Volume II: La campagne d’Égypte et l’avènement, 1798-1799

Volume two deals with 1798-1799, the Egyptian Campaign and the accession to power, general Bonaparte getting to grips with his dream of the Orient: a region with a difficult climate, complicated daily organisation, popular revolts, war. The perfect moment for Napoleon to show his sense of organisation and his remarkable ability to improvise, his obstinacy, but also his implacable toughness: an apprentice head of state, whom the Brumaire coup d’etat catapulted to power in France.
Comprising 2,550 letters, of which about one thousand not published in the Correspondance published during the Second Empire, complete with explanatory notes, a detailed chronology, three indices, maps and facsimiles, this volume, with a preface by professor Henry Laurens, of the Collège de France, also includes two studies, one by Gabriel Madec on Bonaparte’s headquarters and one by Pierre Branda on finances in Egypt.

With the support of the Archives de France and the Fondation La Poste, this operation to publish -in twelve volumes- this Correspondance générale has up to now included the collaboration of two hundred people and should end at the beginning of 2009. Emilie Barthet, the person in charge of the correspondance project at the Fondation Napoléon, reports on the project as a whole and the difficulties faced.

Thierry Lentz (ed.), working with Gabriel Madec, assisted by Emilie Barthet and François Houdecek, preface by Henry Laurens, Professor at the Collège de France.

Paris : Éditions Fayard, 2005, 1272 pages.