Happy 255th Birthday to Napoleon Bonaparte

avirosemail,
Re the Ridley Scott film on Napoleon...D'accord!!! What a joke that film was! Better to hunker down with the latest bio by Andrew Roberts, "Napoleon, A Life". Looong, but very readable and extremely well-done.
Bonne Anniversaire, M. Bonaparte!

Yes, it is the 15th....the 255th anniversary of the Emperor's birthday. Bon Anniversaire.

This trip and that of last summer I saw more coverage and evidence in museums , plaques and statues of Napoleon, such the statue of him on horseback in Rouen, the plaque in the centre-ville in Grenoble ( I figured there had to be something dedicated to him in Grenoble, ), and the Napoleonic Museum in Brienne-le-Chateau, which the Travel Office girl in Troyes had so enthusiastically recommended and urged me to visit. She said she herself had been there twice. I can see why. Her recommendation was absolutely right. The Museum is ideal for anglophone Napoleon haters to see.

Totally agree on the Andrew Roberts books ( he has written more than one) on Napoleon.

It's not just the Anglos who see Napoleon in a negative light, I think most of Europe sees him has a power hungry tyrant. In Spain he's seen as a proto-Hitler/Stalin for the atrocities committed by his army against the civilian population. You will find all over the country memorials to massacres committed by the French. The experience was so deeply scaring that it has become part of our national psyche and the war against the French is often seen as a war of liberation/freedom -
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Second_of_May_1808
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Third_of_May_1808

Not to mention all the historical objects and artwork the French looted and damage to historical places all over Spain like Montserrat, Olite, Zaragoza, Alhambra and the list goes on and on

It is no coincidence that one of the first places Hitler visited when he took over Paris in WWII was the tomb of Napoleon to pay his respects, from one tyrant to another.

Alas I share the same birthday, but not the same ambitions in life thankfully. That man was nothing short of an authoritarian tyrant.

I think we can agree Napoleon was not directly a nice person, but you can say the same about his opponents, they weren’t much better.

I am not a supporter of making one person responsible for all the bad things that happened. There are cases you can do that, but here you have to take in account the circumstances, the context, the time period he was living. And with the arrival of the French revolution and so the uprise of democracy nobility was scared to death losing their dominant possition. They dit everything and I mean everything they could to stop that.

Every territory he conquered he introduced legislation based on the principles of Enlightenment, better known as the Code Napoleon. What was not always in favour of nobility like the abolition of serfdom, actually a form of slavery. In many cases their wealth was based on that. Nobility was only interested keeping everything under their thumb that was not in their favour. With Napoleon a new form of leadership arrived undermining nobilities position, so the aim was keeping him under their thumb too. Btw many democracies their legislation nowadays is still (partly) based on that Code.

So for nobility stopping ambitious Napoleon was one thing, not losing their dominant position another. And from what I have learned in many cases Napoleon was provoked to fight, but he was so talented that he won most of the battles. Hate was part of the propaganda against him to bring him down and think still have influence how we see him till today.

WW1 was needed to make an end to the dominant position of nobility in Europe, that means a horrendous amount of people lost their lifes because of a small group didn’t (understand) accept that democracy became the better way to live together for everybody. WW1 made WW2 possible, but that’s another discussion. Again Napoleon was certainly a tiran, an opportunist making advantage of the situation , but saying this you have to look to his opponents too, they were far from innocent.

One thing for sure, Napoleon was a man of contradictions. A champion of meritocracy yet raised all his extended family and friends to positions of power and nobility. Much to his detriment as they were generally all incompetent.

I was not trying to claim that standardizing street addresses somehow makes up or compensates for Napoleon's many cruelties; I was mentioning it as a rarely mentioned bit of trivia about him.

