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Napoleon: A Political Life
Englund, Stephen. Napoleon: A Political Life. N.Y.: Scribner,
2004. 575 pages. ISBN# 0684871424. Hardcover. $35.00.
The ever increasing mountain of biographies of Napoleon Bonaparte has
grown one bigger with the publication of Napoleon: A Political Life
by Steven Englund. The author is an American scholar who lives in Paris
and has taught courses on French history and Napoleon for many years;
this however is his first work on the Napoleonic era.
As the title implies, Napoleon: A Political Life focuses mainly
on the man's political career, starting from his early years in Corsica
until his death on St. Helena. The book is in a hardback format with
an illustrated dust-jacket and is separated into four main sections,
each named after a line from La Marseillaise and includes fifteen
chapters. There is also a short introduction and an epilogue in which
the author describes how he discovered Napoleon and how and why he wrote
this biography. The work is fully notated with a notes section at the
end, as well as a bibliographical comment on his sources. It is of medium-length,
at 575 pages including notes and index, and is well-written, generally
flowing smoothly from one section to the next. The language becomes
a little heavy and needlessly complex and rambling at times, but the
prose is usually good and easy to read. There is a small section of
black and white copies of artworks and sculptures of Napoleon and other
key figures of the era.
Napoleon is extremely well researched - Englund has clearly
spent a long time carefully going through a wide-range of sources and
information, including a host of French documents and memoirs. Despite
this, he sometimes uses only a small number of them for some of his
key quotations and arguments. The book mentions a wide range of political
figures of the time and makes reference to numerous historical events
of the time, in particular the French Revolution, without properly explaining
them so some knowledge of the history of the era is useful in being
able to fully appreciate Napoleon, but by no means necessary.
It basically follows the life of Napoleon in chronological order, but
sections on certain areas will cover it over a whole range of time,
looking both forward and backwards.
The work is strongest when looking at Napoleon's domestic politics
and the nature of his government. However his consideration of Napoleon's
international affairs, policies and diplomacy is average and somewhat
stereotyped he fails to understand or highlight the delicate intrigues
and reasonings of a number of key political figures and treaties. Englund
considers the reasons and policies of each nation that led to the ruptures
of 1803 and 1805 and then in both cases places the blame firmly on Napoleon
in a complete contradiction of his own previous arguments which suggest
that the blame should at least be shared around. Time and again he blames
Napoleon for poor treaties and the beginnings of wars without full consideration
of the situations. At one point (p. 262) he writes that "Bonaparte
didn't have to drive England to war, but in view of what
he did, England had to declare it" to say that someone
had to declare war in such circumstances is sheer fantasy.
He curiously makes common use of the works of Paul Schroeder a man
so vehemently anti-Napoleon that I believe that his hatred clouds his
judgment and makes free use of memoirs without properly considering
the biases and positions of their authors, such as Metternich and Talleyrand.
However, while somewhat flawed, Napoleon goes some way
towards examining and explaining the international relations of the
time, but it is a poor cousin to Jacques Bainville's Napoleon
in this area. Despite that work's own few flaws, it beautifully analyses
and describes Napoleon's international policies and concerns as well
as those of the Allies in clear, extremely insightful fashion. Indeed
the two works at times blatantly contradict each other, but in such
cases it is Bainville's arguments that usually ring true. Bainville
has seen past the facades and complexities of both sides while Englund
is still trying to peep through the cracks in the wall and is more often
than not quite happy to follow the official lines of the governments.
That said, Englund's writing on Napoleon's domestic affairs is highly
insightful and detailed. He looks at his parliamentary bodies, distribution
of powers, creation of laws, policing, religious policies, economics
(including the all-important Continental System), industry, agriculture,
education and a range of other areas. He focuses particularly on the
Consulate and early-Empire years when considering these aspects, but
also tracks their changes and progress into the late-Empire, particularly
in the areas of governing bodies and economics. He explains how Napoleon
laid the great blocks and foundations of the modern French state in
his time as First Consul in a wonderful, concise section that should
be read by all interested in the emergence of modern France.
He writes that "the granite blocks, then, were the means by which
a property-owning society of the eighteenth century, led by an Enlightenment
general, strove to make a good exit from the most extravagant political
ordeal of modern times (the Revolution) an ordeal that the General
and his supporters regarded as greatly admirable and greatly pernicious"
a fascinating statement.
Englund takes an even-handed approach to these issues, looking at both
the positives and negatives of Napoleon's domestic government. Overall
he paints a vivid, considerate view of political Napoleonic France and,
to some extent, Europe, which is sympathetic to the Emperor while also
pointing out his mistakes and less-successful areas of leadership, comparable
with Alistair Horne's excellent work The Age of Napoleon. He
often makes comparisons between Napoleon and other similar historical
figures, such as Julius Caesar and Alexander the Great, which shows
how Napoleon learnt from his broad knowledge of history and identifies
the common traits which are associated with such great leaders.
The reader is also given an interesting insight into Napoleon's early
political career and views, including his turbulent time in Corsica
in the late 1780's-early 1790's. Napoleon looks at the man's
political reasonings and theories. Englund looks at the sources from
which he developed his political outlook, such as the great Voltaire
and Rousseau and the Jacobin Robespierre and considers the experiences
that shaped this outlook as he charts the Corsican's political rise.
