IS A FAIR ASSESSMENT OF NAPOLEON POSSIBLE?

I was thinking about this question in terms of one day writing a biography of Archduke Charles.

It would be quite straightforward to emulate the recent biog by Hertenberger and take the material from the dynastic historians like Criste and Angeli. It would be easy to reject the critiques by Clausewitz and Delbruck as a couple of Prussians pushing nationalistic agendas and being advocates of total war - well look where that got them. Looking at Rauchensteiner, it could be said that he wrote his PhD dissertation on Hiller, something of a rival to Charles, but ha, ha, Hiller was that good in Italy in 1813 that he was soon replaced by Bellegarde. Likewise with our own Jack Gill, one could dismiss his comments as those of a Confederation historian, for whom Austria was only a limited angle, or some of the authors of Krieg 1809, about whom one could say they were just in thrall to Prussia after the 1866 defeat.

This is of course nonsense, but precisely what we are invited to do by Cronin and his followers on Napoleon or indeed the Emperor’s main detractors. In reality, it is best to start with the Archduke’s own writings, notably in the Ausgewaehlte Schriften and what is reproduced Cristy, as the opening building blocks to get inside his head. Then, it is necessary to read the likes of Clausewitz and Delbruck - certainly there probably was nationalism in their comments, but they push total war while criticising Charles for pursuing limited war. That leads you to a key issue that needs to be explored to show how Charles thought and he was vindicated by the events of 1945 and how warfare has changed since then. That takes you to a valuable critique by Rauchensteiner on this very aspect.

"or indeed be in the slightest bit interested in the opinions of my peers" Well, I say...I mean, y'know, that could make a chap feel unwanted.

@Kevin F. Kiley 1812 occupies the same place as many conflicts in this period, did not directly involve Napoleon. Fundamentally though “Napoleonic Wars” is an historian’s construct and as such is transient. History isn’t a closed shop, there is no History Teamster’s Union that I’m going to be run out of if I don’t use an ‘official’ designation. I’m not taking any exams or submitting any essays, so why should I care? And more importantly, why should anyone else?

@Kevin F. Kiley I’m very patient and it is a simple question. Are you seriously suggesting that Napoleon became Emperor against his will? If not, we have to presume his stated personal ambition and sense of destiny were major if not the sole reasons why he was elevated. It seems quite ludicrous to me that a Great Captain who spent his life at the head of his soldiers and in artillery range of his enemies would be in the slightest influenced by the prospect of assassination? Even if he was, how did a change in job title make any difference? There are more holes than a piece of Swiss cheese. I genuinely want to understand, specifically, what you are proposing and adapt my thinking if necessary. If however all you are doing is parroting a hagiographer with no footnote and an acolyte with no corroboration then this discussion isn’t going anywhere useful. I’m always happy to here of new sources and volumes, but I read and discarded these decades ago. If you have nothing new, then fine, we’ll leave it there.

@Kevin F. Kiley So secondary sources only? As I’ve explained many times, I don’t set much store in historian’s unsupported opinions. If you can’t provide any primary evidence that that was the motivation, I’ll happily consign that one to the bin marked “interesting myths historians amuse themselves with”. Who’s suggesting Napoleon was ‘forced’ me to become Emperor against his will? I’m using the following source: “There were circumstances that forced a transition from First Consul to Emperor of the French” Kevin F Kiley, placed on the Napoleonic Wars Forum 4 Sept 2020.

Well, that’s debatable, particularly in the Vendee. However, I wasn’t aware France was a belligerent in the war of 1812. If you believe otherwise, please provide your source.

Sorry @Kevin F. Kiley I’m missing the subtlety between drafted and authored? And isn’t the role that he was brought into the conspiracy for was as the military power base? Are you seriously suggesting he was somehow forced to become an Emperor against his will? I don’t understand it, Napoleon was transparent about his ambition and his attachment to the notion of being a man of destiny. Why do modern commentators persist in playing it down? It’s a reticence and a modesty he never possessed or claimed. As a general observation on the genre, It makes no sense and looks really strange.

As the French say "nul n'est prophète dans son pays".

It seems Napoleon is more popular in countries that weren't affected by the Napoleonic Wars.

@Mo Cheikh Ironically, I think Napoleon has more resonance in the US than France.

Claims of inaccuracy and unreliability are designed to mislead the unwary. They really refer to “what I want/don’t want to hear”. Without support or analysis, you finish up with the nonsense by the hagiographer Cronin and others, who dismiss certain accounts as “unreliable”, but in the next breath (to quote Cronin) say they have used them, because they are backed by other sources (but don’t apply that test to sources they like) or “cannot be wrong” - whatever that means.

If material is to be dismissed as inaccurate, it would require some explanation of its lack of validity. It is interesting that those using this approach will often talk about “credible secondary sources” without further explanation and indeed, whose credibility has already been shot through.

To answer the OP, yes a fair assessment of Napoleon can be reached, but only if the old British and allied propaganda is used carefully. Both Napoleon's detractors and his avid supporters are at two completely different poles and neither can be intellectually or factually trusted. And there are good and bad biographies of Napoleon and the latter needs to be ignored.

