Empire's Eagles: The Fate of the Napoleonic Elite in America

The never-before told story of how Napoleon's top brass escaped to America after Waterloo. Empire's Eagles is colorful, new, and an effectively unknown chapter in American history. In its center is the mystery of whether Napoleon's "Bravest of the brave," Marshal Ney, cheated a firing squad to escape under an alias and reinvent himself in America.

At sunset on June 18, 1815 Napoleon Bonaparte was in desperate flight from the battlefield at Waterloo. Racing to reach Paris, he abandoned on the...