Napoleon

by Felix Markham

A magnificent reconstruction of Napoleon's life and legend written by a distinguished Oxford scholar.

Genres: History, Biography, Nonfiction, France, European History, Politics, Military History

Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1963

About the author

Felix Maurice Hippisley Markham studied at the University of Oxford and taught there for 40 years. He was Fellow and History Tutor at Hertford College, Oxford, from 1931 until 1973.

Reviews

[Antigone · Rating 3 out of 5]

Markham's biography stands as one of the more popular works in the Napoleonic oeuvre. It is comprehensive, well-researched and relatively accessible. He does fall prey to that habit of experts in a given field, assuming far too often that his reader is aware of the fundamentals. This is especially irksome when it comes to the battlefield, where he's fleet enough to hold interest but still manages to sail strategic troop movement and command philosophy like Frisbees over the head. In the afterward (penned by Steven Englund), the bulk of the praise goes to Markham's objectivity. It is rare to find such an even-handed study of Bonaparte coming from an Englishman. And since Englishmen write most of them? This sets the book apart.

I'm going to go even further to say that much of the work on Napoleon appears to have been produced by avid, whiskered boys who care more about the wars and the weapons and the testosterone required to mount a campaign to rule the world than they do the finer points of this history. These are largely enthusiasts who can easily be imagined commandeering a mudroom to set up Waterloo-to-scale on an old table tennis platform. I'm certain nine out of ten of them would toss a limp wave in my direction, assuming with no evidence whatsoever that I'm talking about some romantic urge to hear more about Josephine. And I'm not. And stop being a Neanderthal. And Wellington's artillery goes over there.

Under such circumstances, what I appreciate has a tendency to be drawn from my own extrapolation. Case in point:

The island of Corsica was rife with revolution when Napoleon was born upon it. His father was operating as a guerrilla fighter and his mother was wandering the hills as a refugee during the final months of her pregnancy. Things settled down when the French won out and his parents, by all reports an attractive and dynamic couple, befriended the new governor, de Marbeuf. It was this connection that brought the family forward and granted Napoleon enrollment at Brienne, a school for the nobility in France - where he excelled in mathematics and took great joy in staging mock battles in the snow. So promising a student was he that he went straight from Brienne to the Ecole Militaire in Paris; an equivalent of Sandhurst and/or Annapolis. He flew through this school, skipping several intermediate grades, and was quickly given the rank of Lieutenant of Artillery at Valence (where his initial service was limited to suppressing food riots).

Napoleon returned to Corsica during this time. His father had died, and he picked up the gauntlet to take a leading role in organizing a National Guard and obtaining a decree from Paris proclaiming that Corsicans, alongside the revolutionary French, were to be accorded full rights and liberties as its citizens. Unfortunately, political stability did not last. The island fell to civil war until one of its leaders (Paoli) ended in delivering it to the English. The Buonapartes, on the wrong side of this equation, were condemned to "perpetual execration and infamy." Their property was pillaged and the family fled into exile (at Marseilles) where they remained for several years subsisting primarily on Napoleon's army pay.

From which I extrapolate (it must be said, in a manner I find amusing) the following:

"Napoleon, the landlord is asking for the rent."

"Napoleon, Mama wants a chicken."

"Napoleon, Pauline very much needs a new dress."

"Napoleon, Lucien would like a letter of recommendation."

"But Joseph doesn't want to enlist in the army..."

"Napoleon, I know you're busy fighting in Italy, but can you tell us how to exchange for gold these silly assignats?"

Now who, in their right mind, thinks these years as sole support of a family of tempestuous Corsicans did not inform his subsequent choices when parceling out crowns later on? These people became the placeholders of his Empire - and, frankly, I just don't think this exile in Marseilles gets anywhere near enough historical press.

Markham gives Napoleon's youth a solid ten pages. And that's ten pages more than what one usually encounters, I have to hand him that.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

A review of this enjoyable book in three parts: “Why This Book is Ideally Read on a Kindle”, “Reading as a Strategy to Snag and Hold onto a Romantic Partner”, and “Do I Care?”.

