Anthony Hughes

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Napoleon was fast asleep on his iron camp bed beneath the chandeliers of the Kremlin when he was woken at 4 a.m. on September 16 and told about the fires. ‘What a tremendous spectacle!’ he exclaimed, watching them from a window whose panes were already hot to the touch. ‘It is their own work! So many palaces! What extraordinary resolution! What men! These are indeed Scythians!’17 (Typically, he reached back to ancient times for an analogy, here to the famously ruthless Persian tribe mentioned by Herodotus who left their Iranian homeland to fight on the Central Eurasian steppes.) He was ...more
Napoleon: A Life
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