"Good Napoleon / Bad Napoleon..." Topic

Reading now a English book on Trafalgar and Waterloo, I begin to think about the several ways each nation's history sees this man, and I must say that the english version is usually the one who treat Napoleon more harshly, how is to become of , even now, with 200 years apart and the image of big bad ogre (or a more modern Hitler-like) to endure??? How is it that we still cannot get a normal vision of this man??? Many now can deal that Alexander sexuality was normal at its time, that Rommel was a great general but under the mental spell of Hitler… Even the French has yet to name a single street or alley to Bonaparte, seems like they are afraid of him or posible terrified of what this legand can become…

[Even the French has yet to name a single street or alley to Bonaparte]

I think you may be mistaken. I've lost count of the numbers of Parisian streets named after napoleonic Victories, Marshals, Generals, etc. The number of French Romantic-period authors who penned adoring portraits of Napoleon is likewise mind-boggling.

Dominique de Villepin, currently the French Prime Minister, is quite a fan. He keeps a bust of Napoleon on his desk and wrote a very flattering biography of him.

France almost always had a warship named "Napoleon," beginning as early as 1821. (I don't think they have one at present, though.)

French TV routinely does celebratory documentaries of Napoleon, including a recent one of Waterloo that was a big hit, and with the bicentenniels coming up, I expect a great deal more of this is on the way.

You'll find no shortage of Napoleon admirers in Britain, the US, and even Germany and Russia. And of course, they are quite thick on the internet, too, as you're about to learn….

There is a dock named after him in Antwerp. And if you go to Waterloo, you'll wonder who really won the battle.

He may have been the Corsican Ogre, but he is still very popular with many people.

Well, as everyone know if you are in this forum you most be a Nappy fan, but that doesnt mean that everyone agrees if he was demon or an angel. Besides most romantic rememberence of the Napoleonic Period in Frence ended with the defeat of 1870 and the fall of NapIII, and I really found funny how in Paris there a lot of streets for Napoleon´s Marshalls and Generals, but not of him, of course there is the Invalides and the Arch.

I imagine that Napoleon admirers probably outnumber Napoleon-bashers by at least 10-1. The popular culture is generally favorable to him, and he has a number of amateur and history-buff type magazines dedicated to him, as well as a pretty large selection of coffee table books like the Hourtouille series, etc., that are frankly adoring.

He is of course, occasionally a popular bad-guy, too, such as in the "Sharpe" series, where he's always off-stage but nonetheless very much part of the story.

Thoughtful criticism is generally limited to scholars, whose audience is much smaller.

Are we talking about the Corsican Ogre?

lemmor, you don;t have to be a Nappie fan to get mail from this forum. I just never tuened off Nappies.

I asked basically the same thing and got mixed answers

TMP link

Propaganda is an insidious beast – in the case of English anti-napoleon agit-prop you could hear it on a theatre screen just last year. A couple of centuries of that sort of thing is going to have a lasting effect on the english-speaking world.

Les Howie wrote;
'Propaganda is an insidious beast – in the case of English
anti-napoleon agit-prop you could hear it on a theatre screen just last year.'

That's interesting, I haven't heard it. Can I ask you what you mean by English propaganda? I have got you right – you are saying (with the word 'propaganda') that there's a national or party conspiracy to distort the truth about Napoleon for political ends?

Which Englishmen are doing this? I'm interested. Do you have their names?

Ye3ah, I wouldn't be holding my breath for "Blucher: The Magazine!."

I suspect that he was never very popular with the Women of France. He certainly got a lot of their sons, brothers, and fathers killed in twenty years.

Greg

The best description of Napoleon I've heard was expressed kinda like this:

"Napoleon sat astride the border between genius and insanity. Genius attempts the possible. Napoleon tried to achieve the impossible."

I think you can argue that Napoleon was both — he was one of the sharpest guys of the time, but also unrealistically believed (for a time, at least) that he had no limits.

As a result, he did a large number of things that France chooses to be proud of. He also did a bunch of questionable things that tarnish his image.

Condottiere: "I find it amusingly ironic that the English, in their period propaganda and literature, who accused Napoleon of wanting to conquer the world, would eventually go on to do what they accused him of attempting to do during his short reign, and this shows man's relative nature."

I believe the prevaling mentality of the period was that, you can conquer non-European places all you want, as long as you don't attempt to conquer Europe (read "The World")

Condottiere wrote:
"I find it amusingly ironic that the English, in their period propaganda and literature…"

Condottiere, could you please tell me which English author or authors you mean? I'd like to see what you mean.

