Napoleon

How did Napoleon do it? How did he succeed in projecting such a heroic image both to contemporaries and posterity? His wars killed well over a million Frenchmen and double that number of other Europeans and ended in total defeat, not once but twice. He condemned his adopted country to at least a century of social and economic backwardness, while his former enemies across the Channel and across the Rhine powered ahead on all fronts. In particular, his destruction of the Holy Roman Empire – arguably the most damaging own goal in European history – paved the way for German unification and the invasions of 1870, 1914 and 1940. He himself was an unprincipled opportunist, plundering both France and the rest of Europe to enrich his family and himself. Betraying the revolution that had brought him to power, he established a military dictatorship, indulging himself in a luxurious lifestyle that was a grotesque parody of the old regime.

It is the great strength of Alan Forrest’s sparkling new biography that the emphasis is placed not so much on what Napoleon did as on how it was presented. The general conclusion is that: ‘Throughout his career, Napoleon demonstrated an insatiable desire to project his chosen image, to reserve his place in history.’ Right from the start, his ability to publicise a victory proved to be as important as the victory itself. Both highly intelligent and utterly unscrupulous, he made sure that it was his version of events that reached the public first. So the insignificant skirmish at Lodi on May 10th, 1796 was elevated into an epoch-making triumph. Three days later he was already commissioning an engraving of ‘the amazing crossing of the bridge at Lodi’, so that a pictorial record of his exploits could be broadcast to all and sundry. Every possible media was drummed into the task of promoting his image. As the painter Girodet sourly observed: ‘We are all enlisted now, even if we don’t wear the uniform.’

Twenty years later, as he languished in exile on the remote and disagreeable South Atlantic island of St Helena, he was still at it, spinning away. Yet, for all the distortions, exaggerations, half-truths and downright lies Napoleon perpetrated in his memoirs, he managed to create a myth of extraordinary power and durability. Never was this more emphatically demonstrated than when his remains were repatriated in 1840 and laid to rest in the Invalides, the episode with which Forrest begins his book. In what follows he demonstrates with admirable clarity just how fragile was Napoleon’s house of cards. The most revealing quotation in the book is the admission made by the fallen idol on St Helena: ‘I was the key to a completely new building, and one with such shallow foundations! If it was to endure, it was reliant on each and every one of my battles.’

For readers looking for a biography that is concise (there are 300 pages of text but the font size and line spacing are generous) and lays special emphasis on Napoleonic myth-making, this book can be warmly recommended. They should be aware, however, that there are a number of odd mistakes. We are told, for example, that at the battle of Valmy in 1792 the Duke of Brunswick commanded an ‘Anglo-Prussian’ force and that the French victory scattered the Austrians, when in fact the British had not yet entered the war and the Austrian army was a long way away. We are also told that in 1809 the Tyroleans rose in revolt against the Austrians, when in fact they rose in support of Austria against the Bavarians. One can only speculate as to whether the late Thomas Nipperdey would have been more flattered than irritated to find his celebrated dictum: ‘In the beginning was Napoleon’ – attributed to Goethe. Even Homer nodded, of course, and these slips can be sorted out in a second edition.

Tim Blanning is the author of The Romantic Revolution (Phoenix, 2011).