The Age Of Napoleon The Story Of Civilization Volume Xi Durant by Durant, Ariel & Durant, Will B004ZZVUQ4 instant download after payment.

Britannica (XVI, Ioa), “the literature on Napoleon already numbered more 

than 100,000 volumes.” Why add to the heap? We offer no better reason than 

to say that the Reaper repeatedly overlooked us, and left us to passive living 

and passive reading after 1968. We grew weary of this insipid and 

unaccustomed leisure. To give our days some purpose and program we 

decided to apply to the age of Napoleon (1789–1815) our favorite method of 

integral history—weaving into one narrative all memorable aspects of 

European civilization in those twenty-seven years: statesmanship, war, 

economics, morals, manners, religion, science, medicine, philosophy, 

literature, drama, music, and art; to see them all as elements in one moving 

picture, and as interacting parts of a united whole. We would see Prime 

Minister William Pitt ordering the arrest of author Tom Paine; chemist 

Lavoisier and mystic Charlotte Corday mounting the guillotine; Admiral 

Nelson taking Lady Hamilton as his mistress; Goethe foreseeing a century of 

events from the battle of Valmy; Wordsworth enthusing over the French 

Revolution, Byron over the Greek; Shelley teaching atheism to Oxford bishops and dons; Napoleon fighting kings and imprisoning a pope, teasing 

physicians and philosophers, taking half a hundred scholars and scientists to 

conquer or reveal Egypt, losing Beethoven’s dedication to the Eroica for an 

empire, talking drama with Talma, painting with David, sculpture with 

Canova, history with Wieland, literature with Goethe, and fighting a fifteen- 

year war with the pregnable but indomitable Mme. de Staël. This vision 

roused us from our septua-octo-genarian lassitude to a reckless resolve to turn 

our amateur scholarship to picturing that exciting and eventful age as a living 

whole. And shall we confess it?—we had nurtured from our