Napoleon lost an empire in 1815, but gained another: that of books. He is the historical figure that has been written about the most, after Jesus of Nazareth. The general, first consul and emperor of the French managed to cross the Saint Bernard Pass in the Alps and survived the Beresina and its disastrous invasion of Russia, but there is a feat that even the God of war could never achieve: reading everything that has been written about him and his companies.
Two novelties have made this Everest of paper and ink grow. English historian and Cambridge professor Ruth Scurr, 51, is the author of her umpteenth biography, this time from an unusual point of view: Napoleon, a life among gardens and shadows (Shackleton Books). The monumental The Napoleonic Wars, a global history (Desperta Ferro), by Alexander Mikaberidze, 44, also breaks the mold.
The work of Professor Mikaberidze, an American-based Georgian historian, is weighty. And not just in a metaphorical sense. His work (1.5 kilos) follows the path of the extraordinary The Campaigns of Napoleon (The Sphere of Books, 1.8 kilos), by the British David Chandler. But he is not limited to Europe and concludes that the conflicts that bled the continent between 1792 and 1815 had global repercussions.
Both Ruth Scurr and Alexander Mikaberidze asked the same question. "Another book on Napoleon?" The bibliography is already incomprehensible. Jean Tulard, one of his biographers and honorary president of the Institut Napoléon, affirms that he "has inspired more books than days have elapsed since his death." On May 5, 2023, it will be 202 years since his death, that is, 73,730 days. The books are many more.
Alistair Horne, another of his scholars, states in The Time of Napoleon (Debate) that at the end of the 20th century, the last time someone bothered to count them, there were more than 600,000 titles about him. One of the first biographers of him was Walter Scott, in 1827. Barely ten years later, Ozeki San'ei published the first biography in Chinese (the last, as far as the chronicler knows, is that of Li Yuan Ming, from 1985). And the fountain does not dry up.
The essays continue to appear, as confirmed by the archives of the Bibliographie Annuelle de l'Histoire de France. So there is the question of the last (for now) to jump on the bandwagon: "Another book on Napoleon?". And why not? Replies Ruth Scurr, who remembers that few women have entered this field. In addition, "there is no definitive biographical portrait: there is always something new to say."
She found in this heavily exploited mine a still virgin vein: the gardens. “That great woodcutter of Europe”, Victor Hugo said of the emperor. Indeed, he took countless lives. Although we will never know the final figure, he was responsible for "between three and six million deaths," agree Ruth Scurr and Alexander Mikaberidze. But the first holds that, in addition to being a woodcutter, he was passionate about botany and gardening.
Napoleon's life, the author maintains, was marked by gardens. His family's and a mulberry nursery in Ajaccio (Corsica). The one from the military school. The one in the Tuileries, where he saw the annihilation of the Swiss Guard. The one in Cairo, where General Kléber was assassinated and where he could have died if he had not returned to France. The walled garden of Hougoumont, in Waterloo. Those of Elba and Santa Elena, banish her from him...
Between the first and the last garden, he lost an empire. And he reshaped the world, argues Alexander Mikaberidze. By invading Spain, he "indirectly became the architect of Latin American independence." He also contributed to "reshaping the Middle East." And he "bolstered British imperialist ambitions and fueled the rise of the United States, which doubled its territory after buying Louisiana from the French."
The Napoleonic wars, adds this historian, are "perhaps the most powerful agents of social change between the Protestant Reformation and the First World War." The consequences of the struggle between France and Great Britain (and its allies) were not limited to Europe. It was “a struggle between two great powers on a truly global scale” that were disputing “colonial territories and world trade”.
Architect, gardener, woodcutter... The latest editorial news on the Napoleonic era does not spare chiaroscuro. Professor Scurr's book already does so in the subtitle (A life between gardens and shadows). But despite everything, even she gives up. He was she, she says, "an Alexander the Great of the contemporary age, whose authority was not inherited, but rather conquered by military or political ingenuity."
That ingenuity, unfortunately, rested on the blood of others. Chateaubriand called him the "great maker of widows and orphans in France." From France and half of Europe. He claimed to fly the flag of freedom, but reestablished the slave trade in the French colonies, abolished during the French Revolution. Nothing illustrates his contradictions than the paintings on one of his feats, the passage of San Bernardo.
There are two very famous oil paintings on that feat that facilitated Marengo's victory. The most realistic is by the French Paul Delaroche, who painted it between 1848 and 1850. With the emperor on the throne, he would not have been able to portray him like this. Alexander Mikaberidze still has part of the child who discovered Napoleon in a discount bookstore in Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia. And, despite the fascination, his book does not spare criticism either.
His character was "a careerist, manipulative and an egotistical man inclined to nepotism", although not "the Corsican Ogre that his enemies painted or the romantic hero of legend". His wars were, above all, "a European conflict, but they redefined Europe's relationship with the rest of the globe." Mikaberidze returns to Chateaubriand for the final point: "In life, the world slipped out of his hands, but once dead, it seized him."