Why This Book is Ideally Read on an Ebook Reader

Before launching into some grousing, I would like to thank the inexplicably-named Pickle Partners Publishing for rescuing this pre-electronic-age (1963) book and converting it. As it turns out, happy accidents of technology made this book ideal for my Kindle as currently configured.

I find Popular History to be a very enjoyable genre. Nevertheless I run occasionally into the hunk of non-fic. that self-advertises as for the layperson, but then lets loose with an avalanche of historical, philosophical, geographical, and other categories-ical references that are not usually stored in the easily-accessible parts of the working memory of an average person like self. I assume this sort of book happens when an expert on an era/topic/etc. is commissioned to write a popular history, but he (I think it is frequently enough a male failing to use this pronoun) has spent too long in the ivory tower and has no conception of what the average reader may or may not know about his topic of specialization. I have complained previously on this site that preventing books like this from seeing the light of day should be the responsibility of the editor or somebody else in the publishing racket, but seeing how this phenomenon is at least (2018 – 1963 =) 55 years old now, it seems unlikely that it will go away any time soon.

Happily, a late-model Kindle ebook reader with internet connectivity helps the reader escape from the barrage of inexplicable references that often occur when reading inattentively-edited attempts at Popular History. With wi-fi enabled, I found that, merely by placing one of my sausage-like digits on the offending word, I could, about 75% of the time, get a satisfactory one-paragraph explanation either from the device's onboard dictionary or instant Wikipedia-accessing function. This increased my enjoyment of this book quite a bit. It is otherwise quite readable and gallops along at an enjoyable pace, not surprisingly given the variety of accomplishment in, and action-packed pace of, the life of the titular.

The other 25% of the time, I just mumbled something like “Probably French place” or “Probably Russian general” to myself and moved on.

Reading as a Strategy to Snag and Hold onto a Romantic Partner

Decades ago, I met and got to know the future Long-Suffering Wife (LSW) and quickly decided she was “a keeper” for many reasons, one of which was she seemed much more likely to have a long and well-paying career ahead of her, relieving me of the responsibility of finding and holding a tedious (i.e., any) job for years on end.

The problem was: how to endear myself sufficiently to allow future LSW to somehow gloss over the less attractive aspects of my personality? My working theory was, if I just hold on long enough, she will just simply get used to me and think (like Molly Bloom) “as well him as another”. What could I do to ensure she'd keep me around?

At that time, she was a graduate student. When I saw her ridiculously long reading list, I sensed an opportunity to ingratiate myself. I knew I had hit on a winning strategy when she appeared the next day with a great pile of German literature in translation and thrust them at me, saying: “Here, read these and tell me what I think about them.”

Lo, the years pass and now LSW finds herself on the delivery end of the education racket, which is to say, she will soon be teaching others, specifically, soldiers. Her future employer gives her a (somewhat shorter than before) list of books the teachers and students are expected to be familiar with. This book is on the list. Having been spared the fate of having to work for a living, I am sufficiently grateful to take this perfectly entertaining book in hand and give her the Cliffs' Notes version. As an additional benefit, this book also gives us something to talk about over evening meals. Making compelling conversation is sometimes a little difficult in the fourth decade of our alliance. LSW didn't even seem to mind the occasional dramatic readings of select passages.

In our far distant past, man hunted and killed animals, and then came home and presented the bloody carcasses to their mates as evidence of their worth as a provider. In our time, the presentation of knowledge to one's beloved can serve the same function, at a far lower level of personal bodily risk, showing that our day and age, while not without its drawbacks, has many happy advantages of which we may not be sufficiently appreciative.

Do I Care?

If anyone ever reads this far, they might be justified in thinking: “Okay, so you met cute a long time ago, why is this in a book review?”

After reading the book under the circs. described previous, I thought, hmm, what exactly are our future military leaders supposed to get out of this book? I answer myself as follows:

A long time ago, the best teacher I ever had (Mr. Cauley) said that Napoleon's Big Idea (which, like many Big Ideas, seems blindingly obvious in retrospect) as a military leader was “concentrate your fire on a single point in the enemy line”. This book, published more than ten years before Mr. Cauley told me this, contains the same contention and, I suspect, was directly or indirectly responsible for the idea's appearance in suburban high-school classrooms like mine, years later.

