Keraunos | 21 Oct 2009 11:32 p.m. PST |
Can someone enlighten me as to how it is possible to describe Napoleon as anything other than a Tyrant? He ran a police state over half af Europe and replaced its sovereign (mostly 'annointed by God', it should be noted – in the terms of the time) leaders with his family and friends. The continental system was clearly not a freely agreed sort of EEC collective agreement. So how on earth can he not be seen as a Tyrant? And don't come back with any of the good stuff please. The code Napoleon, excellent though it was, does not cancel out the Police state he ran it with. Equally, military exploits are out of the question – as is being a warmonger, it is not material to this question. |
Chouan | 22 Oct 2009 2:36 a.m. PST |
Of course he was a benevolent liberal, after all, he said that he was, so it must be true. He also proclaimed himself "Emperor", so he must have been an Emperor as well. |
nsolomon99 | 22 Oct 2009 2:53 a.m. PST |
"
And don't come back with any of the good stuff please. The code Napoleon, excellent though it was, does not cancel out the Police state he ran it with. Equally, military exploits are out of the question – as is being a warmonger, it is not material to this question.
" So having ruled out of all of this how are we supposed to answer? Or is this a rhetorical question and you're actually just stating an opinion to which you are perfectly entitled? |
ashill | 22 Oct 2009 3:00 a.m. PST |
By modern standards he was no liberal – but in my opinion his government compares favourably to modern 'liberal' states. NATO invades others more or less at will and imposes rules and laws. All the Western democracies have their secret services, many of which are not above torture, arrest without trial etc., etc. I cannot speak for other nations but here in the UK it is standard practice for Prime Ministers (regardless of which party they are from) to give positions in government to friends and 'cronies'. Doesn't this also happen in the US? By the standards of his time,N ould be seen as being much more liberal than those he replaced. For one thing, positions of power and privilege were no longer the strict preserve of the scions of the nobility. Prior to the French revolution, most people in Europe existed more or less at the whim of the nobility. As a result of that Revolution, more power passed into the hands of the masses. Whether or not they used that power wisely is another matter. |
WKeyser | 22 Oct 2009 3:08 a.m. PST |
I am constantly amused with this question! In what way was he fundamentally different than any of the other dictators (Kings) that ran around Europe for generations killing millions of people and last but not least the great family feud that was WWI. At least he did it on his own and was not handed the silver spoon from his mom and dad! William |
Theword | 22 Oct 2009 3:18 a.m. PST |
And of course after the revolution the rest of Europe just left France alone to settle in to it's new form of government
. TW. |
Keraunos | 22 Oct 2009 3:20 a.m. PST |
to be clear, I consider most european rulers of this time to be tyrants of one hue or another. but that is not to say that Napoleon was therefore absolved of the charge. He was a tyrant, yet when one states as much, others disagree. I would be interested to know the reasons they can offer. and I maintain, a police state is a tyrannical device which cannot be 'cancelled out' by some other good acts. One must establish clear evidence which demonstrates there was no police state, that the rights of self detemination were granted to the nations of europe under Napoleons empire, and that the continental system was by free choice. In short, that the revolution was enhanced by the emperial presence. |
Field Marshal | 22 Oct 2009 3:30 a.m. PST |
Im settling in with some popcorn,,,,this should be fun! |
JeffsaysHi | 22 Oct 2009 3:37 a.m. PST |
Can someone enlighten me as to how it is possible to describe Keraunos as anything other than a Troll? and don't come back with any of the good stuff, like reasonable discussion or reasoned debate. Just kidding
.. |
Keraunos | 22 Oct 2009 3:43 a.m. PST |
should I snort, or growl, or roar at that? what noise do trolls make anyway? |
Chouan | 22 Oct 2009 3:49 a.m. PST |
"And of course after the revolution the rest of Europe just left France alone to settle in to it's new form of government
