best biography about napoleon

• NONFICTION BOOKS
• BEST NONFICTION 2023
• BEST NONFICTION 2024
• Historical Biographies
• The Best Memoirs and Autobiographies
• Philosophical Biographies
• World War 2
• World History
• American History
• British History
• Chinese History
• Russian History
• Ancient History (up to 500)
• Medieval History (500-1400)
• Military History
• Art History
• Travel Books
• Ancient Philosophy
• Contemporary Philosophy
• Ethics & Moral Philosophy
• Great Philosophers
• Social & Political Philosophy
• Classical Studies
• New Science Books
• Maths & Statistics
• Popular Science
• Physics Books
• Climate Change Books
• How to Write
• English Grammar & Usage
• Books for Learning Languages
• Linguistics
• Political Ideologies
• Foreign Policy & International Relations
• American Politics
• British Politics
• Religious History Books
• Mental Health
• Neuroscience
• Child Psychology
• Film & Cinema
• Opera & Classical Music
• Behavioural Economics
• Development Economics
• Economic History
• Financial Crisis
• World Economies
• Investing Books
• Artificial Intelligence/AI Books
• Data Science Books
• Sex & Sexuality
• Death & Dying
• Food & Cooking
• Sports, Games & Hobbies
• FICTION BOOKS
• BEST NOVELS 2024
• BEST FICTION 2023
• New Literary Fiction
• World Literature
• Literary Criticism
• Literary Figures
• Classic English Literature
• American Literature
• Comics & Graphic Novels
• Fairy Tales & Mythology
• Historical Fiction
• Crime Novels
• Science Fiction
• Short Stories
• South Africa
• United States
• Arctic & Antarctica
• Afghanistan
• Myanmar (Formerly Burma)
• Netherlands
• Kids Recommend Books for Kids
• High School Teachers Recommendations
• Prizewinning Kids' Books
• Popular Series Books for Kids
• BEST BOOKS FOR KIDS (ALL AGES)
• Ages Baby-2
• Books for Teens and Young Adults
• THE BEST SCIENCE BOOKS FOR KIDS
• BEST KIDS' BOOKS OF 2023
• BEST BOOKS FOR TEENS OF 2023
• Best Audiobooks for Kids
• Environment
• Best Books for Teens of 2023
• Best Kids' Books of 2023
• Political Novels
• New History Books
• New Historical Fiction
• New Biography
• New Memoirs
• New World Literature
• New Economics Books
• New Climate Books
• New Math Books
• New Philosophy Books
• New Psychology Books
• New Physics Books
• THE BEST AUDIOBOOKS
• Actors Read Great Books
• Books Narrated by Their Authors
• Best Audiobook Thrillers
• Best History Audiobooks
• Nobel Literature Prize
• Booker Prize (fiction)
• Baillie Gifford Prize (nonfiction)
• Financial Times (nonfiction)
• Wolfson Prize (history)
• Royal Society (science)
• Pushkin House Prize (Russia)
• Walter Scott Prize (historical fiction)
• Arthur C Clarke Prize (sci fi)
• The Hugos (sci fi & fantasy)
• Audie Awards (audiobooks)

Make Your Own List

Nonfiction Books » History Books » Historical Figures

The best books on napoleon, recommended by andrew roberts.

Napoleon: A Life by Andrew Roberts

How did Napoleon Bonaparte, an upstart Corsican, go on to conquer half of Europe in the 16 years of his rule? Was he a military genius? And was he really that short? Historian Andrew Roberts , author of a bestselling biography of Napoleon , introduces us to the books that shaped how he sees l'Empereur —including little-known sources from those who knew Napoleon personally. Read more history book recommendations on Five Books

Interview by Charles J. Styles

The Campaigns of Napoleon by David G Chandler

Talleyrand by Duff Cooper

With Eagles to Glory: Napoleon and His German Allies in the 1809 Campaign by John H Gill

Private Memoirs Of The Court Of Napoleon by Louis François Joseph Bausset-Roquefort

With Napoleon in Russia: Memoirs of General de Caulaincourt, Duke of Vicenza by Armand de Caulaincourt

1 The Campaigns of Napoleon by David G Chandler

2 talleyrand by duff cooper, 3 with eagles to glory: napoleon and his german allies in the 1809 campaign by john h gill, 4 private memoirs of the court of napoleon by louis françois joseph bausset-roquefort, 5 with napoleon in russia: memoirs of general de caulaincourt, duke of vicenza by armand de caulaincourt.

I f you were to explain the significance of Napoleon Bonaparte (1769–1821) to someone who knew nothing about him, what would you say?

I argue that although he didn’t have much to do with the French Revolution itself, as he was too young, he nonetheless kept the best bits of the Revolution—equality before the law, religious tolerance, meritocracy—for France and the countries that France conquered. The Code Napoleon was still in effect in the Rhineland until 1900, for example, and it underlies modern European legal systems to this day.

He got rid of the worst bits, like the mass guillotining, the Reign of Terror, the various mad ideas they had like the ten-day week, abolishing Christianity, and so on. He was the person who brought France into the 19th century with huge reforms of administration and finance. He was a moderniser.

You mentioned his relationship with the Revolution. I think there’s something paradoxical about it. He’d declare things like “I am the Revolution”, and the Napoleonic Code did enshrine revolutionary principles like civic equality into law. But didn’t he also curtail the rights of women and reinstate slavery in the Caribbean sugar colonies? Some would argue that the main constitution itself was structurally undemocratic, with an unelected senate, even if it was put to the people in a plebiscite.

The Code Napoleon was not good for women , but then they were hardly over-endowed with rights before the Revolution. He went on to abolish slavery , of course, not once but twice. He did reinstitute it in 1802, but abolished it again in 1814. So, he had an in-out/in-out policy with slavery. When I say a ‘moderniser’, I mean a moderniser in the context of the times, not a moderniser in the context of Tony Blair.

Joining the dots between the French Revolution and Napoleon’s ascendency, how did France go from establishing a Republic and executing their king to welcoming an emperor barely a decade later?

I think his military successes first in Italy in 1796 and also in 1800 as well as his creation of the civil code were essential to understanding how they able to recognise that he wasn’t a king . Being an emperor and being a king were very different things. They were perfectly happy to have an empire, which they saw as being based on republican principles, with a Napoleon rather than Bourbon at the top of the tree.

So, there wasn’t any lingering republican resistance?

No, there was—especially in the army. The French army was considered to be highly republican. There was resistance from people like Marshal Bernadotte to Napoleon calling himself an emperor in December 1804. But it was not unpopular in the rest of the country.

I really enjoyed your own biography of Napoleon , which was awarded the Grand Prix of the Fondation Napoléon. It’s an excellent read and continues to be an international bestseller in both UK and US editions. It was also one of the first books to build upon the publication of some 33,000 of Napoleon’s letters. I’m curious to know what you found to be the most striking revelations from them. Did they overturn any major myths?

There are still dozens of myths and misconceptions about Napoleon. But what I came across most powerfully among the letters was his capacity for compartmentalising his mind. He could completely ignore what was happening at the time, even during or after battles or when the Kremlin was burning, and concentrate on running parts of his empire, or on setting up the rules of a girls’ school, or on telling a prefect that he shouldn’t be seen at the opera with his mistress. He had this incredible capacity for, as he put it, pulling out a drawer in his mind, dealing with whatever was in it, and then closing it again.

If we’re talking about myths, I suppose the main one to get out of the way is his height!

Your first book choice is The Campaigns of Napoleon by David Chandler. Can you tell us about this one and why you’ve recommended it?

It’s a totally comprehensive history of all of Napoleon’s campaigns. Chandler wrote it, I think, in the late 60s, and yet it still holds up very well as an overall history of Napoleon’s fighting. Perfectly understandably, it doesn’t include everything else about Napoleon—the politics, the personality, the 27 mistresses and all the rest of it—nor is it intending to do that. It’s just doing the military side of it all. But it is an absolutely encyclopaedic run-through of all of Napoleon’s battles.

So, this is a must-have for military history buffs?

It is indeed. David Chandler reissued it several times and updated it with the latest thought on Napoleon’s battles. If there was something new said on the Battle of Austerlitz or something like that, he would then reissue the book with that new information in it. So, you want to buy the last iteration of it before David died.

Napoleon is often labelled a “military genius”. Notwithstanding his ultimate defeat, what is the best way to support that judgement?

I think the fact that he was able to fight so many different kinds of battles. The reason that he’s a genius is that he managed to win battles whether he outnumbered the enemy or was outnumbered by the enemy, whether he was moving forwards or backwards, whether or not he was having his right or left flank enveloped, or whether he was enveloping the enemies. Or sometimes he could do a double-envelopment, which is one of the most difficult manoeuvres in warfare. He managed to pull that off.

“It is an absolutely encyclopaedic run through of all of Napoleon’s battles”

Napoleon had equal dexterity when it came to commanding infantry, cavalry, and artillery, even though he was himself educated as an artilleryman. He’s also extremely good in coalition warfare—in striking at the hinge between his enemies but also keeping his own coalitions in order. His invasion of Russia involved something like 20 countries. You have, therefore, a commander who is incredibly dextrous and capable of adapting to whatever military circumstance he’s facing.

In terms of his military weaknesses, we undoubtedly have naval warfare, but he also had difficulty with guerrilla insurgencies in the Peninsular War.

That’s right and, of course, the guerrilla insurgencies in the Russian campaign as well. He was no good at sea. At all. He just didn’t understand how ships worked. That was a huge lacuna in his capacity and his knowledge. As is what we now call “asymmetrical warfare”, where the enemy doesn’t actually put up an army in the field.

Would you say Napoleon was deluded about his own naval capabilities?

Yes. He didn’t recognise that he was rubbish at sea at all. He thought that you could tell an admiral to do things at sea in much the same way that you could tell a general to do things on land. But, of course, the whole process is very very different—not least because of the wind!

There were various points in your book where Napoleon is still trying to fund naval expansion and is putting men out in ships for warfare despite them never having been at sea before.

That’s right. To give him his due, though, he was up against the Royal Navy which was at the peak of its efficiency. Britain was putting one third of its national spend into the navy. With admirals like the Earl of St Vincent and Collingwood and obviously Nelson, they had endless extremely talented admirals and an extremely can-do attitude towards maritime fighting in the period of fighting sail. Napoleon was really up against an absolutely superb organisation in the Royal Navy. One has to give him his due, but there are no Napoleonic naval victories.

The Napoleonic Wars are very complex and involve coalitions taking on Napoleon at different points. How much can we say with generality about what provoked them?

Here was somebody who was a profoundly radical force that each of these legitimist monarchies like the Hapsburgs of Austria and the Romanovs of Russia and the Hohenzollerns of Prussia were extremely nervous about. They saw what had happened to the Bourbons in France, and they didn’t want it to happen at home. So, this cold wind of modernisation that Napoleon unleashed on Europe was something that they were very keen to try to . . . whatever you do to a wind. That’s the reason.

So, he has inherited international hostility already because of the Revolution?

That’s right, yes. But also, they didn’t see him as a legitimate monarch. There were no ‘Bonapartes’ before him. His statement that he wanted to be the Rudolf of his dynasty, i.e. the founding father like Rudolf Hapsburg had been, was seen to be impossibly pretentious—not least because Rudolf came from the 13th century and they were in the 18th century.

There are two cases of Napoleon launching an offensive war. The rest of the time, people are declaring war on him. So, would you say this image of Napoleon stomping across Europe, declaring war on everybody, annexing their territory and so on, is completely wrong?

Yes, completely wrong. He started the Peninsular War and he started the 1812 Russian campaign. Other than that, each of the wars was started by the coalitions against him.

Support Five Books

Five Books interviews are expensive to produce. If you're enjoying this interview, please support us by donating a small amount .

And the cases where Napoleon does initiate a war seem largely to do with enforcing the ‘Continental System’—his attempt to weaken Britain economically by blocking trade—rather than building an empire for empire’s sake.

Precisely, yes. He didn’t believe in empire for empire’s sake; he recognised that he could overstretch French resources very dangerously and very easily. But he did want to try to force England to the negotiating table. The way he thought he could do that was to hit us in our pocket and try to cut us off from all European markets.

That’s why he invaded Portugal, which was unwilling to take part in the Continental System—being a very old ally of England’s, going back to 1383—and it’s also why, ultimately, he invaded Russia after the tsar ripped up the Tilsit agreement and started trading openly with Britain. It’s a fascinating thing that, as you say, the two aggressive wars that Napoleon started began for mercantile protectionist reasons. It was to try to force the merchants of London to put pressure on the Whig and Tory governments to make peace with him.

But the problem with enforcing this policy of economic strangulation against the Brits was their sea power.

Exactly. When you can land anywhere at all, when you can set up various places off the coast of Italy and off the coast of Germany which are effectively massive freebooting piracy operations of free-trade in everything, it’s just something that is not going to work. His attempt to stimulate local production and an industrial revolution in France was also something that never truly got off the ground.

Britain and France are continuously at war from 1803 onwards until Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo in 1815, a period of war unmatched in any of the other coalitions. What do you think is the main motivation for why the Brits are so uncompromising?

Let’s move on to your next book. This is Duff Cooper’s biography of the diplomat Talleyrand, whose political life encompasses the rise and fall of Napoleon and beyond.

Talleyrand had a totally extraordinary political life. He supported six different separate regimes in his career and, naturally, got a reputation for being a turncoat. Some people have argued, including Duff Cooper in this brilliant biography, that he did have some central messages that he believed all his life—like liberalism and an affection for the English-style constitution. But the key reason to read this book is that it’s literature as much as history. It’s a beautifully written evocation of an era that Duff Cooper, having been British ambassador to Paris, knew well and actually saw the last glimmers of.

It’s incredible that Talleyrand flees the Reign of Terror, goes to England and then to America, returns to France in 1796 and manages to become foreign minister within a year.

And stays foreign minister or in the diplomatic sphere in some way or another for the rest of his life. He thereby met almost all the important people in Europe and was at the table when all the great decisions were made. He was born an aristocrat and was later an unfrocked bishop. He had a lame foot rather like Byron and Goebbels which apparently turns you into a sex maniac; he turned his niece into his mistress which I think today would have him defenestrated but, nonetheless, no one seemed to hold that against him either.

What does the book tell us about the relation between Talleyrand and Napoleon? What are the main ways we can trace his influence on Napoleon as foreign minister or vice-elector?

It tells us that it was always rocky. Napoleon, quite rightly, didn’t trust him. Talleyrand was working especially with the Russians behind Napoleon’s back. Despite being extremely witty and obviously wonderful company, he was a dangerous person to have working for you. Talleyrand generally thought that France should be at peace and, of course, that’s very difficult when you’re the foreign minister of a conqueror.

I don’t see that you can call Napoleon a warmonger given that, as we’ve said, of the seven wars of the coalitions he only started two. But I think there was a legitimist jihad against him and against the French Revolution. And he had to fight those. But, overall, Talleyrand was someone who, as a good negotiator and a diplomat, wanted peace.

And was willing to betray Napoleon’s military secrets in the process?

He was willing to betray absolutely everybody in the process. It wasn’t just Napoleon; he betrayed five different regimes in the course of his life. I’m certain that had he lived any longer, he would have betrayed the July Monarchy as well.

It’s surprising that when Napoleon found out Talleyrand was selling military secrets to his enemies, he didn’t exile or execute him.

This is another reason to recognise that Napoleon is not a proto-Hitler in the way he’s been portrayed by many British historians. If he were a proto-Hitler, he would have shot Talleyrand and Fouché (his police minister) years before. Napoleon was a dictator politically, in that he dictated the laws of France and what happened. But I don’t think he has anything in common with the 20th-century dictators like Lenin, Mussolini, Hitler , and Stalin.

But what about atrocities like executing thousands of prisoners of war in Jaffa, for instance?

When you say “for instance”, that implies that there were 20 or 30 Jaffas but there weren’t. There’s one at Jaffa and then, after that, in 1796 in Padua, Italy, he also let the troops run riot. But other than that, there just aren’t the mass executions. There aren’t the 40,000 people who died during the Reign of Terror, for example.

