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by Correlli Barnett
| Hardback in Very Good condition, in a Very Good Dust Jacket. The book in Dark Blue cloth, has silver lettering down spine. The Dust Jacket, unclipped, has no nicks, tears or creases.
Published by George Allen & Unwin Ltd, 1978.
224 pages, with numerous, black and white & colour pictures and maps.
19.3cm x 25.4cm x 2.4cm.
Weight: 875gms.
Cover price: £7.50.
Jacket illustrations:
FRONT: Bonaparte the legend - as portrayed by Jacques-Louis David crossing the Alps in 1800 by the Great St Bernard Pass. In reality he crossed on a mule several days behind the leading troops.
BACK:
Bivouac of Napoleon on the eve of the Battle of Austerlitz, 1805, by Louis Francois Lejeune.
Correlli Barnett has made his reputation through arrestingly novel interpretations of his chosen subjects. His new portrait of Napoleon Bonaparte is no exception. He sees Bonaparte first and foremost as a demagogic politician 'on the make', and a soldier second. In his view Bonaparte's campaigns were political expedients to serve his own ambition. The author argues that there was no 'turning-point' in Bonaparte's career, but rather that there was a consistent pattern from the beginning to the end.
Like the modern financial 'take-over king', Bonaparte had to keep moving because his position was fundamentally unsound. Every extension of his power, though outwardly impressive, only rendered it the more unstable. He always needed a quick victory, followed by a peace and a return to Paris. Up to 1809 his enemies played his game by giving him his decisive battle, and when they lost it, making peace. But, first in Spain under Wellington, and later in Russia in 1812, in Germany in 1813, and in France itself in 1814, they learned to fight on, even when beaten by Bonaparte in single encounters. Once this happened, Bonaparte's system of war was doomed.
As a commander his forte was speed and aggressiveness. As a planner, however, he was slapdash and neglectful of supply; his armies starved and went barefoot. The author also argues that, far from being a master of concentration of force on the battlefield, he was again and again caught with his army dispersed and only rescued from disaster by the last-minute arrival of reinforcements.
As his career developed, Bonaparte ceased to be a Corsican, yet he never became a true Frenchman. In this he seems to prefigure the rootlessness of modern man, just as his Imperial regime is a prototype for much that is politically and socially characteristic of our own age. Correlli Barnett compares him as a young revolutionary to the leaders of modern student revolt. Later, he compares him as Emperor with the self-made tycoon, one who was also, in the modern sense, the first master of public relations, a manipulator of people and opinion, a creator of glamorous myth. Power, indeed, was to Bonaparte what lust was to Casanova, and it proved equally destructive. For his regime was founded, as are modern tyrannies, on the claim of fulfilling the 'general will' of the people, justifying the extinction of dissent and opposition, and thereby destroying liberty in the name of liberty.
'Bonaparte' presents a powerful, original and convincing portrait of one of the crucial figures of modern history both as politician and commander in the field; and it does so in the course of a narrative of his career that is masterly in detail, vigorous in style, surprising in its judgements and , throughout, compellingly interesting and exciting to read.
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Publisher: Allen & Unwin
ISBN: 04944011X
Condition: VG / VG |
1978
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| Postage & Handling to UK mainland: £4.00 | Price: £5.00
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