Precious volumes from the personal library of Emperor Napoleon I at the Château de Fontainebleau and chosen by him for his exile on the island of Elba BINDING WITH THE ARMS OF NAPOLEON IER. - ROLLIN (Charles) and Jean-Baptiste-Louis CREVIER. Roman history from the foundation of Rome to the battle of Actium. In Paris, at the widow Estienne, then at the widow Estienne and Jean Desaint, then at the brothers Estienne, the widow Desaint et al, then at the widow Desaint et al, 1741-1781. 14 volumes in-12, spotted fawn calf, spines with partitions and ornaments with red and green title and greeen pieces, fine gilt frieze framing the boards with gilt coat of arms in the center, mention " FONTAINEBLEAU " gilt at the bottom of the upper boards, gilt edges, red borders; bindings rubbed with a few snags and worn corners, wetness on the leaves of vol. IX, one plate detached (binding circa 1805-1808). With illustrations of copper-engraved plates out of the text, mainly MAPS WHERE THE ILE D'ELBE ("Ilva") MAY APPEAR. The Roman gesture until the advent of the Emperor Augustus This Roman History is a narrative of the mythical times of Rome, then of the royal period and finally of the republican period. It echoes the personal history of Napoleon I: the numerous military campaigns, victorious or concluded by disasters (the affair of the forks of the caudine), the Punic wars, led against the Carthaginian maritime power, the long and difficult conquest of Spain, the ascension of Caesar... In his Memoirs, Prosper de Barante reports on this subject a discussion that he had with the Emperor at the Tuileries in February 1813: "he admired Caesar as a great man of war, but he made little of it as a politician. - He liked too much to please the people, also he could not succeed in seizing the power". The advent of the first emperor, Octavian, known as Augustus, at the end of a long civil war shaking the Republic, also presents interesting mirror effects. In the present work, Octavian's personal ambition and his political calculation aiming at the common good by the return to peace are weighed up: "he had felt that the Government of only one was the only remedy for the evils of the fatherland tired by interminable discords" (vol. XVI, p. 176). THE GOOD ROLLIN, "BEE OF FRANCE" (MONTESQUIEU). Criticized by Voltaire as an uncritical historian, Charles Rollin (1661-1741) was praised as a pedagogue by Montesquieu: he was for him "an honest man [who] has, through his works, enchanted the public. It is the heart that speaks to the heart; one feels a secret satisfaction in hearing virtue speak. He is the bee of France". Jansenist and attached to the heroic souls, Charles Rollin approached the history as a source of exempla suitable to insufflate to the reader moral and religious principles, making the beautiful part to the portraits of the great men, what guarantees its success until the beginning of the XIXth century, and even its presence in the textbooks of history until the years 1890. His disciple Jean-Baptiste-Louis Crevier (1693-1765), attached to the same values, continued the present work from volume X. From the personal library of the Emperor at the Château de Fontainebleau "NAPOLEON HAD TO DREAM OF "RENEWING THE CHAIN OF TIME" BY RECONSTITUTING THE LIBRARY OF THE KINGS OF THE RENAISSANCE" Charles-Éloi Vial, Napoleon and Libraries. Livres et pouvoir sous le Premier Empire, Paris, CNRS Éditions, Perrin, 2021, p. 229. A great reader, and a head of state aware of the usefulness of books in the exercise of his duties, Napoleon I was quick to have libraries installed in his imperial residences, and entrusted this task to his librarian Louis-Madeleine Ripault, replaced in 1807 by Antoine-Alexandre Barbier. Thus, emptied during the Revolution, the Château de Fontainebleau was endowed, from 1805 to 1807, with an important library entrusted to a curator, the abbot Carlo Denina, who was succeeded by the poet Charles Rémard in December 1810. It was divided into three sections: first, a library for the emperor's personal use, set up under the supervision of the bibliographer and bookseller Louis-François-André Gaudefroy; second, a topographical cabinet containing maps and a few books; and third and finally a "Great Library", intended for the ministers, the great officers and office employees, foreign and visiting ambassadors. In order to build up the core of the latter, Napoleon I first had in September-October 1807 all the books of the library of the Conseil d'État, constituted in 1800-1801 by Barbier. ... ATTENTION THE COMPLETE DESCRIPTION CAN BE FOUND IN THE EBOOK