The Corsican: A Diary of Napoleon's Life in His Own Words by Robert Matteson Johnston

The Corsican: A Diary of Napoleon's Life in His Own Words Reviews

• 
  Antigone

  "A man must have accomplished all that I have, to realize fully the difficulty of doing good. It sometimes needed all my power to succeed. If it was a question of extending the Tuileries gardens, of repairing the sewers, of carrying through a public improvement, all my energy was necessary; I had to write six, ten letters a day, and get hot and angry. I have spent as much as 30 millions on sewers which nobody will ever thank me for."
  
  He's forty-seven. He's been on the island of St. Helena for a little less than a year, but he sees where this is going. Any agency he may have had with regard to conquest, influence, and his own physical liberty is dust on the wind. All that's left to maneuver is his legacy and how history remembers him. Ever the pragmatist, he's well aware that what you or I or any stranger on a future street corner will recall are the battles - Jena, Austerlitz, Wagram, the Russian campaign, Waterloo. (He would be surprised, I suspect, at the enduring recollection of Josephine.) But what he knows for a fact is that we will not remember this:
  
  "You want to know the treasures of Napoleon? They are enormous, it is true, but in full view. Here they are: the splendid harbor of Antwerp, that of Flushing, capable of holding the largest fleets; the docks and dykes of Dunkirk, of Havre, of Nice; the gigantic harbor of Cherbourg; the harbor works at Venice; the great road from Antwerp to Amsterdam, from Mainz to Metz, from Bordeaux to Bayonne; the passes of the Simplon, of Mont Cenis, of Mont Genevre, of the Corniche, that give four openings through the Alps; in that alone you might reckon 800 millions. The roads from the Pyrenees to the Alps, from Parma to Spezzia, from Savona to Piedmont; the bridges of Jena, of Austerlitz, of the Arts, of Sevres, of Tours, of Lyons, of Turin, of the Isere, of the Durance, of Bordeaux, of Rouen; the canal from the Rhine to the Rhone, joining the waters of Holland to the Mediterranean; the canal that joins the Scheldt and the Somme, connecting Amsterdam and Paris; that which joins the Rance and the Vilaine; the canal of Arles, of Pavia, of the Rhine; the draining of the marshes of Bourgoing, of the Cotentin, of Rochefort; the rebuilding of most of the churches pulled down during the Revolution; the building of new ones; the construction of many industrial establishments for putting an end to pauperism; the construction of the Louvre, of the public granaries, of the Bank, of the canal of the Ourcq; the water system of the city of Paris, the numerous sewers, the quays, the embellishments and monuments of that great city; the public improvements of Rome; the reestablishment of the manufactories of Lyons. Fifty millions spent on repairing and improving the Crown residences; sixty millions' worth of furniture placed in the palaces of France and Holland, at Turin, at Rome; sixty millions' worth of Crown diamonds, all of it the money of Napoleon; even the Regent, the only missing one of the old diamonds of the Crown of France, purchased from Berlin Jews with whom it was pledged for three millions; the Napoleon Museum, valued at more than 400 million."
  
  And in this he is correct. We give it no account.
  
  Published in 1910, R.M. Johnston's work is an attempt to create a diary in Napoleon's own words. It's a slap-dash affair of chronological quoting from correspondence and commentary without the least effort expended to house those "entries" in context. One would be well and truly lost without a prior knowledge of events and the personalities involved. Hence I cannot recommend it to anyone - even on the dullest of days or the most isolated of desert islands. (There may be something in the odd military dispatch for the martially-directed, though I offer no guarantee.)
  
  My advice: Forget the book. Remember the sewers.
  
• 
  Mark Lawry

  Purely Napoleon's own words written in his diary. He is not explaining the context of anything he is writing, he presumes the reader is aware of current events of the early 1800s. Therefore, knowing something of his time would increase the value of this book. Weeks, or months, or years at a stretch are missing. What is there is impressive enough, but will make one want to read more. I said recently to my friend who recommended this that I now need to read a good 1,000 page book on Napoleon. He responded that shelves of 1,000 page books have been written on Napoleon and nobody is that interesting. No, I think Napoleon might actually be that guy.
• 
  Thomas

  Takes some deciphering to get through the middle, but the final years are particularly interesting. Would recommend to anyone.
• 
  El

  The problem with an edited diary of a public figure is the reminder that there is so much missing from the text. R.M. Johnston states in the beginning that these are Napoleon's original words, whether written or spoken, but what it becomes is one sentence from one letter to depict one day. The next sentence is a different one sentence from a different one letter to depict the next different day. While this allows a psychological overview of Napoleon it leaves me absolutely frustrated as I constantly felt I was missing something. One sentence does not give much information, and what about the context? What was written before and/or after that sentence can change my feelings entirely, can change what Napoleon said or meant.
  
  As a historical overview it passes - someone interested solely in his military career might be genuinely pleased. But here we have a very watered down anthology of a man's words based on the opinion of another man who decides how it should go. The little bit showing the confused relationship between Napoleon and Josephine was a nice edition, though his exile on Elba was almost missed entirely (though to be fair I may have stopped paying close attention by that point); to make up for it Napoleon's exile in St. Helena was super dramatic and almost ridiculous at times in how Johnston chose to portray it.
  
  I went in stupidly expecting a more extensive text as it is a thick book.
• 
  Chris Bassett MD

  It's a diary, some entries as dictation, some as letters written. Difficult to read without having to fill in gaps, history book at the ready. ;) But it's interesting to hear Napoleon's "voice" - alternately boastful and petulant, as dictated by the prevailing tide of war. Spoiler alert: he dies at the end.