In the footsteps of Napoleon - by James Morgan

In the footsteps of Napoleon - his life and its famous scenes

From the introduction:

Before writing this biography of Napoleon, I made a journey of nearly twenty thousand miles to the famous scenes in his life and along the line of his celebrated marches. The drama of history is as much entitled to its proper stage setting as the plays of the theatre, and my aim has been to see and portray the man in his various backgrounds, to bring closer his habitations and battlefields, to simplify the geography of his campaigns.

It chanced that on the eve of the War of the Nations, my errand took me from Corsica through France and Italy to Egypt, the Holy Land, and Syria; over the Alps and through Austria, Germany, and Poland into Russia, and finally to Elba and Waterloo. The Russians and Germans had only lately commemorated their liberation from Napoleon's empire, and the British and other peoples were preparing to celebrate the centennial of his final overthrow at Waterloo when another great European war suddenly burst upon the same fields where the same powers had struggled for mastery 100 years before.

The War of the Nations is the tragic sequel of the Napoleonic wars. Some of the parties may have changed sides for the moment; but in their motives and their strategy, the two wars are strangely alike, and I have depicted the earlier as the forerunner of this later conflict. The centenary of Napoleon's downfall, moreover, seems to offer an appropriate occasion for telling again the story that never grows old, and for telling it in the light of our own times.

An effort has been made, therefore, to find in his rise and fall something more than the miraculous vicissitudes of a legendary superman, or the meaningless sport of blind fortune. I have tried to present him simply as a man of the people who, in a period of chaos, was called out of the crowd to embody and vindicate the race of common men against the privileged few, to sweep away ancient systems and wrongs, and, as the incarnation of the Great Revolution, to be enthroned above monarchs of long descent. In short, I have represented him as the servant of a mighty power not of himself and which, with the pitilessness of nature, cast him away when, blinded by personal ambition, he was no longer faithful and useful to its purpose. This is the Napoleon who, after the lapse of a century, retains his dominion over the imagination of the world, supreme in the admiration and the disappointment, in the applause and reproach of men. Since my wife shared my travels and my labours in the preparation of this volume, I hope I may be permitted gratefully to acknowledge her joint authorship.

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In the footsteps of Napoleon - his life and its famous scenes

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