to cross the channel. He couldn’t work out a winnable plan to invade England like Rome did, so he set his eyes on Egypt (another Roman favorite) which he thought would be easier and cheaper to plunder. Napoleon attacks Egypt at the worst time of the year (a reoccurring theme/blunder in his life) leading many of his men to die of thirst. Intense heat made them abandon their booty, “and many others, tired of suffering, simply blew their brains out.” This was the fruits of invading a “Sultan’s territory without declaring war and without any valid reason for a declaration.” Now the French Army was “marooned in Egypt” without their fleet. The Rosetta Stone gets brought back from Egypt and deciphered. Napoleon thinks of redoing the ancient Suez Canal and calls in a decorator who says, okay, this beige has got to go.
At Jaffa, Napoleon commits horrible war crimes. Jaffa surrenders on the word of a French officer that their lives will be spared. Once inside, Napoleon says screw that, kill ‘em all. The problem is that the troops don’t have enough ammunition (bullets and gunpowder). No problem, says Napoleon, drown and bayonet them. Even battle-hardened veterans were sickened by killing 3,000 defenders (plus 1,400 prisoners taken from Gaza) this way. “There are well authenticated reports of soldiers wading out to sea to finish off terrified women and children who preferred to take their chances with the sharks.” Napoleon realized that history would judge him harshly because he couldn’t plead a compelling necessity. Yep. The fourteen months spent by French troops in Egypt brought France nothing. The French state was now bankrupt, and credit was non-existent. Butter and cheese became luxury items. The Directory was unable to satisfy any sector of society. “At root, the Thermidoreans wanted a Republic dedicated to the interests of the rich – rather like the U.S.A. at that time under Washington and Jefferson.” The Jacobins were on the Left but were an ineffective coalition, while the Royalists were infighters. Napoleon makes his bid for power (18 Brumaire) at the moment “the all-important bourgeoisie was willing to contemplate one-man rule.” He had shown how he could deal harshly with the bread rioters. France did not know Napoleon’s genius required constant warfare and all other hopes in him would be wasted. “Without Marengo, Napoleon could not have become consul for life and, ultimately, Emperor.”
A treaty with Spain gifts France the land later known as the Louisiana Purchase. The Haitian Revolution happens (seeking independence from France) and Napoleon says let me sell the Louisiana land France just got to Thomas Jefferson since France really needs money. Jefferson thinks, “wow, this Louisiana Purchase is such a blatant violation of the Constitution and my sacred oath …but on the other hand, if I sign, maybe my enslaved mistress Sally will call me a “bad boy” tonight”. Meanwhile back in France, Napoleon’s Josephine “bought 900 dresses per year” (for comparison, Marie Antoinette bought no more than 170) and a thousand pairs of shoes. She bought 38 hats in one month alone. She had a debt of 1,200,000 francs. Elsewhere in the country, “highway robbery and brigandage were rampant, especially in the south and west” Napoleon was anti-worker/anti-proletariat, yet workers supported him because he kept bread prices low. It was clearly the moneyed elite who benefited most from Napoleon’s rule. “By 1804, Napoleon’s grip on France was complete.”
Think of Napoleon as more an old-fashioned autocrat than a modern dictator. Strange quirks: he absolutely despised cats and open doors. When you entered to visit him, you had to squeeze though a barely open door, “then hold the door tight shut by the handle, sometimes doing so with hands behind the back, until dismissed”. Napoleon put in an eighteen-hour day making him one of histories greatest workaholics. He was very good at dressing down someone diplomatically, so they’d work harder next time. “He was both rootless and classless.” He gets coronated in 1804 and chooses a bee motif as symbol for his empire. When our US Presidents get inaugurated, instead of beautiful golden bees and fleur-de-lis, the symbols of our empire are Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, General Dynamics and Northrup Grumman.
Looking at ships, Napoleon saw France had 13 while England had 52. So, he kept his warships at full ready at ports to keep the English from relaxing. By 1805, Europe achieved a coalition against France. The traditional enemy of Russia was Turkey. “Under normal conditions, the semaphore system conveys intelligence at the rate of 120 mph. He writes Josephine, “Yesterday I beat the Russians and Austrians. I am a bit tired.” On August 9th 1806, the Holy Roman Empire ceased to exist when Francis II of Germany renounced his title of Emperor of Germany. Prussia is turned into a French satellite. Napoleon meets fellow England hater Czar Alexander; it leads to the Treaty of Tilsit. Later, they say they “loved” each other. England hated the Treaty because Russia (and her subordinate Sweden) had been the source of their masts, ship decking, tallow, linseed, pitch, iron, and hemp. Napoleon’s Spanish policy was one of his greatest errors. Charlemagne and Constantine could fall back on Christianity; Napoleon couldn’t. His 1812 plan if he defeated Russia was to take Constantinople, then press on to Persia and India. France went into deficit spending. In French occupied land, “The brutal French soldiers, many of them rapists and murderers who had chosen the army instead of a prison sentence, took their pick of the local women.” One French soldier later wrote, “They cannot forgive us for having twenty years caressed their wives and daughters before their very faces.” Invading Spain for the French was hard because you are invading from the north, but Spain’s mountains and rivers run east-west. Oops…
For England, keeping a Navy afloat was much cheaper than keeping an army on land. Meanwhile, Napoleon goes with his fellow sociopaths to an arena where they slaughter eighty defenseless wild boar. “Without control of the seas, France was always more likely to end up locked in than to lock Britain out”. England’s Navy could enforce its own blockade. Napoleon’s failure in Russia helped England; Napoleon’s failure in Spain helped England. In Russia, French food wagons broke down on the Russian rutted tracks. Lack of horses to move stuff. Starvation loomed. 8,000 of his horses died just between Vilna and Vitebsk from lack of fodder, being driven too hard, and huge daily hot to cold differentials. Napoleon’s Grande Armee “was losing 5-6,000 men a day from sickness and desertion.” They had fired “90,000 artillery shells and two million cartridges.” at Borodino where 100,000 died. When he arrived in Moscow it was intentionally a ghost town. Retreating Napoleon retraces his footsteps back into scorched earth territory rather than head south to food and supplies. Kutusov has a chance to finish off Napoleon on this retreat but fails although holding “vastly superior numbers”. The retreating Grand Armee’s stories of deprivation goes on for many pages in this book: “for hundreds of miles the Grande Armee lived mainly on horseflesh”. Then came the Winter (of napoleon’s discontent). Frostbite was common. “1812 was the beginning of the end for Napoleon.” In 1813 French morale was so low that French men would injure themselves to avoid the draft. The book then details many gruesome examples of draft -resisting mutilations that, each would make you cringe. Seventeen-year-olds would marry ninety-year-olds to escape the same draft. Napoleon said to Metternich, “A man like me cares little for the lives of a million men.” Metternich replies I wish all of Europe could hear that. By 1814, The Army was basically Napoleon’s only ally. The draft made him hugely unpopular. Waterloo was fought with 140,000 men crammed in three square miles. Napoleon ends up in remote St. Helena where amoebic dysentery was an endemic problem for all stationed on the island. He wrote, “In America I would either be assassinated or forgotten. I’m better off in St. Helena.” Napoleon’s two great victories were Austerlitz and Friedland. Think of Napoleon as callous but not ruthless or he would have quickly dealt with the interference of Bernadotte, Fouche, Talleyrand and Murat. He lost 500,000 in Russia and almost the same number in Germany in 1813. “He was unmoved by the human cost of his campaigns.” McLynn believes that the death toll just of French people 1798 to 1815 (because of Napoleon) is four million at the very least. This was a good book. My knowledge of Napoleon was pathetic, so it was important finally learn something about him.
