Napoleon

A Life

By: Andrew Roberts

Narrated by: John Lee

The definitive biography of the great soldier-statesman by the New York Times best-selling author of The Storm of War.

Austerlitz, Borodino, Waterloo: His battles are among the greatest in history, but Napoleon Bonaparte was far more than a military genius and astute leader of men. Like George Washington and his own hero Julius Caesar, he was one of the greatest soldier-statesmen of all times.

Andrew Roberts's Napoleon is the first one-volume biography to take advantage of the recent publication of Napoleon's thirty-three thousand letters, which radically transform our understanding of his character and motivation. At last we see him as he was: protean multitasker, decisive, surprisingly willing to forgive his enemies and his errant wife Josephine. Like Churchill, he understood the strategic importance of telling his own story, and his memoirs, dictated from exile on St. Helena, became the single best-selling book of the 19th century.

An award-winning historian, Roberts traveled to 53 of Napoleon's 60 battle sites, discovered crucial new documents in archives, and even made the long trip by boat to St. Helena. He is as acute in his understanding of politics as he is of military history. Here at last is a biography worthy of its subject: magisterial, insightful, beautifully written, by one of our foremost historians.

©2014 Andrew Roberts (P)2014 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

"The pleasures of Roberts's big, richly detailed biography of the great French conqueror are enhanced in this outstanding audiobook production. John Lee is a steady and agreeable narrator, and a good choice for a work this long. Based on the recent full publication of the 33,000 letters Napoleon wrote in his lifetime, the narrative offers a close-up and largely sympathetic view of one of history's most interesting, accomplished, and - yes - likable personalities. Lee maintains the fine balance between intimacy and perspective, as well as between Napoleon's current and former reputation, to make this one of the stellar histories and audiobook adaptations of this year." ( AudioFile)

Napolean, more than just a military genious

If you're looking just for a military history of Napoleon's campaigns, you might be disappointed. Roberts does a fine job recounting campaigns and battles, but there's little new military history here. The audio book is not a great vehicle for battle narratives since one needs a map to make any sense of troop distribution and movements. Though all of Napoleon's battles are covered, they take up relatively little of this book. Roberts is at his best when covering Napoleon's political and diplomatic schemes as well as the anecdotal accounts of his relations with his men. lovers and marshals. Robert's appraisal of Napoleon is balanced pointing out his military innovations, but admitting that Napoleon enjoyed more than his share of good luck. Napoleon often exhibited genius on the battlefield, but Roberts shows us that he was perhaps more a master of political spin. There are many controversies surrounding Napoleon, perhaps the greatest being whether his death was the result of natural means or poison. Roberts offers compelling reasons to believe the former. I sometimes find John Lee's narration to be plodding, but in this recording, he is flawless.

An Absorbing Book about a Great, Flawed Man

'Adieu Josephine. A thousand daggers stab my heart, do not plunge them in deeper. Adieu, my happiness, my life, all that had any real existence for me on this earth.' Napoleon wrote many love letters like that to his wife when he was off on campaign, busily annexing and reorganizing much of Italy after 300+ years of Austrian dominion. One of the interesting things about Andrew Roberts' Napoleon: A Life (2014) is Napoleon's ability (or need) to compartmentalize his life, so that one moment he'd be writing melodramatic letters to Josephine, the next leading his French army to another military victory over allied European powers or installing a new legal system based on equality before the law or discussing literature or philosophy or science with the leading savants of his era.

In his biography Roberts covers Napoleon's achievements as a general, 53 victories in 60 battles via influential tactics, and as a statesman, promoting meritocracy, improving infrastructure, reforming education, and implementing the Napoleonic Code still present to some extent in the legal systems of 40 countries today. 'Even if Napoleon hadn't been one of the great military geniuses of history, he would still be a giant of the modern era.' Roberts details aspects of Napoleon's character like his boundless energy, hands-on micromanaging, wide-ranging interests, sense of humor, and forgiveness of enemies (and of feckless siblings). He reveals Napoleon's private life, his intense relationship with Josephine and calmer one with Marie Louise, and his affairs. He conveys Napoleon's charisma, which got so many men to follow him as if on a grand adventure to make history.

Roberts wants to correct the image painted by other historians of Napoleon that he was a war-loving tyrant who sacrificed myriad people and upset the world to satisfy his ambitions, pointing out that other countries declared war on him more often than he on them and that many of his callous comments vis-à-vis the lives of soldiers were taken out of context or fabricated. Perhaps at times Roberts tries too hard to put us in Napoleon's camp by using words like 'Luckily, …' or 'Unfortunately, . . .' to introduce sentences referring to developments that helped or harmed Napoleon and his aims. Anyway, Roberts successfully demonstrates that 'What brought Napoleon down was not some deep-seated personality disorder but a combination of unforeseeable circumstances coupled with a handful of significant miscalculations: something altogether more believable, human and fascinating.'

