Napoleon

With his own elaborate imperial court, with his family ensconced on thrones across the continent, and with his overthrow of several historic republics, Napoleon brought Europe to a pinnacle of monarchism.

J.M. Thompson profiles Napoleon's revolutionary younger brother, who often clashed with the French leader.

The whole of Stendhal’s youth was spent under the aegis of Napoleon, and Napoleonic legend played an increasing part in his later writings.

In his memoirs Chateaubriand denounces Napoleon. But, asks Douglas Hilt, is it not a figure of grandeur and vision that emerges?

After early service in Poland, writes Adam Zamoyski, Sulkowski joined the French Army of Italy and in 1798 met a gallant death in Egypt.

As an exile, writes D.S. Gray, the Emperor had many conversations with a Scottish officer, which ‘left no doubt of his expecting that circumstances might yet call him to the throne of France’.

Like all military dictators, Bonaparte understood the martial importance of well-designed uniforms.

Napoleon returned to Paris in 1814 pledged to the concept of a liberal Empire. From the paradoxical experience of the Hundred Days, writes Harold Kurtz, sprang both the legend and reality of Bonapartism.

Although Canning resigned in 1809, writes Cedric Collyer, the fruits of his foreign policy, and the confirmation of the principles on which it rested, were already apparent by 1812 in the changing face and prospects of the war.

John Terraine studies the effects of Napoleonic doctrine upon the leadership of mass armies in the Industrial Age.