Napoleon’s big love was Josephine who would spend a lot of time cuckolding him. In return, Napoleon would tell aghast strangers, “She has the prettiest little cunt in the world.” Ever the poet, Napoleon wrote Josephine that he longed to visit her “black forest.” He treated badly faithful women who loved him in favor of errant Josephine. Josephine preferred to cat around with men who could make her laugh and who lasted longer in bed. Napoleon loots Italy and takes the famed lion of Venice and the four bronze horses of St. Marks. He sends paintings by Michelangelo, Titian, and Raphael to Paris.
His four greatest skills were: the tech he used, his men’s morale, “the effects of the French Revolution” and his genius at tactics and strategy. Napoleon could never have had his meteoric rise without the French Revolution; the same with his generals like Davout. Regarding healthy troop morale, Napoleon won a lot, “he clothed and equipped them well, paid them in specie, and turned a blind eye to their pillaging expeditions. Winning a battle meant riches. Napoleon knew how men liked the rewards of money, honorific titles, and flattery. Back then, a sharpshooter needed to be under one hundred yards away to hit an individual. Reloading took a while; five rounds a minute was the fastest an expert could shoot, and more common was one to two rounds per minute with varying accuracy. This is why Napoleon favored artillery. Shooting practice was uncommon because ammunition was hard to get and guns sometimes blew up (burst barrel) in the face of the shooter. Deaths by bayonet were few. When you were close enough see the whites of your opponent’s eyes, gun accuracy went way up. Napoleon hated frontal attacks and far preferred to turn, or envelope, the enemy by attacking its flanks closest to their point of retreat. Show up at the right time and the right place. He liked to camp two nights away from the battle zone and then pull a night march and arrive a day earlier than the opponent expects. If he screwed up, he was a great improvisor, but not much of an innovator. Stendhal said Napoleon’s Italian Campaign was his greatest success. The best estimate is that only 1/5 of the Italian stolen art made its way to the Directory. The Directory was corrupt and so were the Generals, including Napoleon.
Napoleon knew that to invade England, it would take a minimum of eight hours just to cross the channel. He couldn’t work out a winnable plan to invade England like Rome did, so he set his eyes on Egypt (another Roman favorite) which he thought would be easier and cheaper to plunder. Napoleon attacks Egypt at the worst time of the year (a reoccurring theme/blunder in his life) leading many of his men to die of thirst. Intense heat made them abandon their booty, “and many others, tired of suffering, simply blew their brains out.” This was the fruits of invading a “Sultan’s territory without declaring war and without any valid reason for a declaration.” Now the French Army was “marooned in Egypt” without their fleet. The Rosetta Stone gets brought back from Egypt and deciphered. Napoleon thinks of redoing the ancient Suez Canal and calls in a decorator who says, okay, this beige has got to go.
At Jaffa, Napoleon commits horrible war crimes. Jaffa surrenders on the word of a French officer that their lives will be spared. Once inside, Napoleon says screw that, kill ‘em all. The problem is that the troops don’t have enough ammunition (bullets and gunpowder). No problem, says Napoleon, drown and bayonet them. Even battle-hardened veterans were sickened by killing 3,000 defenders (plus 1,400 prisoners taken from Gaza) this way. “There are well authenticated reports of soldiers wading out to sea to finish off terrified women and children who preferred to take their chances with the sharks.” Napoleon realized that history would judge him harshly because he couldn’t plead a compelling necessity. Yep. The fourteen months spent by French troops in Egypt brought France nothing. The French state was now bankrupt, and credit was non-existent. Butter and cheese became luxury items. The Directory was unable to satisfy any sector of society. “At root, the Thermidoreans wanted a Republic dedicated to the interests of the rich – rather like the U.S.A. at that time under Washington and Jefferson.” The Jacobins were on the Left but were an ineffective coalition, while the Royalists were infighters. Napoleon makes his bid for power (18 Brumaire) at the moment “the all-important bourgeoisie was willing to contemplate one-man rule.” He had shown how he could deal harshly with the bread rioters. France did not know Napoleon’s genius required constant warfare and all other hopes in him would be wasted. “Without Marengo, Napoleon could not have become consul for life and, ultimately, Emperor.”
A treaty with Spain gifts France the land later known as the Louisiana Purchase. The Haitian Revolution happens (seeking independence from France) and Napoleon says let me sell the Louisiana land France just got to Thomas Jefferson since France really needs money. Jefferson thinks, “wow, this Louisiana Purchase is such a blatant violation of the Constitution and my sacred oath …but on the other hand, if I sign, maybe my enslaved mistress Sally will call me a “bad boy” tonight”. Meanwhile back in France, Napoleon’s Josephine “bought 900 dresses per year” (for comparison, Marie Antoinette bought no more than 170) and a thousand pairs of shoes. She bought 38 hats in one month alone. She had a debt of 1,200,000 francs. Elsewhere in the country, “highway robbery and brigandage were rampant, especially in the south and west” Napoleon was anti-worker/anti-proletariat, yet workers supported him because he kept bread prices low. It was clearly the moneyed elite who benefited most from Napoleon’s rule. “By 1804, Napoleon’s grip on France was complete.”
Think of Napoleon as more an old-fashioned autocrat than a modern dictator. Strange quirks: he absolutely despised cats and open doors. When you entered to visit him, you had to squeeze though a barely open door, “then hold the door tight shut by the handle, sometimes doing so with hands behind the back, until dismissed”. Napoleon put in an eighteen-hour day making him one of histories greatest workaholics. He was very good at dressing down someone diplomatically, so they’d work harder next time. “He was both rootless and classless.” He gets coronated in 1804 and chooses a bee motif as symbol for his empire. When our US Presidents get inaugurated, instead of beautiful golden bees and fleur-de-lis, the symbols of our empire are Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, General Dynamics and Northrup Grumman.
