Mémoires pour servir à l'Histoire de France sous Napoléon, Tome 1.2

Gourgaud, Gaspard, Baron, 1783-1852Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.5
Word count
480K words
Chapters
48

Tags

Foreign Language Books World HistoryMilitary Historical ReappraisalImperial Rise and FallPortrait GalleryMilitary CommandersPower GameTurbulent Era19th Century

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Mémoires pour servir à l'Histoire de France sous Napoléon, Tome 1/2 by GourgaudAuthor: Gourgaud, Gaspard, Baron, 1783-1852,Language: French, Class: DC: History: General and Eastern Hemisphere: France, Andorra, Monaco, Release Date: Nov 29, 2011

Editor's review

This is the second fascicle of Volume One of Baron Gourgaud's memoirs, written during his exile with Napoleon on Saint Helena and presented here in the original French as a free public-domain eBook from Project Gutenberg. Its value lies not in literary polish but in a first-hand record—from an eyewitness perspective—of court life, campaign observations, and Napoleon's own remarks, which can be read alongside standard historical accounts. Readers will sense the tension inherent in oral testimony: rich in detail, yet shaped by the author's personal standpoint and lapses of memory, and therefore to be read with a critical eye. The electronic edition makes it easy to search names, places, and events throughout the text, and is well suited as supplementary material for research on Napoleon's later years or for topics in nineteenth-century French history. It is meant for close comparative study at a desk rather than light reading on a commute; readers without French will need a translation or reference works.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Not a good fit for

Reading tips

  1. Begin with the editor's note or preface to understand the memoir's background and the author's standpoint before turning to the main text.
  2. Read alongside a biography of Napoleon or a general history, checking details against the timeline.
  3. Look up names and places as they arise, using full-text search in the electronic edition to build a table of relationships.
  4. Mark passages where the author's bias is evident, distinguishing factual record from personal judgment.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10
  11. 11
  12. 12
  13. 13
  14. 14
  15. 15
  16. 16
  17. 17
  18. 18
  19. 19
  20. 20
  21. 21
  22. 22
  23. 23
  24. 24
  25. 25
  26. 26
  27. 27
  28. 28
  29. 29
  30. 30
  31. 31
  32. 32
  33. 33
  34. 34
  35. 35
  36. 36
  37. 37
  38. 38
  39. 39
  40. 40
  41. 41
  42. 42
  43. 43
  44. 44
  45. 45
  46. 46
  47. 47
  48. 48

FAQ

Is this book in the original French, and can I read it without knowing French? The book is listed as being in French and is a public-domain electronic text. Readers without French will need a translation, a bilingual edition, or translation tools; otherwise it is difficult to read smoothly. It is better suited to source retrieval and comparison than as an introductory reading.
What is the main historical value of this memoir? The author, Gourgaud, accompanied Napoleon into exile on Saint Helena, and the book records his firsthand observations and Napoleon's remarks, making it a primary oral-history source. It can supplement standard histories with detail, but it also carries the author's personal standpoint and lapses of memory; it is best used alongside other sources, not as a sole authority.
What are the practical features of the Project Gutenberg edition? This edition is a free public-domain eBook, convenient to download, search in full text, and check quotations against, making it a useful textual tool for topical study. Public-domain eBooks, however, usually lack modern scholarly annotation and introductions, so readers must supply background material themselves.

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

Gourgaud, Gaspard, Baron, 1783-1852 Author · French · 1783–1852

Gourgaud, Gaspard, Baron (1783–1852), was a French general who served for many years as Napoleon's aide-de-camp and accompanied him into exile on Saint Helena, making him one of the key eyewitnesses of Napoleon's final years. His memoirs, based on this unusual experience, are an important source for the later years of the Napoleonic Empire and the exile. This library holds two of his works, both in the series Memoirs for the History of France under Napoleon, namely Volume 2.2 and Volume 1.2, dealing with French history during Napoleon's rule from a first-hand, strongly defensive perspective. Public information is limited; his writing emphasizes military and political observations, is concrete in detail, and has more historical than literary value, offering an irreplaceable primary reference for later understanding of the Napoleonic era.