Previously published as v. 1 of The rise and fall of Napoleon Bonaparte.

An accomplished Oxford scholar delivers a dynamic new history covering the last chapter of the emperor's life—from his defeat in Russia and the drama of Waterloo to his final exile—as the world Napoleon has created begins to crumble around him. In 1811, Napoleon stood at his zenith. He had defeated all his continental rivals, come to an entente with Russia, and his blockade of Britain seemed, at long last, to be a success. The emperor had an heir on the way with his new wife, Marie-Louise, the young daughter of the Emperor of Austria. His personal life, too, was calm and secure for the first time in many years. It was a moment of unprecedented peace and hope, built on the foundations of emphatic military victories. But in less than two years, all of this was in peril. In four years, it was gone, swept away by the tides of war against the most powerful alliance in European history. The rest of his life was passed on a barren island. This is not a story any novelist could create; it is reality as epic. Napoleon: The Decline and Fall of an Empire traces this story through the dramatic narrative of the years 1811-1821 and explores the ever-bloodier conflicts, the disintegration and reforging of the bonds among the Bonaparte family, and the serpentine diplomacy that shaped the fate of Europe. At the heart of the story is Napoleon’s own sense of history, the tensions in his own character, and the shared vision of a family dynasty to rule Europe. Drawing on the remarkable resource of the new edition of Napoleon’s personal correspondence produced by the Fondation Napoleon in Paris, Michael Broers dynamic new history follows Napoleon’s thoughts and feelings, his hopes and ambitions, as he fought to preserve the world he had created. Much of this turns on his relationship with Tsar Alexander of Russia, in so many respects his alter ego, and eventual nemesis. His inability to understand this complex man, the only person with the power to destroy him, is key to tracing the roots of his disastrous decision to invade Russia—and his inability to face diplomatic and military reality thereafter. Even his defeat in Russia was not the end. The last years of the Napoleonic Empire reveal its innate strength, but it now faced hopeless odds. The last phase of the Napoleonic Wars saw the convergence of the most powerful of forces in European history to date: Russian manpower and British money. The sheer determination of Tsar Alexander and the British to bring Napoleon down is a story of compromise and sacrifice. The horrors and heroism of war are omnipresent in these years, from Lisbon to Moscow, in the life of the common solider. The core of this new book reveals how these men pushed Napoleon back from Moscow to St Helena. Among this generation, there was no more remarkable persona than Napoleon. His defeat forged his myth—as well as his living tomb on St Helena. The audacious enterprise of the 100 Days, reaching its crescendo at the Battle of Waterloo, marked the spectacular end of an unprecedented public life. From the ruins of a life—and an empire—came a new continent and a legend that haunts Europe still.

Until now, there has been no study of the significant errors that Napoleon made himself which, though apparently trivial at the time, proved to be major factors in his downfall. Digby Smith tracks his rise to power, his stewardship of France from 1804–15, and his exile. He highlights his military mistakes, such as his unwillingness to appoint an effective overall supremo in the Iberian Peninsula, and the decision to invade Russia while the Spanish situation was spiralling out of control.

However great his military campaigns, how often he was victorious on the battlefield, Napoleon was destined to be deposed by political connivance and personal betrayal. This important study of the cause and effects of Napoleon's removal from power tracks his illustrious career through to his downfall and, while doing so, charts the clandestine diplomatic intrigue linking Britain, Austria, Russia and Prussia in the quest for the Emperor's death.

This book is suitable for children age 9 and above. Napoleon Bonaparte was the first emperor of France. He was a very successful military general and he led his army into many victorious battles. This is the story of how a lawyer's son rose to become a powerful emperor.

In his early years, Napoleon was a Corsican nationalist who considered the French to be oppressors. Nevertheless, he was sent to military academies in France, and when he graduated in 1785, at the age of 16, he became a second lieutenant in the French army. Napoleon's military career presents a surprising paradox. His genius at tactical manoeuvring was dazzling, and if he were to be judged only by that, he might perhaps be considered the greatest general of all time. In the field of grand strategy, however, he was prone to making gross blunders, such as the invasion of Egypt and Russia, and, because of his eventual defeat in 1815, all of his foreign conquests proved ephemeral.

Since his untimely death aged fifty-one in 1821, Napoleon Bonaparte has been too often the victim of biographical revisionism that treats him either as a demi-god or as devil incarnate. In the first of this monumental new two-volume biography, Robert Asprey has preferred to treat him as a human being. The Rise and Fall of Napoleon (Volume 1: The Rise) chronicles the beginning of this most extraordinary of lives, from Napoleon's birth in 1769 to the historic Battle of Austerlitz in 1805, when he brilliantly defeated the Austro-Russian armies. What emerges is both a fascinating and contradictory figure: a child of the French Revolution who grew to be its master; who exploited the national will for what he believed to be the national good; who converted the surging passions of thirty million persons into an irresistible force to challenge and often topple archaic thrones; whose desire for European reforms ultimately fell victim to feudal superstition and misery. Based on years of research, Robert Asprey tells this remarkable tale with the even-handedness such a major historical figure deserves. He presents Napoleon as he was - a man dedicated to his vision of himself and his empire.