Looking at ships, Napoleon saw France had 13 while England had 52. So, he kept his warships at full ready at ports to keep the English from relaxing. By 1805, Europe achieved a coalition against France. The traditional enemy of Russia was Turkey. “Under normal conditions, the semaphore system conveys intelligence at the rate of 120 mph. He writes Josephine, “Yesterday I beat the Russians and Austrians. I am a bit tired.” On August 9th 1806, the Holy Roman Empire ceased to exist when Francis II of Germany renounced his title of Emperor of Germany. Prussia is turned into a French satellite. Napoleon meets fellow England hater Czar Alexander; it leads to the Treaty of Tilsit. Later, they say they “loved” each other. England hated the Treaty because Russia (and her subordinate Sweden) had been the source of their masts, ship decking, tallow, linseed, pitch, iron, and hemp. Napoleon’s Spanish policy was one of his greatest errors. Charlemagne and Constantine could fall back on Christianity; Napoleon couldn’t. His 1812 plan if he defeated Russia was to take Constantinople, then press on to Persia and India. France went into deficit spending. In French occupied land, “The brutal French soldiers, many of them rapists and murderers who had chosen the army instead of a prison sentence, took their pick of the local women.” One French soldier later wrote, “They cannot forgive us for having twenty years caressed their wives and daughters before their very faces.” Invading Spain for the French was hard because you are invading from the north, but Spain’s mountains and rivers run east-west. Oops…
For England, keeping a Navy afloat was much cheaper than keeping an army on land. Meanwhile, Napoleon goes with his fellow sociopaths to an arena where they slaughter eighty defenseless wild boar. “Without control of the seas, France was always more likely to end up locked in than to lock Britain out”. England’s Navy could enforce its own blockade. Napoleon’s failure in Russia helped England; Napoleon’s failure in Spain helped England. In Russia, French food wagons broke down on the Russian rutted tracks. Lack of horses to move stuff. Starvation loomed. 8,000 of his horses died just between Vilna and Vitebsk from lack of fodder, being driven too hard, and huge daily hot to cold differentials. Napoleon’s Grande Armee “was losing 5-6,000 men a day from sickness and desertion.” They had fired “90,000 artillery shells and two million cartridges.” at Borodino where 100,000 died. When he arrived in Moscow it was intentionally a ghost town. Retreating Napoleon retraces his footsteps back into scorched earth territory rather than head south to food and supplies. Kutusov has a chance to finish off Napoleon on this retreat but fails although holding “vastly superior numbers”. The retreating Grand Armee’s stories of deprivation goes on for many pages in this book: “for hundreds of miles the Grande Armee lived mainly on horseflesh”. Then came the Winter (of napoleon’s discontent). Frostbite was common. “1812 was the beginning of the end for Napoleon.” In 1813 French morale was so low that French men would injure themselves to avoid the draft. The book then details many gruesome examples of draft -resisting mutilations that, each would make you cringe. Seventeen-year-olds would marry ninety-year-olds to escape the same draft. Napoleon said to Metternich, “A man like me cares little for the lives of a million men.” Metternich replies I wish all of Europe could hear that. By 1814, The Army was basically Napoleon’s only ally. The draft made him hugely unpopular. Waterloo was fought with 140,000 men crammed in three square miles. Napoleon ends up in remote St. Helena where amoebic dysentery was an endemic problem for all stationed on the island. He wrote, “In America I would either be assassinated or forgotten. I’m better off in St. Helena.” Napoleon’s two great victories were Austerlitz and Friedland. Think of Napoleon as callous but not ruthless or he would have quickly dealt with the interference of Bernadotte, Fouche, Talleyrand and Murat. He lost 500,000 in Russia and almost the same number in Germany in 1813. “He was unmoved by the human cost of his campaigns.” McLynn believes that the death toll just of French people 1798 to 1815 (because of Napoleon) is four million at the very least. This was a good book. My knowledge of Napoleon was pathetic, so it was important finally learn something about him.
June 2, 2013
If I wanted to read a pop psychology analysis of Napoleon I would have picked up Napoleon: A Pop Psychoanalysis By A Non Expert, not Napoleon: A Biography.
The book, in parts, is well written and really immerses you in the story... but then come the last pages of the chapter where the author shows his knowledge of pop psychology in all of its glory. What a way to ruin a book. I couldn't get past 10% of the book.
Also, if you're going to describe a battle in detail, it's a good idea to throw in a map or two. The reader might have a general understanding of France's geography, but please don't assume we'll know specific topography that is crucial to the outcome of a battle.
So, well written but exasperating analysis that ruins the book.
The book, in parts, is well written and really immerses you in the story... but then come the last pages of the chapter where the author shows his knowledge of pop psychology in all of its glory. What a way to ruin a book. I couldn't get past 10% of the book.
Also, if you're going to describe a battle in detail, it's a good idea to throw in a map or two. The reader might have a general understanding of France's geography, but please don't assume we'll know specific topography that is crucial to the outcome of a battle.
So, well written but exasperating analysis that ruins the book.
October 20, 2020
A serviceable overview of Napoleon's life and career but with two major flaws. First, the repeated, laughable attempts to psychoanalyze Napoleon. For example, the author suggests that the young Napoleon's decision to abandon the cause of Corsican independence for French Jacobinism was motivated by his Oedipus complex and a subconscious desire to 'kill' his father figure and leader of the independence movement, Paoli. It is bad history, bad biography and totally unconvincing. Second, there is a puerile fixation on Napoleon's sex life and a nasty, misogynist undertone in the descriptions of his various female relatives and mistresses.
January 10, 2015
I liked this book when I read it over a week or two in 2009. It was surprising how poor Napoleon was and how much of an utter nobody he was when in boarding school and such. I'm not sure if this one had the story of him leading the snowball fight, but that is a good story nonetheless.
If you want a good one-volume book, this is a good bit. I'd have liked a bit more on some of the weirdness and sexual proclivities, and I just don't remember them being here.
I will add that there's a short book on Napoleon's time on St. Helena that compliments this one well.
If you want a good one-volume book, this is a good bit. I'd have liked a bit more on some of the weirdness and sexual proclivities, and I just don't remember them being here.
I will add that there's a short book on Napoleon's time on St. Helena that compliments this one well.
October 1, 2021
Excellent study of the “Corsican ogre”. He comes over as dictatorial but not a fully fledged dictator. Arguably his greatest weakness was allowing a culture of venality & corruption to flourish with important roles going to incompetent relatives or those that flitted briefly across the historical stage, having one good moment followed by multiple disasters. Ney, Joseph, Murat & Grouchy all fit this category. McLynn is clear that Napoleon’s military ability shrinks relative to the responsibility he has to shoulder, whether that is in terms of sheer numbers under command or looking at warfare in a strategic sense by tailoring objectives to available resources. Particularly good section on the Egyptian campaign that shows both that lack of strategic reality combined with a sense of personal reality as he abandons his army to further his political career.
September 30, 2018
A behemoth of a book is needed to discuss a behemoth of historical figure, and Frank McLynn's biography of Napoleon met that need (my paperback copy weighed in at 663 pages). McLynn sought to write a fair and balanced biography of the infamous emperor, whose colorful personality and propaganda-flavored memoirs often obscure the truth of his life and his rise to power. McLynn strives to be objective, and his meticulously researched and detailed biography does its utmost to solve the many historical riddles left behind by Napoleon Bonaparte.
