"Was there a "good guy" in the Napoleonic Wars?" Topic

In many wars it seems people, not just wargamers, view one side or the other as good and the other side as evil (World War 2 being the most obvious example), in others, it seems we generally view both sides as evil (the Iran-Iraq War being a good example), and in yet others, we often view both sides as different, but without any moral imperative (many dynastic conflicts seem to fall into this category).

With that in mind, during the Napoleonic wars, was the Coalition(s) good, neutral, or evil? What about Napoleon himself? Why?

Yes there was, Napoleon, because without him we would not be playing Napoleonics today.

Yes, but what came before "Napoleon" was still similar warfare involving "most" of the European powers. I would not consider any power as "evil", but then again it depends on the lense you view the warfare from.

If you were a peasant living in Germany, Poland, Italy or so many other areas, you would view any major military force that negatively impacted your family/home as evil.

Well, I think the 200 year interval is good to put some distance between the heated opinions

Coalition – good points – trying to restore order and stability; bad points – a bunch of hereditary dictators trying to maintain their right to rape the environment and oppress the peasantry

Napoleon – bad points – not a hereditary dictator, but a dictator – not able to know when to stop – big ego; good points – at least allowed promotion by merit and did establish a reasonable legal code (at least for France)

So – I actually am fond of Napoleon; seems to me there could have been a lot worse outcomes than Napoleon winning

Let the games begin!

I give credit to Napoleon for putting the excess of the Revolution to an end. Had he been willing to stick to his gains, he could have gone down as a hero. He descended into a cycle of wars with the other continental powers that caused immense death and disruption. The treaty of Amiens could have brought peace if both sides had stayed committed.

I give credit to the brits for staying steadfast. Other continental powers were too flighty, though they did most of the fighting and dying.

Of course Napoleon was a bad guy, he just made a reputation for wanting more than all the other bad guys.

Yes there was, Napoleon, because without him we would not be playing Napoleonics today.

Very true. Without him, what would we call all those figures? "Early 19th Century French"?

Based on the last two Marengo games we played, they would be called the Moreauvian Wars because Bonaparte didn't become emperor.

Wellington and Nelson.

I nominate Talleyrand with a nod to Fouche. After all, they both helped make Napoleon the man he was.

Depends on your point of view.

If your Spanish the French will be bad guys. Really bad guys, and Bonerparte would be like some backstabbing dark emperor. The British wouldn't be bad, but they would be kind of opportunistic allies whose motives were suspect.

If your British, then the Wellington and the British are the good guys, along with the Portuguese and Hanovarians. The French are clearly the bad guys what with trying to invade us and burn our homes, rape our women and children, kill our leaders and patriots and eat our superior food.

If your French then you probably view the British and Russians as being the bad guys with the Austrians and Prussians not far behind.

If you come from a different angle then your views might change. Anti-imperialists must consider the French as the bad guys. Monarchists would view the European armies fighting against Boney as the the good guys. Anglophobes will see the British as bad regardless, as will Francophobes, Russophobes, Germanophobes (???) regarding their respective bias. A person with left wing views would probably view everyone as bad guys except for Tyrolean rebels and the like. A right winger may have pro Napoleon tendencies as they have hard ons for dictators but since fascism and nationalistic beliefs are intwined I suppose it would depend on where the right winger was from. A right wing Brit probably would think the French were the good guys but a right wing Frenchman would.

For myself I think of the good guys as being the British (a little island, a little army, helping all the others with money and guns, threatened with invasion by a hostile power, helping Portugal and Spain) , Canadians (Defending their homes from expansionist invaders) Russians (conscripted peasants, invaded), Portuguese (invaded), Hanovarians (invaded and taken over), the Austrians (wear white, invaded, often beaten gives them an underdog charm) the Poles (fighting for independence against three big land powers), Native Americans (fighting for their land against racist colonisers) , Brunswick (doomed and tragic leaders, invaded and occupied but never give up fighting) , the Swedes and the Danes ( whose ever heard of evil Scandanavians? Danes get big good guy points for being very tiny and trying to fight GB alone, also wear red, a heroic colour)

