The Musée de l’Armée at Les Invalides in Paris has a new exhibition that I believe to be the best and most extensive on the Emperor in three decades. Anyone interested in Napoleon Bonaparte, early 19th-century military history and strategy, the Grande Armée’s campaigns from 1796 to 1815, monumental battle paintings, First Empire beaux-arts, uniforms, weaponry or cartography, has only until 22 July to visit the truly breathtaking Napoleon: Strategist.
On entering, you walk past the large busts of six of the seven great captains of history that Napoleon said he admired and wished to emulate: Alexander, Hannibal, Julius Caesar, Henri de la Tour d’Auvergne, Marshal de Saxe and Frederick the Great. For some reason the seventh, the 1st Duke of Marlborough, is missing, though not for reasons of French chauvinism as this is a very even-handed exhibition, despite being held in the Valhalla of the French army, only yards away from the Emperor’s tomb.
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