From his unpromising childhood as a member of the financially-strapped Corsican nobility, to meteoric rise to power as General, First Consul, and finally Emperor of France, to his ignoble death on the dreadful island of St. Helena's, there is little about Napoleon's life that is unexceptional--and most of it is contradictory. Napoleon is most famously known as an Emperor of France but spoke French in a thick Corsican/Italian accent that he never bothered to improve. He was a Machiavellian whose talent as a politician and a general was largely based in his understanding and manipulation of human nature, yet he would blindly and inconceivably forgive wrongs and betrayals done to him by traitorous court members and military marshals time and time again. He was deeply misogynistic and verbally (and occasionally physically) cruel towards women yet adored his obviously unfaithful wife Josephine. He valued talent and ability but also rewarded countless honors and kingdoms to his useless and conniving brothers and sisters. England was clearly Napoleon's most powerful enemy, yet he often turned his attention away from English shores and toward the east, to Egypt and (in a move that would prove fatal) to Russia. McLynn doesn't shy away from these contradictions and does his best to explain Napoleon's motivations and psychological hang ups, by using letters and documents from the time period, as well as an array of historians' takes on this famous figure. McLynn does not seek to forgive Napoleon for his errors nor attribute greater wrong to him than is deserved. Overall, he manages to be a fair biographer. But he definitely does pick favorites among Napoleon's entourage, though. Josephine is portrayed as an emotional, thoughtless flirt, Talleyrand practically oozes slime and insincerity, Napoleon's mother Madame Mere is described as a money-grubbing, hateful creature. I'm also not sure what Czar Alexander of Russia ever did to McLynn, but the author actively seems to hate him. So while McLynn took a great deal of effort to be objective concerning Napoleon, he did not do the same with all the other historical figures he researched. I do admit, though, that I found his off hand descriptions/insults amusing.
There are some other problems as well. McLynn relies far too much on psychoanalysis in understanding Napoleon's relationship with women (because it all apparently comes down to his mother, surprise surprise), which always makes me leery (blame it on being an English major in college). Some of the sections are painfully detailed and slow, such as the extended battlefield descriptions and the breakdown of Napoleon's ultimately unsuccessful economic embargo. This isn't always a page turner, and it shows in just how long it took me to read this book. But the strength in McLynn's biography is its completeness. You don't have a sense of information being skimmed over or left out--you may occasionally wish McLynn had left info out, because it's so detailed! But if you want a one-stop shop on everything Napoleon, this is the book to do that.
While not always effortlessly enjoyable, I can't deny that I know far more about Napoleon now than I did before. Napoleon was a figure of extreme interest in his time, and it is a testament to his historical impact and force of personality that he remains so 200 years later. McLynn did an excellent job in portraying this fascinating but contradictory figure.
From his unpromising childhood as a member of the financially-strapped Corsican nobility, to meteoric rise to power as General, First Consul, and finally Emperor of France, to his ignoble death on the dreadful island of St. Helena's, there is little about Napoleon's life that is unexceptional--and most of it is contradictory. Napoleon is most famously known as an Emperor of France but spoke French in a thick Corsican/Italian accent that he never bothered to improve. He was a Machiavellian whose talent as a politician and a general was largely based in his understanding and manipulation of human nature, yet he would blindly and inconceivably forgive wrongs and betrayals done to him by traitorous court members and military marshals time and time again. He was deeply misogynistic and verbally (and occasionally physically) cruel towards women yet adored his obviously unfaithful wife Josephine. He valued talent and ability but also rewarded countless honors and kingdoms to his useless and conniving brothers and sisters. England was clearly Napoleon's most powerful enemy, yet he often turned his attention away from English shores and toward the east, to Egypt and (in a move that would prove fatal) to Russia. McLynn doesn't shy away from these contradictions and does his best to explain Napoleon's motivations and psychological hang ups, by using letters and documents from the time period, as well as an array of historians' takes on this famous figure. McLynn does not seek to forgive Napoleon for his errors nor attribute greater wrong to him than is deserved. Overall, he manages to be a fair biographer. But he definitely does pick favorites among Napoleon's entourage, though. Josephine is portrayed as an emotional, thoughtless flirt, Talleyrand practically oozes slime and insincerity, Napoleon's mother Madame Mere is described as a money-grubbing, hateful creature. I'm also not sure what Czar Alexander of Russia ever did to McLynn, but the author actively seems to hate him. So while McLynn took a great deal of effort to be objective concerning Napoleon, he did not do the same with all the other historical figures he researched. I do admit, though, that I found his off hand descriptions/insults amusing.
There are some other problems as well. McLynn relies far too much on psychoanalysis in understanding Napoleon's relationship with women (because it all apparently comes down to his mother, surprise surprise), which always makes me leery (blame it on being an English major in college). Some of the sections are painfully detailed and slow, such as the extended battlefield descriptions and the breakdown of Napoleon's ultimately unsuccessful economic embargo. This isn't always a page turner, and it shows in just how long it took me to read this book. But the strength in McLynn's biography is its completeness. You don't have a sense of information being skimmed over or left out--you may occasionally wish McLynn had left info out, because it's so detailed! But if you want a one-stop shop on everything Napoleon, this is the book to do that.
While not always effortlessly enjoyable, I can't deny that I know far more about Napoleon now than I did before. Napoleon was a figure of extreme interest in his time, and it is a testament to his historical impact and force of personality that he remains so 200 years later. McLynn did an excellent job in portraying this fascinating but contradictory figure.
May 2, 2021
Disappointing, overly psychological, potboiler biography of Napoleon that is exceedingly psycho-sexual in its explanatory framework, and, therefore, fails to create a clear and objective evaluation of its subject as soldier and statesman, general and emperor. In addition, it is marred by misunderstandings about the politics outside of France and marked by too many basic errors, such as making Bernadotte king of Sweden when he was crown prince until 1818, and confusing Pitt with the Ministry of All the Talents and Grenville with Hawkesbury as Foreign Secretaty under Addington.
The book is ridiculously anti-British throughout, painting the actions of the Pitt ministry and its successors and the exploits of the military constantly in the worst possible light, and drawing unjustifiable comparisons between England and Napoleonic France, always to the advantage of the latter.
McLynn seems incapable of evaluating the achievements of Napoleon, painting all possible greatness in prosaic colours of drabness, and seemingly unable to accept the emperor's extraordinary talents, but, incapable of constructing his life as other than meteoric, he constantly diminishes the attainments of those who worked with and against Napoleon. Not only are the Marshals, with the odd exception such as Suchet and Davout, portrayed as idiots and incompetents, especially Ney, or traitors, as with Bernadotte, but important, constructive figures such as Castleresgh, Wellington, Metternich, and Talleyrand, each pursuing justifiable and understandable policies, are constantly and excessively berated and ascribed mendacious motives for policies of ill intent.
