At a time when Napoleon needed all his forces to reassert French dominance in Central Europe, why did he fixate on the Prussian capital of Berlin? Instead of concentrating his forces for a decisive showdown with the enemy, he repeatedly detached large numbers of troops, under ineffective commanders, toward the capture of Berlin. In Napoleon and Berlin, Michael V. Leggiere explores Napoleon’s almost obsessive desire to capture Berlin and how this strategy ultimately lost him all of Germany. Napoleon’s motives have remained a subject of controversy from his own day until ours. He may have hoped to deliver a tremendous blow to Prussia’s war-making capacity and morale. Ironically, the heavy losses and strategic reverses sustained by the French left Napoleon’s Grande Armee vulnerable to an Allied coalition that eventually drove Napoleon from Central Europe forever.

The first comprehensive history of the Fall Campaign that determined control of Central Europe following Napoleon's catastrophic defeat in Russia.

“Rodenberg inventively uses Bonaparte’s own unfinished novel to tell the story of the despot’s rise to power, which she juxtaposes against the story of his last love affair. Told creatively and with excellent research!” —Stephanie Dray, New York Times and USA Today best-selling author of America's First Daughter and The Women of Chateau Lafayette “Beautiful and poignant.” —Allison Pataki, New York Times best-selling author of The Queen’s Fortune With its delightful adaptation of Napoleon Bonaparte’s real attempt to write romantic fiction, Finding Napoleon: A Novel offers a fresh take on Europe’s most powerful man after he’s lost everything—except his last love. A forgotten woman of history—the audacious Countess Albine—helps narrate their tale of intrigue, desire, and betrayal. After the defeated Emperor Napoleon goes into exile on tiny St. Helena Island in the remote South Atlantic, he and his lover, Albine de Montholon, plot to escape and rescue his young son. Banding together enslaved Africans, British sympathizers, a Jewish merchant, a Corsican rogue, and French followers, they confront British opposition—as well as treachery within their own ranks—with sometimes subtle, sometimes bold, but always desperate action. Amid his passions and intrigues, Napoleon finishes his real novel Clisson that he started writing as a young man. Now it's a father's message to the young son whom his enemies took from him, but how can they get it to the boy? When Napoleon and Albine break faith with one another, ambition and Albine’s husband threaten their reconciliation. To succeed, Napoleon must learn whom to trust. To survive, Albine must decide whom to betray. This elegant, richly researched novel reveals the Napoleon history conceals and the Countess Albine history has forgotten.