The Napoleonic Age

For twenty years, one man remade the map of Europe faster than cartographers could print new editions. Napoleon gave the world the metric system, the Napoleonic Code, the template for the modern centralized state — and somewhere between one and three million dead in his wars. He is one of the most consequential human beings who ever lived, and the argument about whether that's a compliment is still going.

Joséphine was the love of his life, whom he wrote ardent letters to from every campaign and eventually divorced because she couldn't produce an heir. Talleyrand — the limping, brilliant diplomat — served the monarchy, the Revolution, Napoleon, and the Restoration in sequence, and outlived all of them. History rarely moves this fast, and rarely leaves this many complicated people in its wake.