Napoleon: A Life
2014
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The definitive biography of the great soldier-statesman by the New York Times bestselling author of The Storm of War—winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Biography and the Grand Prix of the Fondation Napoleon Austerlitz, Borodino, Waterloo: his battles are among the greatest in history, but Napoleon Bonaparte was far more than a military genius and astute leader of men. Like George Washington and his own hero Julius Caesar, he was one of the greatest soldier-statesmen of all times. Andrew Roberts’s Napoleon is the first one-volume biography to take advantage of the recent publication of Napoleon’s thirty-three thousand letters, which radically transform our understanding of his character and motivation. At last we see him as he was: protean multitasker, decisive, surprisingly willing to forgive his enemies and his errant wife Josephine. Like Churchill, he understood the strategic importance of telling his own story, and his memoirs, dictated from exile on St. Helena, became the single bestselling book of the nineteenth century. An award-winning historian, Roberts traveled to fifty-three of Napoleon’s sixty battle sites, discovered crucial new documents in archives, and even made the long trip by boat to St. Helena. He is as acute in his understanding of politics as he is of military history. Here at last is a biography worthy of its subject: magisterial, insightful, beautifully written, by one of our foremost historians.
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“I lived like a bear, in a little room, with books for my only friends . . . These were the joys and debaucheries of my youth.””
— Andrew Roberts
“More books have been written with Napoleon in the title than there have been days since his death in 1821.””
— Andrew Roberts
“Napoleon taught ordinary people that they could make history, and convinced his followers they were taking part in an adventure, a pageant, an experiment, an epic whose splendour would draw the attention of posterity for centuries to come.””
— Andrew Roberts
“It is not genius which reveals to me suddenly, secretly, what I have to say or do in a circumstance unexpected by other people: it is reflection, meditation.””
— Andrew Roberts
“The future is a matter of contempt for those with courage. - Napoleon Bonaparte.””
— Andrew Roberts
“Men can be unjust towards me, my dear Junot,’ he wrote to his faithful aide-de-camp, ‘but it suffices to be innocent; my conscience is the tribunal before which I call my conduct.””
— Andrew Roberts
“If you would make war,' he would say to to General d'Hedouville in December 1799, 'wage it with energy and severity; it is the only means of making it shorter and consequently less deplorable for mankind.””
— Andrew Roberts
“Rule one on page one of the book of war, is: “Do not march on Moscow.” ’ Field Marshal Viscount Montgomery, House of Lords, May 1962””
— Andrew Roberts
“I am very happy to see the enemy wish to avoid our coming to him. – Napoleon””
— Andrew Roberts
