Memoirs Of The Life Exile And Conversations Of The Emperor Napoleon

This edition in four volumes is a record of Napoleon's last years spent on the island of Saint Helena, documented by comte de Las Cases, Napoleons servant and unofficial secretary in exile. Las Cases began his journal on June 20, 1815, two days after Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo, and continued it until his expulsion from St. Helena on orders of the island's governor, Hudson Lowe, at the end of the following year. The core of the work transcribes Las Cases' near-daily conversations with the former Emperor on his life, his career, his political philosophy, and the conditions of his exile. The work entered the popular imagination as something like Napoleon's own personal and political testament, and as such became a founding text in the development of the Napoleon cult and the ideology of Bonapartism.

Before the shattering of the Napoleonic empire in 1815, Count Las Cases had served loyally for many years in the council of state. However, his most important service was to come after he followed his Emperor into exile on St. Helena. During his time with Napoleon on the “Rock in the Atlantic”, he was to write down all that he heard from the Emperor’s mouth, as clear a stream of his thoughts and reminiscences as were ever recorded. He was to eventually publish these entries as the “Memoirs of the life...”, also known as the Mémorial de St. Hélène. They stand as a classic not just of the history of Napoleon’s times, but also of the history of the first year of his banishment. Ranging from his earliest days in Corsica to the ranging battlefields of his career, Napoleon speaks through these pages as in no other of the sources left to us today. Essential reading and the birth of the Napoleonic legend. Author — Las Cases, Emmanuel-Auguste-Dieudonné, comte de, 1766-1842. Text taken, whole and complete, from the edition published in 1855, New York, by Red Field. Original Page Count – 400 pages. Illustrations — 4.