Episode One: The Basics

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Well, here we go, the first episode, at long last. Before we do anything else, I thought I'd lay out a short introduction to the man in the title, just so we're all on the same page. Napoleon Bonaparte was born in the town of Ajaxio, on the Mediterranean island of Corsica in 1769. He left home at age 9 to attend a military school in France. In 1785, he completed his schooling and was commissioned an officer in the Army of the King of France, where he remained until he was swept up in the events of the revolution of 1789. Napoleon supported the revolution, but only played a peripheral role until 1793, when he was instrumental in retaking the city of Toulon for the radical government in Paris. He rose to national prominence in 1795 as commander of pro-government forces during a royalist uprising in Paris that nearly toppled the Republican government. He was rewarded for this service with his first Army command. Shortly after in 1796, Bonaparte began a series of campaigns in Italy, Austria, then Egypt, that quickly won him a reputation as one of the best military minds in Europe. In 1799, he joined a group of conspirators plotting to overthrow the government he'd helped save four years earlier, the coup succeeded. Much to the surprise of his co-conspirators by the end of the year, Napoleon had installed himself as first consul, effectively dictator of France, at the age of 30. In 1804, he gave himself a promotion, crowning himself Emperor of the French. His rule brought stability and a degree of social harmony to France for the first time since the revolution, and gave the French people a competent forward-looking government for the first time in almost a century. He also cracked down on civil liberties, fixed elections, and retreated from many of the egalitarian ideals of the revolution. When he came to power, Napoleon told France he was the only one who could deliver long-term peace with the rest of Europe. It never happened. The other great European powers repeatedly joined together in coalitions to defeat France, finally succeeding in the sixth attempt in 1814, forcing Napoleon to exile. He returned to France and re-took power the very next year, but was defeated in exile again, this time to the remote island of Saint Helena, where he died in 1821. He was only 51 years old. Under Napoleon, France got a new law code, and new administrative, educational, and financial institutions. All of these institutions still exist today in one form or another. It's no exaggeration to say the foundations of modern France were laid during this period. By conquest and by example, this new type of governance spread across most of Europe, planting absolute monarchies, and the remnants of the old medieval feudal system. Napoleon had an intense, serious temperament. He was a natural introvert with few close confidants, but with a situation called for it, he could turn on the charm. He was generally calm and even keeled, but his rare flashes of temper were explosive. He had an inquisitive, analytical mind, and read voraciously throughout his life. Napoleon saw himself as a disciple of the Enlightenment, and in keeping with Enlightenment values, he maintained an unsentimental, utilitarian outlook. Coming of age, amid the chaos of the revolution, didn't shake Napoleon's faith in the Enlightenment principles that underpinned it, but it didn't still in him a fear of civil discord and mob violence he kept with him all his life. He was a habitual, almost reflexive liar, not the type to tell outright whoppers, but he was as a debted spin and propaganda and half-truths as any modern politician. Napoleon was relentlessly ambitious and could be quite Machiavellian and pursuing his ends. He was sometimes vindictive to defeated rivals, but just as often extended an olive branch to a former foe, once they were out of his way. People who knew Napoleon commented most on his boundless energy and inexhaustible work ethic. He rarely slept, working in three hours. Physically, he was of average height, had a dark complexion, dark brown hair. He had a wily build as a young man, but began slowly putting on weight in his 30s until he resembled the stocky figure, probably familiar to you from fiction. Napoleon's romantic life was generally unhappy, he had two marriages, one of which was close, but tumultuous, the other was distant, but harmonious. Once he attained power and fame, he entertained a never-ending succession of mistresses, but these relationships tended to be shallow and short. He liked to sing in his private moments, but had a terrible voice, and he didn't have much of a sense of humor, although he did enjoy the occasional prank. Those are the basic undisputed facts of Napoleon Bonaparte's life, but obviously that's far from the whole story. And the headlines and a little bit of trivia aren't what makes it such an important compelling story. Almost everything else about him is subject to constant debate. After Jesus Christ, no one individual has been the subject of more literature in the Western world. Napoleon was the most significant figure of a period which saw massive change in turmoil, which makes him attractive as a symbol of those changes to anyone grappling with their consequences, which is to say basically anyone who was thinking or writing about anything important during the 19th century. This has led to writers, politicians, philosophers, of every political persuasion from every country appropriating his story, and reinterpreting his legacy to suit their own purposes. The result is an infinite number of different, often conflicting portraits of the man. Napoleon's own nature makes him harder to understand. He was reserved and calculating, careful to present people with whatever image of himself he thought they wanted to see. So even those who knew him in his own time often came away with vastly differing impressions. All of these conflicting accounts and symbolic representations leave us with inscrutable and ambiguous figure, whose life and career seemed to be full of contradictions. The great French writer Jement de Stal, and the German polymath Johann Wolfgang von Goetz had both met Napoleon in person, de Stal thought he was frightening, and called him more terrible than Attila the Hun or Genghis Khan. On the other hand, Goetz said he was the most brilliant man who ever lived, and that quote man kind was certain to reach its goals under his direction. I can't dismiss either statement as entirely wrong, which I think gets at the heart of what makes Napoleon so