." They did, until France began sending its "armed missionaries" to spread the Revolution! The new Revolutionary government of France began the Revolutionary Wars, by invading their neighbours. Before this the rest of Europe merely looked on with amusement. |
Decebalus | 22 Oct 2009 4:03 a.m. PST |
I didnt know that tyrant and liberal are opposite. Liberal is a political word, tyrant is a derogatory word. Living in a state where you can marry a protestant when you are catholic, knowing that your house will be yours by law and not be taken by a bishop, or publishing your science even if some priest dont like it, paying only taxes to the state and not one to the bishop, one to your count and sometime – and you dont know when – to the king and having the possibilitie to get every job in the government or the army
that are typical examples of a modern liberal state. France, especially in comparison with Russia, Austria and Prussia, was such a state. That the government accepts that you dont like it and want to change it, is not a sign for a modern liberal state but for a democracy. I dont see so many of those in europe 1806. (Not the best english, but i hope i got my point.) |
Theword | 22 Oct 2009 4:34 a.m. PST |
Maybe it's just that people that admire Napoleon want him to be remembered as we remember Alexander. We tend to think more of the positive aspects of his life and dwell less on the "tyrannical" things that he too was guilty of. I tend to think it's a case of victors write the history books, and that annoys some people. TW. |
raylev3 | 22 Oct 2009 4:45 a.m. PST |
How was his method of government any different than the other continental powers? (Of course, the UK gets points for parliament.) Does that make them all tyrants
I guess so. So what's the point of the question? |
mweaver | 22 Oct 2009 4:47 a.m. PST |
Well, first, who said he was a benevolent liberal? Second: With "And don't come back with any of the good stuff please. The code Napoleon, excellent though it was, does not cancel out the Police state he ran it with." Aren't you sort of fixing the game a bit – tell me how he is a benevolent liberal but do so without mentioning any of the good stuff?
An exam question that I like to ask students in my Europe 1789-1848 class is "Given the original goals of the Revolution, is Napoleon a 'revolutionary' figure?" You can make some good arguments on both sides, of course. |
Sundance | 22 Oct 2009 5:22 a.m. PST |
He created back to work programs long before FDR ever thought of them
|
John the OFM | 22 Oct 2009 7:06 a.m. PST |
Doc Weaver asks "essay questions"? Eeeewwwww |
Old Bear | 22 Oct 2009 7:23 a.m. PST |
Napoleon was an Emperor, whether you like it or not. He was a leader, whether you like it or not, and he did more genuinely original things than almost any other single political figure I can think of. Trying to transplant modern terms and standards on historical figures is facile and will always be doomed to failure. For those who somehow find the moral high ground to decry him as a warmonger, I wonder what board they would be on now bleating if he hadn't, for this board would not exist. |
ArchiducCharles | 22 Oct 2009 7:34 a.m. PST |
What I find funny is why do some need to always say the "tyrant" Napoleon, or other such insults every time they talk about him. I don't hear anyone calling "Tyrant" Alexandre, "Tyrant" Francis, and I don't hear anyone calling Britain kings tyrants
why the double standard? - At least he did it on his own and was not handed the silver spoon from his mom and dad! - Spot on! He might not have been better than the rest, but at least he worked for it! |
50 Dylan CDs and an Icepick | 22 Oct 2009 7:50 a.m. PST |
[I don't hear anyone calling "Tyrant" Alexandre, "Tyrant" Francis, and I don't hear anyone calling Britain kings tyrants
why the double standard?] Because those guys didn't try to present themselves as liberators, modernizers, the embodiment of the Enlightenment, the Revolution, blah blah blah
