"Napoleon the Great" - Andrew Roberts

 

Napoleon Bonaparte

I've just finished reading 'Napoleon the Great' by the historian Andrew Roberts. Napoleon fought around sixty battles and was sometimes wounded. An English gunner near fort Mulgrave ran a pike into his left thigh and he survived being hit by a bullet at the Battle of Ratisbon. On one occasion, his horse was disembowelled by a howitzer shell. He also saw a number of staff officers killed near to him. He said he'd seen many men perish who were taking to him.

War was declared on Napoleon and France more times than he declared war on others. Before he went to war, Napoleon often sought peace terms. Seven Allied coalitions were formed during the Napoleonic wars to rid Europe of Napoleon and to put the Bourbons back on the throne of France. It has been estimated that the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars cost a total of around 3 million military and one million civilians deaths, of whom, 1.4 million were French. Many of these men died of disease and infections.

Napoleon's regime depended on the maintenance of French power in Europe and he knew it. He was personally responsible for many of these deaths but many Frenchmen were happy to follow the Emperor of France into battle. They admired his courage, had a sense of national pride, and most of the time Napoleon had a good rapport with his troops. He had a sense of familiarity with his soldiers that would've been unthinkable to Arthur Wellesley. He was also ruthless and ambitious. While professing to believe in meritocracy, he put his brothers and family members on the thrones of Europe and made himself a very rich man and the Emperor of the French Republic, which is a contradiction in terms.

At the Battle of Bautzen in 1813, some 21,200 Frenchmen were killed or wounded, whereas the Allies, lost half that number. He told the Empress of France, Marie Louise, that 3,000 men had been killed or wounded but, "no one of any importance." Only hours after writing this to the Empress, his closest friend Geraud Duroc, the Duc de Frioul, was disembowelled by a cannonball in front of him at the Battle of Reichenbach in Poland. A year later, Napoleon spoke about what happened. He said:

"When his bowels were falling out before my eyes, he repeatedly cried to me to have him put out of his misery. I told him: 'I feel pity for you my friend, but there is no remedy but to suffer till the end." Yet, Napoleon was capable of showing kindness even to enemy soldiers if they were Europeans.

After more than 20 years of war, the French people desired peace at any price. After Napoleon's first abdication in 1814, the Allied armies entered Paris by the Saint-Denis gate on April 1, 1814. They were greeted by the populace with the exuberance that victorious armies always tend to receive. The Bonapartist, Lavelette, wrote that he was disgusted by the site of "Women dressed as for a fete, and almost frantic with joy, waving their handkerchiefs crying: "Vive l' Empereur Alexander!" as Cossacks and Russian troops bivouacked on the Champs-Elysees and the Champ de Mars.

As we all know, Napoleon spent his last years in exile on the remote Island of St. Helena. The Prussians and the Bourbons wanted to execute him but he sought political asylum from the British and was granted it. He wrote his memoirs on St Helena and seems to have lived his last years in relative comfort with his staff. He did complain of the humidity, rats, midges, termites, mosquitoes and cockroaches at Longwood. Nevertheless, in the last 3-months of 1816, 3,700 bottles of wine - 830 of them claret - were delivered to Longwood House where lived. During his captivity on St Helena, he spent a total of 1,818,245 francs of his own money. He died of stomach cancer on Saturday May 5, 1821, at 5.49 pm, aged 51.

On the subject of war and humanity, Napoleon had this to say: "If one thinks of humanity and only of humanity, we should give up going to war. I don't know how war is to be conducted on the rosewater plan."

It's politicians and ruling elites that start wars but unlike Napoleon, the big shots don't fight them. It's the hoi polloi who are used as cannon fodder.