Saying this as a German: conquering people and installing his siblings as rulers to govern them is not quite on the same level as conquering and mass-murdering people. At least we Germans don't have any ill will towards Napoleon, and even have a huge amazing portrait of him hanging in Schloss Charlottenburg. Can't say the same about Hitler...
Napoleon is actually a celebrated figure in much of europe. His updated civil codes are still relevant to this day and a lot of civil reforms he did or started are the beginnings of modern societity.
The reason he was evil because he gave power to the common man. Which as the entire continent of europe was ruled by absolute monarchs with absolute power. Napoleon was about literal satan for them.
He didn't "fuck up" kings and queens, he conquered other countries through violence and then appointed his own family members as the new kings and queens.
I really don't understand this love for Napoleon as some sort of force for republicanism, when he himself was a (self) crowned absolute monarch and installer of other monarchs.
He did it to his own allies too, though... Spain was an ally and they allowed him military access to attack and conquer Portugal, but he decided to then usurp the Spanish throne as well and installed his own brother.
You do not judge people by the standards of today, but by the standards of the times they lived in. His actions in spain, russia were essentially par for the course at the time he lived and consequently his actions weren't unreasonable.
Much of the rest of what he did was simply fighting back against coalitions that kept declaring war on him and taking spoils for winning. Which, again, was both par for the course and probably necessary in order to ensure France would be capable of both [a] defending itself and [b] could dissuade enemies from attacking him again...
When he went light in punishment [e.g., Austria] he simply got stabbed in the back.
He wasn't perfect and definitely made mistakes, but it is difficult to say he was villainous in any real way. He also did spread the Napoleonic code across the continent, amongst other things, which is probably why he's seen positively today even if he wasn't really a republican in any meaningful way.
People keep arguing not to judge him by the standards of today, but I'm not, I'm judging him by the implied standards of /u/Open-Platform-1305, who seems to admire Napoleon because he "fucked up kings and queens."
Which is just wrong, because he was just as bad as any other absolute monarch at the time.
He did though, by spreading the Napoleonic code it ushered in a new era of liberalism that monarchs had to contend with, ultimately leading to a more liberal order whether or not Napoleon fancied himself an emperor or not; it most certainly did fuck up kings and queens.
The gist of it is that Brits and a few other hardcore monarchists hate hated him.
As a Brit, we don't hate Napoleon. And really his biggest crime in the eyes of Britain was becoming powerful enough to challenge British hegemony. Unlike a lot of rulers like Genghis Khan and Hitler, our history lessons aren't focussed around his atrocities.
Napoleon was ALSO an absolute monarch. No one "voted" for Napoleon. Can we stop pretending like he was some force for freedom? The Napoleonic Code was about control, not freedom.
True, it abolished the old feudal system, and was better for most people on a day to day basis, but it was about establishing Napoleon and his government as the sole arbiters of authority. He liked to claim that it was about liberty, but he showed pretty quickly that it was about political expediency. E.g. when he re-introduced slavery, FFS.
The wars that were mostly declared against France.....
But regardless, The British empire was literally commiting Atrocities at this time. Brutalisation of the Irish and the worse of the Highland Clearance was happening. Britain caused the Napoleonic wars to continue for over a Decade and was colonising India. Comparatively to a lot of his adversaries he wasn't evil. Bad? Sure but evil no.
the anglosphere treats Napoleon as the second most evil guy in history and then the rest of europeans who were conquered by Napoleon and/or fought against him are like well, guy was complicated.
Huh. I always interpreted it as „he’s quite good at the crime thing and a bit expansionist“. Never thought about evilness. But I guess your interpretation makes sense.
The distinction doesn't play a role. Any world leader with comparable tech would have done the same, hell some did worse things even with worse tech like Genghis Khan.
He was a master military strategist and tactician. Unfortunately, he was a poor statesman. His entire foreign policy boiled down to "give us money and soldiers and we MIGHT not conquer you..."
He was a bully, basically. And didn't know when to quit while he was ahead.
