Fourth volume of the Correspondance générale de Napoléon and a new adventure!

It's true that we're still only at the beginning, but each volume has a story to tell.
More than ever this is a team effort, with everyone giving their all.
 
The team at the Fondation Napoléon have been assisted by more than 100 volunteer corresponding members, and it has to be underlined, that without them the project would never have moved so quickly. A big thank you once again to all those who have come to work at the Fondation. For 2007 alone, they have clocked up more than 5,660 hours of work processing the imperial correspondence. And they are still as enthusiastic as when they started…

We must also thank the generous help of certain institutions (notably the Archives nationales, the Archives du ministère des Affaires étrangères and the Service Historique de la Défense, all in Paris) and a growing number of private collectors who have joined the project (with special thanks going to Aristophil, for giving us access to Napoleon's letters to Cambacérès).
 
We have now reached the stage were most of the letters have been collected, although the historical committee's job will not end until the last volume has appeared. Past experience has shown that new auctions frequently throw up letters not known previously.
 
To date, our database contains files on 30,000 letters. These files give complete pedigrees for the each letter (sources, auctions, etc.…), and they have helped us avoid many pitfalls. One striking case was the miss-dating of letters because the secretary wrote correspondence for Year XII on headed notepaper for Year XI (so as to save money…), leading auctioneers and historians astray.
 
Thie fourth volume shows the First Consul inexorably becoming first Emperor. And it is another step on the road to the complete Correspondance. The editors in chief and commentators are already finishing their work for the next volumes.

Volume V (1805, or the birth of the Empire and Napoleon's military consecration) is to come out in spring 2008.