Letters of Napoleon

Summary

Napoleon dictated or wrote tens of thousands of letters, often several dozen a day, to generals, ministers, prefects, bishops, kings, his family and the women he loved. Napoleon III's government published a thirty-two-volume Correspondance de Napoléon Ier between 1858 and 1870, pruning letters that embarrassed the dynasty; the Fondation Napoléon's complete edition, begun in 2004, runs to more than forty thousand items. The English reader usually meets them in selections, such as J. M. Thompson's (1934), that follow his life chronologically and let the letters stand in for a biography. The selections typically open with the young Corsican officer's letters to his family and to Paolist and Jacobin patrons, full of debts, ambitions and resentment of French rule over his island. In March 1796, two days after marrying Joséphine de Beauharnais, he left to command the Army of Italy, and the letters he sent her during that campaign are the most famous in the collection: feverish, possessive, sensual, by turns adoring and furious at her silence and her lingering in Paris. Alongside them run the dispatches to the Directory that announce victories at Lodi, Arcole and Rivoli, and the proclamations to soldiers that promised them the riches of Italy. From Egypt in 1798 he wrote to his brother Joseph of his discovery of Joséphine's infidelity and of his disgust with human nature. The Egyptian and Syrian letters also record plague in the army, the massacre of prisoners at Jaffa, and the retreat from Acre. Once in power as First Consul and then emperor, the letters become instruments of government. Napoleon writes to Fouché on police, to Cambacérès on the Civil Code, to the minister of war on boots, bread and conscripts, and to his brothers Joseph, Louis and Jérôme, whom he made kings of Naples and Spain, Holland and Westphalia, scolding them for extravagance, weakness or independence. Letters to Pope Pius VII move from concordat to confrontation and the pope's arrest. After the divorce from Joséphine in 1809 and marriage to Marie-Louise of Austria in 1810, he writes to his young wife with a gruff tenderness and constant concern for their son, the King of Rome. The Russian campaign of 1812 appears in curt bulletins and letters that minimise catastrophe; the letters of 1813–1814 show him fighting on several fronts, then abdicating at Fontainebleau. The collection usually ends with Elba, the Hundred Days, the appeal to the Prince Regent after Waterloo for asylum like Themistocles, and the restricted correspondence of St Helena. Read together, the letters show a mind of extraordinary range and appetite for detail, and the way a single will could steer a continent through paper.

Plot or Argument

• Corsica and the Revolution (1785–1795)

  Letters to family and patrons reveal a provincial officer torn between Corsican patriotism and French careerism, short of money and eager for notice; the siege of Toulon (1793) and the suppression of the Paris royalist rising (1795) make his name.

• Italy and Joséphine (1796–1797)

  Passionate letters to his new wife alternate with dispatches to the Directory and proclamations to the army as he defeats Piedmont and Austria and dictates peace terms on his own authority.

• Egypt and Syria (1798–1799)

  Letters from Cairo on administering a conquered country, on Joséphine's betrayal, on plague among the troops, and on the failed siege of Acre, before he abandons the army to return to France.

• Consul and emperor: governing by letter (1799–1809)

  Orders to ministers on police, finance, religion and law; campaign correspondence from Marengo, Austerlitz, Jena and Friedland; reproaches to his brothers as client kings; the rupture with the pope.

• Marie-Louise and the King of Rome (1810–1814)

  Domestic letters to his second wife and about his son run beside the Spanish war, the invasion of Russia and the retreat, the 1813 campaign in Germany and the defence of France.

• Abdication, Elba and the Hundred Days (1814–1815)

  Letters at the fall of the empire, from Elba, and during the brief restoration that ended at Waterloo, including his appeal to the British for hospitality.

• St Helena (1815–1821)

  A small and constrained final correspondence, complaints about his treatment by the governor Hudson Lowe, and the will dictated weeks before his death.

Characters

• Napoleon Bonaparte, letter-writer

  General, consul and emperor, whose voice changes from lover to administrator to scold to exile.

• Joséphine de Beauharnais, first wife

  Widow of a guillotined general, married to Napoleon in 1796, crowned empress in 1804, divorced in 1809 for failing to bear an heir.

• Marie-Louise of Austria, second wife

  Daughter of Emperor Francis I, married in 1810; mother of Napoleon's son.

• Joseph Bonaparte, elder brother

  Confidant of the Egyptian letters, later king of Naples and then of Spain, frequently corrected by Napoleon.

