Napoleon Was a Dynamite Dictator

Napoleon Bonaparte died on May 5, 1821. More books have been written with his name in the subject line than the number of days that have passed since.

So writing yet another biography about one of the most iconic and controversial statesman of 19th century Europe seems, at first glance, like a fruitless task.

That is, of course, unless one has something new to say about the French emperor. In Napoleon A Life the British historian Andrew Roberts seeks to revaluate what he calls the “caricature we have come to think of as Napoleon.”

Ever since Hitler visited Napoleon’s tomb at Les Invalides, on June 23, 1940¾ following the fall of Paris¾ a connection has been made between the two dictators that historians haven’t been able to forget about.

In his new book, Roberts seeks to persuade his readers that Napoleon was not an evil monster. The narrative is a remarkable piece of historical research that spans just over 800 pages. It presents a convincing argument that while Napoleon was certainly no pacifist, he did, during his 16 years in power, create lasting achievements that ought to be remembered by France, Europe, and indeed the rest of the world.

“The huge difference between those rulers and Napoleon comes down to one word: totalitarianism. Napoleon was not interested in it. He wanted his subjects to support his regime."

This aspect of Napoleon's personality would indirectly lead to the Impressionist movement later in the 19th Century. Napoleon recognized that with territorial conquest, he would be better off winning the hearts and minds of conquered peoples, and consequently tried to avoid as much as possible, his armies from foraging local foodstuffs as they moved along. This led to efforts on his part to have methods of food preservation developed to sustain his armies in the field. One technique proposed was foil tubes, which proved marginal as a means of food preservation, but turned out to be very effective as a means of storing and transporting oil paints.

If you look at landscape painting up and into the 19th century, they were virtually all executed in studios from sketches the artists had made in the field as oil paints are very messy, and particularly at the time, pigments tended to be very expensive. It made far more sense for the artist to mix his oils in the studio on an as needed basis and paint there. Foil tubes, for the first time, made it possible for artists to take their paints, a canvas and an easel on-site and paint their observations directly without intermediate sketches...

He stopped the bloody excesses of the French Revolution

Nonsense. The excesses had been pretty much over for a number of years when he came to power.

, and quite frankly, he treated his people far better than Tsar Alexander, Frederick William

Quite possibly

or King George

George was not a tyrant, both because he had no tendencies in that direction, and because he had no power to be one.

I can’t say whether or not Napoleon was good or not, or is even worthy of meeting Louis XVI, but I can tell you one thing, he most certainly was far more preferable compared to Robespierre and his ilk. At least HE stopped the outright persecution of religion when he came to power. That’s probably the only reason I have any respect for the guy. And he doesn’t really deserve to be listed as being among the likes of totalitarian dictators like Hitler beyond the whole Waterloo thing. As people pointed out, he didn’t even care to control literally every aspect of other people’s lives, while Hitler actually was obsessed with controlling other people’s lives, “socializing people” as he put it (not to mention, contrary to popular belief, Hitler also tried to exterminate Christians just as much as Jews). Heck, I’m not even sure if Augustus Caesar really deserves being put into that camp either. If anyone was closer to actually BEING like Hitler, it was Robespierre (and I’m not even sure if it’s truly totalitarian there either despite being a lot closer to fitting the definition there than under Napoleon, considering that it came closer to outright anarchy with no direct chain of command).

Les Invalides had a special month-long Napoleon retrospective while we were in Paris during May.

It's my routine to swing by the military museum every time we visit (usually annually), so I'd seen some of the individual items before, but not collected together to form a unified theme. What I really enjoyed was the emphasis on the skill and detailed work that went into planning each campaign, rather than just the surface level emotional elements of the battles themselves.

Because it's the actual army museum/repository, they of course had all the general staff's paperwork and planning documents. As might be expected, it was incredibly complex - and in the time before computers - it took a small army of personnel to keep everything organized. Napoleon, by all accounts, was like Julian and Trump in that each could/can work 20 hour days on multiple subjects, which in turn required at least 2 shifts of secretaries to keep up.

What was especially cool were a couple of sets devoted to Austerlitz, Jena, Russia & Waterloo. Once you were prepped with the fundamentals of how the campaigns evolved, there was an interactive Q&A system that tested users on the various strategic elements. For example, Napoleon had his entire army in the NE part of France when his spies reported that the Czar was sending his army to join up with Austria to form a unified threat to France.

What does Napoleon decide to do? He marches his entire army across the continent to meet them before they even knew he was there. The reason he was able to do this was his troops carried around 1/7 of the standard kit all other armies of the day were rucking. They literally only had a blanket, rifle and light boots, which enabled them to cover around 20 miles per day. The result of course was Austerlitz, which was such an incredible defeat for both Austria & Russia that it ended the 1000 year reign of the Holy Roman Empire.

From the French perspective, Napoleon simply ran out of steam. They showed portraits of a dashing young general in his 20s turn into an aged old man by his 30s. The British were able to stand off, protected by the Channel, and had a large enough economy to finance each of the different opposition coalitions. The two antagonists finally met face to face @ Waterloo, and without Prussia's arrival at the last moment, it would have swung the other way.

To this day, the UK is still a monarchy while its people are merely 'subjects'. We can see the end game of that relationship with the arrest of Tommy Robinson. The French go on strike every year not just over money, but as an expression of their republican roots. That is, their cause is presented as a fundamental patriotic expression not much different than Trump.

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