Thank you in advance for your help

In the short-lived US syndicated comedy-adventure series, "Jack of All Trades" (starring Bruce Campbell), Nappy was portrayed as a dwarfish, comic-evil villain figure. The usual English-speaking depiction!

I prefer the nuanced portrayal of Ian Holm in the criminally underrated "The Emperor's New Clothes" movie.

I have a number of very good french friends – they all see him as a hero.

The problem with this is that the question is laoded from the start – what do you mean by "good"? After all, N, Hitler and the Romans all built roads to move troops around, but they brought economic benefits.

My choice of avatar tells you what I think of him.

David Chandler summed up Napoleon I as "A great, bad, man" which pretty much covers it for me as well. Comparisons with Hitler, a genocidal maniac, are odious. Napoleon was a romantic hero, a swashbuckler who mounted a coup d'etat and then pushed his luck a bit too far.

Napoleon's most vociferous critics were French as were his most ardent admirers. Aside from his military prowess (sheer good fortune, others would say) his legacy is still active (The Code Napoleon).

Cacadores, curl up with a couple of Hornblower books. Sure, its fiction. But "Corsican Tyrant" rattles around in your brain, and unless you make a deliberate effort to study the period with some accuracy its what sticks.

A deliberate effort to denegrate Napoleon? Does propaganda need to be deliberate? And from what I have seen most people who produce propaganda believe that they are upholding truth.

There is even a Napoleon street here just outside of Ottawa, Canada

There's no question that Napoleon was a brilliant general. I just got back from Paris and was astounded at how many streets are named after his victories and his marshals/generals. It would be like Washington DC having every third street named Bunker Hill or Patton. Just riding the subway is getting a dose of propaganda. Upon viewing his remains, my wife noted it was a mighty big sarcophagus for a little guy. What with the Arc de Triomphe and the Invalides, naming a street after him would be anti-climactic.

My opinion about him as national leader has wavered over the years from appreciation of his organizational talents in formalizing the gains of the Revolution to dismay at his aggressive foreign policy. Others have said he was not at fault because the crowned heads of Europe would not let him be. In the last few years I've become convinced of his aggression by his rejection of the Allied peace offer after Leipzig. Having lost an enormous multi-national army in Russia in 1812 and suffering another crushing defeat in Germany, he turned down a peace offer that would have left him on throne and France with the frontiers won in 1795, not bad for someone who had lost badly twice in two years. All he had to do was evacuate his garrisons in Germany and let the Allies redraw the map there. He rejected this, France was invaded and he was exiled after a few months of fighting. It's a deal I would have taken.

I recently read Paddy Griffith's "Art of War of Revolutionary France". Paddy is stridently anti-Napoleon. But he has an interesting theory; Revolutionary and then Napoleonic France was addicted to plunder. Any move back to an ordinary peace footing would see a profound recession/depression, as indeed happened to Louis XVIII in 1814-1815. Napoleon preferred that the French discover they didn't like peace after all on someone else's watch.

Les, C. S. Forester doesn't refer to Napoleon as 'the Corsican Tyrant', his CHARACTERS do. This is very much in period. It is what British naval officers of the period would have thought and said. For them to do otherwise would be the same as writing an ACW novel where all the white characters referred to 'persons of color' rather than 'n*****s'. And, yes, I know the latter has been done – and came out looking pretty stupid, too.

Les Howie wrote:

'Cacadores, curl up with a couple of Hornblower books. Sure, its fiction. But "Corsican Tyrant" rattles around in your brain, and unless you make a deliberate effort to study the period with some accuracy its what sticks.

A deliberate effort to denegrate Napoleon? Does propaganda need to be deliberate? And from what I have seen most people who produce propaganda believe that they are upholding truth.'

Just a little confused now. You said Hornblower is fiction? But that the author thought he is upholding truth? Then the book would be sold as a factual book, wouldn't it?

I would think that if it's not deliberate, then it can't be a conspiracy to distort the truth for political ends. But you say the book is fictional? You say you don't want to study the period with accuracy: then will you ever know what is truth or not – is that really the author's fault?

I'm a bit lost!

