Excerpt: "Now that one hundred years have elapsed since the "long-drawn agony" of Saint Helena we think that the time has come for a more impartial estimate. Facts are clearer, motives are better known, much new evidence is available. Let us then endeavor to depict Napoleon as he was, and "nothing extenuate, nor set down aught in malice." - Walter Geer

FOREWORD: "In the popular estimation the Empress Josephine is crowned with a halo of goodness which makes the task of her biographer one of peculiar difficulty. The aversion which many feel towards Napoleon is not a little due to what they conceive to be the cruelty with which he treated the woman who for fourteen years was the companion of his glory. The writer of this book holds no brief either for the prosecution or the defence. He wants to draw a portrait - not to pronounce a judgment: his object is to depict Josephine as she was, and he leaves the reader to decide as to her goodness." Walter Geer