Woman, wrote the young Napoleon in 1791, "is indispensable to man's animal organization…. The sweetness of this union beautifies the dreams and mitigates the sorrows of life; it diversifies life's joys; and it fertilizes the broad field of the sensations." Napoleon had many love affairs, but there was only one woman - the incomparable Joséphine - for whom such romantic notions could be said to have held any truth. "I have married a womb," was his summation of his second union to Marie Louise of Austria. Napoleon and his Women Friends is widely recognized as the definitive work on this fascinating perspective of one of history's most extraordinary figures. In scholarly but lyrical style, Gertrude Aretz describes the part played by each of Napoleon's women - not only his two wives, but his three sisters, his mother and older female relatives, his Court 'companions' and his many mistresses, including Eléonore Dénuelle de la Plaigne, Madame Walewska, Pauline Fourès - the Queen of the East, Giuseppina Grassini - the Milanese Singer, Giorgina - the beauty of the Parisian stage, and Joséphine Duchesnois. Captivating, erudite and entertaining, Napoleon and his Women Friends is a timeless classic of Napoleonic history.