Napoleon: A Biography Book PDF Free Download
Napoleon Early Life
Napoleon Bonaparte was born at Ajaccio, Corsica, on 15 August 1769. Such a bald, even banal statement is necessary when we consider that every aspect of the man’s life has been turned into the stuff of legend.
In 1919 Archbishop Whateley tried to push beyond legend into myth by suggesting, tongue-in-cheek, in his Historic Doubts Relative to Napoleon Bonaparte,
that Napoleon had never existed, that he was a proper name falsely attributed to the French people collectively.
The psychologist Carl Gustav Jung, while accepting the reality of Napoleon’s existence, argued that his significance was wholly collective and not individual:
that he represented the resurgence from the depths of the French unconscious of the savage and irrational forces the Revolution had tried to suppress through the cult of Reason (Déesse Raison).
A brilliant biography which will surely become a classic life of Napoleon.’ Lawrence James, The Times
Napoleon Bonaparte’s character and achievements have always divided critics and commentators.
In this compelling new biography, Frank McLynn draws on the most recent scholarship and throws a brilliant light on this most paradoxical of men – as a military leader, lover, and emperor.
This book does not purport to be a definitive biography of Napoleon.
Indeed I wonder if such a thing is possible, short of a multi-volume life along the lines of Martin Gilbert’s lifetime work on Churchill,
and even then there must be doubts whether any one individual could fully master all the sources dealing with the multitudinous aspects of such a complex life
As the great French scholar, Frédéric Masson found, after spending a lifetime studying the Emperor, Napoleon becomes more elusive and more enigmatic the more one knows about him.
I have therefore set myself the modest task of attempting a clear synthesis of our existing knowledge of this extraordinary colossus who convulsed the world for two decades.
Regrettably, I have decided that I cannot afford the luxury (self indulgence?) of detailed footnotes and citations.
In the case of Napoleon, in order to sustain a single proposition one would have to cite the conflicting evidence available sometimes from more than a dozen sources.
Apart from the fact that this volume, which is already long enough, would have to double in size to accommodate the critical apparatus,
I am not sure the reader is really interested in the agonizing that goes on before a historian makes his or her Thucydidean judgment on what is likely to have been the truth about a particular incident.
| Author | Frank Mclynn |
| Language | English |
| Pages | 767 |
| PDF Size | 9.57 MB |
| Category | Biography |
Napoleon: A Biography Book PDF Free Download