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Penguin Lives
Napoleon: A Life
From New York Times bestselling author Paul Johnson, “a very readable and entertaining biography” (The Washington Post) about one of the most important figures in modern European history: Napoleon Bonaparte
In an ideal pairing of author and subject, the magisterial historian Paul Johnson offers a vivid look at the life of the strategist, general, and dictator who conquered much of Europe. Following Napoleon from the barren island of Corsica to his early training in Paris, from his meteoric victories and military dictatorship to his exile and death, Johnson examines the origins of his ferocious ambition. In Napoleon's quest for power, Johnson sees a realist unfettered by patriotism or ideology. And he recognizes Bonaparte’s violent legacy in the totalitarian regimes of the twentieth century. Napoleon is a magnificent work that bears witness to one individual's ability to work his will on history.
In an ideal pairing of author and subject, the magisterial historian Paul Johnson offers a vivid look at the life of the strategist, general, and dictator who conquered much of Europe. Following Napoleon from the barren island of Corsica to his early training in Paris, from his meteoric victories and military dictatorship to his exile and death, Johnson examines the origins of his ferocious ambition. In Napoleon's quest for power, Johnson sees a realist unfettered by patriotism or ideology. And he recognizes Bonaparte’s violent legacy in the totalitarian regimes of the twentieth century. Napoleon is a magnificent work that bears witness to one individual's ability to work his will on history.
208 pages, Paperback
First published March 27, 2002
101 people are currently reading
1530 people want to read
About the author
Paul Johnson
134 books832 followersPaul Johnson works as a historian, journalist and author. He was educated at Stonyhurst School in Clitheroe, Lancashire and Magdalen College, Oxford, and first came to prominence in the 1950s as a journalist writing for, and later editing, the New Statesman magazine. He has also written for leading newspapers and magazines in Britain, the US and Europe.
Paul Johnson has published over 40 books including A History of Christianity (1979), A History of the English People (1987), Intellectuals (1988), The Birth of the Modern: World Society, 1815—1830 (1991), Modern Times: A History of the World from the 1920s to the Year 2000 (1999), A History of the American People (2000), A History of the Jews (2001) and Art: A New History (2003) as well as biographies of Elizabeth I (1974), Napoleon (2002), George Washington (2005) and Pope John Paul II (1982).
Paul Johnson has published over 40 books including A History of Christianity (1979), A History of the English People (1987), Intellectuals (1988), The Birth of the Modern: World Society, 1815—1830 (1991), Modern Times: A History of the World from the 1920s to the Year 2000 (1999), A History of the American People (2000), A History of the Jews (2001) and Art: A New History (2003) as well as biographies of Elizabeth I (1974), Napoleon (2002), George Washington (2005) and Pope John Paul II (1982).
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 179 reviews
February 5, 2017
Several years ago I happened across a few lines about the Corsican.
That's how it starts. A couple of lines. Evocative. Resonant. Seductive enough to awaken one of those nightingales of inspiration. Before I knew it I was being haunted by that nocturnal song, serenaded with some insistence toward a project of sorts; a vaguely defined labor of artistic expression. And instead of reaching for the nearest pearl-handled .22 to put a cap in that feathered folly (hindsight being twenty-twenty and all), I added the field of study to the creased old list I take with me on my afternoons of book hunting. This is how you wind up in ownership of two long shelves of oddly esoteric Napoleonic history - just in case you were wondering - and with which, it has occurred to me of late, something must be done.
Enter Paul Johnson and the Penguin Lives Series.
The publishers at Penguin had what they must have considered an interesting idea at the time of tasking working writers with short biographies on famous figures in history. Larry McMurtry on Crazy Horse, Edmund White on Proust, Karen Armstrong on the Buddha, you get the idea. Paul Johnson, a historian, drew Napoleon and has produced what amounts to a two hundred page essay on the man. Birth to death, Toulon to Waterloo; it's Napoleon-in-brief and something I thought would provide a basic foundation for my launch into the empiric morass.
Johnson does a serviceable job. He hits the major events and structures a solid through line. However, he turns out to be one of those gentlemen who is thoroughly disgruntled by the preponderance of people who consider Napoleon Bonaparte to have done anything more than lay the groundwork for Hitler and Stalin. Bonaparte's "legacy of evil," he contends, is in many ways responsible for the rise of those brutally militaristic regimes and the horrors that followed. This conviction and the bitterness he feels toward those who advance an alternate perspective brought a sourness to his work that I found difficult to get past. Honestly? In my experience, the instant you start throwing critical historical figures like so many potatoes into a single burlap sack, you lose the ability to sight those equally critical distinctions that make any sort of study both productive and worthwhile.
Thankfully there are other books, right here in this very room, that look a wee bit more promising.
That's how it starts. A couple of lines. Evocative. Resonant. Seductive enough to awaken one of those nightingales of inspiration. Before I knew it I was being haunted by that nocturnal song, serenaded with some insistence toward a project of sorts; a vaguely defined labor of artistic expression. And instead of reaching for the nearest pearl-handled .22 to put a cap in that feathered folly (hindsight being twenty-twenty and all), I added the field of study to the creased old list I take with me on my afternoons of book hunting. This is how you wind up in ownership of two long shelves of oddly esoteric Napoleonic history - just in case you were wondering - and with which, it has occurred to me of late, something must be done.
Enter Paul Johnson and the Penguin Lives Series.
The publishers at Penguin had what they must have considered an interesting idea at the time of tasking working writers with short biographies on famous figures in history. Larry McMurtry on Crazy Horse, Edmund White on Proust, Karen Armstrong on the Buddha, you get the idea. Paul Johnson, a historian, drew Napoleon and has produced what amounts to a two hundred page essay on the man. Birth to death, Toulon to Waterloo; it's Napoleon-in-brief and something I thought would provide a basic foundation for my launch into the empiric morass.
Johnson does a serviceable job. He hits the major events and structures a solid through line. However, he turns out to be one of those gentlemen who is thoroughly disgruntled by the preponderance of people who consider Napoleon Bonaparte to have done anything more than lay the groundwork for Hitler and Stalin. Bonaparte's "legacy of evil," he contends, is in many ways responsible for the rise of those brutally militaristic regimes and the horrors that followed. This conviction and the bitterness he feels toward those who advance an alternate perspective brought a sourness to his work that I found difficult to get past. Honestly? In my experience, the instant you start throwing critical historical figures like so many potatoes into a single burlap sack, you lose the ability to sight those equally critical distinctions that make any sort of study both productive and worthwhile.
Thankfully there are other books, right here in this very room, that look a wee bit more promising.
April 1, 2019
When I was wondering which book to read next, Paul Johnson's biography of Napoleon leapt at me. I have had this book for years, and so I thought maybe it was time to read it.
There is good news and bad news. The good news first.
Paul Johnson's book narrates the story of Napoleon from the time he was born to his last days when he was imprisoned by the British in the island of St.Helena. It describes how he was lucky at times (for example, the island he was born, Corsica, used to be a part of Genoa, but in the year before he was born, Genoa gave away the island to France, and so by chronological fortune, Napoleon was born a French citizen, which helped him to accomplish great things later), but how at other times he accomplished great things because of his talent, ability, hardwork and because he was a man of action and took initiative, without waiting for things to happen. The book charts his meteoric rise from being a lieutenant in the French army, to becoming a captain, and later heading the army itself. By the time he was thirty five years old, he had been coronated the Emperor of France. It is so amazing to read and so hard to believe. There is a description of many of the battles that Napoleon fought and the book touches on how brilliant a general he was in the battlefield. There is a description of his Egyptian campaign and how the history of Ancient Egypt was rediscovered by the deciphering of the Rosetta Stone. There is also a chapter towards the end, on the Battle of Waterloo, which he lost. There are quotes shared in the book by different people - his companions during his journey, writers, his rivals and other contemporaries. Paul Johnson's prose is spare and breezy, and the pages fly at a rollicking pace. Paul Johnson is also honest and doesn't shy away from sharing his opinions. I also love the book's cover - it is beautiful, isn't it?
That is the good news. Now for the bad news.
The book has all the above nice things. But...
I can see you smiling now ☺️ Because you are probably remembering what Jon Snow says to his sister Sansa in 'Game of Thrones' – "What did father use to say? Everything before the word "but" is horse shit." And that is true ☺️
One of the biggest problems I had with Paul Johnson's book is that it is critical of everything about Napoleon from the first page. There is venom dripping from every page. For example, at the beginning, he says that Napoleon's birthplace Corsica was "poor, wild, neglected, exploited, politically and economically insignificant." On its own, this sentence looks like it is stating the facts, but when we read the surrounding sentences, we feel that Johnson implies that Napoleon didn't have class and pedigree because he was born here and he just got lucky. The book continues in the same vein throughout. When Johnson describes how Napoleon and his army won battles, he either says that it was because Napoleon believed in action as he was impatient or because he had unlimited resources at his disposal. But when Napoleon lost a battle, Johnson goes on the praise the opponent. When Napoleon escapes from the clutches of his enemies, he got lucky, but when he got caught, it was because his enemies were brilliant. When Napoleon didn't believe in privilege, but believed in merit, and he promoted people accordingly, Johnson says that this was not Napoleon's original idea, or he shouldn't be given credit for it. When describing how Napoleon's team discovered the Rosetta Stone and deciphered it, Johnson adds a corollary that the Rosetta Stone was later captured by the British, making it seem as if that was the more important fact, and by doing so, trying to devalue one of most of the most important archaeological discoveries of all time. When someone criticizes Napoleon, Johnson looks at them favourably, but when someone says nice things about Napoleon, Johnson mocks him. Most of the battles which Napoleon won are given cursory treatment, but the Battle of Waterloo, which he lost, gets a whole chapter. Johnson even goes to the extent of saying that if Napoleon had lived in the 20th century he would have been prosecuted for his crimes against humanity by an international war tribunal and given the death penalty. He mocks the fact that Napoleon has become a French national hero now and he blames the French government for building a memorial for him. The whole book would have been comic, if it wasn't tragic, as a biography and as a work of history.
