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A marriage plot is also an economic plot. A drawing room is also a market. A polite conversation is also a negotiation under law. I wrote comedy because comedy can say, with a smile, that everyone in the room is counting money while pretending to discuss feelings.

Austerlitz, 2 December 1805. I have thought about this battle more than any other because it was the most perfectly executed. The Russian and Austrian commanders advanced toward what they thought was my weakened right flank, stripping troops from the Pratzen Heights in the centre. I waited until the heights were half-empty. Then I sent Soult's corps up in...

David painted this five times. I am on a rearing horse, my cloak billowing in the alpine wind, pointing forward. The reality was that I crossed the Alps on a mule — a sure-footed grey mule, chosen by my guides for the terrain. I told David: I do not need to be on a horse. What I need is to look calm.

He gave me the horse anyway. Good. The painting is not...

Machiavelli says it is better to be feared than loved. From sixteen years of campaign I would add: it is best to be both, briefly, and then indispensable. A general who is only feared will be obeyed under supervision and abandoned under fire. A general who is only loved will be mourned when dead but not followed into the impossible. The man who combines...

History is a set of lies agreed upon. I know this because I arranged some of them myself. The bulletins I sent from Egypt described victories that were partial or imaginary. I am not proud of it. But I also know that a general who tells the truth about every setback does not remain a general.

To understand the man you have to know what was happening in the world when he was twenty. I was twenty in 1789. The Bastille fell when I was a junior officer with no prospects. The Revolution did not make me; I made myself from what the Revolution opened. The chaos was the opportunity.

From the heights of these pyramids, forty centuries of history look down upon us. I said this in Egypt because I understood that men need to feel they are part of something larger than the current campaign. History is not a backdrop for action. It is an argument for why the action matters.

In war, three-quarters turns on personal character and relations; the balance of manpower and materials accounts for only one quarter. I was an artillery officer who understood logistics better than most generals. But every campaign I won, I won because my soldiers believed in me personally. Belief is a force multiplier.

A soldier will fight long and hard for a bit of coloured ribbon. I invented the Légion d'honneur because armies run on honour, and honour is entirely public. The man who says he fights for principle alone has not spent a night in a bivouac in January. He fights for his comrades and for the chance to be seen to be brave.

Impossible is a word found only in the dictionary of fools. I have been told I cannot cross the Alps, cannot defeat Austria, cannot become Emperor of France. Each impossibility became a campaign. The Alps were crossed in May 1800. Austria surrendered at Austerlitz. The coronation was in December 1804.

A leader is a dealer in hope. An army of lions commanded by a deer will never be an army of lions. I have reviewed thousands of officers. The difference is not in courage — most soldiers have courage. The difference is in whether the men believe their commander sees farther than they do. When they believe this, they follow into fire. When they doubt it,...

Impossible is a word found only in the dictionary of fools. I was born in Corsica — a province conquered by France the year before my birth. I had no family connections, no inherited rank, no patron. I made myself by study, by speed of decision, and by understanding that the universe of possibilities is vastly larger than the cautious believe. What is...