“It would be the height of madness”

Another excerpt from Dedem de Gelder, backtracking to the 1812 campaign. After Napoleon's abandonment of the Grande Armée (the command of which he had left to Murat), the political ramifications of the disastrous campaign are already being felt; the Prince of Schwarzenberg confirms to Dedem that Austria, Napoleon's reluctant ally since his marriage to Marie-Louise, …

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“In order to ruin him… in the Emperor’s mind”

Following up on my previous post, I've been looking further into the alleged Fouché/Talleyrand plot to designate Murat as Napoleon's successor. Primary sources on the episode appear to be few and far in between from what I've found so far; while Pasquier's memoirs mention a letter supposedly intercepted by Eugène de Beauharnais (of which no …

Continue reading “In order to ruin him… in the Emperor’s mind”