Napoleon's Letters to Josephine, 1796-1812 - For the First Time Collected and Translated, With Notes Social, Historical, and Chronological, From Contemporary Sources #221260

Napoleon was not only a King of Kings, he was a King of Words and of Facts, which are the sons of heaven, while words are the daughters of earth, and whose progeny, the Genii of the Code, still dominates Christendom.1 In the hurly-burly of the French War, on the chilling morrow of its balance-sheet, in the Janus alliance of the Second Empire, we could not get rid of the nightmare of the Great Shadow. Most modern works on the Napoleonic period (lord Rosebery's Last Phase being a brilliant exception) seem to be (i) too long, (2) too little con fined to contemporary sources. The first fault, especially if merely discursive enthusiasm, is excusable, the latter pernicious.