Napoleon: Great Man or Petty Tyrant?
So, my friends are assigning me open-ended essay questions now. Well, I owe you and I love you dearly, so I did the footwork.
What does the modern European think of Napoleon? Include opinions from the French and non-French, especially any filthy commies.
The first response is that he was obviously a great warrior. He was undoubtably a military genius. The French are not really apologetic about putting Europe to flame and blood, but either consider it to be against their morals or just in bad taste.
It’s generally acknowledged that he conquered and accomplished a lot during his lifetime, and not everything he did was necessarily bad (which is a twisty French way of saying that he did some good as well). Some of the best French institutions were founded under his influence, including the Napoleonic code, a rational and enlightened codified civil legal system that serves as the fundamental basis for civil law in many countries today (including Quebec). If he was a tyrant, he wasn’t ruling entirely by whim.
Despite having himself declared Emperor and installing his family across Europe, he was one of the great administrators of the principles of the Enlightenment — a grand promoter of science and justice.
GKarlsen
Holy Smokes!!!
Napoléon Bonaparte (15 August 1769 — 5 May 1821) was a general and politician of France. He was the effective ruler of France (as First Consul) starting in 1799, declared himself Emperor Napoléon on May 18, 1804 and continued as Emperor until April 6, 1814; he is also known as Napoléon I or Napoléon le Grand (“the great”). Napoléon, over the course of little more than a decade, acquired control of most or all of the western and central mainland of Europe by conquest or alliance until his defeat at the Battle of Waterloo, followed shortly by capture and exile.
Napoléon appointed many members of the Bonaparte family as monarchs, but generally speaking, they did not survive his downfall. Napoléon was one of the “enlightened monarchs.”
He was a short man.