XVI
A SHORT HISTORY OF NAPOLEON THE FIRST. By John Robert Seeley
THE FIRST NAPOLEON: A SKETCH, POLITICAL AND MILITARY. By John Codman Ropes[1]
A condensed biography of Napoleon ought to make the richest and most interesting volume in profane literature. Frenchmen find it a difficult book to write, because they feel both the excess and the deficiency of essential information. The correspondence of the Bonapartes, though it occupies more than sixty volumes, is mutilated and incomplete. Materials for an ample supplement are known in France ; a collection of the emperor's autograph letters was offered for sale in London not long ago ; and the priceless bundles that passed through Mr. Murray's hands passed into concealment. The papers of imperial ministers are lost or kept back. Those of Fouché are said to have been burnt at Trieste ; those of Talleyrand were partially destroyed, and the few readers of his memoirs foretell disappointment. Barras and Sieyès, Cambacérès and Caulaincourt, Molé and Pasquier left memoirs which are at least difficult of access to most people except M. Taine. Some are printed but unpublished. The task may be fitly undertaken at a distance by men resolute not to be distracted by the pursuit of detail or baffled by mysteries that resist inquiry.
Two such lives written in English at the same time
- ↑ English Historical Review, vol. ii. 1887.
442
