NAPOLEON

A familiar, cursory look at Napoleon’s accomplishments and failures: martial, civil, and cultural.

The British author of several painters’ biographies, Wilson-Smith has written about Bonaparte before from that point of view (Napoleon and His Artists, not reviewed). Here, he divides his brief work into two principal sections. The first summarizes Napoleon’s rise to power, his stunning series of military victories, the growth and decline of the French empire, Waterloo, Elba, St. Helena, and death. (The author takes no position on the question of murder by poison.) For those who have read elsewhere of Napoleon or paid attention in Western Civ, there is not much new save an occasional gripping detail—e.g., the forces of Wellington and Napoleon camped only about 5,000 yards apart the night before the Big One. Too often, Wilson-Smith reaches into his analogy kit and comes up with the unremarkable: “The last and most terrible person to try to play a Napoleonic role in Europe was Adolf Hitler.” The second half points out Bonaparte’s other well-known achievements: stimulating scholarly interest in Egypt (the author cracks wise, noting that Napoleon “looked ridiculous” in a kaftan and turban), establishing and perhaps even perfecting the French bureaucracy, creating and formalizing the Code Napoléon, doing good deeds in public finance and education, building roads, and supporting some artists and writers. Once again, an occasional detail with a keen edge or a crisp sentence animates the text: Wilson-Smith notes that the French killed some 15,000 wolves between 1805–15 to protect their livestock and observes that Bonaparte “disliked clever women and suspected that those who could look after themselves were not truly feminine.” He ends by expressing a more-than-grudging admiration for the general responsible for some five million deaths and unimaginable destruction. Of genuine interest are Wilson-Smith’s analyses of the various 19th-century paintings of the Emperor.

Stale loaf from a famous French bakery. (16 pp. b&w photographs, not seen)