Napoleon - Tim Wilson-Smith

Napoleon as a man of war was perhaps the cause of more men's deaths than any other warleader before him. The full story of the disruption caused by almost twenty years of warfare will never be told in all its harrowing detail. Across Europe, villages were razed by fire and cities destroyed by cannon, monasteries closed, and thousands turned into refugees. There were revolts in Ireland, possibly pro-French, and in southern Italy, clearly anti-French, all savagely repressed, and the loss of many small states that had dotted the map of central Europe for centuries. Yet the terrible destruction of wartime does not tell the whole story. The men who eventually brought Napoleon down, chief among them Castlereagh and Metternich, failed to grasp that one of Napoleon's most remarkable gifts was his ability to bring about significant social change that would outlive his own defeat.

One of the Emperor's greatest achievements was the Code Napoleon, a civil code which has remained in place largely unchanged to this day - a lasting monument. Similarly, a passion for the arts led him to become a great patron - his desire to immortalize himself resulted in the magnificent works of David, Ingres and Gros, and in the creation of societies and learned institutions that serve to keep his memory green nearly 200 years later.

Timothy Wilson-Smith's illuminating and lucid biography does what no other book on Napoleon has done - it separates and sets out for comparison the Emperor's achievements in war and his legacy in peacetime, and in so doing reveals the true stature of this remarkable man.