"Napoleon was not that short" Topic

Napoleon Bonaparte's actual height was 5 foot 6 inches which, in those days, was a completely average height for men. So where did all the confusion come from? The difference between English and French measurements. The English thought the French pre-Revolution unit known as the "pouce" was equivalent to their inch, but it was actually slightly longer. So everyone thought the dictator was only 5'2".

Are you taller than he was? I am.
QED

Wellington's nose wasn't that big either.

If you measure it in millimeters it is.

Everything is bigger if you measure it in millimetres. 15mm figures are 20mms tall.

Maybe Napoleon is suffering from scale creep?

…Napoleon Bonaparte's actual height was 5 foot 6 inches which, in those days, was a completely average height for men. So where did all the confusion come from?…

Maybe the "short" comment originated wif' an angry Josephine.

Just saying…

I'm thinking when you are standing next to a bunch of guys in tall bearskin hats, you might look somewhat short!

Just remember… if you're of "average height," then roughly half of all the men in the world are taller than you!

The average American male today is supposedly about 5'9". Put that guy in a crowd of men, and he'll look short, just because there are so many six-footers all around him.

That said… I did always use the Foundry model of Napoleon in my French collection, surrounded by Front Rank figures for his aides, because the Foundry model is so short and dumpy!

I have heard/read that Napoleon's legendary shortness was simply the result of British propaganda, cartoons, etc.

Revisionist nonsense. He was 4'3".

Wellington's MI5 agents would sneak in and remove the lifts from his boots and file down the heels, making him look shorter and thus ridiculous.

I thought is was the Bourbons secretly adding an inch (25mm) of the end of his cane every evening making him think he had the shrinks and fueling his napoleon complex.

So, if he wasn't short, how come his nickname was "Le Petit Caporel"?

Being surrounded by 6' guardsmen in big hats probably didn't help.

This sort of thing isn't very useful as they cheated and put Napoleon in a big hat and everyone else bare headed. He still looks like a midget compared to Obama.

Brown looks like a teddy bear… And medvedev like Barbies Ken puppet… So sweet ;)

..how come his nickname was "Le Petit Caporel"?

Same reason French for 'girlfriend' is 'petite amie', it's a term of endearment.

He still looks like a midget compared to Obama.

But, as an artillerist, he'll eat Obama's lunch from the free-throw line.

Ron

E were a' short a' a badger and twicet a' mean ta boot.

"But, as an artillerist, he'll eat Obama's lunch from the free-throw line."

But Obama has somewhat more nuclear throw-weight at his disposal.

Whenever this comes up I am reminded of Napoleons portrayal in 'Time Bandits', especially his comments on Alexander the Great.

The Emperors reputed stature is part of his enduring charm. His tomb would accommodate a large gentleman.

Well, he was also very fat (ducks).

The question of his height appears to be as 'immortal' as he is!

There goes history again, ruining all the party talk and cheap laffs!

Sarko still wins …. prettiest wives : Cecilia Ciganer-Albeniz, & Carla Bruni vs. Napoléon's Joséphine (nice enough) & the Austrian princess (meh).

And you don't even want to learn the disrespectful Russian word which we use for Madame Medvedev at our house. No amount of high-grade Swiss plastic surgery, nor French cosmetics, nor photo-shopping of her official images, can fix the curse with which she was born.
:-)

- Sasha

I'm just finishing up painting Tom's 54 mm resin Napoleon done in caricature. Talk about a short Napoleon! Or a really big horse.

link

I think I've had that figure for three years, but I was just so intimidated by it that I am only just now finishing it up. I hope to post pictures of the little stick-legged pot-bellied emperor soon.

David

The comment about Napoleon standing next to all those grenadiers in tall, bearskins is probably close to the mark. I was the fourth tallest man in my ACW reenactment company at about 5-11. But the three tallest guys were all about 6-6 and in line I stood right next to them. For years everyone thought I was short and were amazed at my height when they saw me away from the big tall guys :)

Napoleon's supposed short stature was based on Cruikshank's cartoons of the period, which portrayed him as tiny
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Napoleon's other nicknames were much more common, such as 'Le Tondu' the 'shorn one' as he cut his hair short upon becoming First Consul.

