Here are the facts and legends behind some of the major scenes from Ridley Scott’s new Napoleon biopic. What we think we know about the “real” Napoleon is often filtered through self-interested and partial accounts like this one. Many years later, in 1829, de Bourrienne penned a memoir in the hope of cashing in on the popular appetite for authentic tales of the great general. The author was later an employee of Napoleon, who sacked him for embezzlement in 1802.
Yet the veracity of this moment rests primarily on a single account – the memoir of one of Napoleon’s childhood friends, Louis de Bourrienne, who attended the same school.
