Napoleon Bonaparte is the first Emperor of France, a genius commander and a legendary statesman.
Napoleon’s career dawns when he is twenty-four years old, when he becomes a brigade general. The following years are the rise of a new military and political star. His army’s triumphant victories change the map of Europe; one country after another bows its head to the French leader. But not Russia. Hopes for world domination crumble under the harsh conditions of the Russian winter, luck abandons Napoleon—ahead lies defeat at Waterloo and exile to the distant island of Saint Helena.
A decade after his death, Alexandre Dumas the elder, author of “The Three Musketeers” and “The Count of Monte Cristo,” wrote a historical and biographical novel about the man who changed the world of his era. Dumas traces Napoleon’s life path between two islands—Corsica and Saint Helena: between the sunny place where he was born and the gloomy site of his death in exile.