I found this in the used book section of my local bookstore the last time I was back in the States. And, as you do with used books, I bought it primarily just because it was so cheap. (I paid only $2 for this).
It's a very small little book, running at just 270 pages, and that on small pocket sized pages.
As a result, I learned very little new information from it. It was mostly a review of some- of the other - Napoleon - books I had been reading this year. But there were some interesting bits here and there.
This book was published in 1966, and there are some cases where it shows its age. For example it doesn't have the advantage of recent studies on whether or not Napoleon was poisoned at Saint Helena (w). Felix Markham has a short appendix on the cause of Napoleon's death, but the research only goes up to 1962.
From a readability standpoint, I found this book a bit dry. Furthermore there's so much information packed into a small area that it can be a bit difficult to absorb.
Also, thank goodness for the daily show. Their little bit on right wing hypocritical attitudes towards protest and criticism saved me having to write a post ranting about it. Watch here and here. (I might do a post on right wing hypocrisy later, but for now these video links will tide me over.)
I was pretty excited when I stumbled upon this book in the bookstore. I had always wanted to learn more about Napoleon's Egyptian campaign.
There's a lot of romance that has grown up around this story. The politically incorrect part of me, the part that grew up reading Rudyard Kipling and watching movies like "Gunga Din" (w), is still somewhat fascinated by stories of European soldiers having adventure in exotic locations.
And if that's what you're looking for, some of that can be found here: French soldiers battling Bedouin nomads, getting eaten by crocodiles on the Nile River, and the Rosetta stone.
However, as the book's subtitle, "Invading the Middle East" indicates, the author Juan Cole is more interested in the problems created by a Western country invading a Middle Eastern Muslim country. There are, perhaps, certain parallels to the situation we find ourselves in today.
And in fact, it turns the parallels run a lot deeper than you might think. Remember that the Egyptian campaign was before Napoleon seized control of France's government with a military coup. Back in 1798, Napoleon was not yet Emperor of France, but simply a general under the French Republic.
At the time, France was the only republic in Europe, and they viewed it as their mission to spread liberty and freedom around the world.
They invaded Egypt partly for strategic reasons, but also partly under the rhetoric of freedom and democracy. When they overthrew the Turkish rulers, they fully expected the Egyptians would rise up and greet them as liberators, and the French were confused and frustrated when the Egyptians resisted them.
Perhaps by this point, the story is beginning to sound very, very familiar.
I know I recently recommended "The Revolutions of 1848" as a book relevant to our times, but I take it back. If you want to get some historical perspective on the mess we are in right now with Iraq, this is the book to read.
By the time of the Egyptian campaigns, Napoleon had already established himself as the most brilliant military tactician in Europe. He had smashed the Austrians, the Prussians, and the Italians, and everyone thought this campaign in Egypt, against the seemingly backward Muslims, would be a piece of cake. Instead it ended up a disaster.
The parallels to the present day that Juan Cole has been able to dig up are amazing, including a debate among the French about whether or not to use torture against Muslim insurgents. (The French eventually concluded that, although torture might be effective as a punishment, it is useless as an information gathering tool because the victim will say whatever he thinks his torturers want to hear.)
Some interent critics have accused Juan Cole about being more concerned with 2008 than 1798, but personally I feel that if Juan Cole has been able to dig up the parallels, than it is fair game to use them. And, for the most part, Juan Cole lets the history speak for itself. He quotes generously from eye-witnesses and French memorialists at the time, and for the most part avoids using his voice as the author to hit the reader over the head.
(There are a couple exceptions, such as when he explicitly draws the readers attention to Napoleon's attempt to set up a government of Muslim clerics, and the U.S. attempt to do the same in Iraq).
Indeed, reading this book, one gets a huge sense of frustration at the failure of our leaders in Washington. The historical record was out there and available for anyone who bothered to look (not only Napoleon's Egyptian campaign, but also the French in Algeria, our own national experience in Vietnam, or a million other examples on could mention) and yet we were still stupid enough to blunder into another military quagmire. Politicians always have a remarkable ability to commit this kind of stupidity when it is other people's lives at stake.
However, although Juan Cole brings up many parallels throughout his book, he does not forget about his original story. So if you're a history geek, and you're looking for a book to fill in a gap in your knowledge about this period of history (as I was), then this book will work quite nicely for that purpose as well.
My only complaint is that (as this Amazon viewer put it quite nicely) the book has serious problems in the last act. As I got closer and closer to the end, I kept wondering how Juan Cole was possibly going to have room to get to everything that happened in the little space he had left. And in fact, the end of Napoleon's Egyptian campaign is reduced to a quick summary in the last chapter. After so much detail in the early chapters, I was hoping for a thorough retelling all the way through, but inexplicably the book comes to a rather abrupt ending.
