Napoleon: A Biography

rubber-stamped the Emperor's decisions. The Assembly of Deputies quickly declined to the level of farce, with a high level of ab ...

themselves. The scale of this madness became apparent during Napo­ leon's triumphal procession through Italy in the fourteen wee ...

nothing happened on the island without her say-so. Legendarily stingy, Letizia was also, bizarrely, put in charge of the imperia ...

in imperial times, to the effect that Napoleon and Pauline had been incestuous lovers. The 'source' was allegedly Josephine, sai ...

Thiard business, the Emperor seems to have displaced some of his hostility on to Josephine, for we hear of a scene at court wher ...

concocted that Murat had raped her, but the truth was that she became his lover willingly enough. The cynical Caroline was unmov ...

Josephine about her behaviour, Stephanie reluctantly accepted the dynastic marriage Napoleon had arranged for her with Charles L ...

architecture or entertainment, reeked of vulgarity, ostentation, conspicu­ ous consumption and chip-on-the-shoulder aping of the ...

CHAPTER FIFTEEN For more than two years, from the outbreak of war in May 1803, Napoleon was intermittently obsessed by the invas ...

smaller bases at Wimereux and Ambleteuse; the four principal army corps, each with artillery park, would be held back at Utrecht ...

Yet even at this stage Napoleon had not come to terms with the fu ndamental problem that would in the end bring all his grandios ...

flotilla was not 'weatherly' enough for a winter crossing of the Channel; the movement of shipping from the assembly ports to th ...

the Rochefort squadron (Admiral Villeneuve in command of another five men o'war) and then fetch a wide compass into the Atlantic ...

West Indies. The Toulon fleet was to recapture Surinam and the Dutch colonies and take reinforcements to Santo Domingo (where th ...

his admiral's humiliating failure, his rage was a sight to behold. The volcanic anger is still evident in his correspondence in ...

with an equally large Franco-Spanish fleet simply meant that problems of logistics and coordination were compounded. The element ...

The writing was on the wall as Ganteaume failed to get out of Brest despite strenuous efforts on 26-28 March 1805, when the Fren ...

cuckoo-land. It was almost as though the Emperor had reacted self­ destructively to the manifold problems of an invasion of Engl ...

of the line. On the other, Calder linked up with Cornwallis to tighten the noose around Brest. This was the moment when a French ...

However, none of this affected Napoleon's superb confidence. Constant records that Napoleon diverted himself with the charms of ...