“Napoleon was a dictator politically in that he dictated the laws of France and what happened. But I don’t think he has anything in common with the 20th-century dictators”

I go into Jaffa in some detail in my book about how the men who he executed had earlier promised to fight against France. And then, six weeks later, they were captured fighting against France. According to the very harsh rules of law in the late eighteenth century, they forfeited their lives.

There’s a stereotype about Napoleon being indifferent to the immense human cost incurred by trying to establish French hegemony in Europe. Do you think this is misguided?

Yes, I think it’s hugely misguided. I think that commanders throughout history have had to harden their hearts to the inevitable losses made, but I don’t think he ever threw men into battle willy-nilly. He was one of the great commanders in history and one of the great soldiers of all time. Great soldiers don’t do that. And he was personally affected. There are times when he’s in tears in his tent after a battle, in the same way that Wellington was.

The idea of him being some cold-hearted unemotional figure profoundly misunderstands him, as does the idea of him being humourless. Throughout my book, there are something like 80 or 90 Napoleon jokes. He was constantly making humorous remarks that even 200 years later remain extremely funny.

I enjoyed the one where, in the midst of battle, an officer has his helmet thrown off by the impact of a cannonball, only for Napoleon to casually remark “It’s a good job you’re not any taller.”

Let’s move on to your third book. This is With Eagles to Glory: Napoleon and His German Allies in the 1809 Campaign by John H. Gill.

This is a tremendously detailed military history of the Danube campaign of 1809. This was a very important campaign because it knocked the Austrians out of the Napoleonic Wars for the third time. The only way for them to deal with Napoleon after that was for the archduchess Marie-Louise to marry Napoleon and try to bring him into the system like that. He fought a lightning campaign up the Danube, capturing Vienna, fighting battles such as Aspern-Essling and Wagram. This is Napoleon at his classic best. You can see him in this book just outmaneuvering the Austrian army again and again.

One of the distinctive things about this book is that it drew a lot of attention to the 30,000 German troops fighting on behalf of Napoleon.

Yes, this book is an important corrective to the idea that Napoleon’s forces were all French. They certainly weren’t. When Napoleon invaded Russia, only something like 55% of his army were French. He invaded Russia with 615,000 men which was the same size as Paris at the time. It’s very important to see the Napoleonic Wars as coalition wars, both on his side and against him. The book does lots of other things as well, but it certainly underlines that very important factor about Napoleon’s wars.

These soldiers were all supplied from the Confederation of the Rhine. Can you tell us about that and when it was established?

It was established at the time of the collapse of the Holy Roman Empire in August 1806. After the Holy Roman Empire vaporised out of existence, it became Napoleon’s tool—his vehicle—for bringing together the north German states. He called himself the “Protector” of the Confederation. They stayed as such for nine years or so before it itself collapsed at the time of the 1813 campaign. The battles of Leipzig and Dresden were pretty much the death-knell for the Confederation of the Rhine.

I want to ask about military culture and attitudes towards Napoleon among soldiers from the client states. Presumably the German troops didn’t have the same patriotic fervour motivating them as French soldiers, but they weren’t indifferent either.

There’s a huge difference. Some of them some of the time are just as enthusiastic about Napoleon as the French. The Polish lancers, for example, believed that Napoleon was going to make Poland an independent state and give it its own sovereignty for the first time since it had been sliced up in the partitions. And so, they were incredibly excited about fighting for Napoleon. In fact, Napoleon is the only individual named in the Polish national anthem. That’s a good one for a pub quiz!

Your last two books are written by people who had great proximity to Napoleon. Let’s look at Private Memoirs Of The Court Of Napoleon by Louis François Joseph Bausset-Roquefort. This seems a fairly unknown book.

Yes, it’s a very little-known book but an extremely interesting one. Bausset was Napoleon’s palace chamberlain who followed him around the campaigns and lived in his palaces. He knew the family very well indeed and wrote these memoirs even though it was dangerous to do that once the Bourbons had been restored. He was still an admirer of Napoleon and is the living personification of the untruth of the epithet that “no man is a hero to his valet.”

Bausset definitely did admire Napoleon—not blind hero-worship by any means, but he was somebody who saw Napoleon for what he was. This book explodes many of the myths about Napoleon being a vicious and unpleasant individual. Instead, he comes across as a good employer, a witty man, and someone who had normal human emotions.

I suppose it says a lot about a person when all of your personal servants are begging to go into exile with you.

Well, exactly. And not just any old exile. One could understand why they might have wanted to go to Elba, which is a perfectly nice, warm, pleasant place. One would go on holiday to Elba, but nobody would go on holiday to Saint Helena. This is a windswept, godforsaken, tiny, eight-by-ten-mile island plopped bang in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. It takes six days by boat to get there from Cape Town, or at least it did before the airport came in. And a very boring journey it is too, I can tell you. And these 21 servants were basically fighting each other for the right to accompany into exile. It shows the charisma of the man.

You mentioned that Bausset goes with him on the campaigns, but what do we find out about Napoleon in a more domestic setting?

That he was a kind husband and a loving father. He was not the domestic monster that the Bourbon literature has been so keen to present him as; many books, I’m afraid, have taken it for granted to be true.

There are some quite eccentric arrangements in Napoleon’s imperial household as well. I’m thinking of his first wife Josephine’s menagerie.

Yes, having orangutans around at lunchtime, zebras in the fields, and black swans at Malmaison. That was her idea, of course, but he indulged it and paid for it. But having exotic animals at that time was very much a royal pursuit and it had been for years. I think Cosimo III de’ Medici had a hippopotamus or something along those lines. It was a way of proving your wealth and status to have unusual animals around. Josephine did actually dress the orangutan in a chemise and have it come to tea parties.

You mentioned that this was to flaunt wealth and status. Was that a slightly sore thing to do considering the tensions building up to the Revolution?

Let’s go on to your final choice. This is the Memoirs of General de Caulaincourt, Duke of Vicenza.

These are fascinating. Caulaincourt was the ambassador to Russia and was also Napoleon’s master of the horse. He was an aristocrat, born and bred. At least according to his memoirs, he was the person who informed Napoleon not to invade Russia. The memoirs were only published in 1935, and there’s no reason why he should have lied in them, owing to the fact that they were never going to be published in his lifetime.

Once he had warned Napoleon, he came with him and was the only person on the sledge that accompanied Napoleon back to France from the catastrophe of the 1812 campaign. It’s in his sledge that we get Napoleon saying “from the sublime to the ridiculous is just one small step.” The memoirs are immensely well-written, encapsulating and pretty crushing for Napoleon’s reputation with regard to the 1812 campaign.

So, it’s not a panegyric?

Not in the slightest. But equally it’s not a denunciation. Caulaincourt stayed with Napoleon up until the 1814 abdication and is a trustworthy source. He’s not anti-Napoleon. It seems that he kept scraps of paper that he used as his notes for this book. It’s a pretty fabulous and invaluable source for the period.

The Russia campaign is regarded as one of the worst defeats in military history. Can you give an outline of the factors that made it so catastrophic?

Napoleon went into Russia on June 21, 1812 with 615,000 men, and by the time he crossed the river Niemen back in the other direction in December, he had lost over half a million of those men. In that sense, you have to go back to the ancient world to see such an enormous military catastrophe.

“Napoleon went into Russia on 21 June 1812 with 615,000 men. By the time he crossed the river Niemen back in the other direction in December, he had lost over half a million of those men”

In a nutshell, the reason was that he was drawn further and further into Russia. He captured Moscow, something that Hitler never did, but he stayed there too long. He won a battle called Maloyaroslavets and decided the next day to retreat back via Borodino, which was a big battle that he’d won on 7 September. It turned out to be the wrong route back and his army was encompassed by blizzards. Although he won each of the formal engagements, the army was swallowed up by the snows of Russia. It’s a story of cannibalism and utter despair and disaster, with a few flashes of redemption such as the crossing of the Berezina river. Otherwise, it’s up there with Xenophon.

We’ve mentioned it already, but it’s important to keep in mind that Napoleon wasn’t marching on Russia to try and annex it. He was trying to force Russia’s compliance with the Continental System.

Yes, he had no territorial desires. He had an army twice the size of the Russian one, and had defeated the Russians twice before. Napoleon only intended to fight on the outskirts; he only intended to go in 50 miles or so and wanted a three-week campaign. Instead, it turned out to be a six-month campaign and carried on for literally thousands of miles there and back. It’s a classic example of mission creep.

The Russians also pursued a scorched earth policy, rather like they did in 1941 and 1942, which meant that there was mass starvation. Napoleon lost 100,000 of the troops of his central thrust to typhus—a horrible disease where a louse will bury itself into your skin and then defecate in your skin and then die. You then die about four days later in immense pain. It’s a horrible way to go.

With armies in those days, everyone had lice. If the weather’s too cold for you to change your clothes more than once every six weeks or so, then you’re going to get lice. The soldiers all huddled together, very close to one another, because it was so cold outside. So, their lice jumped from one soldier to another. There wasn’t a single person, including the emperor, who didn’t have lice. They didn’t work out a cure for typhus until 1911; it wasn’t properly diagnosed until over a century later. It was, in every way, an absolute nightmare of a campaign.

It’s largely remembered for the merciless winter, but the immense heat of the summer advance was almost as damaging.

That killed a lot of horses. And, of course, it’s almost entirely a horse-and-bullock-drawn invasion. The heat and the thirst were appalling on the way into Russia, yes. It was biblical.

There are three more years before Waterloo in 1815 but, in your view, was the Russian campaign the turning point?

Yes. Up until 1811, Napoleon was the master of Europe. From December 1812 onwards, he was on the skids. You can’t lose half a million men and not expect your throne to topple.

But he went out fighting.

He did. The 1814 campaign involved small numbers of men but, nonetheless, he won four battles in five days there. He was back to his old form. These were significant, rather brilliant military victories. But, in the end, with the whole of Europe against him and invading, he was fought to a standstill and then very comprehensively defeated at the Battle of Waterloo.

Just to end, what do you consider to be Napoleon’s greatest achievements that have endured?

I think the beauty of Paris is very largely down to him. He rebuilt Paris. We love going and taking our loved ones there and crossing the four bridges that he built and seeing the fountains and great buildings like the Madeleine Church. That’s a testament to him. He designed the Arc de Triomphe , but it was only built after his death. Although as an Englishman I prefer English common law, nonetheless the whole of French and European law is much more closely built on the Napoleonic Code than anything that had gone before, including Roman law. Napoleon is someone who every Frenchman should be proud of. Other things like the Légion d’honneur and the Conseil d’État are still around. In fact, the numbering of its houses in its streets from the Seine outwards is all down to him. There are also the reservoirs. Even 200 years after his death, it’s difficult to imagine Paris or France without the influence of Napoleon Bonaparte.

October 28, 2019

Five Books aims to keep its book recommendations and interviews up to date. If you are the interviewee and would like to update your choice of books (or even just what you say about them) please email us at [email protected]

Andrew Roberts

Andrew Roberts is a British historian and journalist. He is a Visiting Professor at the Department of War Studies, King's College London, a Roger and Martha Mertz Visiting Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, and a Lehrman Institute Distinguished Lecturer at the New York Historical Society. He has written or edited nineteen books—including internationally bestselling biographies of Napoleon Bonaparte and Winston Churchill—which have been translated into 23 languages.

We ask experts to recommend the five best books in their subject and explain their selection in an interview.

This site has an archive of more than one thousand seven hundred interviews, or eight thousand book recommendations. We publish at least two new interviews per week.

Five Books participates in the Amazon Associate program and earns money from qualifying purchases.

© Five Books 2024

Top Ten Books on Napoleon Bonaparte

David Bell emphasizes the astonishing sense of human possibility--for both good and ill--that Napoleon represented. By his late twenties, Napoleon was already one of the greatest generals in European history. At thirty, he had become an absolute master of Europe's most powerful country. In his early forties, he ruled a European empire more powerful than any since Rome, fighting wars that changed the shape of the continent and brought death to millions. Then everything collapsed, leading him to spend his last years in miserable exile in the South Atlantic.

Philip Dwyer sheds new light on Napoleon’s inner life—especially his darker side and his passions—to reveal a ruthless, manipulative, driven man whose character has been disguised by the public image he carefully fashioned to suit the purposes of his ambition. Dwyer focuses acutely on Napoleon’s formative years, from his Corsican origins to his French education, from his melancholy youth to his flirtation with radicals of the French Revolution, from his first military campaigns in Italy and Egypt to the political-military coup that brought him to power in 1799. One of the first truly modern politicians, Napoleon was a master of “spin,” using the media to project an idealized image of himself. Dwyer’s biography of the young Napoleon provides a fascinating new perspective on one of the great figures of modern history.

The Napoleonic wars were nothing if not complex—an ever-shifting kaleidoscope of moves and intentions, which by themselves went a long way towards baffling and dazing his conventionally-minded opponents into that state of disconcerting moral disequilibrium which so often resulted in their catastrophic defeat.

The Campaigns of Napoleon is an exhaustive analysis and critique of Napoleon's art of war as he himself developed and perfected it in the major military campaigns of his career. Napoleon disavowed any suggestion that he worked from formula (“Je n'ai jamais eu un plan d'opérations”), but military historian David Chandler demonstrates this was at best only a half-truth. To be sure, every operation Napoleon conducted contained unique improvisatory features. But there were from the first to the last certain basic principles of strategic maneuver and battlefield planning that he almost invariably put into practice. To clarify these underlying methods, as well as the style of Napoleon's fabulous intellect, Mr. Chandler examines in detail each campaign mounted and personally conducted by Napoleon, analyzing the strategies employed, revealing wherever possible the probable sources of his subject's military ideas.

Unfortunately, this is an older book and it only comes in hardcover. Due to its high price, we recommend that you check it out from a library.

When Napoleon’s Grand Armee went to war against the might of the Habsburg empire in 1809, its forces included more than 100,000 allied German troops. From his earliest imperial campaigns, these troops provided played a key role as Napoleon swept from victory to victory and in 1809 their fighting abilities were crucial to the campaign. With Napoleon’s French troops depleted and debilitated after the long struggle in the Spanish War, the German troops for the first time played a major combat role in the center of the battle line.

In this epic work, John Gill presents an unprecedented and comprehensive study of this year of glory for the German soldiers fighting for Napoleon, When combat opened they were in the thick of the action, fighting within French divisions and often without any French support at all. They demonstrated tremendous skill, courage and loyalty.

In the spring of 1814, Napoleon Bonaparte was defeated. Having overseen an empire spanning half the European continent and governed the lives of some eighty million people, he suddenly found himself exiled to Elba, less than a hundred square miles of territory. Braude dramatizes this strange exile and improbable escape in granular detail and with novelistic relish, offering sharp new insights into a largely overlooked moment. He details a terrific cast of secondary characters, including Napoleon’s tragically-noble official British minder on Elba, Neil Campbell, forever disgraced for having let “Boney” slip away; and his young second wife, Marie Louise who was twenty-two to Napoleon’s forty-four, at the time of his abdication. What emerges is a surprising new perspective on one of history’s most consequential figures, which both subverts and celebrates his legendary persona.

The Battle of Waterloo has cast a long shadow over Europe. It ended the French Empire and Napoleon's aspirations and it significantly altered the direction of Europe. Unsurprisingly, the meaning and significance of Waterloo are different for all of the countries that participated in the battle. Alan Forrest walks through the reader through the battle but explores the consequences and the interpretations of Waterloo. Forrest answers how we remember Waterloo. Britain, France, Belgium, Germany, and the Netherlands all view Waterloo through different a lens.

The Great Retreat is an unprecedented, visually rich account of Napoleon’s march back from Moscow, built on a remarkable discovery of newly unearthed artifacts and archival sources. It tells the story of how Napoleon lost nearly 400,000 men to the brutal cold, poor planning, and effectively destructive harrying of the Russian army at his heels. Featuring more than 1,600 illustrations and detailed biographies of all 289 regiments and units involved in the retreat, supplemented by unforgettable eyewitness accounts, this book brings Napoleon’s retreat, and its unfathomable human cost, to life in a wholly new way. No student of Napoleon or fan of military or Russian history will want to miss it.

