NAPOLEON AT ST. HELENA (318 pp.)The Journals of General Bertrand, January-May, 1821Doubleday ($3.75).
"The finest piece of work since the Romans," said Napoleon of General Henri-Gatien Bertrand's bridging of the Danube in 1809. Four years later, Napoleon made Bertrand grand marshal of the imperial palace, and in this capacity the old soldier followed his master into exile at St. Helena. When Bertrand died, in 1844, he bequeathed his notebooks of the exile to his daughter Hortense, who in turn entrusted them to a French bureaucrat with orders to publish them 25 years after her...
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