Alan Schom.
ONE HUNDRED DAYS: Napoleon's Road to Waterloo
Michael Joseph, #20 (pp 321).
THOMAS Hardy said, ''War makes rattling good history, but peace is
poor reading.'' His backing of Bonaparte to ''give pleasure to
posterity'' has proved predictably accurate.
Alan Schom, who has skirmished with Napoleon before in his book on
Trafalgar, now turns his full attention to the Corsican general,
specifically his return from exile in Elba, his reclamation of the
Empire, and his road to Waterloo. Popularly known as the 100 Days, this
period actually stretched from Louis XVIII's departure from Paris on
March 20, 1815, until July 8 when he returned to the capital after
Napoleon's defeat at the hands of Allies led by Wellington.
So where stands Schom on the great man? An understandably huge volume
of work has argued the pros and cons of the man who was a subaltern at
25 and Emperor of a vast chunk of Europe just 10 years later. Wisely
Schom has steered a steady course, avoiding the hyperbolic praise of a
Thiers and the bitter condemnation of Lanfrey's writings.
He does, however, decry Napoleon as despotic and for the purposes of
this volume this is an assessment that can be easily defended. But it
ignores the extraordinary civil code, the concordat with the Roman
Catholic Church, and the innovations in education and sciences which
Napoleon promoted before his exile to Elba. But Schom is simply writing
about the 100 Days.
Schom's picture of Napoleon, therefore, remains one-dimensional. His
portrait of the other characters in the final curtain of the great drama
are simply superb. He writes in his preface:
''A mere chronicle of historical facts and events, without providing
the elementary human perspective responsible for shaping them, is in
itself relatively meaningless and. . . a distortion of history.''
His essays on the supporting players ensure this is no mere chronicle.
On Talleyrand, survivor of the Revolution, leading light of the
Consulate, major player under Napoleon, and a restorer of the Bourbons,
Schom is even-handed given the weight of French historians who have
pilloried the one-time Bishop of Autun. He condemns Talleyrand's
duplicity but does give him some credit for his desire for peace.
However, it seems Duff Cooper's 1932 biography of Talleyrand will remain
for some time the only document in the statesman's defence.
On the subject of the other great survivor, Police Minister Joseph
Fouche, Schom draws heavily on Madelin's writings to investigate the
strange morality of a devoted father and husband who nevertheless was
responsible for some of the worst excesses of the revolutionary period.
Fouche's background, career, and motivation are described in convincing
fashion.
His triumph, however, is the sniping account of the brothers
Bonaparte. His clinical dissection of the morally and financially
bankrupt Jerome is performed with wit and style.
Bainville wrote in 1924 that ''the events of the 100 Days had the
colour of a novel and their character is that of the passions. They do
not belong to the domain of reason.'' Schom draws sense from the period
but also maintains a narrative flow. His succinct account of the carnage
at Waterloo is comprehensible, as far as that error-ridden encounter
ever could be, yet evokes the bravery, the blood, and the butchery of
that great struggle.
Marshal Ney's mistakes in that encounter which helped turn the tide
against Napoleon are dealt with with sympathy for a battle-weary
veteran. His account of the marshal's subsequent execution by the
restored Bourbons provides a poignant postscript.
On his ill-fated venture to Egypt, 17 years before the events
described in this book, Napoleon saw his officers were reading novels.
He told his librarian: ''Give them history. Men should read nothing
else.'' Schom has franked this judgment in a virile and vital testament.
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