John Tone recounts the dramatic story of how, between 1808 and 1814, Spanish peasants created and sustained the world's first guerrilla insurgency movement, thereby playing a major role in Napoleon's defeat in the Peninsula War. Focusing on the army of Francisco Mina, Tone offers new insights into the origins, motives, and successes of these first guerrilla forces by interpreting the conflict from the long-ignored perspective of the guerrillas themselves.

While this book is not specifically about Napoleon, it examines the early 19th century through Tallyrand. Tallyrand was the French Foreign Minister for multiple French regimes and one of the most interesting and remarkable diplomats of the 19th century. Unique in his own age and a phenomenon in any, Charles-Maurice, Prince de Talleyrand, was a statesman of outstanding ability and extraordinary contradictions. He was a world-class rogue who held high office in five successive regimes. A well-known opportunist and a notorious bribe taker, Talleyrand’s gifts to France arguably outvalued the vast personal fortune he amassed in her service.

Once a supporter of the Revolution, after the fall of the monarchy, he fled to England and then to the United States. Talleyrand returned to France two years later and served under Napoleon, and represented France at the Congress of Vienna. Duff Cooper’s classic biography contains all the vigor, elegance, and intellect of its remarkable subject.

Dailyhistory.org is an Amazon Associate and earns money from links (primarily to books) from Amazon.

Advertisement

Supported by

‘Napoleon: A Life,’ by Andrew Roberts

• Share full article

By Duncan Kelly

• Nov. 13, 2014

On July 22, 1789, a week after the storming of the Bastille in Paris, Napoleon Bonaparte wrote to his older brother, Joseph, that there was nothing much to worry about. “Calm will return. In a month.” His timing was off, but perhaps he took the misjudgment to heart because he spent the rest of his life trying to bring glory and order to France by building a new sort of empire. By the time he was crowned emperor on Dec. 2, 1804, he could say, “I am the Revolution.” It was, according to the historian Andrew Roberts’s epically scaled new biography, “Napoleon: A Life,” both the ultimate triumph of the self-made man, an outsider from Corsica who rose to the apex of French political life, and simultaneously a “defining moment of the Enlightenment,” fixing the “best” of the French Revolution through his legal, educational and administrative reforms. Such broad contours get at what Napoleon meant by saying to his literary hero Goethe at a meeting in Erfurt, “Politics is fate.”

Napoleon didn’t mean fatalism by this, rather that political action is unavoidable if you want personal and national glory. It requires a mastery of fortune, and a willingness to be ruthless when necessary. If this sounds Machiavellian, that’s because it is — Machiavelli’s arguments about politics informed Napoleon’s self-consciousness, whether in appraising fortune as a woman or a river to be tamed and harnessed, or assuming that in politics it is better to be feared than loved. Such views went hand in hand with the grand visions of politics outlined in the ancient histories and biographies Napoleon revered as a young man. “Bloodletting is among the ingredients of political medicine” was Napoleon’s cool if brutal reminder of an ever-present item on his exhausting schedule.

His strategy always included dashing off thousands of letters and plans, in a personal regime calling for little sleep, much haste and a penchant for being read to while taking baths so as not to waste even a minute. He compartmentalized ruthlessly, changing tack between lobbying for more shoes and brandy for the army at one minute, to directing the personal lives of his siblings or writing love letters to the notorious Josephine at another; here ensuring extravagant financial “contributions” from those whom he had vanquished, there discussing the booty to send back to Paris, particularly from the extraordinary expedition in Egypt where his “ savants had missed nothing.” The personal and the political ran alongside each other in his mind.

Yet when his longtime collaborator but fair-weather political friend, the diplomat Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand, suggested that Napoleon try to make those he conquered learn to love France, Napoleon replied that this was an irrelevance. “ Aimer : I don’t really know what this means when applied to politics,” he said. Still, if grand strategy and national interest lay behind foreign affairs, there were nevertheless personal rules of conduct to uphold. Talleyrand was a party to Napoleon’s strategy since supporting his coup d’état against the French Directory in 1799. That was O.K. And by short-selling securities he made millions for himself. But he was called out by Napoleon and dismissed as vice grand elector when found facing both ways politically at a crucial moment.

Napoleon understood those temptations because he was also flexible enough to tilt toward the winning side, regularly supporting any form of local religion that could help him militarily. Nonetheless, Roberts’s Napoleon is a soldier, statesman and “bona fide intellectual,” who rode his luck for longer than most intellectuals in politics ever do.

Testing himself against fate seems to have been his mantra. A relative outsider to the French elite, he forced his way up its ranks through ferocious hard work, making the best of his natural talents, particularly in mathematics and artillery. He was among the few selected for the prestigious École Militaire in Paris, and there he grasped every opportunity. He was a severe young man with little small talk. “His favorite entertainments were intellectual rather than social,” though he eventually cultivated a happy marriage with Josephine, only later to annul it for strategic reasons.

We are having trouble retrieving the article content.

Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and  log into  your Times account, or  subscribe  for all of The Times.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access.

Already a subscriber?  Log in .

Want all of The Times?  Subscribe .

• History Classics
• Your Profile
• Find History on Facebook (Opens in a new window)
• Find History on Twitter (Opens in a new window)
• Find History on YouTube (Opens in a new window)
• Find History on Instagram (Opens in a new window)
• Find History on TikTok (Opens in a new window)
• This Day In History
• History Podcasts
• History Vault

Napoleon Bonaparte

By: History.com Editors

Updated: April 24, 2023 | Original: November 9, 2009

Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821), also known as Napoleon I, was a French military leader and emperor who conquered much of Europe in the early 19th century. Born on the island of Corsica, Napoleon rapidly rose through the ranks of the military during the French Revolution (1789-1799). After seizing political power in France in a 1799 coup d’état, he crowned himself emperor in 1804. Shrewd, ambitious and a skilled military strategist, Napoleon successfully waged war against various coalitions of European nations and expanded his empire. However, after a disastrous French invasion of Russia in 1812, Napoleon abdicated the throne two years later and was exiled to the island of Elba. In 1815, he briefly returned to power in his Hundred Days campaign. After a crushing defeat at the Battle of Waterloo, he abdicated once again and was exiled to the remote island of Saint Helena, where he died at 51.

Napoleon’s Education and Early Military Career

Napoleon Bonaparte was born on August 15, 1769, in Ajaccio, on the Mediterranean island of Corsica. He was the second of eight surviving children born to Carlo Buonaparte (1746-1785), a lawyer, and Letizia Romalino Buonaparte (1750-1836). Although his parents were members of the minor Corsican nobility, the family was not wealthy. The year before Napoleon’s birth, France acquired Corsica from the city-state of Genoa, Italy. Napoleon later adopted a French spelling of his last name.

As a boy, Napoleon attended school in mainland France, where he learned the French language, and went on to graduate from a French military academy in 1785. He then became a second lieutenant in an artillery regiment of the French army. The French Revolution began in 1789, and within three years revolutionaries had overthrown the monarchy and proclaimed a French republic. During the early years of the revolution, Napoleon was largely on leave from the military and home in Corsica, where he became affiliated with the Jacobins, a pro-democracy political group. In 1793, following a clash with the nationalist Corsican governor, Pasquale Paoli (1725-1807), the Bonaparte family fled their native island for mainland France, where Napoleon returned to military duty.

In France, Napoleon became associated with Augustin Robespierre (1763-1794), the brother of revolutionary leader Maximilien Robespierre (1758-1794), a Jacobin who was a key force behind the Reign of Terror (1793-1794), a period of violence against enemies of the revolution. During this time, Napoleon was promoted to the rank of brigadier general in the army. However, after Robespierre fell from power and was guillotined (along with Augustin) in July 1794, Napoleon was briefly put under house arrest for his ties to the brothers.

In 1795, Napoleon helped suppress a royalist insurrection against the revolutionary government in Paris and was promoted to major general.

Did you know? In 1799, during Napoleon’s military campaign in Egypt, a French soldier named Pierre Francois Bouchard (1772-1832) discovered the Rosetta Stone. This artifact provided the key to cracking the code of Egyptian hieroglyphics, a written language that had been dead for almost 2,000 years.

Napoleon’s Rise to Power

Since 1792, France’s revolutionary government had been engaged in military conflicts with various European nations. In 1796, Napoleon commanded a French army that defeated the larger armies of Austria, one of his country’s primary rivals, in a series of battles in Italy. In 1797, France and Austria signed the Treaty of Campo Formio, resulting in territorial gains for the French.

The following year, the Directory, the five-person group that had governed France since 1795, offered to let Napoleon lead an invasion of England. Napoleon determined that France’s naval forces were not yet ready to go up against the superior British Royal Navy. Instead, he proposed an invasion of Egypt in an effort to wipe out British trade routes with India. Napoleon’s troops scored a victory against Egypt’s military rulers, the Mamluks, at the Battle of the Pyramids in July 1798; soon, however, his forces were stranded after his naval fleet was nearly decimated by the British at the Battle of the Nile in August 1798. In early 1799, Napoleon’s army launched an invasion of Ottoman Empire -ruled Syria , which ended with a failed siege of Acre, located in modern-day Israel . That summer, with the political situation in France marked by uncertainty, the ever-ambitious and cunning Napoleon opted to abandon his army in Egypt and return to France.

Napoleon’s Life—and Mysterious Death—in Exile

After his defeat at the Battle of Waterloo, the former emperor was placed in a 'wretched' home on a remote island.

The Personality Traits that Led to Napoleon Bonaparte’s Epic Downfall

Sex. Money. Class. You name the inferiority complex, and this thin‑skinned and deeply insecure French leader had it.

How Napoleon Plotted One of History’s Greatest Prison Breaks

The French emperor escaped his island prison in plain sight.

The Coup of 18 Brumaire

In November 1799, in an event known as the coup of 18 Brumaire, Napoleon was part of a group that successfully overthrew the French Directory.

The Directory was replaced with a three-member Consulate, and 5'7" Napoleon became first consul, making him France’s leading political figure. In June 1800, at the Battle of Marengo, Napoleon’s forces defeated one of France’s perennial enemies, the Austrians, and drove them out of Italy. The victory helped cement Napoleon’s power as first consul. Additionally, with the Treaty of Amiens in 1802, the war-weary British agreed to peace with the French (although the peace would only last for a year).

Napoleon worked to restore stability to post-revolutionary France. He centralized the government; instituted reforms in such areas as banking and education; supported science and the arts; and sought to improve relations between his regime and the pope (who represented France’s main religion, Catholicism), which had suffered during the revolution. One of his most significant accomplishments was the Napoleonic Code , which streamlined the French legal system and continues to form the foundation of French civil law to this day.

In 1802, a constitutional amendment made Napoleon first consul for life. Two years later, in 1804, he crowned himself emperor of France in a lavish ceremony at the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris.

Napoleon’s Marriages and Children

In 1796, Napoleon married Josephine de Beauharnais (1763-1814), a stylish widow six years his senior who had two teenage children. More than a decade later, in 1809, after Napoleon had no offspring of his own with Empress Josephine, he had their marriage annulled so he could find a new wife and produce an heir. In 1810, he wed Marie Louise (1791-1847), the daughter of the emperor of Austria. The following year, she gave birth to their son, Napoleon François Joseph Charles Bonaparte (1811-1832), who became known as Napoleon II and was given the title king of Rome. In addition to his son with Marie Louise, Napoleon had several illegitimate children.

The Reign of Napoleon I

From 1803 to 1815, France was engaged in the Napoleonic Wars, a series of major conflicts with various coalitions of European nations. In 1803, partly as a means to raise funds for future wars, Napoleon sold France’s Louisiana Territory in North America to the newly independent United States for $15 million, a transaction that later became known as the Louisiana Purchase .

In October 1805, the British wiped out Napoleon’s fleet at the Battle of Trafalgar . However, in December of that same year, Napoleon achieved what is considered to be one of his greatest victories at the Battle of Austerlitz, in which his army defeated the Austrians and Russians. The victory resulted in the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire and the creation of the Confederation of the Rhine.

Beginning in 1806, Napoleon sought to wage large-scale economic warfare against Britain with the establishment of the so-called Continental System of European port blockades against British trade. In 1807, following Napoleon’s defeat of the Russians at Friedland in Prussia, Alexander I (1777-1825) was forced to sign a peace settlement, the Treaty of Tilsit. In 1809, the French defeated the Austrians at the Battle of Wagram, resulting in further gains for Napoleon.

During these years, Napoleon reestablished a French aristocracy (eliminated in the French Revolution) and began handing out titles of nobility to his loyal friends and family as his empire continued to expand across much of western and central continental Europe.

Napoleon’s Downfall and First Abdication

In 1810, Russia withdrew from the Continental System. In retaliation, Napoleon led a massive army into Russia in the summer of 1812. Rather than engaging the French in a full-scale battle, the Russians adopted a strategy of retreating whenever Napoleon’s forces attempted to attack. As a result, Napoleon’s troops trekked deeper into Russia despite being ill-prepared for an extended campaign.

In September, both sides suffered heavy casualties in the indecisive Battle of Borodino. Napoleon’s forces marched on to Moscow, only to discover almost the entire population evacuated. Retreating Russians set fires across the city in an effort to deprive enemy troops of supplies. After waiting a month for a surrender that never came, Napoleon, faced with the onset of the Russian winter, was forced to order his starving, exhausted army out of Moscow. During the disastrous retreat, his army suffered continual harassment from a suddenly aggressive and merciless Russian army. Of Napoleon’s 600,000 troops who began the campaign, only an estimated 100,000 made it out of Russia.

At the same time as the catastrophic Russian invasion, French forces were engaged in the Peninsular War (1808-1814), which resulted in the Spanish and Portuguese, with assistance from the British, driving the French from the Iberian Peninsula. This loss was followed in 1813 by the Battle of Leipzig , also known as the Battle of Nations, in which Napoleon’s forces were defeated by a coalition that included Austrian, Prussian, Russian and Swedish troops. Napoleon then retreated to France, and in March 1814 coalition forces captured Paris.

On April 6, 1814, Napoleon, then in his mid-40s, was forced to abdicate the throne. With the Treaty of Fontainebleau, he was exiled to Elba, a Mediterranean island off the coast of Italy. He was given sovereignty over the small island, while his wife and son went to Austria.

HISTORY Vault: Napoleon Bonaparte: The Glory of France

Explore the extraordinary life and times of Napoleon Bonaparte, the great military genius who took France to unprecedented heights of power, and then brought it to its knees when his ego spun out of control.

Hundred Days Campaign and Battle of Waterloo

On February 26, 1815, after less than a year in exile, Napoleon escaped Elba and sailed to the French mainland with a group of more than 1,000 supporters. On March 20, he returned to Paris, where he was welcomed by cheering crowds. The new king, Louis XVIII (1755-1824), fled, and Napoleon began what came to be known as his Hundred Days campaign.

Upon Napoleon’s return to France, a coalition of allies–the Austrians, British, Prussians and Russians–who considered the French emperor an enemy began to prepare for war. Napoleon raised a new army and planned to strike preemptively, defeating the allied forces one by one before they could launch a united attack against him.

In June 1815, his forces invaded Belgium, where British and Prussian troops were stationed. On June 16, Napoleon’s troops defeated the Prussians at the Battle of Ligny. However, two days later, on June 18, at the Battle of Waterloo near Brussels, the French were crushed by the British, with assistance from the Prussians.

On June 22, 1815, Napoleon was once again forced to abdicate.

Napoleon’s Final Years

In October 1815, Napoleon was exiled to the remote, British-held island of Saint Helena, in the South Atlantic Ocean. He died there on May 5, 1821, at age 51, most likely from stomach cancer. (During his time in power, Napoleon often posed for paintings with his hand in his vest, leading to some speculation after his death that he had been plagued by stomach pain for years.) Napoleon was buried on the island despite his request to be laid to rest “on the banks of the Seine, among the French people I have loved so much.” In 1840, his remains were returned to France and entombed in a crypt at Les Invalides in Paris, where other French military leaders are interred.

