He places him firmly within the context of his times, showing how in the 1790s, this provincial youth was propelled into a political scene racked by revolution and a world at war.
What made his ambition exceptional was the scope it was accorded by circumstance.Īdam Zamoyski strips away the lacquer of prejudice, explodes accepted myths and debunks long-held assumptions to reveal a more human, more understandable and far more interesting Napoleon. His motives were mostly praiseworthy and his ambition no greater than that of contemporaries such as Alexander I of Russia, Wellington, Nelson, Bernadotte and many more. He could be selfish and violent, but there is no evidence of him wishing to inflict suffering gratuitously. A protean organiser and legislator whose charisma mobilised millions, he did leave an impressive array of laws and institutions which survive to this day, but perhaps his most persistent legacy is the self-serving legend he painstakingly crafted.īut he was no evil monster. He possessed almost superhuman qualities and talents, but it is hard to credit genius to a general who presided over the worst (and self-inflicted) disaster in military history and who single-handedly destroyed the great enterprise of rebuilding a strong France which he and others had toiled so hard to achieve. He was a man, and as Adam Zamoyski presents him in this landmark biography, in many ways a rather ordinary man at that. Was he a god-like genius, Romantic avatar, megalomaniac monster or just a nasty little dictator? Napoleon inspires passionately held and violently conflicting visions.
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