Napoleon I. A great life in brief
Albert Guerard
- New York Alfred A. Knopf 1956
- 199 p
- Great lives in brief a new series of biographies .
Young Buonaparte, 1769-1795 -- General Bonaparte : rehearsals for empire : Italy and Egypt, 1796-1799 -- The man of the hour : Bonaparte First Consul, 1799-1802 -- The parting of the ways : Napoleon Bonaparte : Consul for life, 1802-1804 -- Napoleon Emperor : the ascending star, 1804-1807 -- Dark omens, 1808-1809 -- Splendors and miseries, 1810-1811 -- Downfall : the Russian campaign, 1812 -- The German and the French campaigns, 1813-1814 -- Elba and the Hundred Days, 1814-1815 -- Epilogue : St. Helena, 1815-1821 ; Paris, 1840.
After fifty years of study, Napoleon appears to me as neither angel nor beast, but as human, all too human: our brother -- our Big Brother -- a creature of strong but ailing flesh, lean and sulphurous in youth, paunchy and lardy in middle life; not a very good husband, who married two not very good wives; a martinet, an incomparable efficiency manager, with an addiction to gambling and gigantic dreams. - Foreword.