Customer Reviews

Napoleon Bonaparte: A Life

5 star:		(23)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(15)
2 star:		(25)
1 star:		(28)

 

 

First, the book has a nice dust jacket with a very attractive portrait of Napoleon. I enjoyed some parts: Napoleon's youth, family gossip, and the murder of Napoleon (revealed years ago by Ben Weider). But often I got bogged down, and overall, Schom's book is unsatisfactory. His stated purpose of an all encompassing, one-volume, fair and balanced Napoleon biography falls short. He glosses over or misses important accomplishments: economics, law, nationalism, etc. Moreover, his prejudices are too obvious. Depending on how the psycho-babble definition of psychopath in 'medical notes' is applied, it would cover a very large number of successful military men (even the Iron Duke), businessmen, and politicians, including the current President of the United States.

His research shows a curious use of sources. As other readers have noted, Schom uses selective parts of secondary sources omitting pertinent explanations. Primary sources should be sifted and evaluated by a historian, but Schom seems heavily dependent on some of the less reliable memoirs available. (1) Bourrienne's memoirs are interesting, but he was fired by Napoleon for embezzlement, turned pro-Bourbon, and his memoirs were ghost written (presumably with his input). So, much of Bourrienne must be taken with a grain of salt. (2) Memoirs of the Duchess of Abrantes (Junot) were also ghost written and include lots of pure fantasy. (3) Barras was Napoleon's enemy (and Josephine's previous lover). His memoirs are generally considered to have very little credibility. Yet Schom seems to accept Bourrienne, Abrantes, and Barras as gospel.

Despite, the pretty dust jacket, I have limited shelf space. I prefer to keep Cronin's Napoleon, a much better read, showing Napoleon as a flesh and blood, three dimensional figure, not a cardboard cutout tyrant. Also, Cronin has an excellent bibliographical essay. And for those essential accomplishments overlooked by Schom, try Holtman's Napoleonic Revolution. For military actions, Chandler, The Campaigns of Napoleon, has shortcomings, but for the most part, he is pretty good, and I still like the old study by Wartenburg, Napoleon as a General. J.C. Herold doesn't like Napoleon at all, but his Napoleon in Egypt is a pleasure to read compared to Schom's account of this campaign. Schom has obviously spent a great effort in this large volume; unfortunately, it is tainted and disappointing.

This is a very biased biography of Napoleon. Parts of it make interesting reading but on the whole, the book is very anti-Bonaparte. Essentially, Schom views Napoleon as a brutal, lying psychotic who was very lucky. Schom loses track of the historical sequence after 1799, glossing over the years 1800-1805 very quickly and then darting all over. Although there is some new material on Fouche and Talleyrand, most of the sources are well-worn. Schom totally ignores the development of the Grande Armee and what this did to the European balance of power. Instead, Schom focuses heavily on naval matters, particularly those events leading up to Trafalgar (based on research for his previous book). Schom avoids Napoleon's charisma and passes over his triumphs. There is no real analysis of Napoleon's role in history. Schom exaggerates negatives, such as casualties, expenses. The author never compares Napoleon to other contemporary rulers - i.e. was he really more territorially avaricious than the Tsar of Russia or Prussian Junkers (who dismembered Poland)?

Schom assures readers that his biography of Napoleon is objective and non-partisan because being American frees him of the prejudices, for or against, Europeans would feel for the subject.

Unfortunately he doesn't deliver, instead he always qualifies the many facts in the book: Napoleon, his family, and his supporters appear as the "devious so-and-so" or the "piratical such-and-such"; while Napoleon's enemies are "adversaries" or "unlucky victims" or "hapless innocents".

This is annoying in a supposedly impartial book. Schom should have toned down his attacks, and frankly admitted his dislike of the subject. Napoleon is and will remain controversial. Schom could have easily made a case against Napoleon without resorting to mere rhetoric. As it is, it feels like he wants to lure his readers into his camp.

One star for the impressive list of facts, and that's all.

"Among the differing views of Napoleon exists the "black legend", which sees him merely as usurper, dictator, warmonger and tyrant. Chateaubriand condemned Napoleon as a foreigner who saw France as only a source of plunder and cannonfodder for his wars of self-aggrandizement. Mme de Stael viewed Napoleon as a tyrant who wished only to satisfy men's interests at the expense of their virtues, to corrupt opinion by specious argument, and to divert the nation towards war and away from liberty. Benjamin Constant likened Napoleon to Genghis Khan or Attila, arguing that Napoleon usurped the throne with "slime and blood." Opposition to Napoleon III's Second Empire brought renewed vigor to the "black legend." Hippolyte Taine transferred his dislike for the nephew to the uncle. He compared Napoleon, "the foreigner," to Renaissance tyrants like Sforza and blamed Napoleon's egoism for 4 million deaths. In the political upheavals of the 1930s the "black legend" found new currency. Charles Maurras, royalist and Action Francaise supporter, attacked Napoleon as the "son of the Revolution" who had established hated equality and promoted centralization only to satisfy his own ambition.

