Napoleon read a lot on St. Helena

Loading Twitter/X Embed...
If tweet fails to load, click here.

quote:

---

Napoleon did an insane amount of reading when exiled on the island of St. Helena.

He brought 588 volumes from France, and his captors sent him another 1,200 paperbacks.

What did he read? His librarian wrote:

"The Emperor was infinitely fond of reading. The Greek and Roman historians were often in his hands, especially Plutarch. He could appreciate this excellent author more than anyone else. Therefore The Lives of Illustrious Men always appeared on the shelves of his campaign libraries. He often read Rollin. The history of the middle ages, modern history, and particular histories occupied him only casually. The only religious book which he had was the Bible. He liked to read over in it the chapters which he had heard read in the ruins of the ancient cities of Syria. They painted for him the customs of those countries and the patriarchal life of the desert. It was, he said, a faithful picture of what he had seen with his own eyes. Every time that he read Homer it was with a new admiration. No one, in his view, had known what was truly beautiful and great better than this author; consequently he often took him up again and read him from the first page to the last. The drama had great charms for the Emperor. Corneille, Racine, Voltaire, often had one or two acts of their pieces read aloud. He preferred Corneille to the others, in spite of his imperfections; he always chose what was as lofty as he himself, Napoleon. Sometimes he would ask for some comedy which he had seen played, and from time to time a piece of poetry, for instance, ‘Vert-Vert’ [by Gresset]. He also took pleasure in reading some parts of Voltaire’s Essai sur les moeurs et l’esprit des nations, as well as some articles from the Dictionnaire Philosophique of the same author. Novels helped him to relax and broke the seriousness of his habitual occupations. Gil Blas, Don Quixote and a small number of others would be read by him. Those of Mesdames de Staël, Genlis, Cottin, Souza, etc. he read over sometimes, but the novels which he could not bear were those of Pigault Lebrun. He could not endure this author, although he had almost all his works; he never thought of asking for a volume of them, and would have refused one if it had been offered to him. He had nearly always under his eyes all the works relative to the military art and the campaigns of the great captains. One author, Polybius, which he had desired for a long time, he received only during his last days, when he had almost given up work. It was only by chance that he took up a scientific work; books of this sort were only occasional."

---

quote:

---

"The Emperor had an extraordinary imagination and a remarkable memory. The mobility of his tongue was, so to speak, insufficient to convey all that his mind furnished him with, and his pen was still more so. He could dictate for several hours together without stopping. His memory furnished him with everything that he needed. He compared it to a piece of furniture composed of a great number of drawers; he would pull out that one which he needed in order to take from it the materials which belonged to his subject. The classification of everything was done as if automatically, and then nothing remained for him to do but to speak the words. He often said that he was equal to killing six secretaries. Those who wrote from his dictation, although they wrote in the most abbreviated way, were always one or two, or even three, sentences behind. Only stenographers were able to keep up with him."

---