In the first installment of #Napoleon month, I explore the Emperor's life, unpick some of the myths, and offer a 'warts and all' assessment of the man's reputation. Be warned - this one won't please either those who adore Napoleon, or loathe him! I've done my best to be balanced! Can I just urge people to be polite when discussing this - I know it rouses people's passions on both sides of the debate, but I'm keen we all avoid slinging insults at each other! https://anchor.fm/the-napoleonicist/episodes/Napoleons-Life-and-Reputation-eluabj
Good luck with that! 😇
Well its not like we haven't been through these kinds of discussions often enough for people to know that they won't get away with slinging insults around... 🤔 oh wait...😂
Just looking at this in a wider view, I am rather nervous when I hear modern agendas and events driving interpretations of events two hundred years ago.
Slavery has been a big issue this year, especially with Black Lives Matter and their need to topple statues or at least deface them. It is mostly rent-a-crowd mob violence, not to improve our understanding of a subject, but actually to drive their own version of history, which conveniently ignores much of that history. In that, they are no better than Islamic State blowing up Palmyra or ancient Mesopotamian sites. Slavery is a feature of this period, but it goes back to the dawn of time and continues today. It has finished up in the diversity agenda of various companies failing and now being replaced by the psychobabble of unconscious bias.
Similarly, women were the chattels of men in every society until about 1900. Women’s rights really stem from the 60s and have likewise finished up in the nonsense of diversity ratios. While the Revolutionaries did extend women’s rights, that was an aberration in the sweep of history, much like women monarchs from Cleopatra to Catherine the Great.
So, while it is relevant to consider what Napoleon did in relation to these subjects, his motivations and actions must be considered in the context of his times, not modern agendas, however trendy they might be at the moment.
I disagree with the vast majority of what you have to say about the Black Lives Matter movement - the Islamic State comparison is frankly tone deaf, but this is not the place either for your comments on it, or my rebuttals.
There is a deeper truth though to what you say about consideration of standards of the time. In this sense, I don't feel that Napoleon was vastly different from many of his contemporaries, and that, as I emphasised with what was probably tedious frequency, is rather my point - he was far less forward thinking than is often acknowledged. I also think it is worth us recognising that there were steps back for women and slaves. The revolution was remarkable for its moves for both groups, and shedding a light on that isn't about modern agendas, its a recognition of historical fact.
@Zack White This is precisely the trap you are falling into. Groups like BLM try to push their own agendas and versions of histories, just like extreme N worshippers, before running into contradictions that are either ignored or blamed on someone else. However, their particular issue becomes a totem against which anyone’s value to society or whether they deserve a statue is measured. So, you say that, because N rolled back the changes made by the revolutionaries on women and slavery, he was not forward thinking nor (to use a term hijacked by left wingers) progressive. That is is trendy current thinking, which ends in the demands that statues of Churchill or US Founding Fathers be pulled down, but more put up of Mandela, who was caught with explosives.
These approaches do not deal with the question from the contemporary standpoint - they are an agenda, not a question of imposing modern views. They also more importantly deflect from the real point. Every new regime, democratic or otherwise, is inherently unstable until it is legitimised by reelection in a democracy or succession in a dynastic one. Thatcher came to power in 79 determined to sweep away the economic consensus of mixed economies (big role for the state), but she had to act in the short-term in her first Parliament and only really became radical after reelection in 83, while her reforms arguably did not take effect until the mid-90s. So, the question of how Napoleon thought has to acknowledge the extent to which he had to use short-term thinking to appease certain power groups and stabilise his regime, compared with what he could do with his own free will, not what his actions were in relation to a particular subject now trendy 200 years later. If N had thought that enfranchising women would benefit his regime, he would have done it - it is nothing to do with his feminist sympathies or lack of them. On slavery he changed policy a few times, but for reasons unconnected to his views on black people and actually to try to curry support for his regime. It is no different from his actions in relation to the Jews, which have become more of a totemic issue since the mid-1930s, when N’s relations with that group were primarily about cash for his regime. Indeed, in relation to slavery, I came across the tale of an Austrian soldier captured at Montebello, who finished up on the slave market at Antwerp and thence at the court of the Arab Bey of Tunis. Becoming the Bey’s military adviser, he was chased up a minaret by an angry crowd and died when he jumped off the top. No black people involved at any stage.
