872 pages, Simon & Schuster, ISBN-13: 978-1567310221
The Story of Civilization is an 11-volume set of books by the American writer, historian and philosopher Will Durant that focuses on a philosophical understanding of Western history that was intended for the general reader. Written over a period of more than fifty years, Volume 11: The Age of Napoleon was originally published in 1975, and centers on Napoleon and his times; it would also prove to be the last volume in the series (although a further two volumes were planned at the time of the author’s deaths: Volume 12: The Age of Darwin and Volume 13: The Age of Einstein, which would have taken The Story of Civilization right up to 1945). This volume covers, as compared to other books in the series, a relatively scant number of years in the history of Europe (The Age of Faith spanned almost a thousand years, for instance). But, oh, what momentous years they were, what with the French Revolution and the rise and fall of one Napoleone di Buonaparte (interesting note: I actually started reading The Story of Civilization in junior high with this volume, not knowing at the time that it was the last of an 11-part series; whoops).
The Durants open with a more involved chronicle of the French revolution that concluded Rousseau and Revolution, this one making more obvious that the revolution was a slow but quickening crumbling of royal legitimacy that collapsed into the chaos of revolution after a few sudden shocks. The king’s decision to attempt to escape France in fear of his life was one such shock, demonstrating that he was and remained an actor – not a prop. From here, the Durants follow the Wars of the Coalitions, as the various nations of Eurrope fell in to and out of alliances with or against France, with the enmity between England and France being the only fixed point. In 1807, with Napoleon enjoying one of his greatest triumphs – the subjugation of Prussia, and the pretended friendship of Russia – the Durants pause to cover both French and English culture, including one hundred pages on English poetry alone. They then alternate sections on the culture of Germany, Russia, Italy, Iberia, etc., and sections on the Napoleonic wars as they encompassed these regions.
Related to this volume’s unusual dominance by one person is the unusually heavy amount of military coverage here. The Durants typically dispatch wars in a few sentences, concerned with them only as a background to the social or political events that develop as a consequence. There’s no getting away from battles and Napoleon, though, even considering the energy he poured into the political administration of France and Europe, and the long-term effects that energy would have. The result is not a military history, however; there are no maps of battles. Instead, the Durants treat the readers with their usual balance of literature, science, economics, etc. (there is even a section on Jane Austen. Whoop!) Another prominent author, Germaine de Staël, maintained a long rivalry with Napoleon; she wrote a celebratory survey of German culture that pined for more amity between France and the Germans, and was present in Russia when Napoleon drove towards Moscow. Beethoven, of course, merits a full section of his own.
Napoleon reliably described himself as a Son of the Revolution, even though his policies ended some revolutionary dreams. His concordant with Rome, for instance, re-established the Catholic Church in France, albeit in a corralled form. That was a far cry from the total secularization (or de-Christianization, depending on the revolutionary), dreamed of by many – those who redrew the calendar and butchered France’s artistic legacies, those who in a just heaven will be consigned to war forever with the whitewashing Puritans and the sculpture-smashing Wahhabis, as well as others who would destroy art and heritage for ideology. Napoleon did apply much of the revolutionary, modernizing spirit to those parts of Europe he conquered – overwriting their ancient laws and traditions with constitutions from his own pen. Although Napoleon kept faith with some of the past as convenient – his concordant with Rome, for instance – the Durants observe that in his army and state, merit reigned, allowing even commoners to advance.
Liberty and equality are enemies: the more freedom men enjoy, the freer they are to reap the results of their natural or environmental superiorities; hence inequality multiplies under governments favoring freedom of enterprise and support of property rights. Equality is an unstable equilibrium, which any difference in heredity, health, intelligence, or character will soon end. Most revolutions find that they can check inequality only by limiting liberty, as in authoritarian lands.
Yet, even after his brief exile to Elba (well after he had failed them as Emperor), we read that the revolutionists of Lyons “[m]any of them ardent Jacobins, part of an underground current that now rose to the surface to welcome Napoleon in the hope that he would lead them back to 1789”. Frankly, I find this amazing (rekindling memories of standing in front of the monument in Cannes where his return was immortalized) that this de facto monarch should engender such loyalty, even enough that Marshal Ney would first promise to bring Napoleon back to Paris as a prisoner and then, transfer his loyalty and his men to the former Emperor. Reading descriptions of the Emperor’s death on St. Helena makes me understand even more how the slow poisoning with cyanide theory gained such credibility over the years: all that vomiting, stomach pain, and inability to ingest/digest food. Yet, the Durants do not address this conspiracy theory and judging from recent forensic efforts, it now seems unlikely that Lowe really did poison the Emperor with a slow increase in cyanide.
No individual has ever dominated a single volume in this fashion (even Charles V, in The Reformation, would disappear in chapters chronicling Persia and Arabia). But Napoleon’s story encompasses not just France and England, but Spain, Italy, Germany, Austria, and Russia. The Emperor does move backstage at times – in the chapters on English poetry and novels, for instance – but he is never completely gone. This final volume manages through Napoleon’s person to be just as comprehensive, but more tightly bound. I think that it is obvious that the Durants are unabashed admirers of the Little Corsican, and I have to say that their enthusiasm for their subject is infectious – so much so that I have read countless biographies of the brilliant sonovabitch in no small measure due to having read The Age of Napoleon at such an impressionable age. After having read and reread all eleven volumes of The Story of Civilization, I can only bemoan the fact that these two paradigms of the American intellectual ferment could not complete their Great Work. We must, sadly, make do with what we have, which is as masterful a compilation of Western History as has ever been written.
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