While reading the book, I had to read 'against the grain', while reading every sentence, every passage, every page. For example, when Johnson mocks Corsica, I had to tell myself that someone who came from such a humble background accomplished great things and that is inspiring. When Johnson says that Napoleon didn't have any principles but was an opportunist because he was an atheist but he also wasn't against religion (Johnson uses this opportunist argument again and again in different contexts), I read against the grain and took it as evidence of Napoleon's liberal attitude, that he didn't believe in religion but he also respected people who did. It was hard for me to read the book, because I couldn't let my guard down and trust the author - I had to separate the facts he stated from the analysis he described and I had to use the facts and come to my own conclusion. Reading against the grain was a lot of hardwork and it made me mentally tired.
The blurb at the back of the book describes it as an unsentimental, unromantic biography of Napoleon. I laughed when I read that. Because this book is neither of that. It is a biased biography dripping with pure venom on every page - it reads like British propaganda against the French. Paul Johnson has written many books which have become bestsellers, including a history of Christianity and a history of the Jewish people and a history of the twentieth century. I don't know whether they are similarly biased. I have read a few British historians during my time, including John Keay, J.M.Roberts, Arnold Toynbee, Bamber Gascoigne, Simon Winchester, H.G.Wells, E.H.Carr, Norman Davies and have loved them all. British historians have a long reputation of sticking to the facts and trying to give objective analysis of historical events, though they might lean towards the British point of view. Paul Johnson's book is an insult to all these wonderful historians and their work.
As a palate cleanser, I have to now read a biography of Napoleon by a French historian, maybe by Georges Lefebvre. Hopefully, that is better.
Many of my friends, fellow book readers, tell me that I always say nice things about every book I read, and I never have a bad thing to say about a book. Well, as they say, "To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven". I think the time has finally arrived for me to say not-so-nice things about a book, to write a negative review. This is that one ☺️
Have you read Paul Johnson's biography of Napoleon? What do you think about it?
There is good news and bad news. The good news first.
Paul Johnson's book narrates the story of Napoleon from the time he was born to his last days when he was imprisoned by the British in the island of St.Helena. It describes how he was lucky at times (for example, the island he was born, Corsica, used to be a part of Genoa, but in the year before he was born, Genoa gave away the island to France, and so by chronological fortune, Napoleon was born a French citizen, which helped him to accomplish great things later), but how at other times he accomplished great things because of his talent, ability, hardwork and because he was a man of action and took initiative, without waiting for things to happen. The book charts his meteoric rise from being a lieutenant in the French army, to becoming a captain, and later heading the army itself. By the time he was thirty five years old, he had been coronated the Emperor of France. It is so amazing to read and so hard to believe. There is a description of many of the battles that Napoleon fought and the book touches on how brilliant a general he was in the battlefield. There is a description of his Egyptian campaign and how the history of Ancient Egypt was rediscovered by the deciphering of the Rosetta Stone. There is also a chapter towards the end, on the Battle of Waterloo, which he lost. There are quotes shared in the book by different people - his companions during his journey, writers, his rivals and other contemporaries. Paul Johnson's prose is spare and breezy, and the pages fly at a rollicking pace. Paul Johnson is also honest and doesn't shy away from sharing his opinions. I also love the book's cover - it is beautiful, isn't it?
That is the good news. Now for the bad news.
The book has all the above nice things. But...
I can see you smiling now ☺️ Because you are probably remembering what Jon Snow says to his sister Sansa in 'Game of Thrones' – "What did father use to say? Everything before the word "but" is horse shit." And that is true ☺️
One of the biggest problems I had with Paul Johnson's book is that it is critical of everything about Napoleon from the first page. There is venom dripping from every page. For example, at the beginning, he says that Napoleon's birthplace Corsica was "poor, wild, neglected, exploited, politically and economically insignificant." On its own, this sentence looks like it is stating the facts, but when we read the surrounding sentences, we feel that Johnson implies that Napoleon didn't have class and pedigree because he was born here and he just got lucky. The book continues in the same vein throughout. When Johnson describes how Napoleon and his army won battles, he either says that it was because Napoleon believed in action as he was impatient or because he had unlimited resources at his disposal. But when Napoleon lost a battle, Johnson goes on the praise the opponent. When Napoleon escapes from the clutches of his enemies, he got lucky, but when he got caught, it was because his enemies were brilliant. When Napoleon didn't believe in privilege, but believed in merit, and he promoted people accordingly, Johnson says that this was not Napoleon's original idea, or he shouldn't be given credit for it. When describing how Napoleon's team discovered the Rosetta Stone and deciphered it, Johnson adds a corollary that the Rosetta Stone was later captured by the British, making it seem as if that was the more important fact, and by doing so, trying to devalue one of most of the most important archaeological discoveries of all time. When someone criticizes Napoleon, Johnson looks at them favourably, but when someone says nice things about Napoleon, Johnson mocks him. Most of the battles which Napoleon won are given cursory treatment, but the Battle of Waterloo, which he lost, gets a whole chapter. Johnson even goes to the extent of saying that if Napoleon had lived in the 20th century he would have been prosecuted for his crimes against humanity by an international war tribunal and given the death penalty. He mocks the fact that Napoleon has become a French national hero now and he blames the French government for building a memorial for him. The whole book would have been comic, if it wasn't tragic, as a biography and as a work of history.
While reading the book, I had to read 'against the grain', while reading every sentence, every passage, every page. For example, when Johnson mocks Corsica, I had to tell myself that someone who came from such a humble background accomplished great things and that is inspiring. When Johnson says that Napoleon didn't have any principles but was an opportunist because he was an atheist but he also wasn't against religion (Johnson uses this opportunist argument again and again in different contexts), I read against the grain and took it as evidence of Napoleon's liberal attitude, that he didn't believe in religion but he also respected people who did. It was hard for me to read the book, because I couldn't let my guard down and trust the author - I had to separate the facts he stated from the analysis he described and I had to use the facts and come to my own conclusion. Reading against the grain was a lot of hardwork and it made me mentally tired.
The blurb at the back of the book describes it as an unsentimental, unromantic biography of Napoleon. I laughed when I read that. Because this book is neither of that. It is a biased biography dripping with pure venom on every page - it reads like British propaganda against the French. Paul Johnson has written many books which have become bestsellers, including a history of Christianity and a history of the Jewish people and a history of the twentieth century. I don't know whether they are similarly biased. I have read a few British historians during my time, including John Keay, J.M.Roberts, Arnold Toynbee, Bamber Gascoigne, Simon Winchester, H.G.Wells, E.H.Carr, Norman Davies and have loved them all. British historians have a long reputation of sticking to the facts and trying to give objective analysis of historical events, though they might lean towards the British point of view. Paul Johnson's book is an insult to all these wonderful historians and their work.
As a palate cleanser, I have to now read a biography of Napoleon by a French historian, maybe by Georges Lefebvre. Hopefully, that is better.
Many of my friends, fellow book readers, tell me that I always say nice things about every book I read, and I never have a bad thing to say about a book. Well, as they say, "To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven". I think the time has finally arrived for me to say not-so-nice things about a book, to write a negative review. This is that one ☺️
Have you read Paul Johnson's biography of Napoleon? What do you think about it?
November 26, 2023
Johnson has missed the point in a effort to sound clever. He puts forth the old British arguments that Napoleon was a shiftless tyrant (and now a proto-Hitler!) who couldn't overcome Great Britain, which embodied in Nelson and Wellington, is a superior nation to France (keep in mind Johnson hates the French). Johnson's argument has no basis in the facts of how and why Napoleon rose and fell. How can he be a proto-modern dictator when he avoided mass murder or purges based on ideology, race and/or religion? Truth is Napoleon wedded republican ideals with enlightened despotism and hard practicality, making him more like Frederick the Great and Louis XIV than Mao or Hitler. His legacy is still in debate, and doubtless dictators have been inspired by him, but so have artists, soldiers, and just about anyone who desires to rise above his station and leave his mark upon the world. As Goethe pointed out, Napoleon left a complex legacy.
Also Johnson is one of the poorest historians around. He gets facts wrong, offers no new analysis, and often lets his right wing ideology get in the way, as seen in his history of America. A fine writer but not a historian.
Also Johnson is one of the poorest historians around. He gets facts wrong, offers no new analysis, and often lets his right wing ideology get in the way, as seen in his history of America. A fine writer but not a historian.
April 21, 2018
Paul Johnson is supposed to be a serious historian. Well, I don't know about his other works but from a strictly academic point of view this 'Napoleon' is a complete fail. Here's in fact more of a pamphlet than a decent historical essay.