So, it is not just a case of having to consider Napoleon in terms of the standards of his time, including that his reforms were very similar to those attempted by Joseph II, which do tell us a lot about his thinking in terms of contemporary society. We also need to avoid trendy current thinking, where certain issues become totemic to the exclusion of others. Napoleon’s views on women and slavery do not tell us whether he was forward thinking. They merely confirm that he thought and acted in a certain way to stabilise his regime and appease certain powerful groups. Those are problems that most career political leaders have to contend with.
@Zack White I must admit that I find it interesting to hear two men that I believe live overseas arguing about BLM (please correct me if I am wrong and I apologize for my assumption in advance). Being a person who lives in Richmond, VA, and sees what is going on is hard to describe. I have coached plenty of black and Hispanic young athletes who were at the protest. They do not see it the way you describe it. It isn't slavery for most of them. It is changing the way they are looked at in their everyday lives. I do not know how it feels to be looked upon differently, but I am married to a Colombian woman, and I see how people treat her. People always ask me if she has drugs or if I will be killed by cartels when I visit Colombia. In reality, Bogota is beautiful and safe for even this very white guy to walk through. I lived in Boston (Quincy) for a while, probably the most racist city in America; if you aren't Irish, you are an outsider. She speaks fluent English, Spanish, and Portuguese, but the second she starts talking to a typical Bostonian, they look at me to translate. I do not disagree that the BLM has its problems, but I believe many young men and women in the background do not protest to rewrite the narrative of slavery, but instead to be seen and treated differently. Other than what I stated above, I have enjoyed the debate.
Until you live a day in the life of a person of color and see how they are treated, then you are just making judgements based off what you see and read in the news, which is always bias.
Anyway, after my little rant, a couple of more general thoughts on assessing Napoleon:
As I have said previously, the key assessing any major figure is to avoid concepts of right/wrong and good/bad, not least as they suck in modern agendas. It is better to employ the legal approach to criminal offences - this means that any offence is composed of two parts: the actus reus (thing done) and the mens rea (defendant’s intention or state of mind). It is the same in history - there is usually no dispute over the actus reus, but the question is the mens rea. Obviously we cannot interview anyone and we just have documents, but we must at least seek to construct a consistent pattern of thinking. Too often, especially in the extreme camps, there is no consistency (on top of ignoring the inconvenient episodes). This is especially so with Napoleon where his political biographies are separate from the military biographies, so we finish up with someone working down to the last franc of expenditure, but delegating of the military activity to his subordinates. People do change during their lives - older people tend to be less idealistic and more conservative, but few of us change our whole approach to doing things at the drop of a hat.
Napoleon also suffers from a lack of context at a time when the sources material expands significantly, but that context is lost. The Code is just the French version of Roman Law, which dated back to the Romans and notably Justinian. Those in the Common Law jurisdictions seem to stand in awe of the Code, because their own national approach does not involve codes, just collections of statute law and legal interpretations. Joseph II sought to codify Austrian criminal and civil law, a process continued by Franz II/I, but somehow this is forgotten - yet Joseph’s motivations were very similar to Napoleon’s.
While I am in ranty mood, we also seem to fall into this American adulation of Napoleon and his meritocracy, which seems to stem from their own views about their own society. If you have executed or exiled the bulk of your officer and political class, what basis do you appoint people on? If the upper class is gone, having officered your army, someone has to replace them.
The same nonsense spills over over into the view of the Continental regimes. Just as the USA and UK were not democracies open to people on an equality basis, so the Austrian regime was not authoritarian nor was its officer class composed of German Catholic nobles. This is Revolutionary propaganda, so to suggest that Napoleon was somehow different can arise simply from not considering what happened elsewhere based on the correct material.
You quote or you refer to some books - I would appreciate that you could list them here - so in case I am inclined to read them - alas seemingly Anglo Saxon sources only - I could do.
Otherwise I have no great dissent to your opinion, other than I see his Art of War not as glorious as you painted it, certainly a master in the Operational Art of War - at some campaigns - and a miserable failure in others.