We have waited a long time for the publication of the first volume of Philip Dwyer’s life of Napoleon, and it has been worth the wait. Dwyer remains primus inter pares among Anglo-American historians for his knowledge of the man’s life. In addition to having a remarkable mastery of the vast secondary literature on Napoleon and the First Empire – particularly that of the past two generations – he also has read with thoroughness in the ocean of available primary sources, notably the Moniteur Universel, still largely uncharted in a systematic way by historians). Finally, he has also combed through more memoirs of contemporaries than any other biographer of the Emperor. If the second volume matches the first, and there is no reason it should not, this will be a ‘take’ that lasts, whether one agrees with the author’s point of view or not.
And make no mistake: Dwyer has a point of view. His is a very personal take, as indeed one expects, for there can be no definitive or ‘complete’ life of so unique, large, and controversial a figure as Napoleon. He profoundly dislikes the man. More, he finds him largely at fault in most, if not all, of the conflicts in which he was involved. If he does not, at least not yet – (the first volume stops with the end of the Directory) – go so far as Paul Schroeder or Desmond Seward as to see the first French emperor as the direct precursor of Hitler, he does not fall far short.
On the other hand – and it is a big other hand – Dwyer does not become so obsessed with his opinions about the man that they inhibit the reader’s deeper understanding of the story, nor does the author fail to communicate (albeit perhaps not enough) the sources of Napoleon’s conquest – Dwyer might prefer “seduction” or “enticement” – of the admiring opinion of many of the ‘brightest and best,’ not only in France and not only during the First Empire, but everywhere, ever after. That is to say, Dwyer is aware of the ambiguities and ambivalences, and he does not skirt them, even when he does not always share them. This is not an unjust portrait, though it is a negative one. Much of it, in fact, is classic – taken from Napoleon’s own interpretations (e.g., his youth of resentment and anger, humiliation and ambition; his Corsican years of wounded Corsican patriotism) or from Vandal’s great work.
Dwyer’s evenhandedness, given his overall viewpoint, is admirable. Take, for example, the massacre of the enemy troops at Jaffa. Dwyer puts it into deep and proper perspective: “pillage, rape and murder, it has to be said, were the rule rather than the exception throughout the seventeenth and eithteenth centuries on the fall of a besieged town. … There was nothing, sadly, out of the ordinary, then, in the massacre at Jaffa, except that it was calculated and took place after the storming of the town. The massacre was committed from a position of weakness, that is, out of a desire to impose authority and to terrorize the opposing camp. … [I]t was a political act, but it also testifies to a complete disregard for human life bordering on the pathological, to an authoritarian, repressive style that did not originate in the ‘Orient’ but which already existed, to an extent, in Corsica and which was certainly present in Italy. For Bonaparte, people were pawns in his political and military calculations, to be dispensed with if they could not be useful.” (p. 421) In sum, the author sees the massacre in terms of the violence customarily handed out by the French to each other in the Revolution, or to Italy, or in the Vendée.
Or again, Dwyer pulls his punch in discussing Bonaparte’s return to France in the summer of 1799: “Too much has been made of the fact that Bonaparte abandoned his troops in Egypt to their fate. He was certainly not the first revolutionary general to take leave of his command without permission.” (p. 445)
The author has a feel for psychology and its evolution. In regards to Napoleon’s cruelties meted out in Egypt: “As for Bonaparte, it was impossible to say whether his lack of humanity was an inherent, latent trait that had now come to the fore – had the realization that Josephine was unfaithful made him even more callous and unfeeling towards those around him? – or whether he had simply become immune to suffering. There was now a ruthlessness about him that was taking on alarming dimensions.” (pp. 421-22)
The return to France and the taking of power are well limned. Dwyer gets off fine distinctions – for example, “The state of France may have been relatively good, in spite of some serious problems. However, the perceived state of France was much worse.” (p. 463) He cites a wonderful quote of Talleyrand’s, on Sieyès: “Proud and weak, he was necessarily envious and distrustful. He only speaks in catchphrases, but each one expresses a thought and indicates some reflection. In conversation he is serious, he is never stirring but he imposes.” (p. 467)
Dwyer has a knack for saying something with economy and elegance: “The civilian conspirators relied too heavily on the reputation of Bonaparte and his prestige as a military leader to suppress any opposition; Bonaparte relied too heavily on the civilian conspirators to carry the Councils along by expediency.” (p. 489)
Dwyer elects to go with his mentor (Jean Tulard’s) view: the myth of the savior. This, too, is classic and contains undeniable truth. Dwyer adds his own idea that the French needed “a personality” at a time when all the great ones of the Revolution (Mirabeau, Lafayette, Danton, Robespierre) were dead or used up. “Bonaparte filled a vacuum in the French political culture of his time: the need for a personality who would dominate the revolutionary landscape.” (p. 512)
On Dwyer’s telling, the emergence of Napoleon Bonparte at the top is a matter of propaganda, luck, lies, popular need, image, management, and connections, and exploitation far more than it is of genius, charisma, or talent. “…[P]ower fell into Bonaparte’s hands,” he writes, “because those around him were too ineffectual to grab it themselves.” (p. 519)
This is undoubtedly true; it will be another thing to hold and use power, and for this exploit, Dwyer’s Volume I has only somewhat prepared us. “There is little doubt that Bonaparte had a flair for battle,” (p. 516), for example, does not suffice to explain the man’s success on the field or leading his men.
At the end of the day, the very Anglo-Saxon author sees no mysteries to try to plumb, let alone be fascinated by – and why should he? Occam’s razor has shaved off all mystery, in this barber’s practiced hands. “A woman shouted “Vive Bonaparte!”, Dwyer writes, and she “found an echo in the tumult.” (p. 497) There may be more here than he imagines.