Napoleon Bonaparte

Napoleon Bonaparte, from the Makers of History Series is a popular biography by John Stevens Cabot Abbott of the French Emperor who dominated European politics from 1799 to 1815. Abbott’s Napoleon was the most popular and most controversial volume in his Makers of History series and went through many editions across the second half of the nineteenth century.

Napoleon (1769-1821) had been the central political and military figure of the Napoleonic Wars that occupied Europe for two decades. His career from junior Corsican artillery officer to consul to emperor to exile and final defeat at Waterloo was the dramatic political narrative of the period, and his impact on European law, administration, education, and the broader political order extended well beyond his actual reign.

Abbott was openly sympathetic to Napoleon. The book essentially defended Napoleon against the broader Anglo-American historical tradition that treated him as a tyrant and would-be conqueror of Europe. Abbott presented Napoleon instead as a great constructive statesman whose civilian reforms, including the Napoleonic Code, the reorganization of French administration, and the establishment of the lycée education system, had lasting positive impact. The military campaigns are presented as essentially defensive against the various European coalitions that had repeatedly attacked France.

This pro-Napoleon position was unusual for an American writer of the period and drew substantial criticism from reviewers who thought Abbott had abandoned proper historical balance. The book was nonetheless enormously popular and helped shape the more sympathetic American popular view of Napoleon that developed across the second half of the nineteenth century, particularly during the years of Napoleon III’s Second Empire.

The treatment is accessible to readers without prior preparation in European or French history. Abbott narrates the major military campaigns and political events clearly and provides enough background that the reader can follow what is happening without needing to consult other sources.

The book runs about four hundred pages in the standard edition. It pairs with the other Makers of History volumes on Napoleonic-period figures including Hortense, Louis Philippe, and Marie Antoinette.