Germaine de Staël, the most famous woman intellectual in Europe, records how Napoleon hounded her out of Paris, banned her book on Germany and kept her under watch at Coppet. In 1812 she escaped through Austria and Poland into Russia, arriving as the French invasion began, and continued to Sweden, observing courts and peoples along the way.
A vivid first-hand document of the Napoleonic era by one of its sharpest opponents, published from her manuscript by her son. Download the free EPUB.