Napoleon: A Biography

plotting that would result from his absence. Sure enough, for two months Paris was once again in the grip of coup-fever, with Ja ...

victories: Dupont was successful at Pezzolo and MacDonald in the Alps while in Italy Murat drove the Neapolitans out of the Papa ...

to compass their ends. To facilitate their conquest of Egypt, they first used an Islamic fanatic to murder the able General Kleb ...

and Ceylon was a bitter pill for the English leadership to swallow. Pitt consoled himself with the thought that British finances ...

glory in Italy and regarded it as his own personal province; his 'Oriental complex' meant that he was bound to intrigue in areas ...

Louisiana territory from Spain in r8or was one sign of this new bearing; another was the disastrous decision to send an expediti ...

isles of France and Bourbon. He explained that the differential decree of 28 Floreal r8or was necessary because Martinique, just ...

the military adventure in Haiti, Napoleon gave the first signs of an impatience with very long-term calculation that was to prov ...

CHAPTER TWELVE From the very first day Napoleon addressed the Senate as First Consul, he made it clear that he had a new era in ...

figure of 6oo,ooo francs. For the sake of his prestige he ordered the sum paid. Bourrienne then persuaded the various tradesmen ...

from the Vendeans, he announced there would be peace only when the rebels had submitted. He sent some of his best generals, incl ...

Delmas and Simon. Yet Napoleon was always kept well informed of Jacobin plots by his spies and made a point of se nding dissiden ...

and the other Brumairians were things apart. Napoleon thus not only avoided all the unpopularity currently felt towards the men ...

wanted the credit for it. Hence the paradox of the vigour with which this man, with no love for Christianity per se, forced thro ...

who had benefited from the sale of national property were the mainstay of Napoleon's regime, he could hardly grant the Pope's ec ...

speedily agreed and bishops appointed in a spirit of compromise: twelve were former constitutionals, sixteen former non-jurors a ...

Legislature pointedly elected an atheist as its president; and the Senate coopted a leading 'constitutional' who had opposed the ...

Some 4o,ooo emigres or 4 0% of the total availed themselves of the opportunity, making Napoleon's rightward drift ever more evid ...

18oo-o2 were the system of direct taxation by central government, which balanced the budget by 18oz; a sinking fund to diminish ...

who in their turn controlled 30,000 mayors and municipal councils. The prefects ran the country rather in the manner of the Inte ...