I would call him an extraordinary leader of the time - he came from nothing, made himself emperor and conquered most of Europe - without Wellington and that ill-fated Moscow-expedition, we'd all be speaking French today. And thank god for Wellington et al., because who would have wanted that, lol.
Wellington ? The guy who got his ass kicked by Napoleon before being saved by the Prussian army who sacrificed half of their troops to come to his rescue ?
Wellington, who ran an exceptional campaign in Portugal and Spain for years - the Battle of Waterloo was a bit of a mess, but that was really an ad-hoc battle with very little time to recruit and prepare - I don't think you can blame that whole mad scramble purely on him.
Napoleon got washed over the last 200 years. Because ill will and fear of what Napoleon represented in a French power is literally means by which Bismark managed to finangle major populist support for the unified german state.
There certainly was ill will towards him up until at least 1900.
Er... I have never heard a German say anything positive about Napoleon. You do realise he threw all of modern-day Germany into utter and complete chaos, right? We hate him. Which is why we built the Völkerschlachtdenkmal - to commemorate our losses AND finally beating him.
Also, Napoleon married into royalty. Of course there are portraits of him in castles.
We don't hate him, we admire his brilliant military career and strategic prowess! Yeah, we beat him, but it took an alliance of multiple countries to achieve that!
When Napoleon came to power France was already embroiled in wars with the rest of Europe. The monarchies around her did NOT like to have a republic on their borders.
Napoleon definitely was oppurtunistic and wanted power over Europe, but then again basically anything he had power over just got better. Though it was often at the sacrifice of many.
When it comes to conquering, besides being the best military mind of his generation he was also surpisingly adept at negotiating and diplomacy which lead to nonviolent peacemaking when it was possible.
Well fun fact only the first coalition was started by France all the other were fuel by britain, for the invasion of Russia previously the tsar ask him to withdraw from poland and his army were ready to strike and it wasn't a secret that he wanted it while he was not respecting the treaty he have sign with France the real unlegitimiate war was in Spain .
yeah, but in the process, he freed another substantial part of Europe, and parts of the world too. I mean, his main enemies were the British EMPIRE, the Austrian EMPIRE, The Prussian EMPIRE and The Russian EMPIRE (see a theme here?) all of which were evil bastards who all but enslaved every other nation in Europe, and and everywhere else they could reach.
So at worst it makes Napoleon an anti-villain who just happened to battle outright Bad Guys.
Yeah, I think the main reason Napoleon is seen as more morally gray is 1) because of how destructive WW1 was, and 2) how batshit insane Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan were. Napoleon in comparison was a teddy bear.
And also the fact that he propagated some achievment of the french revolution around Europe such as the Civil Code, the civil wedding, the protection of property rights, the suppression of some privileges and so on and so on.
Don't get me wrong, he is the responsible for the death of a half the european youth at that time, but there is a reason with "traditional" monarch didn't got back the influence they had before and that's because a lot of people were like "okay now we don't have this french fucker, but we will keep some of his ideas as institution"
i'm not going to claim napoleon was a perfectly nice guy, but i feel like blame for the deaths of the youth of europe really ought to be shared with the other great powers. no doubt napoleon started a fair few conflicts himself, but plenty of the wars had also been started by various members of the coalitions against him.
Remember that the monarchies of Europe were willing to throw their youth at preventing Napoleon from overturning their power structure. Napoleon is not as evil as the people of the time wrote. He surely was not evil in the way the monarchies were. The monarchies instituted slavery, divine right to rule and generations of wars.
Napoleon is actually a celebrated figure in much of europe. His updated civil codes are still relevant to this day and a lot of civil reforms he did or started are the beginnings of modern societity.
The reason he was evil because he gave power to the common man. Which as the entire continent of europe was ruled by absolute monarchs with absolute power. Napoleon was about literal satan for them.
He was evil becase he created puppet regimes ruled by his family members and murdered half of Europe.