If this Big Idea as I understand it is being taught in military circles, it might lead to two questions:

1) How do you choose the spot to concentrate your fire? In some cases, the answer might be relatively simple, as in a case where the enemy has the lack of foresight to form a line in a V-shape with the pointy end facing toward your army. It seems pretty obvious: attack the pointy end. But what about other circumstances? Do you just choose a spot at random?

perhaps more importantly

2) Does the Big Idea transfer from the literal battlefield of guns and cannons to the metaphorical global battlefield of ideas, diplomacy, hard and soft power, etc.? Should nations concentrate their persuasive powers, charm, diplomats, etc., on a single point on the line between us and them, and then metaphorically fire away? When you are holding Napoleon's hammer, does everything look like a nail?

[Amin Tuysserkani · Rating 5 out of 5]

کتاب عالی. فکر‌ نمی‌کنم در زبان فارسی کتابی بهتر از این درباره زندگی ناپلئون وجود داشته باشد. کتاب به صورت جامع و دقیقی به کل‌زندگی ناپلئون حتی دودمان وی پس از مرگ می‌پردازد. کتاب سرشار از جزئیات است اما‌ تحلیل هم کم ندارد. نویسنده سعی کرده در روایت زندگی‌ این مرد بزرگ تاریخ بی‌طرف باشد اما به‌هرحال تمایل و علاقه‌اش به ناپلئون بارها درک می‌شود.

[JoséMaría BlancoWhite · Rating 4 out of 5]

This little 1963 book of about 250 pages of tightly pressed print gives a more than sufficient first overlook at this man's life and era. It covers, I believe, all the facets of his life, from family man, through lover, to war titan, politician and emperor. From his Corsican cultural inheritance to his Saint Helen exile and even the immediate post-Napoleonic times. The story is not entangled as one might expect from having so much to tell about in so reduced a space, but it is lively and amazingly devoid of any bias or prejudice. To the point, giving each important issue its time and space, if however pithy, and moving forward never losing a bit. Perhaps one should expect a little more ink spent on big issues like the great battles, say Waterloo for instance, dealt with in just a couple pages, which could have been done to the detriment of his years on Saint Helen, and rightly so. In my opinion.

But overall a very good place indeed to get started on the times and on the extraordinary man known by history as Napoleon Bonaparte. What comes out of the reading of this book is the plain facts and the plain man.

[MatthewS F1]

Napoleon was the greatest man of his time: unrivaled, unmatched, a genius. This book is the greatest biography I have seen of Napoleon yet. It dwarfs others in terms of size, detail, and accuracy. It really defines Napoleon's character as a person, and even includes multiple chapters about his life on St. Helena. In the far future, I would be glad to conduct a study on his life in greater detail, or perhaps find similar biographies on other figures in history.

[Tommy Trionfetti · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent single volume biography.

[Matt Buongiovanni · Rating 4 out of 5]

“The carefully calculated and limited ambition of a Frederick the Great was no longer enough for Napoleon. The urge to dominate, to dare, to play for the highest stakes was as instinctive to him as the urge of the mountaineer to climb Everest. This element of the irrational, the unlimited, the daemonic is as fundamental to the nature of Napoleon as it is to the character of Mozart’s Don Giovanni. Without it the career of Napoleon is unintelligible.”

This book is a concise, but still quite rich, look at the life of Napoleon Bonaparte. Felix Markham moves along at a fairly brisk pace, never stopping to get into the weeds of any particular battle or political struggle; his goal here is to provide a sweeping overview of this man’s life, rather than a close look at any one stage. I think that this little tome is probably best for someone with an intermediate level of familiarity with this period of European history—Markham generally assumes that the reader will have some prior knowledge about the context from which Napoleon emerged, and generally doesn’t spend much time introducing the various other players in the historical scene—in other words, this book was written for someone like me: not an expert, by any means, but also not a complete newcomer. I will admit that, while I occasionally wanted more details about this or that anecdote, I generally found this choice quite refreshing (I have read quite enough about the myth of “lines and columns,” thank you very much). I can’t really complain that much about the lack of excruciating detail; I think that, at this point in my reading about Napoleon, I have somewhat outgrown general biographies, and it may be time to take a deeper dive into works that deal more with more specific areas of interest, instead.

