Napoleonology

Douglas Johnson

• Napoleon: Master of Europe 1805-1807 by Alistair Horne
  Weidenfeld, 232 pp, £6.95, September 1980, ISBN 0 297 77678 9
• Napoleon’s Diplomatic Service by Edward Whitcomb
  Duke, 15/5/81 pp, June 1981, ISBN 0 8223 0421 X
• Dictionary of the Napoleonic Wars by David Chandler
  Arms and Armour, 576 pp, £12.95, November 1980, ISBN 0 85368 353 0
• Napoleon, the Jews and the Sanhedrin by Simon Schwarzfuchs
  Routledge, 200 pp, £5.50, March 1979, ISBN 0 7100 8955 4
• Auguste de Colbert: Aristocratic Survival in an Era of Upheaval, 1793-1809 by Jeanne Ojala
  University of Utah, $15.00, February 1979, ISBN 0 685 95370 X

It would appear to be difficult to write a book about Napoleon without apologising for it. Alistair Horne talks about the three hundred thousand which have already been devoted to this one man, but Edward Whitcomb brings about a substantial (and welcome) reduction by referring only to some two hundred thousand. David Chandler explains that ever since he wrote his excellent book on the campaigns of Napoleon ten years ago, he has been inundated by requests for further information coming from the widest possible variety of people, all of whom are, as he puts it, ‘caught up by the awesome range of Napoleon’s attributes and talents’, while Simon Schwarzfuchs, in his more specialised study of Napoleon and the Jews, refers to a change in Napoleon’s reputation and to his recent loss of repute among historians.