Flashman14 | 01 May 2011 5:49 a.m. PST |
I've been carting quite a few volumes around over the years and now I have a rather big selection to choose from. Where to start? I'm leaving out the titles like Chandlers "Campaigns of
" as I want to focus here on general histories of the man, biography only where possible. Napoleon Bonaparte: A History by William Sloane 2 volumes Rise and Reign of Napoleon Bonaparte by Robert Asprey Napoleon by Geoffrey Ellis Napoleon: Man of War, Man of Peace by Timothy William-Smith Napoleon by Francis McLynn Napoleon Bonaparte by J.M. Thompson Napoleon's Road to Glory by David J. Markham Napoleon: a Life by Alan Schom Napoleon by Paul Johnson Napoleon by Emil Ludwig I'm not done unpacking and I know I have others somewhere but it's a good start at least
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CPBelt | 01 May 2011 5:53 a.m. PST |
As a Napoleon neophyte, I am enjoying Napoleon's Wars: An International History, 1803-1815 by Charles Esdaile. It's also available as audio. link |
Flashman14 | 01 May 2011 5:58 a.m. PST |
Less wars, more The Man – if that can be done. |
CPBelt | 01 May 2011 6:31 a.m. PST |
Uhhhh
.how can one divorce the warfare and politics from "the man"? That's like discussing how good an Oreo cookie tastes while ignoring to mention the creamy white filling. I will not be an apologist for the book, but it does a nice job of balancing personal bio and history, which to me is what a good bio on the man should do for a general overview of his life and times. Unless one is looking for a Kitty Kelly take on Napoleon? Then I cannot help that person. |
50 Dylan CDs and an Icepick | 01 May 2011 7:11 a.m. PST |
Schom and Johnson are mirror-image disasters. The latter is a People magazine puff piece featuring every stupid cliché and tertiary-source myth that always makes the Napoleon's Greatest Hits list. The former is a bizarre psycho-historical rant, barely backed up with a handful of misunderstood and misquoted sources, in which Napoleon is a sort of Hannibal Lector on the loose. There are a million to choose from, but here are two others worth of making the list:
Vincent Cronin, NAPOLEON (a bit of hero worship, to be sure, but well written.) Philip Dwyer NAPOLEON: THE PATH TO POWER (currently my favorite). |
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx | 01 May 2011 7:50 a.m. PST |
Cronin is rubbish – you only get a mention if you tow the party line. It is the opposite of Schom. I haven't read it, but Horne: How Far from Austerlitz gets good write-ups. |
Gazzola | 01 May 2011 8:27 a.m. PST |
Ignore Vanity Hollins. He dislikes any authors (or anyone else for that matter) who say anything positive about Napoleon. He just can't cope with it. Cronin is a good choice. |
10th Marines | 01 May 2011 9:19 a.m. PST |
Cronin is excellent-well-researched and well-written. It also handles the myths about Napoleon, both past and present, very well. It is the best biography of Napoleon the man that I've read. There is also a very useful appendix dealing with memoir writers of the period and after. Ludwig is useful, as is Englund's biography of Napoleon. Horne's book is error-ridden and not up to his usual standard. Dwyer's book is also excellent and I'm looking forward to the next volume by him. I also highly recommend Esdaile's book, or anything by him. K |
Hazkal | 01 May 2011 10:39 a.m. PST |
Not a scholar, but I enjoyed Cronin. Exceptionally readable and the focus is nicely off of the battles and onto the other 'hats' Napoleon wore. |
Trajanus | 01 May 2011 12:23 p.m. PST |
Biggest problem 200 years down the line is finding something that isn't exactly the same as the book you last read and the one before that, particularity when dealing with one individual and his career. Of those mentioned, the only one I got a feel for the individual from was Cronin. Having said that, Esdaile's Napoleon's Wars: An International History, 1803-1815 does a fine job of showing what a duplicitous little git he actually was! Ruler of the World and All Round Nice Guy are not compatible titles! |
Flashman14 | 01 May 2011 1:31 p.m. PST |
I found most of them now I think including: Napoleon: The Man Who Shaped Europe by Ben Weider with Emile Guegen |
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx | 01 May 2011 2:03 p.m. PST |
That makes Cronin look balanced and well researched. It is akin to arguing that Hitler was misunderstood and a peacemaker, because UK and France declared war on germany in 1939. Markham was a sidekick of Weider's. |
XV Brigada | 01 May 2011 2:30 p.m. PST |
