Napoleon's Family
Desmond Seward

Napoleon's Family

No family in history ascended the thrones of Europe so quickly - or were deposed so fast - as the Bonapartes. Like some mafia capo, Napoleon heaped honours and riches on his siblings, giving them the crowns of Spain, Naples, Tuscany, Rome, Holland and Westphalia. In Napoleon's Family Desmond Seward recounts the saga of this extraordinary clan of social-climbing Corsican emigres. Their back-biting and bickering for. honours was incessant, often vicious if deplorably entertaining, a constant embarrassment to their august brother. They had small talent for government and even less for battles, saving all their energies for dissipation. One brother was a drunken wastrel, another a venal womaniser, a third a paranoid depressive. The sisters were notorious for their innumerable lovers - among whom were Metternich and the violinist Paganini - and the emperor himself called them whores.

Napoleon's Family is more than a scandalous family chronicle, however. It offers a penetrating view of the inner Napoleon - a military genius who brought France to the height of glory, a farsighted ruler who initiated social and economic reforms, yet also a man who could not escape from his Corsican background and was unable to control worthless brothers and sisters.

Book Details:

  • Author: Desmond Seward
  • Published Year: 1986
  • Rights Sold
    • UK: Weidenfeld
    • US: Viking
    • Russia: Russitch
Desmond Seward

Desmond Seward

Desmond Seward was born in Paris and educated at Ampleforth and St Catharine's College, Cambridge. He is the author of many books including The Monks of War: The Military Religious Orders, The Hundred Years War, The Wars of the Roses, Eleanor of Aquitaine and Henry V as Warlord, Josephus, Masada and the Fall of Judaea (da Capo, US, April 2009), Wings over the Desert: in action with an RFC pilot in Palestine 1916-18 (Haynes Military, July 2009) and Old Puglia: A Portrait of South Eastern Italy (Haus August 2009). Forthcoming is The Last White Rose: the Spectre at the Tudor Court 1485-1547 (C...
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Book Reviews

  • "With precision, wit and remarkable clarity, the author chronicles the intertwined lives of these tfhalf-savage squireens, scarcely more than peasants with coats of arms" through an all but unbelievable saga of vanity, stupidity and mindless greed ..."
    Washington Post
  • "Desmond Seward's brief, witty and delightfully anecdotal popular history of Napoleon and his family sets the record straight ..."
    Atlantic Journal Constitution
  • "A wonderfully engaging tale of nepotism run wild ... A colorful lot, they live again here with all of their idiosyncracies in full bloom."
    Booklist
  • "The rise and fall of Napoleon Bonaparte retold – and retold most engagingly – with emphasis on the greatest of all his many burdens …"
    The New Yorker