If it's impossible to write about such a man without being biased, and if having a bad opinion about the said man (here, VERY bad!) is acceptable, there still remain lines to don't cross. Those lines are nevertheless crossed here absolutely shamelessly.
The thing is, this book goes way beyond depicting Napoleon as an opportunist and dictator. Outrageous comparisons are also made so as to deliberately blacken his character. The allusions to George Washington, 'who translated a military victory into social progress and renunced to force in favor of the law', where Napoleon ruled with the help of canons and baionettes, could have been interesting (well! Washington wasn't surrounded by hostile nations on the war path...). Other far more shocking are simply unacceptable, for example when he is compared to Hitler, his last campaigns to the Nazis victories in the Ardennes or, again, his final exil labeled an happy alternative to a trial for crime against humanity! Even Fouché is compared to Himmler!
You get it, the whole is real bad. Funnily enough however, it's one of those things that are so bad they are good. A speedy read flying over the whole napoleonic era, if you give up on seriousness its outrageous stance will make it quite entertaining. That certainly wasn't the goal of the author, but this 'Napoleon' is funny to read specifically because it entertains all the cliches about its subject. Opportunist megalomaniac, aggressive narcisist thirsty for blood and conquests, we even learn that the poor man was a bad lover with a small d#ck!
At least, this made me smile... in the end!
If it's impossible to write about such a man without being biased, and if having a bad opinion about the said man (here, VERY bad!) is acceptable, there still remain lines to don't cross. Those lines are nevertheless crossed here absolutely shamelessly.
The thing is, this book goes way beyond depicting Napoleon as an opportunist and dictator. Outrageous comparisons are also made so as to deliberately blacken his character. The allusions to George Washington, 'who translated a military victory into social progress and renunced to force in favor of the law', where Napoleon ruled with the help of canons and baionettes, could have been interesting (well! Washington wasn't surrounded by hostile nations on the war path...). Other far more shocking are simply unacceptable, for example when he is compared to Hitler, his last campaigns to the Nazis victories in the Ardennes or, again, his final exil labeled an happy alternative to a trial for crime against humanity! Even Fouché is compared to Himmler!
You get it, the whole is real bad. Funnily enough however, it's one of those things that are so bad they are good. A speedy read flying over the whole napoleonic era, if you give up on seriousness its outrageous stance will make it quite entertaining. That certainly wasn't the goal of the author, but this 'Napoleon' is funny to read specifically because it entertains all the cliches about its subject. Opportunist megalomaniac, aggressive narcisist thirsty for blood and conquests, we even learn that the poor man was a bad lover with a small d#ck!
At least, this made me smile... in the end!
November 24, 2023
The Andrew Roberts Napoleon: A Life has been staring at me reproachfully from my shelf. I had the same experience American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer but had enough foresight to start it months before the movie. But it's now too late to read Roberts' tome before the Napoleon movie. Right next to it, mostly forgotten, was the Penguin Lives short biography of Napoleon by Paul Johnson with a black marked line on the bottom that indicates I must have bought it on remainder years ago. So I took that one down from the shelf and read it.
The good thing about the book is that it is relatively short and covers much of Napoleon's life and career from his birth in Corsica to his last years on Saint Helena with much in between helping to fill in a lot of gaps for me. The prose is also very vivid.
The bad thing is the organization jumps around a bit thematically which at times makes it unnecessarily hard to follow. But the worst thing is that Paul Johnson thoroughly detests Napoleon and he doesn't just show that detest he tells it over and over and over again to the point where it becomes tiresome and makes one question much of the rest.
The good thing about the book is that it is relatively short and covers much of Napoleon's life and career from his birth in Corsica to his last years on Saint Helena with much in between helping to fill in a lot of gaps for me. The prose is also very vivid.
The bad thing is the organization jumps around a bit thematically which at times makes it unnecessarily hard to follow. But the worst thing is that Paul Johnson thoroughly detests Napoleon and he doesn't just show that detest he tells it over and over and over again to the point where it becomes tiresome and makes one question much of the rest.
May 12, 2012
I'll start off this review with a general comment about biographies in general. I've noticed that, as I grow older, I've become more curious about how other people have gotten along in this world. It seems to me that younger folk, blinded by their convictions of their own exceptionalism, are often barred from this interest. I've read biographies before and had, in fact, in college been obsessed with Emil Ludwig, a German biographer who was influential in the time between the two world wars, but I think this love was rooted more in the exoticism of his own viewpoint than in a curiousity of his subjects (the only exception being Ludwig van Beethoven, but, then again, I've always identified strongly with him). Just an observation.
This biography, like all of the Penguin Lives biographies, is very short. It could be termed more of a summary than an in-depth biographical study. It does not record all details known of the person, but the summary it gives is first-rate. Paul Johnson comes across as someone who is not interested in recounting what many people find attractive about Napoleon or indulging their taste for iconography or glamour. Johnson is very forthright about Napoleon's faults and rather dismissive of his successes in a way that would probably not be attractive to Napoleon lovers. I am usually very wary of summarizing, because I don't think you can trust most people to really put in the work of understanding that person, but I felt like Johnson did a good job of understanding the man, his times, and the effects each had on the other.
This biography, like all of the Penguin Lives biographies, is very short. It could be termed more of a summary than an in-depth biographical study. It does not record all details known of the person, but the summary it gives is first-rate. Paul Johnson comes across as someone who is not interested in recounting what many people find attractive about Napoleon or indulging their taste for iconography or glamour. Johnson is very forthright about Napoleon's faults and rather dismissive of his successes in a way that would probably not be attractive to Napoleon lovers. I am usually very wary of summarizing, because I don't think you can trust most people to really put in the work of understanding that person, but I felt like Johnson did a good job of understanding the man, his times, and the effects each had on the other.
April 29, 2013
Napoleon Bonaparte - progenitor of Hitler and Stalin, lucky chancer, sexual inadequate and rapist, killer of horses, art thief, cheat at cards, hothead driven to fury by the innate taciturn superiority of the English and, if all that wasn't bad enough, a Frenchman. Welcome to the life story of Bonaparte as written by harrumphing Little-Englander Paul Johnson, surely every Daily Mail reader's favourite historian.
Don't get me wrong, I'm sure that even the most patriotic Frenchman understands the complexities, crimes and hypocrisy of the man, but Johnson's determination to look down his nose and belittle Bonaparte at every turn becomes tiresome. Why spend half a page (of a slim book) explaining that Bonaparte didn't know how to use a 'nef' at a formal banquet? This is swiftly followed by the line "What occurred on his wedding night is not recorded". Johnson, doubtless unhappy at a missed opportunity to (yet again) mock Napoleon's sexual prowess, decides to offer up some unflattering hearsay anyway.
Two more direct quotes sum up why I just couldn't take this book seriously. Firstly, "The total Guard numbered 50,000 and formed a separate army in itself (rather like Hitler's SS divisions)",a totally gratuitous comparison that tells us more about Johnson's agenda than it does about Napoleon. And then, with reference to the French triumph in deciphering the Rosetta Stone, Johnson can't help noting that Champollion was "...assisted by the Englishman Smith". It just wouldn't do to give those damn Frenchies credit for anything, eh Paul?
Don't get me wrong, I'm sure that even the most patriotic Frenchman understands the complexities, crimes and hypocrisy of the man, but Johnson's determination to look down his nose and belittle Bonaparte at every turn becomes tiresome. Why spend half a page (of a slim book) explaining that Bonaparte didn't know how to use a 'nef' at a formal banquet? This is swiftly followed by the line "What occurred on his wedding night is not recorded". Johnson, doubtless unhappy at a missed opportunity to (yet again) mock Napoleon's sexual prowess, decides to offer up some unflattering hearsay anyway.
Two more direct quotes sum up why I just couldn't take this book seriously. Firstly, "The total Guard numbered 50,000 and formed a separate army in itself (rather like Hitler's SS divisions)",a totally gratuitous comparison that tells us more about Johnson's agenda than it does about Napoleon. And then, with reference to the French triumph in deciphering the Rosetta Stone, Johnson can't help noting that Champollion was "...assisted by the Englishman Smith". It just wouldn't do to give those damn Frenchies credit for anything, eh Paul?
August 11, 2016
My review is addressed to others who have reviewed this book and found it too short or not detailed enough.
What the hell were you expecting? The Penguin Lives series is not supposed to be a definitive set of authoritative biographies of eminent personages. The point of Penguin Lives (and other short biography series) is to give a great writer an excuse to read a whole bunch of (over)long biographies and then give us, the reader, their considered thoughts on the life and times of the subject. Exhaustive detail would only get in the way of the main purpose of this book (and others like it), which is to elaborate on how the major events in their lives informed the character of the subject.
Even if these sort of short biographies aren't your cup of tea, as a reviewer you should strive to judge a book on its own terms.
What the hell were you expecting? The Penguin Lives series is not supposed to be a definitive set of authoritative biographies of eminent personages. The point of Penguin Lives (and other short biography series) is to give a great writer an excuse to read a whole bunch of (over)long biographies and then give us, the reader, their considered thoughts on the life and times of the subject. Exhaustive detail would only get in the way of the main purpose of this book (and others like it), which is to elaborate on how the major events in their lives informed the character of the subject.
Even if these sort of short biographies aren't your cup of tea, as a reviewer you should strive to judge a book on its own terms.
