Napoleon

‘[An] enlightening study.’
Kirkus Reviews

Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821) has been compared to Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar and the Emperor Augusts. He shared Alexander’s qualities of youth, daring and unbridled ambition. His genius for propaganda was equal to that of another soldier-politician, Julius Caesar. Like Augustus he remade his country, France, as the centre of an Empire.

This biography charts Napoleon’s rise from a Corsican army cadet to the Emperor of the French and master of Europe to his death in exile on St Helena. It acknowledges his legend and his lasting legacy, the reshaping of France, her government and laws as well as his wider influence on the whole of Europe.

TIMOTHY WILSON SMITH was the author of prize-winning Delacroix (1992), Napoleon and his Artists (1996), Caravaggio (1998) and Napoleon: Man of War, Man of Peace (2002). He has degrees in History and English, taught at Eton College, has lectured at the National Portrait Gallery and has broadcast on the BBC. He died in 2006.