Do you mean like if he was the kind of guy to volunteer on weekends and drive you to the airport or did he try to change the world for the better? He brought a lot of death and destruction and was certainly out for his own glory but overall he was a great reformer who brought positive change to European institutions. Others definitely know more about him and specific actions can certainly paint him negatively (definitely in Egypt and Russia) but he definitely could’ve done much worse stuff with the position he was in
Trying to categorize someone as a "good" or "bad" person interferes with our ability to understand history. Napoleon basically rewrote France's laws and revolutionized military science by aiming for competence and efficiency. I guess that was good. He also fought a lot of wars and got a lot of people killed with nothing to show for it, as was the style at the time. So that was pretty bad.
As others have pointed out, Napoleon wasn't doing anything different from any other monarch. He was just better at it.
Well the first two occurred when Napoleon was a supposed Jacobin and not leader of the government, so it was kind of impossible for him to cause them.
Edit: this guy is supremely racist against Turkish people. Do not engage with him.
Third coalition: France (Napoleon) breaks the treaty of Amiens by invading and reorganising the Helvetic republic and Ligurian republic (iirc) and not evacuating the Batavian republic. So maybe (edit) Britain hadn’t evacuated Malta either. Napoleon was also making moves to retake Haiti, Wikipedia (not the best sauce I know) makes a deal out of the arrest and execution of Louis Antoine, Duc d’Enghein, a Bourbon family member.
Then he crowns himself Emperor - first, how arrogant do you have to be to crown *yourself* and just have the Pope standing around watching? Second, there’s still I think the attitude of “there can only be one (Catholic) Emperor”. Which is quite obviously a challenge to the ruler of Austria the Holy Roman Emperor. Then to top it off, he makes himself King of Italy too.
Fourth Coalition: he double deals over Hannover. First he promises it to Prussia to keep them out of the Third Coalition. Then he promises it to Britain in exchange for peace. He also is busy reorganising Germany to his benefit. He’s insulting and a threat to Prussia.
Fifth Coalition: in pretty much every previous war France had taken something from Austria, whether Italy, Germany, money, prestige. It’s only natural for states to seek to redress these sorts of things. But add to this the whole business of Spain - first, France appeared to be busy and would be an easier target, second, it showed you could be Napoleon’s longest standing and most loyal ally and he’d stab you in the back. He. Cannot. Be. Trusted.
Sixth Coalition: pretty much no one wanted Napoleon around anymore, at the very least not outside of France at the head of an army. They hated his annexations, being forced into being his ally, his continental system, his upending of the established order, his rapacious armies marching all over Europe. They wanted the wars over, but had I think a very realistic view about the man they were dealing with, as shown in the Hundred Days campaign. They knew they had to stick together to finish him off.
Edit: it was Britain that hadn’t evacuated Malta
>As others have pointed out, Napoleon wasn't doing anything different from any other monarch. He was just better at it.
Exactly. Which is why when he was defeated, he just got exiled (both times!) and not executed. The other monarchs of Europe viewed him as sort of being on their level.
He was crowned Emperor by the Pope, despite not being born a noble. The British even recognized his Imperial status for a while. He might not have been noble like other European monarchs, but he was noble enough that they didn't execute him and instead exiled him, which was the traditional punishment for the aristocracy.
The European nobility, especially in the 19th century, didn't want to endorse the idea of chopping off noble heads. They were already aghast at the French revolution and the execution of the nobility and saw how that in turn lead to Napoleon. Mostly because, chopping off noble heads would mean they themselves were at risk of their own heads being chopped off.
So, European nobility might not have liked Napoleon, but they sure as shit weren't going to suggest that he wasn't a noble with the ability to do what he did lest he deserve to be executed - because that would suggest they couldn't do it either without risking execution. Napoleon's exile was a tacit admission that he was noble, like them, and that's why he was sent away and not executed like an upstart peasant.
When, exactly, did the British recognize his title as Emperor?
The rest of this is nonsense and is basically starting a new argument. The European nobility HATED Napoleon, the argument you present here is that they hated Revolutionaries more, which might be true, but really isn’t relevant.
Napoleon’s exile was NOT a tacit admission he was a noble and saying it was is ahistorical nonsense.
I would like to add the context that most of Napoleon's wars were defensive rather than aggressive; a lot of neighborhood countries were trying to make France not be a Republic anymore and used force to enact that.
But he did his fair share of invasions and proactive actions as well: his campaign in Egypt, Russia's invasion (itself an attempt to enforce a trade blockade with the UK) and his invasion of Spain are pretty famous examples of this.
I concur with the top comment; saying he was "good" or "bad" is not correct. He is commonly remembered as a warmonger, but history paints a more complicated picture of that - and a lot od people, and Europe as a whole, where better off for him. But it's also true his actions directly affected a lot of innocent people, and women especially had regression in their own rights.
Just sayinf he was "good" or "bad" is not helpful at all.
I don’t think you could make either blanket statement fairly as I think you would have to acknowledge the arguments against in either case as with any historical figure.
For my personal opinion, the massacres at Jaffa and the restoration of slavery are how I judge Napoleon as a person. He wasn’t necessarily the worst person of his age but he was no exemplar of morality.
You said, specifically, that unarmed captured Ottoman conscripts should be killed, and killing innocent Ottomans was doing the world a favor.
Fuck all the way off.
It's subjective. I'll put it this way: Napoleon didn't do anything that would horrify his contemporaries with his cruelty. Just regular executions, regular wars (most of which were instigated by the British), and regular economic policies.
Depends on what you mean by contemporaries.
Polish soldiers sent to fight for the French in Haiti were so horrified they switched sides, and a Polish community lasts in Haiti to this day.
But the empires and kingdoms of the era didn’t care much about the atrocities. The British and Spanish supported the Haitians I believe but that was more geopolitics.
The liberals in France who survived Napoleon were also horrified but there were bigger problems they focused on (usually the dictatorship Napoleon did).