fascinating. Then again, maybe it's simply a reflection of the fact that Napoleon hated both the style and her husband, but praised Goetz as writing and decorated him with the Medal of the Lezion d'Arno, France's highest decoration for merit. To take another example, Bonapartism is a common term in Marxist jargon describing a situation in which reactionary military officers seize power from a revolutionary government and co-opt the ideals of the revolution. On the other hand, a generation before Marx, right wing conservatives and reactionaries also used Napoleon as a cautionary symbol, but they saw him as the embodiment of the revolution, not its portrayer. To them, he was an avatar of the destructive chaos they believed was the inevitable endpoints of all democratic and liberal ideas. Both versions of Napoleon serve a useful symbolic purpose in explaining the respective political ideologies, but it's harder to say which is closer to the truth. Napoleon's own words aren't much help at various times, he said both. the revolution is over, and I will define the revolution where I am the revolution. You see the same phenomenon across decades, across ideologies, all over the world. People read about Napoleon and some novels, some history, some political treaties, and they find something in the portrayal that suits their beliefs, so they remake him anew to suit those purposes. As time passes the myths around Napoleon multiply and the actual events of the Napoleonic era fade further away. 200 years of repetition of that process have brought us to where we are today. Most people are familiar with at least a few elements of some of these myths, but the historical record is comparatively obscure. That's why I want to tell this story to try to get beyond some of those stale portraits of Napoleon, we've become accustomed to, and re-equaint people with the historical person. And we won't just be talking about the man himself. The years between the storming of the Bastille and the Battle of Waterloo were a tumultuous times that brought many other fascinating historical characters to the European stage, and led to plenty of amazing events that don't necessarily have anything to do with Napoleon. We'll be exploring some of those as well. Hopefully now you have some idea of where I'm planning on taking this project, and hopefully I have enough view on the hook that now we can tackle some boring podcast business without losing too many of you. First a disclaimer, I don't have any particular credentials or qualifications in this subject. Please don't cite me. I'm an amateur, but this has been an interest of mine for years, and I've tried to be diligent with my research. That said, mistakes will be made. Please bear with me. Corrections and constructive criticism are always welcome. I'm going to start off by releasing a new episode every two weeks, but that's such a change. We'll see how it goes. I'm shooting for episodes to be about 20 to 30 minutes a piece, but again we'll see. Maybe once like at the hang of this, I'll gravitate towards a different schedule or average episode length. I'm mostly going in chronological order from the mid-18th century to the early 19th, but I have a couple of little aggressions planned and a few standalone topic-based episodes as well. The show will always be free. There may be paid bonus content or advertising or something like that down the road, but I promise I won't suddenly announce that all new episodes will be behind a paywall or anything like that. I'll be doing my best to pronounce things correctly in their language of origin, unless there's an anglicized pronunciation and wide usage. I do speak French, but when I'm speaking in English, I just can't bring myself to say Napoleon or Pauille instead of Napoleon and Paris. Apologies to any French purists I've offended. I may have already lost a few hardcore Napoleon nerds or a Corsican nationalists in the third sense of the show by referring to him as Napoleon Bonaparte, rather than by the Corsican name he was given at birth Napoleon de Bonaparte. Names didn't have comments spelling until relatively recently and translating a person's name used to be very common. For clarity's sake, I'll just be referring to people by whatever name is most common in my sources and referring to all the members of Napoleon's family as Bonaparte, the spelling Napoleon adopted in his 20s and preferred for the rest of his life. Anyway, sorry in advance for mistakes on the pronunciation front. The podcast has a Twitter account at Age of Napoleon, all one word. Follow me there for links to new episodes, reading recommendations, updates on the show, and occasional Napoleon trivia. There's also a Gmail account, Age of Napoleon podcast at gmail.com where you can reach me with feedback, suggestions, or any other show business. Alright, that's the administrative stuff out of the way. Napoleon believed in rewarding good service, so in that spirit I thought I'd reward everyone who sat through that with some rapid fire answers to questions. I suspect some of you are itching to have answered. First off, what's this about average height? Wasn't Napoleon short? This is a surprisingly controversial given what a straightforward question it is, even among professional scholars of Napoleon. Simple answer? He probably wasn't short. At the lowest estimate he was five foot two at the highest he was five foot seven. In case anyone out there prefers modern rational units of measurement over arbitrary medieval ones, that's about 157 centimeters at the low end, or 170th high end. Now that's pretty small by modern standards, but the average height of a French man of that period was only five foot six or 167 centimeters. So by the low estimates he was short, but not far off from average, and by the high estimates he was actually a slight taller than average. Personally, I suspect he was on the high end of that range. We have a lot of physical descriptions of Napoleon from people who met him, and I don't know of any which comments on him being very short. Now that's called an argument from silence, and any impressionable young history students listening should know that's bad, you should never do it. Come on, if you met the greatest warrior and conqueror of your age, and he turned out to be the size of a child, wouldn't you think to mention that somewhere to someone? I could think of a couple reasons this myth is so persistent. First, one of Bonaparte's nicknames was Lu Petit Capelal, which literally means the little corporal, but the word little in French in this context is a term of endearment, familiarity, not