Excerpt from Napoleons Men and Methods The history of Napoleon is of inexhaustible interest. When the English government decided to send him to St. Helena, after the battle of Waterloo, Lord Liverpool wrote to the Duke of Wellington, that in that island he would soon be forgotten; he even repeated this remark in another letter. 'Yes, ' he said, 'he will soon be forgotten.' Yet at the present time there is no individual about whom more is written in all languages and in all branches of literature. Histories, novels, plays, are never tired of his story, and a serious student finds that there is no personality about whom more discoveries are constantly being made and with regard to whom it is more necessary to reconsider his judgment. At the dawn of the XIXth century, two great names, one in literature and one in the world of action arrest the attention of mankind; Goethe and Napoleon. Their careers have been so minutely studied that we are acquainted with what they did every day, almost every hour of their lives. Yet subjected to this fierce light of publicity, which few could endure, they both gain by it, and Napoleon not the less. The more we know about him the more we admire him, the more reasonable do his actions appear, the less well founded the stories which are told to his discredit. Napoleon was born a French subject, in Corsica, of a noble family of Italian descent. He received an excellent education in military colleges, About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

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Napoleon's soldiers marched across Europe from Lisbon to Moscow, and from Germany to Dalmatia. Many of the men, mostly conscripted by ballot, had never before been beyond their native village. What did they make of their extraordinary experiences, fighting battles thousands of miles from home, foraging for provisions or garrisoning town in hostile countries? What was it like to be a soldier in the revolutionary and imperial armies? We know more about these men and their reactions to war than about the soldiers of any previous army in history, not just from official sources but from the large number of personal letters they wrote. Napoleon's Men provides a direct insight into the experiences and emotions of soldiers who risked their lives at Austerlitz, Wagram and Borodino. Not surprisingly, their minds often dwelt as much on what was happening at home, and on mundane questions of food and drink, as on Napoleon himself or the glory of France.