Napoleon Bonaparte was a bully, rude and insulting. Women did not like him. But even so, writes Frank McLynn, "he had an amazing ability to sway other men to his purposes," which earned him one of the greatest empires Europe had ever known. McLynn, a noted biographer of difficult personalities, gives us a many-sided Napoleon: the shrewd strategist, the intolerant prude, the scrappy fighter, the charismatic leader, the sadist. ("He liked to strike people of both sexes, to slap them, pull their hair, pinch their ears and tweak their noses.") He nonetheless managed to extend French rule to the gates of Moscow. Why, then, was he so resoundingly defeated? McLynn argues that, among other things, Napoleon was not ruthless enough in dealing with the "endless list of ingrates" that surrounded him.
McLynn's book has several virtues, and readers interested in Napoleon's brief but brilliant career will want to have a look. --Gregory McNamee
After visiting Corsica, Rousseau declared, "I have a presentiment that one day this small island will astonish Europe." Corsica did. Born there in 1769, Napoleon Bonaparte would convulse the Continent, precipitating thousands of books about him since. This latest, by British historian and Strathclyde University (U.K.) literature professor McLynn (Villa and Zapata; The Jacobites), is a crowded and persuasive one-volume life. McLynn's study but for his addictions to clich and to repetition, and his labored leaning on both Freud and Jung is one the best of the new breed (since the 1978 discovery of Bonaparte's arsenic poisoning made earlier volumes obsolete). No hagiographer, McLynn is hard on Napoleon both as general and as statesman, and faults his failures to rein in his openly "venal" marshals, treacherous administrative elite and astonishingly rapacious siblings. Indifferent to people except as he needed their loyalty, this Napoleon's embodies ambitions not tempered by any idealism, and McLynn dismisses "credulous" previous biographers for seeing anything in him beyond a familiar French grasping for "grandeur" and "glory," apparent on a lesser level from Louis XIV to de Gaulle. To McLynn the difference is that Napoleon's dreams were truly Alexandrine that "His genius was of a kind that needed constant warfare to fuel it and... that all the hopes vested in him were illusory." While deftly exposing the material realities underlying the Napoleonic wars, McLynn also graphically describes the battles, suggesting that few (Austerlitz is an exception) demonstrate any authentic military brilliance. He is even more explicit about the general's tumultuous domestic and sexual life, in which Napoleon allegedly found little but masochistic satisfaction. "The true representative of the nation," Napoleon declared desperately in 1814, as his empire was collapsing around him, "is myself. France has more need of me than I have need of France." Such is still the case, McLynn claims, as France continues to cultivate his myth. Although McLynn's is a well-researched, convincing portrait, aficionados will find it not quite up to the standard of Alan Schom's 1997 Napoleon Bonaparte, which is both better written and more psychologically astute. 16 pages of b&w illustrations.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Numerous biographies of Napoleon are available, but this monumental work, first published in the United Kingdom in 1997, is clearly one of the most pleasurable to read. Using an interesting mixture of narrative and analysis, McLynn (Stanley: The Making of an African Explorer, 1841-1877) explores aspects of Napoleon's life often ignored by other authors. For example, he discusses the influence of the Corsican independence movement and the failures of Napoleon's father as the major influences they were. All of the personalities surrounding Napoleon, including both of his wives and his large family, are thoroughly analyzed in conjunction with the events of his fantastic career. The author is as nearly objective in his characterizations as one can be, holding nothing back as he probes Napoleon's entourage more deeply than did Alan Schom in Napoleon. What results is a less psychopathic, more human view of this much mythologized European. Strongly recommended for all collections. David Lee Poremba, Detroit P.L., MI
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
Reviewed with Paul Johnson's
Napoleon.
Two new books, each one different in scope and audience, profile the French emperor who gave his name to an era.
A prolific and popular historian, Johnson provides an excellent overview. In what amounts to an extended essay, this volume in the Penguin Lives series presents a concise appraisal of Napoleon's career and a precise understanding of his enigmatic character. The author views Napoleon, not as an "idea man" whose ideology was the ladder by which he propelled himself to heights of power, but as an opportunist who took advantage of a series of events and situations he could manipulate into achieving supreme control. From the island of Corsica, which only recently had come under French rule, Napoleon saw France's raw, revolutionary condition as the perfect playing field for an "ambitious, politically conscious, and energetic soldier" such as himself. But, in the long run, he failed as a politician, which eventually caused his failure as a general as well.
If Johnson's book is an outstanding introduction, McLynn's study is for readers wanting a more in-depth analysis. At more than 700 pages, this journey through Napoleon's life, with its emphasis on detail, whether about military maneuvers or Napoleon's quasineuroses, certainly demands an investment in terms of time and undivided attention. Written with great stylistic flourish, McLynn's full embrace of his subject's life, which benefits from exhaustive research resulting in a comprehensive picture of the Napoleonic era, is a rich reading experience.
These two biographies are not mutually exclusive. They can comfortably sit side by side on the shelf, each one filling a different need. Brad Hooper
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About the Author
Frank McLynn was educated at Oxford and the University of London. A full-time writer, he won the 1985 Cheltenham Prize for Literature for The Jacobite Army in England, and is the author of a number of acclaimed biographies. He is currently Visiting Professor in the Department of Literature at Strathclyde University.
