Napoleon was exceedingly victorious. He changed the course of history.
He imposed the French Revolution's liberalism throughout Europe.
That included weakening the Catholic Church, imposing separation of church and state, emancipating Jews, and advancing civic nationalism (the idea that anyone born under French rule, including Africans in French colonies, was French).
He destroyed the Holy Roman Empire, enabling German states to break free of Austrian Hapsburg domination. Beethoven wrote his Emperor Concerto in honor of Napoleon. (Beethoven later lost his admiration when Napoleon turned out to fall short of liberal ideals.)
He destroyed the Spanish Empire. His defeat of Spain enabled many South American states to declare independence.
He introduced Europeans to Egyptian antiquities. During his Egyptian campaign, Napoleon brought scholars along with him, which was unheard of, and they discovered the Rosetta Stone.
Napoleon was not only a general, but a law giver. He supervised the drafting of the Napoleonic Code, which is still used in part of the world, including Louisiana.
And despite his defeat at Waterloo, Napoleon was a great general and military innovator. He mastered the use of mass armies of common conscripts. He understood the importance of supply lines and promoted discoveries in canned food, as he understood their military value.
Europe in 1780 was the "Ancien Regime" of Church and aristocracy. The French Revolution changed that in France. Napoleon spread the revolution throughout Europe. Metternich tried to put the genie back in the bottle, but Europeons were never the same after Napoleon.
True. He did indeed modernize Europe in many ways.
Still, this came at the price of millions of war dead - French and non- French alike. France, Europe‘s most populous nation before Napoleon‘s time, never totally recovered its demographic and political supremacy, which it had held since the Thirty Years War.
> Napoleon was exceedingly victorious. He changed the course of history. <
I’ll grant you much of what you say. But he did it in the bloodiest way possible. Mixed in with his reformist ideas was a tyrant’s desire to rule all of Europe.
early Napoleon: Wise reformer and defender of France.
late Napoleon: Monster who brought misery to all of Europe.
Pity that he could not quit while he was ahead.
Permit me to add something to my post #134:
While we do disagree on Napoleon, your post #125 contained a lot of very interesting historical information. Thanks.