At almost 700 pages this book is a reasonably detailed study of Napoleon, but it conspicuously fails to properly evaluate the man or contextualise his times, and its Freudian-Jungian architecture perhaps tells more about the obsessions of the author than it does about the motivations of the extraordinary man who was Napoleon Bonaparte. In the end, Napoleon comes across as a sexually neurotic opportunist riding a tide of historical forces in a world populated by greedy, grafting nonentities. Napoleon is not great, it is just that everyone else is so much less.
The book is ridiculously anti-British throughout, painting the actions of the Pitt ministry and its successors and the exploits of the military constantly in the worst possible light, and drawing unjustifiable comparisons between England and Napoleonic France, always to the advantage of the latter.
McLynn seems incapable of evaluating the achievements of Napoleon, painting all possible greatness in prosaic colours of drabness, and seemingly unable to accept the emperor's extraordinary talents, but, incapable of constructing his life as other than meteoric, he constantly diminishes the attainments of those who worked with and against Napoleon. Not only are the Marshals, with the odd exception such as Suchet and Davout, portrayed as idiots and incompetents, especially Ney, or traitors, as with Bernadotte, but important, constructive figures such as Castleresgh, Wellington, Metternich, and Talleyrand, each pursuing justifiable and understandable policies, are constantly and excessively berated and ascribed mendacious motives for policies of ill intent.
At almost 700 pages this book is a reasonably detailed study of Napoleon, but it conspicuously fails to properly evaluate the man or contextualise his times, and its Freudian-Jungian architecture perhaps tells more about the obsessions of the author than it does about the motivations of the extraordinary man who was Napoleon Bonaparte. In the end, Napoleon comes across as a sexually neurotic opportunist riding a tide of historical forces in a world populated by greedy, grafting nonentities. Napoleon is not great, it is just that everyone else is so much less.
April 29, 2012
Men lined on a wet grassy field, fighting ferociously for a farmhouse waiting desperately for the arrival of Grouchy and his thirty thousand reinforcements. As thousands of dark colored uniforms line up on the eastern edge of the battle field a call goes out. The French are here, but this is not to be the case as the arriving Prussians turn Napoleon's flank sealing the deal for one of the most well known battles in history, Waterloo.
This is all that I have known of the unbelievable life of this man. That changed quickly as I struggled to push through this mammoth undertaking. With a love for history compounded by a love for fiction I bounce back and forth between the two subjects tearing through the faster easier reads. Frank McLynn's work here is superb every page is filled with details that I digested at a slow and methodical pace.
Consuming the pages I am in awe that this man was able to do what he did. A believer in fate, Napoleon goes on a path to prove that nothing is written. Dreaming the impossible dream, he attempted to fulfill it, and for a decade the impossible was granted to him. In the end I am left feeling a bit of sympathy for this man, who like most men destroy themselves. I will leave my review where McLynn leaves his biography. Napoleon Bonaparte R.I.P.
This is all that I have known of the unbelievable life of this man. That changed quickly as I struggled to push through this mammoth undertaking. With a love for history compounded by a love for fiction I bounce back and forth between the two subjects tearing through the faster easier reads. Frank McLynn's work here is superb every page is filled with details that I digested at a slow and methodical pace.
Consuming the pages I am in awe that this man was able to do what he did. A believer in fate, Napoleon goes on a path to prove that nothing is written. Dreaming the impossible dream, he attempted to fulfill it, and for a decade the impossible was granted to him. In the end I am left feeling a bit of sympathy for this man, who like most men destroy themselves. I will leave my review where McLynn leaves his biography. Napoleon Bonaparte R.I.P.
October 3, 2009
My first thought on finishing this book? "It's over at last!" If you've never read a biograph of Napoleon, I don't recommend starting here. Lumbering, almost totally devoid of section breaks, and with an author that seems to have a fetish for the thesaurus. The author paints Napoleon as a bright but deeply flawed individual, surrounded by a sea of relatives, subordinates, and peers that were even more reprehensible (the word "incompetent" is throw around alot). Almost nobody mentioned seems likable or even vaguely sympathetic. The book also tries to get inside Napoleon's head psychologically, often trying to write off decisions by him as being due to his issues; ironically, it does this while NOT advocating that Napoleon had a Napoleon Complex. There is also a shortage of maps.
That all said, it's not completely worthless. There is a great deal of information and a number of myths about Napoleon are shot down. And I've read dryer writing.
That all said, it's not completely worthless. There is a great deal of information and a number of myths about Napoleon are shot down. And I've read dryer writing.
March 21, 2013
Think you need 752 pages on Napolean? You are probably wrong. I was.
McLynn writes well, and this is surely a complete life of a world-historic figure. But there's way too much assumed knowledge, and not nearly enough maps. The battle sequences are great for folks with detailed geographical information about late 18th C Italy, France, Egypt, Syria, Austria-Hungary, German, Russia, Spain and Portugal. For everyone else, it's a slog through the battle scenes.
McLynn is also weirdly obsessed with the sex lives of Napolean and his family. His sister comes in for some odd treatment, with the author refering to her alleged nymphomania at least a dozen times.
But I did come away knowing a lot about a very interesting guy. And I'm pretty convinced that life in the Grand Armee when they made their way through Russia was not too pleasant.
McLynn writes well, and this is surely a complete life of a world-historic figure. But there's way too much assumed knowledge, and not nearly enough maps. The battle sequences are great for folks with detailed geographical information about late 18th C Italy, France, Egypt, Syria, Austria-Hungary, German, Russia, Spain and Portugal. For everyone else, it's a slog through the battle scenes.
McLynn is also weirdly obsessed with the sex lives of Napolean and his family. His sister comes in for some odd treatment, with the author refering to her alleged nymphomania at least a dozen times.
But I did come away knowing a lot about a very interesting guy. And I'm pretty convinced that life in the Grand Armee when they made their way through Russia was not too pleasant.
February 18, 2017
A fairly useful biography of Napoleon and his campaigns, but ruined by a lot of specious psychobabble, a lot of unevidenced opinion, some rather sexist attitudes and some terrible howling errors. The two howlers that jumped out at me were that 1. Napoleon wasn't particularly short, actually, so attempts to give him a 'complex' about his height are nonsense, and 2. the persistent mis-titling of Friedrich Wilhelm, King of Prussia, as 'Kaiser' or 'Emperor'. If you can't get something as simple as that right, it lends no confidence to the rest of your research.
September 14, 2024
This is a masterful account of the subject. It is one of many books I have read on the Napoleonic era in general, and the third on Napoleon specifically, but it is the first that has made me come half to understanding the man. It is truly a difficult topic to face, especially in a fairly concise way as this book is. Seven hundred pages is not even nearly enough to cover everything. Diligently, McLynn has had to move at pace, explaining complex matters simply, and focusing on areas that best explain the essence of Bonaparte. In my eyes he has succeeded. McLynn is clearly not a military historian and therefore moves swiftly through his battles, but he sums them up well enough. With the exception of Waterloo which is perhaps ten pages, no other battle takes up more than two. This is not to say he doesn't realise the importance and impact of the battles however, but in focusing on the non-military aspect we get much more on the character of Napoleon, his relationships, and crucially, his management of the empire. Due to the efficiency of the novel, I can someone who is not familiar with the basics of the era may get lost at parts, but as an all purpose biography of Napoleon for a book of this size, I can't imagine anyone could do much better.