One final note: I was very impressed with Markham’s evenhanded approach to writing about Napoleon’s actions. Especially among English historians, it is rare to find a writer who is capable of walking the tightrope of criticizing Napoleon when it is warranted, while still acknowledging his tactical and administrative brilliance. It is very easy to lean too heavily on one side or the other, and pen a work that comes across as either hagiographic or histrionic, but Markham does an admirable job of keeping an even keel.

[Numidica · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent short history of Napoleon and his works, military and civil.

[KB · Rating 4 out of 5]

Felix Markham's biography presents a concise yet comprehensive overview of the life of Napoleon Bonaparte.

Bonaparte's family and personal relationships receive a fair amount of attention, though the often-belabored relationship with Josephine plays an understated role here. These succeed substantially in humanizing the man of myth.

The military perspective mainly concerns broader campaign strategies, as opposed to the specific tactical elements of Napoleon's many individual battles; however, the latter are explored in limited depth for a few of the more pivotal clashes.

The author provides good outlines of the Continental System and the Code Napoleon, and a few of the constituent parts of the various Napoleonic administrations are described.

General familiarity is assumed on the part of the audience with regard to principal personalities and events, and to overall historical background. For example, politicians such as Metternich are not explicitly introduced, no explanation is given of the French Revolution prior to Bonaparte's ascension, and so forth.

(Incidentally, a good resource for acquiring such background information is Season 3 of Mike Duncan's Revolutions podcast, freely available at https://www.revolutionspodcast.com/ )

In-text primary citations occur frequently but unobtrusively, and verbatim quotations from Bonaparte himself are used liberally. An extensive bibliography appears at the end of the book.

This book offers a good intermediate-level examination of the subject material. Napoleon will be most appealing to readers who already have an introductory grasp of the life and times of its focal figure. Those with a more advanced knowledge may also find this book useful as a basis for identifying specific aspects of Bonaparte's life worthy of further research.

[Windsor · Rating 5 out of 5]

The only short book on Napoleon I like. Amazing overview. This is the first book I ever give any of my friends who want to learn about him.

[Justin Daniel · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have always found the person of Napoleon fascinating. When I was in Paris last year, I went to a place called Les Invalides. There is a chapel there that houses some of France’s most memorable leaders. Enshrined in that place lies the grave of Napoleon that attracts millions of visitors every year. But Napoleon has been described in history as the first dictator; a tyrant; a radical; and an emperor. But what makes Napoleon so special, and why is he still considered one of France’s heros?

Well I think Felix Markham presents Napoleon is a balanced way in this book, “Napoleon.” I have often wanted to read a book on Napoleon, but in order to understand Napoleon, you have to understand the French Revolution. Earlier this year, I reviewed a book for a class I had to take on the French Revolution and Napoleon. I reviewed William Doyle’s book “The Oxford History of the French Revolution” which was a great introduction to the time Napoleon found himself in.

Napoleon grew up in Corsica, which was an island in the Mediterranean south of France. It was always a contested island, and the French invaded it around the time Napoleon was born. Napoleon’s father and mother were freedom fighters for the small island nation, but succumbed to French rule. Napoleon never forgave his father for this treachery. As he grew up, he went to school on mainland France and eventually found himself enrolled in a military school where he was to become an artillery officer. When he became an artillery officer, he never really had a chance to ascend through the ranks because in the old regime (see my review of the French Revolution to understand this), the nobility were the only people who could advance far into the military. When the French Revolution happened, this did away with the old regime and Napoleon won a decisive battle against the English. He was promoted to Brigadier General and eventually put in charge of the French Army that was to conquer parts of Italy.

In the Italian campaign, Napoleon won victory after victory with his brilliant military tactics. The government was very poor and his troops had not been paid for some time; Napoleon won the confidence of his men by allowing them to gather the booty of Italian treasures and they charged through the land. Paintings, statues, gold, coins, ancient antiquities were all liquidated to France during these campaigns.

