The global history perhaps has no other person who stirred such opposing and powerful emotions or who, during his lifetime, evoked so much admiration, fear, or hatred from humanity as Napoleon.
Even the most composed of later critics, reviewing his career, are not only led to various and mixed judgments, but they also cannot help but feel some astonishment that in a single life, in a single character, such greatness unites with such cunning, so much gold with so much rust.
For those for whom psychological analysis is a tedious occupation, Napoleon simply appears as a great man of action who, without the aid of wealth or social class, rose to the pinnacle of human fortune, providing with the magnitude of a supernatural example the most compelling answer to the theory that the art and mystery of politics are not accessible to all but are gifts of lineage and privilege.
(chapter one: "Youth")
