Napoleon

Wow. Be warned that there is no turning back once you dive into the incredibly complex, giant-in-scale and heavily controversial world of Napoleon, and modern Napoleon biographies. This one (the first I’ve ever read front to back) was written by Andrew Roberts, an unabashed proponent of Napoleon who says so immediately in the introduction, yet an author with a near disconcerting dedication to the facts and research. To call this book sweeping or complete would be an understatement, and to say that Roberts’ self-proclaimed pro-Napoleon bent in any way sabotages the book would be false. I do know, from a newfound fascination with the author, that there is a second, dueling contemporary Napoleon biography also out
by author Adam Zamoyski. Zamoyski and Roberts have an amazing 1+ hour debate online, hosted by Intelligence Squared, in which they disagree on the fundamental question of whether Napoleon can truly be considered “Napoleon the Great,” in the ilk of Alexander and others. I will stay away from that minefield in this note.

What you do garner from this near 1,000 page, encyclopedic view of the man, is that his life played such a fundamental and significant role that it emerged far past the context of just its present, and has truly changed history and human behavior, institutions, and culture ever since. In strictly the field of military affairs and strategy, I am hard pressed to see the argument that Napoleon was not a genius, not a systems thinker of prolific scale, and consistently over time. Beyond that, I feel I must hold my tongue and read more holistically of the man, and especially from Zamoyski and his other critics, before being able to form a larger and more concrete opinion.

This book is vivid in its writing, doing justice to the insatiable mind of its subject and surely that of Roberts as well. It perhaps shines best in the exhaustively detailed lead-up to the infamous Russian scorched-earth campaign. You get so much detail of Napoleon’s long friendly diplomatic courtship of Alexander, the strain put on the relationship over time, and the fascinating reversal that led to on the the most important events in world history. Just as someone highly curious about the study of strategy, I quite appreciated the stride-by-stride descriptions of the Russian winter, the vivid burning of Moscow, the cinematic (and only partially-successful) demolition of the Kremlin, and the delectable amount of recovered mail correspondence Roberts compiled of so many of the major players in this portion of history. I am glad I also read this after War and Peace, as it helped concretize many details and plot lines I first missed or didn’t fully appreciate from Tolstoy.

My advice is that this is well worth the effort. If you have the time, it is probably best to also read Zamoyski’s work, as I plan to do, and really give this period of history the time it deserves, as it has incredibly complex. I wouldn’t be surprised if it is many more years before I can feel fairly secure about my understanding of the period and its implications, using this as a first data point.