Original Reviews

          Phillip Dwyer carries the career of Napoleon Bonaparte up to the coup d’état in 1799 that brought him to power as first consul. Dwyer is critical of Napoleon, even his generalship. He is dismantling a reputation that, to a great extent, Napoleon himself constructed. Napoleon was a self-promoter, par excellence.

          He was also good at factional politics. He cut his political teeth in his native Corsica in the early years of the French revolution. Napoleon’s politically-prominent father had initially supported Corsican independence. But when France occupied the island in 1768, he chose to stay and ‘collaborate.’ He sent Napoleon and his brothers off to France for their education. Napoleon joined the French army.

          Dwyer argues that Napoleon straddled two cultures. He returned to Corsica for long periods of time between 1786 and 1791 and joined the Corsican Jacobin party. He spoke French with a heavy Italian accent. He and his brothers epitomized the contention between regional identity and French nationality, so characteristic of the long nineteenth century.

          In addition to his self-promotion, Bonaparte managed to be in the right place at the right time. He was in Paris at the right moment to get himself appointed as an artillery officer in the French army that captured the port of Toulon from the royalists in 1793. Although nothing like as consequential as he subsequently claimed, his contribution to the victory earned him the command of the Army of the Interior. That appointment fortuitously placed him in Paris with the job of defending the Directory against popular unrest in October 1795.

          Critics claimed that Napoleon’s next appointment , command of the French army in Italy, was a political appointment. But Dwyer reminds us that military appointments in revolutionary France were always political. Successful generals were self-promoters. He and they benefited from the fact that so many of the French military leadership had emigrated after 1789.

          Perhaps the most intriguing episode of Napoleon’s early career was the expedition to Egypt in the summer 1798. Charles-Murice de Talleyrand, then foreign minister of the republic, was promoting the idea that France should establish a colonial empire in north Africa. Occupying Egypt would also threaten Britain’s route to India.

          The venture was not without risks; the British fleet had a formidable presence in the eastern Mediterranean.  Moreover, there was little recognition of the difficulties of summer warfare in the Egyptian desert. The Mameluke cavalry and Bedouin infantry would prove to be more troublesome than Napoleon had assumed.

          Alexandria fell without a fight, but the disastrous march across the desert to the Nile without adequate drinking water should have been an early warning of the difficulties to follow. Cairo was taken and Napoleon set about organizing an occupation that would bring the French enlightenment to this Ottoman domain. But in August 1798 the British navy under Lord Horatio Nelson destroyed the French fleet moored off Alexandra. And Napoleon then suffered a humiliating defeat in Syria.

          With the Egyptian venture not going well, Napoleon looked for an opportunity to return to France. Dwyer talks about his “flight from Egypt,” abandoning his army. Upon his arrival in France, Bonaparte was, however, able to fashion a victorious Egyptian campaign out of his few but well-publicized military successes.

          Dwyer claims that by 1799, the republican experiment was concluding, the Directory almost universally considered a failure. The electoral process had been overturned by coup d’états too many times. Napoleon was, however, not the primary force behind 18th Brumaire. It was organized by a masterful intriguer, Emmanuel Sieyès. Sieyès needed a successful general, and Napoleon was available. Ultimately, however, Napoleon high-jacked the conspiracy, using a military force under his command to dismiss the Directory and disperse the Council of 500. This ‘savior on horseback,’ became a collective memory that would be cultivated during the Empire and again in the nineteenth century.

          Philip Dwyer has cut Napoleon down to size. It must be remembered, however, that Bonaparte demolished the ancien régime throughout Europe. So much so that when restored after 1815, it needed popular support and even parliamentary democracy to govern.

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