Napoleon: A Biography

to flee his kingdom in a hurry. Meanwhile he continued his profligate opera bouffi career. After one of his carouses he was so d ...

Napoleon's son was given the title 'the King of Rome'. At the age of three months, on 9 June I8II, he was solemnly baptized in N ...

But on the broader count of the indictment of introducing a police state, there is much to be said in Napoleon's favour. There h ...

newspapers and their scandal stories which pointed up the vulgar ostentation of the regime and even its quasi-gangsterism. Mette ...

gratuities and benefices fo r generals, highly placed officials and nobles or commercial profits fo r manufacturers and traders. ...

The Berlin Decree established a notional blockade: any ship coming direct from a British port or having been in a British port a ...

The impact of the Continental Blockade on Napoleon's Empire varied enormously, not just over space but through time. Subject to ...

largely worked, to the point where the gendarmerie brigades were reduced in number in 1810. In central France there were many de ...

some sections of the economy burgeoning and others plummeting. Those whose livelihood depended on ports or who were engaged in c ...

francs a year - not much when compared with the Councillor of State's annual salary of 25,000 francs. Indeed, by some indices th ...

Statistics are eloquent on this point: France had over 1,500 ocean-going merchant vessels in 1801 but only 179 in 1812. Thirdly, ...

slumped badly, being estimated at just £r million for the years r8ro--r2. If Louis's complaisant policies in Holland played into ...

seemed absurd that England was crammed with surplus products while France languished through shortage of the selfsame products, ...

daily wage for an agricultural labourer was I-I:i francs; in the Pyrenees the respective rates were ten francs and three francs. ...

Emperor's blockade would have been more effective if, at the same time as he was taking violent steps to close European markets ...

nineteenth century: forced pastoralization. The workings of the cotton industry in Catalonia provide an almost textbook example ...

10, 18 October 1810) introduced a new pattern of blockade which in many ways contradicted the old System. The July decree allowe ...

The sustained economic crisis of I811-I3 in France was really a combination of three distinct factors: overproduction because of ...

backs who come screaming to the bakeries.' But like many absolute rulers, he found that economics was impervious to a dictator's ...

But the economic crisis of I8II did not strike at France alone. The irony was that as Napoleon wrestled with a sea of internal t ...