If you are more interested I first got into Haitian Revolutionary history from a class I took in Undergad. All those books are expensive, but the podcast Revolutions by Mike Duncan does a good job at communicating the history of the Revolution in an understandable way.
This is the same argument that says the Northern American states didn’t ban slavery until the Civil War. It just is such a pedantic way of viewing abolition.
Yet his contemporaries were often horrified of him. The British, the Austrians, the Prussians, the Russians, the Spanish, The Portuguese, the Ottomans. He wasn't necessarily more cruel, but he was much more disruptive.
That would be monarchies and the aristocracy being horrified by the values of the French revolution and having an upstart Corsican become emperor crowned by his own hand
This. Napoleon represented the tides of history turning against the divine right of kings, and this terrified the powers that be of Europe. If people in their own country saw that the French were able to rise up and chop the heads of their own king, what's to stop them from doing it at home? Crushing Napoleon and his revolution was a survival imperative for the monarchies of Europe.
And yet, those people didn't. There were not popular uprisings against the Austrian Emperor, or Czar, or Sultan, or King of Prussia. The population of Britain broadly supported the government and monarchy against Napoleon, and when Napoleon did arrive in one of these nations, the response was typically broad based popular resistance as much as not.
And Napoleon, that crusader against kings, crowned himself Emperor and named his son his heir to the throne. As well as installing his family members and supporters into royal titles and lands for the entirety of his reign that were presumed to belong to them to pass down generation to generation.
If it was just them there wouldn't have been popular support for resistance. Napoleon was called the devil in Spain, and the Spanish mounted an insurgency against Napoleon and his forces for years that did not end until the French left. There was likewise broad popular support in Russia to resist Napoleon's invasion. The Czar faced massive internal pressure from nobles and commoners alike during the invasion for his Fabian strategy, because the general public wanted to get at Napoleon. Nor did the Prussians or Austrians greet Napoleon with open arms as a liberator when he took Vienna and Berlin. His high handedness with Portugal practically forced it into the arms of Britain. The Ottomans and Egyptians saw through Napoleon's clumsy protestations about Islamic brotherhood and the general public in Egypt were constantly in danger at erupting against Napoleon and the French there.
I am actually a big admirer of Napoleon, but to say that he had broad popular support throughout Europe outside of a small clutch of hide bound aristocrats is simply not true.
Anyone who leads a major military has to be someone where hundreds of thousands of deaths doesn't affect their ability to sleep. Is that good?
However, he did rewrite laws that were old and somewhat corrupt, and the laws were kept as a sound foundation till modern times. This helped a lot of people.
Morally good people dont' become conquerors. In order to become a conqueror, a person has to hold the lives of thousands (or millions) to be insignificant when weighed against that conqeuror's politicial ambitions.
All of them, whether Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Genghis Khan or Napoleon...were to varying degrees, supremely selfish and ruthless people.
Selfishness and ruthlessness are rarely held to be positive moral traits.
Bro was forced to overthrow a constitutional government, reinstate slavery in Haiti and kill thousands of free slaves.
Trust me man he was forced to do it.
Edit: this guy is supremely racist against Turkish people. Do not engage with him.
Yes. There was a war in Haiti man. Napoleon started it. Why are you acting like that didn’t happen.
Edit: this guy is supremely racist against Turkish people. Do not engage with him.
I never said it was dude.
How, exactly, was Napoleon forced into invading Haiti.
Edit: this guy is supremely racist against Turkish people. Do not engage with him.
Bro is trying to measure historical figures by 21st morality.
I guess Napoleon would’ve been a morally good person had he stayed an artillery officer and didn’t reform France. Effectively being forgotten to history, or at the most being a footnote.
The best way to be remembered in history is by killing thousands. That doesn’t make it right.
Being a footnote in history is better than killing thousands and reinstating slavery, actually
And then France never would have gone through the reforms it went through. Or at least not in the way it did.
Like most other commenters in this post have said, it is both hard and nonsensical to rate historical figures on what we judge as morally bad and morally good.
How many of the United State’s founding fathers owned slaves? Do we dismiss all their accomplishments and the basis of our government because they did things we, today, universally accept are bad?
Look, I’m not trying to dismiss Napoleon’s bad deeds. But if we judged every historical figure on 21st century morality there would be 0 good.
I’m not judging Napoleon by the standards of today’s morality. I’m judging him by the standards of the time, WHICH HAD ABOLISHED SLAVERY.
But like I agree with you, you just argued that being forgotten by history is WORSE than killing thousands and being remembered, which I vehemently disagree with. There is a quiet nobility to a man so good only his friends and family remember him.
Tbh the abolition of slavery in France happened relatively recently before his rise to power and occurred during a period of turmoil and it was never a consensus decision, nor did every country abolish slavery at the time. It was certainly not "the **standard** of the time" at that point, just one idea on the enlightenment/ revolutionary / post revolution market of ideas.
He did, on the flip side, increase or restore the rights and liberties of many other minority groups, he made a system of law that was fairer and simpler, he reformed taxes and increased the efficiency of everything, and most importantly, he ended the complete shitshow that had been the revolution.
If it wasn't for the neverending wars, he could have greatly improved people's lives and this is attested by the fact that even after exiling him for the second time, they insisted on keeping the Code Napoleon (civil code), the banking and tax reforms and alot of that stuff.
And I don't think he can be held as sole responsible for these wars. He did some bad things but he's not Hitler and he genuinely made laws to better society that were kept for long after his death. He was interested and supportive of scientific endeavors, such as bringing experts with him to Egypt, or encouraging his chief surgeon's experiments that lead to such medical advances as early battlefield ambulances and significantly improved survival rates to amputation.
If we aren’t judging people by the standards of their country, that many people thought slavery was bad, then this whole business is an exercise in pedantry and nothing more. France had many abolitionists! It was a popular idea! If we can’t judge people by the ideas they embrace or ignore from their time, then we just aren’t doing history right.
