The definitive portrait of Napoleon's court from the unpublished papers of the Emperor's leading courtiers and his second Empress Marie Louise.

Napoleon's military conquests changed the world and dominate most portraits of him, but it was through the splendour of his court - a world fashioned beyond the battlefield - that Napoleon governed his empire. The court of Napoleon I, in its grandeur and extravagance, surpassed even that of that the Sun King. Napoleon's palaces at Saint-Cloud and the Tuileries were the centres of his power, the dazzling reflection of the greatest empire in modern European history.

The life of the court illuminates the life of Napoleon himself and the nature of a personality that conquered half the world. Yet, he was in the end abandoned by his dynasty and courtiers, his past glories fading into lonely and ignominious exile.

Philip Mansel brings to life the intoxicated world of a court 'devoured by ambition', as Stendhal called it: its visual magnificence and rigid hierarchy, mistresses, artists and manipulators.

An eloquent and original study of the Bonaparte family, delightfully acute in its depiction of the vanities, rivalries and pretensions of Napoleon. -- David Gilmour, author of The Pursuit of Italy
Clear, well-researched, always interesting. -- Nigel Nicolson * History Today *
Napoleon is presented in a new guise: the Eagle both in splendour and as chie-en-lit... The author’s urbane and witty style [gives a] vivid description of the Napoleonic Court. -- John Mackrell * Journal of Modern History *

Mansel’s book derives from a sound archival and bibliographical base... It is hard not to agree with [his] perceptive comment
that it has really been the manufactured splendour of style which accounts for the continuing fascination with the Emperor, of which this is a not unworthy example.

Philip Mansel, who has lived and taught in Paris, is one of Britain's leading historians of France and the Ottoman Empire. His first book, Louis XVIII, together with subsequent works such as Paris Between Empires, 1814-1852, established him as an authority on the later French monarchy. Mansel's acclaimed Constantinople: City of the World's Desire was described by William Dalrymple as 'An impeccably researched masterpiece of exquisite historical writing.' He currently lives in London, and is editor of The Court Historian, journal of the Society for Court Studies (www.courtstudies.org).