George's Lefebvre's is one of the better French Biographies available in English and pretty well thought of. It is as good a start as anywhere. Before reading any subjective biography of Napoleon though, it should be mandatory to read Pieter Geyl's Napoleon For and Against and Michael Broer's Europe under Napoleon. Cronin's hagiography is a product of the 'Napoleon Industry' which eulogizes its subject while avoiding or understating anything negative. Primary sources that do not conform to Cronin's preconceptions are "unreliable" and ignored while others are used selectively and information drawn from them only where they support his view. It is a very good example of manipulative history. Bill |
50 Dylan CDs and an Icepick | 01 May 2011 3:27 p.m. PST |
Despite the plethora of Napoleon books, I've always thought that there is a glaring absence of books that place Napoleon's career and actions in the wider context of the era. The huge majority of his biographers treat his decisions as sui generis phenomena. (Napoleon does XYZ
now argue about whether it was good or bad.) But virtually nobody discusses these decisions in their broader historical context. For example: The Code Napoleon: how much was really new, and how much was sort of the mainstream of Enlightenment thought that had been percolating for a couple of generations by then? Was Napoleon mainly an enabler of legal precedents whose time had come? Economics: his policies of conquest and extraction often seem to be updates of the Louis XIV playbook: placing areas "under contribution" to pay for the war and the army that conquered them, which in turn dictated the kinds of regions in which one could – or should – make war. Napoleon's thinking about economics often seemed to be limited purely to military ends, but in all fairness to him, was there any precedent in French history for the sort of new financial models that were transforming Britain, Holland, the USA, parts of northern Italy, etc? His regime lurched from fiscal expedient to expedient, and there were some very bad or obviously unsustainable practices, but
What other template did he have to use? Diplomacy and Power Politics: How – if at all – were his decisions to make war different from those of his contemporaries? Or from his Bourbon predecessors? (Is there a parallel between N's attempt to reconfigure Spain using his dynasty
and the earlier effort by Louis XIV to do so?) The Police State: were Napoleon's methods of oppression consistent with those of his day? Did they come out of the Revolutionary experience? Out of French precedent? Were they simply the normal practice of an authoritarian monarch of his time? Anyway, that's the idea: very few writers have made a consistent effort to place Napoleon in his historical setting. Esdaile and Black have given it a bit more than a nod, but not many others. I suspect that there are a number of people who approach Napoleon in a fundamentally religious way (Weider is certainly among them), in which Napoleon is presumed to be superior to all regimes of his day – an obvious improvement and a heroic protagonist. That approach then forces you into this stupid binary argument about all the various "bad stuff" that N. did, and whether or not you can explain it away or deny it outright, or just change the subject. A more sophisticated approach would be to accept that Napoleon was a figure of his era, shaped by his era and by the state and its institutions – just as much as he shaped them. |
La Fleche | 01 May 2011 5:18 p.m. PST |
J.S.C. Abbott's The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, though dated, is an excllent study that offers a lot of his life in his own words as well as of those around him. |
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx | 02 May 2011 3:29 a.m. PST |
Blanning's The Origins of the French Revolutionary Wars is a very good survey of the forces, which led up to the fighting starting in 1792 and how it progressed to 1801, but strictly speaking Napoleon doesn't feature that much much. The economics behind all this is very interesting and worthy of further study. |
50 Dylan CDs and an Icepick | 02 May 2011 5:13 a.m. PST |
"The economics behind all this is very interesting and worthy of further study." Indeed. That is THE major gap in the historiography of the Napoleonic period. It's been touched on here and there, over the years, by a few French and German historians. Nothing serious in English, to my knowledge, that compares with François Crouzet or Diedrich Saalfeld. (And those guys were more interested in long-term and regional effects, not looking specifically at the economics of Napoleon's decisions at the times he made them.) |
Gazzola | 02 May 2011 9:16 a.m. PST |
