A History of Napoleon Bonaparte II

“Whether the truth displeases us or not, we are governed by her, and experience in all this has been her very humble servant. History has another mission than that of pleasing; it is no more made to be the courtier of a people than the courtier of a king. The so-called patriotic prejudices must learn to know that it is no longer possible for a historian to be national in the narrow sense of the word. [....] His country lies in a region without frontiers and his cause is the universal immutable cause of right against force, of liberty against oppression. The exclusiveness that some would impose on him was possible in the small states of antiquity, where all foreigners were treated as enemies; it cannot be maintained in the midst of the great European community, which lives the same life, and is fed by the same thought. Again, Rome in conquering the world rose to the notion of humanity, and it is in this that the incomparable grandeur of Tacitus consists. We discover in him, in spite of his prejudices, the man of every time and of every country, or rather we seem to hear mankind pronouncing ineffaceable judgments upon its own history.” — Chapter VIII, National Movement in 1803, The Camp of Boulogne, Foreign Receipts Writing a history of Napoleon and Napoleon’s empire, Lanfrey thought of Tacitus and his history of Rome. This by itself says a lot about what Lanfrey wanted to do in his History . Napoleon to Lanfrey was not a son, an heir, of the French Revolution; he was “the enemy of the Revolution, the destroyer of the Republic, . . . the founder of the Czarism of the West.” Literature on Napoleon and the Napoleonic era typically highlights the profound divisiveness in the assessments of Napoleon and his legacies. In the general rehabilitation of Napoleonic legacies in recent years, such talk of divisiveness might have led some to But where, really, are his critics? What, really, did his “enemies” do? What did they think, say, or write about him? Lanfrey’s History will be a happy discovery (re-discovery) to readers who have wanted to know more about Napoleon as a tyrant. It provides an account of Napoleon’s life and his reign that will be indispensable for a broader and deeper understanding of the historical significance of the Napoleonic era. Pierre Lanfrey (1828-1877) was a French historian and politician. His father was a military officer during Napoleon’s Empire. He studied philosophy, history and literature in Paris. Following his first book, L’Église et les philosophes du XVIIIe siècle (1857), which drew attention to the talented young author, he published a series of notable works in short Essai sur la Révolution française (1858), Histoire politique des papes (1860), Études et portraits politiques (1863), among others. Histoire de Napoléon Ier , generally considered his magnum opus , is an in-depth study of Napoleon’s reign, its nature and its impact on all aspects of life in France and Europe. Due to Lanfrey’s premature death in 1877 at the age of 49, this Histoire couldn’t be completed and it ends in the year 1811, a year before Napoleon’s fateful Russian campaign. *This edition is a revised and emended version of The History of Napoleon the First (1886).