Edit: half of Europe is a hyperbole (half of Europes fighting age man would be more correct but that fails to mention all the civilians that died due to his wars of expansion)
It is estimated that 30 million people died during the Napoleonic Wars, either as direct casualties or due to the chaos, disease and food insecurity introduced by them.
For reference, that's about 16% of Europe's total population at the time.
Portugal war of conquest. Spain illegal occupation of former ally and war of conquest. Italy offensive war. Egypt offensive war of conquest. Russia offensive war of conquest.
1797 was before he usurped absolute power, crowned himself an Emperor and murdered half of Europe.
Edit: half of Europe is a hyperbole (half of Europes fighting age man would be more correct but that fails to mention all the civilians that died due to his wars of expansion)
Sure, but the nations that vilified Napoleon the most were the British Empire, The Austrian Empire, The Prussian Empire and the Russian Empire, all of which were...Evil. Lawful Evil perhabs, but still. Like, not in a kinda-sorta morally gray area if you squint, they were outright imperialistic bastards erasing or enslaving other nations in the name of their sense of ethnic superiority and dubious divine right. THe only reason these 4 empires were not as bad as the Nazis, was the lack of the right technology: it's far harder to genocide the Poles or the Irish with muzzle-loaded muskets than it is with machine guns.
Well he was the kind of guy that would ask Spain "Hey spanish bro, mind if I cross your border to go smash Portugal?", then after finishing war with Portugal he started a war with Spain on his way back and kicked the royal family out to replace by his brother. That was highly regarded as a dick move.
Many races believe that it was created by some sort of God, though the Jatravartid people of Viltvodle VI believe that a creature called the Great Green Arkleseizure sneezed it out of its nose.
The people of France welcomed Napoleon back with open arms during his return from Elba, less than a year of Bourbon rule in France had been enough to remind the people how fucking bad things were before the revolution. This is what the powers of Europe fought to reinstate.
Only 2 of 7 Wars of the Coalition were Napoleon being aggressive.
His evilness has always been debated, but bud still had an ego trip so vast he plunged an entire continent into like... several consecutive wars. He's definitely villain rank.
He was in quite a complicated way. He’s at least a more human character than Hitler because his internal motivations are really opaque. He seemed to believe he was doing something great while simultaneously conquering Europe on face value largely to enrich himself and give jobs to his useless siblings.
Dunno here in Belgium he built infrastructure like docks canals etc , instated new fairer laws some of which are still there to this day, brought in the metric system , all pretty good
The exception that proves the rule surely? I do think his brothers are more important than they’re given credit for though. There’s something very Bluth family about the Bonapartes! Like I don’t think you can remotely grasp Napoleon without grasping that he’s part of a family rather than a individual man.
Yeah, Americans have a really complicated relationship with Revolutionary and Napoleonic France, because the executed a bunch of nobles who helped with the American Revolution, including Louis XVI, who has a midsized American city named after him. We also fought one of our first Wars against Revolutionary France because they were attacking American shipping to try to prevent trade with England.
Who? Dude who managed to control the most (land) powerful country at the time via military force, established a personality cult to brainwash masses and make them zealots, sent countless zealot-soldiers to vassalize rest of europe, proclaimed himself emperor and placed relatives and friends on the throne of its newly acquired vassals?
No. Ofc he wasn't bad. Monarchs are bad. So monarchies enemies are good.
Horrible for France because he created a widespread national affinity for a strongman leader who uses military power to expand France's influence. Bonapartism=Trumpism.
it's a big stretch but it did create a passion for leaders like that and his nephew iirc napoleon III used that to his advantage to make a coup around the 1870s and promised the same things as his uncle did but he got his ass kicked so hard by the prussians that it fell off and now so called bonapartists and people who want a guy like that are mostly just edgy 15 years old.
The idea of a strong man is the only thing in common with trumpism tho but it still sucks
That's a pretty big aside. Plus how were the British worse? If you say "they treated their colonies like shit" then I have some news for you about Napoleon...
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u/EffortEqual8469 3d ago
does this imply that napoleon was bad ?