Books small enough to take on one's travels was one motivation behind the invention of italic type. Using italic, a book could be printed to be 10 percent smaller than without.
Same author, same subject, on The French History Podcast:<p><a href="https://www.thefrenchhistorypodcast.com/napoleons-library-with-louis-sarkozy/" rel="nofollow">https://www.thefrenchhistorypodcast.com/napoleons-library-wi...</a>
I think one of the key ideas here is not just having a personal library – it's about doing focussed research to help conduct whatever military campaign you're going on, and having a librarian to help you do that.<p>So there, all of your assigned papers in college that had you do research were teaching you the whole time to build the French Empire!