July 10, 2013
In terms of being an incredibly concise, straightforward, and well-paced primer on Napoleon, it succeeds. A great pity that the author allows his undercurrent of disgust at Napoleon's legacy to taint the tone of the prose. He tries to invoke Napoleon as the father of all the psychotic & mass-murdering dictators of the 20th century -- especially Hitler. The word "evil" is tossed around quite a bit...but I believe he's stretching his argument to breaking point. A valuable historical resource, to be sure...but it's best to ignore the author's almost petty jealousy about his subject's historical reputation.
April 11, 2021
A short but stunningly well-written biography of Napoleon. Johnson is by far the most critical biographer of the French emperor Ive read, and makes his case in a way that is both substantive but not at all sensational. This is a very good book.
January 27, 2024
Just what I was hoping for: a short bio of Napoleon. An aperitif for the Andrew Roberts much larger version that keeps bubbling up in my worlds.
December 1, 2025
I could read Paul Johnson for the rest of my life. Every page is filled with gripping detail, concise prose, and sage analysis. You can only do so much with 200 pages, and Johnson knocks it out of the park.
Note to readers: due to the scope of the book, you won't get play-by-plays of Napoleon's battles, with the exception of Waterloo.
Note to readers: due to the scope of the book, you won't get play-by-plays of Napoleon's battles, with the exception of Waterloo.
March 29, 2022
“One of the contentions of this book is that Napoleon is not an ideologue, but an opportunist that seized upon the accident of the French Revolution.
“I say accident because the example of Britain and the Scandinavian countries showed that all the desirable reforms that the French radicals brought about by force and blood could have been achieved by peaceful means.”
Each Paul Johnson book I read concludes better than the last. I was skeptical starting this short history book; that a historical character as voluminously documented as Napoleon could possibly be satisfactorily condensed in such a book's length as this. Started skeptically, finished impressed.
Brilliant General and tactician. Much of his battlefield and campaign success was owed to the fact that he could read and understand maps more than anyone (particularly enemy commanders). This geographical-cartographer skill is remarked on more times than I can count.
Every reading of Napoleon I’ve encountered to date has largely focused on just Napoleonic events (battles, encounters, etc.). But this book illuminates the grand global impact that Napoleon left upon Europe and the world.
Napoleon could arguably be credited with creating the political and national divisions that we faced into the 20th century and today.
Every autocrat or totalitarian government that existed in the 20th century (Hitler to Stalin, every European or Asian dictator) admired or prototyped Bonaparte.
Comments on his military-army actions:
His preferred strategy was a lightning attack (pre-blitzkrieg) against his allied enemies before they could coordinate.
Another tried tact was to defeat in detail. Deceive the enemy to split their forces. And then concentrate your own forces to defeat the divided enemy in turn.
Strategically, he never grasped naval warfare. Which proved in the long term for France to be part of her downfall. He dismissed the British’s naval dominance and never seemed to formulate a successful strategy.
At Waterloo, Napoleon broke several of his own rules for battle. Which proved catastrophic.
Comments on his character
He was a secularist. Hated organized religion, especially the Church. The majority of France (peasantry) were all devout Christian Catholics, so he kept himself and his government neutral when possible.
Comments on the French Empire
It was a military state.
The nation was mostly built around supporting the army and it’s campaigns.
Napoleon’s empire was never built to prosper but to burn and fizzle.
“I say accident because the example of Britain and the Scandinavian countries showed that all the desirable reforms that the French radicals brought about by force and blood could have been achieved by peaceful means.”
Each Paul Johnson book I read concludes better than the last. I was skeptical starting this short history book; that a historical character as voluminously documented as Napoleon could possibly be satisfactorily condensed in such a book's length as this. Started skeptically, finished impressed.
Brilliant General and tactician. Much of his battlefield and campaign success was owed to the fact that he could read and understand maps more than anyone (particularly enemy commanders). This geographical-cartographer skill is remarked on more times than I can count.
Every reading of Napoleon I’ve encountered to date has largely focused on just Napoleonic events (battles, encounters, etc.). But this book illuminates the grand global impact that Napoleon left upon Europe and the world.
Napoleon could arguably be credited with creating the political and national divisions that we faced into the 20th century and today.
Every autocrat or totalitarian government that existed in the 20th century (Hitler to Stalin, every European or Asian dictator) admired or prototyped Bonaparte.
Comments on his military-army actions:
His preferred strategy was a lightning attack (pre-blitzkrieg) against his allied enemies before they could coordinate.
Another tried tact was to defeat in detail. Deceive the enemy to split their forces. And then concentrate your own forces to defeat the divided enemy in turn.
Strategically, he never grasped naval warfare. Which proved in the long term for France to be part of her downfall. He dismissed the British’s naval dominance and never seemed to formulate a successful strategy.
At Waterloo, Napoleon broke several of his own rules for battle. Which proved catastrophic.
Comments on his character
He was a secularist. Hated organized religion, especially the Church. The majority of France (peasantry) were all devout Christian Catholics, so he kept himself and his government neutral when possible.
Comments on the French Empire
It was a military state.
The nation was mostly built around supporting the army and it’s campaigns.
Napoleon’s empire was never built to prosper but to burn and fizzle.
May 10, 2012
Let me start by saying that this is the first biography I've ever read and its all thanks to Ms. Marcy Newman. Before I use to get all my biographies from Wikipedia.
Now as for the book itself Paul Johnson couldn't have written a better biography about Napoleon that had Detailed information and a mixture of both his personal life and his various war efforts
all in the same chapter! Johnson effectively portrays Napoleon's epic rise to power, his campaigns against his enemy's, his love life and his titanic fall. Johnson also portrays Napoleon as the ancestor to almost all the infamous dictators of modern times. Johnson shows the reader how the dictators of modern time, ranging from Hitler to Stalin and even Mussolini, mimicked Napoleon to gain and maintain power, to glorify themselves and look omnipotent. Its as if Napoleon wrote a handbook to the dictators, and it would probably go something like this: Step 1, Take advantage of of any chaotic situation that is reeving your country, step 2: promise the people of that country to be different form the than incumbent leaders, step 3 gain the support of the army, once support is received attempt a Coup, step 4: if coup is successful, hold a referendum to become the absolute leader( make sure to rig elections and get 99% of the vote) step 5: introduce propaganda and censorship, step 6: blame all the problems in the world on other countries and raise war against them at the cost of millions lives , and most importantly if defeated, in any way, make sure to write a letter to your enemy more or less similar in this form, " to the most powerful, the most unwavering and the most generous of my foes"- The End. Most importantly Johnson convinces the reader that Napoleon, though a mass murderer, was a self made man who was despised by all the legitimits in Europe for earning and not inheriting his dream.
Now as for the book itself Paul Johnson couldn't have written a better biography about Napoleon that had Detailed information and a mixture of both his personal life and his various war efforts
all in the same chapter! Johnson effectively portrays Napoleon's epic rise to power, his campaigns against his enemy's, his love life and his titanic fall. Johnson also portrays Napoleon as the ancestor to almost all the infamous dictators of modern times. Johnson shows the reader how the dictators of modern time, ranging from Hitler to Stalin and even Mussolini, mimicked Napoleon to gain and maintain power, to glorify themselves and look omnipotent. Its as if Napoleon wrote a handbook to the dictators, and it would probably go something like this: Step 1, Take advantage of of any chaotic situation that is reeving your country, step 2: promise the people of that country to be different form the than incumbent leaders, step 3 gain the support of the army, once support is received attempt a Coup, step 4: if coup is successful, hold a referendum to become the absolute leader( make sure to rig elections and get 99% of the vote) step 5: introduce propaganda and censorship, step 6: blame all the problems in the world on other countries and raise war against them at the cost of millions lives , and most importantly if defeated, in any way, make sure to write a letter to your enemy more or less similar in this form, " to the most powerful, the most unwavering and the most generous of my foes"- The End. Most importantly Johnson convinces the reader that Napoleon, though a mass murderer, was a self made man who was despised by all the legitimits in Europe for earning and not inheriting his dream.
November 11, 2011
I was told to expect good things from Paul Johnson and I was not disappointed. Extremely engaging and informative without a lot of the pop-psyche you can get from modern historical biography. Appropriate amount of finger wagging at the French for elevating Napoleon's status to that of hero in the years after his death but overall the book neither vilifies nor deifies him. This is a compact and highly readable little history book. I highly recommend it to all but the hardcore historian.
March 28, 2023
I’ve read several much longer books on this little man and I wish I’d read this one first. Excellent summary of thr battles and rapid fire insights that would make you want to highlight every page. If you’re simply interested in what Napoleon is all about and don’t care to read Roberts or any of the larger treatments, this is excellent. In fact, it’s dense enough that it might require a rereading at some point.
July 2, 2009
this book was a mess of sweeping generalizations and misconstrued facts, some very blatant. there was a pretty thorough description of the battle of waterloo which i thought was good, but i do not recommend this book. in fact i recommend staying far away from it.
March 28, 2012
As short as this was, I couldn't finish it. A short book needs to be full of something - full of punch, full of vim and vigor, even full of s***. This was just blather, at least to me.
February 28, 2018
Delicious read.
The author's distaste for Bonaparte drips throughout the book, only thing that keeps me from giving it 5 stars is the bias evident in the writing.
Still highly recommend, though.
