David Bell offers a succinct overview of the remarkable life of Napoleon, highlighting the most important aspects of his character, the critical historical events, and his enduring legacy. I have great respect for historians who are able to part with the minutiae and distil the key concepts for non-historians like me – as Bell writes in the introduction, “while the current crop of biographies has many virtues, concision is not among them”.

I was particularly impressed that, despite the emphasis on brevity, Bell not only narrates Napoleon’s life but advances a thesis of the historical circumstances that made Napoleon possible. He believes that while Napoleon was indeed a man of great talent (exceptionally intelligent, industrious, and politically savvy), his rise was catalysed by the social tumult of the French Revolution (”chaos is a ladder”), the newly-free press, and the evolution of warfare. For example, Napoleon was a master of the media, carefully managing his image and using the press to rally the populous, a tactic that has been repeated many times in history: Mussolini and Nasser with radio, the Nazis with film, Khomeini and the cassette tapes, etc.

The biography is well-written – the language is pretty without being ornate – and within the constraint of concision, Bell does a commendable job of introducing other characters and themes. I now want to read more about Talleyrand, who was Napoleon’s foreign minister for a time, before ultimately resigning and plotting against Napoleon. Notably, Talleyrand features more in The 48 Laws of Power than Napoleon!

Napoleon is certainly not presented as a role model, especially with his general disregard for human life (“A man like me troubles himself little about a million men”), but Bell does not think he is a tyrant either, especially when compared to 20th-century fascist leaders. Moral considerations aside, in my eyes the principal value of his story (and the story of other “Great Men” like Churchill, Alexander the Great, and Caesar Augustus), is to make us dramatically expand our view of what is achievable in a lifetime.

For all his crimes and errors, his life also incarnated a sense of sheer human possibility that quite rightly fascinated onlookers at the time and has continued to do so ever since. We look at his life and recoil from parts of it in horror. But at the same time, inescapably, there is something that takes the breath away.

Key ideas

• The French Revolution (1789-1799):
  • In the 1780s half of France’s tax revenue was being used to service foreign debt
  • Food prices spiked due to a severe hailstorm in 1788
  • The National Assembly formed in June 1789. Louis XVI sends troops to Paris, and revolutionaries respond by storming the Bastille on July 14th
  • 1792: revolutionaries capture Louis XVI, and put him to death by guillotine.
• The new forms of war:
  • After the Bourbons were overthrown, the French Republic could draw on its large population for the army
  • Warfare became more about numbers: “Napoleon was a product of total war, would become its master, and would end up its victim.”
  • Prior to Napoleon, European warfare was not generally about usurping other monarchs.
• Napoleon’s rise to power:
  • 1793: promoted to Brigadier General at the age of 24, after demonstrating military acumen and physical courage at the Siege of Toulon
  • 1794: Napoleon arrested due to his political allegiance to Robespierre. Though he avoided prosecution, he was spurned and given bad posts. Until he had a lucky break from Barras to put down the royalist coup attempt in Paris. His success leads to his appointment as head of the Italian portion of the French army
  • 1799: at the age of 30, he became the First Consul
  • 1800: Napoleon leads 35k men across the Alps to intercept the Austrian army.
  • 1802: Napoleon becomes First Consul for Life
• Napoleon’s strengths:
  • Read a lot as a child
  • Photographic memory, could visualise the positions of his army and manoeuvre them optimally
  • Generous in sharing the spoils: “I will lead you into the most fertile plains on earth. Rich provinces, wealthy towns, all will be yours for the taking. There you will find honour, and glory, and riches.”
• Mastery of the media
  • e.g. the famous “encounter at Laffrey” was somewhat stage-managed – one of his officers had liaised with a royalist commander
  • Napoleon made use of the new free press to inspire popular support and later controlled the press carefully
  • Cultivated his image, e.g. the Jacques-Louis David paintings
• Disregard for human life: “A man like me troubles himself little about a million men”
• Key failures:
  • Trafalgar (1805): Lord Nelson defeats France and Spain at sea, using columns of ships to break the line. Cements British Naval supremacy which is a persistent headache for Napoleon thereafter.
  • Russia campaign (1812): only 85k of the 665k made it back out of Russia.
  • Battle of the Nations at Leipzig (1813): split up his forces, in addition to being heavily outnumbered.
  • Waterloo (June 1815): Lord Wellington and the coalition defeat Napoleon.

Highlights

• Introduction
• Historical context
• Early years, 1769–1796
• General, 1796–1799
• First Consul, 1799-1804
• Emperor, 1804–1812
• Downfall, 1812–1815
• Legacy