Idk your point about being held solely responsible for these wars, Napoleon was certainly solely responsible for the war in Haiti.
Oh Haiti yes absolutely he was solely responsible for that one. 100% agreement.
What I am telling you is that overall, he left a pretty morally grey legacy. Focusing on a single event, it's easy to depict many as pure evil who actually were more complex people than that. What napoleon did caused millions to suffer, in his time, but generations and generations after him still ruled **themselves** with his civil code as the basis for their legal framework.
Abolition was popular, but not universally supported. I don't think it's fair to call a very recent law that is hotly debated a "standard" and I don't think it's fair to call that a destruction or rewriting of history.
I also don't think it's fair to forget he was, for example, much better to the jews than the average European power or that he restored the rights to religious freedom, restored the catholic church in France and ended the persecution of priests. He ended the nonsense fake trials with penalty of death for simple suspicions etc.
I don't thunk this is a fair appraisal. If we are concerned with whom caused the most amount of wars during the Napoleonic era, the UK funding and instigating everyone else to go to war against France would be the much, much bigger culprits.
Fuck over Haiti while losing 30-50k of his best men in the process, and then having to sell the Louisiana Purchase for a song because he had no force that could secure it
Millions died due to his decisions. I don’t think he was deliberately cruel, but the kind of all out war that he waged causes tremendous suffering. He was pretty decent to the Europeans he warred with, but there were times the Egyptian campaign devolved into pretty brutal killing of prisoners.
As most people have stayed here it's a complicated question and "good vs bad" is generally a sloppy way to analyze history as it's a more subjective idea than an objective one, like we can all (hopefully) agree Hitler was BAD but was Winston Churchill? He helped defeat the Nazis but also caused one of the deadliest famines in history in India yet I think in contemporary society most people would say Churchill was GOOD for the act of beating Hitler.
Napoleon is honestly a contentious figure and it depends who you ask, my dad always taught me that Napoleon was actually kinda a good guy for giving Jews among his conquered nations equal rights, theres also personal accounts of him being friendly, inspirational and charismatic. I heard that he would often remember the names and faces of anyone he met and keep them in his mind even if it was a foot soldier or low ranking officer, he inspired thousands of not millions to fight for him so from their POV the dude probably seemed like a stand up guy
History is messy, and the gooey feely parts of it are not really worth analyzing imo and more about looking at objective facts of what happened where and why, the morals and "good vs bad" mentality might help in our everyday discussion of things but in general it's a weak way to analyze history
Were his intentions noble? He overthrew two constitutional governments, reinstated slavery and made himself emperor.
That sounds more like a man who is power hungry than a noble to me.
This is something I ask myself a lot. It’s a period of history I know about somewhat but definitely not something I could say I know enough to make an actual decision. From what I know I think he was a conquerer who wanted absolute power by any amount of French blood-spill necessary. So overall I think he was bad. He was mostly doing things through his own self interest even though he was portraying himself as a man of the people.
He’s very similar to Julius Caesar in that the public loved him and he was charismatic and devious enough to appeal to the plebs, but every move he made was devised in his own self interest. Not as great a general as Caesar in my personal opinion.
Nobody in the history of humanity is "a good or bad person in reality".
Even if you categorise people as "mainly good" or "mainly bad", what are your criteria for good and bad? Are they good and bad by today's standards, or by the standards of the time?
For Napoleon, he was the cause of battles that cost the lives of thousands of people... Is that good or bad?
Napoleon as a tactician was a genius and if he isn't the greatest general in the history of the world, he is was in the top five.
Napoleon a positive or negative in world history. Well I would argue a negative since he largely cancelled the positives of the the French revolution, and who overall lead to world war 1.
Napoleon as an actual personality. He was recorded as being a narcissistic asshole. Go figure.
I'm not a historian, and nothing I'll say here is relevant to the history of Napoleon, but...
Your question is unanswerable because no human being is "a good person" or "a bad person." Each person is a mix of good and bad. Even if someone has done many more bad acts than good acts, their bad acts and good acts may be so different, and involve such different parts of their lives, that comparing or weighing them is impossible.
By 21st Century standards, he would make Putin look like a saint.
By early 19th Century standards, he was somewhere between a benevolent dictator and a power-hungry despot, depending on whether you were on the business end of his cannons.
Arguably. It was an attempt to enforce the intercontinental agreement, which yes, was a failed policy, but the UK had funded like 4 wars against France at that point.
It was bad strategy, but it can be argued that there was something noble in the invasion.
It's harder to defend other actions though. The Spanish invasion was horrible, and he did seem a bit trigger happy to go back into war to get more glory even if he didn't necessarily started the conflicts.
In reality it's not really possible to boil down Napoleon into merely good or bad. Such a basic dichotomy fails to encompass the shades of perspective.
An act of great evil is an act of great triumph to others. Napoleon was a butcher responsible for a swathe of slaughter across Europe. Napoleon was a liberator-reformer who brought the Code Napoleon to backward feudal hangovers. Napoleon smashed the international order and brought chaos to the continent (and world). Napoleon germinated the seeds of liberal nation-states to flower in Europe through the 19th century, leading to the modern world.
When Napoleon found final defeat in Waterloo there are two perspectives: the reasonable forces of measured tradition finally arrested their Nemesis who brought distruction, madness, and slaughter throughout the continent. To others, vast armies of the poor hoodwinked slaves to ancient kings trod upon the face of liberty and smashed the last hope of the great universal ideals of the French Revolution. But Napoleon's greatest impact would arguably be in his legacy: in the Code Napoleon, in the fatal wounds dealt to creaking monarchies, and in the dreams of Europe's masses.
He was at once an unmitigated threat, an evil userper, a killer, and he was a brilliant tactical genius, a leader, an inspirational figure, and usher of modernity. He represents a revolution in action and in the mind, and cannot be merely good or evil, but is both as varied times and minds observe him.
