"Napoleon as a man of war was perhaps the cause of more men's deaths than any other individual before him. The full story of the disruption caused by almost twenty years of warfare can never be told in all its harrowing detail.".

"Yet the terrible destruction of wartime does not tell the full story. The men who eventually brought Napoleon down, chief among them Castlereagh and Metternich, failed to grasp that one of Napoleon's most remarkable gifts was his ability to bring about significant social change that would outlive his defeat. One of the Emperor's greatest achievements was the Code Napoleon, a civil code which has remained in place largely unchanged to this day, a lasting monument.

He renegotiated the relations between Church and State, he reorganized French administration, law and education and tried to use the French economy as a weapon of State."--BOOK JACKET.