a description of size. We don't really do this in English, so there's no good way to translate it, but something like our corporal might be more faithful to the spirit of the nickname. Second, Bonaparte's propaganda often depicted him with his imperial guard, most commonly the guard's most elite unit, the grenadiers of the old guard. This regiment had a minimum height requirement of six feet or 182 cm. On top of that, guard grenadier uniforms included a giant bear skin hat that was over a foot tall. What I'm getting at here is almost anyone would look pretty short, standing in the middle of a group of these guys. Eighth Annapolian political cartoons often depicted him as tiny, and this wasn't some cheap shot at his stature, they were trying to make a political point. Napoleon's enemies wanted to portray him as a trumped up nobody with no business playing at European geopolitics. An upstart. They made this point by depicting him as literally a little man trying to compete with giants, and finally we've all heard that wonderful phrase Napoleon complex, which is widespread enough that the myth that he was short is probably the first thing a lot of people learn about Napoleon. Next question. Was Napoleon not really French? Short answer? No, he was not born French, but he became French. Again there's more to this than meets the eye. The whole concept of nationality was in its infancy in Napoleon's time, so the question of the national identity of anyone from that era is fuzzier than it would be for someone today. In his early life Napoleon considered himself a Corsican patriot and supported Corsican independence, but his views evolved, and by the time his career took off, he definitely considered himself a Frenchman of Corsican origin rather than a Corsican living abroad in France. We'll get more into how and why that evolution took place when we get to that part of Napoleon's life in the narrative. As to the related question of whether he was an Italian, if you asked him he certainly would have said yes, but we should remember that he lived before the era of Italian nationalism, so that would have had some different connotations to people in his era. Next was Napoleon a war-malker, kind of. Again it's hard to give a pithy answer. Napoleon certainly didn't consider war inherently immoral and even enjoyed some aspects of it, which is a perspective he had common with basically every other soldier and statesman of his times. From our point of view that probably sounds pretty cold blooded, given that hundreds of thousands of people died in the wars of Cairo and millions more suffered, but we should also keep in mind that they were products of societies with different values from our own, and Napoleon anonic warfare was nowhere near as destructive as modern warfare. In most of Napoleon's wars his enemies declared war on France rather than vice versa. That said Napoleon's foreign policy was often aggressive and provocative. He made choices in setting French geopolitical strategy that he knew could provoke rival powers into declaring war, and he sometimes even deliberately provoked armed conflict when he thought it was in France's interest. So Napoleon is not without fault even in some of the cases in which it was the other side who actually issued the Declaration of War and thus was technically the aggressor. It's also worth noting that the whole European balance of power was totally out of act during this time period. The political transformation of France under the revolutionaries and Napoleon was just one of many sources of instability in late 18th and early 19th century Europe. So there may well have been a war around this period of time, even if there had been a revolution and Napoleon Bonaparte had lived and died in obscurity. Next, why did Napoleon always pose with one hand at his waistcoat? Was that some sort of personal trademark? This was actually a very common pose for male portraits into Polian's era. Artists liked it because it's easy for the subject to maintain that position for a long period of time while setting for a sketch, but slightly more visually dynamic than just standing with your arms at your sides or sitting in a chair or something. If you look at portraits of men from the late 18th and early 19th century, you'll see this pose a lot. We associate it with Polian because he was by far the most famous person from that era, so portraits of him have been reproduced far more often than portraits of anyone else. Next question. Was Napoleon assassinated by Poison? There's no consensus on this. A recent study suggests he may have been exposed to a staggering amount of arsenic in the days and months before his death. At first glance, that might sound like pretty definitive proof that he was killed by his British captors, but it's not as strong an indicator as it sounds. The dangers of arsenic exposure were not well understood in Napoleon's time. It could be found in hundreds of everyday products, including medicines and cosmetics. Probably thousands of people were killed by arsenic exposure in the 1820s out of ignorance rather than malice. Napoleon could easily be one of them. Stomach cancer was the cause of death listed by Napoleon's doctors. There is some evidence that other members of Napoleon's family, including his father, died of stomach cancer, and given that risk factors for the disease are highly heritable, this seems to support the theory that he died of natural causes. Personally, it's fun to speculate, but I doubt we'll ever know with any certainty. Too much time has passed, we don't have enough information. Stomach cancer seems like a plausible theory, but keeping in mind what a strong incentive the British had to ensure Napoleon couldn't escape exile a second time, poisons certainly doesn't seem far-fetched either. Next, did Napoleon want to conquer the world? I doubt it. He definitely wanted to make France the dominant hegemonic power of continental Europe, and he had ambitions of surpassing the British as a commercial and naval power, but there's no evidence he literally wanted a French tri-colour flying over every inch of land on the planet. Napoleon was prone to grandiosity, but even his oversized ambitions had their limits. I think belief things there for the time being, next episode we'll be talking about Europe in the mid-18th century, the world in which Napoleon was born. Topics include The Wars Afforded the Great, Royal Absolutism, and the Intellectual Revolution of the Enlightenment. I hope you'll join us. Thanks for listening. 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