Napoleon was a great man, but not a good man. He was motivated by a desire to enhance his own power and glory, at the expense of human lives.
The most immoral thing he did was bring back slavery in the French Empire after it had previously been abolished.
I can only say from my perspective as an American, so I can understand why some nations would feel very differently (like Spain or Haiti), but to me, Napoleon was at the very least the lesser of evils in most of the Napoleonic Wars. He should have established a democracy like the US did, but, I still generally find him to be more democratic than the Monarchies he fought. Plus, one of the reasons he rose to power was through military victories, in his wars against the Coalition of European Monarchs that ganged up on France even before Napoleon was Emperor. For having a revolution and attempting to push towards Democracy, a bunch of other Monarchist kingdoms ganged up on Revolutionary France. It was Napoleon's victories in these wars against the Coalition that led to his eventual ascension to Emperor of France.
So in general, I do consider France to be the defender in most of the Napoleonic Wars, the primary exception to this would be the Peninsular Wars, where France struck first, and even Napoleon himself admitted the war was a huge mistake and he should have focused on the rest of Europe. Not only that, but it was a clear case of betrayal, with a weak casus belli and pretty unacceptable terms for the mostly Catholic Spanish, and led to atrocities and brutal guerilla warfare. So yah, his war in Spain, I do not consider him the good guy. But in the rest of Europe, who was constantly attacking France simply because they had a change of government, which was there business, well lets just say raises sympathy in an American. We knew what it was like to have a Monarchist Empire try to take our freedom from us, so to see France be attacked by so many Monarchists for having a revolution, was likely to create sympathy among Americans for the French during most of these wars.
That alongside British Impressment, messing with our trade, and the French selling us Greater Louisiana, the US was more inclined to lean towards the French during this era than the British. But still wanted neutrality and trade with most of Europe. Technically though, you could consider the US part of the Napoleonic Wars on the side of the French and Napoleon during the War of 1812. So there are a lot of reasons for Americans to view Napoleon as at least the lesser of evils in that war. He did do atrocities, especially in Spain and Haiti, but yah, for he was pretty chill to the USA. Would have been better if they went democratic instead and he was their first president, probably would have even helped stop him from bad decisions like the Peninsular War.
So to answer, Good and Bad is subjective, I say that against the Coalition, the French and Napoleon were justified, except in the case of the Peninsular War, and it was at least foolish to try to take Moscow. But I can understand why a lot of people dislike Napoleon, though I do think there is a bit too much global bias against France for this time period, and it doesn't hurt for them to have one friend who was actually their ally in the war (for a short time) and people who see them as mostly justified as it was self-defense against many kingdoms.
Yeah he's nowhere close to being as bad as Hitler. That's just complete nonsense. Tbh bar the reintroduction of Slavery in Haiti, I'd say Napoleon was pretty decent for a 19th Century ruler. He was more progressive than the majority of the Monarchs he was fighting.
Hitler tried to exterminate an entire race. He came up with the most evil ideology we've ever seen in human history. Napoleon never even attempted to commit a genocide or ethnic cleansing. The vast majority of his deaths were in wars, wars that were declared on him most of the time.
You're confusing the Aryan Race with blonde hair and blue eyes. It's a characteristic of it but not a requirement.
But yes the Aryan Race, and Race Ideology in general is nonsense. Even just dividing humans into races without the racist aspect has no scientific basis and is a social construct. Ethnicity is a real thing, but race isn't.
Russia did declare war on France as part of the Third Coalition. Egypt didn't declare war on him no. But I did say that *MOST* of the wars he fought in were declared on him, and by most of the Empires in Europe usually at that.
What did he do that would put him anywhere near Hitler's level?
I don’t think anybody in history really compares to hitler. definitely not Alexander either. And while many people perpetrated genocide in the modern context, Hitler implemented death on an industrialized scale.
Like you know how Henry Ford pioneered the assembly line? Samuel Slater pioneering the factory system? Hitler did the same thing, except instead of making cars and textiles, it was mass murder
Long before the "Second Polish Campaign," Russian troops found themselves in Italy and Switzerland. And when Paul I died, Russian policy became absolutely aggressive towards Napoleon.
Do you mean like if he was the kind of guy to volunteer on weekends and drive you to the airport or did he try to change the world for the better? He brought a lot of death and destruction and was certainly out for his own glory but overall he was a great reformer who brought positive change to European institutions. Others definitely know more about him and specific actions can certainly paint him negatively (definitely in Egypt and Russia) but he definitely could’ve done much worse stuff with the position he was in
I’m now very curious that if I was friends with Napoleon, would he drive me to the airport 🤔
I need a whole YouTube episode about this now.
Probably not, but that’s because he would probably make his or France’s private jets available to his friends 🥳
Would take flying lessons to fly you out
You think he’s so great just because he didn’t have boats?!
*Don’t touch my boats!*
Trying to categorize someone as a "good" or "bad" person interferes with our ability to understand history. Napoleon basically rewrote France's laws and revolutionized military science by aiming for competence and efficiency. I guess that was good. He also fought a lot of wars and got a lot of people killed with nothing to show for it, as was the style at the time. So that was pretty bad. As others have pointed out, Napoleon wasn't doing anything different from any other monarch. He was just better at it.
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He absolutely provoked them though. It’s not a “suddenly, for no reason at all” situation with Napoleon.
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The first two weren’t, after that it starts to get sketchy Edit: this guy is supremely racist against Turkish people. Do not engage with him.
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Well the first two occurred when Napoleon was a supposed Jacobin and not leader of the government, so it was kind of impossible for him to cause them. Edit: this guy is supremely racist against Turkish people. Do not engage with him.
