Sources

What this site is built on — and where to read further.

Primary sources

• Correspondance de Napoléon Ier (32 volumes, published 1858–1870). The bedrock: thousands of Napoleon’s letters, orders, and notes. Where this site marks a quotation Documented, it is traceable here or to an official act of the same standing.
• Official proclamations and bulletins of the Grande Armée. Napoleon’s public voice — brilliant, and propagandistic. Used for what he said publicly, never as neutral evidence for what happened.
• The will, dictated at St. Helena, April 1821. The source of the “ashes on the banks of the Seine” passage quoted on Sayings.
• The Civil Code (1804), the Concordat (1801), and the laws of the Consulate and Empire. The documentary record of what he did as a ruler.

Memoirs (use with care)

• Emmanuel de Las Cases, Mémorial de Sainte-Hélène (1823). The founding text of the legend — Napoleon’s St. Helena conversations as his follower recorded them. A primary source for Napoleon’s self-image; a secondary and partisan source for facts.
• Louis-Antoine Bourrienne, Mémoires (1829–31). Napoleon’s former secretary — intimate, score-settling, sometimes unreliable.
• Armand de Caulaincourt, Mémoires (published 1933). The most respected of the insider memoirs, especially on Russia 1812 and the fall.
• General Gourgaud and General Montholon, St. Helena diaries and accounts — the sources for the disputed last words and much of the exile detail.

The rule this site follows: a memoir claim stated by one witness is Reported; stated by several independent witnesses, it may be treated as established; contradicted by documents, it loses.

Modern scholarship

• Andrew Roberts, Napoleon: A Life (2014). The most readable one-volume modern biography; sympathetic, massively documented.
• Adam Zamoyski, 1812: Napoleon’s Fatal March on Moscow (2004). The standard modern account of the Russian catastrophe.
• Philip Dwyer, Napoleon: The Path to Power (2008) and Citizen Emperor (2013). The best scholarly two-volume life; strongest on the revolutionary years.
• David A. Bell, Napoleon: A Concise Biography (2015). Short, sharp, and skeptical — the best single-volume corrective.
• Antoine-Henri Jomini, Summary of the Art of War (1838). The contemporary military theory that transmitted (and possibly invented) several famous Napoleonic maxims — see Sayings.

Images

See the image captions for credits and context. Illustrated character art is a dramatization.

Captions throughout the site state each image’s status: contemporary record, official propaganda, later retrospective, or commercial print.

What this site does not use

• Quotation collections without sources (the main vector for fake Napoleon quotes).
• Wikipedia as a citation (useful as a finding aid; never as the authority).
• Napoleon’s bulletins as evidence for casualty figures or enemy losses.
• Any source that cannot be named. If a claim’s only basis is “it is said,” the claim is labeled accordingly or omitted.

Source notes

• The bibliography above names real works; publication details are as stated. Readers checking a specific claim should start with the Correspondance for documented quotations and with Dwyer or Roberts for narrative facts.
• See the image captions for credits and context. Illustrated character art is a dramatization.
• Correction policy: if a reader produces a primary source for any claim labeled Attributed or any item in the misattributions list, the page will be corrected with the new source cited — see Methodology.