Yep there goes Vanity Hollins again, knocking any author (usually better authors than he will ever be) who say something positive about Napoleon. And he always tries to find some sort of connection, in this case, Markham and Weider, in a feeble attempt to fool everyone that what he says is right. He is so easy to see though. Sad really, but not unexpected. |
Trajanus | 02 May 2011 11:32 a.m. PST |
Gazzola, So its give a dog a bad name Eh? Markham and Weider – The President and The Founder of the International Napoleonic Society. The chance of them giving Napoleon a bad Rep are ruffly the same as the Pope saying God doesn't exist. Ben was a very nice man who believed passionately in Napoleon and who's ideas on Napoleons death I've always been able to give credence to (unlike Dave as, I recall). Mr Markham has a string of academia to his name and an equally strong opinion of our Corsican chum. Mr Hollins and I have had the occasional difference in the past but even a broken watch is right twice a day! What you are seeing through the 'transparent' Mr Hollins on this occasion is the outing of two front line Bonapartists.They would still be this if Dave Hollins had never written a book or expressed an opinion in his life! |
Lambert | 02 May 2011 1:37 p.m. PST |
My vote goes to a very old biography, "The History of Napoleon Buonaparte" by John Gibson Lockhart. |
DELETEDNAME | 02 May 2011 1:39 p.m. PST |
Gazzola, Please excuse me for the following comments. I do not want to give the impression that I would seek to constrain the scope of your posts, but perhaps we all might agree to try, please, to stay a little more on topic? Isn't insulting Dave Hollins a little off topic here? We have several threads currently active which seem more or less devoted to this already: TMP link TMP link TMP link One could insult Dave Hollins on these threads quite contentedly, I should think. Others could then add positive comments about Dave Hollins and perhaps insult you. If you used these three threads for this purpose, it would all be so much easier to follow, or ignore, for the rest of us. Again, please accept my apologies for any affront that you might sense in my suggestion. I intend none at all. =============== Sam, I agree completely about the relative lack of detailed treatment of the economic aspects of the Napoleonic era, save perhaps for some work on the theme of the development of "modern" methods in the state finances in Britain. There are two problems : 1. this stuff is really, really boring! have you ever tried to read Mollien's mémoires, or Gaudin's? or the "annual" Treasury reports (the ones that eventually closed the accounts for a given year – sometimes quite a few years down the road)? soooooo looong and soooooooo boooooorrrring! 2. macroeconomics did not yet exist – thus making university studies just that much more attractive – but also with the result that the data that would normally be used for economic analysis often is lacking – this data now has to be re-created or estimated, a process frought with potential error. In addition to Crouzet, there are Michel Bruguière, Guy Thuillier and Pierre-François Pinaud who have treated the topic with varying degrees of breadth and success. Currently, Pierre Branda is doing some work along these lines that you may find interesitng – several pieces by him can be found online. There is also the European State Fiance Database at esfdb.websites.bta.com – if you want to look over some of the data that has been collected. =============== Flashman, I say dump ALL the bios – the pro-Naopléon and the anti-Napoléon. You don't need them. Napoléon wrote his own, day by day, often with some real candor, in his personal and state correspondence. And this correspondence is now fully published, mostly available free online and in many cases available in English translation. In my opinion, don't let some modern secondary source tell you what he thinks about Napoléon. Read the correspndence and other primary sources and decide for yourself. =============== Amicalement. |
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx | 02 May 2011 2:12 p.m. PST |
The subject of bonds is however quite interesting as it is something people can get some grasp of these days, which they might not have had a few years ago. Secondary books, which are well written and considered, can flag up ideas and evidence, which are useful in forming your own opinion. |
Graf Bretlach | 02 May 2011 2:44 p.m. PST |
Heres some online reading, mostly about Napoleon, courtesy of Dominique Laude on the NSF. link link link link I think Klingons 3:27 post is so true, also agree with Sotnik, the correspondance makes excellent reading.