Napoleon Bonaparte Quotes

• “The only way to lead people is to show them a future: a leader is a dealer in hope.”
• “Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.”
• “Envy is a declaration of inferiority.”
• “The reason most people fail instead of succeed is they trade what they want most for what they want at the moment.”
• “If you wish to be a success in the world, promise everything, deliver nothing.”

Sign up for Inside History

Get HISTORY’s most fascinating stories delivered to your inbox three times a week.

By submitting your information, you agree to receive emails from HISTORY and A+E Networks. You can opt out at any time. You must be 16 years or older and a resident of the United States.

More details : Privacy Notice | Terms of Use | Contact Us

Napoleon Bonaparte

French military general Napoleon Bonaparte crowned himself the first emperor of France in 1804. His Napoleonic Code remains a model for governments worldwide.

We may earn commission from links on this page, but we only recommend products we back.

Latest News: Napoleon Movie in Theaters Now

Napoleon has received some flack for its historical inaccuracies , such as showing the titular character shooting at pyramids. “If you want to really understand Napoleon, then you should probably do your own studying and reading,” Phoenix previously told Empire magazine . “Because if you see this film, it’s this experience told through Ridley’s eyes... What we were after was something that would capture the feeling of this man.”

Quick Facts

Early life and military education, how tall was napoleon, napoleon’s rise to power, wives: empress josephine and marie-louise, napoleonic code, napoleonic wars, exile on st. helena, death and tomb, napoleon movies, who was napoleon bonaparte.

French General Napoleon Bonaparte was one of the world’s greatest military leaders who became the first emperor of France, from 1804 to 1815. Born on the Mediterranean island of Corsica, he attended military schools in France and eventually embraced his adopted home. Bonaparte steadily rose to power in the tumult of the French Revolution before seizing power in a 1799 coup. He was elected consul for life in 1802, then proclaimed the French emperor two years later. As a political leader, Bonaparte broadly transformed French society, most notably ushering in the Napoleonic Code that still serves as the basis of civil codes around the world today. During the Napoleonic Wars, the famed military tactician expanded France’s footprint before a string of critical losses forced him into exile. Bonaparte spent the final years of his life on the remote island of St. Helena, where he died in 1821 at age 51.

FULL NAME: Napoleon Bonaparte BORN: August 15, 1769 DIED: May 5, 1821 BIRTHPLACE: Ajaccio, Corsica SPOUSES: Josephine de Beauharnais (1796-1809) and Archduchess Marie-Louise (1810-1821) CHILDREN: Charles, Alexandre, and Napoleon II ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Leo HEIGHT: 5 ft. 7 in.

Napoleon Bonaparte was born Napoleone Buonaparte in Ajaccio, on the French island of Corsica, on August 15, 1769. He was the fourth, and second surviving, child of Carlo Buonaparte, a lawyer, and his wife, Letizia Ramolino. Napoleon eventually had seven surviving siblings.

Around the time of Napoleon’s birth, the French’s occupation of Corsica had drawn considerable local resistance. Napoleon’s father had at first supported the nationalists, siding with their leader, Pasquale Paoli. But after Paoli was forced to flee the island, Carlo switched his allegiance to the French. After doing so, he was appointed assessor of the judicial district of Ajaccio in 1771, a plush job that eventually enabled him to enroll his two sons, Joseph and Napoleon, in France’s College d’Autun.

In 1779, young Napoleon began attending the military college of Brienne, where he studied for five years. He excelled as a student yet struggled to fit in with his classmates who were the children of French nobles and bullied Napoleon for being a foreigner.

At age 15, Napoleon moved on to the military academy in Paris. While Napoleon was still there, his father died of stomach cancer in 1785. This propelled Napoleon to take the reins as the head of the family. Graduating early from the military academy, Napoleon, now second lieutenant of artillery, returned to Corsica in 1786.

Back home, Napoleon got behind the Corsican resistance to the French occupation, siding with his father’s former ally, Pasquale Paoli. But the two soon had a falling out, and when a civil war in Corsica began in April 1793, Napoleon—now an enemy of Paoli—and his family relocated to France, where they assumed the French version of their name: Bonaparte.

Napoleon stood about 5 feet, 7 inches tall, making him slightly taller than the average Frenchman of his time.

Much has been made of Napoleon’s height, and legends claim that he was unusually short, giving rise to the term “Napoleon complex,” an inferiority complex sometimes associated with people of short stature. Some historians attribute the myths about Napoleon’s height to British propaganda.

Napoleon’s return to France began with a service with the French military, where he rejoined his regiment at Nice in June 1793. The turmoil of the French Revolution , which began four years prior, created opportunities for ambitious military leaders like Napoleon. The young leader quickly showed his support for the Jacobins, a far-left political movement and the most well-known and popular political club from the French Revolution.

A year after France was declared a republic, King Louis XVI was executed in January 1793. Ultimately, these acts led to the rise of Maximilien de Robespierre and what became, essentially, the dictatorship of the Committee of Public Safety. The years of 1793 and 1794 came to be known as the Reign of Terror , in which as many as 40,000 people were killed. Eventually, the Jacobins fell from power, and Robespierre was executed.

Trusted Military Leader

In 1795, the French revolutionary government known as the Directory took control of the country. Napoleon, who had previously fallen out of favor with Robespierre, came into the good graces of the Directory that same year after he saved the government from counter-revolutionary forces. For his efforts, Napoleon was soon named commander of the Army of the Interior. In addition, he was a trusted advisor to the Directory on military matters.

In 1796, Napoleon took the helm of the Army of Italy, a post he’d been coveting. The army—just 30,000 strong, disgruntled, and underfed—was soon turned around by the young military commander. Under his direction, the reinvigorated army won numerous crucial victories against the Austrians, greatly expanded the French empire, and squashed an internal threat by the royalists, who wished to return France to a monarchy. All of these successes helped make Napoleon the military’s brightest star.

Failed Egypt Campaign

On July 1, 1798, Napoleon and his army traveled to the Middle East to undermine Great Britain’s empire by occupying Egypt and disrupting English trade routes to India. But his military campaign proved disastrous: On August 1, Admiral Horatio Nelson’s fleet decimated Napoleon’s forces in the Battle of the Nile.

Napoleon’s image and that of France were greatly harmed by the loss, and in a show of newfound confidence against the commander, Britain, Austria, Russia, and Turkey formed a new coalition against France. In the spring of 1799, French armies were defeated in Italy, forcing France to give up much of the peninsula. That October, Napoleon returned to France as his troops continued fighting.

Coup of 18 Brumaire

Shortly after his return to France, Napoleon participated in an event known as the Coup of 18 Brumaire. The bloodless coup d’etat, heavily orchestrated by Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès, overthrew the newly Jacobin-controlled Directory on November 9, 1799. Napoleon and Sieyès ushered in a new government called the Consulate to be led by three members—themselves and Pierre-Roger Ducos. Napoleon’s brother Lucien Bonaparte also assisted the cause.

When Napoleon was named first consul, he became France’s leading political figure in a position that amounted to nothing less than a dictatorship. Under the new guidelines, the first consul was permitted to appoint ministers, generals, civil servants, magistrates, and even members of the legislative assemblies. Sieyès and Ducos were reduced to figureheads. In February 1800, the new constitution was easily accepted.

At the Battle of Marengo in June 1800, Napoleon’s forces defeated the Austrians and drove them from the Italian peninsula. This military victory cemented Napoleon’s authority as first consul.

Napoleon proceeded to transform France’s economy, legal and educational systems, and even the Church, as he reinstated Roman Catholicism as the state religion through the Concordat of 1801. He also negotiated a European peace, partially through the 1802 Treaty of Amiens that struck a (short-lived) truce with the war-weary British.

His reforms proved popular: In 1802, he was elected consul for life, and two years later, he was proclaimed emperor of France on May 18, 1804. He was officially crowned Napoleon I during his coronation at Notre Dame Cathedral on December 2 of that year.

As Napoleon was rising in the ranks, his personal life was also taking shape. He met Josephine de Beauharnais, the widow of General Alexandre de Beauharnais (guillotined during the Reign of Terror) and a mother of two children, at a party in 1795. He was quickly smitten and despite her initial reservations— Josephine described Napoleon as “altogether strange in all his person”—they married on March 9, 1796, in a civil ceremony.

Their union was tempestuous from the outset, with Napoleon’s military campaigns forcing him away from home for long periods. Although he often complimented Josephine in letters from the battlefield, both of them engaged in extramarital affairs. Napoleon had at least two children out of wedlock—Charles Léon Denuelle in 1806 and Alexandre Walewski in 1810.

Josephine was known for holding lavish parties and spending money on clothing and property, including the Malmaison estate near Paris in 1799. Despite their arguments, the two stayed together as Josephine maintained a positive perception among the public. When Napoleon crowned himself emperor in 1804, he insisted upon placing a crown upon Empress Josephine as well.

Despite his new title, not all was going to plan for Napoleon. He faced mounting pressure from his family to separate from Josephine, who was in her 40s by this point, because she was unable to give him a legitimate son and, thus, an heir. So in December 1809, Napoleon arranged for the annulment of their marriage.

Following the annulment, Napoleon searched in haste for a new bride. His first choice was Anna Pavlovna, the 15-year-old sister of Russian Tsar Alexander I. But after delays and excuses, he instead selected Archduchess Marie-Louise of Austria, 18, due largely to political motivations. Marie-Louise was the great-niece of Marie Antoinette . She dreaded the idea , writing in her diary that just looking at Napoleon would be the “worst form of torture.” However, she complied and married Napoleon by proxy in a civil ceremony in March 1810.

Marie-Louise gave Napoleon the heir he desired, as the couple had a son—Napoleon II, King of Rome—on March 20, 1811.

Despite his marriage to Marie-Louise, Napoleon continued his correspondence with Josephine and made unannounced personal visits to Malmaison. In 1813, he even brought his young son to meet her, as their struggle to produce an heir “had cost her so many tears.” This stoked jealousy in Marie-Louise, who remained married to Napoleon until his death.

Continuing the societal reforms he made, Napoleon instituted the Napoleonic Code, otherwise known as the French Civil Code, on March 21, 1804. The sweeping set of laws ended the feudal system and addressed property rights, family law, and individual freedoms. It forbade privileges based on birth, declaring all men to be equal and stating that government jobs must be given to the most qualified. Men were entitled to religious freedom and placed in charge of the women and children in their families. Women were largely left without rights, though they did have limited liberties in divorce proceedings.

The Napoleonic Code applied in France and its growing number of territories. Napoleon correctly predicted that his code, more so than his many military victories, would have a lasting legacy. Parts of it are still in use around the world today. The terms of the code are the main basis for many other countries’ civil codes throughout Europe and North America.

The Napoleonic Wars were a series of European wars lasting from 1803 to Napoleon’s permanent abdication of power in 1815.

In 1803, in part to raise funds for war, France sold its North American Louisiana Territory to the United States for $15 million, a transaction known as the Louisiana Purchase . Napoleon then returned to war with Britain, Russia, and Austria.

In 1805, the British registered an important naval victory against France at the Battle of Trafalgar , which led Napoleon to scrap his plans to invade England. Instead, he set his sights on Austria and Russia, beating back both militaries in the Battle of Austerlitz.

Other victories soon followed, allowing Napoleon to greatly expand the French empire and paving the way for loyalists to his government—including his brothers and other family members—to be installed in Holland, Italy, Naples, Sweden, Spain, and Westphalia.

Invasion of Russia

In 1812, France was devastated when Napoleon’s invasion of Russia turned out to be a colossal failure—and the beginning of the end for Napoleon. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers in Napoleon’s Grand Army were killed or badly wounded: Out of an original fighting force of some 600,000 men, just 10,000 soldiers were still fit for battle.

News of the defeat reinvigorated Napoleon’s enemies, both inside and outside of France. Some attempted a failed coup while Napoleon led his charge against Russia and as the British began to advance through French territories. With international pressure mounting and his government lacking the resources to fight back against his enemies, Napoleon surrendered to allied forces on March 30, 1814.

First Exile

About a week later, on April 6, Napoleon was forced to abdicate power and went into exile on the island of Elba off the Italian coast in the Mediterranean Sea. His exile didn’t last long, as he watched France stumbled forward without him.

In March 1815, Napoleon escaped the island and quickly made his way back to Paris. King Louis XVIII fled, and Napoleon triumphantly returned to power. But the enthusiasm that greeted Napoleon when he resumed control of the government soon gave way to old frustrations and fears about his leadership.

On June 16, 1815, Napoleon led French troops into Belgium and defeated the Prussians; two days later, he was defeated by the British, reinforced by Prussian fighters, at the Battle of Waterloo .

It was a humiliating loss, and on June 22, 1815, Napoleon abdicated his powers for good. In an effort to prolong his dynasty, he pushed to have his young son, Napoleon II, named emperor, but the coalition rejected the offer.

After Napoleon’s abdication from power in 1815, fearing a repeat of his earlier return from exile on Elba, the British government sent Napoleon to the remote island of St. Helena in the southern Atlantic Ocean. He lived there for the rest of his life.

For the most part, Napoleon was free to do as he pleased at his new home. He had leisurely mornings, wrote often, and read a lot. But the tedious routine of life soon got to him, and he often shut himself indoors.

According to historian Kate Williams’ 2014 book Ambition and Desire: The Dangerous Life of Josephine Bonaparte , Napoleon continued to show great affection for his ex-wife , who died of pneumonia at her Malmaison estate in May 1814. He had portraits of Josephine placed throughout his residence and even ate off plates with her likeness on them.

Starting in 1817, Napoleon’s health began to deteriorate. In early 1821, he was bedridden and growing weaker by the day. That April, he dictated his last will: “I wish my ashes to rest on the banks of the Seine, in the midst of that French people which I have loved so much. I die before my time, killed by the English oligarchy and its hired assassins.”

Napoleon died on May 5, 1821, on the island of St. Helena at age 51. Allegedly, he uttered his ex-wife Josephine’s name as his final word.

During his final weeks, he experienced symptoms such as vomiting, incessant hiccups, and blood clots. Physicians who conducted his autopsy ruled stomach cancer, exacerbated by bleeding gastric ulcers, as the cause of Napoleon’s death. According to PBS News Hour , Napoleon’s cancer was in an advanced state, and his family history of gastric carcinomas supported the autopsy results.

However, researchers have posited alternative theories regarding his demise. In 1961, Swedish dentist Sten Forshufvud and Drs. Hamilton Smith and Anders Wassen analyzed a sample of his hair and published an article suggesting he might have died from arsenic poisoning. Although other experts have rebuffed this theory, it has led to conspiracies surrounding Napoleon’s death.

Despite what he requested in his last will, Napoleon was initially buried on St. Helena on May 9, 1821, in the Geranium Valley, now known as the Valley of the Tomb. In 1840, he was exhumed by order of French King Louis-Phillippe , and Bonaparte’s remains were transferred back to mainland France, arriving on December 15 .

Napoleon’s tomb is located in Paris in the Dôme des Invalides . Originally a royal chapel built between 1677 and 1706, the Invalides were turned into a military pantheon under Napoleon’s reign. In addition to Napoleon Bonaparte, several other French notables are buried there, including: Napoleon II, the King of Rome and Napoleon’s son; Napoleon’s brothers Joseph and Jérôme Bonaparte; Generals Henri-Gratien Bertrand and Géraud-Christophe-Michel Duroc; and the French Marshals Ferdinand Foch and Hubert Lyautey.

Not surprising given his place in world history, Napoleon has appeared on the big screen many times with depictions ranging from purposefully humorous to based in realism.

Marlon Brando and Dennis Hopper were cast as Bonaparte in the 1950s movies Désirée (1954) and The Story of Mankind (1957), respectively. The general also appears in films such as Waterloo (1970), Time Bandits (1981), and The Count of Monte Cristo (2002).

In terms of more fantastical portrayals, Napoleon is a character in the 1989 cult comedy Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, in which the title characters played by Alex Winter and Keanu Reeves decide to abduct historical figures for their high school project through the use of time travel. He also appears as an antagonist in the 2009 sequel Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian .

