Napoleon's Road to Glory

First let me concede some of the compliments other readers have paid this book. It is easy to read, concise, and thoroughly researched. Three stars: C level work. It is not, however, very strong history. That is not to say that I picked out anything that was incorrect or even misleading, but instead it seems that Markham's obvious infatuation with Napoleon leads him to be unable to ask hard questions about his hero. More demanding readers, much less those who are critical of Napoleon's legacy, will walk away from this book unsatisfied. This is a book written by a "Napoleonic Society of America" member for others of that same group.Napoleon was of course subject to horrible and fictitious slander. His position and long sustained success bred bitter enemies, and we shouldn't fall into the trap of believing their deionizations. Still, Markham comes dangerously close to going to the opposite extreme. He uniformly portrays Napoleon as peace loving and well intentioned. Criticisms of Napoleon are raised in as little as a sentence and dismissed just as quickly. The book never asks hard questions.Take, for example, Markham's explanation of why peace never managed to break out during Napoleon's time. It was always England that "wanted war." Wanting war! After WWI the terms of peace laid blame for the war at Germany's doorstep. These days we are more likely to say the great tragedy of that same war is that it seems none of Europe's leaders truly wanted it. Or how about the Cuban missile crisis? Over 13 days the world's greatest powers almost destroyed themselves. Which side wanted war? The US? The Soviets? Reducing wars of this magnitude to simple desire on the part of one side or the other is facile. There are deep personal, political, and strategic issues at work that must be understood.Markham makes little effort to contribute to that understanding. Instead he simply says that the English could not tolerate French possession of Antwerp. Very well, then if Napoleon is as committed to peace as Markham would have us believe, why did he not surrender the city or come to some other accord? Markham simply states that the French would not tolerate that. Little more is offered. "Why" plays a small part in the analysis. Still, it seems that Napoleon's ultimate downfall in great part hinged on this decision from both sides of the channel. Delving into this issue and others, at least for a page or two, would have been worth while.That lack of analysis makes Markham more of a reporter of old news than a historian. Moreover, his presentation of the facts becomes suspect because he is so clearly enamored with his subject.Read this book if want to feel good about Napoleon, but go elsewhere if you want to probe below the surface.

Napoleon's Road to Glory is a well-written and well-researched biography that could easily replace Felix Markham's classic biography of the French emperor to become the new standard biography of Napoleon I. One important way that David Markham, unlike the earlier Markham, improves upon the presentation of the older biography is by supplying numerous endnotes that provide readers with reference points for future research into certain key and fascinating aspects of Napoleon's compelling life. Moreover, David Markham's book does not suffer from the problems of obvious authorial bias that plague books such as Alan Schom's Napoleon Bonaparte. I am especially pleased to see that he included sections on Napoleon's religious policies and vision of European unity (highlighted even more in his Napoleon for Dummies), as well as comparisons of Napoleon to earlier leaders like Alexander the Great. David Markham provides an overview of Napoleon's settlement with the Catholic Church, including an overview of the background of the situation inherited by Napoleon before Markham addresses how Napoleon sought to resolve the religious divisions of the French Revolution. Moreover, Markham, who bases most of his material on Napoleon and the Jews from Ben Weider's work, explains that Napoleon's proclamation declaring Palestine an independent Jewish state even served as part of David Ben Gurion's argument that the United Nations should recognize Israel in 1947, roughly one hundred and fifty years after Napoleon planned to issue his proclamation! Markham reminds us that Napoleon was after many kinds of peace: domestic, foreign, and religious. Napoleon reopened the University of Pavia and granted its professors liberal stipends. In 1808, he created the Academic Palms as a reward for excellence in teaching. In Napoleon's Road to Glory, Markham describes Napoleon's improvements to Paris and other cities in France, Italy, and Switzerland as a parallel to the public works projects initiated by Julius Caesar. David Markham seconds Geoffrey Ellis's designation as the consular period as a Pax Napoleonica. As Markham puts it, if Napoleon "were Caesar, then the Consulate was his Pax Romana even in the years when there was no actual peace." Markham adds that some "consider the Consulate to have been something of a golden age of French culture . . ." The what if?'s of history also abound in this book, as does the logic behind Napoleon's foreign policy. Readers learn, for example, that a report published "by Colonel Sébastiani . . . suggested that France could easily retake Egypt" and Markham explains Napoleon`s desire to keep the Belgian departments, because much "of Belgium is French-speaking and had always been seen as a potential part of France." And imagine the consequences had Napoleon married a Russian bride and managed to avoid invading the Russian Empire in the year following the appearance of the above quotation! Instead, the Franco-Russian alliance rapidly collapsed in such an extreme fashion that in a proclamation to his troops in 1812, Tsar Alexander cited "difference of religion" as one of the reasons why Russian peasants now consider themselves as Napoleon's "irreconcilable enemies." What is more, the king of Naples turned on Napoleon following Napoleon's defeat at Leipzig in 1813, because Marshal Murat "feared that Napoleon had expressed a resolution to . . . incorporate Naples with the kingdom of Italy." I have graded many history assignments in my academic career at two universities and were I to assign a grade to this impressive volume, I would overwhelmingly give the book a solid A+!