ISBN 9780571301522
Format Hardback
Published 01/03/2018
Length 560 pages
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https://www.faber.co.uk/9780571301522-napoleon-volume-2.html
There is a marked correlation between the clothes that Bonaparte the general wore & those worn by Napoleon the emperor. Even when he was first consul he wore the laurel edged uniform of a general in the republic, much like the one he wore when he stormed the bridge at Arcole. The distinctive olive grey coat & cocked hat over the undress uniform of the chasseurs a cheval de la Garde Imperiale came about around the time of Austerlitz.
That is to say before 1805 there was no Napoleon. Without Ulm & Austerlitz there could not have been a Napoleon. Without these events, Europe would have remembered a heroic revolutionary general who quietened the bloodlust of the revolution. A young soldier on a bridge with a flag, not an emperor on a horse with a hat. Continue reading “Book Review: Napoleon, Spirit of the Age by Michael Broers.”