I found this little book very interesting, as a different view of the man, in English too Betsy Balcombe's Memoirs of Napoleon on St Helena – To befriend an Emperor, Ravenhall books, 2005 |
Trajanus | 02 May 2011 3:13 p.m. PST |
The subject of bonds is however quite interesting Steady now Dave, you'll be accused of being into Bondage next! |
50 Dylan CDs and an Icepick | 02 May 2011 3:33 p.m. PST |
"1. this stuff is really, really boring! Not necessarily. A good writer can make anything interesting. For example, not everybody agrees with Niall Ferguson's work on the British economic motives for World War One, but you can't deny that it's gripping reading. I should know: I assign it to 19-and-20-year olds, and they not only read it, but they understand it, and enjoy discussing it. Economic history doesn't have to be dull. Consider how many (most?) people think of traditional military campaigns-and-battles history. Most people find that excruiating. Whereas guys like us
well, we're nerds. |
4th Cuirassier | 02 May 2011 3:39 p.m. PST |
McLynn is hilarious, with a substantial focus on the rumpy-pumpy and the disgraceful behaviour. The conclusion is a bit dodgy – he claims Napoleon's only significant win was Austerlitz, and every other time he was either lucky or just preapred to get more of his own guys killed. He also has an awestruck view of Desaix, for no obvious reason, while thinking all the other marshals (except Suchet) useless bums. Along the same lines is Correlli Barnett's bio from the 70s. He really rips the p1ss, but it's enjoyable. |
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx | 02 May 2011 4:18 p.m. PST |
The interesting thing about those denouncing economics is how often they mention the Austrian Finance Minister's point in 1808 that he could only finance the army for another 6 months. Trajanus – we could get into Bond durations! |
ochoin deach | 03 May 2011 1:50 a.m. PST |
Barnett & Cronin should be read simultaneouly. It's very instructive to read how each interpets the same events. |
SJDonovan | 03 May 2011 4:02 a.m. PST |
I enjoyed 'The Age of Napoleon' by J. Christopher Herold link It's not a biography as such but it is a very readable account of his life and times. |
Grand Duke Natokina | 03 May 2011 7:37 a.m. PST |
Butterfield's 100 page bio. Had to read it in grad school. |
Gazzola | 03 May 2011 1:43 p.m. PST |
Sotnik I think you should get your facts right. Mr. Hollins was (and has done previously) insulting other authors. It is a habit he has because . |
Gazzola | 03 May 2011 1:54 p.m. PST |
Trajanus Mr. Hollins is always attacking other authors. It does not matter if they were Bonapartists or not. If they said something positive about Napoleon, he would kill himself to find fault. He can't help it. The rubbish he spouted over the Armies book reviews is a perfect example of the way he operates. The storm over the reviews had, I thought, died down. I have even recently recommeneded one of the smaller chapters it contains in the further reading section of a magazine article. But what does Vanity Hollins do – he writes further comments to the Amazon reviews to get the storm going again. I think he is pathetically trying to get more publicity. But his actions show he just can't help himsself and is certainly incapable of moving on. A shame really. |
XV Brigada | 03 May 2011 2:32 p.m. PST |
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IronMarshal | 03 May 2011 2:34 p.m. PST |
Vincent Cronin, Napoleon is my favorite. |
Lest We Forget | 03 May 2011 8:40 p.m. PST |
There are several now out of print book collections of selected letters and correspondence of Napoleon that may be of interest that you can still find at a library. XV: was that link for ronery Gazzora? |
XV Brigada | 04 May 2011 2:23 a.m. PST |
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Gazzola | 04 May 2011 2:46 a.m. PST |
Lest We Forget & XV Brigada 'ronery Gazzora' ???? |
basileus66 | 04 May 2011 4:45 a.m. PST |
Sotnik For an economic overview of the economy of the Napoleonic France, I would recommend Pierre Branda's Le Prix de la Gloire Paris: Fayard, 2007. Sam Good points. When I was researching about the guerrilla war in Spain, I did read several French memoires. One of the things that struck me most as a surprise was the similarities between the different authors, in their descriptions of the Spanish people, their uses, social behaviour, ecc
