Napoleon: A Biography

'Firstly because God... plentifully bestowing gifts upon our Emperor, whether for peace or for war, has made him the minister of ...

Napoleon served him up affront after affront. In r8o5 the Grande Armee blatantly violated the neutrality of the Prussian territo ...

a war party led by the formidable Qu een Louise gained the upper hand in Berlin and forced the reluctant king to a declaration o ...

commanded 6o,ooo Prussians; another mixed force of so,ooo Prussians and Saxons were under the Prince of Hohenlohe; and a third f ...

Schwabhausen• 2 3 4 5km French Army Corps � French line of march Prussian Army Corps �-� Prussian line of march matched, for t ...

wounded himself. Napoleon at first found it difficult to acknowledge that he had made such a signal error and played this down i ...

The terms dictated by Napoleon after Jena were harsh. Prussia was to cede all territory between the Rhine and the Elbe, which me ...

to send him Tadeusz Kosciuszko and the other leaders of the Polish independence movement. On 8 November Magdeburg capitulated an ...

declaring for an independent Poland. He let it be known that he would make such a proclamation if the Polish leaders would put 4 ...

where the Russian army had retreated to, so that the French crossings of the Narew river were hotly contested. A running battle ...

Confiscated British assets in the Baltic ports increased the total. Not content with uplifting money, Napoleon imposed requisiti ...

grand seigneur of his district, even though he had a grandson of twenty­ five! Marie herself had been strictly brought up, in th ...

deserves a p rize fo r its disingenuousness: 'Come to me; all your hopes will be fulfilled. Your country will be dearer to me wh ...

their winter quarters by an unauthorized plundering expedition in the Polish lakeland region - which he justified by pleading sh ...

(just two hundred big guns against the Russians), he wanted to wait until all his fo rces came up before giving battle. But the ...

killed or captured but for the heroism of his personal escort, who held the line until two battalions of Guards came up. Napoleo ...

25,000 men; the Russians lost r5,ooo (the figures are disputed and some authorities are inclined to reverse these numbers). Napo ...

with a viscous, oozy mud. Worst of all, he had somehow to repair the damage to his personal prestige and to silence the 'I told ...

presents. Her effect on him was certainly beneficial. During the sojourn at the castle of Finkenstein he displayed miraculous en ...

litter of eight bastards; I find her more despicable than ever. She was a nice enough trollop; she has become a horrible, infamo ...