• Louis and Jérôme Bonaparte, younger brothers

  Made kings of Holland and Westphalia; their failures to obey draw some of the harshest letters.

• Pope Pius VII, correspondent and adversary

  Signatory of the Concordat of 1801, later imprisoned at Savona and Fontainebleau after excommunicating the emperor.

• Joseph Fouché and Jean-Jacques Cambacérès, ministers

  Police minister and arch-chancellor, recipients of constant directives on surveillance, law and administration.

Lessons

• Command as correspondence

  Napoleon governed an empire largely through dictated letters that specified quantities, dates and names. The collection shows how power in the age before the telegraph depended on a ruler's capacity to process and issue information at speed.

  • What kinds of decisions does Napoleon refuse to delegate?
  • How does the volume and precision of his letters both strengthen and endanger his rule?

• The lover and the conqueror in one voice

  The 1796 letters to Joséphine share their urgency and possessiveness with the military dispatches written the same week. Reading them together raises the question of how private passion and public ambition fed each other.

  • What tone does Napoleon use when Joséphine fails to write back?
  • Do the love letters reveal a different person from the dispatches, or the same temperament?
  • Why have these letters been so often published and sold?

• Family as an instrument of empire

  Napoleon placed siblings on thrones and then treated them as subordinate officials, demanding obedience over local loyalty. The letters to Louis and Joseph show dynasty and bureaucracy colliding.

  • Why did Napoleon trust family members more than marshals, and was the trust justified?
  • How does Louis's attempt to rule Holland in Dutch interests appear in Napoleon's replies?

• What the bulletins leave out

  Letters from Jaffa, Spain and Russia minimise losses, disease and atrocity. Comparing them with soldiers' memoirs teaches how official correspondence manages catastrophe.

  • What does Napoleon say, and not say, about plague at Jaffa or the retreat from Moscow?
  • How should a historian weigh a ruler's own letters as evidence?

Context

The letters span the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars (1792–1815), which redrew the map of Europe, abolished the Holy Roman Empire, exported the Civil Code, and cost several million lives. Napoleon's administration created prefects, the Banque de France, the Legion of Honour and lycées, and restored slavery in the French colonies in 1802. His letters are a primary source for all of this, but also for his self-fashioning: he wrote with an eye to history and later dictated memoirs to shape his legend.

Composition

Most letters were dictated to secretaries such as Bourrienne, Méneval and Fain, who struggled to keep pace; Napoleon added corrections or signatures. Napoleon III's commission published the Correspondance (1858–1870), deliberately excluding compromising material. Additional letters appeared in later supplements (Lecestre's Lettres inédites, 1897), and the Fondation Napoléon's Correspondance générale (2004–2018) is the complete scholarly edition. English selections include those of J. M. Thompson (1934) and earlier Victorian anthologies.

Reception

The love letters to Joséphine became collectible and were sold at auction for large sums; they have shaped romantic images of Napoleon in fiction and film. Historians from Taine to Andrew Roberts have relied on the correspondence for portraits ranging from monstrous egotist to administrative genius. The letters are also studied as models of concise military writing and staff work.

Comparisons

• napoleons-maxims-of-war

  The Maxims abstract general rules from Napoleon's campaigns; the letters show those rules being made and broken in specific orders, often contradicting the clean principles attributed to him.

• on-war

  Clausewitz served against Napoleon in 1812 and theorised the 'God of war' he saw in action; the letters provide the raw record of decisions Clausewitz generalised.

• the-twelve-caesars

  Suetonius's lives mix public acts with private appetite and scandal, a model that Napoleon's own letters, especially those to Joséphine and his brothers, seem to invite.

• the-conquest-of-gaul

  Napoleon admired and annotated Caesar; both men wrote their wars in their own words, but Caesar's commentaries are polished narrative while the letters are unrevised working documents.

• instructions-for-his-generals

  Frederick wrote a single confidential manual for his officers, whereas Napoleon instructed his marshals letter by letter, rarely trusting them with a general doctrine.

• persian-letters

  Montesquieu's fictional letters satirise absolutism through an eastern despot's household; Napoleon's real letters display a ruler whose control of ministers and family can look strikingly similar.

Quotes

For Students

A reading companion for classical Christian high school students. See the student guide.