When Alexander *did* start to get himself all stuffed up with those sorts of ideas, he came in for the same sort of ridicule. Another angle to look at this is the Michael Rowe / Philip Dwyer school of thought, in which they argue that Napoleon's state represents a big step forward for the power of the all-seeing, all-controlling dictatorial autocracy; a harbinger of things to come in European history. In this context, Napoleon's various "modernizations" can be seen as entirely self-serving, to secure the power of his own regime, because he needed such an apparatus to compensate for his lack of traditional, dynastic legitimacy. Finally, I think a lot of people indulge in teleology when talking about this period, emphasizing *modernization* as a benefit brought from the Revolution to these Old Regime states via Napoleon's armies. It's a classic historical fallacy: we see institutions that remind us of our own time, and we think, "Ah! Look how advanced and modern they were! That must have been good! Everybody must have appreciated that!" (The secular state, for instance, or rights for religious minorities like Jews.) But in Napoleon's case this thinking stumbles on at least two counts: 1) For a guy who was supposedly bringing the rule of law and constitutionalism to Europe, he certainly played fast and loose with his own laws! Pretty much like any other autocrat, the will of the Leader could – and did – supersede the law whenever he wished it. (And – getting back to Rowe and Dwyer's thesis – since Napoleon was very efficient and hands-on, that usually meant that he was more actively engaged in this sort of day-to-day tyrannies than most other leaders of the time
just cuz he was more efficient at doing so!) 2) There's very little evidence, since nobody did public opinion polling in those days, that majorities of people DID in fact like the regime or the changes it brought. The state was a lot more efficient at drafting men into the army
great
The state was a lot more efficient at censorship
great
The state was a lot more efficient at collecting taxes
great
The state was a lot more efficient at controlling and enforcing economic activity
great
Consider how many non-Frenchmen Napoleon clapped onto France. Millions of Germans, Italians, Belgians, Dutch, Catalans, and even Croats. Does anybody really think that anything like a majority of these people liked having wrenching changes imposed on them with force by foreigners? |
malcolmmccallum | 22 Oct 2009 9:26 a.m. PST |
Napoleon's march to Paris in 1815 hardly demonstrates the actions of a tyrant. France wanted him. All of France? No. Enough that he could do a bloodless coup with weeks of warning. By and large, he did NOT replace sovereigns of other states. Where he put his friends and family into roles as monarchs it was where changes in borders and political fealty left voids without clear authority. Democracy was not an option, of course, so he parachutes in an outside authority to prevent squabbling, bickering, and politicizing among the locals wanting to make power grabs. It was a way of giving these new nations a fresh start. France was no more a police state than any other. In fact, it was less so. It had a constitution that gave its citizens rights to trial and provided defence counsel. Was there a police force and was it looking for spies? Certainly, for it was at war and other nations were constantly spying on it. So if you are one of the people that likes to refer to Napoleon as 'The Tyrant' and France as a 'police state', in fairness you should apply those same labels to every other regime in history (and in modern times) that has some aspects of those things. So we get The Tyrant Francis II and the Russian Police State. |
50 Dylan CDs and an Icepick | 22 Oct 2009 9:37 a.m. PST |
[France was no more a police state than any other. In fact, it was less so. It had a constitution that gave its citizens rights to trial and provided defence counsel. ] Believe you're mistaken here. Napoleonic France was extensively more and more-efficiently policed than any other major European state. And of course those French police were everywhere that French soldiers stood, so you could get abducted off the streets of Berlin, for instance, and hauled off to Paris on charges of printing seditious materials. (That happened to 43 different people in that one city in the year 1808 alone.) Napoleonic agents arrested people all over Germany and Italy: publishers, professors, lawyers
and we haven't even gotten to the ad-hoc or arbitrary law practiced by commanders on the scene. For example, in 1811 a French cavalry officer in Braunschweig apparently tried to rape a local woman and was then killed by her husband. When a jury failed to convict the husband, Davout sent two regiments from the Magdeburg garrison to place the city under martial law, obtain the man, and then "try" him in a military court. Guess what
