Napoleon the Great

by Andrew Roberts

  Finally, there is the fascination of the man. The 33,000 letters now superbly presented by the Fondation Napoléon, on which this book is based, are extraordinary testimony to his protean mind. His correspondence with astronomers, chemists, mathematicians and biologists showed a respect for their work, and a capacity to engage with it, that is very rare among statesmen. ‘I am always working, and I meditate a great deal,’ the Emperor told Roederer in March 1809. ‘If I appear always ready to answer for everything and to meet everything, it is because, before entering on an undertaking, I have meditated for a long time, and have foreseen what might happen. It is not genius which reveals to me suddenly, secretly, what I have to say or do in a circumstance unexpected by other people: it is reflection, meditation.’10 For sheer intellectual capacity and its persistent application in government, there has probably never been another ruler in history to match him.

  Napoleon was able to compartmentalize his life to quite a remarkable degree, much more so even than most other great leaders. He could entirely close off one part of his mind to what was going on in the rest of it; he himself likened it to being able to open and close drawers in a cupboard.11 On the eve of the battle of Borodino, as aides-de-camp were arriving and departing with orders to his marshals and reports from his generals, he could dictate his thoughts on the establishment of a girls’ school for the orphans of members of the Légion d’Honneur, and shortly after capturing Moscow he set down the new regulations to govern the Comédie-Française. No detail about his empire was too minute for his restless, questing energy. The prefect of a department would be instructed to stop taking his young mistress to the opera; an obscure country priest would be reprimanded for giving a bad sermon on the Emperor’s birthday; a corporal was warned that he was drinking too much; a demi-brigade that it could stitch the words ‘Les Incomparables’ in gold onto its standard. His letters and comments also show much charm, an occasional capacity for candid self-appraisal, and a fine sense of humour which allowed him to make jokes in virtually any situation, even when facing catastrophe. There are innumerable testimonies from those who know him well to the attractiveness of his personality, as well as to his unceasing energy. He could lose his temper – volcanically so on occasion – but usually with some cause. His vices included an occasional but by no means consistent ruthlessness, and, as he aged, a growing narcissism and cynicism about human nature. He was ambitious, of course, but when allied to extraordinary energy, administrative capacity, what appears to have been a near-photographic memory for people and data, a disciplined and incisive mind, and a clear idea of what France could achieve and how Europe could be ordered, we should not be surprised at that. Even Napoleon’s brother Louis, whom he deposed as king of Holland, eventually came to say, ‘Let us reflect upon the difficulties Napoleon had to overcome, the innumerable enemies, both external as well as internal, he had to combat, the snares of all kinds which were laid for him on every side, the continual tension of his mind, his incessant activity, the extraordinary fatigues he had to encounter, and criticism will soon be absorbed by admiration.’12

  The most commonplace criticism of Napoleon is that in deciding to invade Russia in 1812 he was suffering from some kind of ‘Napoleon Complex’, a hubristic desire to rule the world, at no matter what cost to his soldiers and subjects. Yet he had no territorial aspirations in Russia, but merely wanted to force the Tsar to go back to honouring the economic blockade commitments he had made at Tilsit five years earlier. Nor was his confidence in victory so hubristic as it might seem in hindsight. He had comprehensively defeated the Russians twice before. He had no intention of fighting much beyond the border in a maximum one-month campaign. He commanded a force well over twice the size of the Russian armies in the West. He believed the Tsar would sue for peace and never anticipated the sheer level of scorched earth defence to which the Russians would go, to the extent of burning Moscow themselves. He regularly considered stopping at places like Vitebsk and Smolensk once the campaign, and the devastation of his central force through typhus, had begun. Once he was in Moscow he was well aware of the cold of the Russian winter and had left enough time to get back to quarters in Smolensk before it became intolerable. But among the thousands of military decisions that he took, the one on the night of October 25, 1812 undid him.

  Napoleon was thus not some nemesis-doomed monster, a modern exemplar of ancient Greek drama or any of the dozens of historical constructions that have been thrust upon him. Rather, Napoleon’s life and career stand as a rebuke to determinist analyses of history which explain events in terms of vast impersonal forces and minimize the part played by individuals. We should find this uplifting, since, as George Home, that midshipman on board HMS Bellerophon, put it in his memoirs, ‘He showed us what one little human creature like ourselves could accomplish in a span so short.’13

  Napoleon the Great? Yes, certainly.

  Illustrations

  1. The energetic and determined General Bonaparte, commander-in-chief of the Army of Italy, at the age of twenty-seven.

  2. The substantial Casa Bonaparte in central Ajaccio in the mid-nineteenth century, now one storey higher than when Napoleon was born there on a pile of tapestry in 1769.