In 2023, director Ridley Scott helmed a new biopic simply titled Napoleon that released in theaters on November 22. The movie stars Joaquin Phoenix as the French emperor and Vanessa Kirby as Josephine and focuses heavily on their tumultuous relationship. Napoleon marked a reunion for Phoenix and Scott, who worked on the 2000 classic Gladiator also starring Russell Crowe .

• I am never angry when contradicted; I seek to be enlightened.
• I wish my ashes to rest on the banks of the Seine, in the midst of that French people which I have loved so much. I die before my time, killed by the English oligarchy and its hired assassins.
• A revolution is an idea which has found its bayonets.
• A great people may be killed, but they will not be intimidated.
• He who fears being conquered is certain of defeat.
• Love does more harm than good.
• A man is not dependent upon his fellow creature, when he does not fear death.
• It is the cause, and not the death that makes the martyr.
• Even when I am gone, I shall remain in people’s minds the star of their rights, my name will be the war cry of their efforts, the motto of their hopes.
• Men of genius are meteors, intended to burn to light their century.
• Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever.
• In choosing a wife, a man does not renounce his mother, and still less is he justified with breaking her heart.

Fact Check: We strive for accuracy and fairness. If you see something that doesn’t look right, contact us !

The Biography.com staff is a team of people-obsessed and news-hungry editors with decades of collective experience. We have worked as daily newspaper reporters, major national magazine editors, and as editors-in-chief of regional media publications. Among our ranks are book authors and award-winning journalists. Our staff also works with freelance writers, researchers, and other contributors to produce the smart, compelling profiles and articles you see on our site. To meet the team, visit our About Us page: https://www.biography.com/about/a43602329/about-us

Tyler Piccotti first joined the Biography.com staff as an Associate News Editor in February 2023, and before that worked almost eight years as a newspaper reporter and copy editor. He is a graduate of Syracuse University. When he's not writing and researching his next story, you can find him at the nearest amusement park, catching the latest movie, or cheering on his favorite sports teams.

Julius Caesar

Queen Elizabeth II

Marcus Aurelius

Pontius Pilate

Maria Theresa

Alexander the Great

Nicholas II

Kaiser Wilhelm

Kublai Khan

Bonnie and Tom McCloskey Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University

Lehrman Institute Distinguished Fellow at the New-York Historical Society

Visiting Professor at the War Studies Department at King’s College, London

Join the mailing list

Andrew Roberts, British historian, British history writer, Masters and Commanders, A History of the English Speaking Peoples since 1900

Lord Roberts of Belgravia

Napoleon: A Life

Buy from Amazon Look on Penguin

Winner of the Grand Prix of the Fondation Napoleon 2014 Los Angeles Times Biography Prize 2014

The definitive biography of the great soldier-statesman by the New York Times bestselling author of The Storm of War

Austerlitz, Borodino, Waterloo: his battles are among the greatest in history, but Napoleon Bonaparte was far more than a military genius and astute leader of men. Like George Washington and his own hero Julius Caesar, he was one of the greatest soldier-statesmen of all times.

Andrew Roberts’s Napoleon is the first one-volume biography to take advantage of the recent publication of Napoleon’s thirty-three thousand letters, which radically transform our understanding of his character and motivation. At last we see him as he was: protean multitasker, decisive, surprisingly willing to forgive his enemies and his errant wife Josephine. Like Churchill, he understood the strategic importance of telling his own story, and his memoirs, dictated from exile on St. Helena, became the single bestselling book of the nineteenth century.

An award-winning historian, Roberts traveled to fifty-three of Napoleon’s sixty battle sites, discovered crucial new documents in archives, and even made the long trip by boat to St. Helena. He is as acute in his understanding of politics as he is of military history. Here at last is a biography worthy of its subject: magisterial, insightful, beautifully written, by one of our foremost historians.

Publisher’s tip sheet

Complete Bibliography

Website contents copyright © Andrew Roberts 2018

• Follow Us On Twitter
• Like Us On Facebook

What We Reading

Find Your Next Great Read

• Non-Fiction

7 Of The Best Books On Napoleon Bonaparte

“Imagination rules the world.”

When it comes to the greatest military leaders in history, few names come close to matching the legacy of Napoleon Bonaparte. Having risen through the ranks as a military genius during the French Revolution, his authoritarian rule as First Consul and then as Emperor led to many cultural and political reforms that helped establish Europe’s contemporary history, and his fast-paced stunning tactics continue to fascinate military schools and historians to this day. From his humble beginnings in Corsica, his expeditions to Egypt, smashing victories at Austerlitz and Wagram, his doomed invasion of Russia to his final defeat and exile following Waterloo, books on Napoleon help us put his achievements into perspective, understand his character and appreciate his legacy on history. Join us today at What We Reading as we present the best Napoleon books and biographies that capture all there is to know about the French emperor (who was definitely average height for the time). 

Napoleon: A Life – Andrew Roberts 

First up on our list of the best books on Napoleon is Andrew Roberts’ definitive biography of the French emperor. From Austerlitz to Waterloo, Napoleon: A Life was the first single-volume biography on Napoleon to make use of the thirty-three thousand letters published by the man himself, completely warping our understanding of his character and motivations. Dictated during his years of exile on St. Helena, these letters show Napoleon to be far more decisive, strategic and forgiving than many readers would likely assume. 

Roberts, an award-winning historian, travelled to fifty-three of Napoleon’s sixty battle sites, uncovered crucial new material in archives and even visited St. Helena personally to paint one of the most compelling portraits of Napoleon. Acute just as much in his political knowledge as he is with his military history, A Life is undoubtedly the most insightful, fascinating and comprehensive Napoleon books ever written. 

Napoleon: The Man Behind The Myth – Adam Zamoyski 

In his 2018 biography, Napoleon: The Man Behind the Myth , Adam Zamoyski makes use of original European sources to take readers beyond the myths surrounding France’s First Consul. Rather than the conflicting views that surround Napoleon ranging from being a god-like genius to a crackpot nasty little dictator , Zamoyski’s landmark work shows that he was instead a rather ordinary individual, capable of flashes that lean into all of these personalities. 

By stripping away the prejudices, The Man Behind the Myth is a book on Napoleon that firmly puts the emperor in the context of his time. From a range of European sources in several different languages, Zamoyski’s book is one of struggle, ambition, conflict and self-interest, examining how a boy from Corsica became ‘Napoleon’. He documents how Napoleon was able to achieve what he did, and how he managed to undo it all. Rather than painting Napoleon as either a genius, romantic or a butcher, Zamoyski expertly attempts to understand Napoleon and his incredible trajectory. 

Napoleon In Egypt – Paul Strathern 

Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt was the first attack from the West on the Middle East in modern history. And, in his acclaimed book on Napoleon, Paul Stathern offers readers a rich and compelling account of a mission fuelled by a quest for riches and glory, and how it ended in disaster. 

Napoleon in Egypt documents the 335 ships, 40,000 soldiers and an array of scholars, artists, scientists and inventors that followed Napoleon on his mission to establish an Eastern empire akin to his hero, Alexander the Great. Yet, this ‘liberation’ effort would soon descend into endless desert marches in the shadows of the pyramids, being hounded by a Muslim army led by the infamous Murad Bey. Not only one of the best Napoleon books for capturing the unquenchable ambition, heroic romanticism and slice of madness that personified all of his efforts, Strathern’s work also shows the significance of Napoleon’s campaign in Egypt in bridging Eastern and Western cultures and broadening, translating hieroglyphics and modern Egyptology. 

The Illustrious Dead: The Terrifying Story Of How Typhus Killed Napoleon’s Greatest Army – Stephen Talty 

In the spring of 1812, Napoleon Bonaparte was at the height of his powers. Forty-five million people called him ‘emperor’ and he led the most cultured and advanced nation on Earth. No army on the continent could match his masterfully trained forces, leading to him turning his attention towards Russia. He assembled the largest army ever seen in human history, and his continued sweep across Europe seemed like an inevitability. 

Yet, even as the disorganised Russians dispersed around him, Napoleon’s invading force would find itself continually picked off by an invisible assailant. The emperor’s fabled brilliance appeared useless as the once all-conquering march descended into a hellish retreat for survival. No list of Napoleon books would be complete without an examination of the infamous invasion of Russia, and Stephen Talty presents a unique take on the tale by going beyond the bloody battlefields and into the ordinary lives of the soldiers present, and the ghastly pathogens that have a hidden role in history. 

Napoleon: A Political Life – Steven Englund 

If you’re looking for a book about Napoleon that focuses more on his enduring political legacy rather than all of his fabled military adventures, Steven Englund has you covered with his famous work, Napoleon: A Political Life . 

This sophisticated biography may not be the best reading for a newcomer to all things Bonaparte, but it does do an excellent job of analysing one of Europe’s most famous generals. From his Corsican upbringing, his French education, his acts of reform as First Consul, his more controversial record as Emperor, all the way to his exile and death, A Political Life is one of the best books for understanding the power Napoleon held, and why he continues to fascinate even to this day. 

The Invisible Emperor: Napoleon On Elba – Mark Braude 

One of the most overlooked parts of Napoleon’s remarkable life was the emperor’s ten-month-long exile on the small island of Elba. But, in Mark Braude’s The Invisible Emperor , readers get a fascinating look at how the most powerful man on the planet turned defeat into one final challenge. 

A jaw-dropping drama mixed with a close character study, The Invisible Emperor presents a different side to Napoleon Bonaparte – as a heartbroken husband, civil engineer, interior designer, decorator, gardener and even spymaster. It also chronicles his efforts to turn two of his greatest enemies into close confidants, build a miniature island empire and famously hatch a plan to return to France without ever firing a single shot. 

Waterloo: The True Story Of Four Days, Three Armies And Three Battles – Bernard Cornwell 

Bestselling historian Bernard Cornwell offers one of the most fascinating books on Napoleon and the Napoleonic Wars in his 2014 work. Already renowned for his ability to bring history to life through his vivid storytelling, Waterloo: The True Story of Four Days, Three Armies and Three Battles is everything you need to know about a campaign that forever altered the course of European history. 

Through the lens of the British, Prussian and French armies amassed across the campaign, Cornwell delves into the heroism and tragedies of what it was truly like to be a soldier fighting at the scene of Waterloo. Pitting two of the greatest military minds on the continent against each other, Cornwell’s combination of gritty descriptions and meticulously researched details make this the definitive account of what would prove to be Napoleon’s final defeat. 

Part-time reader, part-time rambler, and full-time Horror enthusiast, James has been writing for What We Reading since 2022. His earliest reading memories involved Historical Fiction, Fantasy and Horror tales, which he has continued to take with him to this day. James’ favourite books include The Last (Hanna Jameson), The Troop (Nick Cutter) and Chasing The Boogeyman (Richard Chizmar).

Related Posts

6 Of The Best Books About The Gulf War

9 Books To Read If You Love A Brief History Of Time

• History & Society
• Science & Tech
• Biographies
• Animals & Nature
• Geography & Travel
• Arts & Culture
• Games & Quizzes
• On This Day
• One Good Fact
• New Articles
• Lifestyles & Social Issues
• Philosophy & Religion
• Politics, Law & Government
• World History
• Health & Medicine
• Browse Biographies
• Birds, Reptiles & Other Vertebrates
• Bugs, Mollusks & Other Invertebrates
• Environment
• Fossils & Geologic Time
• Entertainment & Pop Culture
• Sports & Recreation
• Visual Arts
• Demystified
• Image Galleries
• Infographics
• Top Questions
• Britannica Kids
• Saving Earth
• Space Next 50
• Student Center
• Introduction & Top Questions

Early life and education

The jacobin years.

• The Directory
• Consolidation of power
• Program of reforms
• Military campaigns and uneasy peace
• Founding the empire
• War with Britain
• Blockade and the peninsular campaign
• Consolidation of empire
• Disaster in Russia and its aftermath
• Downfall and abdication
• Elba and the Hundred Days
• Exile on St. Helena
• The Napoleonic legend

Who was Napoleon?

How did napoleon become emperor of france, what did napoleon accomplish, what happened to napoleon, was napoleon short.

Our editors will review what you’ve submitted and determine whether to revise the article.

• Warfare History Network - Napoleon Bonaparte and The 1812 Battle of Borodino
• Humanities LibreTexts - Napoleon
• JewishEncyclopedia.com - Biography of Napoleon Bonaparte
• Live Science - Who was Napoleon Bonaparte?
• HistoryNet - Napoleon Bonaparte
• The Ohio State University - ehistory - Napoleon Bonaparte
• Jewish Virtual Library - Biography of Napoleon Bonaparte
• Napoleon - Children's Encyclopedia (Ages 8-11)
• Napoleon I - Student Encyclopedia (Ages 11 and up)
• Table Of Contents

Napoleon I, also called Napoléon Bonaparte, was a French military general and statesman. Napoleon played a key role in the French Revolution (1789–99), served as first consul of France (1799–1804), and was the first emperor of France (1804–14/15). Today Napoleon is widely considered one of the greatest military generals in history.

Napoleon first seized political power in a coup d’état in 1799. The coup resulted in the replacement of the extant governing body—a five-member Directory —by a three-person Consulate . The first consul, Napoleon, had all the real power; the other two consuls were figureheads. Napoleon eventually abolished the Consulate and declared himself Emperor Napoleon I of France.

Napoleon served as first consul of France from 1799 to 1804. In that time, Napoleon reformed the French educational system, developed a civil code (the Napoleonic Code ), and negotiated the Concordat of 1801 . He also initiated the Napoleonic Wars (c. 1801–15), a series of wars that carried over into his reign as emperor of France (1804–14/15). As Emperor Napoleon I, he modernized the French military.

After a series of military defeats in 1812–13, Napoleon was forced to abdicate the French throne on April 6, 1814. Napoleon returned to power in early 1815 but was again ousted on June 22, 1815. In October 1815 Napoleon was exiled to the remote island of St. Helena in the South Atlantic Ocean, where he remained until he died on May 5, 1821, at age 51.

No! “Le Petit Caporal” wasn’t petite—at least not by 19th-century standards. The estimated average height of a French man in 1820 was 5 feet 4 inches (about 1.65 meters). At the time of his death in 1821, Napoleon measured about 5 feet 7 inches (roughly 1.68 meters) tall, meaning that he was actually of above-average height.

Recent News

Napoleon I (born August 15, 1769, Ajaccio, Corsica—died May 5, 1821, St. Helena Island ) was a French general , first consul (1799–1804), and emperor of the French (1804–1814/15), one of the most celebrated personages in the history of the West. He revolutionized military organization and training; sponsored the Napoleonic Code , the prototype of later civil-law codes; reorganized education; and established the long-lived Concordat with the papacy.

(See “Napoleon’s Major Battles” Interactive Map)

Napoleon’s many reforms left a lasting mark on the institutions of France and of much of western Europe . But his driving passion was the military expansion of French dominion, and, though at his fall he left France little larger than it had been at the outbreak of the Revolution in 1789, he was almost unanimously revered during his lifetime and until the end of the Second Empire under his nephew Napoleon III as one of history’s great heroes.

Napoleon was born on Corsica shortly after the island’s cession to France by the Genoese. He was the fourth, and second surviving, child of Carlo Buonaparte , a lawyer, and his wife, Letizia Ramolino. His father’s family, of ancient Tuscan nobility, had emigrated to Corsica in the 16th century.

Carlo Buonaparte had married the beautiful and strong-willed Letizia when she was only 14 years old; they eventually had eight children to bring up in very difficult times. The French occupation of their native country was resisted by a number of Corsicans led by Pasquale Paoli . Carlo Buonaparte joined Paoli’s party, but, when Paoli had to flee, Buonaparte came to terms with the French. Winning the protection of the governor of Corsica, he was appointed assessor for the judicial district of Ajaccio in 1771. In 1778 he obtained the admission of his two eldest sons, Joseph and Napoleon, to the Collège d’Autun.

A Corsican by birth, heredity, and childhood associations, Napoleon continued for some time after his arrival in Continental France to regard himself a foreigner; yet from age nine he was educated in France as other Frenchmen were. While the tendency to see in Napoleon a reincarnation of some 14th-century Italian condottiere is an overemphasis on one aspect of his character, he did, in fact, share neither the traditions nor the prejudices of his new country: remaining a Corsican in temperament, he was first and foremost, through both his education and his reading, a man of the 18th century.