I am of the outlook on the powerful that says that most of us will never have a lot of it ourselves, and we will find our lives governed by others whether we will it or not (willy-nilly) A rights/justice -based system of government which involves representation of each citizen, kind of like a democracy, is preferable to rule by oligarchs or aristocrats or megacorporations because in the former everyone has at least a little say in how their lives are controlled -- contrast it with the cable company or the phone company; if you're unhappy with them they needn't bother to laugh at you behind your back -- they can laugh directly in your face because they are the only game in town. OTOH, if people keep getting injured at the intersection at the end of my street and a few of us neighbors complain about it to the right office(s), we can get a traffic light installed.

To bring this back to travel -- as mentioned above, the alternatives to Napoleon were not any better and in many cases were worse. At least he believed in citizenship! You can't say that for the Russians or the Prussians and so on.

For a less tyrannical perspective on Napoleon, and a good introduction to the assimilation of Jews into European life (sort of) try this pop history book by former NPR radio host Michael Goldfarb:

Emancipation: How Liberating Europe's Jews from the Ghetto Led to Revolution and Renaissance

https://www.amazon.com/Emancipation-Liberating-Europes-Revolution-Renaissance/dp/1416547975/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2BXJQSI27N2PO&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.bqJGUsd9Ljex0uore3u_ow.6rkBE9GccmgX2gvLaYLXoQy8UVTNLKkArJcQJ_KOqOQ&dib_tag=se&keywords=Emancipation%3A+How+Liberating+Europe%27s+Jews+from+the+Ghetto+Led+to+Revolution+and+Renaissance&qid=1723854203&sprefix=emancipation+how+liberating+europe%27s+jews+from+the+ghetto+led+to+revolution+and+renaissance%2Caps%2C163&sr=8-1

The co-incidence of the War of 1870 and the rebellion of the slaveholding states against the USA here in America has many other parallels, since the Jews of Spain and Italy and Russia and on and on were much better off under Napoleon than before.

I went to a live reading by Goldfarb when he was on the book tour and the audience was very moved by his delivery and the strength of his portrayals. He is very good on how Napoleon's forces compelled city fathers all over western Europe to dismantle the gates of the ghetto themselves, like physical laborers, and to work up a sweat and blister their hands taking a sledgehammer to the ironwork, while the newly elevated citizens of newly declared French departements looked on.

After the reading an Anglophile and I were chatting about it and he insisted that the French were wrong for doing that, and that was why their victories didn't last. If only 'they had been more moderate, and eased the changes in with small reforms' instead of revolutionizing these societies, the new order might have held.

This remark reminded me of William F. Buckley's opposition to the civil rights bills of 1964 and '65 -- he insisted you have to let the Southern racists reform themselves in their own sweet time. SMH.

It's true that in 1802 Napoleon as First Consul sent an expedition to to Haiti to reimpose slavery, which Robespierre's and his fellow Jacobins had passed during the Reign of Terror. That was done in Feb of 1794, by July the Thermoderian Reaction takes place and Robespeirre and his clique fall victim to the national razor blade. The Terror ends.

Still, you have a free Haiti but which other countries are going to meddle in their affairs with the aim of restoring slavery. Look at the diplomatic alignments of Europe in 1795. Napoleon and his whiff of grapeshot incident doesn't take place until Oct, when the successors to Robesperre the Directory call upon him the save the government from a royalist coup.

Look at who/which country is sending troops to Haiti with the expressed aim of knocking over the free Blacks there and restoring slavery. This is 7 years prior to Napoleon's failed attempt in 1802

A fair number of those Haitians moved and resettled as free men in Phila and NYC, only to have their grandchildren castigated by people resisting service in the Union Army, who blamed them for their sort-of forced enlistment.

Of course, many of them were newly arrived from the isles and dikes of the old country themselves.

I want to award a kudo or two to Nick and Carlos for their comments and inspiring me to look a little more at Napoleon's relations with Spain, because otherwise I would not have found out about the afrancesados, those parts of Madrid society who wanted the French to usher in positive reforms to their country:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afrancesado

As we've discussed above, there were many people in Spain who thought Napoleon was a better alternative, though not such a great guy. And after some double-crosses, he was seen as an even less of a great guy. But enlightenment values were a plus for many people.