Napoleon: A Life (2015)
3.5 Stars out of 5
Andrew Roberts
926 pages
Andrew Roberts describes himself as “extremely rightwing” in
his politics. He is an Englishman with a degree in modern history. He has
written 17 publications on historical events since 1991 and is best known for
his 2009 “Storm of War”; a book-long analysis of where Hitler went wrong in WWII. Had I
known this prior to reading his 2014 exhaustive
biography on Napoleon Bonaparte, I would have thought to find a work that slanted
Napoleon’s life towards a conservative Englishman’s point of view. And while it
is certain Roberts admires Napoleon, he has managed to avoid creating an overly
reactionary summary of his chosen topic. What the book does suffer from
is a paucity of analysis and an overabundance of Napoleonic lists: his will
bequeaths, his art decorations, the books in his library, and so forth. There
is far too little critical examination of Napoleonic influence on France’s
social institutions, on European law, on art and education, or even on modern
military theory. Napoleon was an enormous influence on France and the Western
World. An egotist to be certain; he wanted throughout his life to join in
history his two most admired heroes, Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar.
After reading this extensive summary of his achievements, should you choose to
do so, you will unquestionably agree that he has indeed joined them. You will
unfortunately also have to come to that conclusion (as I am sure you will) based on your own analysis of Roberts’
summary of Napoleon’s achievements, as he will provide close to no interpretation
or summary of his own opinions on Napoleon’s position in history.
When modern Americans think of Napoleon, what do think of
him, let alone know of him? Most likely they will have some comic image of a
very short man, his right hand stuffed into his jacket, and some indication in his
caricature of a fool or even a deranged man. Napoleon’s own contemporaries may
have thought him unbalanced in the sense that they saw in him a man subsumed by
his own notoriety and drive for glory. Perhaps they saw him as a dictator
driven by his ego to sacrifice untold thousands of French soldiers as he sought
to dominate Europe. It is certain the English saw him as a distinct threat to
their growing hegemony. They knew he was not much of a threat on the sea, they
knew they controlled it via the repeated victories by Admiral Lord Nelson.
Their concerns lay rather with control of the continent. Indeed, the English
saw so much risk inherent in an unbound Napoleon that they spent millions of
English Pounds buying off Russia, Prussia, Austria (a country already consumed with
hatred for Napoleon), Sweden and a host of smaller countries – all in an effort
to isolate on land what they had already done at sea. But how did Napoléon
Bonaparte, the son of a minor Corsican noble, a child that never learned to
speak anything but heavily accented French, rise to be emperor of
post-revolutionary France, the primary threat to England and the terror of
virtually all Europe. The answer lies in Robertson’s book, but you will have to
look for it.
Napoleon was born in 1769 to a father lately arrived to
Corsica from Tuscany and a mother that was devoted to him and learning. He was
part of a large collection of brothers and sisters, all of whom would join him
in his later imperial administration and royal machinations. His siblings though
would prove at best, neutral allies, or at worst as in the case of his elder
brother Joseph, a complete disaster. I would go so far as to say Joseph’s
mishandling of Spain was one of the critical elements in Napoleon’s ultimate
down fall. Young Napoleon showed considerable talent in math and this would
lead him to the study of artillery once he reached the mainland and its
military schools. He also displayed great interest in a personal study of classical
history, focusing of course on the various military geniuses that had
distinguished themselves. Alexander and Caesar would become life-long icons for
him to emulate. Following his graduation from school, he did not look to have much
promise as a military leader, or even as a reliable member of the Army. From
the beginning he established a habit of year-long leaves from the French Army.
One example (and not the only one) was when he chose to involve himself in a
conflict on Corsica, a conflict that was with France herself. Eventually, he
did return and was instrumental in brutally suppressing via cannon fire, mob
action in Paris. This got him the attention of the government and command of
the French Army of Italy, all by the age of 26. Needless to say, due to his youth and inexperience he was
initially poorly regarded by those in his new command. However, he very quickly
was able to demonstrate his military genius as he out-thought the Austrians (the military rulers of a fractured Italy) and
proved to be an extremely able commander of men, as well as a great military
tactician. His defeat of the Austrians would form in them and their Emperor,
Francis I a life-long enmity, and would be the beginning of 60 major military
battles with him winning all but a very few. Though of course, two of those
losses, Leipzig and Waterloo would prove disastrous to him and France.
He returned to Paris a darling of the populace; of the
populace, but not of the revolutionary government that had shortly followed the
over-throw of Louis XIV, the Directorate. They decided it would better if he
were somewhere far from Paris. As such, and to ostensibly frustrate English
ambitions in India, they sent him to Egypt. On this trip in 1789 he would take 167
scholars, hundreds of books and thousands of soldiers. He would there continue
his string of military victories as he defeated the Mameluks, the mercenary
force ruling Egypt. He would also oversee the gathering of great amounts of
scholarly work by his cadre of scientists (the Rosetta Stone was discovered on
this expedition). And he would start to display his ruthless behavior when he
felt the military situation warranted
it. In this case, he would kill to the last man the defenders of Jaffa, and even
his own men dying from the plague on the trip back to Egypt after the battles
in Palestine were concluded. When he decided to make a precipitous return to
Paris, a new controversy arose, as in leaving the field as he did, he left the majority
of his men in Egypt in order to race back to France. His men would soon be defeated
by the English as Admiral Nelson destroyed the Nile-based French fleet and over-ran French
land forces. Napoleon though, managed a watery escape – this too would be a
pattern: previously from the Corsican conflict, now from Egypt and later from Elba.
