Broers - Europe Under Napoleon

English Historical Review

MICHAEL BROERS

EUROPE UNDER NAPOLEON

T his book has known many incarnations, and it has taken a long time towrite. The thanks I owe to others in this task may well become almost aslong as the apologies and explanations I will incur for its errors and follies.Its faults are still to be exposed, but the debts are already withme.

In the north of England, I have had the good fortune to have access totwo of the finest university libraries in Europe, the John Rylands inManchester and the truly glorious Brotherton in Leeds. I cannot thank orpraise their staffs, founders and benefactors enough. To Neil Plummer, ofthe Brotherton, my thanks and admiration. The staff of the British Libraryhave been unfailing in their patience and reliability as the work hasprogressed.

Much of the work and, indeed, the writing of this work took place appropriately enough in Paris, and I owe a great deal to my many friendsand colleagues there. To M. Michel Fleury and Madame Auffrey, of theInstitut de la Francophonie, where these words are written, whosegenerosity and very practical support have been my mainstay. To the staffof the Bibliothque Nationale and the Archives Nationales de Paris, inparticular my old friends Claire and Philippe Bchu, Jacky Plaut, PierrePortet and Grard Hrmisse, who have provided both professionalknowledge and deep comradeship for many years, for although archivalsources may not dominate the pages of this book directly, they haveexercised a powerful influence on it at every stage. To my oldestfriends, Hlne and Jean-Michel Chevet, simply for listening andalways being there. In each of these cases, it is impossible to separatethe personal from the professional, and so it should be. For manyyears, M. and Madame Charles Bonis provided the best tat-majeur imaginable.

Professors Jean Tulard and Louis Bergeron have encouraged me fromthe very outset in the study of the Napoleonic period, as have many closerat hand: Alan Forrest, Jim McMillan, Colin Lucas, Geoffrey Ellis and CliveEmsley. Among my own cohort, Charles Esdaile and Mike Heffernan haverendered invaluable professional assistance and, above all, the camaraderieso needed when so much work has been done in real isolation, away fromParis. In Leeds, where I teach, my head of department, Bill Speck, hasbeen a constant source of support, both in securing me leave at acrucial point in the work for this book, and as a friend in times ofneed.

Finally, I have four outstanding debts to acknowledge. The deepest of allto Christopher Wheeler, at Arnold, who had faith in the project. To TimBlanning, who read every word, and without whom it would all have beenfor nought. To Sue, my wife, and the most loyal bonapartiste I have everknown! I hope she will endure the criticisms of lEmpereur in these pageswith as much goodwill as she has the long, hard-fought campaignthat produced them! This book is her Spanish Ulcer, the guerrillabehind every rock. Thanks to her, at no point in its writing did Iever identify with Napoleon, for no one could be better loved than Iam.

Odd as it will seem to those who knew him, this book belongs, above all,to the late Richard Cobb, mon matre. It tries to see the Napoleonic erathrough the eyes of those on the ground, those who endured it, and in sodoing, to be loyal to the truths he shared with me. If this book has keptwithin its gaze the soldiers, the peasants, the local officials, who bore thebrunt of the lunacies of masters and ideas, it is thanks to his influence. Iwrite these words in the city, indeed in the neighbourhood, he taught me tolove. Richard would have been appalled to be compared to Napoleon, buthis presence and his passing have left as indelible a mark as any man canmake, within his own empire. Im sorry he wont be here to curseme.

Paris 4e,
January 1996

I n a review article published in The Historical Journal in 2008, theAmerican biographer of Napoleon, Steven Englund, spoke of nothing lessthan a scholarly renaissance in the field of Napoleonic studies, and wentfurther, adding that Indeed, the word naissance applies even better,because so much of the new literature was mined from primary sources.He spoke too soon, for the explosion in Napoleonic studies has, if anything,gained still more pace in the half decade between Englunds vantage pointand the republication of the present volume. At a conference held inBrussels and Lille in October 2011, under the auspices of the Centre forNapoleonic Studies at the latter university, I was struck not just bythe number of young scholars present, drawn from all over Europeand from North America, but by the fact that many establishedexperts in the Revolutionary period, and even the ancien rgime , hadtransferred their interests to the study of the Napoleonic regimes, a signthat not only a new generation of researchers were at work in thefield, but that senior historians of what might be described withsome irony as the annexed periods, now saw issues of interest andimportance in a field once considered too dull, too sterile to merit seriousconsideration. The real triumph of the growing awareness of theimportance of the Napoleonic era emerged for me as I surveyed myluncheon companions that Saturday in Brussels, in that we who hadbroken open the path had been followed by those who had made theirmark elsewhere. More than the converted had been converted, as itwere.