After the Italian campaigns, Napoleon devised a plan to halt the British dominance in the Western world. It would be near suicide to invade the British mainland, so Napoleon would strike at the British colony of Egypt. In the Egyptian campaign, Napoleon again found his mark as he conquered the land. Unfortunately, his entire fleet was shipwrecked by the British, stranding Napoleon and his men in Egypt. Napoleon, seeing events in France progress to the point where a power vacuum was coming, made his way back to Paris to take advantage of the situation.

Eventually Napoleon orchestrated events to where he would become the defacto dictator of the country. This stabilization was actually ultimately good for France; what was not good was the wars that ensued. Napoleon wanted complete power, and he instituted himself as Caesar of the French Empire. Following this, he took to Prussia and Russia where he won victories at places such as Austerlitz that demonstrated he was in total control.

Napoleon’s fatal mistake came in his assault into Russia. He was stymied that Spring into the summer, and the cold came upon the Le Grande Armee before they reached Moscow. When they did eventually get to Moscow, there was no one there to strike up a peace deal; rather, the Russians had set fire to the city. Defeated, Napoleon set off for France as his army continued to dwindle. The cold, lack of food, and attacks from the cossacks continued to drain his numbers. Just over a million set out to conquer Russia and only around 10,000 returned.

Napoleon built up another army but it wasn’t enough; he had to capitulate and was sentenced to exile in Elba. He wasn’t there for long however; he broke free of his imprisonment and set out to Paris. He regained control and fought one last decisive battle at Waterloo with a coalition of forces against him commanded by the British. He lost this last battle and was sentenced to exile on St. Helena where he died sometime later.

You can see that the legacy of Napoleon is mixed; on the one hand, he somewhat strengthened and saved France from the democratic disaster of the previous decade. The French Revolution took a toll on the people and Napoleon brought stability and order to chaos. And Napoleon was in all regards a genius. He was a tactician whose skills would only be dwarfed by men like Rommel in Italy and Africa. But on the flip side, he was brutal and took massive risks that endangered the French warriors of the time. He did a lot of harm to France mixed in with the good.

Napoleon’s legacy is difficult. But one thing is for sure; he is a very interesting character to study. I think Markham’s brief study on Napoleon is palatable enough for both the novice and the ardent historian.

[Reece · Rating 2 out of 5]

In the course of searching for a brilliant biography, one may stumble across one or two middling histories instead, as I have done here by reading Felix Markham’s Napoleon. Though the afterword provided by Steven Englund is far more reflective and less impulsive to judgement or to letting biases seep through, the same is not to be said of Markham’s work.

Napoleon is rife with Markham’s own adoration for the man whom he is writing about. It is a frustrating affair to read a biography of a mass killer and politician so controversial, one where such certain and positive judgement is surely out of touch with the subject matter, just for the biographer to speak constantly of “genius” and of “greatness” as though these are not arbitrary terms dictated by the author’s own ideals rather than those which reflect a yearning for truth or at least a capitulation to the task. No, instead we are left with Markham’s casting aside Napoleon’s faults. One does not get the impression that the author wrote this with the intention to truthfully adhere to historical research methodologies, but instead as something of a passionate, posthumous love letter to the ill-fated Emperor. All the same, it does a fine job of tracking the details of his life from the 1790s until his death with a disingenuous reflection on the Napoleonic legacy (which Markham himself clearly fell for). And for that, I do not entirely dislike this work. I do feel I learned something in reading Napoleon, but I do not feel as though I trust Markham as a historian.