The book takes us chronologically through Napoleon's life until he is made emperor in 1804, then the narrative bounces between various topics in mixed chronologically up to the dreaded Moscow campaign in 1812, then again the narrative is linear. At the beginning, before he is made emperor, McLynn produces much psychoanalysis of Napoleon's intentions and how his complexes are reflected in his actions, i.e. he surmises the death of Napoleon's four father figures (his hero Paoli, his real father, his patron and Louis XVI) is what allows him to abandon Corsica and become a patriot of France. While I wasn't convinced by the psychoanalysis at parts, I appreciate the intent. In his introduction, McLynn summarises the issue that any biographer of Napoleon contends with: the more you know of him, the more enigmatic he seems. He takes a lot of time in this book tracing Napoleon's background, his various complexes and his mixed beliefs to interpret the decisions he makes. Again it lost me at parts, for the example the very final paragraph of the book references some quite specific theories of Jung which bewildered me. You can tell the historian had just written a book about the philosopher as there are many references to Jung in his analysis, but this element interested me and adds an interesting individual quality to the biography.
Of course being a British account, Napoleon is not made out to be a messiah or a legend amongst men. McLynn is very critical of his subject most of the time, and I sense this is not a biography written by someone who hero-worships Bonaparte. Rather it sets out to be a fairly honest assessment of his life and character. I enjoyed the conclusion, where we see Mclynn's mixed comments throughout the book come together in one logical assessment of the man of legend. In sum, as we hear Napoleon reference throughout his life, he was a 'child of circumstance', not the titan he has since been made to be, nor the ogre. This probably summarises the angle he is observed from throughout the book.
Interestingly, McLynn states at the end his view that Napoleon certainly died of arsenic poisoning, and that this was almost definitely done by Count Montholon under the direction of the Bourbons. It is quite a big claim and probably the only set one he makes, it was convincing though I believe since this book was written, more evidence has come to the fore, it'd be interesting to know if the historian still stands by his claim
The book takes us chronologically through Napoleon's life until he is made emperor in 1804, then the narrative bounces between various topics in mixed chronologically up to the dreaded Moscow campaign in 1812, then again the narrative is linear. At the beginning, before he is made emperor, McLynn produces much psychoanalysis of Napoleon's intentions and how his complexes are reflected in his actions, i.e. he surmises the death of Napoleon's four father figures (his hero Paoli, his real father, his patron and Louis XVI) is what allows him to abandon Corsica and become a patriot of France. While I wasn't convinced by the psychoanalysis at parts, I appreciate the intent. In his introduction, McLynn summarises the issue that any biographer of Napoleon contends with: the more you know of him, the more enigmatic he seems. He takes a lot of time in this book tracing Napoleon's background, his various complexes and his mixed beliefs to interpret the decisions he makes. Again it lost me at parts, for the example the very final paragraph of the book references some quite specific theories of Jung which bewildered me. You can tell the historian had just written a book about the philosopher as there are many references to Jung in his analysis, but this element interested me and adds an interesting individual quality to the biography.
Of course being a British account, Napoleon is not made out to be a messiah or a legend amongst men. McLynn is very critical of his subject most of the time, and I sense this is not a biography written by someone who hero-worships Bonaparte. Rather it sets out to be a fairly honest assessment of his life and character. I enjoyed the conclusion, where we see Mclynn's mixed comments throughout the book come together in one logical assessment of the man of legend. In sum, as we hear Napoleon reference throughout his life, he was a 'child of circumstance', not the titan he has since been made to be, nor the ogre. This probably summarises the angle he is observed from throughout the book.
Interestingly, McLynn states at the end his view that Napoleon certainly died of arsenic poisoning, and that this was almost definitely done by Count Montholon under the direction of the Bourbons. It is quite a big claim and probably the only set one he makes, it was convincing though I believe since this book was written, more evidence has come to the fore, it'd be interesting to know if the historian still stands by his claim
December 7, 2018
By any measure, Napoleon Bonaparte was a colossus among men. I remember the legend of Napoleon haunting me right from the time I read the abridged version of The Count of Monte Cristo when I was 8 or 9 till the year or so of obsession with Friedrich Nietzsche. I'd heard of Napoleon's having had a small penis and Napoleon having been extremely ruthless, and I'd read how Napoleon was employed as a shadow by George Orwell for Joseph Stalin in Animal Farm. An obsession with anarchism (and even the French Revolution) made things black-and-white, but its enrapturement didn't put me out of affection for the Corsican ogre.
Frank McLynn's biography was the first detailed work that I read about Napoleon during graduate school. Frank busted all of the above myths and much more. Unlike most readers, I wasn't put off by the lack of detailed maps in this book. The few ones (Austerlitz, Jena-Auerstadt, Borodino, Waterloo et al.) that found their way in did enough without interfering with the biographical aspects. The Jungian obsession of the author is not accentuated with a prejudice toward British perspectives. This work is a towering embodiment of objectivity; often Frank berates Prussian, Russian and Austrian adversaries of Napoleon for their mediocrity and does not spare the British either. William Pitt is criticized for not being a sane European voice in an era of competition for dominance. The British handling of Napoleon at St. Helena is also scoffed at. Blame is apportioned to the nincompoops that decided the fate of Bonaparte and the cynicism of the island administration. The over-skepticism of the British with regard to conspiracy theories is hinted at as one of the reasons why the stomach cancer theory of Napoleon's death had dominantly survived at the time of writing the book.
Some of the fascinating portions of the book involve Frank McLynn being self-contradictory across a mere two or three paragraphs. Napoleon's military decline is thoroughly discussed in one paragraph, immediately followed by another where he is his old brilliant self. One of his overrated traits stands exposed in one portion, which is soon succeeded by another where this trait shines brightest. Frank McLynn's efforts at busting the myth of Napoleon clearly seem to reveal his underlying admiration for the "Emperor." The writing, although pompous in its use of Latin, French and Italian phrases and terms when plain English would've sufficed, adds to the retrograde European times discussed quite well and ends in complete subscription to the enigma of Napoleon -- Napoleon as the consummate gambler in modern history.
PS: If I'd been younger, I would've argued about the appropriateness of the comparison of Napoleon's battles to Alexander's, Hannibal's or even Subutai the Valiant's. This argument would've dealt with the reliability of the battle sources and Frank McLynn's thorough awareness of the extent of propaganda involved in the aforementioned. But I guess that the "greatness" of Napoleon was not about winning all his battles. It was in his endless resourcefulness and impishness -- something that is acknowledged copiously throughout this work.
