I'm Back! And with a book report!
So, while I was away, I was doing a little research on the Napoleon world. I, of course, didn't forget this blog or any of you!
While I was out, I read Empire's Eagles by Thomas E. Crocker. Would I recommend? Absolutely. Especially if you are interested in any of the personalities around Napoleon and what happened to them after the fall of the empire.
The personalities he focuses on are all the ones that ended up coming to the United States. Hello Grouchy. Hello Van Damme. Hello Joseph Bonaparte. Some get a few paragraphs dedicated to them. other's whole chapters. The book is really more divided into two sections. The first section deals with the people I mentioned above, a whole chapter on Joseph and his goings-on.
The second part of the book in all about Ney. If you love Ney, interested in Ney, or have questions on Ney and his execution, the conspiracy around it, you'll want to look at this book.
For those new, or haven't gotten to the Bravest of the Brave Ney on their bingo card yet, you may or may not know that Ney was tried and found guilty of treason after Napoleon's second abdication. His execution was a weird mess that led to conspriacies that maybe Ney didn't die but instead escaped to the United States. This conspiracy gathered more steam when a certain man by the name of Peter Stuart Ney, showed up in the states, looking like Marshal Ney and claiming to be Ney. The book goes into a mini bio of Ney's life, then switches into some 40 eyewitness accounts of people who knew, liked, respected and were the students of P.S. Ney and whether they believed he was the great Marshal Ney. In the end, the chapter weighs the evidence why P.S. Ney could be Michel Ney and why he could not be Michel Ney.
I admit that I had never really looked into the Ney conspiracies and I'm rather surprised more hasn't been dedicated to the subject an a Hollywood film hasn't arisen with really bizarre story.