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piquet of chasseurs
Napoleon borrowed many biographies and history books from the school library, devouring Plutarch’s tales of heroism, patriotism and republican virtue. He also read Caesar, Cicero, Voltaire, Diderot and the Abbé Raynal, as well as Erasmus, Eutropius, Livy, Phaedrus, Sallust, Virgil and the first century BC Cornelius Nepos’ Lives of the Great Captains, which included chapters on Themistocles, Lysander, Alcibiades and Hannibal.
He could recite in French whole passages from Virgil, and in class he naturally took the side of his hero Caesar against Pompey.38 The plays he enjoyed as an adult also tended to focus on the ancient heroes, such as Racine’s Alexandre le Grand, Andromaque, Mithridate and Corneille’s Cinna, Horace and Attila.
A contemporary recalled Napoleon withdrawing to the school library to read Polybius, Plutarch, Arrian (‘with great delight’) and Quintus Curtius Rufus (for which he had ‘little taste’).39 Polybius’ Histories chronicled the rise of the Roman Republic and offered an eyewitness account of the defeat of Hannibal and the sack of Carthage; Plutarch’s Parallel Lives included sketches of Napoleon’s two greatest heroes, Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar; Arrian wrote the Anabasis of Alexander, one of the best sources for Alexander’s campaigns; Quintus Curtius Rufus produced only one surviving work,
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as a schoolboy he had read Jerusalem Delivered, Tasso’s epic poem about the First Crusade.)
Rousseau’s La Nouvelle Héloïse, one of the biggest bestsellers of the eighteenth century, which had influenced him so much as a boy, argued that one should follow one’s authentic feelings rather than society’s norms, an attractive notion for any teenager, particularly a dreamer of ferocious ambition.
Napoleon read Corneille, Racine and Voltaire with evident pleasure. His favourite poet was Ossian, whose bardic tales of ancient Gaelic conquest thrilled him with accounts of heroism among misty moors and epic battles on stormy seas. He took the Ossian poem Fingal on his campaigns, commissioned several Ossianic paintings, and was so impressed with the opera Ossian by Jean-François Le Sueur, with its twelve orchestral harps, that he made the composer a chevalier of the Légion d’Honneur at the premiere in 1804.
He appears not to have been particularly disconcerted when it was discovered that the epic poem had in fact been written by its self-styled ‘discoverer’, the literary fraudster James Macpherson.
He also studied General Comte Jacques de Guibert’s revolutionary Essai général de tactique (1770): ‘The standing armies, a burden on the people, are inadequate for the achievement of great and decisive results in war, and meanwhile the mass of the people, untrained in arms, degenerates … The hegemony over Europe will fall to that nation which becomes possessed of manly virtues and creates a national army.’
The list of books from which Napoleon made detailed notes from 1786 to 1791 is long, and includes histories of the Arabs, Venice, the Indies, England, Turkey, Switzerland and the Sorbonne. He annotated Voltaire’s Essais sur les moeurs, Machiavelli’s History of Florence, Mirabeau’s Des lettres de cachet and Charles Rollin’s Ancient History; there were books on modern geography, political works such as Jacques Dulaure’s anti-aristocracy Critical History of the Nobility, and Charles Duclos’ gossipy Secret Memoirs of the Reigns of Louis XIV and Louis XV.68 At the same time, he learned verses of
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He was determined to continue his exhaustive autodidactic reading programme and his voluminous notebooks from Auxonne are full of the history, geography, religion and customs of all the most prominent peoples of the ancient world, including the Athenians, Spartans, Persians, Egyptians and Carthaginians. They cover modern artillery improvements and regimental discipline, but also mention Plato’s Republic, Achilles and (inevitably) Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar.
Histoire philosophique et politique des établissements et du commerce des Européens dans les deux Indes,
Le Souper de Beaucaire.
‘I have had to struggle against ignorance and the base passions which it engenders.’