He discusses the political environment into which the young Napoleon
entered, including the turbulent Revolution, the strong idealism and
the position of the army, as well as a description of a few (but not
really enough) of the key figures of the time.
The author takes the time to explain and consider the nature of French
and European politics at the time, including the distinction and yet
connection between la politique the realm of politicians, campaigns
and parliaments; and le politique that vague, undefined concept
of the collective nation or society that has become so important in
our modern world. Englund proceeds to take an interesting and informed
look at how this environment shaped Napoleon's and other statesmen's
politics, and how they in turn, especially the young general, manipulated
and changed the nature of the two in their time. Englund has carefully
analysed the somewhat scant sources on this time in Bonaparte's life
and gives us a good view of the man's political views and objectives
at this time. This is a highly contested and uncertain area in Napoleon's
life, and while some are sure to disagree with him, I feel that in most
cases the author is accurate in his descriptions of the motives of the
'little corporal'.
Englund also looks at the nature of Napoleon's grip on power, and looks
in-depth at his position as head of the government and the transition
from Consul to Consul-for-Life and finally Emperor, with a revealing
look at the reasons and methods of these changes. Englund traces the
connections between events and ideals and the resultant changes in Napoleon's
government with excellent clarity. He tackles the massive spectre of
the revolution, the fear of royalists, the radical ideas prevalent in
the young nation and the actions of the other European states and plotters
and admirably outlines how Napoleon managed all these issues and how
they in turn shaped his own leadership and the feelings of the French
people. Englund also looks at Napoleon's relationship with Pope Pius
VII and the conflict between the two which led to the Pope's arrest
in 1809 and removal from Rome and political power. Englund gives us
a clear view of the awkward problems that separated the two, and highlights
the separation between the political and personal feelings they exchanged
in an accurate, insightful fashion.
The book is clearly aimed at being a political work and admits as much,
but even so, when it strays into the military side, which is almost
impossible to avoid in a biography of the Emperor, it is poor and, while
seemingly well-researched, he only makes any significant use of one
or two sources. There are a number of small errors that pepper this
aspect of the book, which while small in themselves, combine to undermine
the credibility of this part of the book. For example he called Marshall
Lannes a 'gruff old Jacobin' when he was neither old nor a Jacobin and
he claims that even if Bonaparte had lost Marengo then the French still
would have definitely won the war a ludicrous claim. His consideration
of Napoleon's method of war comes almost entirely from Clausewitz's
On War, which is of course a very fine military work but on its
own is not sufficient to properly consider Napoleon's operations, even
in brief.
Englund looks rather briefly at Napoleon's downfall in 1813-1814, failing
to give us a detailed, accurate description of the actions and motives
of either Napoleon or the Allies, and racing through the Emperor's abdication
and exile on Elba. Englund turns to the flight of the eagle and the
short-lived 'liberal empire', looking at the intermittent rule of the
Bourbons and the rallying of France to the Emperor. He looks at the
actions of Napoleon in the hundred days and the nature of his new government,
outlining its initial highly liberal nature and leaving it up to the
reader to decide whether or not Napoleon was sincere in his intentions
which were curtailed by Waterloo.
The author skips through the second abdication, removal to St Helena
and Napoleon's dictation of his memoirs the four 'gospels' and his
eventual death in 1821, before looking at the Emperor's legacy and legend
the Napoleonic tradition(s). Englund looks at the rise of Bonapartism
and the expansion of the Napoleonic cult, and gives us a fascinating
insight into how the French state, politicians, academics and people
have treated Napoleon and his legacy up to the present day. He also
looks at how the building blocks and policies begun by Bonaparte continued
and changed in the French state after his fall and looks at the problems
and confusion that have plagued the French over how to treat the Emperor.
He closes by defending Napoleon against comparison with Hitler, Stalin
and other 20th Century dictators and highlights his leniency,
decency and intellectual superiority to these figures, comparing him
rather to a Renaissance prince and closing with Lord Roseberry's great
words "Mankind will always delight to scrutinize something that
indefinitely raises its conception of its own powers and possibilities."
Overall, Napoleon: A Political Life is a worthy edition to the
long list of Napoleon biographies. It is tentatively pro-Napoleon, which
is a contrast to a number of other recent works, as the author identifies,
yet the author has done his best to present a neutral, even-handed view
of the man and his contemporaries, a task at which he usually admirably
succeeds. Those who want to know Napoleon the man (morals, personality,
habits, family life, etc.) or general should look elsewhere (we get
glimpses of both but nothing definitive), but people interested in his
political career and motives and the European politics of the time in
general should find this book most informative. As regards Napoleon's
own domestic politics and the politics of his government and the tasks
that it accomplished I find Napoleon to be one of the best works
published to date on this area, perhaps not as detailed as individual
studies but very well summarised and analysed in the biographical setting.
For international policy and consequences it gives the reader an introduction,
but fails to properly analyse this area.
The work is often quite personal, and one can often see Englund himself
in it, especially in his attempts to explain and justify the reasons
for and method of his writing. The author, like so many Napoleonic historians
and interested individuals, is conflicted over Napoleon and the various
views that he has on him, and this is very clear in the biography. Whether
one sees this as a positive, in that it makes the work real and honest
and human, or a negative because it prevents a proper 'cold' study of
Napoleon and his actions, I think is up to the individual reader.
Reviewed by Christopher Gibbs
February 2005
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