Once in Paris, he decided to waste little time in orchestrating a coup d’état,
thus ending the Directorate’s rule and beginning his rule as 1st
Consul. The consulship was ostensibly a republic ruled by Napoleon and two
others. In fact, this became his start as a dictator as he quickly eliminated the
authority of the two other consuls, leaving Napoleon in sole charge. Each
Consul was allegedly elected by popular vote. However, here was an early example
of Napoleon’s self-serving math. His facility with numbers which had served him
so honorably in artillery school would now be employed less precisely in a
career long pattern of lying about how many votes he received, in this case,
>99%. He would continue this action in 1804 when he was “elected” to emperor,
again with >98% of the votes. He had already given much evidence of his flexibility
with numbers when he reported back to Paris on how many cannon he had taken
from the Austrians, how many enemy killed or imprisoned, or how many French
soldiers had been lost. The enemy’s losses were always grossly inflated, while
his own losses severely minimized. He considered such Franco-centric numbers to
be part of his military strategy to deceive and demoralize the enemy; that they
helped foster his reputation was a convenient plus.
There is no doubt of Napoleon’s military genius. He
formulated over twenty maxims of military strategy and tactics that are studied
to this day in Western military schools. His actual battles are modeled and
studied as well; even his losses such as Waterloo are studied carefully to see whether
or not he erred in not following his own maxims. His normal performance was so
far above the performance of his foes (Wellington was a distinct exception),
that when he did fail as at Waterloo or Leipzig, military scholars first assume
he did not follow his own dictums and then try to find out why. They simply do
not assume his tactics were at fault. With respect to tactics, if this is an
area of interest, you will find them reasonably summarized in Roberts’ book. A
gross simplification of them could be summed as the following: never split your
forces, keep them concentrated and focus them on the your enemy’s center; once
you have your enemy in trouble, finish him off before you turn to another enemy
force. He also introduced several techniques to enhance his army’s mobility and
flexibility in turning to new threats. Lastly, as previously noted, Napoleon
was a great believer in false information. In one of his greatest victories,
Austerlitz, he did everything he could to convince the Austrians that his
forces were in trouble. The Austrians took the bait and paid the ultimate price
for it.
As one reads of Napoleon’s victories, it is hard not to
conclude that a disproportionate amount of them were over the Austrians.
Francis I would join his country to seven coalitions made up at one time or the
other of Austrians, Prussians, Russians, and the English – but always the
Austrians, and always the Austrians would pay the price. It is true, they were
part of the forces that defeated Napoleon in France the first time in 1814
following Napoleon’s defeat in Leipzig at the hands of the Prussians and
Russians in 1813 and then again for the last time in 1815 at Waterloo, this
time at the hands of the English and the Prussians. The Austrians really never
did learn their lesson from Napoleon. One might as well wonder what lessons
Napoleon learned with respect to his two major defeats. It would have been nice
if Roberts had devoted a chapter to summing up the forces and events that
culminated in Napoleon’s downfall, but he does not. It is easy to see how under
Napoleon’s brother Joseph’s incompetent rule of Spain, French land forces were
pinned down and weakened by long term guerilla warfare by the Spanish and
Portuguese (with considerable help from Wellington, again). These forces were
not available to Napoleon when he marched to or from Moscow. He also dallied
for far too long in his approach to and in his stay in Moscow, and thus got
caught in a Polish winter during his retreat out of Russia that decimated his
forces. Napoleon unquestionably created an enemy in Czar Alexander with
Napoleon’s Continental System. This system was an attempt to thwart the English
control of the seas but all it really did was ruin the Russian economy and impoverish
a significant part of the French populace. Napoleon’s intent was to embargo all
sea traffic involved with Great Britain, but in doing so he ruined everyone’s
business interests: allies and enemies alike. Since Britain had near absolute
control of the seas by 1814, Napoleon was forced to such extremes. In this case
he chose very unwisely as he hurt his true allies and erstwhile allies like Czar
Alexander as much as he hurt Britain. Another significant mistake Napoleon made
was in his relations to the hitherto almost uninvolved Prussia; he created the
Confederation of the Rhine by taking land from Prussia in the Treaty of Tilsit which
humiliated them and created an enemy force on Prussia’s border. The treaty of
Tilsit had been by Napoleon designed to make an ally of Russia at Prussia’s
cost. What it did instead was create a furious enemy in Prussia, and an
unreliable ally in Russia. It is truly ironic that so many of these themes
would re-occur in post-WWI Europe.
The bottom-line then is Napoleon created the conditions and
the enemies that would create the coalitions that formed to defeat him. Indeed,
by the time of the 6th and 7th coalitions, the Allies
regarded a complete removal of Napoleon as being almost the only goal that
mattered. They weren’t defeating and subjugating France as much as defeating
and subjugating Napoleon. Needless to say they did more to France than imprison
Napoleon on Elba in 1814 and St Helena in 1815, they also slaughtered hundreds
of thousands of French soldiers and in 1814 returned the French borders to
those of 1791, borders that existed before Napoleon ever came
to power.
France and Napoleon paid a dear price for his military
exploits, but France was also the beneficiary of considerable social progress
under Napoleon. The "Code of Napoleon" legal system was instituted and became a
model for several European countries besides France and still exists in some countries up to the present. The structure of the
French “states” into districts with a governance system based on meritocracy
was instituted under Napoleon. A modern sewer system for Paris was created under Napoleon. A long list of such social accomplishments could
be studied to clearly understand just what a force for good as well as bad
Napoleon was. He was in many ways far more than his two heroes, Alexander and Caesar.
He stands alone in history for a rich variety of reasons. He is a man well
worth study. But I am sad to say, that unless lifeless language and long lists
are your primary choices for studying history, or if you are looking for a
professorial-level analysis of the geo-political, or even the military forces
involved in the Napoleonic era, Roberts’ book is not the best choice to use in
such a study.
