Napoleon Crossing the Alps

[hardblue.livejournal.com]

For those who didn't like the Reagan picture.



How do you feel about Napoleon? Even the French are apparently greatly divided.

“The divide is generally down political party lines,” says professor Peter Hicks, a British historian with the Napoléon Foundation in Paris. “On the left, there’s the ’black legend’ of Bonaparte as an ogre. On the right, there is the ’golden legend’ of a strong leader who created durable institutions.”

-- Brian Eads

I don't have a strong 'feels' myself. Is he a great hero-leader, or is he more like a Stalin?

Comments

[kittymink.livejournal.com]

I like him and I don't like him because I like the the Napoleonic wars but I prefer the British side.

Though the USA was on Napoleon's side - though we almost went to war with the French earlier - and he did sell us half of the USA in the Louisiana Purchase. (Because he fucked up so bad in Haiti?) That didn't work out too well for the Indians though.

I find French history and politics very interesting and very confusing. It's interesting to me that Napoleon appealed to the common people but dictators often do. Then with the Second Republic in 1848, they voted another one in... I think it was more complicated than that but yeah.

I think Napoleon was a capable, brilliant ruler and general who only lost because most of the rest of Europe hated him. And he invaded Russia derp.

We got this out of it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VbxgYlcNxE8&feature=kp

[hardblue.livejournal.com]

If this is a sensible question, would you say
that he was more of a creature of the 1789
revolution or a reaction against it?

I was thinking he was more of the revolution,
but I'm surprised to read here that the right
is more inclined to lionize him while the left
denigrates him as an ogre.

[kittymink.livejournal.com]

I am thinking he was more of the revolution.

I think both the right and left of France have moved to the left since then. The right were Royalists and even the Bourbon Restoration kings weren't kingly enough for the far right at least.

[telemann.livejournal.com]

Great leader, but fatally flawed. Philosophy of Science guru James Burke credits a lot of significant technological advances due to Napoleon, particularly in medical science. But it was how to feed large armies that eventually had some modern implications in our day-to-day lives. Burke explains:

[kittymink.livejournal.com]

I love this movie:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vlcuvrM1po

"Has Wellington nothing to offer me besides these Amazons?"

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0066549/

[serianor.livejournal.com]

He brought back slavery and lowered women's rights, and for that, as a French woman, I can't like him.

[hardblue.livejournal.com]

Wow, I guess you're right.

~ ~ ~

In 1801, Napoleon Bonaparte resolved the issue of freedom for slaves in France’s colonies. He restored slavery!

Worse, under Napoleon, slavery was brutally reinstated in those of France’s colonies that his troops could control.

On the French island colony of Haiti, then known as Saint Domingue, Napoleon's troops launched a vast operation of ethnic cleansing in 1802, to stamp out a slave revolt. French troops used sulphur dioxide gas to suffocate slaves: they were shot, drowned, fed to dogs or gassed in the holds of slave ships.

During three weeks of resistance to French rule in Guadeloupe, Napoleon’s generals refused to take prisoners. Instead, they shot men, women and children in their own homes. Hundreds of islanders were executed in cold blood in town squares, on beaches and in military installations.

-- Yahoo Answers (https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070624181246AA3DkXC)

He did not hate women, but he had a low opinion of their intelligence and thought that they should be kept firmly under male control. "We need to restore the notion of obedience" he said when he was forming the Napoleonic Code.

Certain laws that had been passed during the French Revolution granting rights to women, like married women's property rights, the right to divorce, widow's pensions etc, were done away with. The male head of the family was given absolute authority over his wife and children (like the ancient Roman Pater Familias) and he could even have his wife or children imprisoned if he wanted to, without trial.

-- Yahoo Answers (https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090629083128AAC8JlA)

That definitely sounds counter-revolutionary.