Reading Guide

Watch for

• The change in Napoleon's voice between the letters to Joséphine from the Italian campaign of 1796 and the dispatches to the Directory written in the same weeks. The same man is pleading lover in one and cool commander in the other.
• The Egyptian letter to his brother Joseph in 1798 about Joséphine's infidelity, and how private disillusion bleeds into a general disgust with human nature.
• The sheer range of the letters as First Consul and emperor: boots, bread, and conscripts to the minister of war in one letter, the Civil Code to Cambacérès or police to Fouché in the next. Notice what he thinks a ruler must personally attend to.
• The letters to his brothers Joseph, Louis, and Jérôme after he made them kings. Watch how often he scolds them, and ask what kind of loyalty he expected from men he had crowned.
• The letters to Pope Pius VII, which move from the Concordat of 1801 to confrontation and the pope's arrest, and the tone of the bulletins from Russia in 1812, which say much less than they could.

Key terms and names

Army of Italy

The ill-supplied French army Napoleon took command of in March 1796, two days after marrying Joséphine. His victories with it at Lodi, Arcole, and Rivoli made him famous and the letters of this campaign are the best known in the collection.

The Directory

The five-man executive that governed France from 1795 to 1799. Napoleon's dispatches to it from Italy report victories but also show him dictating peace terms on his own authority, a sign of who really held power.

Concordat of 1801

The agreement between Napoleon and Pope Pius VII that restored the Catholic Church's public place in France under state control. The later letters to the pope show the agreement breaking down until Pius was imprisoned at Savona and Fontainebleau.

Civil Code

The unified French law code of 1804, later called the Code Napoléon, which Napoleon discussed with Cambacérès and exported to the lands he conquered. It is the most lasting institution that passes through these letters.

Client kings

Napoleon's brothers, made kings of Naples and Spain, Holland, and Westphalia. The letters treat them less as monarchs than as subordinates to be corrected, and their disobedience draws some of his harshest words.

Correspondance de Napoléon Ier

The thirty-two-volume edition published under Napoleon III between 1858 and 1870, which left out letters that embarrassed the dynasty. Readers of any selection should remember that the record itself was edited to protect a legend.

The Hundred Days

Napoleon's return from Elba in 1815 and brief restoration, ending at Waterloo. It is followed by his appeal to the Prince Regent for asylum, in which he compares himself to the exiled Athenian Themistocles.

Seminar Questions

1. Comprehension What does Napoleon want from Joséphine in his letters from the Italian campaign of 1796, and what does he complain about when she does not write or does not come?
2. Comprehension What kinds of matters does Napoleon write to his ministers about once he is First Consul and emperor? Name at least three, with the minister each letter goes to.
3. Comprehension How do Napoleon's letters to Pope Pius VII change between the Concordat of 1801 and the pope's arrest, and what does Napoleon claim as his grievance?
4. Interpretation The love letters to Joséphine and the dispatches to the Directory were written in the same weeks of 1796. Do they show two different men, or the same desire to possess and command turned toward different objects?
5. Interpretation Napoleon made his brothers kings and then reproached them for extravagance, weakness, or independence. What do these letters reveal about how he understood kingship, family, and obedience?
6. Interpretation The Russian bulletins of 1812 minimise catastrophe. Since Napoleon wrote with an eye to history, how should a reader weigh what the letters say against what they leave out?
7. Interpretation In his appeal to the Prince Regent after Waterloo, Napoleon compares himself to Themistocles. What does the choice of that comparison tell us about how he wanted to be remembered?
8. Big Question The letters show a single will steering a continent through paper. Is such concentrated power ever good for the people who live under it, and what would a ruler need in his character to bear it well?

Faith Connections

• Daniel 4 (Scripture)

  Nebuchadnezzar surveys Babylon as the work of his own power and is driven out until he learns that the Most High rules the kingdom of men. The arc of the letters from the coronation years to Fontainebleau, Elba, and St Helena invites the same reflection on a ruler who believed his will could shape everything.

• Matthew 22:15-22 (Scripture)

  Jesus answers the question about the tribute coin by distinguishing what belongs to Caesar from what belongs to God. Napoleon's correspondence with Pius VII, from the Concordat to the pope's imprisonment, is a long dispute over exactly where that line falls.

• Augustine, City of God V (Church Fathers)

  Augustine argues that God granted Rome its dominion and that the love of glory, though it restrained baser vices, is not true virtue. Napoleon, who measured himself against Caesar and wrote for posterity, is a modern case of the glory-seeking Augustine describes.

• Pascal, Pensées (on diversion and the misery of man without God) (Great Conversation)

  Pascal observed that kings are surrounded by business and amusement so that they never have to think about themselves. The tireless flow of orders in these letters, dozens a day, makes a reader wonder whether the restless activity was strength, flight, or both.

