We remember his military genius, but how was he as a ruler? Certainly he didn’t set out to destroy entire religious or ethnic groups like Hitler did, but just how heavy-handed was he in his governance of the French, and of the countries he conquered? How would we rate him today in terms of respect for the rule of law, free speech, freedom of religion, etc.?
Would a French peasant have been any better or worse off than his, say, British, Italian, Hessian, Polish or Russian counterparts in the Napoleonic era?
Today we would rank him as one of the more benevolent dictators (as far as dictators go): he had a large security apparatus for the time, but compared to today’s dictatorships, they didn’t do a lot of killing and arbitrary detentions.
But compared to the rest of Europe, he was ahead of his time, especially in terms of freedom of religion. Jews and Muslims were treated with equality (by him at least: there was still a lot of prejudice amongst the French public,) and all religions were treated better than under the Revolution.
One way in which he was both worse than the Revolution and many non-middle-east dictatorships was the status of women: he rolled back what rights they had gained during the Revolution.
The French peasant would have been better under Napoleon than under the previous French regimes, either due to oppression and lack of rights, or due to risk of arbitrary slaughter. I don’t think a comparison to other countries is meaningful because their peasants lot was largely determined by economic factors (like in Russia and England, not to say that Russian peasants weren’t oppressed,) or the lack of cohesion in the country causing opportunities for chaos (like in a lot of Italy.)
I always kind of thought a lot of that reputation is the residue of early 19th century British propaganda. Obviously, the French think highly of the man, but I don’t know about elsewhere. He doesn’t look so bad on paper with 200 years hindsight, I’ll say.
I think a lot of it was that he was a conqueror, and generally speaking conquerors aren’t looked upon favorably, even if they are bringing improvements and a higher standard of living. Sort of a “it may be a crappy standard of living, but it’s OUR crappy standard of living.” situation.
Depends on where. You would not want to be Spanish or Portuguese. The French occupation of the Iberian penninsula resembled in places somewhat the Nazi occupation of Eastern Europe - widescale killings as “reprisals”, for example.
Part of the problem was the French habit of attempting to live off of the countryside. With very large armies, this resulted in large-scale hardship - starvation for the local peasantry. This in turn provoked pesant uprisings (the term “guerrilla” dates to this era), which in turn lead to further reprisals, etc.
The English were in the position of actually being able to pay for the food they wanted - including in France itself when they got there.
“Bringing a higher standard of living”? I’m not aware that that really happened anywhere, other than in theory. Part of that may not be Nappy’s fault - he was generally always at war - but the “benefits” of French occupation of (say) Spain to the average person would be hard to establish, even though the Spanish monarchy was a decayed and inefficient autocracy and the monarchy of Joseph was quite “enlightened” - on paper, that is.
It is hard to appreciate the benefits of enlightened government when it is imposed by foreign troops who steal your food, rape you, and murder you if you fight back against this.
If you’ve got the time and the interest, the “Napoleon 101” podcast presents an unashamedly pro-Napoleonic view–indeed, it’s generally well over the line into cheerleading.
Curious: Is there a general problem with the podcast, or is it that they’re so pro-Nappy that they wind up being revisionists? I enjoyed listening to it, and would like to know if my understanding of the period is now filled with Major Historical Errors.
He also was personally against torture (at a time where it was a fairly popular pastime), both as a means of punishment and as a means of information gathering.
Eh, the cheerleading didn’t bother me, but I gave up on it after the two hosts spent more and more time talking about the Napoleon podcast and less and less time talking about Napoleon.
Too bad to, as it starts out promising, and Napoleon is a good subject for that sort of historical podcasting.
At the start of his rule, many liberals all over Europe had great hopes for Napoleon, viewing him as the great liberator, the final successful embodiment of the ideals of the Revolution, bringing enlightenment and modernity wherever he conquered. (And there was something to that.) But most of them gradually and reluctantly became disillusioned with him.
To be fair, this is an age old habit of armies, not something introduced by the French. The phrase *bellum se ipsum alet * (the war will feed itself) dates back to Cato the Elder. Famine and disease had long followed in the wake of armies; the population of the German states dropped by a third during the 30 Years War for example.
The French did quite a bit more foraging on the march than other armies.
This was a semi-deliberate strategy of Napoleon, it reduced the baggage train considerably. Which, in turn, increased his marching speed.
This advantage in speed was pivotal in most of his campaigns. Get to the enemy while they are not yet assembled and attack and defeat the enemy piecemeal with superior troop concentration.
Foraging was forbidden in allied territory though.
Hence the Third Amendment I believe, where “quartering” needs to be understood not just as “sleeping on the premises” but also “nicking all the food and small valuables, raping all the daughters and slaughtering all the livestock on a lark before moving on because fuck you that’s why”. The founders sanitized the language.
I also think it is a touch unfair to typify Napoleon as a conquering dictator.
It was France that was attacked after all. It was the surrounding dictators (also known as ‘kings’) that wanted to destroy the new democracy.
Napoleon, the emperor with a vast territory, was born out of the wars to defend France. While he did become a dictator, after 1805 he tried to prevent any more wars, it wasn’t him that started them.
I know that Sun Tzu advises living off the enemy countryside in The Art of War. I need to reread it, but I believe that he advocated taking supplies for only a limited time, and to depend on foraging both to reduce the baggage train and to reduce the resources available to the enemy.
Abel Gance still believed Napoleon was the successful culmination of the French Revolution, a century later. His epic Napoleon shows the Ghosts of the Revolution hailing Napoleon, a scene which brings weird reaction from modern filmgoers.