The author's distaste for Bonaparte drips throughout the book, only thing that keeps me from giving it 5 stars is the bias evident in the writing.
Still highly recommend, though.
November 21, 2021
This is the first Napoleon biography that I have read. How do I know that it isn't worthy of five stars?
July 14, 2021
One of the worst historical books I’ve read, incredibly based and using not only hearsay and classicism positions, such as the treatment of Napoleon’s early career and place of birth, the way he interacted with his troops more freely, or mentions of french people. The author clearly thinks of British people as superior and isn’t afraid to bring them up even when talking about the Rosetta Stone and how Champollion was assisted by an Englishman. Naturally.
Venom spills from the pages. Whenever Napoleon did something right, he was lucky. When he lost, the author goes to praise his opponents and overfocus on Waterloo and Wellington, while mocking everyone who didn’t hate Napoleon. He even goes so far as to compare him to Adolf Hitler "The total Guard numbered 50,000 and formed a separate army in itself (rather like Hitler’s SS Division)" and mock the French for treating him as a national hero. Wholly dishusting book full of lies, badly written venom, and ego.
Venom spills from the pages. Whenever Napoleon did something right, he was lucky. When he lost, the author goes to praise his opponents and overfocus on Waterloo and Wellington, while mocking everyone who didn’t hate Napoleon. He even goes so far as to compare him to Adolf Hitler "The total Guard numbered 50,000 and formed a separate army in itself (rather like Hitler’s SS Division)" and mock the French for treating him as a national hero. Wholly dishusting book full of lies, badly written venom, and ego.
June 4, 2019
這是「謗書」無誤。
先前我看過左岸出版由羅斯．金恩所寫的《馬基維利︰權力的哲人》，寫得很精彩，讓我看了非常喜歡。所以左岸傳記系列在其後出的這部《拿破崙︰法蘭西的皇帝》，也讓尚未翻開的我相當期待。
但是，這位作者 Paul Johnson 所寫的這本小傳記，並不能算是一般的歷史人物「科普」讀物。這本書可是用來「吵架」的——或者說，本書的目的，是想要對那些把拿破崙當英雄偶像的人，用一大堆瑣碎材料與評論來加以嘲諷此人。由於我對拿破崙．波拿巴此人，在情感上沒有真正的喜歡或厭惡，只是想要多瞭解一下法蘭西十八至十九世紀這段風起雲湧的歷史。因此這本意圖十分強烈的書，與我的讀書胃口完全不合，沒什麼收獲。最大的新知，就是曉得以後要避開 Johnson 的作品了。
就我自己的想法，一個能在歷史上成就大事業的人（無論是正面或負面），只要去「脈絡化」一下，便很難用三言兩語或是簡單褒貶加以論定。只要願意，任何半瓶水的歷史圈內人，都能找到一百個吹捧此人的理由、也同樣可以找到一百個痛罵他的理由。但我的年紀不小了，與其看這種「首辨忠奸賢愚」的作品，不如好好地「還原」一下歷史當場的主觀與客觀情況。雖然我沒有鑽研過拿破崙波拿巴，但我可以非常清楚地知道，在法國大革命之後，這個國家內亂外患從不間斷、人與人互相折磨殘殺了十多年的時間。此時出現了一位十分具有魅力、在戰場上將外國人趕走的勝利將軍，願意出面領導這團和漿糊一般的政局，那麼我們又怎麼能夠指責法國國民會如此識人不明，將這位骨子裡壞到極點的爛傢伙（作者從頭到尾的基調）送上獨裁者的位置上呢？現代冷氣房裡的學者要臧否死去兩百年前的大咖很容易，但想理解歷史現場可是需要更大的體悟才行。
總而言之，這是一本給「討厭拿破崙」的讀者的小傳記。與我不對盤。
先前我看過左岸出版由羅斯．金恩所寫的《馬基維利︰權力的哲人》，寫得很精彩，讓我看了非常喜歡。所以左岸傳記系列在其後出的這部《拿破崙︰法蘭西的皇帝》，也讓尚未翻開的我相當期待。
但是，這位作者 Paul Johnson 所寫的這本小傳記，並不能算是一般的歷史人物「科普」讀物。這本書可是用來「吵架」的——或者說，本書的目的，是想要對那些把拿破崙當英雄偶像的人，用一大堆瑣碎材料與評論來加以嘲諷此人。由於我對拿破崙．波拿巴此人，在情感上沒有真正的喜歡或厭惡，只是想要多瞭解一下法蘭西十八至十九世紀這段風起雲湧的歷史。因此這本意圖十分強烈的書，與我的讀書胃口完全不合，沒什麼收獲。最大的新知，就是曉得以後要避開 Johnson 的作品了。
就我自己的想法，一個能在歷史上成就大事業的人（無論是正面或負面），只要去「脈絡化」一下，便很難用三言兩語或是簡單褒貶加以論定。只要願意，任何半瓶水的歷史圈內人，都能找到一百個吹捧此人的理由、也同樣可以找到一百個痛罵他的理由。但我的年紀不小了，與其看這種「首辨忠奸賢愚」的作品，不如好好地「還原」一下歷史當場的主觀與客觀情況。雖然我沒有鑽研過拿破崙波拿巴，但我可以非常清楚地知道，在法國大革命之後，這個國家內亂外患從不間斷、人與人互相折磨殘殺了十多年的時間。此時出現了一位十分具有魅力、在戰場上將外國人趕走的勝利將軍，願意出面領導這團和漿糊一般的政局，那麼我們又怎麼能夠指責法國國民會如此識人不明，將這位骨子裡壞到極點的爛傢伙（作者從頭到尾的基調）送上獨裁者的位置上呢？現代冷氣房裡的學者要臧否死去兩百年前的大咖很容易，但想理解歷史現場可是需要更大的體悟才行。
總而言之，這是一本給「討厭拿破崙」的讀者的小傳記。與我不對盤。
January 27, 2022
You dont reason with intellectuals. You shoot them, Napoleon Bonaparte.
Napoleon by Paul Johnson, is a very short (no pun intended) biography of the man that reigned Europe for 15 years, he fought in 70 battles and only losed 8, and he will always be remembered for the fuckup that was Waterloo. We still use many things Napoleon introduced like the metric system, and ways of Education, and his legacy is still noticible. In this 200 page book we follow Bonaparte in every mayor event and most battles, we find out some interesting facts and how supersticious he was, this book started like a big info dump on every pace, but when you ajust to that, you just have a very readable and enjoying book about Napoleon's life, their are probably better and longer books about the man, but this was not bad, we see him win all the battles, lose a couple big ones, until his very sad ending, reccomended for people who like history, or are interesting in the persona of Napoleon Bonaparte.
⭐️⭐️⭐️
Napoleon by Paul Johnson, is a very short (no pun intended) biography of the man that reigned Europe for 15 years, he fought in 70 battles and only losed 8, and he will always be remembered for the fuckup that was Waterloo. We still use many things Napoleon introduced like the metric system, and ways of Education, and his legacy is still noticible. In this 200 page book we follow Bonaparte in every mayor event and most battles, we find out some interesting facts and how supersticious he was, this book started like a big info dump on every pace, but when you ajust to that, you just have a very readable and enjoying book about Napoleon's life, their are probably better and longer books about the man, but this was not bad, we see him win all the battles, lose a couple big ones, until his very sad ending, reccomended for people who like history, or are interesting in the persona of Napoleon Bonaparte.
⭐️⭐️⭐️
April 2, 2020
Napoleon was one of those major historical figures I really didn't know a lot about so this was a good introduction. I had never heard this argument made before but I think there is strong evidence that Napoleon led to the rise of Hitler. The hardest thing to believe about Napoleon's history is how he was removed from power twice but never executed for all the loss of life and property he was responsible for.
June 29, 2020
I was interested in Napoleon, but not all THAT interested, so I wanted a short book about him. This was the right length, and reasonably well written. Johnson despises Napoleon, which is OK with me since he was autocratic, warlike, and ultimately betrayed the cause of liberalism. Unfortunately, Johnson makes himself ridiculous by trying to pin responsibility for any number of murderous 20th century dictatorships on him. A dispassionate historian would at least explore the possibility that some element of modernity predisposes societies toward statist absolutism and that Napoleon was only the first example thereof. Another failing is that too much attention is paid to the particulars of battle (an aspect of history only of interest to creepy men with military fetishes) and not enough to Napoleon's modernizing reforms. Curiously, though Johnson clearly wants the reader to despise his subject, he barely mentions Napoleon's heinous crimes against the Haitian people.
December 7, 2023
What drives such madness!!
August 27, 2023
Great men change history, sometimes for better, sometimes for worse. But their legacy is always complicated, as Paul Johnson shows in his whirlwind biography Napoleon: A Life. Few could have predicted the Little Corporal’s ascent; within ten years, he rose from the obscurity of Corsica to become the most powerful man in France, probably in all Europe. Yet as he liberated the yearning nations of Europe from their ancient monarchies, he also ruthlessly expended the lives of his men in the pursuit of glory.