Napoleon was educated at three schools: briefly at Autun , for five years at the military college of Brienne, and finally for one year at the military academy in Paris. It was during Napoleon’s year in Paris that his father died of a stomach cancer in February 1785, leaving his family in straitened circumstances. Napoleon, although not the eldest son, assumed the position of head of the family before he was 16. In September he graduated from the military academy, ranking 42nd in a class of 58.

He was made second lieutenant of artillery in the regiment of La Fère, a kind of training school for young artillery officers. Garrisoned at Valence , Napoleon continued his education, reading much, in particular works on strategy and tactics. He also wrote Lettres sur la Corse (“Letters on Corsica”), in which he reveals his feeling for his native island. He went back to Corsica in September 1786 and did not rejoin his regiment until June 1788. By that time the agitation that was to culminate in the French Revolution had already begun. A reader of Voltaire and of Rousseau , Napoleon believed that a political change was imperative , but, as a career officer, he seems not to have seen any need for radical social reforms.

The Revolutionary period

When in 1789 the National Assembly , which had convened to establish a constitutional monarchy , allowed Paoli to return to Corsica, Napoleon asked for leave and in September joined Paoli’s group. But Paoli had no sympathy for the young man, whose father had deserted his cause and whom he considered to be a foreigner. Disappointed, Napoleon returned to France, and in April 1791 he was appointed first lieutenant to the 4th regiment of artillery, garrisoned at Valence. He at once joined the Jacobin Club , a debating society initially favouring a constitutional monarchy, and soon became its president, making speeches against nobles, monks, and bishops. In September 1791 he got leave to go back to Corsica again for three months. Elected lieutenant colonel in the national guard, he soon fell out with Paoli, its commander in chief. When he failed to return to France, he was listed as a deserter in January 1792. But in April France declared war against Austria , and his offense was forgiven.

Apparently through patronage, Napoleon was promoted to the rank of captain but did not rejoin his regiment. Instead he returned to Corsica in October 1792, where Paoli was exercising dictatorial powers and preparing to separate Corsica from France. Napoleon, however, joined the Corsican Jacobins, who opposed Paoli’s policy. When civil war broke out in Corsica in April 1793, Paoli had the Buonaparte family condemned to “perpetual execration and infamy,” whereupon they all fled to France.

Napoleon Bonaparte, as he may henceforth be called (though the family did not drop the spelling Buonaparte until after 1796), rejoined his regiment at Nice in June 1793. In his Le Souper de Beaucaire ( Supper at Beaucaire ), written at this time, he argued vigorously for united action by all republicans rallied round the Jacobins, who were becoming progressively more radical, and the National Convention , the Revolutionary assembly that in the preceding fall had abolished the monarchy.

At the end of August 1793, the National Convention’s troops had taken Marseille but were halted before Toulon , where the royalists had called in British forces. With the commander of the National Convention’s artillery wounded , Bonaparte got the post through the commissioner to the army, Antoine Saliceti, who was a Corsican deputy and a friend of Napoleon’s family. Bonaparte was promoted to major in September and adjutant general in October. He received a bayonet wound on December 16, but on the next day the British troops, harassed by his artillery, evacuated Toulon. On December 22 Bonaparte, age 24, was promoted to brigadier general in recognition of his decisive part in the capture of the town.

Augustin de Robespierre, the commissioner to the army, wrote to his brother Maximilien , by then virtual head of the government and one of the leading figures of the Reign of Terror , praising the “transcendent merit” of the young republican officer. In February 1794 Bonaparte was appointed commandant of the artillery in the French Army of Italy . Robespierre fell from power in Paris on 9 Thermidor, year II (July 27, 1794). When the news reached Nice, Bonaparte, regarded as a protégé of Robespierre, was arrested on a charge of conspiracy and treason. He was freed in September but was not restored to his command.

The following March he refused an offer to command the artillery in the Army of the West , which was fighting the counterrevolution in the Vendée . The post seemed to hold no future for him, and he went to Paris to justify himself. Life was difficult on half pay, especially as he was carrying on an affair with Désirée Clary, daughter of a rich Marseille businessman and sister of Julie, the bride of his elder brother, Joseph. Despite his efforts in Paris, Napoleon was unable to obtain a satisfactory command, because he was feared for his intense ambition and for his relations with the Montagnards , the more radical members of the National Convention . He then considered offering his services to the sultan of Turkey .

MOVING SALE — Save 50% Off Select Books This Month

A Political Life

Steven Englund

Harvard University Press books are not shipped directly to India due to regional distribution arrangements. Buy from your local bookstore, Amazon.co.in, or Flipkart.com.

This book is not shipped directly to country due to regional distribution arrangements.

Pre-order for this book isn't available yet on our website.

This book is currently out of stock.

Edit shipping location

Dropdown items

• Barnes and Noble
• Bookshop.org
• Waterstones

ISBN 9780674018037

Publication date: 04/30/2005

Winner of the J. Russell Major Prize, American Historical Association Best Book on the First Empire by a Foreigner, Napoleon Foundation

“Englund has written a most distinguished book recounting Bonaparte’s life with clarity and ease…This magnificent book tells us much that we did not know and gives us a great deal to think about.”—Douglas Johnson, Los Angeles Times Book Review

“Englund, in his lively biography…seeks less to rehabilitate Napoleon’s reputation and legacy than to provide readers with a fuller view of the man and his actions.”—Paula Friedman, New York Times

“ Napoleon: A Political Life is a veritable tour de force : the general reader will enjoy it immensely, and learn a great deal from it. But the book also has much to offer historians of modern France.”—Sudhir Hazareesingh, Times Literary Supplement

“Englund’s incisive forays into political theory don’t diminish the force of his narrative, which impressively conveys the epochal changes confronting both France and Europe…A strikingly argued biography.”—Matthew Price, Washington Post

This sophisticated and masterful biography brings new and remarkable analysis to the study of modern history’s most famous general and statesman. As Englund charts Napoleon’s dramatic rise and fall—from his Corsican boyhood, his French education, his astonishing military victories and no less astonishing acts of reform as First Consul (1799–1804) to his controversial record as Emperor and, finally, to his exile and death—he explores the unprecedented power Napoleon maintains over the popular imagination.

Englund’s book feature[s] brilliantly pyrotechnic prose and a keen appreciation of Napoleon’s political instincts. —David A. Bell, The Nation

Englund has written a most distinguished book recounting Bonaparte’s life with clarity and ease… This magnificent book tells us much that we did not know and gives us a great deal to think about. —Douglas Johnson, Los Angeles Times Book Review

Englund, in his lively biography…seeks less to rehabilitate Napoleon’s reputation and legacy than to provide readers with a fuller view of the man and his actions. —Paula Friedman, New York Times

Napoleon: A Political Life is a veritable tour de force : the general reader will enjoy it immensely, and learn a great deal from it. But the book also has much to offer historians of modern France. —Sudhir Hazareesingh, Times Literary Supplement

Englund’s incisive forays into political theory don’t diminish the force of his narrative, which impressively conveys the epochal changes confronting both France and Europe… A strikingly argued biography. —Matthew Price, Washington Post

Englund’s luminous prose, and, yes, his romanticism, allow him to appreciate a quality that was central to Napoleonic experience, but which has virtually disappeared from contemporary political life, namely, grandeur… By far the best biography currently available. —David A. Bell, The New Republic

Napoleon Bonaparte (1769–1821) has inspired countless films, plays and books—five biographies since 1997 alone. This one is a marvelous read, all 575 pages of it, even if you’re not a historian. As a political biography, it looks at the man’s motives rather than at the details of his battles… This is a sophisticated, often witty biography. Englund sweeps across a brilliantly crowded canvas with clarity and dash, and he enriches his own fine writing with Napoleon’s pithy aphorisms and the tart remarks of his contemporaries. —Barbara Black, Montreal Gazette

It is Napoleon’s politics, not explicitly his battles, that interest this biographer, who subtitles his study A Political Life … His is no narrow study of how those in politics operate, hang on to power, or scratch each others’ backs… All things considered, this is the best of the recent crop of Napoleonic biographies. —David P. Jordan, Journal of Modern History

• Steven Englund is a scholar of French history.

Book Details

• 6 x 9 inches
• Harvard University Press

Recommendations

Admiral Bill Halsey

Commander of All Lincoln’s Armies

To Save and to Destroy

Democratic Elitism

A Fractured Liberation

Sorry, there was an error adding the item to your shopping bag.

Expired session

Sorry, your session has expired. Please refresh your browser's tab.

Main navigation

An item has been added to the cart

Added to shopping bag

• Copy to clipboard

Set your location

It looks like you're in   . Would you like to update your location?

Unavailable

Harvard University Press titles are not shipped directly to India due to local distribution arrangements.

Unavailable in country .

Shopping Bag

Your shopping bag is currently empty. Add items to your shopping bag, to complete check out.

Napoleon Bonaparte

Server costs fundraiser 2024.

Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821) was a Corsican-born French general and politician who reigned as Emperor of the French with the regnal name Napoleon I from 1804 to 1814 and then again briefly in 1815. He established the largest continental European empire since Charlemagne and brought liberal reforms to the lands he conquered at the cost of the destructive Napoleonic Wars (1803-1815).

Born to a family of minor Corsican nobility, Napoleon rose to prominence in the French army during the French Revolutionary Wars (1792-1802), leading military campaigns in Italy and Egypt . He seized control of the French Republic in the Coup of 18 Brumaire of 1799 and crowned himself Emperor of the French in 1804. Napoleon and his famed Grande Armée fought against several coalitions of European powers; by the time of the Treaties of Tilsit of July 1807, his authority covered most of Western and Central Europe .

However, after the disastrous failure of Napoleon's invasion of Russia in 1812, most of Europe turned against him. He was defeated and exiled to the Mediterranean island of Elba in April 1814, only to make a triumphant return to France the following year, beginning the period of his second reign known as the Hundred Days . He was soon defeated once again at the Battle of Waterloo (18 June 1815), after which he was exiled for a final time to the island of St. Helena in the South Atlantic, where he died on 5 May 1821.

Napoleon is best remembered for his military career, over the course of which he fought 60 battles and lost only seven. His military innovations changed European warfare ; he utilized conscription, popularized the implementation of corps as an army's largest unit, and pioneered certain military tactics that have been studied ever since. He is often ranked alongside Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar as one of history's most brilliant generals. He also implemented a set of civil laws, best known as the Napoleonic Code, that was adopted throughout much of continental Europe and influenced the judicial systems of many modern nations. Alternatively viewed as a reformer and an autocrat, a warmonger and a defender of liberties, Napoleon enjoys a controversial reputation but remains one of Western history's best-known figures.

The future French emperor was born Napoleone di Buonaparte in Ajaccio, Corsica, on 15 August 1769. The Buonaparte family had originated in Italy before emigrating to Corsica in 1529, where they established themselves amongst the minor nobility; Napoleon's father, Carlo Buonaparte, was a lawyer, prosperous enough to own the three-story Casa Bonaparte in Ajaccio as well as a countryside house, a vineyard, and a flock of sheep. Napoleon was the second surviving child of Carlo and Maria-Letizia Bonaparte; he had an older brother, Joseph, and younger siblings Lucien, Elisa, Louis, Pauline, Caroline, and Jerôme.

For centuries, Corsica had been controlled by the Republic of Genoa but allowed to effectively govern itself. However, in 1768, Genoa sold Corsica to the Kingdom of France, which was interested in a more direct administration style. This was met with resistance, and an initial French expeditionary force was checked by a group of Corsican freedom fighters led by the charismatic Pasquale Paoli. At the decisive Battle of Ponte Novu in May 1769, the French defeated Paoli's Corsicans, who were forced into hiding. Carlo Buonaparte had initially supported Corsican independence, but after the Corsican defeat, Carlo swore allegiance to his new French overlords. In return, the new French administration awarded the Buonaparte family with new titles and honors.

In April 1779, Carlo used his new French connections to send his two eldest sons to school in France. Nine-year-old Napoleon was enrolled in the Royal Military School of Brienne-le-Château near Troyes to begin studying for a military career. Napoleon spent the next five years at this boarding school, where his strong Corsican accent, strange-sounding name, and fierce Corsican patriotism set him apart from the other students; lacking friends, Napoleon turned to the company of books. For a time, he considered embarking on a writing career and penned no fewer than 60 essays, novellas, and pamphlets, including a history of Corsica. In the classroom, Napoleon was intellectually gifted, particularly in the field of mathematics. Despite being educated by monks, he was skeptical of the divinity of Jesus Christ; this skepticism led him to view religion as a political tool, which he would wield effectively during his career.

In February 1784, Carlo Buonaparte died. Two years later, Napoleon graduated from the prestigious École Militaire as an artillery lieutenant but spent most of the subsequent months on leave in Corsica. Napoleon and his siblings enthusiastically supported the French Revolution when it began in 1789, with Napoleon winning election as a lieutenant colonel in the revolutionary National Guard in April 1792. Their support of the new French government put the Bonaparte siblings at odds with Paoli, who still championed Corsican independence. Rising tensions between the Bonapartes and Paoli's supporters soon forced Napoleon's family to flee to mainland France in 1793. Exiled from his homeland, Napoleon was no longer a Corsican nationalist but was now committed to the French cause.

The Revolution

In the spring of 1792, Revolutionary France went to war with Austria and Prussia, kicking off the Revolutionary Wars. After the stunning French victory at the Battle of Valmy (20 September 1792), the First French Republic was proclaimed, and King Louis XVI of France was guillotined on 21 January 1793. As the French Republic became more radical and belligerent, additional nations joined the war against it, including Great Britain , Spain, and the Dutch Republic. On 28 August 1793, a fleet of British and Spanish ships occupied the harbor of Toulon; since Toulon housed the entire French Mediterranean Fleet, it was vital for the Republic.

Meanwhile, Napoleon published a pro-Jacobin pamphlet entitled Le Souper de Beaucaire , where he argued for the necessity of the extreme measures pursued by the revolutionary government. This pamphlet impressed several powerful Jacobin leaders, which led to Napoleon's appointment as commander of the French artillery at the Siege of Toulon . Napoleon displayed valuable leadership abilities during the siege, and his cannons were crucial to the French victory on 19 December 1793; though he was wounded during the final assault, Napoleon was promoted to brigadier general after the battle, aged only 24.

In July 1794, the Reign of Terror ended, and the Jacobins fell from power; Napoleon was briefly arrested but was ultimately released. With the downfall of his benefactors, it appeared that Napoleon's brief career may already be over. This changed on 4 October 1795, when the Republic's government was scrambling to defend Paris from an impending royalist insurrection. Since Napoleon was one of the few qualified officers in the capital, he was put in charge of the defense, a task he carried out with ruthless efficiency; after requisitioning some cannons, Napoleon's troops fired grapeshot into the crowd.

By suppressing the Revolt of 13 Vendémiaire , Napoleon won the attention of Paul Barras, one of the leaders of the new government called the French Directory . In 1795, Barras introduced the young general to Joséphine de Beauharnais , a 32-year-old widow with whom Napoleon quickly fell in love. Additionally, Barras secured Napoleon's appointment to the command of the French Army of Italy. On 9 March 1796, Napoleon married Joséphine in a civil ceremony before leaving for Italy two days later; it was at this point that he began spelling his name in a Frenchified way, as "Napoleon Bonaparte".

Italy, Egypt, & Brumaire

When Napoleon first arrived in Italy, his officers did not think much of him. He was a small, thin man, only 26 years old with no experience leading an army. But this opinion quickly changed; after whipping the undisciplined Army of Italy into shape and procuring much-needed supplies, Napoleon embarked on a lightning campaign against the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia, knocking it out of the war within a month. He then campaigned against the Austrians, capturing Milan, and setting up several French client states in northern Italy. He went on to besiege the Austrian stronghold of Mantua, defeating Austrian armies at the Battle of Castiglione (5 August 1796), the Battle of Arcole (15-17 November), and the Battle of Rivoli (14-15 January 1797). When Mantua finally fell in February 1797, Napoleon's army was poised to threaten Vienna; the Austrians asked for an armistice and signed the Treaty of Campo Formio in October, ending the War of the First Coalition .

