Napoleon: A Biography

split, and disaster loomed. It was fortunate for Napoleon that heavy rain and inadequate supplies held the Austrians up, so that ...

campaign, which was not his usual practice. His defenders, however, claim that sending Massena on a sweep of the Saale on the zo ...

assailed by Austrian commando raids, sometimes even having to endure violent storms and the attacks of fireships, French enginee ...

bridge to Lobau was broken once again and the Emperor had ordered a general retreat to the island. In almost the last fighting o ...

fall on the stockmarket. In Spain the military advantage the Emperor had secured a few months earlier was thrown away by the inc ...

went off without a hitch; not a single man was lost and complete surprise was achieved when the French emerged at their new loca ...

things and that if he, Bernadotte, were in command he could have forced Charles to surrender without firing a single shot. He fo ...

French artillery on Lobau which, finding a perfect target in Charles's would-be enveloping forces, mowed them down in droves. Ne ...

been a close-run thing and, had Archduke John appeared at the moment the Emperor committed his last reserves, a signal defeat wo ...

turned to debacle, though it was a protracted one, since the British did not leave the island until 23 December, hoping the Aust ...

when he went to Vienna in August to consult the physician Professor Lanefranque about his indifferent health (he wrote to Joseph ...

reason. They make young men assassins. But what can be done? ... A sect cannot be destroyed by cannonballs.' Once again he had e ...

CHAPTER NINETEEN By I8o8 Napoleon controlled an army of 8oo,ooo men and an empire that stretched from the Russian frontier to th ...

The most important satellite state was the Confederation of the Rhine, a league of states set up by Napoleon to replace the old ...

joining them on the rubble heap were the many ex-convents where the Jacobin and other clubs had convened. Considerable improveme ...

Napoleon's ambition to make Paris a cultural capital suffered from the obvious drawback that his censorship policies and general ...

historical Napoleon crossed the Alps in r8oo on the Marengo campaign by mule - the only way to negotiate the icy passes - the my ...

by this time Napoleon had under his wing as court favourites Pierre-Paul Prud'hon, whose sensual allegories were very much to hi ...

placed on his head with his own hand, this time in Milan Cathedral) to the imperial crown of France, just as Charlemagne had don ...

deep impulse behind the events of 1812. The problem about unassimi­ lated 'complexes' like Napoleon's imperial idea is not just ...