The Parvenu Princesses Elisa Pauline And Caroline Bonaparte

Excerpt from The Sisters of Napoleon, Elisa, Pauline, and Caroline Bonaparte: After the Testimony of Their Contemporaries The domestic life of Napoleon was a perpetual Retreat from Moscow, which eventually led him as surely to his Waterloo as the fatal Russian campaign. He himself declared at Saint Helena that Murat, who was but the echo of his wife Caroline, was the principal cause of his being there. But let us give the fatal Caroline her due. Fortune merely selected her at random to destroy the darling of whom she had tired. In Caroline's position her brothers and sisters would, one and all, have acted precisely as she did. For the much-vaunted esprit de famille of the Bonapartes was a pitiful thing: it consisted of theatrically falling on one another's necks after they had succeeded in wrecking their own and their brother's careers. That they were able to do him any injury at all, however, was due to the weakest as well as the most amiable trait in the character of Napoleon. In few men have the family affections been more strongly developed. A better son, a more devoted husband and father, and a more generous brother there never existed. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

This illustrated A–Z encyclopedia provides easy access to information about the emperor Napoleon. Over 300 entries cover significant events, people, and other topics such as the principal Napoleonic campaigns, all the major battles including Waterloo and Austerlitz, Napoleon's most important generals and marshals, Josephine de Beauharnais, and the Napoleonic Code. Napoleon also includes primary source documents, a handy chronology of key events, a bibliography, and an index.

A survey of the Napoleonic Wars. The central theme is the scale of French military power and its impact on other European states from Portugal to Russia and from Scandinavia to Sicily.

Known collectively as the 'Great War', for over a decade the Napoleonic Wars engulfed not only a whole continent but also the overseas possessions of the leading European states. A war of unprecedented scale and intensity, it was in many ways a product of change that acted as a catalyst for upheaval and reform across much of Europe, with aspects of its legacy lingering to this very day. There is a mass of literature on Napoleon and his times, yet there are only a handful of scholarly works that seek to cover the Napoleonic Wars in their entirety, and fewer still that place the conflict in any broader framework. This study redresses the balance. Drawing on recent findings and applying a 'total' history approach, it explores the causes and effects of the conflict, and places it in the context of the evolution of modern warfare. It reappraises the most significant and controversial military ventures, including the war at sea and Napoleon's campaigns of 1805-9. The study gives an insight into the factors that shaped the war, setting the struggle in its wider economic, cultural, political and intellectual dimensions.