Hello Joan!  I like that about Napoleon renewing Europe, restoring youth and energy -- it seems true.  He definitely inspired so many young men, even those who also felt disappointed in him like Beethoven and Pushkin.  Coulaincourt says Napoleon shocked him once.  After a battle he was walking over the field strewn with bodies.  He says Napoleon's entire staff, hardened soldiers all, felt sickened and ashamed by the slaughter around them.  Napoleon looked at them with amusement, and quoted the Roman saying, "There is no more beautiful sight than that of one's dead enemies."  Coulaincourt realized that Napoleon was cut of a different cloth than most of humanity.  Throughout the Russian expedition, in the midst of all the suffering, Napoleon showed no sign of compassion for the soldiers, just worry about the deteriorating situation.  I don't suppose lovingkindness is a proper quality in a military commander.
Newt reminds me of Napoleon a little -- a belief in his own destiny, fascination with himself and his own brilliance, willingness to shift whenever the winds of change require it.  It makes for an attractive personality, full of energy and surprises, even amusement, while remaining somewhat strange for people outside the immediate charm of his presence.
Does the Takacz measure up to the Guarneri?
My lovely atheistic and revolutionary Tsar, Alexander I, has fallen under the influence of a Christian mystic and now renounces his entire past, a prey to the superstition that upended the dynasty in Nicholas II.  Too bad; I imagine the strain of his reign, which began with patricide and went on to many years of war, was too much.  I hadn't realized how difficult the final defeat of Napoleon was after the Russian expedition -- Napoleon still raised several hundred troops, and only Alexander's firm resolve to defeat him and strategic gifts made it possible.  After the last battle, when Napoleon defeated a cavalry detachment but found it was not the advance guard of the main army but a diversion that opened the road to Paris to the Coalition, he said, "I would not have thought such a trick possible for their generals."  It was Alexander's idea.  Take care, Sidney