until I realized that most of those descriptions were done through the lens of what the Illustrates thought it was the truth about Spain! Actually, one of the memoirists (Lemmonier-Lafosse, I think) recognized that his description of the Inquisition was taken from a novel, published in France in the late 50s of the XVIIIth Century. His rationale was that though the narrative looked a bit over the top, it should include some kernel of truth that would justify him to use it as blueprint! Best regards |
50 Dylan CDs and an Icepick | 04 May 2011 5:02 a.m. PST |
"one of the memoirists (Lemmonier-Lafosse, I think) recognized that his description of the Inquisition was taken from a novel, published in France in the late 50s of the XVIIIth Century. His rationale was that though the narrative looked a bit over the top, it should include some kernel of truth that would justify him to use it as blueprint!" That's the same sort of thing that happens when people describe the Ottomans of this period: "Well, we have this source from the Renaissance, written by some drunk and bankrupt Italian mercenary who spent four months in Istanbul and persuaded the Venetian ambassador to loan him some money to get out
that's close enough. They didn't really change much in the intervening three centuries, and I'm sure that his description of this one place applies across the whole empire
" The same was true of western writing about Russia until very recently. What is either amusing or galling, depending upon how seriously one takes oneself, is that people would then supplement the alleged paucity of sources with an invented rationale that: "The [Turks/Russians/Whomever] were terrible record-keepers, and there's just nothing available
." Translation: "Nobody has written any easy secondary sources in my west-European language, and I don't read a word of Turkish/Russian/Whatever, and certainly am not going to check for myself
" |
basileus66 | 04 May 2011 7:40 a.m. PST |
Translation: "Nobody has written any easy secondary sources in my west-European language, and I don't read a word of Turkish/Russian/Whatever, and certainly am not going to check for myself
" That is one of the saddest truths of our profession! |
Allan Mountford | 04 May 2011 10:14 a.m. PST |
'Napoleon' by Felix Markham. Brief, some would say taken at a gallop, but even-handed nonetheless. - Allan |
Trajanus | 04 May 2011 11:09 a.m. PST |
I've the 1913 edition of The Life of Napoleon I by J.H. Rose Litt.D. that I found in an old book store for £6.50 GBP which I'd recommend if you ever see a copy anywhere. |
badwargamer | 04 May 2011 11:39 p.m. PST |
XV Brigada. Excellent link :-) |
Robert le Diable | 06 May 2011 6:58 a.m. PST |
I'd try the suggestion of reading Cronin and Barnett side-by-side if it were not for the fact that I found the latter to be so irritating that I came close to following the practice of ?Marx; "this is not a book to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force" (that's Groucho, not Karl, if my memory is correct). Markham and Geyl get my vote too. Schom's book on Waterloo, or the Hundred Days, is one of the worst I've ever encountered, so I think I'll avoid anything alse of his. |
Gazzola | 06 May 2011 1:13 p.m. PST |
Robert le Diable Be careful. You have shown you have a mind of your own and can make your own mind up about things. The anti-Nappers don't like that. They prefer everyone to toe the party line, which does not allow independent thought. |
XV Brigada | 06 May 2011 6:28 p.m. PST |
basileus66, It is worse than that and what it usually means is "Nobody has written any easy secondary sources in English, and I don't read a word of any other language, and certainly am not going to check for myself
" As far as historical method is concerned I find biographies to be the most subjective but why wouldn't they be, after all the biographer is usually writing about somebody they admire or has other strong feelings about. Another problem is that biographers are not always historians. Their ability to think critically is not always good and they have a poor understanding of the value of sources (or at least the understanding the historian ought to have). Bill |
10th Marines | 07 May 2011 9:18 a.m. PST |