"Now Alan Schom, building on almost 200 years of the "black legend", culls every questionable allegation, spurious fact and scandalous bit of gossip to blacken Napoleon's name. Schom even casts doubts on Napoleon's military talents, misinterpreting Owen Connelly. Schom tops off his book with a simplistic and silly musing on Napoleon's mental health. But it is obvious that Schom's view of Napoleon as a psychopathic dwarf and Hitlerian mass-murdered appeals to some reviewers. This says perhaps more about those reviewers than about Napoleon. Napoleon was a human being, albeit a great one, with all the faults, vices and virtues of that species, not some cardboard cutout standing in for Hitler or Stalin. Napoleon was a product of his times, writ large, who had many great positive achievements and many great faults. But most of all Napoleon is a mystery, like many great men, but a mystery which still continues to fascinate people the world over after 200 years. Read a good book about Napoleon, not this one."

Wellington once said about Napoleon that "his hat on a battlefield was worth forty thousand men." Alan Schom obviously doesn't agree with that assessment but this book is still worth reading despite the author's contempt for his subject. When Schom involves himself with the cast of characters surrounding Napoleon he gets much better results and he is indeed insightful in his descriptions of Fouche, Marshal Ney, and many others. Unfortunately, Schom's overall negative tone blots out much of what is presented here. He deliberately overlooks and omits nearly everything that the Emperor achieved on a positive note. Even Napoleon's worst critics will agree that he was something of a genius on the battlefield, yet Schom goes to great lengths to undermine and challenge those facts. Perhaps Mr. Schom is the wrong man to be writing about Napoleon to begin with. There's no doubt that the Emperor's reign had catastrophic consequences for Europe at the turn of the 19th Century. But there also should be no denial about his brazen and bold tactics to succeed on a grand scale and to literally change the course of history. Napoleon, despite all his faults documented here, was never the supreme evil ogre that Mr. Schom would like you to believe.

In the preface, the author explains that since he is neitherFrench nor English, he hopes to achieve a biography of Napoleonwithout the prejudices traditionally associated with those nations, who see the man as either brillant hero or vicious tyrant. He hopes to present a balanced, comprehensive account of the life of one of the most complex and influential figures of the last 250 years. It would appear that this preface is from another book, and was mistakenly included in this volume.

Schom's biography concentrates heavily on the personal and the military. In the former area, the author has gone to great lengths to find and chronicle every reported incident of bad behaviour known, no matter how trivial. Slights to emperors and officers, boorish flirtations with women, neglect of family and friends, betrayal of loyal subordinates, are all discussed in revolting detail. The conclusion drawn is that Bonaparte was a Bad Man, and that somehow this is the most important fact of his existance, and explains why he plunged Europe into fifteen years of nearly continuous, destructive warfare. This is not only a naive approach to the complexities of world history, but necessitates some interesting gymnastics, both scholarly and otherwise. Schom relies almost completely on secondary sources, and the primary sources he does choose to use, such as the memoires of several individuals with good reason to dislike the emperor, he seems to accept uncritically. Hardly the basis of good history.

The second area of attention is Napoleon's military career, with each campaign and battle presented in minute detail. Routes of march, numbers of troops and guns on particular days, movements, casualties, etc., are all presented in hopes of portraying Bonaparte as not only a vile human being but a terrible general (except in those cases where he is a brilliant commander being let down by the incompetence of his subordinates). This also requires some gymnastics, as it seems the brilliant Napoleon and the incompetent Napoleon often appeared at the same battle. This issue is never really addressed, but even a cursory analysis of the major campaigns would suggest that he was superb at some aspects of command (such as battlefield tactics, inspiring men, etc.) but lacking in others (logistics, especially), and that the combination says much not only about his generalship but about the developing scale of warfare in Europe.

If this were a balanced view, rather than a gossipy and superficial treatment of the man and his associates, there would be more than a page on the Code Napoleon and the reorganization French law and administration. There would be a more responsible treatment of the complex political situation, especially in England. There would be some appreciation of the complexity of Napoleon Bonaparte.

Finally, the execution of this work is atrocious. Attempting to present complex troop movements with maps that show only the location of selected towns is ridiculous. There seems to have been little or no editing or proofreading, and Mr. Schom's prose is hackneyed at best. To take one example, if the word "literally" were stricken from this book, I believe it would be shortened by nearly 30 pages. If it were stricken only where it was used incorrectly, it would be shortened by 29 pages.