Still, over all an excellent book. Highly readable, and works great as a history or as a political commentary.
I saw this book in a Fukuoka bookstore, and thought, “Talleyrand..., Talleyrand..., that sounds like a familiar name. I've heard that before somewhere.” And that was about the extent of my knowledge before buying this book. However, looking over it, and noticing that Tallyrand’s life dealt with the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars (areas of history I wanted to learn more about) I decided to buy the book and give it a try.
In case you don’t know anymore about the life of Talleyrand than I did, it turns out he had quite a long and interesting career. He started out as a clergyman, and worked his way up to become the archbishop of Autun. Then, when the Estates General was opened in 1989, Talleyrand became active in the French Revolution, helping to create the civil constitution of the clergy. Eventually Talleyrand left the church for greater ambitions, but when the French Revolution got to hot for him he fled to England. When he was declared an undesirable alien in England, he went to America. Once things calmed down in France, Talleyrand returned and became involved with the Directory phase of the Revolution. Talleyrand became foreign minister under the Directory, and organized Napoleon’s disastrous expedition into Egypt. Talleyrand then helped to organize Napoleon’s coup in 1799. After that he served as Napoleon’s foreign minister, reshaping, together with Napoleon, all of the maps of Europe. Once he became disillusioned with Napoleon, Talleyrand helped to organize his downfall and arranged for the restoration of King Louis XVIII. After the Bourbon kings were thrown out in the July Revolution, Talleyrand served as French ambassador to London under Louise-Philippe before finally dying in 1838.
As you can see, there’s a lot of ground that needs to be covered in this biography, and in fact the author opens with a quote from Talleyrand’s secretary, “I have often myself seen [Talleyrand] smile at the idea of anyone attempting his biography.”
Perhaps because of the vast amount of material that needs to be covered, the author Robin Harris gives virtually no background information about any of the events he talks about. The assumption is that the reader is already well-versed in 18th and 19th Century European history, and is just seeking a better analysis of what they already know.
For a paperback history I bought in a popular bookstore, I found it a surprisingly difficult read. This might be partly because it was a written by a British author and published in London, and my impression, from talking to the Brits I’ve met here in Japan, is that they tend to be a lot better educated about European history than we Americans.
If I had my choice, I would have preferred to read a biography of Talleyrand that explained the background of what was happening a little bit more, but I still enjoyed this.
Talleyrand’s life as a Bishop was fascinating to read about because he was incredibly promiscuous. And the impression I got from this book was that in 18th Century France all the clergy were promiscuous, and no one really seemed to care.
This, it turns out, is one of many scandals that surround the life and career of Talleyrand. He comes through in the book like the cocky smart kid
It turns out that Talleyrand was also behind the “X,Y,Z affair” which is something I vaguely remember learning about in my high school American history class.
“Since 1796, French corsairs had been attacking American shipping, in retaliation against the Jay Treaty between the US and Britain, which was deemed by Paris to have breached the terms of American neutrality. A delegation was sent to Paris in the autumn of 1797 to recover damages for US losses and to bring an end to the dispute. But the three American negotiators, John Marshall, Charles Pickney and Elbridge Gerry, were shocked by the treatment they received. They were approached by a series of agents, whose precise status was obscure, but who were clearly working for Talleyrand and who figured in President Adam’s later report to Congress on the matter as ‘X’, ‘Y’ and ‘Z’. The American envoys were told that the precondition for success was the payment of what amounted to substantial bribes. Specifically, they were asked to underwrite a loan of 32 million Dutch florins, to make a gift of 50,000 gold louis to the Directory, and to provide ‘sweeteners’ for the Foreign Minister and his intermediaries. The Americans sent back a long indignant report about these outrageous proceedings, which President Adams duly conveyed to Congress. The scandal in the United States was immense. It then reached the French public through British press reports. Talleyrand indignantly defended his reputation. He even managed to persuade Gerry, the most Francophile of the US negotiators, to lend some support to his protestations of innocence. To the Directory, he simply denied any knowledge. His protestations can hardly have been credible, but for a time he survived in office. This was partly because Barras, his protector, was involved as well. But it was also because, despite the scandal, both the French and American governments knew that no one was better equipped to negotiate the peace between them than Talleyrand. It was in order to press these complicated negotiations forward that the Directory wanted Talleyrand to stay in Paris, rather than go to Constantinople….”
