The Anatomy of Glory - Napoleon and His Guard - A Study in Leadership - With Illustrations and Maps

Providence, Rhode Island and London: Brown University Press and Kund Humphries, 1961. First Edition Stated . Hard Back. Fine/Tatterred. 7 1/2" X 10 1/4" and 3" Thick. 564 Pages Indexed with Names of Persons and with 173 Illustration Plates, and foldout maps of Battle of Waterloo and The Russian Campaign of 1812. Blue boards with gold lettering to spine and cover. Six inked lines of gift inscription on the copyright page. No other marks to this otherwise as new book. Dust Jacket tattered around the edges but complete. Of all his works, the Imperial Guard was Napoleon's frnest creation. Molded from the flotsam of the French Revolution, this elite corps swept through Europe for fifteen years behind its indomitable master, sharing in his brilliant victories and bearing the brunt of his epic defeats with unfaltering devotion. This narrative, presented through the eyes of the participants in an incomparable drama of endurance, heroism, and fidelity, has been adapted for American readers from Commandant Lachouque's monumental work apoleon et la garde Imperiale, crowned'by the French Academy in 1957. The men of the Guard marched in triumph into Milan, Vienna, Berlin, Warsaw, Madrid, Moscow. Members of the new 'popular knighthood', they taught the Grande Armee how to fight. They were tortured in Spain, frozen in Russia, shaken with typhus in Germany. Ragged and famished, they won a dozen battles in 60 days against overwhelming odds in the campaign of France. When their chief fell from power in 1814 they followed him into exile in Elba. Then they returned to reconquer France in 20 days without firing a shot. The Guard died at Waterloo. It never surrendered. Its story from birth to death is told here for the first time in English, accompanied by more than 300 illustrations (90 in color) most of which are from contemporary documents, and a third of which have never before been published. The Appendix includes extensive notes on the illustrations and biographical notes on the artists represented.