Frank McLynn's biography was the first detailed work that I read about Napoleon during graduate school. Frank busted all of the above myths and much more. Unlike most readers, I wasn't put off by the lack of detailed maps in this book. The few ones (Austerlitz, Jena-Auerstadt, Borodino, Waterloo et al.) that found their way in did enough without interfering with the biographical aspects. The Jungian obsession of the author is not accentuated with a prejudice toward British perspectives. This work is a towering embodiment of objectivity; often Frank berates Prussian, Russian and Austrian adversaries of Napoleon for their mediocrity and does not spare the British either. William Pitt is criticized for not being a sane European voice in an era of competition for dominance. The British handling of Napoleon at St. Helena is also scoffed at. Blame is apportioned to the nincompoops that decided the fate of Bonaparte and the cynicism of the island administration. The over-skepticism of the British with regard to conspiracy theories is hinted at as one of the reasons why the stomach cancer theory of Napoleon's death had dominantly survived at the time of writing the book.
Some of the fascinating portions of the book involve Frank McLynn being self-contradictory across a mere two or three paragraphs. Napoleon's military decline is thoroughly discussed in one paragraph, immediately followed by another where he is his old brilliant self. One of his overrated traits stands exposed in one portion, which is soon succeeded by another where this trait shines brightest. Frank McLynn's efforts at busting the myth of Napoleon clearly seem to reveal his underlying admiration for the "Emperor." The writing, although pompous in its use of Latin, French and Italian phrases and terms when plain English would've sufficed, adds to the retrograde European times discussed quite well and ends in complete subscription to the enigma of Napoleon -- Napoleon as the consummate gambler in modern history.
PS: If I'd been younger, I would've argued about the appropriateness of the comparison of Napoleon's battles to Alexander's, Hannibal's or even Subutai the Valiant's. This argument would've dealt with the reliability of the battle sources and Frank McLynn's thorough awareness of the extent of propaganda involved in the aforementioned. But I guess that the "greatness" of Napoleon was not about winning all his battles. It was in his endless resourcefulness and impishness -- something that is acknowledged copiously throughout this work.
July 23, 2023
This is a huge book but then, Napoleon’s was a huge life. McLynn navigates us through the complexity of the man and his tumultuous times with skill and brevity.
Most of what I knew about Boney came, from what I think of as, the “Big Book of British History” (what you think you know rather than what may have actually happened) – ie he was a military genius who came to power after the revolution, took over most of Europe except for getting beat by Nelson and then getting beat by Wellington in Spain; tried to invade Russia with disastrous consequences, got sent to Elba, then came back and finally (thanks to Wellington, of course) met his Waterloo at.. er… Waterloo, then sent to St Helena and death.
All of this is, at a very high level, broadly right (apart from a bit of exaggeration about the role of Wellington in his downfall) but, of course, there’s a shedload of detail that isn’t there.
McLynn fills in the blanks brilliantly – for example, how Napoleon was not merely a military genius but also transformed French society; McLynn illuminates the insanely complex political aftermath of the revolution and how Napoleon navigated his way through it to take his place at the top of the pile. And at the end of it all, how Napoleon very nearly won at Waterloo; some of his own failings came through but he was also betrayed by some and badly let down by others. The course of history is never just one factor above all others and McLynn manages to make all this complexity understandable to non-historians like me.
My key takeaways upon learning the much fuller story of Napoleon – the man was a genius with a massive work ethic; yes he was ruthless and the ethics of his world shattering wars are highly questionable but it’s hard to say he had a moral compass any more damaged than the various Emperors and Kings lined up against him. His family were a bunch of free-loading, over-entitled scum – one of Napoleon’s definite flaws was nepotism; they were constantly dragging him down. Sleeping around between the various political and military heads and their wives was just one of the main political tools of French high society and Marshall Ney, whom Boney remained foolishly loyal to, was a blithering idiot who was the cause of failure for several of the pivotal battles.
A big book of history but, thankfully, more illuminating than the “Big Book of History”.
Most of what I knew about Boney came, from what I think of as, the “Big Book of British History” (what you think you know rather than what may have actually happened) – ie he was a military genius who came to power after the revolution, took over most of Europe except for getting beat by Nelson and then getting beat by Wellington in Spain; tried to invade Russia with disastrous consequences, got sent to Elba, then came back and finally (thanks to Wellington, of course) met his Waterloo at.. er… Waterloo, then sent to St Helena and death.
All of this is, at a very high level, broadly right (apart from a bit of exaggeration about the role of Wellington in his downfall) but, of course, there’s a shedload of detail that isn’t there.
McLynn fills in the blanks brilliantly – for example, how Napoleon was not merely a military genius but also transformed French society; McLynn illuminates the insanely complex political aftermath of the revolution and how Napoleon navigated his way through it to take his place at the top of the pile. And at the end of it all, how Napoleon very nearly won at Waterloo; some of his own failings came through but he was also betrayed by some and badly let down by others. The course of history is never just one factor above all others and McLynn manages to make all this complexity understandable to non-historians like me.
My key takeaways upon learning the much fuller story of Napoleon – the man was a genius with a massive work ethic; yes he was ruthless and the ethics of his world shattering wars are highly questionable but it’s hard to say he had a moral compass any more damaged than the various Emperors and Kings lined up against him. His family were a bunch of free-loading, over-entitled scum – one of Napoleon’s definite flaws was nepotism; they were constantly dragging him down. Sleeping around between the various political and military heads and their wives was just one of the main political tools of French high society and Marshall Ney, whom Boney remained foolishly loyal to, was a blithering idiot who was the cause of failure for several of the pivotal battles.
A big book of history but, thankfully, more illuminating than the “Big Book of History”.
July 20, 2021
Anglophiles’ stories of an evil almost anti-Christ Napoleon have leaked into the American narrative of history. He was just a successful ambitious military man with unique talents who had the opportunity of a country’s resources unchained from the exclusive claims that monarchy, aristocracy, and the church had dominated for centuries. He did not execute political opponents and French citizens. He did not commit heinous war crimes. He did not bulldoze over a free Europe and conquer (like Hitler). He only had to defeat like 5 enemies whose empires had Europe already carved up: Holy Roman, Prussian, English, Russian, and Spanish. They’re were probably only about 30 battles and the players were the same. Defeating a player gave all that empire. The believers of an evil Napoleon think he railroaded the peaceful democracies of an independent Italy, Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, Poland, Hungary, etc. He disrupted status quo. The freed loved him. The profiteers of classism hated him. His claim of evil is exonerated by the fact they didn’t execute him; they exiled him. He was an annoying nemesis, not a feared marauder. (He did loot like a pirate on the pre-updated Disnelyand’s Pirates of the Caribbean ride tho)
April 6, 2024
Okay, took awhile, but it was worth it.
