Napoleon: the path to power

Prologue : the bridge at Arcola

THE OUTSIDER, 1769-1792

The pleasure of recognition

'You will be my avenger'

Corsica in revolution

Ambition awakened

THE REVOLUTIONARY, 1792-1796

Disillusion

The Jacobin

shifting political sands

The political appointee

THE CONQUERING HERO, 1796-1798

Innovation

Conquest and pillage

Artists and soldiers, politics and love

The apprenticeship of power

Bonaparte the 'Italique'

THE CIVILIZING HERO, 1798-1799

A grandiose exile

Confronting Egypt

Conciliation and terror : governing Egypt

Prisoner of his conquest

The limits of imagination

The end of the dream

SEIZING POWER, 1799

The return of the saviour

The coup as farce.