“Vaunting ambition can be a terrible thing, but if allied to great ability – a protean energy, grand purpose, the gift of oratory, near-perfect recall, superb timing, inspiring leadership – it can bring about extraordinary outcomes.”

Since 2004, the Fondation Napoléon has been editing and publishing Napoleon’s 33,000 extant letters, many of which had not been previously published. A man’s whose life has been picked over in extraordinary detail–a fifteen page treatise has been written about the time he stopped for a cup of coffee at a blacksmith’s house on July 19^th, 1804–has suddenly been further illuminated, and in his own words. Napoleon is not an easy subject, often intentionally trying to shape the impression he left for the future, but his words still provide an invaluable source of insight. Roberts does an excellent job using those letters to create a compelling and fascinating biography.

Roberts feels Napoleon has been the target of a rewriting of history by the victors, in this case the English. His goal is to show why the epithet ‘the Great’ is well-deserved, and to a large extent he succeeds. Love him or not, Napoleon had quite the CV: came to power only six years after entering the country as a penniless refugee; defeated six different Austrian armies before his 28^th birthday; represented the ideals of progress, meritocracy, and a rational future to much of Europe; acted as a law-giver, civil engineer, and nation-builder for France; and inspired such loyalty in his people that more volunteered to accompany him to exile than could be accommodated. Today, he is often castigated as a warmonger, but in several cases, it was the British who provoked war with him. The British also used equally ruthless tactics, particularly Wellington’s scorched earth tactics in Portugal.

Napoleon shaped the history of Europe and probably of the world itself, and if he had many failings, he was at least often aware of them. Roberts argues that his greatest may have been his love and trust in family: promoting his siblings to king and queens of Europe, they almost always let him down or failed him. In Russia, in contrast, Roberts argues that Napoleon suffered less from hubris than usually believed: Napoleon expected a brief border war, and failed to anticipate the Russian retreat into their heartland. It was a mistake, a disastrous one, but not initially overconfidence: he never planned to fight in Russia itself.

Napoleon is a fascinating guy, the good with the bad, and if this biography is a little more focused on the good than the bad, that is perhaps understandable. It skims over a few things, such as his marriage to Josephine, but by and large does a good job adding nuance to his character, often by drawing on his own words. The one question that isn’t answered is the world he visualized if he had succeeded. Did he truly believe France could control all of Europe, including Britain? It could never have controlled Russia. This endgame is something he does not describe in letters, and so we are left to wonder.