If there was a template to his life, it was that of Pasquale Paoli. Before Napoleon’s birth and during his youth, Paoli and his brigands led an insurrection from the hills of Corsica against their Genoese (and later French) overlords. They briefly established an independent republic with its own constitution and system of justice. It was a pattern Napoleon was to follow many times:
Napoleon’s strengths were his decisiveness and his superb military tactics and strategy. Already as an artillery commander, he had an excellent grasp of the various figures and measures of war. From a glance at a map, he could determine where a unit could and should march to in a given time, and what would be needed to re-supply it. So reasoning about the moving parts of his armies, he could deploy and re-deploy them faster than any of his opponents, giving him the initiative in choosing when and where to fight.
He first distinguished himself with a series of victories against Austria in the Italian peninsula, but rose to fame when he dispersed a Parisian mob on October 5, 1795 with a “whiff of grapeshot.” He was rewarded with the supreme command of the Italian campaign and immediately set about re-organising the army. He established new workshops to produce armaments. He used the newly invented semaphore—a kind of telegraph by means of optical signals—to transmit military instructions over long distances. Exploiting new, lightweight cannon designs, he innovated on their use by dragging them into and out of battle as a source of mobile firepower.
The Italian campaign was vintage Bonaparte. He used rapid movements in risky, unpredictable attacks. Often he would divide the enemy armies and eliminate them one by one. To fund his efforts, he directed his men to loot churches and galleries. Weary from decades of war and instability, they were lured in by the promise of wealth. The top veterans later took cosy jobs in the constellation of republics Napoleon set up in the wake of his victories.
Though the campaign was a massive moral victory for France, the British never accepted it. Unable to match the Royal Navy’s supremacy on water, Napoleon instead drummed up support for an expedition to Egypt, funded with stolen Vatican and Swiss gold reserves. His goal was to establish a new passage to India. Through Egypt, he could cut the British out of the Indian trade, and perhaps collaborate with her enemies in Mysore.
Evading the British navy, he landed in Alexandria on July 2nd 1798 and defeated both the Mamelukes and the Ottomans. But almost his entire fleet was destroyed in a surprise raid by admiral Horatio Nelson. In the meantime, the home front was on the brink of collapse. This gave Napoleon the perfect excuse to abort the expedition, which he framed as an overall success, despite the fact he’d had to leave 10,000 soldiers behind in a hostile country.
Slipping back across the Mediterranean, Napoleon marched into Paris on a wave of public support. It was a dark hour for the country; only Napoleon, people thought, could save it. He dissolved the government by force and installed himself as First Consul of a new French Consulate, a military dictatorship with a pseudo-Roman veneer.
Unlike other revolutionaries, Napoleon was careful not to wage war with the Church. He was less of an ideologue and more of a pragmatist or opportunist. He knew the importance of religion to the ordinary person and saw how it could be used to legitimise his rule. With a rigged plebiscite showing an overwhelming 99% support from the French people for crowning Napoleon emperor, there was only one thing to do.
Pope Pius VII was brought in for the job. But the ceremony was a farce from start to finish. The Pope was made to wait in a chilly room for several hours before he was finally allowed into Notre Dame. Then Napoleon’s wife, on the edge of a nervous breakdown, burst into tears. The Emperor-to-be, growing impatient, dumped the crown on his own head. His arrogance revealed his true intentions: Napoleon had no belief in his own God-given right to rule; the whole occasion was simply a way for him to entrench his own dynasty as the rulers of France.
His regime was a kind of despotism based on personal ambition and military strength. He had no political party, drawing support instead from the army and (so long as he defeated France’s enemies) the people. All the same, Napoleon ruthlessly expended the lives of his men in order to achieve his goals. One gets the impression he saw them as little more than human materiel, another column in a manifest of cannons, guns, and horses.
Napoleon’s military strategy and political authority reinforced each other. Being the Emperor, his presence on the battlefield inspired his men. Each victory cemented his right to rule. And unlike his opponents, who were officers drawn from various countries, having communication difficulties, political suspicions, and career rivals, there was no-one from above to dilute or meddle with his decisions; what Napoleon wanted, happened. He was able to spin losses as victories, frame setbacks as adjustments, and rally the whole French nation to his will.
At Austerlitz he dealt the coalition a killing blow. Outnumbered by a combined Russian-Austrian army, Napoleon feigned weakness so as to goad them into attacking him. They did, and were promptly ambushed by a contingent of troops that lay concealed in the mist. It was the end of the Austrian war effort. Emperor Francis II was forced to concede territories in Bavaria and Italy, as well as to recognise the establishment of a new confederation of Rhine German states.
Napoleon was an impatient person. In battle he liked to seize the initiative, which usually worked. But in politics, he was too eager to rip up the old states, forcing implausible new administrations and punitive taxes on his conquered subjects. Johnson sees a bit of carelessness in these actions. He links it to Napoleon’s initial struggle to produce an heir:
Unlike his sharpened battle instincts, Napoleon was not by nature a careful, prudent politician. Though often welcomed as an enlightened liberator, he merely replaced the old aristocracies with a new Francophile oligarchy, its members drawn from the families of accomplished marshals and generals, selected for loyalty rather than ability. The French Consulate had no real administrative hierarchy; there was, rather, a single man at the top, with a few hand-picked men holding ad-hoc portfolios beneath him. As with most authoritarian systems, Napoleonic France relied on its Emperor’s personal ability to muster enough force to defeat his enemies and awe and dragoon his subjects. It was fragile and unlikely to survive his death.
One of his lasting contributions was the consolidation of France’s laws into a single document called the Code Napoleon. The process had already begun during the French revolution, but the odd inconsistency and regionalism still persisted. The new law was draconian. Johnson outright describes it as totalitarian. However, the centralised state being in its infancy, what we think of as totalitarian rule—the constant presence and domination of the state’s interests in all spheres of life—was as yet technically impossible. It is wiser to simply call Napoleon’s regime authoritarian. Semantics aside, the law favoured public authority over individual rights; its remit to make decisions on behalf of the individual for the good of France was essentially unlimited.
Not all of Napoleon’s acts of statecraft were successful. Despite shattering his foes on the continent, he could not challenge the British on the high seas. His navy was destroyed at The Battle of Trafalgar and his ports were blockaded. Napoleon’s response was to impose his own embargo on the British; under a new customs union called the Continental System, no-one was to trade with those soggy islands. Though he pursued this idea with unusual vigour, it ultimately failed. Napoleon did not realise the cost of imposing an embargo: his navy was too weak to stop smugglers, and vast amounts of manpower were expended patrolling the highways.
France’s goal was to isolate Britain, who continued to support a popular uprising in Spain against the French occupation. Russia, meanwhile, refused to participate in the Continental System, prompting Napoleon to bring them into it by force. Both theatres—Spain and Russia—were to be his undoing. Napoleon had little understanding of either country, and could not conceptualise their logistic difficulties. His usual strategy was to capture bridges and cities, looting them for the supplies necessary to continue his fast-paced offensive campaigns. He would move to isolate and capture the enemy’s capital city and then force them to sue for peace. Yet in those cases:
His British counterpart, Arthur Wellesley, the Duke of Wellington, fought a superb campaign on the Iberian peninsula. Unlike Napoleon, Wellington was patient, content to let small gains accrue, rather than seeking to end the war in a few decisive battles.
Napoleon’s initial failure in Spain may have inspired him to go after Russia in 1812 with unusual energy; he certainly needed the propaganda victory at home. By making an example of Tsar Alexander, he would also bring a powerful ally into the Continental System and thereby embolden a new European order with France at its top.
The invading French army—up to that point the largest ever assembled in Europe—was so big it was unwieldy, a disaster in Russia’s unforgiving terrain and climate. Villages and cities were sparse, and not enough food could be pilfered to sustain the invasion. The two sides briefly clashed on September 7, but the Russians withdrew after one day, allowing the French to occupy Moscow. Napoleon expected to be able to dictate peace terms; Alexander simply ignored him.
Realising that winter would block his way out of Moscow, Napoleon started to withdraw his troops in October. Conditions were extremely harsh. Most of his horses were dead or eaten. The Russians picked off his men as they fled; cold and starvation did the rest. By the end of it, half a million of his soldiers had perished.
Yet Napoleon refused to settle with his enemies. He fled to Paris and raised a fresh round of recruits. But now he had to fight the combined states of Germany; having destroyed the sprawling, inefficient Holy Roman Empire, there was a political vacuum which a new nationalist spirit had filled. Though there was not to be a unified Germany for another 60 years, the German people were not at all happy with being subservient in a French-dominated Europe. A series of reforms had now turned the Prussian military into Europe’s finest. Joined by Austria, Russia, Sweden, Great Britain, Portugal, Sicily, Sardinia, and a coalition of smaller German nations, they defeated Napoleon and exiled him to Elba, a small island off the coast of Italy.
For anyone else, it would have been the end. As it turned out, this was merely a strange interlude in Napoleon’s staggering life. He spent nearly a year as Prince of Elba; the title was itself a humiliation for a man of his stature. He nonetheless busied himself with his tiny principality. Tourists making the rounds of Italy would come over on the ferry to gawk at the fallen Emperor.
This little island was clearly too small for his ambitions. A mixture of paranoia, boredom, ambition, and humiliation led Napoleon back to power in dramatic fashion in 1815. Landing with his personal retinue in southern France, he sneaked past the royalist army garrisoned at Marseilles, only to find the way blocked by an infantry garrison. The Prince of Elba simply bluffed it; he announced that he was once more Emperor of France, and took command of them. At Grenoble he was greeted as a returning ruler. Marshal Ney was sent out to capture Napoleon but ended up defecting to him. They entered Paris unopposed.