The brilliant success of Napoleon's Italian Campaign won him the love of his troops, who referred to him affectionately as 'the Little Corporal'. It also launched him to political superstardom in France; tales such as his heroic charge across the Arcole bridge became well-known and formed the basis for the Napoleonic legend. In 1798, Napoleon secured permission to lead an army to Egypt to threaten British dominance in the region. After beating the Mamluks at the Battle of the Pyramids (21 July) and capturing Cairo, Napoleon advanced into Syria where he was halted by an Anglo-Ottoman force at the Siege of Acre (20 March-21 May 1799). He was forced to withdraw to Alexandria and slipped out of Egypt in August 1799. Although Napoleon's campaign in Egypt and Syria was a military failure, it greatly advanced the field of Egyptology with the discovery of the Rosetta Stone .

In October 1799, Napoleon landed in France and was approached by several disgruntled French officials such as Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyès who wanted to use him as the 'sword' of a coup. Napoleon accepted and, on 9-10 November 1799, overthrew the government in the bloodless Coup of 18 Brumaire. Napoleon then outmaneuvered Sieyès to become the leading figure of the new government, called the French Consulate . His rise to power marked the end of the French Revolution and ushered in the Napoleonic era.

Sign up for our free weekly email newsletter!

First Consul & Emperor

The Consulate lasted for four years, during which time Napoleon accomplished some of his longest-lasting political achievements. He negotiated the Concordat of 1801, which reconciled France with the Catholic Church, and established the Napoleonic Code, which echoed some of the liberal reforms of the Revolution. He sent an invasion force to reclaim Haiti and reestablish slavery there; this invasion force failed, and Haiti gained its independence in 1804. Additionally, as First Consul, Napoleon made the Louisiana Purchase, which doubled the size of the United States. Militarily, he crossed the Alps and defeated the Austrians at the Battle of Marengo (14 June 1800) and secured an end to the Revolutionary Wars two years later with the Treaty of Amiens. Around this time, he was confirmed First Consul for life by a plebiscite.

Napoleon knew his budding regime would not be secure unless he could establish a hereditary empire. So, on 18 May 1804, Napoleon proclaimed the French Empire with himself as Emperor of the French. The Coronation of Napoleon I was held at the Notre-Dame de Paris Cathedral on 2 December, where Napoleon took the crown and placed it on his own head. By this point, the Napoleonic Wars had already begun, as Britain had declared war on France in May 1803. However, after Napoleon's coronation first as Emperor of the French, then as King of Italy in March 1805, Britain was joined by Austria, Russia, and Naples in the War of the Third Coalition (1805-1806) against France. Napoleon wasted no time marching into Germany at the head of his new Grande Armée, which was subdivided into eight semi-autonomous corps to allow for more speed and flexibility.

This corps system proved greatly effective and allowed Napoleon to force the capitulation of an Austrian army at the end of the Ulm Campaign . He then captured Vienna on 13 November and decisively defeated an Austro-Russian army at the Battle of Austerlitz (2 December 1805), largely regarded as one of his greatest victories. After Austria's surrender, Napoleon reorganized several German states into the Confederation of the Rhine under his own protection; this directly led to the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire in July 1806. Napoleon also deposed the Bourbon king of Naples and installed his brother Joseph on its throne; Louis Bonaparte would be made King of Holland in 1806, while Jerôme got the Kingdom of Westphalia in 1807. An attempt to establish a dynasty, Napoleon has often been criticized for giving too much power to his less competent brothers.

In October 1806, Prussia joined with Russia and Britain in the War of the Fourth Coalition (1806-1807). Napoleon smashed the Prussian army at the Battle of Jena-Auerstedt (14 October) and entered Berlin only days later. Pushing on into Prussian-occupied Poland, he created a new client state, the Grand Duchy of Warsaw, before fighting the Russians to a standstill at the bloody Battle of Eylau (7-8 February 1807). On 14 June, Napoleon beat the Russians at the Battle of Friedland , after which he met with Tsar Alexander I of Russia (r. 1801-1825) on a raft in the middle of the Niemen River to negotiate peace. In the ensuing Treaties of Tilsit, a Franco-Russian alliance was established, and Alexander agreed to join Napoleon's large-scale embargo against Britain, known as the Continental System . The treaties also saw Prussia lose half its territory. This was arguably the peak of Napoleon's power, his influence stretching across Western and Central Europe.

Spain & Russia

In 1807, Napoleon ordered an invasion of Portugal to punish it for not complying with the Continental System. Lisbon fell quickly, but Napoleon was unsatisfied; ever the opportunist, he took advantage of a quarrel within Spain's royal family to invade Spain and install his brother Joseph on the Spanish throne in 1808. The Portuguese and Spanish were quick to resist French occupation and launched the Peninsular War (1807-1814). Aided by British soldiers, the Portuguese and Spanish put up stubborn resistance that included brutal guerrilla warfare; before long, 200,000 French soldiers were tied down in the region, putting a strain on French military resources.

Meanwhile, the initial successes of the Iberian rebels emboldened the Austrian Empire to launch the War of the Fifth Coalition in April 1809. It was during this war, on the banks of the Danube, that Napoleon suffered his first defeat as emperor at the Battle of Aspern-Essling (21-22 May). Though he eventually regrouped and defeated the Austrians at the Battle of Wagram (5-6 July), Aspern-Essling proved to Europe that Napoleon could be defeated. In the aftermath of the war with Austria, Napoleon married the Austrian Archduchess Marie Louise, daughter of the Habsburg emperor, in April 1810; he had divorced Joséphine the previous January because she failed to produce an heir. On 20 March 1811, Marie Louise gave birth to a boy, Napoleon II, who was styled as the King of Rome .

By 1811, the French and Russian empires were on a collision course; Russia viewed the existence of the French-controlled Duchy of Warsaw as a threat while Napoleon felt betrayed when Tsar Alexander exited the Continental System. On 24 June 1812, Napoleon's invasion of Russia began, as over 615,000 French and allied troops crossed the Niemen River, the largest invasion force Europe had yet seen. The Russians, however, refused to give battle, luring the French deeper into their territory and engaging in scorched-earth tactics along the way. This was greatly effective, as the French lost over 100,000 men to attrition before the first major battle was even fought. On 7 September, the French and Russians fought the bloody Battle of Borodino , and Napoleon entered Moscow a week later. However, the city was deserted and was soon engulfed in flames, rendering it useless to the occupying army.

After realizing the Russians were not about to make peace, Napoleon ordered a retreat in October. However, the onset of a brutal winter and the pursuing Russian armies decimated Napoleon's Grande Armée; by the time the French crossed back over the Niemen River in December 1812, they had lost half a million men. The great powers of Europe leaped at the chance to finally defeat Napoleon. In the subsequent War of the Sixth Coalition (1813-1814), Russia was joined by Britain, Prussia, Austria, and Sweden. After Napoleon suffered another crushing defeat at the Battle of Leipzig (16-19 October 1813), many of his German allies defected, and the Confederation of the Rhine was dissolved. The Coalition then invaded France, leaving Napoleon with no choice but to abdicate on 11 April 1814. He was exiled to the Mediterranean island of Elba, and King Louis XVIII of France ascended the throne.

On 1 March 1815, Napoleon took advantage of the political unrest caused by the Bourbon Restoration and landed on the coast of southern France with 1,000 soldiers. On 20 March, he entered Paris in triumph , beginning the period of his second reign known as the Hundred Days. His enemies wasted no time branding him an outlaw and raising new armies. By late May, the Seventh Coalition had sent two armies to Belgium to threaten northeastern France including an Anglo-Dutch-German army led by Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington, and a Prussian army led by Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher. On 15 June 1815, Napoleon marched into Belgium to meet this new threat but was decisively defeated at the Battle of Waterloo (18 June 1815). He abdicated again four days later and was exiled to the lonely island of St. Helena in the South Atlantic. Here, he was kept under close guard by his British captors. His health steadily deteriorated until he died on 5 May 1821, at the age of 51.

Subscribe to topic Related Content Books Cite This Work License

Bibliography

• Bell, David A. Napoleon: A Concise Biography. Oxford University Press, 2015.
• Chandler, David G. The Campaigns of Napoleon. Scribner, 1973.
• Furet, Francois. The French Revolution 1770-1814. John Wiley & Sons, 1996.
• Gates, David. The Spanish Ulcer. Da Capo Press, 2001.
• Lefebvre, Georges & Anderson, J. E. Napoleon. Columbia Univ Pr, 1990.
• Lieven, Dominic. Russia Against Napoleon. Penguin Books, 2011.
• Mikaberidze, Alexander. The Napoleonic Wars. Oxford University Press, 2020.
• Roberts, Andrew. Napoleon. Penguin Books, 2015.
• Strathern, Paul. Napoleon in Egypt. Bantam, 2009.

About the Author

Translations

We want people all over the world to learn about history. Help us and translate this definition into another language!

Questions & Answers

Who was napoleon bonaparte, where was napoleon bonaparte born, when was napoleon bonaparte defeated, why was napoleon bonaparte significant, related content.

French Revolutionary Wars

Napoleon's Italian Campaign

French Consulate

Napoleon's Campaign in Egypt and Syria

Napoleon Bonaparte During the Early French Revolution (1789-1794)

Cadoudal Affair

Free for the world, supported by you.

World History Encyclopedia is a non-profit organization. For only $5 per month you can become a member and support our mission to engage people with cultural heritage and to improve history education worldwide.

Recommended Books

Cite This Work

Mark, H. W. (2023, October 19). Napoleon Bonaparte . World History Encyclopedia . Retrieved from https://www.worldhistory.org/Napoleon_Bonaparte/

Chicago Style

Mark, Harrison W.. " Napoleon Bonaparte ." World History Encyclopedia . Last modified October 19, 2023. https://www.worldhistory.org/Napoleon_Bonaparte/.

Mark, Harrison W.. " Napoleon Bonaparte ." World History Encyclopedia . World History Encyclopedia, 19 Oct 2023. Web. 24 Aug 2024.

License & Copyright

Submitted by Harrison W. Mark , published on 19 October 2023. The copyright holder has published this content under the following license: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike . This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon this content non-commercially, as long as they credit the author and license their new creations under the identical terms. When republishing on the web a hyperlink back to the original content source URL must be included. Please note that content linked from this page may have different licensing terms.

Ground Breaking Books

10 Best Books About Napoleon

Napoleon Bonaparte is a historical figure who has captured the imagination of generations. Whether it’s his meteoric rise to power, legendary battles, or ultimate downfall, there is no denying that Napoleon has left a lasting impact on the world. For those who are interested in learning more about this fascinating figure, there are a plethora of books available. In this article, we will explore the 10 best books about Napoleon.

The links on this page are affiliate links to Amazon. If you find value in these recommendations, please consider purchasing through these links to support this free content. We greatly appreciate it! 🙂

Why Learn About Napoleon?

Napoleon Bonaparte is one of modern history’s most iconic and influential figures. He rose from obscurity to become the ruler of France, and his conquests reshaped the political landscape of Europe. Napoleon’s story is filled with intrigue, ambition, and drama and continues to captivate historians and enthusiasts alike.

But beyond his military and political accomplishments, Napoleon’s legacy has profoundly impacted art, literature, and culture. From the epic paintings of Jacques-Louis David to the novels of Victor Hugo, Napoleon has inspired some of the greatest works of art in history. He has also been the subject of countless biographies, historical studies, and even works of fiction.

Whether you are interested in military strategy, political intrigue, or cultural history, there are many reasons to learn about Napoleon. With that in mind, let’s dive into our list of the 10 best books about Napoleon.

Napoleon: A Life by Andrew Roberts

Andrew Roberts’ biography of Napoleon is widely considered to be one of the most comprehensive and authoritative works on the subject. Drawing on new sources and fresh research, Roberts offers a detailed and nuanced portrait of Napoleon’s life, from his early years in Corsica to his exile on St. Helena. Roberts’ writing is engaging and accessible, making this book an excellent choice for casual readers and serious scholars alike.

Napoleon the Great by Andrew Roberts

Another book by Andrew Roberts, Napoleon the Great, is a more focused study of Napoleon’s military campaigns and his impact on European history. Roberts’ writing is vivid and dramatic, bringing to life the battles, intrigues, and personalities that shaped the Napoleonic era. This book is an excellent choice for readers primarily interested in Napoleon’s military career.

The Campaigns of Napoleon by David G. Chandler

David G. Chandler’s classic study of Napoleon’s military campaigns is a must-read for anyone interested in military history. Chandler’s detailed descriptions of Napoleon’s battles and tactics are accompanied by maps and illustrations that help bring the action to life. This book is an excellent resource for students and scholars of military history, as well as casual readers who want to learn more about Napoleon’s military genius.

Napoleon Bonaparte: A Life by Alan Schom

Alan Schom’s biography of Napoleon is a gripping and engaging account of his life and career. Schom’s writing is vivid and cinematic, painting a portrait of Napoleon as a complex and dynamic figure. This book is an excellent choice for readers who want to get a sense of Napoleon’s personality, psychology, and military and political accomplishments.

Napoleon: The Path to Power by Philip Dwyer

Philip Dwyer’s three-volume biography of Napoleon is an ambitious and impressive work that covers every aspect of Napoleon’s life and career. The first volume, Napoleon: The Path to Power, explores Napoleon’s early years and his rise to prominence in the French army. Dwyer’s writing is scholarly but accessible, making this book a great choice for serious students of history.

Citizen Emperor: Napoleon in Power

The second volume of Philip Dwyer’s biography, Citizen Emperor: Napoleon in Power, is a masterful study of Napoleon’s reign as emperor of France, covering his rise to power, his transformation of French society, and his eventual downfall. Dwyer’s writing is detailed and engaging, providing a nuanced look at the complex political and social forces at work during this turbulent period of European history. This book is a great choice for readers who want to gain a deeper understanding of Napoleon’s impact on France and the world and the challenges he faced as he sought to consolidate his power.

Napoleon and His Marshals by J.T. Headley

J.T. Headley’s classic study of Napoleon and his Marshals is a detailed and engaging account of the men who served under Napoleon during his military campaigns. Headley’s writing is lively and colorful, and he provides a wealth of fascinating anecdotes and insights into the personalities and strategies of Napoleon’s top generals. This book is a great choice for readers who want to learn more about the military leaders who helped shape Napoleon’s legacy.

Napoleon: Soldier of Destiny by Michael Broers

Michael Broers’ biography of Napoleon is a fresh and engaging look at his life and career. Broers’ vivid and engaging writing offers a new perspective on Napoleon’s early years and rise to power. This book is an excellent choice for readers who want to gain a deeper understanding of Napoleon’s personality and motivations and his impact on European history.

The Napoleonic Wars: A Very Short Introduction by Mike Rapport

Mike Rapport’s concise and accessible overview of the Napoleonic Wars is an excellent introduction to this fascinating period of history. Rapport provides a clear and engaging summary of the significant events and personalities of the Napoleonic era, making this book a great choice for both casual readers and serious students of history.

Napoleon: The Man Behind the Myth by Adam Zamoyski

Adam Zamoyski’s biography of Napoleon is a fresh and insightful look at his life and legacy. Zamoyski’s writing is engaging and nuanced, providing a balanced perspective on Napoleon’s achievements and failures. This book is an excellent choice for readers who want to understand the man behind the myth and the impact he had on the world.

Whether you are a student of history, a military enthusiast, or simply someone fascinated by the life and legacy of Napoleon Bonaparte, many great books are available on this subject. From Andrew Roberts’ sweeping biographies to David G. Chandler’s detailed accounts of Napoleon’s military campaigns, there is something for every reader in our list of the 10 best books about Napoleon.

By delving into these books, readers can better understand the man who reshaped Europe and left an indelible mark on history. Whether you are looking for a comprehensive biography or a concise overview, there is a book on this list that will help you explore the fascinating world of Napoleon Bonaparte.

most recent

Page-Turners to Box Office Gold: 15 Shocking Book Adaptations That Rocked Hollywood

Cultural and Social Awareness Books , Newsletter

Gandhi’s principles for ethical leadership in business.

