Napoleon. Life and Fate

The book "Napoleon. Life and Fate" is created based on the exhibition dedicated to the 250th anniversary of the birth of Napoleon Bonaparte. It took place in Moscow and was organized based on the private collection of Professor of Moscow State University Alexander Vikhorov, who is the owner of the most significant collection in Russia reflecting the personality of Napoleon, moments of his life and achievements, victories and defeats, real events and myths.
This edition includes a complete catalog of the exhibition, featuring 280 works of painting, graphic arts, sculpture, decorative and applied arts, as well as memorial items, weapons, orders, and commemorative medals. A significant number of rarities from the early 19th century are published for the first time.
The book by Alexander Vikhorov is especially interesting because it contains stories related to unique items in the collection that mark the path of the “little corporal” to the imperial crown. These are peculiar, personally engaged essays, the content of which goes far beyond the limits of traditional catalog descriptions. Bonaparte appears here both as a man of flesh, a commoner, and a romantic hero of universal scale, for there is no other example in world history of someone rising from the depths to such heights.
An important place in the book is occupied by the twists and turns of the relationship between Napoleon I and Russian Tsar Alexander I, events that affected the fates of many countries in Europe. The theme of the Treaty of Tilsit, the military-political alliance between France and Russia, which crowned the meeting of the two emperors, is presented in depth. History, as it is said, does not know the subjunctive mood. But, as the author of the new book believes, after more than two hundred years, one can ask the question of what the picture of world order could have been if the idea of strengthening the alliance between the two countries through kinship had materialized, as Napoleon proposed sequentially to both sisters of Alexander I.
The refusal of the Romanov family meant one thing for the rejected bridegroom: a head-on collision with Russia was inevitable. Ahead was war, the price of which is known - a million human lives. Of course, these events of the march on Moscow and its conclusion found a vivid reflection in the book, since it was Russia that became the arena for the most significant, tragic events of the era and the beginning of the collapse of Napoleon's great empire.
Emotional notes from the collector, who dedicated almost half a century to the study of the Napoleonic era, direct speech from the Emperor of the French and his contemporaries, historians' assessments, little-known facts, and documentary evidence combined with works of art, items related to everyday life or embodying folk legend, create a more comprehensive panorama of the reflection of the myth of Napoleon, whose life still appears as the greatest adventure.