Sunday 14 October 2012

He had to fall


[Above: Napoleon's tomb at Les Invalides, Paris.]

'Napoleon was bound to fail because his appetite for gloire was insatiable. Like the French Revolution, from whose culture he sprang, he never had any war aims beyond victory.'
From Tim Blanning, The Pursuit of Glory: Europe 1648-1815 (Penguin, 2008), p. 669.