Talleyrand’s corruption and willingness to take bribes is a common theme in the book, but as the author points out, “Far from alienating foreign powers, Talleyrand’s venality pleased them. It seemed to guarantee his flexibility.”
In short, although sections of this book were a struggle for me, I enjoyed it on the whole and I think it helped a lot to broaden my understanding of this time period in history.
Another book in the “World Leaders: Past and Present” series which I picked up from Oita Prefectural Library on my last trip down to Oita City.
This was a very brief summary of Napoleon’s life aimed at the young adult audience, but the gaps in my historical knowledge are such that I still learned tons from it. And I found it fascinating reading. I hope to someday find a full length biography of Napoleon, but for now this will have to do the trick.
I think everyone who ever reads a biography of Napoleon comes away astounded by what he was able to accomplish, and perhaps slightly appalled by the tremendous amount of death and bloodshed that was necessary to satisfy his ambition.
Considering Napoleon started out as nothing but the son of a petty Corsican noble who couldn't even speak correct French, and then later his military career was almost finished before it even started because of his association with Robespierre, what he managed to accomplish was truly amazing. He inherited a situation with France in disarray and under attack by all of Europe, and he was able to beat all of Europe back 3 out of 4 times.
The Napoleonic wars are something I still don’t know about, and this book does a good job of summarizing it. It’s a bit confusing though, since in a relatively short period of time there were 4 coalitions of European powers united against Napoleon.
The scope of the Napoleonic Wars is somewhat astounding as well raging, as it did, back and forth across Europe several times.
To the extent that European wars are sometimes called “World Wars” (World War I at least can be thought of as primarily a European War in which the colonies also took part), the Napoleonic Wars can almost be thought of as 4 World Wars in a 20 year period of time.
One of the things I remember from my Calvin history classes was the paradox of how Napoleon both ended the French Revolution by establishing autocratic rule, but at the same time also cemented the advances of the French Revolution by spreading an enlightened (non-feudal) code of laws and administration throughout Europe.
In some of her last few paragraphs, Leslie McGuire attempts to sum up Napoleon’s mixed legacy:
“Some consider him the enlightened bearer of revolutionary ideals; others regard him as a forerunner of 20th-century dictators. It is hard to asses his role. He redrew the map of Europe several times. He brought lasting reforms to the legal, administrative, judicial, and educational systems of an entire continent. He revolutionized warfare. But the political and social upheavals such as the French Revolution, that shook France and the rest of Europe would have happened without him. Many of his actions brought unintended results. He paved the way for the unification of Italy and Germany. He helped make the United States a world power by selling the Louisiana Territory. His war with Spain gave the countries of Latin America an opportunity to fight for their independence. He strengthened the pope and the Catholic church despite his attempts to do the opposite. Napoleon left behind a powerful legend that grew to enormous proportions after his death. His son, Napoleon II, never ruled France. But in 1852 his nephew, Louis Napoleon, traded on the popularity of his name to proclaim the Second Empire, and took the title Napoleon III. Bonapartism-the belief in a strong, authoritarian ruler appointed by the will of the people-continued to cast its spell over French politics for years and remains a tangible force even today.” (P.106)
A few notes:
* Leslie McGuire claims that: “As head of [the committee of public safety] Robespierre was responsible for the deaths of some 50,000 people during the Reign of Terror”. (P. 24)
This differs slightly from the other books I've been reading recently. Other books in this same series put the figure much lower. In the book on Robespierre, S.L. Carson gives a figure of 2,596 (p.20). Frank Dwyer in his book on Danton says, “during the period known as the “Reign of Terror”, more than 2,300 people were guillotined” (p.16). Guy Endore in “The Werewolf of Paris” which (although not really a serious history) also quotes 2,596.
I’m no expert myself, but I’d be curious to know where McGuire gets her figures from, and why it’s different than the other figures. Is she adding in the deaths caused by the September massacres and the civil war? If so, is it fair to lay all of those deaths at the feat of Robespierre?
* As these are young adult books, they are filled with illustrations, as well as various captions, quotes, and other information filling up the margins of each page.
This adds a lot to the enjoyment of these books, especially for those of us with short attention spans. Although I wish the editors had done a better job of lining the illustrations and quotes up with the main text. Often a picture caption will give away information that won’t be revealed in the main text for a couple more pages.
* And speaking of which, one of the quotations in the margins of the page gives a very graphic portrait of Napoleon’s view of the German Empire. “The Empire is an old serving woman who is used to being raped by everyone.”-Napoleon Bonaparte speaking with reference to the German Empire.
Although that does provoke a very vivid image of the political situation of the time, I’m a bit surprised that the quote made it into a young adult book. Especially since it was just used as one of the superfluous quotes on the side margins.
