Napoleon Stripped Bare
By Richard Fowler
Shaving one morning, the radio tuned to France Inter, I got the clear tones of Lionel Jospin laying out the options in the Ukraine affair. Impressive. Looking him up on Wikipedia, he moved from the Communist Party to join the Socialists. A university teacher and economist by trade he was first secretary for the Socialists, stood for President and lost against Chirac in 1995 and held the post of Premier Ministre when Mitterand introduced the 35 hour week.
He has recently published Le Mal Napoléonien. Meat for me because I have never been able to fathom out how Napoleon got away with causing so much havoc in Europe, Egypt, Spain, and finally Russia. Jospin examines what for him is the misplaced ‘gloire’ attached to his name; quite brave for a Frenchman! His book follows Napoleon’s fifteen year trail and asks if the goals set out, the means and sacrifices demanded and the results obtained were fruitful. Jospin’s conclusion is ‘nul point’ on everything.
He admits in the foreword that enough has been written about the history of Napoleon. His book is more about the effect Bonapartism had on the nation at the time and how it lingers on to the present day. Bonapartism being, maybe, the desire to let a good man have his head. Ridiculously risky.
The 1789 trauma and the reign of terror created the desire for a strong leader to maintain order and stability. Napoleon, famously, quelled a food riot in July 1789 using his canonry expertise. Attracting attention this Corsican aristocrat was called
upon by a handful of men (Barras, Lucien Bonaparte (his brother),Cambacérès, Roger Ducos , Fouché , and Talleyrand) to head up a coup d’état in November 1799. He already had some battles under his belt in Italy.
The coup d’état successfully formed the Consulat, leaving existing institutions but completely subverting them all one way or another. Napoleon became lifetime consulate, then Emperor. Even the church was subverted with prayers for his success and lip service to the glorious revolution of the French people. Interestingly, the revolution had not given every man a right to vote, not to mention women. Voting was for a selected group of people who then chose people to form a government. This was the path to steal the state.
The revolution shook the remaining monarchies of Europe, and was greatly feared. Napoleon’s pretentions to remove and democratise them would seem legitimate. But his real agenda was to conquer them all. Aged 20 at the time of the revolution he knew all the leaders but his gut feeling craved order and from birth he was steeped in the connections and desires of an aristocrat. After a conquest he set up no model of French democracy. The truth is that he feared the people. He placed his own family in charge (his brother Joseph, King of Italy, subsequently moved to Spain; Louis to Holland; Jérôme to Westphalia; and his brother-in-law, Murat, to Naples) and did deals with the existing power brokers. He set great store by old fashioned means of marriage to seize and maintain power; his own marriage to Marie-Louise of Austria, for instance. This is definitely not what you would expect from a democrat.
And how real were the victories? Napoleon was no stranger to propaganda (lies) .800, 000 died in the French army, of whom 600,000 were French conscripts. The rich could buy themselves out, so the army was made up of the poor. Their only incentive was the despoils of war and a short life. Where was the justice in that?
Napoleon’s success relied on swift and surprising movements. Men exhausted from long marches were rushed into battle with no rest or full bellies. The extra losses from this conduct did not weigh heavily on his conscience it seems. Spain was one such disaster too far since there was no supplies of food and materiel. Wellington may have been slow to overwhelm the army , but he took time to build up stores ensuring success. The manner of conquest in no way endeared the conquered to the French and thus no seeds of long term alliance were sown. The countryside was stripped to feed the French army; and wholesale looting was common place, the results of which won no friends.
The policy of the European Continental blockade against trade with England was a disaster for the Baltic countries and France itself was being crippled in its restricted trade. Napoleon seems to have been neither a politician nor an economist. Just a vain soldier.
Nelson burned the French fleet at Agadir, while Napoleon was charging round Egypt. That didn’t stop him leaving the army and rushing back to Paris to maintain his position. The same happened when he nipped back to Paris in advance of his tattered and desperate army on their way home from the Moscow defeat.
His credit ran out when the allies Austria, Prussia and Russia arrived in Paris on 6th April 1814 and the Peace Treaty of Paris was signed. But as in a good Hitchcock film Napoleon comes back one more time to lead his army at Waterloo. Given past history it seems difficult to understand how he could be given that additional chance to redeem himself. Wellington, Blucher and the rain did the business and this time, captured, he was finally exiled to St Helena.
Jospin cites others who tied to use Bonapartism to support their point of view, one being Marshall Pétain (a successful and admired general from the Great War, was cut out to lead the rump of France from Vichy after Paris had been overrun by the Germans in 1940). De Gaulle seems to escape this definition, always going back to the people for a referendum or vote when things got tricky.
Altogether the book is a thorough, readable, and precise study of this infamous French ‘tyrant’. Jospin’s honesty is admirable.
Le Mal Napoléonien by Lionel Jospin
(ISBN978-2-02-116317-9 Editions Seuil, March 2014)