Conquering hero or proto-Hitler? Liberator of the masses or brutal military dictator? The ultimate self-made man or a monument to Latin Eurotrash? Two centuries after he seized power in a bloodless coup and put a quiet end to the French Revolution, Napoleon Bonaparte still divides the critics wildly. And he’s never been so popular.
Last November’s anniversary of the coup dated “Brumaire 18” generated an orgy of articles in the French press about the First Consul and his extraordinary legacy. The next 21 years will see many more anniversaries, starting this month with Marengo, one of the greatest of his 90-odd battles, a victory over the Austrians that allowed the new leader to stabilize his wobbly power base. Whole libraries could be dedicated to the great man — there are said to be 200,000 biographies, while certain publishers dedicate their lives to the gory glory of Napoleonic warfare.
Of course, English-speakers have written Boney off as a megalomaniac dwarf in a silly hat since day one. The anti-Napoleon propaganda was so virulent that one British lady almost fainted when presented to the emperor, whom she was surprised to discover was normal height and actually quite charming and attractive. As great a writer as Stendhal loved him to the end, while H.G.Wells railed against his name.
The Napoleon scholar is faced with a dilemma — what to leave out? No single volume can cover the battles, the family intrigues, the politics, let alone the European political order, which the man wrestled to the ground for close to 15 years. Most only give a paragraph to revising the French administration, creating prefects and départements. Napoleon Bonaparte. The very name oozes glory. Just admire Gros’ painting of a lancer in leopard-skin on his rearing steed... So, you think buying CDs on-line is living life to the max?

“Napoleon” by Frank McLynn (Pimlico)
“Napoleon” by Vincent Cronin (HarperCollins)
The best short biographies in English are nicely complementary. McLynn is no expert, but he is a fine, fiery writer with a healthy disdain for accepted theories and a good line on war and politics. You know how it’s gonna end — remember the Abba song? — but it’s still gripping stuff.
Cronin is a rare breed, a British Francophile with a genuine sympathy for The Corsican. In his 1971 biography he ignores the fighting and politics, and gives us “a living, breathing man.” This is Napoleon the bookworm and novelist, the social reformer and dreamer. We also get his doomed marriage to Josephine as tragedy, not comedy.
But if it is intimate portraits you are after, go no further than two recent French books, both big award winners and just out in English translation.

“The Dark Room At Longwood” by Jean-Paul Kauffmann (Harvill)
A journalist and bon vivant (he edits a cigar magazine). Kauffmann knows something about solitude: he spent three years as a hostage in Beirut. His rumination on Napoleon, La Chambre Noire de Longwood (Gallimard), won six major prizes, including the Prix Femina. It is the story of his six-day stay on Saint-Helena, the lonely “Rock” in the South Atlantic where Napoleon was exiled after Waterloo, to die in deep disillusion.
It’s a bizarre book. Kauffmann recounts everything and anything, from the view out of his window to long conversations with other travelers. He swirls around and around the topic — a hero’s fall — like a seagull following a fishing boat. For some reason it is fascinating, especially when we close in on Longwood, the “haunted house” where the dethroned emperor wiled away his last years, reliving battles and cursing his jailers. “One only has to spend a few hours in the memory’s tomb to realize that the prisoner poisoned himself with the past... the hemlock of regret.”
Kauffmann assures us that he is not obsessed, but we slowly learn through flashbacks that he has visited dozens of other sites, from Russian battlefields to Corsican houses, trying to absorb the great man’s aura. It worked: the portrait he paints is lusher than any biography.

“The Battle” by Patrick Rambaud (Picador)
In 1831 Balzac started work on this epic novel, but never got past the first sentence: “On Tuesday 16 May 1809...”. Now historian Rambaud has dared to complete it for him, using many of the original notes, as La Bataille (Grasset). It won the Prix Goncourt and the Prix de l’Académie Française in 1997.
It is the story of one battle. Not a great victory, but a bloody stalemate in which 40,000 Frenchmen and Austrians died in the mud by the Danube, while occupied Vienna looked on with opera glasses from above the town walls. The cast is huge, from generals and cavalrymen to deserters and lackeys. Every fact is verifiable; only the dialogue and the smoke are made up. Some of the former is clumsy, but the descriptions are marvelous, written with a surprising restraint. The fear, the euphoria and the horror are all wonderfully evoked, as we charge the enemy on horse and foot, help the orderlies amputate, and scavenge boots and lockets from the dead.
The Emperor himself is always there, though usually beyond reach. He pores over maps and climbs trees for a better view. Then he barks orders, throwing in a word or two in Italian: “Bene! Pronto!” (it was his mother tongue, and he always spoke French with an accent).

“Dictionary of the Napoleonic Wars” by David Chandler (Wordsworth)
More than 500 pages of biographies and battles, thick with maps, engravings, anecdotes, and cant — we learn for instance that Fouché was “a second-rate intellect,” while Josephine’s “name was spoken by Napoleon minutes before his death.” — All in one affordable paperback.