  3. A caricature by a fellow pupil at the military academy of Brienne showing the sixteen-year-old Napoleon resolutely marching to defend the Corsican nationalist leader Pasquale Paoli, as one of his teachers tries to restrain him by holding onto his wig. ‘Buonaparte runs,’ it says underneath, ‘flies to help P from his enemies.’

  4. The long narrow bridge at Lodi which French troops captured on May 10, 1796, throwing open the road to Milan. It was Napoleon’s first significant victory and greatly increased his belief in his own military capacity. The painter, Louis-François Lejeune, fought in many battles of the Napoleonic Wars.

  5. Antoine-Jean Gros’ highly stylized propaganda portrait of Napoleon carrying the flag on the bridge at the battle of Arcole on November 15, 1796, which he only did momentarily before being bundled into a ditch.

  6. The battle of the Pyramids on July 21, 1798 saw the Mamluks’ power break against the well-disciplined French squares. ‘Soldiers! From the top of those pyramids, forty centuries are contemplating you.’ Napoleon took Cairo the following day.

  7. Napoleon showed genuine courage in March 1799 when tending to the French army’s plague victims in the hospital on the sea front at Jaffa.

  8. Napoleon seized power in the chaotic Brumaire coup of 9–10 November, 1799. He was manhandled by members of the Council of 500 in the Orangery at the palace of St Cloud before being rescued by grenadiers, who then cleared the hall at bayonet-point.

  9. Napoleon’s younger brother Lucien, a key figure in the Brumaire coup. Napoleon opposed his marriage and they became alienated, though Lucien finally came back to support Napoleon before Waterloo.

  10. Napoleon was close for most of his life to his intelligent but weak elder brother Joseph, whom he made first King of Naples and then King of Spain, but who was politically more of a burden to him than a benefit.

  11. Napoleon’s shrewd mother, Madame Mère. When asked why she was so thrifty, despite the huge income Napoleon gave her, she replied, ‘One day I may have to find bread for all these kings I have borne.’

  12. Napoleon’s younger sister Elisa, whom he made Princess of Lucca and Piombino, and Grand Duchess of Tuscany.

  13. Napoleon’s younger brother Louis, whom he made King of Holland before dethroning him for putting Dutch interests before those of the French empire.

  14. Pushed together by Napoleon and Josephine, Hortense, Josephine’s daughter, married Louis. Their union was unhappy, though it produced the future Emperor Napoleon III.

  15. Napoleon’s alluring younger sister Pauline was the closest to him of all his siblings, and showed him genuine love and loyalty

  16. Unlike their sister Caroline who, despite being created Queen of Naples, betrayed Napoleon to try to save her throne and that of her husband, Marshal Joachim Murat.


  17. Napoleon’s impulsive youngest brother Jérôme, who married an American heiress without Napoleon’s permission, was forced to divorce and then to marry Princess Catarina of Württemberg (seated). He briefly became King of Westphalia.

  18. Josephine de Beauharnais, whom Napoleon married in March 1796, before he left for the front forty-eight hours later. Despite mutual infidelity and eventual divorce, he always thought of her as his lucky star. On their wedding day he gave her a gold enamelled medallion engraved ‘To Destiny’.

  19. Napoleon was very fond of Josephine’s good-natured son Eugène de Beauharnais, whom he appointed Viceroy of Italy and to senior commands on several campaigns.

  20. Josephine’s nécessaire, its centerpiece a portrait of Napoleon.

  21. Napoleon as First Consul by Antoine-Jean Gros, pointing to the peace treaties he signed in 1801 and 1802. The flamboyant red velvet jacket was intended to encourage the luxury clothing industry of Lyons.

  22. A propaganda caricature of Napoleon protecting the crucified Jesus from the Devil. His Concordat with Pope Pius VII, restoring the Catholic religion in France in 1802, was among his most popular reforms.

  23. The uniform of the Institut de France, to which Napoleon was elected in 1797, which he wore regularly. He was proud of being an intellectual as well as a soldier.

  24. Jean-Jacques Régis de Cambacérès effectively deputized for Napoleon as ruler of France when he was away on campaign. A lawyer, regicide and politician from the time of the Revolution, he devised much of what became the Code Napoléon. Napoleon didn’t mind that he was homosexual.

  25. Napoleon’s closest friend, General Louis Desaix, would have been made a marshal of the empire had he not been shot in the forehead at Marengo in June 1800.

  26. Marshal Jean Lannes was one of the few people who could always talk to Napoleon candidly, but he lost his leg at the battle of Aspern-Essling in April 1809 and died in agony some days afterwards.

  27. Marshal Jean-Baptiste Bessières, a confidant of Napoleon’s until he was killed by a cannonball to the chest while reconnoitring enemy positions in May 1813.

  28. Later in May 1813, General Gérard Duroc, Napoleon’s grand marshal of the palace and the only person outside the family to use the familiar ‘tu’, was disembowelled by a cannonball at the battle of Reichenbach.

