Napoleon. Deel 2: van Keizer tot mythe, Johan op de Beeck (ISBN , 9789022329979, Manteau)

New summer holiday so time to re read part 2 of the Napoleon biography from Johan op de Beeck. Although equally good as part 1 this book was a bit harder to get through the second time. It has not so much to do with the writing but all the more with the events in the life of the subject. Where part 1 described the rise of Napoleon, part 2 is about his decline. Things start to go wrong relatively early on in this roughly 750 page book. Nations and even some of his own government officials scheme against him, the empire has become too big to stay on top of everything and the English keep on financing insurrections and wars. From that point of view the book reads like a long and inevitable road to disaster. As things go wrong Napoleon starts to resemble more and more the paranoid tyrant or autocrat. War follows upon war and Napoleon keeps fighting them even though he seems to have lost the appetite and energy to fight them. Op de beeck managed to write a nuanced biography of Napoleon with lots of detail and background illustrating the importance of his achievements for Europe and Western society but also highlighting his flaws. In a way finishing the book gave me an uncomfortable feeling: on the one hand, seeing where Napoleon was going as a leader it is probably good he was defeated at Waterloo, on the other hand, the victorious fought him for all the wrong reasons and they vilified him to justify themselves, diverting attention from their goal to preserve a feudal society.