The other nicknames the Grande Armee gave him were 'John of the Sword' and 'Father Violet.'

B

The relevance of his height being…? Sorry, but I don't get it.

That it's another myth, widely believed.

YouTube link

Old news…. I know this since the move "time bandits"

Oh dear …..

The name Father Violet, le Père la Violette, actually was not used by the army. The name is said to refer to Napoléon's adoption of that flower as an emblem as he departed for exile in Elba, foreshawdowing his return during the next spring.

However, the name actually traces to a 4-page propaganda pamphlet published in Paris during the Cent Jours.
Dialogue entre le père La Violette et le père Du Lys. Signé par le père La Jonquille
Anon.
Paris : impr. de L.-P. Setier fils, 1815.
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The violet, returning in the Spring, is used to contrast with the lily of the Bourbons. There was no Father La Jonquille, by the way.

The snappy little nickname then makes a couple of brief appearances in works eulogizing Napoléon after his death.

The story gets told really well, set in 1814 on he eve of the departure for Elbe, with an old guardsmen begging Napoléon not to forget France, with Napoléon carrying around bouquets of violets, and so on here :

Macedoine, souvenirs du quartier latin ; Paris a la chùte de l'Empire et pendant les Cent Jours ; Correspondance avec Béranger
Émile Labretonnière
Paris : Lucien Marpon, 1863.

The author was a writer of fiction, melodramas and Bonapartiste propaganda in the mid-1800's.
Here are his works: link
At the end of the 1st Empire, he was a young boy at the Lycée Impérial (on r. St.-Jacques, today the Lycée Louis le Grand).

From ths popular work we leap into English with puplication of the story in London's Pall Mall Gazette in 1865. The charming nickanme has then appeared in numerous French and French-biased secondary works, whose authors, like Kevin, did not bother to check the appealing little story, since it fit their biases so well.

Perhaps more realistic nicknames, at least ones from the era and not added later, were "Straw in the Nose" (a reference to his accent in French) and "Jupiter Scabin" (a reference to a devious and conniving character from Molière, given to Napoléon by his own ambassador in Warsaw, the abbé de Pradt).

Kevin, would you like to establish for us that "John of the Sword" was really a nickname given to Napoléon by the Grand Army? Maybe you could take just a few minutes to check one little thing like this, and see if it was a name really given to Napoléon by the Grand Army, before telling folks all about it as if it were true?

- Sasha

Other than historical accuracy/pedantry, does it matter exactly how tall he was?

Why are his admirers so desperate to disprove the British propaganda? Would actually being short detract from his reputation or achievements (for good or ill) in any way?

I really cannot believe this nonsense has been raised yet again and so soon. This forum has a reasonable search engine and it will show that it has been flogged to death, even in the last six months.

Do we really not have better and more interesting issues to discuss? The recent thread on the importance of Hougoumont for instance, or whether Wellington would have marched to Blucher's help on 18th June. Here, some real experts taught the rest of us. I admit, even in this, we have had some excellent primary source material quoted but…come on guys…get a life.

Half of the population of the UK has an IQ below 100 (by definition as pointed out above)…but is this a normal distribution and is it skewed downward, by folk who wonder about whether an iconic personality (like him or not, he did give his name to an era and to this forum) was vertically challenged?

The relevance of his height being…? Sorry, but I don't get it.

That's easy, we all just want to know if he could get on Theme Park rides!

I really cannot believe this nonsense has been raised yet again and so soon. This forum has a reasonable search engine and it will show that it has been flogged to death, even in the last six months.

I completely reject your argument.
By what laws are we confined to discussing only topics that have not been discussed within whatever time frame YOU wish to hold?

Once something has been discussed, it may never be brought again?
Total nonsense.
When you are discussing things with your friends, do you blow off a topic on the grounds that "we talked about this last May!"?

Besides, I don't remember it being discussed, either lately or at all.

Do we really not have better and more interesting issues to discuss?

Start one. Or, are you too busy imitating a Napoleonic pedant?

I've searched and searched for a thread devoted to Marie Louise's bust size. Alas, to no avail.

There had to be some reason why Napoleon was in such a hurry to return to Paris in late 1812.

I think it is absolutely hilarious how often if comes up, it cracks me up every time.

What we haven't had for ages is a good Monty vs Patton busty up.