I have Paddy's book, although I have not read it cover to cover and was not aware of his approach. However, I would agree with it. If you look at Napoleon's finances (and ehre there are direct analogies with Hitler), the level of spending on the military is unsustainable without victories/indemnities and forced "subsidies" from Spain plus of course large numbers of Allied troops. The Continental system was a disaster too and in 1811, much of Europe collapsed under the strain, notably France, UK and Austria. Napoleon remarked to Mollien, his finance chief that he was invading Russia primarly for political reasons, but also "because my finances look weak". Both needed to sustain a huge military to support their power, leading both into Russia in search of resoucres. It is a complex subject and we do not have all the data, but the expenses v income comparison is very revealing.

Because 'propaganda' is a national or party conspiracy to distort the truth for political ends, I asked Condottiere what

" English, …..period propaganda and literature…." means. But he didn't have an answer.

Can anyone help? Thank you so much.

I don't think the U.S. was in step with the rest of the English-speaking (meaning English-dominated) world in their attitudes toward Napoleon, at the time or since. Officially, the Madison administration was angered by both the Brits and the French at the time, mostly over their treatment of American ships, but there were many Americans who were admirers of Napoleon then and since. At least a couple of ACW generals were named after him: Napoleonic Jackson Tecumseh Dana, and Napoleon Bonaparte Buford, both Union generals (the latter a much older half-brother of John Buford of Gettysburg fame). Also, after N's defeat some of his French supporters moved to the U.S. His talents as a general were certainly admired, and West Point, in the pre-ACW days, had a Napoleon Club of officers and cadets who met to study his campaigns in their "spare" time.

Just what was it about him that got the British backs up, anyway? Was it strictly balance-of-power considerations? The threat to Hanover (homeland of the Georges)? or what? True he was hardly an ardent supporter of democracy, but then neither was the British aristocracy of the time, and he was most likely preferable to the Reign of Terror that the Revolution had devolved into.

oops! that Napoleon Jackson Tecumseh Dana, not NapoleonIC!

[but there were many Americans who were admirers of Napoleon then and since.]

Not that many. I'd say that a lot of Americans were enamored with France, obviously because of the special relationship during the revolution. But even that began to wane by the late 1790s, to the point of undeclared war, and by the time TJ is president, a devoted Francophile like him is having a very hard time convincing anybody that Napoleon is a man we can do business with, either in Louisiana, or elsewhere.

Part of that is because Napoleon reneged on trade treaties and agreements to stop plundering US ships. But a large part of that is also residual attachment to Britain. The very same educated, bourgeois Americans who might have been warm to Napoleon, were usually also financially tied to British commerce.

Condottiere

Thank you for your reply. If I understand you good, the English had a conspiracy to distort the truth for political ends (=propaganda)

''in their period propaganda and literature…"

and the evidence (if I understand you right):
that their newspapers contained political cartoons.

Do you mean the Whig – party newspapers with their cartoons very hostile to Wellington and always sympathetic to Napoleon? I know there were English writers praising Napoleon and even congratulating him on his victories, even after Waterloo. Do you mean they were acting together or they planned it to help Napoleon?

Or do you mean the Tory newspapers showing the opposite? Or the radical leaflets making fun of everybody?

I'd be grateful if you could tell me which ones have propaganda. It's a bit confusing. I'd be grateful if you could help. Thank you for your answer.

Condotierre
Re: ''English Propaganda''

Thank you very kindly for your reply. You did say that the English had
''period propaganda and literature''.

Now you write:
''I've never really delved into this area of history.I just gave this stuff a cursory look,''

Therefore I wonder why, if you
''just picked up on the irony in the broadsides and caricatures,'' and ''never bothered to check which political party paid to have a particular caricature published in a paper''

…then why did you accuse the English of 'propaganda' (a national conspiracy to pervert truth for political ends) if ''that's why I(you) made my original comment''.

If I could quote you further, you say 'I don't recall ever seeing one that was pro-Napoleon'. In my country, they are never pro-polititions, they are made to laugh at all different polititions. Is it different in your country? Do all your newspapers all support a foreign man your country is at war with?

Is there somewhere else I can find the reason? Was the word 'propaganda' a mistake?

Thank you

>"The very same educated, bourgeois Americans who might have been warm to Napoleon, were usually also financially tied to British commerce.<"

Why do you think it was the "educated, bourgeois" Americans who were most likely to have been pro-Bonaparte? There were quite a few (former) French people in the U.S. — Louisiana and elsewhere; and there was quite a bit of anti-British feeling in the U.S. at the time, especially in the frontier areas where the Brits had encouraged the Indians to attack the settlers.

