A SINGLE manuscript page from a love story written by Napoleon Bonaparte sold at auction in France yesterday for the equivalent of £17,000.
It was the first page of the final draft of Napoleon's 1795 short novel Clisson and Eugenie - the story was not published in his lifetime.
The page up for sale was long believed to be part of a text that Napoleon wrote about a historical figure n
amed Clissot, but then Peter Hicks, a historian at the Fondation Napoleon, realised it was actually the beginning of his novel. The long-standing confusion was caused in part by Napoleon's sloppy handwriting, Mr Hicks said.
The tale is about a young officer who befriends two sisters and falls in love with the more spiritual of the two. It was loosely based on Napoleon's short-lived romance with Desiree Clary, the sister of his brother's wife.
The page has been part of a French family collection since the 1950s. Before then, it belonged to the financier Andre de Coppet.
Clisson and Eugenie - only 22 pages in its original handwritten form - is the last piece of creative writing Napoleon produced before turning his literary attention to political matters, said Mr Hicks, who helped publish the most complete text of the novel in September.
He said the general was well-read and influenced by the Enlightenment thinker Rousseau, whose ideas of the solitary poet and reverence for nature find their way into the novel.
Just as he was finishing the book in 1795, the young general was asked to suppress a royalist uprising in Paris - an event known as the "Whiff of Grapeshot", which propelled him into the spotlight and led to his promotion.
The full article contains 290 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
