A single manuscript page from a love story written by Napoleon Bonaparte sold for €23,000 (£17,000) at Osenat auction house in France yesterday.

It was the first page of the final draft of Napoleon's 1795 short novel Clisson and Eugenie, only 22 pages in its original handwritten form. The story, loosely based on the author’s brief romance with the sister of his brother’s wife, Desiree Clary, was not published in Napoleon’s lifetime.

Mr Hicks, who helped issue the most complete version of the text in September, said: “It is the last piece of creative writing Napoleon produced before turning his literary attention to political matters.”

He said the general was very literary and influenced by the Enlightenment thinker Rousseau, and Rousseau ideas of the solitary poet and reverence for nature feature in the novel.

The manuscript has been part of a French family collection since the 1950s. Before then, it belonged to the financier Andre de Coppet.