Napoleon wanted to censor racy stories like those told by Benedetta Craveri in “The Last Libertines.” He ordered the manuscript memoirs of the Duc de Lauzun, a free-thinker under the Old Regime, destroyed by the Paris police in the early 19th century. Napoleon was not a prig, but he thought that salacious memoirs about the sex lives of the aristocracy before the Revolution were disruptive of his aim to restore order and stability to France. To that end, the burning of books and manuscripts did not much bother him. Fortunately...

Source: Wall Street Journal October 09, 2020 22:41 UTC