The neutrals being Prussia (just a very sinister power, bad guy looking uniforms all dark and foreboding, but they are invaded and occupied by an oppressive enemy) the Netherlands (the Dutch are good, The Belgians bad so balance out as neither), the Spanish (still harbour the inquisition, but wear white, are betrayed bybtheir former ally, invaded and subjected to brutal occupation) and the Ottomans (crazy Islamic empire, slavery but invaded, occupied and have an outdated army)

The Bad guys – The French (violent republican terrorists give way to genius emperor, invade everyone in Europe, troops behave very badly, eventually lose- and as we all know good always triumphs over evil) the USA ( start a warn to steal land from Canada, lose that war, try to sell warships designs to France).

My views anyway.

Brazilians consider the British to be a bunch of rapacious, conniving, thieving imperialists, the Portuguese to be hugely incompetent and the French to be… well, good, because they're French and because without them, Brazil never would have entered the West.

I have university students (albeit naive freshmen) who seriously think Napoleon was a good thing because he got the Portuguese Court to move to Brazil. The Brits were bad because they used the opportunity to enthrall Brazil to their brand of imperialism.

"…Russophobes, Germanophobes (???) "

I don't think he's here yet. Check back in 170 posts.

Another thought might the discussion as to if the anti-Napoleon forces would have allowed him to stay in power.

I don't see any honest effort by the British to accept him, nor the Austrians…

One might be able to make a point that Napoleon had no choice but to continue defensive wars (smile).

Dan

Prince Eugene
Marshal Bertrand

Loyal to the end.

DM

No one has mentioned Sharpe or Hornblower yet.

One of the reasons why the period survives as a good gaming period is that everyone's motives were all muddled. Everyone can be a good guy, and everyone can be a bad guy. Who you choose as your favorite says more about you than about them.

Me? I gravitate towards the British, and away from the Austrians.

I'm going to say the Prince Regent, but it is because I happen to think some of his descendants are quite good.

namely the illegitimate ones I have ancestry from.

the rest are all a bunch of muppets.

Obviously 'We' were the good guys.

Who 'We' are depends on your starting point of course, as in all wars in history. I can think of very few wars in history where one side can be positively identified as evil, in fact only one, and many of them thought they were doing the right thing.

Apart from a gamer's point of view, perfectly defined by Mithmee, what Frederick said stays true, but with a further detail: the good points for the coalition, that is, restoring order and stability, were in favour for a stagnant and overprivileged ruling class, nobility and church, which was to lose it anyways thanks to revlutionary and napoleonic heritage and impact on society.

So was there a good guy? Yes, Napoleon was the good guy, and his own contradictions made him even more interesting. Wellington was a "bad" (not really evil) guy, and his obvious personal qualities make him a most interesting bad guy. It does not really depend on where you are coming from, but on if you uphold monarchic propaganda disguised as national resistance like in Spain, Germany or Russia, or prefer progress as a real national advantage.

After all Dutch, Italians, Germans and Iberians were not more oppressed by pro-napoleonic monarchies and administrations than they were by pro-absolutist (or likely) monarchies and administrations… The more advanced states in the world, in terms of both people representation and politic, civic and social codification*, were the French Empire (even under Napoleon's dictatorship) and the USA. They weren't enemies IIRC…
*Obviously apart from the British system, which the same British were not intent on extend to other countries…

Whoever invented the bricole.

A man of honour was certainly Poniatowski (probably to the detriment of the future of Poland; Poland had a form of representative democracy at the time at least the equal to Britain, and without the rigged elections and plebiscites of France (Stalinist in their results!).

As a dane I must say we were the good guys. The british are obviously the villains, evil inavders who bomb civilians into submission.
The brits: Give us your navy because we are afraid that else you might actually end up on the side of our enemy although you are neutral right now.
The danes: Give you our navy, no way, why should we.
Brits: Beacuse we say so, and everybody has to do as we say.

The british then proceed to bomb civilians untill they get the navy. Danes noi wonder side with Napoleon.

