"The personal opinions of Napoleon." Topic

Dear Sirs, as these is a Napoleonic Discussion board and I'm quite new here, please, to know more about the interesting people who post here, I beg to know who are those who tender to support a positive vote for Napoleon and who are more for the negative. Even those who are neutral too.

With only the words of "favour" or "against" work for me.

Thanks in advance.
(By the way, my vote is on favour!)

Amicalement
Armand

Antichrist

French

I admire him as a Military leader….but i tend more towards neutral in my feelings……Wellington is a hero of mine so a little bias from me

I'm with kyoteblue

Ambivalent.

Or if you prefer, in the language of modern pop psychology:

Conflicted.

What does the side that wins the vote get? My vote can be bought…

chicks dig guys over 5"10.

Definitely a Great Captain. For the rest, as McCauley said of Cromwell, "a great, bad man."

Poutine?

I would have said neutral, my preferred selection being Austria. However the general attitude on these boards has pushed me into the pro Napoleon camp.

Ogre.

Extreme case of short guy syndrome.

Without a doubt a brilliant general, charismatic leader, and gifted organizer – one of the great captains of the modern age and perhaps the last of the great imperial conquerors. A tragic figure in the sense that his immense ambition, which pushed him to such dizzying heights, also brought about his downfall.

He was an authoritarian monarch, much in the spirit of his time, and the power he wielded did cause suffering to many. However, this has to be judged in the context of the role of warfare and military power previous to the cultural shift the western world underwent following the general democratization of political systems during the 19th and 20th centuries, and the reactions to the two World Wars.

Perhaps best compared to his hero Alexander the Great, in the sense of being an aggressive and successful general who came to power on the strength of his army, pursued a series of staggeringly quick and comprehensive conquests at the head of a uniquely capable army, and established an apparently dominant empire which in the end did not outlast his fall from power.

He should have died at the head of the Old Guard at Waterloo – as Alexander would have.

An Ogre, who ate babies.Or that may just be the British propaganda.
A great military leader but with little care for the lives of his soldiers, I verge on the neutral to negative.

I think Thomas Hardy put it rather well in The Dynasts, in which the Spirit Sinister says:

"War makes rattling good history, while peace is but poor reading. So I back Buonaparte for the pleasure he will give posterity."

The Corsican Ogre has certainly given us wargamers a great deal of pleasure!

I admire Napoleon for the way he was able to rise from a relatively humble background to rule most of Europe.

He was a great general but I think he also implemented some positive changes in Europe too such as the code Napoleon, metric system and improving the legal position for Jewish people.

Wellington was a great general too but he didn't have to run a nation at the same time. When he was prime minister he wasn't very succesful and was far from popular due to his opposition to political reform.

Poutine?

French fries in gravy?

As a Person Ambitious, Duplicitous, Egotistical and ultimately Unrealistic.

As a Commander a brilliant Strategist but occasionally flawed Tactician.

Brilliant opertionalist
Superior tactician
Imposing statesman
Fine mind
Poor human manager
Disasterous quartermaster
Insirational
Petty

a Tyrant

one of the key figures of two centuries.

so, great and terrible depending on your criteria for the time

good question actually,

I rather hope is stays up for a while, and doesn't get side tracked.

Poutine is french fries in gravy

link

Poutine Napoleon has peppercorns in the gravy.

He dressed his soldiers in really nice uniforms, as did his enemies, in an age of short pitched battles. There in lies the rub.

French fries in gravy sounds really nice but those pictures are really unappetising.

I'm also ambivalent about Napoleon. You have to admire the fact that he created so many great wargaming scenarios but the guy cheated at games, which makes him the lowest of the low in my book.

I do apologise, it was rude of me. Have deleted my comments as they were childish.

Thank you. Now let's draw a line under this.

Not specially likeable. Though not specially unlikeable too!

Nappy.

A few good quotes and without him Tolstoy's book would have just been "Peace" and probably no have been as popular.

According to Kleber he was nothing else than a miserable charlaton, according to Wellington Jonathan Wild the Great after Fieldings mock – heroic Prince of Theives, who was an adventurer who survived by building ever bigger and better confidence tricks, pruly upon the unsound basis of successfull smaller erlier ones, according to Tulard his genius is shown in propaganda.

He conducted some brillaint campaigns – yet on the other hands lost miserably in 1812 and had a string of defeats from 1812 onwards.

He never understood logistics – did not learn anything out of his failure in Syria and Poland 1807, left twice his soldiers to persue higher own goals – 100 percent egoistical, not caring for his soldiers.

He never even touched the class of Alexander the Great and there are others who were much better than him (like Grant).