Roberts' book begins with Napoleon's Corsican family history and youth, moves through his meteoric rise during the chaotic era of the French Revolution to become General, First Consul, and then Emperor, and ends with his forced abdication in 1814, his return from Elba, and his defeat at Waterloo and death on St. Helena. The ending is appalling, not because of the fall from power and empire or the awful living conditions on St. Helena, but because Napoleon died a slow, degrading, and painful death from stomach cancer. After all, even men who transform and rule the world only do so temporarily and are made of clay like us all.

Roberts says that writing the biography took him longer than Napoleon spent on Elba and St. Helena combined. He read the accounts of people who knew and liked or hated Napoleon, Napoleon's autobiography (with a large dose of salt), and his myriad letters, 1/3 of which had recently become available for the first time. Roberts also takes into account the European historical political contexts of the late 18th- and early 19th-centuries. He visited 53 of Napoleon's 60 battlefields to get a sense of the challenges the terrain presented, and to make his history more immediate often says things like, 'It [a key bridge] was about 15 yards upstream from today's bridge.'

Roberts' biography features plenty of Napoleonic Age warfare. Interesting details on weaponry (e.g., lightweight and powerful artillery) and tactics (e.g., mobile corps and combined arms attacks) and the impact their development had on war (as Napoleon's enemies learned to use his innovations against him). Not to mention casualties, disease, morale, provisioning, propaganda, spying, communications, leadership, and more. The wealth of pre-battle information regarding the names of generals and numbers of infantry, cavalry, and artillery, etc. can get a little boring, but the accounts of battles are suspenseful and full of vivid details, like a Russian soldier saying after Borodino that he had had to keep his mouth open through the entire battle to normalize air pressure in his ear amid the continuous percussive artillery and musket fire (at least 3 cannonballs and 77 musket balls were fired per second). Roberts at times may try a bit too hard to make us understand such warfare: 'The combined losses are the equivalent of a fully laden jumbo jet crashing into an area of six square miles, every five minutes for the whole ten hours of the battle, killing or wounding everyone on board.'

John Lee reads the audiobook with the John Lee Rhythm, which tends to make all his books sound like they're written by the same person. He does have a great voice, precise pronunciation, and lively energy and intelligence. The audiobook lacks the books illustrations maps, and footnotes.

Anyone interested in history should like this book. It draws on recently available letters and presents an absorbing and balanced account of Napoleon's life and times, includes newly available letters, and has witty and fine writing: 'Ironically, although it was to get an imperial heir that Napoleon divorced Josephine, it would turn out to be her grandson, rather than any offspring of Napoleon's, who would become the next emperor of France, and her direct descendents who today sit on the thrones of Belgium, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Luxemburg. His sit on none.'

Thoughtfully researched and written

What a terrific journey! Napoleon was always a mysterious figure in history to me. There were so many contradictions to what he was that I did not really know who he was. Tyrant and a social reformer. Was he like Hitler? Was he like Washington? Turns out, neither. He was Napoleon, a crazy mix of enlightened liberal sense and unstoppable ambition. The author interspersed humor and quick characterizations throughout his book that kept it entertaining and at times laugh out loud funny. The narrator was outstanding. He understood the writing style of the author and capitalized upon it with his inflections and dead pan drops of humor throughout the book. Having read a great deal of historical biographies, I was particularly impressed with the care Mr. Roberts took in describing the modern state of many of the referenced historical sites in the book. As someone who loves to experience history through travel, it is great to know in exactly which sites look as they did back in their time of historical significance and those that do not. Those that can be visited and those that can’t be. I feel
these details are gifts to the reader.

Excellent history story

I was remiss of Napolean's story and only knew of his name. This story brought the man to life and told the great and the bad side of the the emperor general

Solid

Just wish they’d translate some of the words the narrator said in French to English. I know a little French so I understood some of them but not a lot of em.

Good

If you read anything on Napoleon, read this book. Excellent scholarship. It’s a great read, not overly dense, and a complete telling of perhaps the most remarkable life lived in the modern era.

Loved!

Wonderful detail and a joy to learn the full story. A deep dive into the man, myth and history of Napoleon.

Justice for a Fascinating Man

What did you like best about this story?

If you want to learn about one of the greatest generals in history, this is your book.

How did the narrator detract from the book?

So Annoying he dropped his volume to inaudible on the last syllable of many sentences. Very annoying. But I still loved the book.

Piece of art

Amazing book for those who love history and wants to be in the skin of emperor/ controversial persona/ military genius.

A great read.

A detailed biography. Based mainly on the subjects own writings and quotes as well as official records. Excellently read by Lee.