I saw this movie in my video store, and I thought it would be a good way to learn some history. (The old couch potato’s method of studying).
There are a still a lot of gaps in my knowledge of history, and the period of the Napoleonic Wars is one of those gaps.
And actually I felt like I did learn a lot from this movie.
This 1970 movie opens with what looks like the end. Napoleon’s lost the Russian campaign, and Paris is now surrounded by a coalition of British, Prussian, Russian, and Austrian armies. Napoleon is forced to abdicate, agree to exile in Elba, and the Royal family is restored to the French throne. (Louis XVIII is played by Orson Welles, who appears to be well into his fat and grumpy years by this time).
But 10 months later, Napoleon escapes from Elba, and returns to France. Louis XVIII sends an army out to capture him, but the troops refuse to fire on Napoleon, and join up with him. Then Napoleon is once again Emperor of France, and Louis XVIII has to flee.
All this takes place within the first 20 minutes or so of the movie as but a prologue. The rest of the movie deals with the build up to, and the fighting of, the Battle of Waterloo, at which Napoleon fights his last great battle against the combined forces of the British (led by the Duke of Wellington) and the Prussians.
I don’t know enough to critique this movie, but it certainly felt like it was trying very hard to be accurate. As the armies clash, lose and gain ground over the field of Waterloo, the subtitles mention the time of the day this is going on, and identify which part of the battlefield the action is on. This gives the movie a very historical feel.
It reminded me of that “Gettysburg” (W) epic movie that came out about 15 years ago.
The big problem with “Waterloo” is that the director seems to have been too ambitious for his own good. You get the impression watching this movie that he wanted to create the “Citizen Kane” of war movies. Something that would sweep the academy awards and be analyzed over and over again in film schools.
But there’s a thin line between greatness and pretentiousness. A lot of the more inventive camera shots or angles just struck me as a director trying too hard. For example when Napoleon is confronted by Louis XVIII’s army after returning to France, he walks out slowly to talk to them with his hands held out. The camera zooms in and stays on his hand as he walks, then continues the close up as Napoleon puts his hand behind his back.
And there were a lot more creative shots like this. Maybe I’m just a bit of philistine about these things. I’m sure a film school student would have appreciated it more. But it struck me as pointless.
Also there’s a lot of overacting going on. At times you get the impression the actors think they’re on the stage acting out a Shakespeare play. An actor will start talking quietly, and then abruptly start shouting dramatically with their arms raised out in front of them, and then abruptly lower their voice again for dramatic effect.
Plus this is a long movie. Not quite “Lord of the Rings” long, but over 2 hours (long at the time). And a lot of the length of the movie seems to come from things like long zooming in shots, or dramatic silence between characters, or just a lot of other artsy things that could probably have been left on the cutting room floor.
When the Battle of Waterloo finally begins, the battle scenes are exciting, but they’re nothing special either. Obviously in the 1970s they couldn't compete with all the computer graphic battles of Hollywood today, but even by the standards of the times it seems a bit lacking. I remember watching “Spartacus” as a kid, for example, and those battle scenes can still hold their own against anything Hollywood has today.
(Granted the purpose of the two movies was different. “Spartacus” was intended as pure entertainment, “Waterloo” seems to be striving more for historical accuracy, for example showing which cavalry charge took place when and under what circumstances.)
Probably because this movie was made during the height of anti-war feeling during Vietnam, there are a few scenes which seem inserted just to placate the anti-war crowd. The most obvious of which is when a young British soldier suddenly loses his cool during a battle, breaks out of formation, wanders around during the French cavalry charge shouting out repeatedly, “Why are we killing each other? We don’t even know each other. Why must we kill each other?”
Now, given my pacifist politics, I have no problem with anti-war messages in movies. But this was a bit too cheesy even for me. Plus, it didn't really fit with the rest of the movie, and felt like it had just been tacked on.
(Still, at the same time you do have to feel nostalgic for the days when Hollywood couldn't make a big war film without trying to acknowledge public opposition to war. Things sure have changed.)
Update: Reading the wikipedia article, it appears this is actually a Russian film. Which is strange because it's all done in English with American and British actors (even the French characters speak English) but I guess it was a foreign film that was aiming for a larger audience. This perhaps explains why the battle scenes can't quite compete with Hollywood. (That's what I get for writing the review first, and doing my research second). It may also explain the different style of direction. Also this review here points out a lot of the historical inaccuracies in the film.
Update Update March 15, 2016
This video review here is much more interesting and much more informative than anything I would ever write. Watch this instead of reading my review.
(Book Review)