Especially problematic is the insensitive way in which Markham handles contemporary opinions opposed to Napoleon Bonaparte. One must recall that under his reign, millions of men were conscripted into wars against or in favor of his aggression (as much as Markham would love to convince the reader of the possibility that Napoleon was somehow forced into each military encounter, as though his overstepping of borders and his continual manipulation of other nations did not clearly warrant retaliation, it does not work). Hundreds of thousands of men left their homes, never to return, and instead to die out on the battlefields. In the case of Spain, so that the Bonapartist pride would not waver and so that a Bonaparte could remain on the Spanish throne. When Napoleon reflects on his former battles and his time as Emperor, he is regretful that his reputation, of all things, could not have improved further. His one man’s ambition is obviously not causal in the death of every soldier, for that is an essentialized and naïve judgement; nevertheless, it is ineluctably related, and Napoleon’s warmongering is treated as a necessity in Markham’s work. The fact that it could be a source of anguish and unhappiness for others goes over his head, when he critiques Wellington’s remark on p. 239, “Tell Boney [Napoleon Bonaparte] that I find his apartments at the Elysée-Bourbon very comfortable and I hope he has enjoyed mine at the Balcombes,” to be in poor taste. Yet Napoleon’s ordered mass killing of thousands of prisoners in Jaffa was not, but only instead apologized for by Markham, for “military necessity.” These are the cowardly remarks of a historian who believed Napoleon to be a “genius,” one who was above other human beings, and therefore liable to end others’ lives without fault, save for perhaps adding one remark (and that remark would be apologetic rather than critical, anyways). There must surely be a superior academic undertaking to understand the life of Napoleon Bonaparte than this middling cocksucking of an overweight killer, who could only be outweighed by either the ship that carried him, or by his unworldly sense of pride.

[Brent Jones · Rating 3 out of 5]

There is a great deal the can be found about the life of Napoleon and the complexity of all that he accomplished. The book, Napoleon by Felix Markham, is a short, easy to read, biography about Napoleon Bonaparte, the French leader who pronounced himself emperor and conquered much of Europe in the early 19th century.

Napoleon was born in 1769 and in 1785 he joined the French Army. In 1793 he went to the war in Tulon where he assumed the place of a wounded commander and with victory became a brigadier general at the age of 24.

The British were aligned with Turkey and then with Russia and they declared war on France. In 1799 Napoleon learned that a Turkish Army was planning to invade Egypt, so he attacked and defeated the Turks. When he returned to France he took complete control of the French government. With many years of revolution, the French people wanted one strong leader, so Napoleon ruled France as a dictator. In June 1800, Napoleon led the French to defeat the Austrians and then they signed a Treaty with them.

In 1802 the French people made Napoleon first consul for life. He believed that Brittan and France would eventually be at war, so he sold the Louisiana Territory to the United States to get money needed.

Napoleon crowed himself emperor in 1804 with his Senate’s approval, and he dominated Europe. In 1805 Austria, Russia, and Sweden formed an alliance against France, but later that year Napoleon defeated the Austrian and Russian armies at Austerlitz in Austria. In 1806, Prussia joined Russia in a new coalition, but they were crushed as Napoleon overwhelmed Russian armies at Friedland and then again in 1809 at Wagram. He eventually added Holland and Northern Germany and seemed unstoppable.

Napoleon felt France was threatened by actions of Russia and in 1812 he sent 600,000 men into Russia, but the Russians only retreated. Napoleon pushed on to Moscow only to find the city nearly empty. Much of the city had been destroyed by fires, set by retreating Russians. Napoleon waited with bitter cold coming expecting Alexander to return, but he never did. The winter brought starvation and exposure causing 500,000 of Napoleon’s men to perish. He returned to France and surprisingly the people still supported him, but his enemies had been encouraged.
After his return in 1809 he married Josephine de Beauharnais who was 46 years old. He felt his biggest problem was not having an heir so in April of 1810 he divorced Josephine and married Marie Louise who was 18 years old. In 1811 they had a son and named him Napoleon.
Napoleon took his armies to Germany to fight the alliance again, but this time his troops were outnumbered and defeated. This loss was the cause of eventual collapse of the Napoleonic Empire. The enemy alliance pursued him and in March 1814, they captured Paris and Napoleon was exiled from France.

One more time Napoleon gathered some troops marched into Belgium where he hoped to defeat Britain’s separate armies of the Duke of Wellington and Blucher of Prussia. Napoleon defeated Blucher and attacked Wellington at Waterloo, but he was beaten, and Napoleon fled to Paris but he was captured and sent to the barren British island of St. Helena in the South Atlantic where he died on May 5th 1821.

