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A selection of reference books on Napoleon and the First French Empire. Every purchase made through our links supports the encyclopedia.

13 selected books

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Recommended

Napoleon the Great

Andrew Roberts · 2014

A monumental biography drawing on Napoleon’s 33,000 surviving letters, admiring but rigorous.

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Recommended

Napoléon ou le mythe du sauveur

Jean Tulard · 1977

The book that reshaped how the man is read: how France gave itself a saviour, and what it cost.

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Bonaparte (1769-1802)

Patrice Gueniffey · 2013

The rise alone, from Corsica to the Consulate, by a historian of the Revolution who takes time to explain.

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Napoleon: Soldier of Destiny

Michael Broers · 2014

The first volume of a biography that sets the man inside the Europe he dominated and reshaped.

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Recommended

Nouvelle histoire du Premier Empire

Thierry Lentz · 2002-2010

Four reference volumes on institutions, diplomacy and collapse: the scholarly synthesis of the subject.

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Napoléon

Georges Lefebvre · 1935

The classic of the social and economic history of the Empire, still cited ninety years on.

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Mémorial de Sainte-Hélène

Emmanuel de Las Cases · 1823

The exile’s own account, taken down at Longwood: the book that built the legend, to be read as such.

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The First Total War

David A. Bell · 2007

How Europe moved from cabinet wars to mass warfare, and what the Revolution changed in it.

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Recommended

The Campaigns of Napoleon

David G. Chandler · 1966

Eleven hundred pages on Napoleonic warfare, a staff-college standard for sixty years.

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Swords Around a Throne

John R. Elting · 1988

The Grande Armée from the inside: recruitment, pay, rations, hospitals, discipline — all that battle narratives leave out.

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1812. Moscow 1812

Adam Zamoyski · 2004

The Russian campaign told from both banks of the Niemen, out of soldiers’ diaries and letters.

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Recommended

La battaglia. Storia di Waterloo

Alessandro Barbero · 2003

Waterloo hour by hour, from all three armies, by a historian who writes like a novelist.

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Le Sacre de Napoléon peint par David

Sylvain Laveissière · 2004

The Louvre catalogue on David’s painting: the studio, the reworkings, the figures added or erased.

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Product list

Napoleon the Great

Napoléon ou le mythe du sauveur

Bonaparte (1769-1802)

Napoleon: Soldier of Destiny

Nouvelle histoire du Premier Empire

Napoléon

Mémorial de Sainte-Hélène

The First Total War

The Campaigns of Napoleon

Swords Around a Throne

1812. Moscow 1812

La battaglia. Storia di Waterloo

Le Sacre de Napoléon peint par David