Volume 49, Number 16 · October 24, 2002
A Soft Spot for Napoleon
By John Weightman
Napoleon and Berlin: The Franco-Prussian War in North Germany, 1813
by Michael V. Leggiere
University of Oklahoma Press, 384 pp., $39.95
Napoleon
by Paul Johnson
Lipper/Viking, 190 pp., $19.95
Napoleon: A Biography
by Frank McLynn
Arcade, 739 pp., $32.95
Napoleon Bonaparte: England's Prisoner
by Frank Giles
Carroll and Graf, 206 pp., $26.00
Given the depressing list of dictators who have plagued the world in recent times—Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, Franco, and tutti quanti, up to Milosevic and Mugabe—it is possible to have a soft spot for Napoleon. He began his career as a very young man, when it was a question of defending France against foreign invaders. In most circumstances, he displayed great courage and daring, and he risked his life more than once. Warfare was not yet completely mechanized in his day, and he was present in person on many battlefields. He even made the long trek to Moscow and back, whereas, if I am not mistaken, neither Hitler nor Stalin ever put in an appearance on the Russian front during the Second World War.
Review, 2023 words
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