Wellington was summoned to head a new coalition. Together with the Prussians under General Blücher, they met the French in battle at Waterloo, Belgium. It was, as Wellington later recalled, “a close run thing.” Napoleon’s strategy was to seize the initiative and strike between the two armies before they could combine, eliminating one and then turning to fight off the other. On the morning of battle, he delayed his attack by several hours, believing the ground to be too wet. This gave Blücher all the more time to get to Wellington. Then a French delaying movement, led by Marshal Grouchy, failed to intercept the Prussians. He got so lost he could not join the main battle in time. All of this tipped the scales in favour of the Coalition.
A defeated Napoleon relinquished his command. The French war effort collapsed not long afterwards. The seventh and final coalition had done its job. This time, Napoleon was to be exiled to the remote island of St. Helena, a little rock in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. He would have lived out a reasonably comfortable existence, had paranoia not disposed him against his neighbours. He died in unusual circumstances in 1821, probably of stomach cancer, perhaps of poisoning (of which Napoleon lived in constant fear).
As soon as he died, Napoleon’s legacy was already being distorted by those around him. They exalted him as the saviour of France, as an enlightened warrior who brought liberty to the enslaved nations of Europe. Most of this was simply untrue, argues Johnson. Napoleon was a despot and a tyrant. He sacrificed his own men to obtain and hold onto power. He reintroduced slavery. He allowed his military victories to get to his head; eventually he identified his ambitions as one and the same as the destiny of France—perhaps as the destiny of all Europe. Most of his achievements, Johnson contends, were overrated: “It is curious indeed that Bonaparte, in his lifetime, quite failed to destroy legitimist Europe. In the end, he provoked the Congress of Vienna, which refounded legitmism so firmly that it lasted another century...” (192-3)
There is more than a little bit of venom in Johnson’s assessment: Napoleon’s republicanism was unimpressive, because the new state he founded was totalitarian and anyway inferior to the British system. The patriotic clubs he used to justify his made-up republics were sock-puppets. I do think Johnson underestimates the popular discontent of some of the regimes Napoleon smashed apart. In the Netherlands, for example, the House of Orange-Nassau had long banned the practice of Catholicism (the dominant faith in Brabant) and monopolised the various Stadhouder titles, turning theoretically elected positions into hereditary ones. The regime was genuinely unpopular. It had already been embroiled in several decades of civil strife, including uprisings of civilian militias. Other, more psychological judgements about Napoleon’s life are mere speculation, and thus unfair. One reads the description of Napoleon’s struggle to produce an heir in a mocking tone. And when all else fails, roll out the Hitler comparisons.
This book is an informed biography for the general audience. It lacks proper endnotes, unfortunately, but it remains a good, albeit sketchy introduction to Napoleon; though Johnson makes a good effort of it, 200 pages is simply not long enough. Even if Napoleon’s dream of a united Europe did not eventuate, even if he was, as Johnson persistently claims, a despot, his life is still a fascinating adventure to read about. Nobody could have predicted his rise from the backwaters of Corsica. Such lives seem in themselves to be refutations of the hard claim that history operates according to deterministic, predictable laws. Everything the Little Corporal obtained, he took with sabre and cannon: in the end, he fell by that same iron law to the relative indignity of the lonely rock of St. Helena.
If there was a template to his life, it was that of Pasquale Paoli. Before Napoleon’s birth and during his youth, Paoli and his brigands led an insurrection from the hills of Corsica against their Genoese (and later French) overlords. They briefly established an independent republic with its own constitution and system of justice. It was a pattern Napoleon was to follow many times:
... the fate of Corisca enabled him to give a purpose to power. Winning a battle, a campaign, a war was not an end in itself but an opportunity to impose a new order on the old corrupt and inefficient systems. He was to be a Paoli for all Europe, but in an incomparably larger mould and operating on a continental, perhaps a world scale, for the better governance of mankind. (14)
Napoleon’s strengths were his decisiveness and his superb military tactics and strategy. Already as an artillery commander, he had an excellent grasp of the various figures and measures of war. From a glance at a map, he could determine where a unit could and should march to in a given time, and what would be needed to re-supply it. So reasoning about the moving parts of his armies, he could deploy and re-deploy them faster than any of his opponents, giving him the initiative in choosing when and where to fight.
He first distinguished himself with a series of victories against Austria in the Italian peninsula, but rose to fame when he dispersed a Parisian mob on October 5, 1795 with a “whiff of grapeshot.” He was rewarded with the supreme command of the Italian campaign and immediately set about re-organising the army. He established new workshops to produce armaments. He used the newly invented semaphore—a kind of telegraph by means of optical signals—to transmit military instructions over long distances. Exploiting new, lightweight cannon designs, he innovated on their use by dragging them into and out of battle as a source of mobile firepower.
The Italian campaign was vintage Bonaparte. He used rapid movements in risky, unpredictable attacks. Often he would divide the enemy armies and eliminate them one by one. To fund his efforts, he directed his men to loot churches and galleries. Weary from decades of war and instability, they were lured in by the promise of wealth. The top veterans later took cosy jobs in the constellation of republics Napoleon set up in the wake of his victories.
Though the campaign was a massive moral victory for France, the British never accepted it. Unable to match the Royal Navy’s supremacy on water, Napoleon instead drummed up support for an expedition to Egypt, funded with stolen Vatican and Swiss gold reserves. His goal was to establish a new passage to India. Through Egypt, he could cut the British out of the Indian trade, and perhaps collaborate with her enemies in Mysore.
Evading the British navy, he landed in Alexandria on July 2nd 1798 and defeated both the Mamelukes and the Ottomans. But almost his entire fleet was destroyed in a surprise raid by admiral Horatio Nelson. In the meantime, the home front was on the brink of collapse. This gave Napoleon the perfect excuse to abort the expedition, which he framed as an overall success, despite the fact he’d had to leave 10,000 soldiers behind in a hostile country.
Slipping back across the Mediterranean, Napoleon marched into Paris on a wave of public support. It was a dark hour for the country; only Napoleon, people thought, could save it. He dissolved the government by force and installed himself as First Consul of a new French Consulate, a military dictatorship with a pseudo-Roman veneer.
Taking the fight to the Austrians, he crossed the Alps and fell upon them “like a thunderbolt”. It was a risky move and a difficult crossing, but it paid off; the Austrians were caught off-guard and scrambled to respond. They suffered two fateful losses at Marengo and Hohenlinden; with Vienna exposed, they had to concede land in northern Italy. France also annexed territory up to the Rhine and established new Dutch and German client states.
Unlike other revolutionaries, Napoleon was careful not to wage war with the Church. He was less of an ideologue and more of a pragmatist or opportunist. He knew the importance of religion to the ordinary person and saw how it could be used to legitimise his rule. With a rigged plebiscite showing an overwhelming 99% support from the French people for crowning Napoleon emperor, there was only one thing to do.
Pope Pius VII was brought in for the job. But the ceremony was a farce from start to finish. The Pope was made to wait in a chilly room for several hours before he was finally allowed into Notre Dame. Then Napoleon’s wife, on the edge of a nervous breakdown, burst into tears. The Emperor-to-be, growing impatient, dumped the crown on his own head. His arrogance revealed his true intentions: Napoleon had no belief in his own God-given right to rule; the whole occasion was simply a way for him to entrench his own dynasty as the rulers of France.
His regime was a kind of despotism based on personal ambition and military strength. He had no political party, drawing support instead from the army and (so long as he defeated France’s enemies) the people. All the same, Napoleon ruthlessly expended the lives of his men in order to achieve his goals. One gets the impression he saw them as little more than human materiel, another column in a manifest of cannons, guns, and horses.
Napoleon’s military strategy and political authority reinforced each other. Being the Emperor, his presence on the battlefield inspired his men. Each victory cemented his right to rule. And unlike his opponents, who were officers drawn from various countries, having communication difficulties, political suspicions, and career rivals, there was no-one from above to dilute or meddle with his decisions; what Napoleon wanted, happened. He was able to spin losses as victories, frame setbacks as adjustments, and rally the whole French nation to his will.
At Austerlitz he dealt the coalition a killing blow. Outnumbered by a combined Russian-Austrian army, Napoleon feigned weakness so as to goad them into attacking him. They did, and were promptly ambushed by a contingent of troops that lay concealed in the mist. It was the end of the Austrian war effort. Emperor Francis II was forced to concede territories in Bavaria and Italy, as well as to recognise the establishment of a new confederation of Rhine German states.
Napoleon was an impatient person. In battle he liked to seize the initiative, which usually worked. But in politics, he was too eager to rip up the old states, forcing implausible new administrations and punitive taxes on his conquered subjects. Johnson sees a bit of carelessness in these actions. He links it to Napoleon’s initial struggle to produce an heir:
If Bonaparte had been married earlier, to a fertile woman, and produced children to succeed and assist him, who could be trained to rule, he would have looked at the empire as a long- term investment to be treated and coaxed and cherished accordingly. (76-7)
Unlike his sharpened battle instincts, Napoleon was not by nature a careful, prudent politician. Though often welcomed as an enlightened liberator, he merely replaced the old aristocracies with a new Francophile oligarchy, its members drawn from the families of accomplished marshals and generals, selected for loyalty rather than ability. The French Consulate had no real administrative hierarchy; there was, rather, a single man at the top, with a few hand-picked men holding ad-hoc portfolios beneath him. As with most authoritarian systems, Napoleonic France relied on its Emperor’s personal ability to muster enough force to defeat his enemies and awe and dragoon his subjects. It was fragile and unlikely to survive his death.
