The Conversation: The Night Napoleon Changed the World - Tapa dura

Several years after the French Revolution, in the winter of 1804, Napoleon Bonaparte has to make a crucial decision whether to keep the ideals of the new France alive or to elevate the country into a power base by making it an empire and becoming emperor.

One evening at the Tuileries Residence in Paris, Second Consul Jean-Jacques Cambacérès, a brilliant law scholar and close ally, listens as Napoleon struggles to determine the best course for a country much weakened by ten years of wars and revolutions. Torn between his revolutionary ideals and his overwhelming longing for power, Napoleon declares that only his taking the throne will secure France's future.

Seeking to rally Cambacérès to his cause, he maps out his reasons, but the Republican hero desires only one thing: to forge his legend during his lifetime. France has arrived at a crossroads, and he must break barriers to fulfill his ambition. "An empire is a Republic that has been enthroned," he declares. And so history is made. With erudition, d'Ormesson remarkably captures the man's vertigo of triumph, which would ultimately lead to his fall.