Obviously the best (or goodest… *sic*) good guy was the king of Sweden, Gustav IV Adolf who thought that he was The God's Annoited One destined to slay the Antichrist (aka. Napoleon) and was willing to lose his kingdom by vehemently opposing The Evil Empire TM in every manner.

You really can't be more good than that, eh?

Yep – I always chuckle at the protestations of British honour and high-minded war goals when compared to the rapacious French … threaten our SEA POWER! Threaten our LUCRE?

Despite a (very thin) veneer of cultural change, the Napoleonic wars were just an extension of the political one-upsmanship that had been going on for centuries. There were no "good" and "evil" sides in the way that we think of WWII (with good reason), and have tried to envision wars afterward (with little success).

In the end, it all comes down to glory, good uniform designs, and the game! ;)

Good guy? Sir John Moore. A humane trainer and leader of men, initiator of essential and pioneering army reform, and a truly noble warrior.

optional field

There were no 'good' guys or 'bad' guys. They were all equally good or bad, depending on your point of view. As I've said before, Napoleon was just better than the rest for most of the time.

And anyone who thinks we would have had a lovely, lovely period of peace without Napoleon, are living in cuckoo land. They all wanted power, wealth, land etc and nations often changed sides during the period and even fought their fellow allies at times.

So basically, as I say, no goodies or baddies – just people doing their thing for that period.

<<As a dane I must say we were the good guys. The british are obviously the villains, evil inavders who bomb civilians into submission.

The british then proceed to bomb civilians untill they get the navy. Danes noi wonder side with Napoleon.>>

Quite right. We behaved like a bunch of Vikings, didn't we?

Interesting article on how Napoleon and a Russian general provided British ministers with evidence that the French intended to invade Denmark and use the Danish fleet to invade Ireland, and then Great Britain.

link

The Americans. Why? Just because :)

On a more serious note, there wasn't a real 'Good Guy' during all of this. I give the King of Prussia credit for being the least bad. He seemed to be a genuinely nice guy who was perhaps overwhelmed by the job.

Perhaps the good guys are simply all the humble soldiers, who as Rifleman Harris put it, 'live and fight and die in obscurity', enduring hardships, being loyal to their comrades and bravely facing their foes as they do their duty? Surely they deserve our respect, no matter what leader they followed?

Otherwise, my vote goes to the Canadians: there can be nothing wrong in resisting an unprovoked invasion of your homes by a foreign country.

The Canadians are clearly the good guys. Fought of a larger bunch of rapacious, backstabbing opportunists.

"A UCL (University College London) academic has found evidence that Napoleon successfully duped the British by planting false intelligence. The rumour – that France was mobilising its navy to conqueror Ireland – was a major catalyst for the first terror bombardment on a European capital and its civilians"

Good guys and terror bombardment – think not!

And yes argument could be made that the british are just danish offspring by either direct viking invasion and secondary norman (viking) invasion – that would explain a lot!!!

<<Good guys and terror bombardment – think not!>>

I didn't say they were.

As for this "terror bombardment" nonsense – and I see the article makes the point of stating this was "the first" such act of its kind (probably to do nothing more than "sell" the article) – how would you describe every other bombardment of a besieged city prior to 1807? Or indeed since?

There were no good guys or bad guys.

Just a lot of European nations with a serious conflict of interests going to war to solidify their position on the continent.

France was lucky to be the local superpower and having a strong and very aggressive leader who thought he could take on the rest of Europe (and did so for a while, until like most attempts at European hegemony, the rest of Europe turned against him.) Or to put it another way, Napoleon was looking for glory and the way to achieve it was to have as many people killed in battle as possible, in which case he really made a lot of "glory" in his day.

The whole good guy/bad guy nonsense is just the anglophone propaganda of the time.

Napoleon did just the same that Alexander, Scipio, Caesar, Alaric, Odoacer, Charlemagne, Cnut, William the Bastard, Edward I, Edward III, The Black Prince, Henry V, Ogedei Khan, Charles the Bold, Louis XIV, Charles XII, Peter the Great etc did or tried before him, ie grab somebody else's land to get rich and powerful, which for a long time was the ideal way for a nation to get ahead.