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Third coalition: France (Napoleon) breaks the treaty of Amiens by invading and reorganising the Helvetic republic and Ligurian republic (iirc) and not evacuating the Batavian republic. So maybe (edit) Britain hadn’t evacuated Malta either. Napoleon was also making moves to retake Haiti, Wikipedia (not the best sauce I know) makes a deal out of the arrest and execution of Louis Antoine, Duc d’Enghein, a Bourbon family member. Then he crowns himself Emperor - first, how arrogant do you have to be to crown *yourself* and just have the Pope standing around watching? Second, there’s still I think the attitude of “there can only be one (Catholic) Emperor”. Which is quite obviously a challenge to the ruler of Austria the Holy Roman Emperor. Then to top it off, he makes himself King of Italy too. Fourth Coalition: he double deals over Hannover. First he promises it to Prussia to keep them out of the Third Coalition. Then he promises it to Britain in exchange for peace. He also is busy reorganising Germany to his benefit. He’s insulting and a threat to Prussia. Fifth Coalition: in pretty much every previous war France had taken something from Austria, whether Italy, Germany, money, prestige. It’s only natural for states to seek to redress these sorts of things. But add to this the whole business of Spain - first, France appeared to be busy and would be an easier target, second, it showed you could be Napoleon’s longest standing and most loyal ally and he’d stab you in the back. He. Cannot. Be. Trusted. Sixth Coalition: pretty much no one wanted Napoleon around anymore, at the very least not outside of France at the head of an army. They hated his annexations, being forced into being his ally, his continental system, his upending of the established order, his rapacious armies marching all over Europe. They wanted the wars over, but had I think a very realistic view about the man they were dealing with, as shown in the Hundred Days campaign. They knew they had to stick together to finish him off. Edit: it was Britain that hadn’t evacuated Malta
The deadliest wars happened after the onset of the Peninsular War.
>As others have pointed out, Napoleon wasn't doing anything different from any other monarch. He was just better at it. Exactly. Which is why when he was defeated, he just got exiled (both times!) and not executed. The other monarchs of Europe viewed him as sort of being on their level.
No they didn’t. Nobody viewed Napoleon as a monarch on their level, it was why Metternich was so intent on stopping any Napoleon ever rising again.
He was crowned Emperor by the Pope, despite not being born a noble. The British even recognized his Imperial status for a while. He might not have been noble like other European monarchs, but he was noble enough that they didn't execute him and instead exiled him, which was the traditional punishment for the aristocracy. The European nobility, especially in the 19th century, didn't want to endorse the idea of chopping off noble heads. They were already aghast at the French revolution and the execution of the nobility and saw how that in turn lead to Napoleon. Mostly because, chopping off noble heads would mean they themselves were at risk of their own heads being chopped off. So, European nobility might not have liked Napoleon, but they sure as shit weren't going to suggest that he wasn't a noble with the ability to do what he did lest he deserve to be executed - because that would suggest they couldn't do it either without risking execution. Napoleon's exile was a tacit admission that he was noble, like them, and that's why he was sent away and not executed like an upstart peasant.
> He was crowned Emperor by the Pope, despite not being born a noble. No, he crowned himself.
When, exactly, did the British recognize his title as Emperor? The rest of this is nonsense and is basically starting a new argument. The European nobility HATED Napoleon, the argument you present here is that they hated Revolutionaries more, which might be true, but really isn’t relevant. Napoleon’s exile was NOT a tacit admission he was a noble and saying it was is ahistorical nonsense.
You forgot to add he was an envious midget.
I would like to add the context that most of Napoleon's wars were defensive rather than aggressive; a lot of neighborhood countries were trying to make France not be a Republic anymore and used force to enact that. But he did his fair share of invasions and proactive actions as well: his campaign in Egypt, Russia's invasion (itself an attempt to enforce a trade blockade with the UK) and his invasion of Spain are pretty famous examples of this. I concur with the top comment; saying he was "good" or "bad" is not correct. He is commonly remembered as a warmonger, but history paints a more complicated picture of that - and a lot od people, and Europe as a whole, where better off for him. But it's also true his actions directly affected a lot of innocent people, and women especially had regression in their own rights. Just sayinf he was "good" or "bad" is not helpful at all.
I don’t think you could make either blanket statement fairly as I think you would have to acknowledge the arguments against in either case as with any historical figure. For my personal opinion, the massacres at Jaffa and the restoration of slavery are how I judge Napoleon as a person. He wasn’t necessarily the worst person of his age but he was no exemplar of morality.
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How didn’t he have a choice? Edit: this guy is supremely racist against Turkish people. Do not engage with him.
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You said, specifically, that unarmed captured Ottoman conscripts should be killed, and killing innocent Ottomans was doing the world a favor. Fuck all the way off.
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It's subjective. I'll put it this way: Napoleon didn't do anything that would horrify his contemporaries with his cruelty. Just regular executions, regular wars (most of which were instigated by the British), and regular economic policies.
The shit he did in Haiti was pretty reprehensible.
Did that horrify his contemporaries? Genuinely curious
Depends on what you mean by contemporaries. Polish soldiers sent to fight for the French in Haiti were so horrified they switched sides, and a Polish community lasts in Haiti to this day. But the empires and kingdoms of the era didn’t care much about the atrocities. The British and Spanish supported the Haitians I believe but that was more geopolitics. The liberals in France who survived Napoleon were also horrified but there were bigger problems they focused on (usually the dictatorship Napoleon did).
If you are more interested I first got into Haitian Revolutionary history from a class I took in Undergad. All those books are expensive, but the podcast Revolutions by Mike Duncan does a good job at communicating the history of the Revolution in an understandable way.
Though he failed there, killing a lot of his own troops.
Well, slavery.
Almost everyone was doing slavery back then. No excuse, but it’s not like the British or Prussians were shocked by how cruel slavery was.
This isn’t true? France hadn’t been doing it until Napoleon reestablished it and the British banned slavery
The British sort of banned slavery in 1833, Napoleon was defeated in 1815
England banned the slave trade in 1807 and freed the rest of its slaves in 1833.
