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L'Empire des mots - Conversations avec Napoléon
MX048919
WRITTEN IN FRENCH
Napoleon speaks to us! For more than two centuries, numerous collections of aphorisms and other anthologies of Napoleon's quotations have been published, most of which are entirely fanciful or present truncated, rewritten and poorly explained quotations. Some books, such as the Mémorial...
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WRITTEN IN FRENCH
Napoleon speaks to us! For more than two centuries, numerous collections of aphorisms and other anthologies of Napoleon's quotations have been published, most of which are entirely fanciful or present truncated, rewritten and poorly explained quotations. Some books, such as the Mémorial de Sainte-Hélène, have attempted to reproduce the emperor's words, but only at a specific moment in his life.
Taking the original form of a spoken biography, this work chronologically recounts Napoleon's most important conversations, from his youth to his final exile. Throughout his extraordinary rise to power, speech was a tool that the emperor used to his heart's content, allowing him to make full use of his powers of persuasion, his ability to argue, to invoke historical precedents, and to draw on his immense literary culture.
His masterful use of seduction, authority and intimidation make some of his conversations extraordinary lessons in politics or remarkable meditations on human nature, while others reveal his mad ambition, his pride, or, conversely, the detachment of the defeated man looking back on his great deeds in the twilight of his life.
The fifty-three conversations presented here are all carefully introduced and annotated, first introducing the author of the account, explaining the political, diplomatic and military context, tracking down the most subtle allusions, but also critiquing the authenticity of the text and the extent to which it has been rewritten.
From one page to the next, the breath of Napoleonic speech takes the reader on a journey through the battlefields of the Italian campaign, Egypt, Malmaison, the camp at Boulogne, the Tuileries, Fontainebleau, Vienna, Berlin, Warsaw and Moscow, then to Elba and St Helena, in times of peace and war, in moments of relaxation and bad days, in glory and defeat.
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