Napoleon

“Napoleon at PBS : a biography of Napoleon”

“His Imperial and Royal Majesty entered his palace at the Tuileries last night in the midst of his faithful subjects.”

“The Emperor has arrived at Fontainbleau.”

“Tomorrow, Napoleon will be under our ramparts.”

“Bonaparte has advanced with great strides, but he will never enter Paris.”

“The usurper was seen sixty leagues from the capital.”

“The tyrant has crossed Lyons.”

“The monster slept at Grenoble.”

“The tiger has arrived at Gap.”

“The Corsican ogre has just landed at the Juan Gulf.”

“The cannibal has left his lair.”

“In early life he may have been a sincere republican; but he hated anarchy and disorder, and, before his campaign in Italy was over, he had begun to plan to make himself ruler of France. He worked systematically to transform the people's earlier ardor for liberty into a passion for military glory and plunder.”

“I used to say of him that his presence on the field made the difference of forty thousand men.”

“Messieurs, nous avons un maître, ce jeune homme fait tout, peut tout, et veut tout.”

“Bonaparte was a man of iron energy and was remorseless in the pursuit of his goal. But in those days there were not a few energetic, talented, and ambitious egoists besides him. The place Bonaparte succeeded in occupying would not have remained vacant.”

“Like a final signpost to other ways, there appeared Napoleon, the most unique and violent anachronism that ever existed, and in him the incarnate problem of the aristocratic ideal in itself—consider well what a problem it is:—Napoleon, that synthesis of Monster and Superman.”

“Napoleon personifies the ironic and harsh response of the military men of the XIX century to the literary dreams of the XVIII.”

“But Palmerston likes to put his foot on their necks! Now, no statesman must triumph over an enemy that is not quite dead, because people forget a real loss, a real misfortune, but they won’t forget an insult. Napoleon made great mistakes that way; he hated Prussia, insulted it on all occasions, but still left it alive. The consequence was that in 1813 they rose to a man in Prussia, even children and women took arms, because they had been treated with contempt and insulted.”

“A dîner, il nous disait qu'il se trouvait beaucoup mieux, et nous lui avons fait observer, à ce sujet, que, depuis quelque temps néanmoins, il ne sortait plus, et travaillat huit, dix, douze heures par jour.«C'est cela même,» disait-il: «le travail est mon élément; je suis né et construit pour le travail. J'ai connu les limites de mes jambes, j'ai connu les limites de mes yeux; je n'ai jamais pu connaître celles de mon travail.»”

“He was the God of War.”