In telling the story of the man who became the ruler of France in 1799 and who by 1812 had succeeded in creating an empire that covered most of western and central Europe, author J. M. Thompson draws readers into the workings of the legendary leader’s mind. What makes this biography of one of the greatest and most infamous military commanders in history such a compelling read is the author’s handling and choice of the evidence.
Thompson relies above all on Napoleon’s correspondence, and complements this with an in-depth and wide-ranging knowledge of the background and setting of the story. The result is an intimate but objective biography that shows considerable skill and judgment on the part of the author and that gives readers a lifelike, and lively, portrait of the man who has been variously interpreted. Napoleon has been portrayed as an ogre who sacrificed millions of men to his own ambition, as a power hungry conqueror, as a military genius. But here, readers will not find Thompson indulging in that sort of single-minded sentiment. He provides instead, through masterful use of Napoleon’s notes and letters—from his student days to his final days—a portrait that is full of psychological insight and everyday details, personal concerns and observations, fears and ambitions. Thompson’s Napoleon had a superior mind that ultimately fell prey to a «colossal egoism.» This Napoleon kept copious reading notes on Plato and other classicists, and on British possessions in various parts of the world. He had the audacity at his coronation to take the crown from the attending pope and set it on his own head himself. He could never understand what went wrong at Waterloo- «it remained to the end of his life an inexplicable affair»- and he insisted on preserving the pretensions of empire even «amidst the ennui of exile.» Most of all, this is the Napoleon who «forgot that a man cannot be God.»