Robert, I agree with you on Corelli Barnett's book. It was nothing but an anti-French diatribe which wasn't helpful at all. Cronin's I found to be both well-researched and well-written. I received it as a gift my second year in college and it is still the best biography of the Great Man that I have read after all these years. It is too bad, though, that if a biography is sympathetic to Napoleon it has to be labeled 'hagiography.' Reading the authors Preface as well as realizing all the work he did on the Memoirs Appendix clearly spells out the methodology of the author and what he was trying to accomplish. Sincerely, Kevin |
Robert le Diable | 19 May 2011 6:34 a.m. PST |
To Gazzola and 10th Marines/Kevin, sorry not to respond sooner; I overlooked this Thread during the last week (unlike Napoleon, "toujours la politesse"). From Cronin's book – which I haven't read for a decade at least – one of the things that stick in the mind was his account of how Bonaparte at college made copious notes on an incredible variety of reading. Among the topics was the Dalai Lama! Given the date, isn't that about the most abstruse information one could imagine? By the way, there's a series of books on Napoleon by one Max Gallo (I think that's the name). I picked up one in a second-hand shop, very cheaply, years ago; it concerned the Jena Campaign, and basically took Napoleon's itinerary, day after day, and followed his progress. I found it a bit dry, and don't think I finished reading it. |
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx | 19 May 2011 2:15 p.m. PST |
There are several itinerary books around, which do make interesting reading when you look at contemporary material about the events of that moment. I have found the copy of Cronin, which I had borrowed and the reason why this book is no good is simple: he cannot handle source material. he starts with "The chief source for Napoleon's life is his own writings" – really? Would we accept the memoirs and papers of the subject as the "chief" source? N is perhaps unique in that his correspondence has also been published – albeit I had to flag up his famous [well, I though it was
] letter to Melas after Marengo to the ongoing FN project and it is clear that much of N's intelligence correspondence has been deliberately destroyed. It is true that "Also valuable are the letters of N's contemporaries" plus diaries and the like, but then we get to the curious bit: "None of this presents special problems". However "it is otherwise with the memoirs of those, who knew Napoleon well: here enormous discrepancies are found and there arises the problem of credibility". He then goes through nine authors, whose books he declares "unreliable sources and I have treated them with extreme caution. Normally, I have drawn on them only for statements which they had no reason to distort and which are backed up by more impartial evidence". Independently corroborated evidence is of course the best, but what he means by "more impartial we can see next – the first test is of course a nonsense. Why is he using suppsoedly unreliable material at all? Cronin continues "Fortunately we possess at least twice that number of memoirs, which are on the whole trustworthy". He then lists them out, but does not attempt to test them – they are apparently trustworthy/reliable simply because Cronin says so. You do not have to be one of the educators on this site to know that Cronin would not have passed his school leaving exam, let alone a degree course with this approach. It is hwoever an approach much used by the Keepers of the True Flame as they declare x must be reliable, while ignoring inconvenient material in y. |
Gazzola | 20 May 2011 3:09 a.m. PST |
'The chief source for Napoleon's Life is in his own writing: his essays and reading notes as a young man, his letters to Desiree Clary, to Josephine and to Marie Louise, his letters to his family, and the more than thirty volumes of letters, most of them dictated, in which we see him ruling France. Also valuable are the letters of Napoleon's contemporaries: verbatim notes recorded during meetings of the Council of State; and diaries in which Napoleon's words and doings were noted sur le vif.' (page 441 Cronin, 1994 edition) Cronin discusses reliabilty of some sources (pages 441-448) Cronin lists sources: (pages 452-468) Quite an impressive and lengthy list broken down into sections containing source material employed covering Napoleon's childhood, Military Academies, Love, Italian Campaign, Emperor of the French etc. Of course, this might not be considered as enough research material by some people, but you can't please everyone, can you? Ho hum! |