At least we got the Congress of Vienna out of it and an end to the general cortθge of European hostilities which had been going on since the 16th century.

The "good guys" are the ones on whose side you find yourself.

From this remove it is difficult to choose although a good yardstick is that the "bad guy" is the one who does not have the home field advantage in any given fight…unless you are an advocate of might makes right in which case the opposite might be true.

Thinking in terms of good guys and bad guys is not useful in my opinion. No powerful government has ever been the good guy (and i am talking about every age including this one). The bigger the Government/greater the centralisation of power the worse its human rights record usually is and the more enslaved its people become. The good guys are ordinary people who just want to live their lives & be left alone without Governments, Monarchies, Bankers & Religions trying to push them around.
In regards to the Napoleonic era neither France or Russia or Austria etc were the Good guys, but in my opinion most of the trouble was stirred up by the British and the Banking families.

His Grace, the Duke of Wellington.

And Richard Sharpe, of course.

Moreau
Dupont
Bernadotte
Klebιr
Lecourbe
Richepanse

Bernadotte?! I'm all for cultural relativism, but … Bernadotte?! Really?

The first time we visited the Swedish royal abode, I taught my son to proclaim "There is a traitor to his Emperor" every time he saw a painting of that jackanape. ;)

TelesticWarrior

Good post

Patrick R

The 'colourful' events and backstabbing at the Congress makes for interesting reading. I recommend you read, if you haven't already done so – Adam Zamoyski's Rites of Peace.

As for ending of hostilities – no way. Had Napoleon not returned the Allies may have well gone to war with each other, and threats were made. Plus, later on, we get events like the Franco-Prussian War and then The Crimean War – Britain, Turkey and France against Russia – so no real end to wars at all, just different allies.

Pitt the Younger. As a believer in the rule of law and constitutional government he was a staunch opponent of the revolutionary tyranny (not an opponent of the revolution's initial aims) and Bonaparte's despotism. His idealism makes him, broadly speaking, "a good guy".

Meanwhile, over in France, Bonaparte is a hero because he gives France a new, powerful identity and dishes out rewards to people….sometimes based on actual merit. He too reforms laws society.

For me, Pitt's view wins out because Bonaparte was driven by pure ego and would subvert his reforms for personal gain. Still, a case can be made as to why Bonaparte can be considered a hero.

Prince Eugene and Gen Maj von Gneisenau are my two votes

Yes there was, Napoleon, because without him we would not be playing Napoleonics today.

Very true. Without him, what would we call all those figures? "Early 19th Century French"?

Or maybe the *STLL* revolting French?…

(Napoleon DID do quite a bit to make an end to the Revolution)

Historically I'm not sure. But if we were to talk about a game then the good guys are the side I'm commanding. Ask me, I'll tell you.

We are the good guys.
They are the bad guys.
Given that this forum is world wide, we could get all kinds of different perspectives of this.

I'm Canadian, thus the Canadians are the good guys.

Marshal St Cyr sounds like he was one of the good guys.

Poniatowski too (although I am biased in this because I have a soft spot for the Poles and I am currently playing as Poniatowski in Michael Collins Diplomacy Campaign!).

I can't for the life of me see why anybody would think Bernadotte was one of the good guys. He wasn't an outright baddie either.

Bernadotte was a survivalist, there are quite a few of them.

The good guys are usually the ones who win.

Bad guys are usually the ones who use force to impose their will on others. Bad guys could also be those in positions of power who cause loss of life through incompetence, ignorance and/or pursuit of personal aggrandisement.

Napoleon was a bad guy,Nelson,Wellington and Blucher were good guys.

Good guys don't hurt other people.
There are no 'good' guys in war.
Possibly, there are good causes- but war makes bad men of us all while we fight it.
When the fight is over, if the cause was 'good', you may become a good guy again.
As I read this back I realize I am inadvertantly paraphrasing Winston Churchill.