Napoleon Bonaparte (Ajaccio 1769 - St. Helena, 1821) attended to Ajaccio and Autun directed by religious institutions in which he received an education typical of the traditional training gentilhomme of the eighteenth century.
In 1779 he was admitted to a preparatory school of Brienne-le-Château where the teaching of the humanities Minimes was entrusted to the priests and that of science, technical and artistic lay personnel. Brienne was then taken to a military career. From bonshommes as they were called the religious Brienne he remained until 1784, the year when he attended the Royal Military School of Paris, within the group of artillery. The materials most important were those dedicated to the formation of a good soldier (geography, history, sciences, study of the fortifications) which then took him with the rank of lieutenant to investigate the art of war the following year in the regiment ' The artillery Fère in Valencia. These specialized studies side by side, since he was studying at Brienne, reading Latin and Greek classics (Homer, Tacitus, Plutarch, Titus Livius), the authors of the eighteenth century (Voltaire, Montesquieu, Rousseau, Raynal), the works of Corneille Racine and English and that Ossian was one of the favorite authors of his youth.
But the boy turned his attention especially to the history of Corsica to which participated actively in political life. While studying in mainland France, a country considered hostile, the cause of the ills of his land so that he looked to the revolutionary events through the eyes of a foreigner. He dreamed of liberating Corsica French oppression, and devoured books that told the history of the island or the autonomy of the people treated. He perfected the Italian language in the original version to read the works of the chroniclers of the courses as John Grossa, Ceccaldi, Filippini and began to draw up a history of Corsica and wrote some short stories in which it expressed his "hatred" against France. In his youth operetta is easy to track the influence of Rousseau, from which he drew, according to historian Godechot "at the same time ideas of freedom and equality and the confirmation of his willingness to restore independence to his country."
However, later rejected it cleanly and although he remained an undercurrent the romantic sensibility in life was full disciple of the Enlightenment whose works were always present in its libraries.
writes G. Lefevre, a leading French historians of the first half of '900, became "a rationalist and a philosophe and far away from reliance on intuition relies on the knowledge and methodical effort."
Here is the man that the military government used the book as a tool for work, so that one of its great virtues as a soldier was to have correctly applied at the right time and the techniques learned from the essays of Du Teil, of Saxe, of Guilbert and other military treaties in the eighteenth century had appeared in number increasing the book market.
His preferences were then to the books of history, mathematics and military art and reading enabled him to know the reality and then modify it according to its purpose, which is why the book from which it drew no service was thrown into the fire or thrown out of the carriage. According to historian Tarle
"Napoleon is everything in these words:" accumulate the knowledge to exploit them really. "
But it would be too simplistic to limit its military activity and political relationship with books. Read
action was constant in the life of Bonaparte. When he was asked Brienne return them to the father of library books at home, Aurel in Valencia attended the library and put in contact with a bookseller in Geneva, Paul Borde, for texts on Corsica. At first he lived in Paris spent much of his spare time in libraries. He read everything: poetry, tragedy, ancient and modern works, treatises on medicine and agriculture. I do not like the novel, but he did not refuse as he did for comedy. During the Russian campaign in 1812 said of the novels and after the defeat at Waterloo was found to read one. The passion for reading so it was not even in the most critical moment of his life. He had a penchant for
instead the tragedies because he believes the tragedy was the school of kings and peoples, and there learned rather than from history books. 
Although the political and military rise will mean that other motivations of political propaganda and overlaps with its original interest, personal reading and had continued in him the desire to own the library.
soldier and head of state to organized along two different types of libraries: the collections of the field and those of the royal palaces. Although the political and military rise will mean that other motivations of political propaganda and overlaps with its original interest, personal reading and had continued in him the desire to own the library. To be able to read on the battlefield, the books were placed in large boxes mahogany specially built in the workshop of Jacob, the most famous furniture makers of the post-Revolutionary and Napoleonic Paris.
To avoid having to read texts not to his liking, in Bayonne July 17, 1808 June 12, 1809 at Schoenbrunn those specific provisions. The number of volumes from the library campaign, set to a thousand in the first letter, he went up to three thousand in the second, the format established in the twelfth and eighteenth was then reduced to the maximum number of pages was increased to six hundred and five hundred.
addition, books printed with characters Didot had to have a subtle tie to occupy as little space as possible.
Napoleon failed to realize this dream to build his library on the campaign ideal, but this information is valuable to know which were his favorite subjects.
In the letter sent from Bayonne, Bonaparte meticulously defines the number of books on individual topics of religion 40, 40 to 40 of epic theater, 60 of 100 poetry and 60 novels in history. Everything had to be completed by historical memories of all time.
In the second, the library takes on a grand ideal. The amount of work was trebled and the arguments, however, confined to the history and divided as follows: 1. General history and history 2. Ancient History 3. history of the Lower Empire 4. general history and especially of Voltaire as the Essai, 5. modern history of every European 6. Strabo, the Bible and Church History.
This information, however, served to initiate the formation of a more important collection in which, alongside the works of history were intended to fill other 3000 books of various kinds.
As seen from the above documents, collections, travel was conceived as a block separate from those of the palaces, but after the disastrous campaign in Russia where many cases burned or fell into enemy hands Napoleon had to solve many other situations and ordered campaign from the library was stocked with books of the imperial residences in which he had gathered more than 60,000 volumes.
in buildings, in fact, there were two libraries, an official one, available of the whole court and the officers and staff, especially the library of the emperor.
Napoleon dealt directly with the zeal of all collections of buildings. Although the homes of the Tuileries, the Trianon and the Malmaison contained nuclei more numerous booksellers, Napoleon tried to avoid having multiple copies of the same work. One might even venture that
each collection both private and official was conceived and formed as part of a unique and extensive library of Napoleon.
The location of the books not represented in a different place, in fact, an obstacle if it is true, as Napoleon said Masson in underwear, "a book read or seen does not go out from his memory, and if the librarian does not find it instantly Napoleon describes in detail the binding, indicating the color of the cover and back, this is the place where the volume may have been located and that place has to be found ... "
In each book of the private collections were also a stamp affixed to the front oval, green or red, which contained the imperial eagle in the center surrounded by the inscription
, but already the emblem at the center of the plate outside of the binding indicated the property.
In addition, under the emblem of the golden front plate there was printed the name of the royal palace where the collection was part of the volume, practice already in vogue in 1700. The works were then recorded in a catalog and reigned in libraries, it still tells us Masson, absolute order, methodical. The books do not circulate in a building to another, and if they withdrew to the military campaigns by then had them back in their place.
Bonaparte had then formed his own use and use a bank of knowledge to draw upon at any time that it had provided a vast grid of information. This led him to have a culture of universal, horizontal one would say, now so limited that Metternich called his scientific training. All
its libraries nuclei were never closed, they play an active role, because there were profits. Napoleon, moreover, liked to flaunt their know.
If he had read as a boy to know and understand the reality, of the emperor used the book to dominate the other both militarily and intellectually.
Sandra
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