he was shot the next day. As for the rights to trial and counsel, these could be mooted at any time by the will of the emperor. In fact there were two "dark" courts that were set up to get around the "normal" systems, where the accused was denied counsel, and where the sentencing was carried out usually within 24 hours. But even within the context of the normal court system, Napoleon could intervene whenever or wherever he wanted to subvene the law. For example, I once researched a case in which not only had the accused been ordered convicted and executed prior even to their arrival for the trial, but then Fouché opened an investigation of the accused's defense attorney, because of the unwanted enthusiasm with which he had defended his clients, and importune way he had pointed out that the court had no jurisdiction over the case. Some great reading on this includes: Isser Woloch, Napoleon and His Collaborators Philip Dwyer, ed., Napoleon and his Empire Michael Rowe, ed. Collaboration and Resistance in Napoleonic Europe Louis Bergeron, France Under Napoleon [ in fairness you should apply those same labels to every other regime in history (and in modern times) that has some aspects of those things. ]
Absolutely agree there. I've said that many times: Napoleonic France was no better and no worse than any other autocracy or dictatorship. It was simply more efficient, and spread over a greater area, than most. It did, however, make claims to a moral superiority; claims which have been repeated rather uncritically by the regime's fans ever since. |
Ivan DBA | 22 Oct 2009 9:43 a.m. PST |
Napoleon was an ogre, Keraunos is a troll. |
Fred Cartwright | 22 Oct 2009 9:51 a.m. PST |
Napoleon was an Emperor, whether you like it or not. He was a leader, whether you like it or not, and he did more genuinely original things than almost any other single political figure I can think of. Trying to transplant modern terms and standards on historical figures is facile and will always be doomed to failure. I guess you could say the same about Hitler. :-) France was no more a police state than any other. In fact, it was less so. It had a constitution that gave its citizens rights to trial and provided defence counsel. They came a bit late to that then. IIRC Habeas Corpus goes back to 1305. |
ArchiducCharles | 22 Oct 2009 9:54 a.m. PST |
Great!! I was just wondering when we would get the usual comparison with Hitler. Just what this conversation was missing. |
50 Dylan CDs and an Icepick | 22 Oct 2009 9:57 a.m. PST |
|
The Black Tower | 22 Oct 2009 10:00 a.m. PST |
Was he worse than the Kin he replaced? Was he better or worse than Oliver Cromwell? Or Joe Stalin If you think of the surveillance we are under today can you really claim his was the police state? Oh and quite a number of English kings were called Tyrant, just look at some civil war fags! |
Fred Cartwright | 22 Oct 2009 10:15 a.m. PST |
Great!! I was just wondering when we would get the usual comparison with Hitler. Just what this conversation was missing. Now you know perfectly well no discussion on Napoleon can do without a comparison with Hitler! |
malcolmmccallum | 22 Oct 2009 10:19 a.m. PST |
Part of Bonaparte's problem was that though he was a liberal and a child of the revolution, though he might have honestly yearned for peace, he could never allow principle to interfere with the practical. Truth was not nearly important as appearances. Being seen to make grand and sweeping changes for the public good was great and it allowed himself to think he was actually doing it but he was not about to let those grand sweeping changes get in the way of getting the job done. This may get me in the dawghouse but it is as though he has the presence and rhetoric of Obama with the practicality of Cheney. I believe that Napoleon was honestly well intentioned but, perhaps necessarily, because the scale of what he saw himself trying to accomplish was so vast, he did not appreciate how every d'Enghien affair, which might seem to advance the cause in a practical sense, did more to undermine it. The ends justify the means (except in cases where the manner in which things are done is the desired end) |
ArchiducCharles | 22 Oct 2009 11:02 a.m. PST |
- Now you know perfectly well no discussion on Napoleon can do without a comparison with Hitler! - |
Bandit | 22 Oct 2009 11:27 a.m. PST |