One of his lasting contributions was the consolidation of France’s laws into a single document called the Code Napoleon. The process had already begun during the French revolution, but the odd inconsistency and regionalism still persisted. The new law was draconian. Johnson outright describes it as totalitarian. However, the centralised state being in its infancy, what we think of as totalitarian rule—the constant presence and domination of the state’s interests in all spheres of life—was as yet technically impossible. It is wiser to simply call Napoleon’s regime authoritarian. Semantics aside, the law favoured public authority over individual rights; its remit to make decisions on behalf of the individual for the good of France was essentially unlimited.
Not all of Napoleon’s acts of statecraft were successful. Despite shattering his foes on the continent, he could not challenge the British on the high seas. His navy was destroyed at The Battle of Trafalgar and his ports were blockaded. Napoleon’s response was to impose his own embargo on the British; under a new customs union called the Continental System, no-one was to trade with those soggy islands. Though he pursued this idea with unusual vigour, it ultimately failed. Napoleon did not realise the cost of imposing an embargo: his navy was too weak to stop smugglers, and vast amounts of manpower were expended patrolling the highways.
France’s goal was to isolate Britain, who continued to support a popular uprising in Spain against the French occupation. Russia, meanwhile, refused to participate in the Continental System, prompting Napoleon to bring them into it by force. Both theatres—Spain and Russia—were to be his undoing. Napoleon had little understanding of either country, and could not conceptualise their logistic difficulties. His usual strategy was to capture bridges and cities, looting them for the supplies necessary to continue his fast-paced offensive campaigns. He would move to isolate and capture the enemy’s capital city and then force them to sue for peace. Yet in those cases:
[Russia and Spain] had untamed, often unbridged rivers, poor or nonexistent roads, subsistence economies that could not support unsupplied armies, and extremes of climate that made both summers and winters perilous for troops without barracks. (125-6)
His British counterpart, Arthur Wellesley, the Duke of Wellington, fought a superb campaign on the Iberian peninsula. Unlike Napoleon, Wellington was patient, content to let small gains accrue, rather than seeking to end the war in a few decisive battles.
Napoleon’s initial failure in Spain may have inspired him to go after Russia in 1812 with unusual energy; he certainly needed the propaganda victory at home. By making an example of Tsar Alexander, he would also bring a powerful ally into the Continental System and thereby embolden a new European order with France at its top.
The invading French army—up to that point the largest ever assembled in Europe—was so big it was unwieldy, a disaster in Russia’s unforgiving terrain and climate. Villages and cities were sparse, and not enough food could be pilfered to sustain the invasion. The two sides briefly clashed on September 7, but the Russians withdrew after one day, allowing the French to occupy Moscow. Napoleon expected to be able to dictate peace terms; Alexander simply ignored him.
Realising that winter would block his way out of Moscow, Napoleon started to withdraw his troops in October. Conditions were extremely harsh. Most of his horses were dead or eaten. The Russians picked off his men as they fled; cold and starvation did the rest. By the end of it, half a million of his soldiers had perished.
Yet Napoleon refused to settle with his enemies. He fled to Paris and raised a fresh round of recruits. But now he had to fight the combined states of Germany; having destroyed the sprawling, inefficient Holy Roman Empire, there was a political vacuum which a new nationalist spirit had filled. Though there was not to be a unified Germany for another 60 years, the German people were not at all happy with being subservient in a French-dominated Europe. A series of reforms had now turned the Prussian military into Europe’s finest. Joined by Austria, Russia, Sweden, Great Britain, Portugal, Sicily, Sardinia, and a coalition of smaller German nations, they defeated Napoleon and exiled him to Elba, a small island off the coast of Italy.
For anyone else, it would have been the end. As it turned out, this was merely a strange interlude in Napoleon’s staggering life. He spent nearly a year as Prince of Elba; the title was itself a humiliation for a man of his stature. He nonetheless busied himself with his tiny principality. Tourists making the rounds of Italy would come over on the ferry to gawk at the fallen Emperor.
This little island was clearly too small for his ambitions. A mixture of paranoia, boredom, ambition, and humiliation led Napoleon back to power in dramatic fashion in 1815. Landing with his personal retinue in southern France, he sneaked past the royalist army garrisoned at Marseilles, only to find the way blocked by an infantry garrison. The Prince of Elba simply bluffed it; he announced that he was once more Emperor of France, and took command of them. At Grenoble he was greeted as a returning ruler. Marshal Ney was sent out to capture Napoleon but ended up defecting to him. They entered Paris unopposed.
Wellington was summoned to head a new coalition. Together with the Prussians under General Blücher, they met the French in battle at Waterloo, Belgium. It was, as Wellington later recalled, “a close run thing.” Napoleon’s strategy was to seize the initiative and strike between the two armies before they could combine, eliminating one and then turning to fight off the other. On the morning of battle, he delayed his attack by several hours, believing the ground to be too wet. This gave Blücher all the more time to get to Wellington. Then a French delaying movement, led by Marshal Grouchy, failed to intercept the Prussians. He got so lost he could not join the main battle in time. All of this tipped the scales in favour of the Coalition.
A defeated Napoleon relinquished his command. The French war effort collapsed not long afterwards. The seventh and final coalition had done its job. This time, Napoleon was to be exiled to the remote island of St. Helena, a little rock in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. He would have lived out a reasonably comfortable existence, had paranoia not disposed him against his neighbours. He died in unusual circumstances in 1821, probably of stomach cancer, perhaps of poisoning (of which Napoleon lived in constant fear).
As soon as he died, Napoleon’s legacy was already being distorted by those around him. They exalted him as the saviour of France, as an enlightened warrior who brought liberty to the enslaved nations of Europe. Most of this was simply untrue, argues Johnson. Napoleon was a despot and a tyrant. He sacrificed his own men to obtain and hold onto power. He reintroduced slavery. He allowed his military victories to get to his head; eventually he identified his ambitions as one and the same as the destiny of France—perhaps as the destiny of all Europe. Most of his achievements, Johnson contends, were overrated: “It is curious indeed that Bonaparte, in his lifetime, quite failed to destroy legitimist Europe. In the end, he provoked the Congress of Vienna, which refounded legitmism so firmly that it lasted another century...” (192-3)
There is more than a little bit of venom in Johnson’s assessment: Napoleon’s republicanism was unimpressive, because the new state he founded was totalitarian and anyway inferior to the British system. The patriotic clubs he used to justify his made-up republics were sock-puppets. I do think Johnson underestimates the popular discontent of some of the regimes Napoleon smashed apart. In the Netherlands, for example, the House of Orange-Nassau had long banned the practice of Catholicism (the dominant faith in Brabant) and monopolised the various Stadhouder titles, turning theoretically elected positions into hereditary ones. The regime was genuinely unpopular. It had already been embroiled in several decades of civil strife, including uprisings of civilian militias. Other, more psychological judgements about Napoleon’s life are mere speculation, and thus unfair. One reads the description of Napoleon’s struggle to produce an heir in a mocking tone. And when all else fails, roll out the Hitler comparisons.
This book is an informed biography for the general audience. It lacks proper endnotes, unfortunately, but it remains a good, albeit sketchy introduction to Napoleon; though Johnson makes a good effort of it, 200 pages is simply not long enough. Even if Napoleon’s dream of a united Europe did not eventuate, even if he was, as Johnson persistently claims, a despot, his life is still a fascinating adventure to read about. Nobody could have predicted his rise from the backwaters of Corsica. Such lives seem in themselves to be refutations of the hard claim that history operates according to deterministic, predictable laws. Everything the Little Corporal obtained, he took with sabre and cannon: in the end, he fell by that same iron law to the relative indignity of the lonely rock of St. Helena.
September 10, 2017
No reflections on Paul Johnson, but Napoleon was pretty much of a shit. But a great general!
This is a lot like reading the biography of, well, pick your favorite dictator. He was kind of the 19th-century prototype of the bad leaders of the industrial 20th. So, not much fun to read about. Which is why I'm only about halfway through, and why I'm taking a break from it.
Update 8/2/17: A month on the shelf. Likely to be DNF.
Update 9/10/17: No desire to continue, and its due back in a few days. DNF.
This is a lot like reading the biography of, well, pick your favorite dictator. He was kind of the 19th-century prototype of the bad leaders of the industrial 20th. So, not much fun to read about. Which is why I'm only about halfway through, and why I'm taking a break from it.
Update 8/2/17: A month on the shelf. Likely to be DNF.
Update 9/10/17: No desire to continue, and its due back in a few days. DNF.
October 25, 2016
The best biography/review of Napoleon I have read (I've read two over the years, and started several others but got lost in details). This book related the most important events of Napoleon's reign (for example, it didn't dwell too long on his childhood), explained the historical context and importance of these events, didn't overly-psychologize him, and provided just the right amount of detail - not too much, not too little.
March 1, 2018
My rating is a reflection of how much I enjoy biographies in general, not about how well this book was written. I liked the snippets of personal information and there were some interesting anecdotes. I'm just less interested in the statistics of battles.
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