Once again, I can only refer to the timeless Time Bandits.

"Five foot one and conqueror of Italy, not bad huh?"

"Straw in the Nose"

I thought that was just old French slang, used by snobby Parisians to describe anybody from the provinces, meaning sort of: "Redneck" or "Hick."

"Kevin, would you like to establish for us that "John of the Sword" was really a nickname given to Napoléon by the Grand Army?"

I've always wondered about that one, myself. (It's in Elting, so it must be true, end of discussion.)

(Sasha, if you keep this up, poor Kevin might have to read a different book.)

Some years ago, Kevin used to claim that Napoleon's German troops loved him so much that they called him the Schlachtenkaiser, "the Battle Emperor." He got that, of course, from an English-language secondary source.

I traced down the origin of the quote in original German documents and correspondence and discovered that it was in fact a pejorative, not a compliment. Those German troops called him that when complaining about his endless wars. For example, Fritz Wolf to his friend Louis (Ludwig) von Kaisenberg, 4 Oct, 1812, reacting to the rumors that Napoleon won't stop until he gets to India and becomes "Herr der Welt" (Master of the World):

"Now I've been thinking, that perhaps the mighty Schlachtenkaiser has finally had enough, and with the capital in his hands, he'll make peace. And moreover, it has occurred to me, and the hope has entered my heart, that perhaps we'll start marching back soon — back to you, dear friend, and everybody else — and we can be happy again."

I would comment on the OFM's comment but feel a sufficient time period has not elapsed since that sort of comment has last been made.

Sam,

You know, the late (and to my lights, great) colonel Elting did not have access to google. He was also writing an introduction, a summary, an overview. He also wrote a pretty large book on the French army, and did include some critical comments. Kevin, on the contrary …. well, that's why I introduce these "issues" with "Oh dear ….".

"Straw in the Nose" for Napoléon was reported by de Las Cassas in the "Mémorial": "Napoléon arriva à l'école militaire de Brienne à l'âge d'environ dix ans. Son nom, que son accent corse lui faisait prononcer à peu près Napoilloné, lui valut des camarades le sobriquet de la paille au nez."
It sounds realistic to my understanding of how to pronouce in French. My wife laughed immediately when I showed it to her, and she has a rather "Parisian" sense of humor.
link
And was it was picked up in English right away:
link
From that famous appelation, I think it migrated to a more general indication that one was a "hayseed".

"John of the Sword" traces to two progaganda pamplets and a governement bulletin published under false names during the Cent Jours.
The fable is …. just as his grenadiers called Frederich the Great by the nickname 'Fritz', so did the grenadiers on Elba call Napoléon "Jean", indeed they all said to each other that "Jean de l'Épée" will soon again be "Jean de Paris" and France will be saved from tyrannical government and foreign enemies. Again, we have some retroactive foreshadowing of the return from Elba …. Napoléon as a man of destiny, touched by fate, beloved of his troops, blah, blah, blah …. the usual tropes of Bonapartiste propaganda.

This Cent Jours propaganda was essentially forgotten, like Father Violet, until the eulogizing of Napoleon after his death. It jumped into English in Sir Walter Scott's hagiographic "biography" And, then it got repeated as a nickname given to Napoléon by his troops ever since in French and pro-French biased works, including Houssaye's very popular "1815" and colonel Elting's "Swords …." and so on, until Kevin so thoughtlessly posted it here as if it were true.

Sources :
link
link
link

- Sasha

This whole thing is about how far from the ground was the top of Napoleon's head……

I tried to say how impressed I was, by the spin off about the nicknames applied to him. Funny, how often daft subjects do lead to something useful, I freely admit.

I have, myself, opened several threads with historical questions and been amazed by the talent that is then suddenly available here.

But any of M. B's dimensions are of less interest to me than his contribution to the Napoleonic Wars. If he'd been called Eustace Buonaparte, we'd all be fans of the Eustachian War Forum………and his tubes

I blame Rod Steiger…

I do know what you mean. Funny, I actually think he was very good in the role. Hardly flattered Gen Buonaparte but maybe realistic?

No, it was Sergei Bonadarachuk who has even more to answer for……

As long as he is measured in inch and not in cm it has to rediscussed.

:)