In my view Napoleon would be a tyrant compared to say, Reagan, but compared to his contemporaries I do not think so. And while some argue that leaders should not have the justification of "in their time" – I think it is valid (to a degree). A lot had changed between the Napoleonic Wars and the ACW. Many now would say that Lincoln and Napoleon were contemporaries, but they weren't. That said, many would also call Lincoln a tyrant – he did suspend Habeas Corpus
If I do one thing that is liberal (and someone doesn't like liberals) then I am labeled a liberal. If I do one thing that is conservative (and someone doesn't like conservatives) then I am labeled a conservative. If someone *really* doesn't like me, then they use stronger words
like tyrant. I don't think that the alternative to tyrant is liberal, curiously there are things in between and many people sorta bounce around the scale depending on the subject and the time. Cheers, The Bandit |
Scutatus | 22 Oct 2009 11:28 a.m. PST |
"France was a police state
" Suggesting the other nations weren't? Like Great Britain, where we had the rule of the Iron fist? Can anyone say "Peterloo massacre?" No sorry, I don't think Napoleon was actually any "worse" than his rivals – but he was a man of his time who happened to be better at it. That's not to say he was "benevolent", but then no ruler I can think of ever truly has been. As for "tyrant" – who wasn't for crying out loud? |
Chouan | 22 Oct 2009 11:52 a.m. PST |
"Napoleon was an Emperor, whether you like it or not. He was a leader, whether you like it or not" He was a leader, I'll grant you. An Emperor? only because he said he was! Jean Bokassa was the "Emperor" of the Central African "Empire" (previously Republic). Why? Because he said so, and had the power and authority to make his people accept this, for a while. Did that REALLY make him an Emperor? Or was it merely symptomatic of his megalomania, as "President" (or First Consul) didn't sound grand enough? |
basileus66 | 22 Oct 2009 12:12 p.m. PST |
Napoleon wasn't a liberal, and probably he never intended to be one (though sometimes he claimed to be a revolutionary, but for propaganda purposes more than anything else). Said that, which country was liberal in the early 1800's? Great Britain didn't allow Catholics in the administration, kept the slavery in her colonies and a government system that only allow for political representation of the proprietary class. Prussia, Austria and specially Russia were autocracies. Spain wasn't better. Nor Portugal. USA had liberties recognised by law for every citizen in the country, fair enough
but problem was that neither slaves nor Indians were considered citizens, and then they were out of the system of liberties and rights guaranteed by the Constitution. And that without mention that the half of mankind (women) hadn't any political rights at all. So Napoleon wasn't a liberal
but few people would have been able to claim they actually were in Napoleonic times. As for warmonger. Again, he was a warmonger. And again all the other governments were warmongers too! Starting with Great Britain (the attack, in time of peace, of the four Spanish frigates in 1804 being a case in point), following with Prussia, Russia, Austria, Spain, Portugal or whatever country you can imagine. The only limitation that a government felt to declare war was that they would have thought they would be defeated, i.e. fear. Tyrant. These is a more tricky accusation. He behaved like a tyrant sometimes. After all the definition of a Tyrant is that of a ruler that forfeits the rule of the Law and makes his own law as he deems appropriate, even passing rules against individuals instead behaviours. And Napoleon did (Enghien case being the most infamous). However, usually, Napoleon stuck to the Law, even when he could have done otherwise; i.e. his wasn't an arbitrary government. So I would say that yes he was a tyrant
sometimes, but not all the time. My two cents. |
ArchiducCharles | 22 Oct 2009 12:16 p.m. PST |
Chouan Emperor, i.e. The male ruler of an empire France was an empire (do you really argue that?). So Napoleon was an Emperor. |
John the OFM | 22 Oct 2009 12:16 p.m. PST |
Go back and look up the original meaning of the word "Tyrant", as used by the Greeks. Throw away all the accretions the word has acquired about being "evil, cruel not nice," and so on. When you go by the use of the word as the Greeks understood it, Napoleon could be described as nothing else but a tyrant. There were GOOD tyrants, and there were BAD tyrants. |
Mulopwepaul | 22 Oct 2009 1:00 p.m. PST |