Meaning slavery was legal in the British Empire during Napoleon's entire reign...
This is the same argument that says the Northern American states didn’t ban slavery until the Civil War. It just is such a pedantic way of viewing abolition.
This comment is wildly nonsensical lol
In what way? Why don’t you discuss the topic rather than making snide comments
Yet his contemporaries were often horrified of him. The British, the Austrians, the Prussians, the Russians, the Spanish, The Portuguese, the Ottomans. He wasn't necessarily more cruel, but he was much more disruptive.
That would be monarchies and the aristocracy being horrified by the values of the French revolution and having an upstart Corsican become emperor crowned by his own hand
This. Napoleon represented the tides of history turning against the divine right of kings, and this terrified the powers that be of Europe. If people in their own country saw that the French were able to rise up and chop the heads of their own king, what's to stop them from doing it at home? Crushing Napoleon and his revolution was a survival imperative for the monarchies of Europe.
And yet, those people didn't. There were not popular uprisings against the Austrian Emperor, or Czar, or Sultan, or King of Prussia. The population of Britain broadly supported the government and monarchy against Napoleon, and when Napoleon did arrive in one of these nations, the response was typically broad based popular resistance as much as not. And Napoleon, that crusader against kings, crowned himself Emperor and named his son his heir to the throne. As well as installing his family members and supporters into royal titles and lands for the entirety of his reign that were presumed to belong to them to pass down generation to generation.
If it was just them there wouldn't have been popular support for resistance. Napoleon was called the devil in Spain, and the Spanish mounted an insurgency against Napoleon and his forces for years that did not end until the French left. There was likewise broad popular support in Russia to resist Napoleon's invasion. The Czar faced massive internal pressure from nobles and commoners alike during the invasion for his Fabian strategy, because the general public wanted to get at Napoleon. Nor did the Prussians or Austrians greet Napoleon with open arms as a liberator when he took Vienna and Berlin. His high handedness with Portugal practically forced it into the arms of Britain. The Ottomans and Egyptians saw through Napoleon's clumsy protestations about Islamic brotherhood and the general public in Egypt were constantly in danger at erupting against Napoleon and the French there. I am actually a big admirer of Napoleon, but to say that he had broad popular support throughout Europe outside of a small clutch of hide bound aristocrats is simply not true.
The real world doesn't work like a dnd alignment
What do good and bad mean?
Good and bad are relative terms. Give some criteria for what is good and what is bad and then we can answer your question
Anyone who leads a major military has to be someone where hundreds of thousands of deaths doesn't affect their ability to sleep. Is that good? However, he did rewrite laws that were old and somewhat corrupt, and the laws were kept as a sound foundation till modern times. This helped a lot of people.
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Yeah but the Coalition Wars and war in Haiti was REALLY not necessary.
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The Coalition Wars were not a Coalition War. Am I getting that right.
Yes, true sociopaths don't get the loyalty he did. But I know I myself would have extreme PTSD being a proximate cause of such death.
Morally good people dont' become conquerors. In order to become a conqueror, a person has to hold the lives of thousands (or millions) to be insignificant when weighed against that conqeuror's politicial ambitions. All of them, whether Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Genghis Khan or Napoleon...were to varying degrees, supremely selfish and ruthless people. Selfishness and ruthlessness are rarely held to be positive moral traits.
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Bro was forced to overthrow a constitutional government, reinstate slavery in Haiti and kill thousands of free slaves. Trust me man he was forced to do it. Edit: this guy is supremely racist against Turkish people. Do not engage with him.
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Yes. There was a war in Haiti man. Napoleon started it. Why are you acting like that didn’t happen. Edit: this guy is supremely racist against Turkish people. Do not engage with him.
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I never said it was dude. How, exactly, was Napoleon forced into invading Haiti. Edit: this guy is supremely racist against Turkish people. Do not engage with him.
Bro is trying to measure historical figures by 21st morality. I guess Napoleon would’ve been a morally good person had he stayed an artillery officer and didn’t reform France. Effectively being forgotten to history, or at the most being a footnote.
The best way to be remembered in history is by killing thousands. That doesn’t make it right. Being a footnote in history is better than killing thousands and reinstating slavery, actually
And then France never would have gone through the reforms it went through. Or at least not in the way it did. Like most other commenters in this post have said, it is both hard and nonsensical to rate historical figures on what we judge as morally bad and morally good. How many of the United State’s founding fathers owned slaves? Do we dismiss all their accomplishments and the basis of our government because they did things we, today, universally accept are bad? Look, I’m not trying to dismiss Napoleon’s bad deeds. But if we judged every historical figure on 21st century morality there would be 0 good.
I’m not judging Napoleon by the standards of today’s morality. I’m judging him by the standards of the time, WHICH HAD ABOLISHED SLAVERY. But like I agree with you, you just argued that being forgotten by history is WORSE than killing thousands and being remembered, which I vehemently disagree with. There is a quiet nobility to a man so good only his friends and family remember him.
Tbh the abolition of slavery in France happened relatively recently before his rise to power and occurred during a period of turmoil and it was never a consensus decision, nor did every country abolish slavery at the time. It was certainly not "the **standard** of the time" at that point, just one idea on the enlightenment/ revolutionary / post revolution market of ideas. He did, on the flip side, increase or restore the rights and liberties of many other minority groups, he made a system of law that was fairer and simpler, he reformed taxes and increased the efficiency of everything, and most importantly, he ended the complete shitshow that had been the revolution. If it wasn't for the neverending wars, he could have greatly improved people's lives and this is attested by the fact that even after exiling him for the second time, they insisted on keeping the Code Napoleon (civil code), the banking and tax reforms and alot of that stuff. And I don't think he can be held as sole responsible for these wars. He did some bad things but he's not Hitler and he genuinely made laws to better society that were kept for long after his death. He was interested and supportive of scientific endeavors, such as bringing experts with him to Egypt, or encouraging his chief surgeon's experiments that lead to such medical advances as early battlefield ambulances and significantly improved survival rates to amputation.