If Napoleon is a historical figure you may have wanted to learn more about you will find Felix Markham has brought his life and the many events that he touched into focus. It was really surprising to see the full scope of his ambition. For more on this book see web site: www.connectedeventsmatter.com

[Hellblau · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you want to read a short biography of Napoleon that gives you a quick overview of the man and the times see if you can find this book. It reads and is paced like a novel and is a pretty enjoyable read. If you are at all interested in politics this is basically the foundation of modern european politics and many political figures of the time come into the story such as William Pitt, and Metternich.

I’d like to make two quick comments about Napoleonic history. One: the war of 1812. We all know it was a disaster, although I think no matter how many times I read it, it is just incredible how much of a disaster it was. And it was all going so well... until it wasn’t and then boy did it make a turn for the worse. But anyway, the thing that really impresses me about it is just the audacity to make such a huge army. For Napoleon to take his concept of the french army at the time and scale it up to this massive size, it’s absolutely staggering. And it was a colossal disaster. It is the spruce goose of military history. Simultaneously a work of genius and a massive failure.

And second: there is the 100 days. The whole thing blows you away, that this actually happened. That someone could be swept right back into power merely by showing his face. And there is the fact that the criticism of Napoleon is basically the same of all autocrats: at first he was a man of the people and everyone loved everything he did but towards the end it started to just be all about him and maintaining his grip on power. But! Then comes the 100 days. He became much more acquiescent to sharing power and promised everyone he would behave himself and not start anymore wars. Would he have really done this? The 100 days is packed full of hypotheticals like this, the biggest one of all being Waterloo. So many what ifs.

[William · Rating 4 out of 5]

Felix Markham delivers an outstandingly thorough account of the life and depth of Napoleon Bonaparte, the man who rested the reigns from a tumultuous post-revolutionary France and very nearly expanded the French Empire throughout Europe. While it is not always "exciting," the read does provide insight into one of the most interesting and iconic individuals that history has to offer. If you want to learn more about the great French Emperor and military happenings at the turn of the 19th century, give Markham's Napoleon a go!

[Mark Lisac · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lucidly written, persuasively insightful, concise, full of telling details that illuminate a many-faceted and remarkable person without ever feeling like filler or unnecessary digression. Does assume some background knowledge of the era and of important figures who are referred to only by name, but any gaps on a reader's part should not pose great difficulties. Perhaps a bit too finely detailed in descriptions of military campaigns of 1813-15 but not dauntingly so. A fine example of how good academic writing can be.

[Bryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

A concise and brisk biography of Napoleon. Everything about Haiti and Napoleon's response to it are glaringly absent though. Also, the author is wrong about the Russian strategy being improvised in the summer of 1812. (See Russia Against Napoleon by Dominic Lieven.) Besides all that though, it is still a remarkable book that does a good job of covering everything of significance in a single volume.

Anyway, it's better than the movie. Not that that's a huge accomplishment.

[Writerdevin · Rating 3 out of 5]

The volume expounding the whole life of Napoleon and the embarrassing destiny of his son, the King of Rome, too lengthy and tedious, makes me wanna fall in sleep when reading.

The perspective of the author was quite objective but offset and destroyed by the boring and mediocre description and way of storytelling.

[Roy McCullough · Rating 5 out of 5]

This compact but rich volume is a classic and still one of my favorite 1-volume biographies of Napoleon (although the print does seem much smaller and more difficult to read than I remember from my first reading some forty years ago...)

[Lizzie · Rating 3 out of 5]

A straight-forward depiction of Napoleon and all that he did. In its pointedness, I feel it misses some of his greatness - his military prowess is discussed, but only in numbers. This is a study of Napoleon not a portrait.

[Jack Ohala · Rating 2 out of 5]

very very boring

[Jacob Becker · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great primer on the rise and fall of Napoleon.

[Johan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Well, it was interesting enough, but I feel I need to know more about the time and the world in which Napoleon got his stripes before I can really appreciate this book.

[AC · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read this many, many years ago. Probably dated now…

[Leah Angstman · Rating 2 out of 5]

DNF. Will review in The Pedantic Literary Historian column at The Coil.

