Napoleon's 'Game of Thrones'

This is the second, stunning instalment of what will evidently constitute an outstanding three-volume biography of Napoleon, which explores the extraordinary feats of his central years in command. Superlatives are in order, for after 1805 the French won a series of astounding victories, including Austerlitz, Jena and Friedland. Napoleon's subsequent ‘summit meeting' at Tilsit in 1807, with Tsar Alexander I, saw the two emperors carve up the continent between them. As Michael Broers emphasises, this was a pivotal moment, inducing the hubris that led Napoleon to overplay his hand, notably by intervention in the Iberian peninsula. It sowed the seeds of his future struggle for survival, the great but costly triumph over Austria in 1809 notwithstanding.