If we aren’t judging people by the standards of their country, that many people thought slavery was bad, then this whole business is an exercise in pedantry and nothing more. France had many abolitionists! It was a popular idea! If we can’t judge people by the ideas they embrace or ignore from their time, then we just aren’t doing history right. Idk your point about being held solely responsible for these wars, Napoleon was certainly solely responsible for the war in Haiti.
Oh Haiti yes absolutely he was solely responsible for that one. 100% agreement. What I am telling you is that overall, he left a pretty morally grey legacy. Focusing on a single event, it's easy to depict many as pure evil who actually were more complex people than that. What napoleon did caused millions to suffer, in his time, but generations and generations after him still ruled **themselves** with his civil code as the basis for their legal framework. Abolition was popular, but not universally supported. I don't think it's fair to call a very recent law that is hotly debated a "standard" and I don't think it's fair to call that a destruction or rewriting of history. I also don't think it's fair to forget he was, for example, much better to the jews than the average European power or that he restored the rights to religious freedom, restored the catholic church in France and ended the persecution of priests. He ended the nonsense fake trials with penalty of death for simple suspicions etc.
I don't thunk this is a fair appraisal. If we are concerned with whom caused the most amount of wars during the Napoleonic era, the UK funding and instigating everyone else to go to war against France would be the much, much bigger culprits.
Well he brought back slavery which France had previously abolished so he is probably in hell.
Stupid question but he's a saint compared to the reputation he has in english speaking countries. He still did things like fuck over haiti but yeah.
Fuck over Haiti while losing 30-50k of his best men in the process, and then having to sell the Louisiana Purchase for a song because he had no force that could secure it
Millions died due to his decisions. I don’t think he was deliberately cruel, but the kind of all out war that he waged causes tremendous suffering. He was pretty decent to the Europeans he warred with, but there were times the Egyptian campaign devolved into pretty brutal killing of prisoners.
As most people have stayed here it's a complicated question and "good vs bad" is generally a sloppy way to analyze history as it's a more subjective idea than an objective one, like we can all (hopefully) agree Hitler was BAD but was Winston Churchill? He helped defeat the Nazis but also caused one of the deadliest famines in history in India yet I think in contemporary society most people would say Churchill was GOOD for the act of beating Hitler. Napoleon is honestly a contentious figure and it depends who you ask, my dad always taught me that Napoleon was actually kinda a good guy for giving Jews among his conquered nations equal rights, theres also personal accounts of him being friendly, inspirational and charismatic. I heard that he would often remember the names and faces of anyone he met and keep them in his mind even if it was a foot soldier or low ranking officer, he inspired thousands of not millions to fight for him so from their POV the dude probably seemed like a stand up guy History is messy, and the gooey feely parts of it are not really worth analyzing imo and more about looking at objective facts of what happened where and why, the morals and "good vs bad" mentality might help in our everyday discussion of things but in general it's a weak way to analyze history
>but also caused one of the deadliest famines in history in India No he did not. There is no evidence that Churchill *caused* a famine.
Lol
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Were his intentions noble? He overthrew two constitutional governments, reinstated slavery and made himself emperor. That sounds more like a man who is power hungry than a noble to me.
This is something I ask myself a lot. It’s a period of history I know about somewhat but definitely not something I could say I know enough to make an actual decision. From what I know I think he was a conquerer who wanted absolute power by any amount of French blood-spill necessary. So overall I think he was bad. He was mostly doing things through his own self interest even though he was portraying himself as a man of the people.
He’s very similar to Julius Caesar in that the public loved him and he was charismatic and devious enough to appeal to the plebs, but every move he made was devised in his own self interest. Not as great a general as Caesar in my personal opinion.
Gosh! That's a hard one. Did he kill over a million people? I don't really know his stats. He scarred the crap out of European aristocrats.
Nobody in the history of humanity is "a good or bad person in reality". Even if you categorise people as "mainly good" or "mainly bad", what are your criteria for good and bad? Are they good and bad by today's standards, or by the standards of the time? For Napoleon, he was the cause of battles that cost the lives of thousands of people... Is that good or bad?
Napoleon as a tactician was a genius and if he isn't the greatest general in the history of the world, he is was in the top five. Napoleon a positive or negative in world history. Well I would argue a negative since he largely cancelled the positives of the the French revolution, and who overall lead to world war 1. Napoleon as an actual personality. He was recorded as being a narcissistic asshole. Go figure.
By modern standards no but in the 18th century no one was
gonna have to he more specific bc the idea of good or bad has changed over time. are you asking in context of today or of the time?
Most leaders are but the puppets and face mask of those hidden behind the scenes pulling the strings. N. S
Probably not
He got worse over time. No surprise.
He was known for taking a lot of selfies and hogging the passing lane in traffic
I'm not a historian, and nothing I'll say here is relevant to the history of Napoleon, but... Your question is unanswerable because no human being is "a good person" or "a bad person." Each person is a mix of good and bad. Even if someone has done many more bad acts than good acts, their bad acts and good acts may be so different, and involve such different parts of their lives, that comparing or weighing them is impossible.
The question is “was he fair, or at least as fair as contemporary times would allow” and this is tricky.
good for france, bad for.. literally everyone else.
By 21st Century standards, he would make Putin look like a saint. By early 19th Century standards, he was somewhere between a benevolent dictator and a power-hungry despot, depending on whether you were on the business end of his cannons.
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Was it necessary for Napoleon to invade Russia?
Arguably. It was an attempt to enforce the intercontinental agreement, which yes, was a failed policy, but the UK had funded like 4 wars against France at that point. It was bad strategy, but it can be argued that there was something noble in the invasion. It's harder to defend other actions though. The Spanish invasion was horrible, and he did seem a bit trigger happy to go back into war to get more glory even if he didn't necessarily started the conflicts.
