Category: Napoleon

For those who love to read biographies, there is nothing as satisfying as a deep and richly textured accounting of the formative years of great figures in history, and that’s exactly what Philip Dwyer delivers here in a marvelous first volume biography covering the first three decades of the life of Napoleon Bonaparte. Dwyer describes…

Napoleon’s Russian campaign of 1812 is legendary – and rightfully so. All I knew about it before reading Adam Zamoyski’s “Moscow, 1812: Napoleon’s Fatal March” was that the Russian winter defeated Napoleon’s Grand Armee. I had no idea how horrific the whole experience was for soldiers and civilians, alike, nor the historical context in which…

“Europe is a molehill,” Napoleon is said to have exclaimed, “We must set off for the Orient; that is where all the greatest glory is to be achieved.” The French invasion of Egypt in 1798 was one of the most audacious military and political undertakings of all time. With a fleet of 335 ships and…