Spurred by a lifelong fascination with the great emperor, French novelist Honoré de Balzac set himself the pains­taking task of collecting a selection of Napoleon’s aphorisms from his public speeches and the gazettes of the time.

Arranged into four themes (covering social life, the military arts, the exercise of power and the teachings of experience and misfortune), Napoleon’s pithy pills of wisdom – often Machiavellian, cynical, dry and sometimes cruel – offer a unique insight into the mind of a man who prided himself on preferring action over thought and the sword over the pen, and conjure up one of the most eminent and influential historical figures of all time.