The Age of Napoleon By Will Durant

The Age of Napoleon surveys the amazing chain of events that wrenched Europe out of the Enlightenment and into the Age of Democracy:
* The French Revolution—from the storming of the Bastille to the guillotining of the King
* The revolution’s leaders Danton, Desmoulins, Robespierre, Saint-Just—all cut down by the reign of terror they inaugurated.
* Napoleon’s meteoric rise—from the provincial Corsican military student to the Emperor commanding the largest army in history
* Napoleon’s fall—his army’s destruction in the snows of Russia, his exile to Elba, escape and reconquest of the throne, and ultimate defeat at Waterloo by the combined forces of Europe.
* The birth of romanticism and the dawning of a new age of active democracy and a rising middle class, laying the foundation for our own era.