The Story of Napoleon

Оглавление

Harold Wheeler. The Story of Napoleon

Foreword

CHAPTER I. Napoleon the Boy (1769–1778)

CHAPTER II. The Schooldays of Napoleon (1779–1784)

CHAPTER III. Napoleon as Officer and Author (1784–1791)

CHAPTER IV. Napoleon and the Corsican Volunteers (1791–1792)

CHAPTER V. The Eve of the Reign of Terror (1792–1793)

CHAPTER VI. Napoleon’s First Fight with the English (1793)

CHAPTER VII. Napoleon the Soldier of Fortune (1794–1796)

CHAPTER VIII “The Spark of Great Ambition” (1796)

CHAPTER IX. The Italian Campaign (1796–1797)

CHAPTER X. The Expedition to Egypt (1798)

CHAPTER XI. From Cairo to Fréjus (1798–1799)

CHAPTER XII. How Napoleon Seized the Reins of Government (1799)

CHAPTER XIII. The Passage of the Alps (1799–1801)

CHAPTER XIV. Blessings of Peace (1801–1803)

CHAPTER XV. The Dawn of the Empire (1803–1804)

CHAPTER XVI. The Threatened Invasion of England and its Sequel (1804–1805)

CHAPTER XVII. The War of the Third Coalition (1805–6)

CHAPTER XVIII. The Prussian Campaign (1806)

CHAPTER XIX. The Polish Campaign (1806–7)

CHAPTER XX. Friedland and Tilsit (1807)

CHAPTER XXI. Napoleon’s Commercial War with Great Britain (1807)

CHAPTER XXII. The Genesis of the Peninsular War (1808)

CHAPTER XXIII. Glory at Erfurt and Humiliation in Spain (1808–1809)

CHAPTER XXIV. The Austrian Campaign (1809)

CHAPTER XXV. The Austrian Campaign—continued (1809)

CHAPTER XXVI. The War in Poland and Tyrol (1809)

CHAPTER XXVII. A Broken Friendship and what it Brought (1810–1812)

CHAPTER XXVIII. The Russian Campaign (1812)

CHAPTER XXIX. The Triumphal Entry into Moscow—and after (1812)

CHAPTER XXX. The March of Humiliation (1812)

CHAPTER XXXI. The Beginning of the End—The Leipzig Campaign (1813)

CHAPTER XXXII. The Conquest of the Conqueror (1814–1821)

Отрывок из книги

There is no more marvellous story in human history than that of Napoleon I., Emperor of the French. His career is one long demonstration of the reality of the proverb, “Truth is stranger than fiction.” So fascinating are the details of a life in which so much was attempted and accomplished that many thousands of volumes have been published dealing with its various phases. The demand is by no means exhausted, the supply continuous, as witness the present work. Busy pens are still employed in reviewing the almost superhuman activities of the once obscure Corsican, whose genius for war and conquest upset many a throne, secured for him the Overlordship of Europe, and eventually consigned him to an island prison. Indeed, there seems little likelihood of a lull in interest while the chief source of instruction and amusement of human nature is humanity—in other words itself. Most of us are content to be pupils in the school of experience, willing to sit at the feet of such a master as Napoleon, and learn the lessons he has to teach. The result cannot be other than profitable.

Napoleon has been dead nearly ninety years, but the dazzling brilliancy of his exploits has left a rich afterglow which enables us to get a much less distorted view of him than were our forefathers who were his contemporaries. A subdued light is more useful than one so strong that it almost blinds. With the former we can see details more distinctly, note faults and flaws if there be any, get a clearer idea of an object in every way. Within living memory the name of Napoleon, particularly in Great Britain, was associated with everything that was base and vile, now we know that he was neither the Borgia of his enemies nor the Arch-Patriot of his friends. Nevertheless it is easier for a sightless person to thread a needle than for the most conscientious historian to arrive at an absolutely just summing-up of the case. The “Memoirs” of those with whom the Emperor was intimately acquainted are seldom impartial; the majority of the writers are either definitely for or against him. Take those of Baron Méneval as a typical example. The author was one of Napoleon’s secretaries, and every page of his work is a defence of his master. In the matter of the execution of the Duc d’Enghien, for instance, he takes up the cudgels on behalf of the man who was responsible for the tragedy at Vincennes, boldly stating that “One is forced to admit that Napoleon fulfilled a painful duty, as Head of the Government, and that instead of charging him with a crime, one should rather pity him for having been placed in the necessity of accepting all the odium of an act, the deplorable consequences of which, in the future, his foresight only too clearly pointed out to him.”

.....

Napoleon’s father had no difficulty in deciding what profession to choose for his second son. As for Joseph, he determined that he should enter the priesthood. Napoleon was positive his brother would make a good bishop, and said so.

In this matter of settling the life-work of his boys Charles Bonaparte was helped by the kindly-disposed Marbœuf, one of the two French commissioners appointed by the King to govern Corsica, who frequently visited the house in the Rue St Charles. Napoleon, although only nine years old was now about to enter a larger world, to have an opportunity to appreciate the benefits of education on sounder lines, and to tread the soil of the country which received him as a humble pensioner of the King, and elevated him twenty-five years later to the Imperial throne.

.....