It was suggested that Napoleon's skill might have been luck. I would suggest that all generals needed a some luck, or good fortune if you prefer, to be consistently successful. Or you might look at it in such a way that successful generals (and admirals) created situations where they could get lucky. i.e. give their opponents a chance to make a mistake.

Michael Mathews

You sound like a businessman!

[Why do you think it was the "educated, bourgeois" Americans who were most likely to have been pro-Bonaparte? There were quite a few (former) French people in the U.S. — Louisiana and elsewhere; and there was quite a bit of anti-British feeling in the U.S. at the time, especially in the frontier areas where the Brits had encouraged the Indians to attack the settlers.]

Well, Lousiana wasn't part of the US yet, if I understand the question correctly.

In the 1790s, more than two-thirds of American commerce was with Britain. That commerce was done out of the US port cities. Overwhelingly, that was just four cities: Boston, New York, Baltimore, and Philadelphia. (The southern ports tended to ship first to one of the Northern ports, not directly to Europe.)

The merchant class who ran this trade were definitely not French, and definitely an educated, prosperous Bourgeoisie. So their livelihoods – and the prosperity of the US's most important cities – were directly tied to Britain. (Hence the Jay Treaty.)

Sam Mustafa

The reason for American confusion on the subject derives from a fact they downplay; that that their War of Independance would have failed without French help. In these circumstanses, you don't need to be pro-Nap. any more than Churchil was pro- Stalin. It simply sealed an official acceptance of Napoleon the man, where his more fanatical and mad supporters in America could get a hearing. Just as they could get one in Britian after WW2

That's fine. I'm saying that the "ideology" of Americans (in a sense, both then and now) was to do whatever was best for business.

>"Well, Lousiana wasn't part of the US yet, if I understand the question correctly."<

The Lousiana territory was purchased in 1803 — from Napoleon — 12 years before Waterloo! Louisiana (that is, the southern part of the territory) became a state in 1812.

There were, of course, many people of French descent in the U.S. even before that. But you didn't have to be French to appreciate someone who could pull the British lion's tail and get away with it.

'I'm saying that the "ideology" of Americans (in a sense, both then and now) was to do whatever was best for business'

Where did you ever come up with that for a national ideology?

Kevin, I'm sorry that Dave is in the Dawghouse right now, so you have to go looking for your second-string of people to pick fights with, but please dispense with the "Literal Man" rubbish.

If you actually want to understand that sentence you excerpted, then read my book. You know where to find it. Chapters 3 & 5, in particular. (How's that for a Kiley-style blow-off?)

You have a lot of nerve whining about how people never let you finish arguments about your own research and writing!

Well Sam, let's not start on who picks fights with whom. Your 'national ideology' crack was silly, though it is quite in line with your usual rubbish that you continue to 'publish.'

Lord, talk about whining.

As soon as I can find a copy of your book that is reasonably priced, I'm going to get it. Right now, it appears that it is another overpriced 'academic' work.

Sincerely,
Kevin

One last thing, Sam. If you don't want to be taken 'literally' don't say things that are very easy to be taken that way. Or, try to explain what you mean. Then perhaps your panties won't get in such a knot when people react to your baiting, insults, and general lousy demeanor.

Sincerely,
Kevin

PS-Now, this time when you press the complaint button, don't come back with the nonsensical, 'Gee, who did that?' You're becoming transparent.

[baiting, insults, and general lousy demeanor]

Whom are we describing?

PS – Never pressed the complaint button. Ask Bill. (But you already knew that.) You have more than enough suspects, methinks, given the many many friends you've acquired with your charming online persona.

PSS – Cheer up, man. Dave will be out in a mere 22 hours. I realize that I am a poor substitute for your Main Obsession, but you can do it, man! You can hold out for 22 hours, surely! Have you considered Yoga? Or perhaps some horizontal refreshment. Something, anything, to un-pucker you for just a little while will surely be of benefit to us all.

Sam Mustafa

I quite like this forum, but it can be difficult with people hidden behind nick names, who are you and what books have you had published?

Oh, so DH got a 24 hour forum ban? way to go Dave.

ps how do I get an icon in my title screen?

Mark, surely you don't think anybody would actually want "Sam Mustafa" as a nickname!

I'm just me:

sammustafa.com

Although I probably ought to be somebody else, and in so doing, get out of here before I get into any more trouble.

Thanks Sam, I'm not a wargamer, so the name wasn't familiar