The Ultimate Guide to Colleen Hoover Books: Where to Start?

10 Life-Changing Books That Will Transform Your Perspective

Cultural and Social Awareness Books

Top 5 ray bradbury books you must read.

SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome Book Review

© 2024 Groundbreaking books

Aspects’s Substack

Six of the Best: Books on Napoleon

In the wake of the new movie and its questionable history, if you want to know the truth then you must read this selection of titles on boney. by our editor oliver webb-carter..

With Ridley Scott’s new movie, Napoleon, out soon and starring Joaquin Phoenix as Bonaparte and Vanessa Kirby as Josephine, much discussion has been prompted over its historical accuracy. If your interest is peaked then you must check out these six books on the Corsican Ogre/Greatest Frenchman (delete as appropriate). Scott has caused much consternation among historians who have taken his comments to heart, so if you want to find out the truth, or their truth, you could do worse than one, or all, of the following titles that cover so many aspects of his extraordinary life.

Napoleon the Great , Andrew Roberts

‘Fighting is a soldier’s religion’ said Napoleon and he was first and foremost a soldier. If Andrew Roberts’ Napoleon & Wellington was an enjoyable read for the two great commanders who only met in battle once but never met, with Nosey the victor thereby ensuring his greatness in Britain forever, then perhaps it’s a surprise to read Roberts so enthusiastic about Napoleon in making his demand that he be known as ‘Great’. Whilst positive this is no hagiography, and if you’re looking for an all-encompassing biography then this should be your start. Napoleon was both a brilliant general and ruler, not something the Duke could claim. The descriptions of the various conquests are thrilling, and in Napoleon the Great we understand exactly why he is important to modern day Europe.

Napoleon: A Life in Gardens & Shadows , Ruth Scurr

Did you know Napoleon was fascinated by horticulture from a young age? Ruth Scurr has written an incredibly moving and original biography focussing on how nature was important to him in providing order in a life that saw the chaos of the French Revolution, countless bloody battles of carnage and ultimate disaster then solitude in the middle of the Atlantic. As Ridley reminded us there have been many books written, but it’s quite an achievement to produce a work in 2021 that really does break new ground – we are taken to the gardens of his youth in Corsica to Paris, Malmaison, Egypt and even to the walled garden at Hougoumont, Waterloo and finally his St. Helena exile arranging plants much as he did troops on countless battlefields.

Aspects’s Substack is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

1812: Napoleon’s Fatal March on Moscow , Adam Zamoyski

The march into Russia is well-known to be Napoleon’s greatest blunder, but Adam Zamoyski’s 2004 1812 is rare for its exhaustive description of the disaster using diaries and accounts of the army from Croats, Dutch, Prussians, Poles, Spaniards and Italians as well as French and Russians. Zamoyski’s narrative grips you as he describes the freezing winter conditions, with the summers no better as the sun beat down on troops marching in collapsing footware, thick woollen coats and all the time attacked by swarms of ravenous horse-flies. Napoleon was not at his best for this campaign, most notably with costly mistakes at Borodino, but the reader can understand his rage at subordinates incapable of reaching his own grand heights. A remarkable book.

Josephine , Kate Williams

Biographies of the great commander Napoleon naturally attract male historians, but to understand the man you have to understand the woman he loved, and in Kate Williams’ Josephine we get the female perspective in a gorgeous biography. Josephine was glamourous, skilled in diplomacy and utterly charming. One can see why the two were captivated, though this is no male dominated relationship – one only has to read of their wedding night when Josephine’s pug won an important victory over Bonaparte and secured the first night alone with her.

Napoleon in Egypt , Paul Strathern

When Napoleon arrived in Egypt aged only 28 he had dreams of emulating Alexander the Great, crossing Asia to reach India, and to bring the enlightenment and western civilisation to the ancient land. Nelson thwarted his ambitions by defeating his navy at the Nile, not for the first time, and so when he left his army had suffered defeat, he was confined to Egypt and it was his legion of scientists and artists that had been educated. Paul Strathern’s account of the ultimately disastrous adventure is a thrilling read and once you’ve read this, your eyebrow will be raised at Ridley Scott’s reason for Bonaparte’s departure.

Black Spartacus , Sudhir Hazeerasingh

The impression one gets from many sympathetic to Napoleon was that he was, in some way, an island of progressivism among a sea of reactionaries. Leaving aside the fact he crowned himself emperor, his re-imposition of slavery on the island of Haiti, and his disgraceful treatment of the great Toussaint Louverture certainly leave major question marks over his legacy. In Sudhir Hazeerasingh’s wonderful Black Spartacus , we see the Haitian Revolution through the eyes of the oppressed, as they go up against the mighty European powers of Spain, Britain and France – and win, even if eventual defeat led to a sad end for Louverture in Napoleonic France.

…and for some historical fiction

Sharpe’s Waterloo , Bernard Cornwell

Fans of Richard Sharpe will know he met Napoleon while travelling to South America in Sharpe’s Devil , but at Waterloo Cornwell describes the battle brilliantly as Sharpe and Harper move around the Allied lines as they faced the French army for the ultimate showdown between Wellington and Bonaparte. Boney came off second best and he underestimated the Duke, and perhaps more importantly the discipline and accuracy of the British volley fire as they wreaked havoc on his beloved Imperial Guard. Napoleon is present but does not appear and Cornwell manages convey the sense of awe he inspired in his opponents, let alone in his own devoted troops.

Oliver Webb-Carter is the editor of Aspects of History .

Ready for more?

• Biographies & Memoirs

Sorry, there was a problem.

Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required .

Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.

Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.

Image Unavailable

• To view this video download Flash Player

Follow the author

Napoleon: A Life Paperback – January 1, 2014

Austerlitz, Borodino, Waterloo: his battles are among the greatest in history, but Napoleon Bonaparte was far more than a military genius and astute leader of men. Like George Washington and his own hero Julius Caesar, he was one of the greatest soldier-statesmen of all times. Andrew Roberts’s Napoleon is the first one-volume biography to take advantage of the recent publication of Napoleon’s thirty-three thousand letters, which radically transform our understanding of his character and motivation. At last we see him as he was: protean multitasker, decisive, surprisingly willing to forgive his enemies and his errant wife Josephine. Like Churchill, he understood the strategic importance of telling his own story, and his memoirs, dictated from exile on St. Helena, became the single bestselling book of the nineteenth century. An award-winning historian, Roberts traveled to fifty-three of Napoleon’s sixty battle sites, discovered crucial new documents in archives, and even made the long trip by boat to St. Helena. He is as acute in his understanding of politics as he is of military history. Here at last is a biography worthy of its subject: magisterial, insightful, beautifully written, by one of our foremost historians.

• Print length 926 pages
• Language English
• Publisher Viking Pr
• Publication date January 1, 2014
• Dimensions 6.44 x 1.87 x 9.5 inches
• ISBN-10 0670025321
• ISBN-13 978-0670025329
• See all details

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com review.

An Amazon Best Book of the Month, November 2014: There have been many books about Napoleon, but Andrew Roberts’ single-volume biography is the first to make full use of the ongoing French publication of Napoleon’s 33,000 letters. Seemingly leaving no stone unturned, Roberts begins in Corsica in 1769, pointing to Napoleon’s roots on that island—and a resulting fascination with the Roman Empire—as an early indicator of what history might hold for the boy. Napoleon’s upbringing—from his roots, to his penchant for holing up and reading about classic wars, to his education in France, all seemed to point in one direction—and by the time he was 24, he was a French general. Though he would be dead by fifty one, it was only the beginning of what he would accomplish. Although Napoleon: A Life is 800 pages long, it is both enjoyable and illuminating. Napoleon comes across as whip smart, well-studied, ambitious to a fault, a little awkward, and perhaps most importantly, a man who could turn on the charm when he needed to. Through his portrait, Roberts seems to be arguing two things: that Napoleon was far more than just a complex, and that his contributions to the world greatly surpassed those of the evil dictators that some compare him to. “The historian, like the orator,” Roberts quotes Napoleon as saying, “must persuade. He must convince.” I, for one, am convinced. A fascinating read. –Chris Schluep

About the Author

Product details.

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Viking Pr; First Edition (January 1, 2014)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 926 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0670025321
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0670025329
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 3.08 pounds
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.44 x 1.87 x 9.5 inches
• #374 in Historical France Biographies
• #1,452 in French History (Books)
• #6,553 in United States Biographies

About the author

Andrew roberts.

Discover more of the author’s books, see similar authors, read author blogs and more

Customer reviews

• 5 star 4 star 3 star 2 star 1 star 5 star 72% 19% 6% 2% 1% 72%
• 5 star 4 star 3 star 2 star 1 star 4 star 72% 19% 6% 2% 1% 19%
• 5 star 4 star 3 star 2 star 1 star 3 star 72% 19% 6% 2% 1% 6%
• 5 star 4 star 3 star 2 star 1 star 2 star 72% 19% 6% 2% 1% 2%
• 5 star 4 star 3 star 2 star 1 star 1 star 72% 19% 6% 2% 1% 1%

Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.

To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness.

Customers say

Customers find the book provides a well-balanced view and impartial perspective on Napoleon. They also describe the content as well written and exhaustively researched. Readers find the storyline interesting, gripping, and insightful. They appreciate the visuals, pace, and readability. They describe the book as great and a masterful biography that does justice to this great historic figure.

AI-generated from the text of customer reviews

Customers find the book well-written, fascinating, and engaging. They say it's worth getting the audiobook, and an absolutely first-rate work in its scope.

"...it's also worth getting the audiobook . Narration was great and it's really convenient to listen to while you are on the train or car." Read more

"...It is a story that often leaves you equal parts repulsed, impressed , and sympathetic. I can think of no possible better outcome for a biography." Read more

"...As it is, the book makes good reading on a "grand adventure" and an important historic episode...." Read more

"...like these typically take me months read, but this one was so riveting that it took me only a few weeks...." Read more

Customers find the book's content well written, exhaustively researched, and educational. They also appreciate the masterful and unrivaled reflects on the bibliography. Customers also mention that the book provides criticism and myth busting.

"...It also gives good reasoning on why Napoleon won and why he lost...." Read more

"...His capacity for knowledge , memory, and quick-thinking was truly legendary, and examples abound of his incredible memory even as late as his exile..." Read more

"...This is an eminently scholarly and entertaining biography that should become the standard work on the Emperor's life for many years to come...." Read more

"...gone the extra mile to provide us with such a masterful and unrivalled reflects on the bibliography : dozens, if not hundreds of sources - both..." Read more

Customers find the book very approachable and a pleasure to read. They also say the author does a good job describing the battles and their aftermath. Readers also mention the book is magnificent from start to finish and leaves them astonished at the genius of both the subject and author.

"...As for Napoleon's campaigns, Roberts does a fine job describing the political situation before the battle, the marches and maneuvers, as well as the..." Read more

"...is chronological, which makes sense for a biography and is easy to follow ...." Read more

"...This is excellently written , interesting from first to the last page, and offers an extremely nuanced and personal look into Napoleon's life...." Read more

"...His descriptions of the battles are vivid and colorful , as is his coverage of the maneuverings and agreements that created what might well have..." Read more

Customers find the biography masterful, nuanced, and personal. They say it's an excellent study of Napoleon and a great place to find all you want to know. Readers also appreciate the profound appreciation of this amazing life and learn that Napoleon was a micromanager.

"In this detailed but accessible biography by Andrew Roberts, we get what is arguably the defining biography of Napoleon for our generation...." Read more

"...written, interesting from first to the last page, and offers an extremely nuanced and personal look into Napoleon's life...." Read more

"...For me the best part of the book was Roberts' sublime description of the battles and the battlefields...." Read more

Customers find the storyline interesting, fast-paced, and engaging. They also appreciate the author's excellent descriptions of Napoleon's battles. Overall, readers describe the book as gripping, insightful, and incisive.

"...As far as Roberts’s writing style, the narrative is chronological , which makes sense for a biography and is easy to follow...." Read more

"...This is excellently written, interesting from first to the last page , and offers an extremely nuanced and personal look into Napoleon's life...." Read more

"...It's a hefty tome but Roberts' engaging style keeps the pages turning ...." Read more

"...This is a great story told by Andrew Roberts ...." Read more

Customers find the visuals in the book fascinating, with many maps and color photos of paintings of major participants. They also say the book is highly rated for style and readability.

"...I found this part accessible and easily understood, with detailed maps marking the units helping to paint a fine picture of Napoleon's famous..." Read more

"...from first to the last page, and offers an extremely nuanced and personal look into Napoleon's life...." Read more

"...'s but also the personalities of those around him are colorfully and often amusingly depicted , again many times in Napoleon's own words...." Read more

"A marvelous , unparalleled account of one of history's greatest characters...." Read more

Customers find the pace of the book fast moving but maintains a coherent flow of the life. They also say the book moves in sequence through time rather than jumping around. Readers appreciate the detail conveyed at a smooth, entertaining pace. They say the author's knowledge, memory, and quick-thinking was truly legendary.

"...His capacity for knowledge, memory, and quick-thinking was truly legendary , and examples abound of his incredible memory even as late as his exile..." Read more

"Book arrived in great condition & delivery was fast !" Read more

"...speed, maneuver, convergence, a genius for topography and an acute sense of timing but points out that he never understood naval warfare, instituted..." Read more

"The reader reads much too quickly , at a gallop and that gets irritating after a while. Understandably as the book is 900 pages long...." Read more

Customers find the book provides a well-balanced view. They also say it's multi-faceted, thought-provoking, and provides

"...I felt he was providing a well-balanced view , not an apologist and certainly not anti-Napoleon, but did a good job of stepping back and merely..." Read more

"...This gave me some initial pause. But the book is very well balanced , filling us in on personal life, political situation as well as famous battles...." Read more

"...This is an in depth novel that gives the reader a great perspective into one of the sometimes controversial but well respected military leaders of..." Read more

"At last! A rigorous, well studied, balanced view of the most important European leader of modern history!..." Read more

Reviews with images

• Sort reviews by Top reviews Most recent Top reviews

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. please try again later..

Top reviews from other countries

• About Amazon
• Investor Relations
• Amazon Devices
• Amazon Science
• Sell products on Amazon
• Sell on Amazon Business
• Sell apps on Amazon
• Become an Affiliate
• Advertise Your Products
• Self-Publish with Us
• Host an Amazon Hub
• › See More Make Money with Us
• Amazon Business Card
• Shop with Points
• Reload Your Balance
• Amazon Currency Converter
• Amazon and COVID-19
• Your Account
• Your Orders
• Shipping Rates & Policies
• Returns & Replacements
• Manage Your Content and Devices

• Conditions of Use
• Privacy Notice
• Consumer Health Data Privacy Disclosure
• Your Ads Privacy Choices

6 Best Napoleon Books of All Time

Our goal : Find the best Napoleon books according to the internet (not just one random person's opinion).

• Type "best napoleon books" into our search engine and study the top 5+ pages.
• Add only the books mentioned 2+ times.
• Rank the results neatly for you here! 😊 (It was a lot of work. But hey! That's why we're here, right?)

(Updated 2024)

As an Amazon Associate, we earn money from purchases made through links in this page.

Last Updated: Monday 1 Jan, 2024

• Best Napoleon Books

Andrew Roberts

The Campaigns of Napoleon

David G. Chandler

A Biography

Duff Cooper

Rites of Peace

The fall of napoleon and the congress of vienna.

Adam Zamoyski

The Path to Power

Philip Dwyer

With Eagles to Glory

Napoleon and his german allies in the 1809 campaign.

John H Gill

• ‘Napoleon: A Life,’ by Andrew Roberts - The New York Times www.nytimes.com
• Napoleon Bonaparte and the Napoleonic Wars, by the Books explorethearchive.com
• The Best Books About Napoleon Bonaparte And The Napoleonic Wars - Book Scrolling www.bookscrolling.com
• The Best Books on Napoleon - Five Books Expert Recommendations fivebooks.com
• Top Ten Books on Napoleon Bonaparte - DailyHistory.org dailyhistory.org

What To Read Next

Explore other lists

Share this page

Email us if you have any feedback