Book Description

Excerpt from The Corsican: A Diary of Napoleon's Life in His Own Words A Few words are needed to explain what this book is, and what it is not. The matter, with the exception of the few bracketed passages, is derived entirely from Napoleon's own words, written and spoken. But there are abbreviations, and transpositions of words and of dates. The abbreviations are not shown, for the reason that they are of constant recurrence, and this general warning is therefore substituted for the usual typographical indication. The transpositions of date are made for the purpose of maintaining the journal form, and belong, in all except rare cases, to one of the two following classes: first, the placing of the details of an event that were written a day or two after it, at the very day of that event; secondly, the placing of a statement uttered at St. Helena forward under the date of the event itself. Of this second class there are not many instances. There are also a number of cases of composite texts, as for instance the speech to the Council of Ancients on the 19th of Brumaire, or that to the Polish officers on the retreat from Leipzig, each made up from several versions. Once for all, the warning is given that such is the case, as from the nature of the book the footnotes covering this, and the other matters mentioned, appeared to be out of place; they would have been longer than the text itself. 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.