BOOK REPORT: DEFEAT by Phillipe-Paul De Segur
It shouldn’t be sad to see tyrants stumble, but still it kind of is. As much as you know that conquering Europe is a bad thing, the rise of Bonaparte from obscure Corsican foot soldier, to head of the French army, to ruler of the whole nation, to conquerer of all the ancient crowned dynasties still ranks as a singular ascent. In European history only Joseph Stalin can claim to have come from so little to so much, not only taking over his country but leading a beaten down ramshackle country to conquer a good portion of the world. Hitler overran a lot but his conquest was only stable for the merest blink of the eye before the decline began; it was more like a rabid dog running amok than a true stable ascent.
Of course, Stalin died with his crown firmly on his head and his empire at its height, proving that not all gamblers eventually run out of luck. (It worked out okay for Mao as well). Such was not Napoleon’s fate and this book, written by his aide de camp, tells the story of when fortune suddenly desserted its most beloved child.
Napoleon up close in this book is, if you can forget about the conquering Europe thing, a pretty likable little dictator. He’s always got a kind word for his troops and can’t stand to see them punished, keeps his head up in the worst crisis. He’s not even very much of a tyrant and his generals talk back to him constantly and ignore his orders. I guess that gets to the root of what’s appealing about Napoleon, that in contrast to the old armies and nations of Europe where every inch of your career was determined by your birth, he created the first great hierarchy of the talented and the energetic in his army, with the most fluid structure ever seen in Europe, giving his commanders huge autonomy to press the battle as they saw fit. Unlike Stalin who was ruled tyrannically over small and and more democratic states, Napoleon’s enemies were no great heroes by and large and much as we can’t approve of that invading stuff, there are no tears shed for the Hapsburgs like there were for the people of occupied Poland for 40 years.
If you are a fan of disaster porn - the horrific details of a great, well laid plan gone horribly wrong this book will not disappoint with its vivid descriptions of the gruesomeness of Napoleon’s retreat and what his men when through as the greatest army Europe had ever seen was flayed to death by the cold, hunger and pillaging cossacks. Any book of history that makes illustrates how easily the fate of the world could have been different is okay by me: if Napoleon’s temper has not been quite so restless, if he had stayed put for a few more months in Poland, he might well have wrung a treaty out of the tsar. And if the empire had survived…one can easily see ripple effects all the way to the present. Germany would never have unified. Which would have meant there might not have been a Franco-Prussian war, which produced the lingering resentments on the part of the French over the Alsace which produced the First World War, which produced not only the Bolshevik revolution but the lingering resentments on the part of the Germans which led to the Second World War. Onto the Cold War. So if Napoleon had just sat tight for a few months, 200 years of peace and harmony would have been ours.
Of course, just because those wars didn’t happen, doesn’t mean other wars would have, as they surely would have. Napoleon deserves none of your tears but the collapse of such a dynamo is always, somehow poignant as Richard the Third first showed us.
The Rushfield Babylon Recommendation: Highly.
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