"Tyrant" to the Greeks was never a value-neutral term. The arbitrary nature of the tyrant's rule always had a negative connotation, even if some tyrants were considered exemplars of necessary evil if the only alternative was anarchy. Napoleon was indeed a tyrant; the more interesting question is whether he was necessary or inevitable, given the nature of the Revolution which produced him. I would argue that the universalist and violent ambitions of the Revolution made military rule inevitable, and that one Revolutionary general or other was inevitably going to first cow and then supplant the National Convention. |
britishlinescarlet2 | 22 Oct 2009 1:20 p.m. PST |
Suggesting the other nations weren't? Like Great Britain, where we had the rule of the Iron fist? Can anyone say "Peterloo massacre?" Out of context, the outrage at Peterloo (an accident waiting to happen, not a contrived act) and the Government's crackdown on reformists and the Six Acts eventually led to even greater reform. Not that I disagree with what you say about "The Tyrant" of course, but it is incorrect to juxtapose him with Peterloo. Pete |
Mulopwepaul | 22 Oct 2009 1:29 p.m. PST |
Furthermore, Peterloo was in large part a product of anti-Revolutionary paranoia; without the imperialist Ogre Napoleon having stoked such fears, the Reform movement might have been able to proceed without such violent opposition. |
Scutatus | 22 Oct 2009 3:00 p.m. PST |
Possibly, possibly not. The British Empire came to be pretty good at using force to suppress peaceful demonstrations. For instance in South Africa, India etc. One incident you could call an accident, but incident after incident is argueably more likely general policy. And there were many many incidents, albeit over the course of a century or two. I'm not sure "anti-revolutionary paranoia", real or not, really justifies – or explains – the actions. |
mweaver | 22 Oct 2009 3:09 p.m. PST |
"France was a police state
" Scutatus: Suggesting the other nations weren't? Like Great Britain, where we had the rule of the Iron fist? Can anyone say "Peterloo massacre?" Britain didn't even have a full-time professional police force at the time. Indeed, it was because Britain was such an anti-police state that the government had to depend on poorly-trained alternatives
like the yeomanry cavalry responsible for Peterloo. Incidentally, in the Parliamentary reforms leading up the Metropolitan Police Act of 1829 and the County Constabulary Act of 1839, one of the arguments consistently used by reformers was the argument that full-time, trained police armed with truncheons rather than muskets could break up illegal assemblies without provoking riots. |
Chouan | 22 Oct 2009 3:09 p.m. PST |
"Emperor, i.e. The male ruler of an empire France was an empire (do you really argue that?). So Napoleon was an Emperor." Was Napoleonic Fance an empire? Was the 3rd Reich an empire? "An empire is a State with politico-military dominion of populations who are culturally and ethnically distinct from the imperial (ruling) ethnic group and its culture; The Oxford English Reference Dictionary, Second Edition (2001), p.461" Perhaps they are. However, the ruler doesn't necessarily have to be an Emperor. General Bonaparte effectively ruled other, non-French, territories as First Consul, and wasn't regarded as an Emperor. However, not being content with personal rule, he espoused the hereditary principle, and, unable to adopt the title of King, for reasons of pragmatism, he chose that of Emperor. Now, if people WANT to call him Emperor, and thus perpetuate his self-agrandising and egocentric megolomania, they, of course, are free so to do. However, countries such as the UK refused to acknowledge his right to the title, as did the Hapsburgs, and Russia, when they weren't constrained by his military might. I, therefore, feel free to call him by his rightfully earned title, General, and feel somewhat irritated by effectively being told that I'm somehow puerile for not allowing him to continue to enjoy the self-styled dignity of "emperor"! "Starting with Great Britain (the attack, in time of peace, of the four Spanish frigates in 1804 being a case in point)" That would make the USA a warmonger in starting the Second World War in the Pacific by attacking a Japanese submarine before a declaration of war, BEFORE the attack at Pearl Harbour. In any case, the Spanish, if I remember correctly, fired first, after the RN fired a shot across their bows. |