Logic and Rhetoric

Central argument: The collection's implicit argument is Napoleon's own: a state is governed well when one capable will attends to everything, from the Civil Code to the supply of boots. Ministers, generals, and even royal brothers are instruments, and they succeed only so far as they obey precise orders. Victory and order justify this concentration of control. The later letters, from the Russian retreat to Fontainebleau and St Helena, test the conclusion, since a system that depends on one will fails when that will overreaches or is removed.

Rhetorical device: apostrophe and hyperbole. In the letters to Joséphine from the Italian campaign of 1796, Napoleon addresses her as if she were present and swells his feeling into extravagant claims of longing, jealousy, and devotion; in the proclamations to the Army of Italy the same technique promises soldiers the riches of Italy. Compare the two to see one rhetorical habit serving love and war.

Debate: Resolved: Napoleon's letters show that his talent for administration mattered more to Europe than his victories in battle.

Writing Prompts

Essay: Using the letters to his brothers as client kings and the letters to Pius VII, argue what Napoleon believed the relationship between a ruler and those under him should be, and whether his letters show that belief succeeding or failing.

Comparison with The Conquest of Gaul: Napoleon admired and annotated Caesar, and both wrote their wars in their own words. Compare Caesar's polished third-person commentaries with Napoleon's unrevised letters and dispatches, and argue which gives the more truthful picture of its author, and why.

Medical Lens

The correspondence touches military medicine and epidemic disease at several points. During the Syrian campaign of 1799 bubonic plague struck the army; Napoleon's visit to the plague hospital at Jaffa was later celebrated in Gros's painting, while the allegation that he ordered opium given to plague-stricken soldiers left behind at Jaffa, reportedly resisted by the chief physician René-Nicolas Desgenettes, remains disputed and is a classic case in the history of medical ethics. Typhus, dysentery, cold and starvation destroyed the Grande Armée in Russia far more than battle did, and the letters' near silence on this is itself evidence. Napoleon relied on surgeons such as Dominique-Jean Larrey, pioneer of the flying ambulance and field triage. His last illness on St Helena (diagnosed at autopsy as a stomach lesion, generally interpreted as gastric cancer, with arsenic-poisoning theories now largely discounted) and his reported scepticism about medicine belong to the St Helena record. The jealous intensity of the 1796 letters has invited psychological readings; these are interpretive.

• Letters to Joséphine, Italian campaign (spring–autumn 1796)

  Repeated complaints of sleeplessness, fevered longing and jealousy as he campaigns; Joséphine's illness and delay in joining him.

  Obsession MonomaniaSleep Insomnia
• Letters and orders from Egypt and Syria (1798–1799)

  Plague in the Army of the Orient, quarantine measures, and the siege of Acre; context for the disputed Jaffa opium episode.

  Plague EpidemicPublic Health SanitationPhysicians DoctorsPharmacology Poisons
• Imperial correspondence on conscription and supply (1805–1809)

  Orders on bread, boots, hospitals and conscripts that treat the army's health as a matter of administration.

  Starvation NutritionWAR Wounds
• Russian campaign letters and bulletins (1812)

  Reports from Moscow and the retreat that understate losses to cold, hunger and disease.

  Fever InfectionStarvation NutritionDeath Dying
• St Helena correspondence and will (1815–1821)

  Complaints about climate and confinement, failing health, and the will's request that his body be examined after death.

  Death DyingPhysicians DoctorsAnatomy Dissection

Creative Prompts

• Fiction

  Write Joséphine's unsent reply to one of Napoleon's furious 1796 letters complaining that she does not write.

• Dialogue

  Stage the argument at Jaffa in 1799 between Napoleon and the physician Desgenettes over whether to give opium to plague patients who cannot be evacuated.

• Essay

  Compare one week of Napoleon's 1812 letters with a soldier's memoir of the retreat from Moscow. What does each source make visible about disease and hunger?

• Classroom

  Give students three letters from Napoleon to his brother Louis, King of Holland, and ask them to draft Louis's replies defending Dutch interests.

Further Reading

• Napoleon the Great, Andrew Roberts

  Draws heavily on the Fondation Napoléon's complete correspondence.

• Napoleon: A Life, Adam Zamoyski

• 1812: Napoleon's Fatal March on Moscow, Adam Zamoyski

  Covers the role of typhus, dysentery and cold in destroying the army.

• Memoirs of Military Surgery and Campaigns of the French Armies, Dominique-Jean Larrey

• The Campaigns of Napoleon, David G. Chandler