"Napoleon wrote the best political memoir" Topic

"This week the world marks the bicentenary of the mother of all battles, Waterloo. On June 18, 1815, the destiny of Europe, and much of the rest of the world, was hashed out. The monarchies of Europe, stretching from London to Moscow, had combined forces to defeat France, whose leader, Napoleon Bonaparte, had returned to power following a brief exile on the island of Elba. The battle spelled the ultimate defeat of Napoleon and quashed the prospect of a continent under French dominion. But the blood spilled that day — nearly 60,000 soldiers died — also guaranteed the survival of the revolutionary ideals that Napoleon either channeled — such as equality — or dammed up, like liberty. In a chapter of Les Misèrables that Russell Crowe never got to croon, Victor Hugo rightly noted that Waterloo "was the hinge of the 19th century. A great man had to disappear in order that a great century be born."

That great man also had to disappear so that the mother of all political memoirs could be born: The Memorial of Saint Helena. Thanks to Napoleon's brilliant effort at reinvention, the book transformed a man who had been reviled as a bloody minded despot who had buried the French Revolution and enslaved Europe into a fair-minded constitutionalist who had saved the Revolution and liberated Europe's peoples…"
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Amicalement
Armand

"not by flair and finesse, but instead by phlegm and foreign allies"

Catchy. But, in truth, he had me at "60,000"