Napoleon and the Hundred Days - Hardcover

Coote, Stephen

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0306814080 ISBN 13: 9780306814082

Publisher: Da Capo Press, 2005

Synopsis

In Vienna, 1815, as the political aristocrats of Europe assemble to determine the fate of the continent after defeating Napoleon, the news arrived that Napoleon had escaped captivity and was returning to France. Bonaparte-the revolutionary turned emperor and "disturber of the world's peace"-was fast approaching Paris, gathering troops and taking cities without firing a single shot. He had returned, and it would be just one hundred days before he met his enemies in a final, epic battle.In Napoleon and the Hundred Days, Stephen Coote vividly re-creates the rise and fall of Bonaparte's empire, and brings to life the characters who shaped it: Wellington, Britain's Iron Duke; Josephine, Napoleon's great love; Talleyrand, his duplicitous minister; Fouché, the sinister head of the secret police; Blücher, the uncouth yet courageous Prussian commander; and, of course, Napoleon himself. Displaying his customary blend of a historian's eye and a novelist's dramatic style, Stephen Coote describes how the path to war became inevitable and how, at the battle at Waterloo, the fatigued but ever arrogant Napoleon met his match. This is a dazzling portrait of the legendary emperor, whose genius, courage, and tenacity won-and lost-him a vast empire.

About this title

About the Author

Stephen Coote is the author of several much-admired biographies of historical persons, including W.B. Yeats, John Keats, Sir Walter Raleigh, and Francis Drake. He lives in Oxfordshire, England.

From Publishers Weekly

This literary, almost novelistic treatment of the 100 days between Napoleon's escape from Elba and his capitulation after Waterloo uses the period as a lens through which to examine his character in general. By so doing, Coote (A Play of Passion: The Life of Sir Walter Raleigh) manages to give the reader a panoramic view of the emperor's life, not simply a focused study of the events of the Hundred Days. From Napoleon's unwillingness to concede the impossibility of even his most far-fetched plans to his megalomaniacal identification of Europe's destiny with his own, Coote illustrates the increasingly disastrous consequences of Bonaparte's temperament and character by comparing episodes of his return to power (such as the Additional Act, the Champs de Mai and the battle of Waterloo) to those of his initial rise (the Code Napoleon, the coronation in Notre Dame and the battle of the Bridge of Lodi). Throughout, Coote's prose is a delight, and his knack for description and characterization make men like Talleyrand, Fouché and Louis XVIII almost palpable (of Fouché, he writes, "dressed in plain black clothes amid all the brilliant decor and brighter uniforms of the palace and its courtiers, Fouché gave the uncomfortable impression of being a monk disguised in evening dress, of being something other than what he seemed"). Overall, this accessible work is reminiscent of the finest classical Roman histories and biographies. Although Coote's volume will be of great interest to those already familiar with Napoleonic history, he provides enough background information to make such familiarity unnecessary.
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About this edition

• Publisher: Da Capo Press
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0306814080
• ISBN 13: 9780306814082
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 336