John Elting, in The Superstrategists, put it succinctly:

'Even fair-minded historians found their available sources full of booby traps. While he lived, enemy propaganda presented Napoleon as a monster who relished murder, treachery, theft, incest, blasphemy, and any other possible evil. The counterblasts of his supporters sometimes went to almost equal extremes in lauding him. The most misleading truth twisting, however, came from people who had served him to their profit, but - in hopes of making an equally profitable peace with the Bourbons who supplanted him after Waterloo - turned to defaming him. Prominent among them were former close associates of Napoleon such as Louis Antoine de Bourrienne, the Duchess of Abrantes, Claire de Remusat, and Marshal Auguste Marmont. The memoirs such people wrote, or had ghostwritten, were accepted as indispensable reference works by too many writers, though most of them are worthless and even the better ones contain much untrustworthy material. Only during the last few decades have English-language historians really managed an accurate recreation of Napoleon as an individual human being, as well as a ruler and statesman.'-139.

I have found Broers' biography to be excellent, Dwyer not so much. Dwyer is not as inaccurate as either Barnett and Schom, but there is an agenda there in his books which to my mind make the work suspect. In short, they should be read only after taking a very large salt pill.

There are two ways to 'know' or at least try to 'know' Napoleon the man. First it is by his Correspondence; second by those who knew him best, such as Baron Fain, Generals Rapp and Savary, Maret, Caulaincourt, and others who were close to him.

I'm firmly in No3 Camp. However, I don't think he is intrinsically good or bad, or more complex a character than any one of us. Napoleon the Great and The Corsican Ogre are just masks. Projections that either he himself made or were projected on him by others. Was he talented? Undoubtedly, but then again so are most people. Was he ambitious? Certainly, but ambition without talent gets you nowhere. But millions of talented and ambitious people are consigned to the dustbin of historical anonymity. Was he just lucky? Well, talent and ambition needs opportunity. One stray shot at Toulon, and we would never of heard of him.

I don't think we do the man any favours when we wrap him up in "The Legend" though, as being only human, he is doomed to let us down. In fact "To meet one's Waterloo" has become the definition of it.

It is largely down to where Napoleon sits in history. The period itself marks the shift from limited, monarchial warfare to total war, so the amount of material on the campaigning alone expands hugely, just like the area over which it was fought. Napoleon was the last of the warrior autocrats, in that he held the top political jobs and led his armies to war. It is also a time of great upheaval as the Enlightment gave way to more popular forms of government, which happened in more dramatic ways than an election or the death of one king.

Likewise, literacy and the printing press are expanding significantly. Before Napoleon, there is relatively little information with which to work (looking at the amount of recycling that goes on with the Tudors, where so-called historians finish up dressing up and wandering aimlessly around buildings). After him, we soon get near-universal literacy, more organised state bureaucracies, photography, such that there is plenty of information and relatively little dispute about what happened. There is a lot of information from the period, but plenty is also missing - there are about 80 accounts of Marengo, where about 60,000 fought, no comprehensive account of Wagram and debates over Waterloo still rage now.

So, just to write a book about his personality would get you to 400 pages quite easily, but leave almost no space for even considering the effects of his decisions. If you look at the biographies, they are either social/political or military with the author admitting this and saying “well, you know the basics of the other part”. This finishes up in the obvious contradiction that a man, who is supposed to have taken an interest in every last franc apparently let his generals do what they liked in the sector that was fundamental to the continuance of his regime.

You also focus on the part that boils down to “opinion” - what is “fair”? Even the most hagiographic work would probably be criticised by the true believers for leaving out some element of his ”greatness”. Likewise, given current political arguments, it is easy to see how every great character of history can be criticised for doing something wrong, whether by the standards of the time or more likely current agendas where their views and actions in just one area determine whether they are “good“ or “bad”. Churchill’s statue was defaced by Rent-a-crowd, but I noticed the BBC have a piece on Mandela, which says he got life imprisonment for activities related to his political aims - he was caught red-handed with explosives he was going to set off in a shopping centre.

So, it is a case of not just looking at the person when they lived, but also when they are written about, which means the histories will shift over time anyway.

It seems that regardless of the amount of archival material at an author’s disposal she/he has to do some analysis and interpretation of facts. It’s in this process that her/his “biases” come to play. And in the case of Napoleon there is so much material to support either the black or the golden legend.

The other day I was reading his last will. Here he bequeathes money to people who were good to him decades earlier when he was a "nobody", and to the man who tried to assassinate Wellington. That's Napoleon!

Ultimately I guess it's just the subjectivity of the study of history. One historian will place greater value on one body of evidence than another, and, as you say, read different things into identical sources. I completely agree with your assessment of the three main categories. I see a lot of hardliners of category 2 on facebook who will not listen to any notion other than Napoleon as the messiah, and if you try to inject nuance into the discussion (eg he wasn't entirely perfect and made mistakes), they either scream 'fake news' at you (literally) or scream Napoleon quotes at you.

I get the sense that November's Napoleon month on The Napoleonicist is going to generate a fair bit of impassioned discussion here!