mweaver | 22 Oct 2009 3:13 p.m. PST |
Scutus, the government HATED using the army for crowd control, almost as much as the army hated it. I recommend you read Tony Haytor's "The army and the crowd in mid-Georgian England" (1978). |
Scutatus | 22 Oct 2009 3:18 p.m. PST |
Hmm. Perhaps "police state" was the wrong terminology. But it was hardly a free democracy where all were equal either. Oppression abounded, was kind of the point I was trying to (poorly) make. I will read the book, thank you. |
Mulopwepaul | 22 Oct 2009 3:39 p.m. PST |
"I'm not sure 'anti-revolutionary paranoia', real or not, really justifies – or explains – the actions." One can't unring a bell. Once the Revolution chose terror and the guillotine as its primary weapons against the ruling classes, every movement that openly drew inspiration from the Revolution was likely to be viewed as a grave threat by those ruling classes, eliciting similarly extreme responses. |
Bandit | 22 Oct 2009 4:39 p.m. PST |
On the subject of "should Napy have the title of Emperor?" Yeah, I mean, should Obama really be called a president? I know the country is a democratic republic and that the law states the title of the head of state is President, but really
there have been other countries that fit that same general description and they called their head's of state by other titles, so I'm not sure it really makes sense
Silliness. Cheers, The Bandit |
Russian Bear | 22 Oct 2009 5:44 p.m. PST |
It is better to die for the Emperor than to live for yourself. |
Theword | 22 Oct 2009 5:57 p.m. PST |
It seems..odd.. that you would refer to him as "General" as opposed to Emperor. I guess to those of us that don't live/come from the UK it's hard to understand. But no doubt this is something that you were taught by your father and his father before etc etc etc
and so it will continue in your part of the world. Personally I wasn't conditioned to think of him as an Emperor.. it's just what the history books have always said therefore I took it for granted. Anyway
TW |
ansbachdragoner | 22 Oct 2009 7:30 p.m. PST |
Ok, now in danger of, as Churchill put it, wrestling with a pig – or in this case a troll
. To claim that Napoleon's title of Emperor of the French was invalid simply because it was 'self proclaimed' is absurd. How do you think the titles of Czar, Kaiser and King came about. Somewhere along the line someone 'self styled' themselves as this. Just because it's been that way for a long while doesn't make it any more official. Really, weren't such beliefs what caused the bloody revolution in the first place? Did Charlemagne run a just and democratic poll before being declared Holy Roman Emperor? Next thing we'll be hearing that people are born into classes, and should not advance beyond their station in life. With regards to the UK being a liberal place to live during the Napoleonic wars, could someone then please explain the plight of the Convicts sent to Australia for minor infractions or for holding political views contrary to that of the government, to work in conditions of virtual slavery. A lot of Pro Irish and Scottish, or for that matter republican – thinkers were given a one way ticket down under. Even worse, consider the plight of the poor bloody Australian Aboriginal peoples, who were virtually annihilated by this ‘liberal' regime. In my humble opinion, it is an exercise in futility to try to apply modern social conventions and ideas to people through history. Next up someone will be saying that Napoleon didn't have a good enough Occupational Health and Safety policy for his army, and that factories during the Industrial Revolution should have been submitted to a forward thinking carbon emissions scheme Silliness. I was actually browsing a book in borders the other day in which the author called Napoleon a 'Tyrant and a Corsican warmonger' because, in the authors view, Napoleon should have kept Louisiana and thereby helped abolish slavery in the United States. So basically it was his fault that Slavery continued on in the USA. Just silliness. |
nsolomon99 | 22 Oct 2009 8:10 p.m. PST |
That decides it then, thanks Condottiere, great point, a triumph for Occupational Health & Safety which qualifies the great man as a paragon of benign benevolence instead. I think we can agree the question is now resolved. Now, onto the next critical discussion
ummmm
was Queen Louise of Prussia truly,
as described by napoleon
. "the last man in Prussia". |