Book Description

Excerpt from A Dictionary of Napoleon and His Times The collection in dictionary form of the material, historical and personal, relating to the most significant and arresting figure of the modern world will certainly appear to those best qualified to judge to be a task of hopeless magnitude and complexity; and, indeed, the difficulties in the way of the perfect accomplishment of such a collection are almost insurmountable in view of the unexampled mass of literature, good, bad, and indifferent, which has grown up around the figure of Napoleon Bonaparte. Any attempt which aimed at complete inclusion of all the circumstances connected with that most marvellous life would be a failure unless it assumed the proportions of an encyclopaedia of very large size. No such claim is advanced on behalf of this work, the object of which is to present in popular yet exact form for ready reference a general survey of the Napoleonic period, both as regards its central luminary and the numerous satellites, scarcely less brilliant, who circled round him. Particulars of the personality of Napoleon and all that recent research has discovered with reference to the more obscure episodes in his career have been carefully examined and collated; the campaigns necessitated by his policy; the commercial, political, and artistic developments of his reign; biographical matter relating to his family from the earliest recorded member thereof down to its latest scions; the political circumstances of the various countries with which he had warlike or pacific relations; his habits and idiosyncrasies; the great leaders who served or failed him; his more private life; his relations with his secretaries and valets; the women he loved; and the contemporaries, laudatory, veracious, or scurrilous, who set down their reminiscences of him-all arc included in this work, which, if not encyclopaedic, may at least claim to be comprehensive. Many of the biographies are of considerable length, but the plan throughout has been to give extended treatment only to matters of interest and value, and severely to condense anything which does not approximate to that standard. The work has been written in a spirit which the author believes he is justified in claiming is absolutely without bias of any sort: but that is not to say that it is non-controversial. A work of reference should not lend itself too much to argument; but level acquiescence in the views advanced and in the deductions drawn by standard authorities where these do not square with personal conviction is characteristic of the compiler who attempts nothing further than the mere mechanical collection of materials upon which, as is too often the case, his disabilities prevent any direct comment or illustration. 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."