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.
The sheer determination of Tsar Alexander and the British to bring Napoleon dow.
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 last years of the Napoleonic Empire reveal its innate strength, but it now faced hopeless odds.
Even his defeat in Russia was not the end.
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.
Much of this turns on his relationship with Tsar Alexander of Russia, in so many respects his alter ego, and eventual nemesis.
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.
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.
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.
This is not a story any novelist could create; it is reality as epic.
The rest of his life was passed on a barren island.
In four years, it was gone, swept away by the tides of war against the most powerful alliance in European history.
But in less than two years, all of this was in peril.
It was a moment of unprecedented peace and hope, built on the foundations of emphatic military victories.
His personal life, too, was calm and secure for the first time in many years.
The emperor had an heir on the way with his new wife, Marie-Louise, the young daughter of the Emperor of Austria.
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.
In 1811, Napoleon stood at his zenith.
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
