Word: napoleons
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...NAPOLEON'S LETTERS (312 pp.)-Translated and Edited by J. M. Thompson-Everyman's Library...
Habitually at around 2 a.m., Dictator Napoleon Bonaparte strode into his writing room and assaulted his correspondence. He answered immediately a few important letters, laid others aside for further consideration, hurled the remainder on the floor. At 4 a.m. he summoned his secretary, who found the great man impatiently striding the floor in a white dressing gown, a handkerchief bound round his head...
...Napoleon wrote between 50,000 and 70,000 letters in this way during the 15 years of his dictatorship. Thirty-nine years after Waterloo, Napoleon III (youngest son of the first Emperor's brother, Louis Bonaparte) ordered "official" (i.e., edited and censored) publication of the correspondence-and landed his chosen editors with a nagging headache. Far from illustrating "the grand personality" of "our august predecessor," the letters displayed Napoleon's true personality with embarrassing frankness. Whole sections of them had to be omitted as "illegible," so that the imperial legend should not be tarnished by evidence of ruthless...
...that it was wise enough to teach law to lawyers, science to scientists, and religion to Popes. Most of the letters have a single idea at the back of them-to impress on the recipients the notion that they are living in an age dominated by a "new spirit"-Napoleon himself. Anything, no matter how trifling, that weakens this impression is automatically condemned; anything that strengthens it, no matter how falsely, is automatically encouraged...
Year by year the great man's relatives and marshals were appointed to kingdoms and principalities* all over the Continent-but always as mouthpieces of the supreme "N." "Your letters," Napoleon tells his brother Louis, King of Holland, "are always talking of obedience and of respect; but [these] consist in not going so fast in such important matters without my advice." Marshal Soult, Duke of Dalmatia, is asked: "How could a man of your ability have supposed that I should ever allow you to exercise any authority not derived from me? Your action shows . . . a failure to realize...