Alan Schom's "Napoleon Bonaparte" is about 800 pages long, but does not suffer for it. The book is a quick read for its size and provides an easy to follow narrative of Napoleon's rise and fall. On this merit alone, I think most would judge it a successful history. Few books recount large and complex subjects in such a way as to make readers reluctant to put them down at night. Thus I found it difficult to score Schom's effort, for although it was an exciting read, this rather passionate attempt to debunk the myths that surround Napoleon don't leave the reader with any plausible idea as to how the man managed to do that which he did.

I take Schom's book to be an anti-Napoleonic polemic at base. I believe that his central accusation can be summed up as follows:

Napoleon, between 1805 and 1812, lost approximately one million soldiers in his various campaigns, or 3.5% of the population of France in 1804, about 29 million. After Waterloo, in 1814, all of these efforts had been brought to naught, with France's borders being returned to those of 1789 -- that is to those prior to Napoleon's rise in 1798. Many hundreds of thousands of Europeans that fought against him, of course, also died. An untold number of civilians died as a direct result of his wars. The economy of France and of Europe had been nearly obliterated by his Continental System and out of the ashes was born the nationalism that eventually embroiled Europe in both World Wars. A nationalism that Napoleon had deliberately seeded in Central Europe as part of his propaganda campaign to justify the annexation of the various states there. Moreover, his failure to understand the nationalism that he had helped to unleash on Europe is possibly the strongest deciding factor in his undoing in Spain and Russia. And finally, Napoleon's gift for misinformation campaigns, the reliance on a secret police and the innovation of falsified plebiscites used to authorize his seizure of despotic powers -- combined with his manipulation of the nationalist sentiment -- provides a powerful argument for viewing Napoleon as a major historical precedent for Twentieth Century totalitarianism.

But Schom does not make this case plainly, letting the reader divine it from between the lines, and in the meantime leaves unanswered the central questions that I think most of those relatively new to Napoleon -- such as myself -- would look for answers to in a biography billed like this one. To whit:

What accounts for Napoleon's extraordinary power to lead men? Schom does not suggest anything very convincing. Although he does gape at Napoleon's ability to rouse the troops, he seems to dismiss this power as just an element of his PR skills. This is fine, but he doesn't even provide any textual examples of his speeches or broadsides, or basically anything, that would evidence this ability. I don't think anyone, in the final analysis, would credit Napoleon's chronic mendacity for his astounding leadership abilities. Great leaders are often great liars, but one does not make the other, and Schom does nothing to explain how it was Napoleon managed to secure -- and maintain -- the loyalty of so many.

What made Napoleon's military genius so fearsome to his contemporaries? Even Wellington -- who defeats Napoleon at Waterloo -- had said that Napoleon's hat on the battlefield was worth 40,000 men. Well if Wellington thought so highly of Napoleon's martial abilities, why not Schom? For example, when describing the battle of Dresden, Schom writes "[Napoleon] would soon outnumber Wittgenstein two to one, the sort of odds Napoleon liked." As I understand it, Napoleon preferred better odds than that -- 4 to 1 -- as would any credible general. What is amazing about the man is he managed to win so many battles when the odds were against him. But Schom's descriptions of battles are mere sketches, which is forgivable given the size of his subject, but insufficient to explain what exactly was happening, insofar as it is known. The maps he provides don't help, being static with no arrows or what have you, to indicate movement or the sequence of events. Although Schom seems just as awestruck by Napoleon's successes on the battlefield as posterity is, it appears his only explanation for them is that the man was lucky. Well, I would prefer a lucky general to a good one, but Napoleon had far too many successes on the field to be written off as merely lucky. It just doesn't compute.

How did Napoleon manage the competing interests in France -- and internationally -- after coming to power and what were those competing interests? What were the consequences for these interests after each successive conquest? Which economic interests in France -- and Central Europe -- benefited from Napoleon's policies -- outside of the Grand Armee itself -- and how did they influence the politics of the era and their regions? Why did the French believe that Napoleon was a credible representative of the republican ideals of the Revolution, or didn't they, and if not, to what banner were they flocking and what appeal did it have, exactly? Although the Revolution had decimated the officer corps, had its republican ideals produced innovations that made the French army more efficient than it had been up until then? If so, was Napoleon a beneficiary? Why were people willing to brave death for this man?

If you're looking for answers to these types of questions, you will not find them in "Napoleon Bonaparte." You will find a general outline of what happened, but should be warned that Schom uses dates sparingly, and he will leap back and forth in time at points, so even this can be confusing. The author is so partisan that you find yourself spending a lot of time wondering how much of what he writes can be trusted at face value. However, should you simply be looking for a good read that gives a very general sense of what took place, I think that Schom's book would rate four, or even five, stars. It is a very readable account. But since the book doesn't answer what I regard as the basic questions you would ask a life of Napoleon to answer and is very poorly constructed if considered as a polemic, I give it three.

