Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I

This is not history written from a distance. Baron Fleury de Chaboulon was there, an aide-de-camp in Napoleon's inner circle during the most dramatic political resurrection in European history. When the former Emperor escaped from Elba in March 1815 and marched back toward Paris with nothing but his own audacity, Chaboulon witnessed it all: the calculated risks, the moment of doubt, the crowds that transformed from hostile to hysterical in a matter of days. Volume I concentrates on the Hundred Days, but it is far more than a chronicle of events. Chaboulon offers something rarer: a portrait of the man behind the legend, written as the author argued against the emerging narrative that painted Bonaparte as weak or desperate. Instead, we see a leader operating at the peak of his political cunning, surrounded by betrayal and loyalty in equal measure, a nation caught between revolution and royalism. The author writes from the inside of a regime, with all the intimacy and bias that implies. This is the memoir that every historian of the period must contend with, and every reader seeking the real Napoleon will cherish.