When Napoleon invaded Egypt in 1798, he assembled the largest fleet to ever sail the Mediterranean. It consisted of over 38,000 soldiers, 13,000 sailors, and — true to the French spirit — 800,000 pints of wine.
But that isn’t what made the expedition unique. It was also, without a shadow of a doubt, history’s most literary invasion force.
125 unique books accompanied Napoleon on his journey to Egypt, and the chosen volumes provide a glimpse into the mind of history’s most enlightened emperor. The titles were arranged, by Napoleon himself, into six categories: Politics and Morality, Sciences and Art, Geography and Travels, History, Poetry, and Novels.
What was in the library? For starters, the French playwright Antoine-Vincent Arnault was tasked with collecting “plays from the Greeks, the Iliad, Odyssey, Shakespeare, Rabelais, Montaigne, Rousseau, and the elite of our moralists and novelists.” But that was just the beginning.
Works by Caesar, Tacitus, Plutarch, Livy, and Thucydides also accompanied the Emperor to Egypt, as did classic poems and plays by Homer, Ariosto, Tasso, Ossian, Virgil, Racine, and Molière. And of course, Napoleon wouldn’t have been caught dead without his beloved Sorrows of Young Werther (Goethe) or Esprit des Lois (Montesquieu).
Clearly, Napoleon had a voracious curiosity and vibrant intellectual life — but which of the books he read influenced him the most?
Today, we explore the authors who influenced Napoleon’s life and thought arguably more than any other. Commençons…
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1. Jean-Jacques Rousseau — Politics & Romance
Just as the French Revolution brought bloodshed to the streets, so did it bring a wrecking ball to the realm of political theory. And when the pre-existing structures came tumbling down, Jean-Jacques Rousseau was there to fill the gap.
Prior to the revolution, the divine right of kings was considered a natural and legitimate form of governance. But upon the execution of King Louis XVI, French political theorists were tasked with addressing new sorts of questions — if not from God, where does the right to rule come from? Where does that right originate from? And to what extent can people question or challenge another’s right to rule?
Here Rousseau’s The Social Contract had a disproportionate influence on the revolutionaries. In it, Rousseau elaborates on social contract theory, the idea that the ruled and the ruler enter into an agreement — written or otherwise — with each other, and that only the “general will of the people” has the right to legislate.
Rousseau’s philosophy was a major influence on the young Napoleon Bonaparte, inspiring him to align himself with the post-revolutionary government of the Directorate.
But it wasn’t just Rousseau’s political ideas that caught the officer’s attention. His advice on how to write a love letter, as outlined in his romantic novel La Nouvelle Héloïse, also had a profound impact on Napoleon's conception of romance:
Read a love letter written by someone in his study, by a wit who wants to appear brilliant; in spite of the paucity of fire he may have in his head, his pen will burn up the paper, as they say, but the warmth he inspires will not go any further. You will be charmed, even perhaps stirred, but it will be merely a short lived, sterile emotion which will leave you only words to remember it by.
On the other hand, a letter that love has truly dictated, a letter from an honestly impassioned lover will be loosely written, verbose, drawn out to great lengths, disorderly, repetitious. The lover’s heart, full of overflowing emotion, keeps saying the same thing over and over and never finishes saying it, like a living spring which endless gushes forth and is never exhausted. There is no wit, nothing remarkable in it; you don’t remember any words or turn of phrase. You admire nothing; you are struck by nothing. However, you feel your soul touched; you feel moved without understanding why.
-Jean-Jacques Rousseau, La Nouvelle Héloïse
The melodramatic letters Napoleon sent to his wife Joséphine are evidence of the extent to which his romantic outlook had been shaped by La Nouvelle Héloïse.
But even better is the testimony of others. When a French socialite and acquaintance of the Bonapartes occasioned across the letters of Napoleon, she had this to say:
I saw Napoleon’s letters to Madame Bonaparte during the first campaign of Italy…These letters are very singular: an almost unreadable writing, faulty spelling, a bizarre and confused style…
But there reigns in them such a passionate tone, we can find such strong sentiments, such animated and poetic expressions, that there are no women who wouldn’t have wished to receive such letters.
-Madame de Rémusat
Yet for all the instruction in the ways of romance Rousseau provided, Napoleon soon fell out of love with the philosopher — by the time he came to power, the young general had transformed into a fervent anti-revolutionary.
The profundity of his divorce from the ideals of Rousseau was best encapsulated when, upon a visit to the author’s tomb, the Emperor wondered aloud “...whether or not it would have been better for the French peace if neither I nor Rousseau had ever been born.”
2. Plutarch — Ambition & Zeal
If Rousseau had been Napoleon’s mentor in the ways of love, Plutarch was his teacher in ambition. Plutarch’s Lives, one of the most famous histories of the Greeks and Romans, provided the teenage Napoleon his best example of what grandeur looked like.
Written in the early 2nd century AD, Plutarch’s Lives is a series of parallel biographies that pairs great figures from Greek and Roman history, drawing moral and philosophical lessons from their lives. Plutarch’s aim wasn’t simply to recount events, but to delve into character — to show how virtues and flaws shaped not just individual fates, but the destinies of nations.
The work became a cornerstone of Western thought and was studied by rulers, statesmen, and intellectuals for centuries. During the Renaissance, it inspired Machiavelli and Shakespeare, and by Napoleon’s time, it was considered essential reading for schoolboys — and anyone who aspired to greatness.
For Napoleon, no two figures loomed larger in Lives than Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar. Plutarch’s depiction of Alexander captivated the young Corsican, presenting a vision of limitless conquest and determination. Alexander’s ability to inspire loyalty and overcome insurmountable odds left a deep imprint on Napoleon’s psyche, setting a benchmark for military ambition.
But it was Plutarch’s account of Julius Caesar that resonated most profoundly with Napoleon — and gave him a roadmap to greatness…
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