Product Description

Tracing Napoleon's career, Frank McLynn begins with his Corsican roots, through the years of the French Revolution and the military triumphs, to the coronation in 1804, and ultimate defeat and imprisonment. McLynn reveals how Napoleon was both existential hero and plaything of fate.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #80836 in Books
• Published on: 1998-11-05
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 749 pages

Customer Reviews

Thorough, insightful, but ultimately not satisfying
Mclynn's extensive biography is evidence of the detailed research and analysis of both contemporary and modern day literature on Napoleon's life.

I have three main criticisms:

1. His conclusions on some of the great men who surrounded Napoleon - Ney, Tallyrand and Bernadotte to name three - are forthright and damning. There's no doubt in Mclynn's mind that they were either incompetent, treacherous or both, and no evidence is presented to support them. I was left feeling slightly sorry for these characters!

2. The great battles of Austerlitz and Jena have no diagrams to show the dispositions, and those for Borodino and Waterloo are confusing. The text mentions place names that aren't on the maps, and the maps have features and generals that are ommited from the text. As key moments in Napoleon's career, I would have appreciated a better understanding, using graphics, of the strategies and tactics employed.

3. The Sources section does not show evidence of primary research at the battlefields or cities, although maybe the author assumes this need not be mentioned. Consequently, the descriptions are a little lacking in colour, and too dependant on reviewing the reports of others, without the spark that first hand obervation can give.

I certainly learnt things about Napoleon that I wouldn't have learnt elsewhere, but it's left me slightly annoyed that, in order to get a more complete and less opinioned picture, I have had to check out some of McLynn's assertions myself.

Slightly revisionist
Napoleon's career was made by the French revolution. Austria and England fought hard to bring down the new regime in France and there was battle after battle. People with talent were able to prove themselves in the armies of the new regime were aristocratic birth was not the key to one's career.

Napoleon's first success was designing the strategy that regained the port of Toulon from the English. He went on to beat the Italians in a long campaign in Italy. Following a disastrous expedition to Egypt he returned and was able to make himself dictator of France, initially as First Consul and then later as Emperor. As emperor he initially brought peace to France and developed a set of laws known as the Code Napoleon which were important in shaping the development of law in all of Europe.

Napoleon's detractors have focused on his cronyism. He made his various family members kings of such places as Spain, Southern Italy and the Netherlands. Further he had a penchant for war and after an initial period of peace France was soon at war with all of Europe.

Frank McLynn tells the well-told story well. He brings to its telling two new things. The first involves the Russian campaign. In 1812 Napoleon had defeated most of Europe. Russia held out against him. He raised an army of over half a million men and marched to Moscow. At Borodino an inconclusive and bloody battle was fought which left the Russian Army bloodied but intact. With the onset of winter Napoleon did not know what to do. He occupied Moscow but when the Czar refused to negotiate he saw no way of ending the conflict. He then started a long retreat back to Germany. His army was destroyed and all of the countries of Europe rose up against him and he was defeated. McLynn is able to demonstrate that up till now there has been an understanding that it was the weather which defeated Napoleon. He is able to show that the Russian campaign was a disaster from the start. The army that invaded Russia was to large to be supported from the country and by the time it reached Borodino sickness and desertion had led it to lose two thirds of its strength. Most of the retreat from Moscow was in fact in reasonable weather. The reason for the failure of the campaign were bad planning and a failure to think through the logistic problems. The book in fact slightly downgrades Napoleon's military reputation. The second point raised by the book is to confirm that Napoleon was murdered on St Helena by the use of poison. There is some speculation about who did it.

In all a readable book about a man who was an important symbol to romantics in the nineteenth century but whose fame and importance is no in decline.

An excellent and exhaustive work on Napoleon
~~~Just to put the record straight about one of the remarks made by a previous reviewer: it is not Freudian psychobabble that the author has written, if there is any pyshobabble in the book at all it is Jungian, but I, personally, noted very little of it. This is easily the best book on Napoleon that has emerged recently. It towers above Robert Asprey's well written dual-set biography as well as Vincent Cronin's very good, although highly prejudiced biography.The author takes a very unique slant~~ on the subject. There is not the inquiry into his military genius and plans, although readers will be amazed how much of that Mr.McLynn has absorbed, nor is there attempt to portray Napoleon as a moral saviour of France. No, the Author's narrative, to my mind, focuses on the far most interesting questions of what does it mean to be human? And how does Napoleon stretch our ideas of what human 'nature' is? Presented before us is a man who not only drags himself from nothing but manages (at the~~ expense of his health) to survive on three hours sleep a night whilst utilising the rest of the time in work. He seems to be, as Emerson nominated him, a mainfestation of the Modern. Time and ambition being key to understanding his character. Who is written of does not bear as much resemblance to the Napoleon I have read of in other biographies, nonetheless I was so impressed by the detail of Mr.McLynn's scholarship that I take his book to be the gold standard. No other writer is so well~~ informed about the continuing debates surrounding Napoleon, no other writer appears to be so well philosophically informed, nor any other writer so at home with the 'psychobabble'. A great book, a great read.~