The socialite Laure d’Abrantès, who knew Napoleon at this time, though probably not as well as she later claimed in her bitchy memoirs,
His plan was based both on Pierre de Bourcet’s Principes de la guerre des montagnes (1775),
He believed it was essential for everyone to be treated according to the same rules, appreciating, as he put it, that ‘If there were a single privilege granted to anyone, no matter whom, not one man would obey the order to march.’
Albenga
Savona
Montenotte,
River Erro
Millesimo, a hamlet on the River Bormida,
both had to fall back to the fortified village of Dego,
castle of Cosseria.
Mondovì, a town on the River Ellero,
Cherasco:
‘like power in mechanics, is the product of multiplying the mass by the velocity.’
Momentum actually.
Cherasco
Coni
Tortona, Alessandria, Coni and Ceva were handed over to the French, along with the route to Valence and all the territory between Coni and the Stura, Tanaro and Po rivers.
Beaulieu, the commander of the Austrian forces, had retreated into the angle of the Po and Ticino rivers, covering Pavia and Milan with his lines of communication running north of the Po.
Lodi,
Vaunting ambition can be a terrible thing, but if allied to great ability – a protean energy, grand purpose, the gift of oratory, near-perfect recall, superb timing, inspiring leadership – it can bring about extraordinary outcomes.
‘If you make war,’ he would say to General d’Hédouville in December 1799, ‘wage it with energy and severity; it is the only means of making it shorter and consequently less deplorable for mankind.’
Journal de Bonaparte et des Hommes Vertueux,
Napoleon openly wondered whether fighting for Italy had ultimately been worth it, calling it ‘an enervated, superstitious, pantalon and cowardly nation’ that was incapable of greatness and certainly ‘not worthy of having forty thousand Frenchmen die for it’.
(It is said that when asked about the Venetian clauses, Napoleon explained: ‘I was playing vingt-et-un, and stopped at twenty.’
Oeil-de-Boeuf,’
Napoleon said: ‘The true conquests, the only ones that cause no regret, are those made over ignorance.’
(Years later he would state that he believed ‘Man was formed by the heat of the sun acting upon mud. Herodotus tells us that the slime of the Nile changed into rats, and that they could be seen in the process of formation.’
‘Torture produces nothing worthwhile. The poor wretches say anything that comes into their mind that the interrogator wishes to hear.’
maîtresse-en-titre
Of course Napoleon appreciated the historical aspects of his campaign, later reminiscing, ‘I constantly read Genesis when visiting the places it describes and was amazed beyond measure that they were still exactly as Moses had described them.’
!?
The first volume of Vivant Denon’s vast and magisterial Description de l’Égypte was published in 1809,
‘A newly born government must dazzle and astonish,’ he told Bourrienne at this time. ‘When it ceases to do that it fails.’
Other examples of his passion for renaming included rechristening his invention the Cisalpine Republic as the Italian Republic, the Army of England as the Grande Armée (in 1805), and the Place de l’Indivisibilité – the old Place Royale – as the Place des Vosges.
(He was clearly unfamiliar with Josephus’ Antiquities of the Jews which does indeed mention Jesus.)
This is incorrect.
Josephus was born in 37 CE, after Christ's putative death date. Further, the references are of dubious provenance. They appear out of context and are not consistent with Josephus's style. None are attested to before the 4th century.
Edward Gibbon famously wrote in the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire that ‘The various modes of worship which prevailed in the Roman world were all considered by the people as equally true; by the philosopher as equally false; and by the magistrate as equally useful.’
Napoleon instinctively understood that if France was to function efficiently in the modern world, she needed a standardized system of law and justice, uniform weights and measures, a fully functioning internal market and a centralized education system, one that would allow talented adolescents from all backgrounds to enter careers according to merit rather than birth.
‘Law must do nothing but impose a general principle. It would be vain if one were to try to foresee every possible situation; experience would prove that much has been omitted.’