  29. A French caricature of William Pitt the Younger on the back of King George III hiding behind a hillock and observing the powerful French invasion fleet, which threatened Britain from 1803 until it was largely sunk by Admiral Horatio Nelson at the battle of Trafalgar in October 1805.

  30. A medal hubristically designed to celebrate the successful invasion of Britain in 1804, with the inscription ‘Frappé à Londres’ (Struck in London).

  31. On Quatorze Juillet 1804, Napoleon distributed the first medals of the Légion d’Honneur. Unlike the decorations of the Ancien Régime, or of an honour in any other European country, it was open to all ranks of French society.

  32. Napoleon placed the imperial crown over his own head at his coronation in Notre-Dame on December 2, 1804; as previously arranged, Pius VII merely looked on. It was the supreme moment of the self-made man.

  33. General Jean Rapp bringing captured enemy standards to Napoleon during his greatest victory, the battle of Austerlitz, on December 2, 1805.

  34. The meticulous Alexandre Berthier, Napoleon’s chief-of-staff in every campaign except the last, was one of the essential elements of his success.

  35. André Masséna was known as ‘the Darling Child of Victory’ until he was stopped outside Lisbon by the formidable defences of the Lines of Torres Vedras. Napoleon persistently undersupported him during the campaigns in the Peninsula and shot him in the eye in a hunting accident in September 1808.

  36. Michel Ney, ‘the Bravest of the Brave’, was the last Frenchman out of Russia in 1812. Three years later he promised Louis XVIII that he would bring Napoleon to Paris ‘in an iron cage’. Instead, he became battlefield commander at the battle of Waterloo.

  37. Nicolas Soult was perfectly competent in the Peninsular War, but no match for the Duke of Wellington there, and proved to be an inadequate chief-of-staff in the Waterloo campaign.

  38. Louis-Nicolas Davout, ‘the Iron Marshal’, never lost a battle, and at Auerstädt in 1806 he defeated an enemy three times his number. He was the best of all the marshals in independent command, but lacked rapport with Napoleon.

  39. Nicholas Oudinot, the son of a brewer, sustained more wounds – 34 – than any other Napoleonic senior commander, the first in December 1793 and the last at Arcis in March 1814, when a spent cannonball was deflected by his Légion d’Honneur.

  40. Pierre Augereau was a tall, swaggering former mercenary, clock-seller and dancing-master who killed two men in duels and a cavalry officer in a fight. He commanded an infantry attack in a blizzard at Eylau.

  41. Joachim Murat was the greatest cavalry officer of his age, whose outlandish costumes made him conspicuous on the battlefield. Despite marrying Napoleon’s sister Caroline and being made King of Naples, Murat was the first marshal to betray him.

  42. The Battle of Jena in 1806 saw the catastrophic defeat of one of the Prussian armies. The French cannon on the extreme right are firing at Prussian positions on the Landgrafenberg plateau above the town of Jena.

  43. Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher, ‘Marshal Forwards’, who was often defeated by Napoleon but who arrived decisively at the battle of Waterloo.

  44. King Frederick William III of Prussia, whom Napoleon disdained and sidelined at Tilsit, but who put his country on the path of reform and regeneration.

  45. Imperial grandeur: Napoleon in his Coronation robes by Jacques-Louis David.

  46. Murat’s massive cavalry charge of over 10,000 men at Eylau in February 1807, the largest of the Napoleonic Wars.

  47. The battle of Friedland in June 1807, one of Napoleon’s most brilliant victories, forced Russia to sue for peace.

  48. The Franco-Russian and Prussian peace negotiations in July 1807 began when Napoleon welcomed Tsar Alexander I to a pavilion on a specially designed raft tethered to the middle of the River Niemen near Tilsit. Alexander’s first words were, ‘I will be your second against England.’

  49. Tsar Alexander and Napoleon befriended each other at Tilsit, but by late 1810 the Tsar was chafing at the treaty he had signed there. Soon afterwards he began plotting Napoleon’s downfall.

  50. Desirée Clary was Napoleon’s first love; he proposed to her but was refused. She later married Marshal Bernadotte and became Queen of Sweden.

  51. Pauline Fourès was the twenty-year-old wife of a cavalry lieutenant when Napoleon took her as his mistress in Cairo after discovering Josephine’s infidelity with the hussar Hippolyte Charles.

  52. Giuseppina Grassini was a twenty-seven-year-old opera singer when Napoleon began a long affair with her in Milan in 1800.

  53. Marguerite Weimer’s stage name was ‘Mademoiselle George’ when she became Napoleon’s mistress in 1802 at the age of fifteen.

  54. The Polish Countess Marie Colonna-Walewska was twenty and married to a 72-year-old Polish landowner when Napoleon met her on New Year’s Day 1807. She was to become the favourite of his twenty-two mistresses, and came to visit him on Elba in 1814 and at Fontainebleau the following year.