[MBDAQLI · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great history book ! By reading this book, you get to know the young conqueror of the europe more cause it explains some of his beliefs and manners.

[Toni Olson · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best biographies on Napoleon!

[Ron Maskell · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good book that covers a ton of things and can be at times overwhelming for a Napoleonic neophyte such as myself.

[Armistead B · Rating 4 out of 5]

Solid Napoleon biography perfect for an overview of his life while sparing the reader from endless accounts of battle after battle. A great introduction to this famous Corsican.

[Paul · Rating 3 out of 5]

Felix Markham wrote: "It would be futile to attempt a summing-up or a verdict on Napoleon as a man or as an historical phenomenon. It is better to try to let the facts speak for themselves..." (p. 265) Evidently, this is what he strove to do. First published in 1963, Markham's "Napoleon" made a splash as the first full biography of Napoleon to make use of (then) newly available primary sources: letters written to Napoleon by his second wife, the Empress Marie-Louise, discovered and published in 1955 (Napoleon's letters to her had been discovered and published only in 1934); and the coded diaries of General Henri-Gratien Bertrand who was with Napoleon during his exile on St. Helena (decoded and published between 1949 and 1959). A concise volume (266 pages plus appendices), it nevertheless packs much detail which can be difficult to absorb without some prior familiarity with Napoleon and his times. The close-set type of the Mentor edition compounds this difficulty. (I recommend reading Paul Johnson's "Napoleon" first; telling it as an extended persuasive essay, Johnson gives less detail but preserves the basic arc of Napoleon's story, which it is helpful to know while navigating Markham. And he does cast a verdict, futile or no!) If one bears with it, the reward is a rounded and human portrait of Napoleon.

Markham lets us appreciate Napoleon the general through a close account of two examples he considers "typical ... of Napoleon's strategy": the Italian campaigns and Waterloo. He challenges the common judgment that Napoleon's boycott of English goods - the Continental System - had little effect, offering documentation of its economic and political impact on England. He challenges the argument (accepted by Johnson) that Napoleon died of stomach cancer: "It was Napoleon's wish that there should be an autopsy to determine the cause of his illness [which had been diagnosed twice as chronic hepatitis:]. ... The stomach was found to be perforated by a hole 'large enough to admit a little finger,' but adhering to the liver in such a way as to block the perforation ... the liver was enlarged ... The official post mortem report concluded that death was due to a 'cancerous ulcer' of the stomach, which showed signs of lesions 'about to become cancerous.' This report was highly convenient to ... the English Government, as it showed that Napoleon died of the same disease as his father..." He describes the politics and conditions of Napoleon's exile, which introduced so much controversy and distortion into the record that biographers and historians must rely upon to render Napoleon and his times.

A highlight of this book is Markham's account of how Enlightenment ideas, liberalism and nationalism spread as the Code Napoleon was imposed on states beyond France's borders. He includes both a class analysis - "Northern Italy, western Germany and the Low Countries, unlike Spain, had a substantial middle class which would welcome these reforms ... Napoleonic officers and civil servants were to form the spearhead of the Risorgimento [in Italy:] after 1815." - and a cultural analysis - "After the shock of Jena, the younger generation of intellectuals such as Fichte, Arndt and Schlegel began to formulate the concept of a united and independent Germany and to preach patriotic resistance to Napoleon. ... At the turn of the century, the romantic movement began to modify the rationalism and cosmopolitanism of the Enlightenment; by its interest in custom, history, and tradition, and in the language and literature of the Volk, pioneered by Herder, it gave a powerful stimulus to national consciousness. The initial enthusiasm of German intellectuals for the French Revolution gave way to a conservative and religious reaction which condemned the anarchy and atheism of the Terror, and exalted the spiritual superiority of a distinct, unique German culture. But nationalism was still conceived in cultural, not political terms." And he notes parallel development inside regimes opposed to Napoleon: "In Austria, too, reform was the work of a handful of patriots, and was hampered by Emperor Francis' distrust of 'Jacobinism.'" He opens a window into the ways early-nineteenth-century Europeans thought about "reasonable" and republican reforms, shedding light on why Europe's governments took the shape they did.