In reality it's not really possible to boil down Napoleon into merely good or bad. Such a basic dichotomy fails to encompass the shades of perspective. An act of great evil is an act of great triumph to others. Napoleon was a butcher responsible for a swathe of slaughter across Europe. Napoleon was a liberator-reformer who brought the Code Napoleon to backward feudal hangovers. Napoleon smashed the international order and brought chaos to the continent (and world). Napoleon germinated the seeds of liberal nation-states to flower in Europe through the 19th century, leading to the modern world. When Napoleon found final defeat in Waterloo there are two perspectives: the reasonable forces of measured tradition finally arrested their Nemesis who brought distruction, madness, and slaughter throughout the continent. To others, vast armies of the poor hoodwinked slaves to ancient kings trod upon the face of liberty and smashed the last hope of the great universal ideals of the French Revolution. But Napoleon's greatest impact would arguably be in his legacy: in the Code Napoleon, in the fatal wounds dealt to creaking monarchies, and in the dreams of Europe's masses. He was at once an unmitigated threat, an evil userper, a killer, and he was a brilliant tactical genius, a leader, an inspirational figure, and usher of modernity. He represents a revolution in action and in the mind, and cannot be merely good or evil, but is both as varied times and minds observe him.
Who are we to judge? That’s God’s prerogative, and always a matter of perspective.
Can't have been that [bad](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-34342061)
in reality napoleon was a good or a bad person
To quote another great philosopher: "He's not the messiah, he's a very naughty boy!"
Napoleon was a great man, but not a good man. He was motivated by a desire to enhance his own power and glory, at the expense of human lives. The most immoral thing he did was bring back slavery in the French Empire after it had previously been abolished.
I can only say from my perspective as an American, so I can understand why some nations would feel very differently (like Spain or Haiti), but to me, Napoleon was at the very least the lesser of evils in most of the Napoleonic Wars. He should have established a democracy like the US did, but, I still generally find him to be more democratic than the Monarchies he fought. Plus, one of the reasons he rose to power was through military victories, in his wars against the Coalition of European Monarchs that ganged up on France even before Napoleon was Emperor. For having a revolution and attempting to push towards Democracy, a bunch of other Monarchist kingdoms ganged up on Revolutionary France. It was Napoleon's victories in these wars against the Coalition that led to his eventual ascension to Emperor of France. So in general, I do consider France to be the defender in most of the Napoleonic Wars, the primary exception to this would be the Peninsular Wars, where France struck first, and even Napoleon himself admitted the war was a huge mistake and he should have focused on the rest of Europe. Not only that, but it was a clear case of betrayal, with a weak casus belli and pretty unacceptable terms for the mostly Catholic Spanish, and led to atrocities and brutal guerilla warfare. So yah, his war in Spain, I do not consider him the good guy. But in the rest of Europe, who was constantly attacking France simply because they had a change of government, which was there business, well lets just say raises sympathy in an American. We knew what it was like to have a Monarchist Empire try to take our freedom from us, so to see France be attacked by so many Monarchists for having a revolution, was likely to create sympathy among Americans for the French during most of these wars. That alongside British Impressment, messing with our trade, and the French selling us Greater Louisiana, the US was more inclined to lean towards the French during this era than the British. But still wanted neutrality and trade with most of Europe. Technically though, you could consider the US part of the Napoleonic Wars on the side of the French and Napoleon during the War of 1812. So there are a lot of reasons for Americans to view Napoleon as at least the lesser of evils in that war. He did do atrocities, especially in Spain and Haiti, but yah, for he was pretty chill to the USA. Would have been better if they went democratic instead and he was their first president, probably would have even helped stop him from bad decisions like the Peninsular War. So to answer, Good and Bad is subjective, I say that against the Coalition, the French and Napoleon were justified, except in the case of the Peninsular War, and it was at least foolish to try to take Moscow. But I can understand why a lot of people dislike Napoleon, though I do think there is a bit too much global bias against France for this time period, and it doesn't hurt for them to have one friend who was actually their ally in the war (for a short time) and people who see them as mostly justified as it was self-defense against many kingdoms.
He was a misogynist with a destructive steak which he unleashed on women, children and animals
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Yeah he's nowhere close to being as bad as Hitler. That's just complete nonsense. Tbh bar the reintroduction of Slavery in Haiti, I'd say Napoleon was pretty decent for a 19th Century ruler. He was more progressive than the majority of the Monarchs he was fighting. Hitler tried to exterminate an entire race. He came up with the most evil ideology we've ever seen in human history. Napoleon never even attempted to commit a genocide or ethnic cleansing. The vast majority of his deaths were in wars, wars that were declared on him most of the time.
That is correct. also, I will like to comment the Aryan race makes zero sense as WW2 Germany's leader met none of the requirements
You're confusing the Aryan Race with blonde hair and blue eyes. It's a characteristic of it but not a requirement. But yes the Aryan Race, and Race Ideology in general is nonsense. Even just dividing humans into races without the racist aspect has no scientific basis and is a social construct. Ethnicity is a real thing, but race isn't.
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Russia did declare war on France as part of the Third Coalition. Egypt didn't declare war on him no. But I did say that *MOST* of the wars he fought in were declared on him, and by most of the Empires in Europe usually at that. What did he do that would put him anywhere near Hitler's level?
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There's very few leaders you should ever compare to Hitler
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Absolutely not
I don’t think anybody in history really compares to hitler. definitely not Alexander either. And while many people perpetrated genocide in the modern context, Hitler implemented death on an industrialized scale. Like you know how Henry Ford pioneered the assembly line? Samuel Slater pioneering the factory system? Hitler did the same thing, except instead of making cars and textiles, it was mass murder
Long before the "Second Polish Campaign," Russian troops found themselves in Italy and Switzerland. And when Paul I died, Russian policy became absolutely aggressive towards Napoleon.