There are few historical figures with higher name recognition. After reading this magnificent biography, however, I’m convinced that there are fewer still who are less accurately understood.
Most of us appreciate that Napoleon was one of the great military strategists of all time. I, for one, however, did not appreciate the role he played in shaping the modern Europe. Nor did I appreciate the extent to which the Napoleonic Civil Code has influenced every republic and liberal democracy in the world, and continues to do so to this day.
The book is very well written and exhaustively research. And according to the marketing materials that accompany the book, Roberts is the first biographer to made full use of the 33,000 letters Napoleon wrote just now being made available. Frankly, given the number of references to those letters, and the insight provided by the quotes taken, it’s hard to imagine you could get a real feel for the man without them.
I am admittedly not a big fan of battle strategy and those parts of this rather exhaustive book did drag a bit for me. And I read the electronic version in which the maps are very difficult to read. What I did like about the material covered, however, is that this is a book of history. Unlike, say, Tolstoy’s War and Peace, which covered much the same period, it is not a book about the parlor life of the European aristocracy of the era.
But while the battle strategy was not my favorite part, I find it hard to believe that Napoleon’s Maxims of War are not sitting on every modern CEO’s desk to the extent that copies of Sun Tzu’s, The Art of War, are. His emphasis on speed, attacking the enemy’s hinge points, and never diluting your main force, I believe, have an abundance of application to modern business management.
He was, in many ways, a contradiction, but that contributed to his greatness. He named himself emperor, for example, but had camaraderie with the average foot soldier that was unheard of among officers of the day. He was not one of them but they viewed him as authentic. Few modern leaders achieve that conceptual duality. They either don’t establish themselves as leaders or they create the image of the arrogant you-know-what. They trusted him, in short, and trust is at the heart of all leadership. Without it nothing else matters.
His most amazing contribution, however, and the one that I frankly knew least about before reading this book, was the Napoleonic Civil Code. “The ideas that underpin our modern world—meritocracy, equality before the law, property rights, religious toleration, modern secular education, sound finances and so on—were championed, consolidated, codified and geographically extended by Napoleon.”
All told, whether you enjoy history or not, this book should be on your reading list. You will be amazed at how much better you will understand modern Europe and the world at large.
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