Digital Library

The documents digitised by the Fondation Napoléon (listed here) are full searchable, and any images can be viewed using the high resolution zoom feature.

  • Lettres de Sophie, reine des Pays-Bas au prince Napoléon 1839-1877
    • Paris
    • 2016

    Présentées et annotées par Christine Tane.   La correspondance de Sophie de Wurtemberg, par la suite princesse d’Orange puis reine de Hollande et de son cousin germain le prince Jérôme-Napoléon, débute en 1839 au lendemain du mariage de Sophie et se poursuit pendant trente-huit ans. Les lettres mettent en évidence un lien fait de fascination réciproque, […]

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  • GIFFON-SCAPULA (J.-F.), Les troupes corses de la Révolution au 1er Empire (1789-1815) Des processus et des mutations, la Corse militaire une identité complexe
    • 2016

    Master. Université Paris Sorbonne (Paris IV)

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  • Tournon, Rapports sur l’Espagne à l’Empereur et Roi, 1807-1808
    • [s.l.]
    • [Gabriel Madec]
    • [2017]

    Rapports sur l’Espagne de Philippe de Tournon, chambellan et officier d’ordonnance de Napoléon Ier, 1807-1808. Présentés et annotés par Gabriel Madec.

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  • Schuermans, Itinéraire de Napoléon, (1908)
    • Paris
    • Picard et fils
    • 1908

    Day-by-day calendar account of Napoleon’s life, from birth to death. [This document is also available as en epub file]

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  • Mehlisse (E.G.C.), [Liste de prisonniers français], (1826)
    • Paris
    • Henri Guillemé
    • 1826

    Tableau of the 16,000 soldiers who fought for France taken prisoner in the period 1810 to 1814 (Russia, Poland and Germany), including a list of all the those soldiers (out of the 16,000) still alive and in Russia. [This document is also available as en epub file]

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  • Marmottan (Paul), Un projet de Code rural sous le Premier Empire, (1913)

    • Paris
    • F. Alcan
    • 1913
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  • Mehlisse (E.G.C.), [Liste de prisonniers français], (1826)

    • Paris
    • Henri Guillemé
    • 1826

    Tableau of the 16,000 soldiers who fought for France taken prisoner in the period 1810 to 1814 (Russia, Poland and Germany), including a list of all the those soldiers (out of the 16,000) still alive and in Russia.

    [This document is also available as en epub file]

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  • Meignier (François-Xavier), L’alimentation du soldat pendant la campagne de 1812

    • 2012

    Master 2 d’Histoire, Université Paris-Est-Créteil, 2012

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  • Mémoire de M. le maréchal Masséna sur les événements qui ont eu lieu en Province en avril 1815, (1816)

    • Paris
    • Delaunay
    • 1816
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  • Mémoires de Robert Guillemard, sergent en retraite, de 1805 à 1823, (1826)

    • Paris, Mons
    • Delaforest, Leroux
    • 1826
    • Tome premier

    1826 saw the emergence of one of the first sets of military memoirs on the First Empire: the memoirs of Robert Guillemard, a retired sergeant.

    Describing himself has the son of a notary from Six-Fours in southern France, conscripted in 1805, Robert Guillemard recounts the most noted episodes of a life that was already rich in adventures: he was on Redoutable at the Battle of Trafalgar, and allegedly fired upon the English officers of the Victory from the topmast, mortally wounding Nelson. Then, having become one of Admiral Villeneuve’s servants, he claimed to witness the latter Admiral’s death, which he described as an assassination. Afterwards, Guillemard was involved in a series of campaigns and escapades, in Spain and on the dreaded island of Cabrera, in Russia and Siberia, and allegedly was present at the execution of Murat in Naples, before leaving for Spain again in 1823, and then taking well-deserved retirement.

    The memoirs were an immediate hit in France as well as in England and Germany (where they were introduced and commented on by Goethe himself), but they also raised many questions and much scepticism.

    The English never believed that this was Nelson’s murderer; they had their own candidates crowned with the title of ‘avenger of Nelson’, who had sworn they had decimated every Frenchman perched on the foremast of Redoutable at the time.

    The French seemed particularly interested in the death of Villeneuve, as rumours of a falsified suicide were in circulation, on the orders, or so it was said, of Napoleon himself… Unfortunately, the story told by Guillemard was so littered with errors and inaccuracies that the trick was revealed in 1828 in the Annales maritimes et coloniales. It seemed impossible actually to meet the retired sergeant, so impossible indeed, that nobody had ever met him!

    The affair finally unravelled in 1830, again in the columns of the Annales maritimes et coloniales, when a certain Lardier, a former Navy accountant, who was quite unnerved by the impact of his false memoirs, admitted that ‘Guillemard was only an imaginary character, and his supposed memoires were a historical novel’.

    Bibliographers think that Alexandre Lardier, who was himself the son of a notary near Six-Fours, a sailor under the Empire and thus knowledgeable about the world of the Navy, was either helped by or gave help to a lawyer, Charles-Ogé Barbaroux, also a Provençal, whom the Restoration had reduced to living by his pen.

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