Honestly, I think I would give this one four and a half starts, but I'll round up. My only real complaint was that this book was a biography in the strictest sense of the word, not a "The Life and Times of Napoleon," which I know is a common complaint of this book. It does assume knowledge of events of the time, not just general knowledge, but some some pretty detailed information. It doesn't go into a lot of detail on events outside of Napoleon's life. For example, the Battle of Trafalgar has one paragraph devoted to it. But in fairness to the author, the book is nearly 700 pages, and extending beyond the man's life would have ballooned the book immensely.
I definitely learned a lot about Napoleon. I liked how the author mentioned conflicting reports of certain events and explaining what he believed to be what truly happened and why.
Because it was written by a British author, some events had different names than what I was used to, but that is be expected, I suppose.
Many people were put off by the psychoanalyzing of Napoleon. I don't really know if it added anything and I think leaving it out wouldn't have ruined the book by any means, but I don't think it ruined the book.
Definitely a recommended biography of Napoleon.
Honestly, I think I would give this one four and a half starts, but I'll round up. My only real complaint was that this book was a biography in the strictest sense of the word, not a "The Life and Times of Napoleon," which I know is a common complaint of this book. It does assume knowledge of events of the time, not just general knowledge, but some some pretty detailed information. It doesn't go into a lot of detail on events outside of Napoleon's life. For example, the Battle of Trafalgar has one paragraph devoted to it. But in fairness to the author, the book is nearly 700 pages, and extending beyond the man's life would have ballooned the book immensely.
I definitely learned a lot about Napoleon. I liked how the author mentioned conflicting reports of certain events and explaining what he believed to be what truly happened and why.
Because it was written by a British author, some events had different names than what I was used to, but that is be expected, I suppose.
Many people were put off by the psychoanalyzing of Napoleon. I don't really know if it added anything and I think leaving it out wouldn't have ruined the book by any means, but I don't think it ruined the book.
Definitely a recommended biography of Napoleon.
September 19, 2017
McLynn's Napoleon is, indeed, a compelling 'warts-and-all' biography. I found his opinions of Napoleon's motives fascinating, and I learnt a lot more than I'd known before about his family relationships and the role they played in his decision-making. The only thing that makes me give this work four stars instead of five is the fact that some of the battle discussions became a little long and dry at times. One or two pages was fine, but when they dragged on longer than that, I did find myself skimming a little, but then I am no keen military historian and am more interested in people than battle tactics. Despite that, it was still a wonderful read and a book I am happy to add to my biography collection. It's well worth a read for military history buffs and for those interested in Napoleon and France under his rule.
April 15, 2019
I was searching for a solid, substantive biography of Napoleon, but I'm not sure that I was successful. I gave 4 stars simply out of respect for the extensive effort that McLynn must have put in to producing this tome.
McLynn offers a comprehensive overview of the key moments of Napoleon's career and personal life. He provides surprisingly light coverage of some elements (e.g., the time on St. Helena, and the Battle of Waterloo) while delving deeply into others (e.g., Napoleon's relationship with his mother). I also found McLynn's use of psychoanalytic theory an unfortunate choice; it's simply too difficult to apply these ideas with any sort of consistency or dependability. As other reviewers have noted, discussion of battles and travels might have benefitted from more maps.
McLynn offers a comprehensive overview of the key moments of Napoleon's career and personal life. He provides surprisingly light coverage of some elements (e.g., the time on St. Helena, and the Battle of Waterloo) while delving deeply into others (e.g., Napoleon's relationship with his mother). I also found McLynn's use of psychoanalytic theory an unfortunate choice; it's simply too difficult to apply these ideas with any sort of consistency or dependability. As other reviewers have noted, discussion of battles and travels might have benefitted from more maps.
December 9, 2019
good book although i wish it was longer , a 650-page book will do no justice to life of NP ,
writing was fine
objectivity was good conceding he was brilliant although could be egomaniac that could cost him much .
writer was knowledgeable especially pychoanalysis ( not suprising considering he wrote another book a biograpghy of carl jung ) and finding motives of his actions
chapters about NP's childhood and his teenage years
chapters about russian campaign and peninsular war was a bit short .
کتێبێکی باشە ، بەڵام خۆزگە درێژتر با ژیانی ناپۆلیۆن دەکرا بە ٥ کتێبی لەو شێوەیە پڕبکاتەوە
بەشەکانی کامپەینی رووسیا و شەڕی نیمچەدوورگەیی کورت بوون
بەشەکانی (منداڵی و گەنجێتی ناپۆلیۆن ) زۆر باش بوون .
نوسەر هاوسەنگی پاراستووە ..
writing was fine
objectivity was good conceding he was brilliant although could be egomaniac that could cost him much .
writer was knowledgeable especially pychoanalysis ( not suprising considering he wrote another book a biograpghy of carl jung ) and finding motives of his actions
chapters about NP's childhood and his teenage years
chapters about russian campaign and peninsular war was a bit short .
کتێبێکی باشە ، بەڵام خۆزگە درێژتر با ژیانی ناپۆلیۆن دەکرا بە ٥ کتێبی لەو شێوەیە پڕبکاتەوە
بەشەکانی کامپەینی رووسیا و شەڕی نیمچەدوورگەیی کورت بوون
بەشەکانی (منداڵی و گەنجێتی ناپۆلیۆن ) زۆر باش بوون .
نوسەر هاوسەنگی پاراستووە ..
December 26, 2023
McLynn has written one of the most elaborate depictions of Napoleon 's life. Facts and analysis are well sewed into an intriguing narrative. There are two main flaws in the book. The first one is inevitable - time has passed since in has been written and some new perspectives have appeared. The second one is avertable - McLynn is somewhat unbiased regarding many of the historical figures he portrays in the narrative. All in all, it is a fine written, witty opus that is essential for anyone working on Napoleon's life.
April 18, 2022
Fantastic! Frank McLynn is a storyteller, and I mean this in a sincerely fantastic way. His historical and biographical writing is consumable, binge-able, because instead of writing a textbook, he tells you the story. His work on Napoleon is extremely well written, researched, and sourced. Highly recommended!
December 2, 2023
Finally finished this giant of a book… absolutely worth 5 stars. Has given me amazing detail and fresh perspectives on one of the most famous people of all time. Intensely well researched and full of stories and aphorisms that make you admire the author, as well as Napoleon. So worth the long on and off months it took me to read it.
February 19, 2020
A very interesting and detailed history of Napoleon. Includes everything from early life to the Napoleonic Wars. 14+
April 6, 2020
Brilliant. I thought that all the psychoanalytical stuff was particularly fascinating, but I imagine it probably wouldn't be to everyone's tastes.
July 7, 2020
Very informative book . However maps
are greatly missing.
are greatly missing.
January 9, 2022
Beste und so weit schlüssigste Napoleon-Bio, die mir bislang untergekommen ist. Ausführliche Rezi später. Der Endspurt hat mich den Morgen gekostet.
March 26, 2023
I found it to be a really complete biography. It was very detailed and interesting.
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