Of all the accounts of Napoleon's life I've read (quite a few) this is most skillfully written and the most terribly biased account. The author begins the book by explaining that because he is an American he doesn't have any bias. This is like saying that because I'm Australian I'll have no oppinion on American elections. Schom clearly does have a very strong oppinion which is repeatedly reinforced throughout this book. Essentially his comments that this was an unbiased account of the Emperor's life is a lie. Even Austerlitz, Napoleon's greatest victory, is made to seem like a disaster. This author was hell-bent on destroying every reader's view of the emperor. Enormous ommissions (including almost half a decade between 1800-1805) are made as well as almost no mention of the Code Napoleon - possibly the Emperor's most important contribution of all. Indeed anything that would portray Napoleon as anything other than the Hitler of his day is left out of this attack. Reading this almost makes one wonder what has caused the author to develop such a fierce loathing. This said - the author is skilled with the written word and weaves an entertaining story filled with plenty of well-researched facts. Whilst I'd recomend anyone who is interested in the Emperor read this, I certainly wouldn't suggest that anyone base their assessment of the Emperor on this work alone. Instead attempt to read a variety of works, because this only gives one half the picture. It is no more objective than the Emperor's own memoirs. An entertaining read... nothing more.

Mr. Schom never met a disparaging word about Napoleon that he didn't manage to include in this biased demonization of the Emperor. Unlike real historians, Schom doesn't feel he needs to include any exculpatory material in his book. Take for instance his claim of Napoleon ordering the cannonading of civilians in Toulon. Schom takes the story from David Chandler's book, but leaves out Chandler's explanations as to the possibly untrustworthy source of this story. If Schom chooses to believe it, that's okay, but to leave out the full story does the uninformed reader a disservice. Apparently Schom also finds both Talleyrand and Fouche paragons of truth-telling, when in reality neither of them were probably able to recognize the truth it it came and sat in their laps. The less said about Schom's risible psychoanalysis of Napoleon the better. Let's just say he's a worse psychiatrist than he is historian. None of this would matter much except this book might well be the only one many people ever read on Napoleon. If so, they have had the wool pulled over their eyes. For a better biography of Napoleon read Felix Markham's NAPOLEON. As an antidote, if you've read Schom's, read Vincent Cronin's laudatory NAPOLEON. For a good military read try Elting's SWORDS AROUND THE THRONE.

Napoleon Bonaparte by Alan Schom is truly a "scham" on this historical subject. The author's approach on this biography is with a great prejudicial agenda and truly filled odd interpretations of Napoleon, his battles, intellect, strategy, contributions (good and bad)by the subject and the reaction and views of the French people of his era.

Following Mr. Schom's aprox 790 page journey of Napoleon's life fails to even explain basics; of the intense following and charisma of Napoleon. In every chapter, Napoleon somehow bungles through his historic battles and decisions, through little credit to his planning etc. Mr Schoms argument of the French economy in a shambles brought on by Napoleon and his immense expenditures and the dependency of war loot to prop it up is a failure by the author to understand basic economics; or even understand how difficult life was for the French middleclass and poor in France during the monarchy. It was feudalism under an indifferent corrupt, uncaring monarchy.
Building an economy, a government spends in surplus; when you have war booty and colonial taxes, that is not surplus that is revenue! That revenue is then spent on expanding avenues and modernizing the French capital and roadways is no different than the govenment project of the 1930s in the US and what is recuring today. During Napoleon's time, that money was spent, creating "jobs" and putting money into the French worker, creating a booming economy. Mr Schom's coverage of the French ship building phase for the plans to invade England is looked only as a colossal waste. But this created immense work projects and income for depressed seaport towns that were otherwise blockaded by the Royal Navy.

I lost count of the Mr's Scham's rant of Napoleon's Egyptian campaign and how many times he mentions it through his tirade of a book.

I will not even go into the many subjects and eras of Napoleon's life that is not even following the conventional historical view! Mr Schom even mocks the creation of the Legion of Honor, rather odd since it is still quite an honor to be recognised by this award.

The author even blunders the subject of the monarchy's return and how quickly through their ineptitude lost the public's support, setting the stage for Napoleon's return. Good god, how can anyone over look this!

The final era of Napoelon' life on St Helena is also a blunder as well. Aside form making General Lowe look like a genious Rennaisance-man (and was dull and dim-witted), Mr Schom takes the plunge on the poison theory completely as the only fact, which recent studies clearly dispute outright. It would have been better to cover both tracts since history is truly for the ages (and historians) to ponder.

I had this books for several years on my immense library wall and finally read it over the holidays in 2008.

I cannot recommmend this book or any portion of the writing in any fashion, since there are so many horrendously poor personalized and interjections by the author. I wouldn't even loan this to anyone. If you are considering to buy your first book on the subject of this era, please do not even consider this as a choice!

No Legion of Honor for this author.