OK - little Belgium has figured out a way to commemorate/celebrate the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo by issuing a 2.5 Euro coin (to be sold as collector item at a premium price. They tried to issue it as an EU-wide 2 Euro coin, but France killed it, hence the “Odd Denomination” loophole.
France seems inordinately pissed.
Just how much is the modern French psyche wrapped up in Napoleon?
Aren’t people who attempt to “conquer the world by force of arms” generally regarded with disdain?
Not necessarily. Alexander the Great’s name is pretty good around most of Europe.
It depends mostly on whether one’s sees onself on the cultural side of the would-be conquerer. The Mongolians have a big whopping statue of Genghis, for instance.
As for Napoleon, the British tend to view him as a bad guy. And with the dominance of English culture that view has a lot of currency. But other nations might view him as a liberator, and generally a progressive, who instituted a lot of liberal and secular reforms.
I don’t think the French psyche is wrapped up in Napoleon, but I think he’s viewed positively, as a great man.
It’s no exception. Conquerors are rarely regarded with disdain in their own country. Rather the contrary, as noted by several posters. In fact, conqueror are typically admired even outside their own country. Only the directly victimized countries are generally unhappy about them.
Besides, remember that France perceives this whole period as the “rest of the world” (well…Europe) trying to conquer us. Napoleon is a result of all European powers being bent on destroying revolutionnary France. When all the countries around you (UK, Spain, Prussia, Austria…) gang up to attack you, you can’t be faulted for being very pleased that someone shows up to kick their collective asses and give them a taste of their own medicine. You don’t feel bad about it when you give a good beating to the big bullies.
I’m Belgian and I live less than 20km from the site of the battle. I haven’t heard anything about the French being pissed off at us. The preparations for the commemorations are pretty conspicuous, however.
Otherwise, as clairobscur has pointed out, the Napoleon=bad guy is pretty much a British-American thing. Most French have respect, and some, admiration for the man and not only for his military campaigns.
Personal anecdote: my parents once came to London to visit me when I lived there. I took them on a sightseeing tour and when we reached Trafalgar Square, my dad exclaimed “WTF did they put a statue of Napoleon on that pillar?”. Major brain fart on his part made even more puzzling by the fact that he’s actually a history buff (but more interested in the Middle Ages). Still, I guess it goes to show that your culture can weirdly influence what you see…
Funny, I was planning on starting a similar thread.
The Napoleonic Wars resulted in millions of deaths. To what degree did Napoleon try to mitigate the damage? To what degree did he really support democratic ideals? He had himself crowned emperor, after all. I can understand a strong leader arising to bring order to chaos in France, but it seems he wanted much more than that.
Exactly what the “PR” was of the time is unclear. I’m sure that extensive reading could reveal it, but it’s not clear what good Napoleon thought he was doing in all of the countries he was conquering and ruling.
At the end of the day, the Bourbon throne was restored, and it was more or less business as usual in Europe until 1848. The French Revolution seems more like a comedy of errors than anything else, with “comedy” in this case actually meaning death and tears.
Confession: until this thread, I had no idea Waterloo was in Belgium (or Dutch territory as it apparently was then.) For some reason I thought it was in Austria.
I don’t think Americans generally have a poor view of Napoleon, other than stereotypical jokes about short people. If anything, we probably see him as an admirable military leader and go-getter.
The Poles liked him ;). Napoleon himself was an unrelenting self-aggrandizer and dynast ( he inserted his family into half the state halls of Europe ), but as noted above he was the direct result of anti-Republican campaigns against revolutionary France. And he did inject some brutal rationality into parts of Europe, particularly Germany.
Napoleon’s biggest defeat, and the one that resulted in his first exile (to Elba), was the Battle of Leipzig in Saxony in 1813. Since it involved Austrian troops, you could have been thinking of that.
Perhaps. I’ve had that idea in my brain since I was at least six, though. I have a very vague recollection of laughing at the name “Waterloo” (in this case, the train station in London), and my brother explaining that it came from the Napoleonic Wars.
