Napoleon and his court

THERE was a time when France extended to the Baltic, the Ebro and the Tiber; when the term “Frenchmen” included Frenchmen, Spaniards, Italians, Belgians, Dutch, Germans and even...

OF course, we all know him. He was rather short and corpulent, and he wore a cocked hat, a green coat with red facings, and white breeches. Sometimes, when the mood took him, he...

IT was a common saying in the Napoleonic army that every man in the ranks carried a Marshal’s bâton in his knapsack. This was correct in theory, but in actual practice it hardly...

WE have already alluded to the intensely needy period of Napoleon’s life, which was mainly centred around the year 1795. He knew himself to be a world conqueror; he despised the...

AT the close of 1809 Napoleon was at the height of his power. Every country of Europe, except England, was his vassal or his ally, and he was about to send Masséna and a suffici...

THUS at the beginning of 1810 Napoleon found himself once more unmarried, and free to choose himself a new bride. There never was a choice so fraught with possibilities of disas...

ONCE bitten, twice shy. Napoleon had had one wife of whom doubtful stories had circulated. He would run no risk with the new one. Marie Louise had been strictly guarded all her...

IN the course of his military career Napoleon found he needed three different kinds of subordinate officers. First, he wanted men of supreme courage and vigour in action, whose...

Men like Macdonald and St. Cyr, of high reputation and undoubted talents, found themselves ignored for political reasons, while giants of the Republican armies like Masséna foun...

NAPOLEON was one of a large family, children of a shiftless father and a wonderful mother. Much the same might be said of a large number of other successful men—Moltke and Linco...

IF Napoleon’s brothers were all a generally hopeless lot, the same can by no means be said of his sisters. These stood out head and shoulders above the other women of the time;...

‟BAD troops do not exist,” said Napoleon on one occasion. “There are only bad officers.” Napoleon did his best therefore to find good officers, and trusted that the rank and fil...

IT would be as easy to omit all mention of Napoleon’s mistresses in a serious history as it would be difficult to omit the king’s mistresses from a history of Louis le Grand or...

PERHAPS now we can see a little more clearly the man who was the centre of so much interest. To appreciate a man’s character it is not so much necessary to realize what he did,...

OFTEN and often it has been savagely pointed out that Napoleon enjoyed greater good fortune than anyone could with reason expect. Every incident in Napoleon’s life, from his emp...

IT was Napoleon’s fate, during his lifetime and for some time after, to have his worst mistakes overlooked, and to have various strokes of policy violently condemned as shocking...

WHEN Napoleon abdicated after Waterloo, for the second time, the Allies had achieved the object for which ostensibly they had made war. The Emperor had fallen, and the war they...