Destroyed documents to be able to write his own glorified history.

For myself Napoleon was the GREATEST if not in the top 2 or 3 greatest military Commanders of all time,Grant does'nt come close to the greatness of Napoleon.

Captain Gideon

I still think delaying the 1812 campaign kickoff to avoid carrying fodder for a fleet of horse drawn carts was a bit silly.

Grant was the only one who orchestrated two campaigns on two fronts and got the logisitcs right, Napoleon never accomplished that, he was much inferior to Grant.

Grant? Are you serious?

vW, can you give us an idea of just how big that axe is, so we can guess when you'll be done grinding it?

Both brilliant and flawed. Depending on who is fighting France and when in time depends on who I root for, prefer to play. I will gladly push lead and plastic in any shade of jacket around and pretend to be as good as any of the actual generals.

vW I agree that Grant was also both brilliant and flawed, and in the end more successful than Napoleon. Both Wellington and Lee thought he was perhaps one of the greatest commanders ever, for whatever their opinions are worth.

Gee I don't know. Did Grant ever manage to lose 90% of his forces or ever abandon his troops to their fate while fleeing "for the good of the Union"? Twice?

Grant managed to be (granted a poor)president without declaring himself emperor for life.

Of course he was big on cronyism so maybe he did try to emulate the master in some things.

Grant? U.S. Grant? Well he did get a tank named after him.

Napoleon? well the 'great, bad man' quote has been used already, but that is close enough for me.

He was a romantic hero, a piratical adventurer, a gambler who did not know when to stop etc etc

He does bestride history like a colossus though, up there with Julius Caeser and Alexander the Great.

"Grant? U.S. Grant? Well he did get a tank named after him."

And Wellington had a WWI battleship 'Iron Duke' and a WWII medium bomber; Scharnhorst and Gneisenau had warships, and Blucher a colliery steam engine built be George Stephenson c.1813.

But Napoleon…?

POUTINE – French Canadian dish – french fries with gravy and cheese curds on top

"But Napoleon…?"

Well Santa Anna styled himself "The Napoleon of the West"…

There's a Hotel Napoleon on the Avenue de Friedland in Paris

Well Santa Anna styled himself "The Napoleon of the West"…

Which proved to be a fallacy first by Sam Houston at San Jacinto in the Texas War of Indepedence and again In Mexico City by Winfield Scott in the Mexican American War.

Back to Napoleon. I am a serious admirer of his skill as a military commander and organizer. On his reforms in regard to rule of law The Napoleonic Code was light years ahead of France under the monarchy, the Reign of Terror, and the Directory. France became a meritocracy under his rule where a person could truly become a self made man.

On the obverse he created a police state in which political descent was ruthlessly suppressed. He had a rapacious foreign policy that he did not know when to quit. Finally he managed to hack off every major European power to the point of intolerability, thus guaranteeing there would never be a lasting peace.

Overall the negative overbalances the positive and therefore as a commited beleiver in personal liberty I believe he was a Tyrant. Therefore I must say I am against him. Salut y'all!

Bruce the Texas Grognard

arthur
and Wisconsin had a battleship named after it.You ever been there?

Poutine was a suggestion, instead of popcorn.

Bonaparte was an opportunist adventurer in the great tradition of Gaius Julius Caesar, William the Conqueror, Mr George Washington and Alexander of Macedon.

Genius in operational strategy, and a compelling leader.

……..but deeply flawed and unwilling to learn or take advice. Tyrant – yes.

Ultimately self defeating because of an inability to see an alternative to his ruinous Economic embargos.

Against Boney, with great admiration and respect.

I believe the word the gentleman was looking for was:

"Putain"

In English = Slang term for the player wearing the Number 2 jersey in a Rugby union team.

Incidentally the mortician who delt with Lady Diana was at the time the Hooker for the French Police Nationale Ladies XV. A lovely lady too.

I rate him as a general if not as a hero.

he was many things to many people…and it is evident that he still is today as shown by all of us who frequent this and many other Napoleonic boards, books, wargaming and other sources of information etc…

I don't know why Napoleon is rated so highly, despite his grief shortcomings in Egypt and then from 1812 ro 1815, he is nothing compared to Alexander the great.

Also I don't understand the low opionon of Grant – for me one of the best ever generals.

Grant? U.S. Grant? Well he did get a tank named after him

What you get named after you seems a bit hit and miss. Simon Bolivar gets a whole country (not even the one he liberated), while Garibaldi only gets a biscuit. (And Hannibal's family got the city of Barcelona, and its still got the name)

On Napoleon, was willing to spend unlimited French and other allied blood in pursuit of his imperial ambitions. Otherwise a nice bloke.