I don't know if it's the best, but it's a classic biography and one that is very enduring (it's the first one I read, very long ago).




(Emperor of the French, rather than Emperor of France, to preserve the revolutionary illusion).

As you'll see the second volume is more about the living myth the Emperor became at home and abroad - the man larger than life - while the first volume is more about the man who would become the Emperor. The thematic (as well as chronological, obviously) division is more apparent when you read the second volume.




This is always a challenge for the biographer. You can't really have it both ways. If you want to go in details about the subject's life (or deep in analysis), you can ill afford to go in depth about his time too (or you end up with a very fractured book, or a great many volumes). Then there is the great "popular biography", where the life of the subject becomes a sweeping narrative, and there's the more analytical type(and forcibly, more subjective and more like an essay). Castelot wrote the first type mostly, but his duology isn't a wholly "popular" and very accessible work either. It's between the two types.

What the book isn't is an historical essay on Napoleon's times and Imperial France, not an history book but really a pure biography. That would be a fairly tall order with a figure like Napoléon to combine the two, and it certainly would be done at the expense of many details of his life/rise/rule.

I tend to prefer the second type myself. One of my all time favourite biographies is J.C. Petitfils' Louis XIV (a masterpiece, and hands down the best book on Louis XIV), which is more of the type you seemed to want of Castelot. It's not the best biography if one wishes to learn of all the Versailles minutiae through the reign (neither gossipy nor the serious stuf), but if you're looking for a work that constantly steps back from the strictly biographic content to analyse the context in depth (and that for instance will stop to spend a whole chapter on the Low Countries of the time and its rulers/system etc before carrying on with the narrative of the war), Petitfils is hard to beat (he's not written a Napoléon, but he's done a Louis XVI's in two volumes which is excellent, and again is as much an history book on the genesis of the Révolution as it is a more classical biography. Of course, Petitfils is a reknown historian more than he is a classic biographer, so he writes history books about a figure and his/her time more than he does a narrative biography). Petitfils is also interesting for the fact he leaves much place to foreign scholarship (American, English etc.) in his analysis, something fairly few native historians (French and otherwise.. it's the same everywhere) bother to do, most often relying on their own tradition or that of the country their subject is grom (but in the case of France, it so happens some of the best monographies on aspects of the Versailles system, on clientelism in 17th century France, on Colbertism etc. are the work of brilliant American scholars, little known at home often enough as their works interest few outside university circles there, and even less in France itself).




I'm really of two minds on this. It's nice to widen the scope and have more context, but what you wish for seems to widen it too much, as it's geopolitical information that isn't very relevant to the subject of the book, and it could easily reach the point the book would lose all its focus and become a popular and general history of Europe in the Napoleonic Age, not a narrative of Napoléon's life at all. This sort of work actually exists (as well as monographies on virtually any topic from that period!), and it's Napoléon's life itself which will be covered generally/superficially in them.

You are right, however. The chronology and background of the Napoleonic period (and the French revolution in a more general way) is well known by the educated French, so they don't need to have this, and will expect/hope not to, actually. It's only in very popular (Gallo, etc.) or very general books you'd find such information. In any slightly more scholarly biography or history book, it would be considered clutter or redundant by the readers.

I think it's best to look at books like Castelot's as a window on the man and a period, providing a perspective. It feeds you personal and other details you don't find in general history books on the period, or in monographies, but it won't susbstitute for them either.

When I develop an interest on an era/period/culture, I usually read biographies at two specific times: at the very beginning, in parallel with or as a substitute for a general history book - or much later, when I've gained a fairly solid background on the period and I wish to learn more detaisl about a specific person/theme (eg: a biography of Colbert will forcibly introduce a great deal of details about the working of economy, protectionism etc.). When it's the latter, I usually favour the more analytical/scholarly works, when it's the former I usually prefer the more "popular"/narrative type of biography.

In my experience, the French biographic tradition is most often of the second type (especially in recent works), while the anglo-saxon tradition tends to be more narrative (it doesn't mean there's no analysis in them - and there is a lot on occasion - but the style in biographies is more descriptive overall). I wouldn't be surprised an American or English biography of Napoléon might have been closer to what you were hoping to get (there will be lot more cultural and political context, notably).



It is fairly customary to do this a lot in French history books concerned with the Baroque and revolutionary eras - at the very least to point out to the reader when someone is introduced that this or that figure is better known by the readers under the title/name of X, as these figures changed names and titles so often. Before commonly referring to Armand Du Plessis or call him "Monseigneur Du Plessis", it's kind of useful to point out to the readers this is the future Cardinal de Richelieu, or that la veuve Scarron is actually the future Madame de Maintenon ...

I can understand this can get tedious and confusing to readers who don't really know beforehand most of the persons, by their better known title or otherwise. I feel a bit the same when this is done in English history books.




Of course it's rather expected it would have the opposite effect, as you would have recognized their future titles or names and it would help you situate those people, and help remember their earlier names... of course this works best for readers with a background on the subject.



French historians in general are not very prone to quote swearing or profanities. They will do so without hesitation to make a point, or while discussing the topic, but will often censor the words afterward in the rest of the book. You're mistaking this for prudishness American-style, however. It's nothing to do with puritanism, it's just considered unecessarily vulgar, the point to remind the reader Napoléon was vulgar, not to force his vulgarity on the readers. When the profanities are quaint, amusing or very colouful, historians often find it amusing to quote them in full at least once - and even to explain some in detail, but 19th century profanities, pretty much sexual, are already standard and can pretty much be guessed from the first letter, the number of dts and the context, so quoting them in full would make the book vulgar, something you don't really want when you're prestigious collection like Perrin. Abridged profanities are a perfectly good comprise in most cases, IMO. Expurging them completely is what is totally unnacceptable.

I've finished not long ago the biography of a policeman who worked vice before the revolution. It's full of explicit details, but the writer still abridged most of the profanities (if it's used many times in a quote, he used it in full the first time than abridged all the others), and don't forget: a lot of those profanities would actually be already censored in the secondary sources that quote Napoléon and that the historian used, so the writer is merely quoting the source as is. French profanities are often very mysognistic (that is what bothers readers far more than the sexual aspect), so writers have to judge when they're useful to their argument (eg: if you want to discuss the mysoginy or vulgarity of a given person, etc.) and when being explicit would add strictly nothing but just end up annoying readers.



It is fairly solid. Castelot of course has his own perspective, which if you read others you will find in conflict with some. Napoléon (and in a lesser measure Louis XIV) is a character of French history for whom it's both interesting and important to go look at foreign sources (English historians, Russian, Venetian etc.) for a more complete picture. One of the thing so fascinating about the man is that few people in European history offer the same opportunity to go read history books from so many countries, all about differents aspects of the same period, and with often radically different perspective on the man or the events.