How come yesterday's Napoleon has no problem seducing today's French?
Ask the British and they would say, "The French are simply as pathetic as Napoleon was."
Ask me and I would say the following:
Compared to his male contemporaries, the real Napoleon was of average height (5'6")* Yes, he was called le petit caporal (the little corporal). But that was a cute nickname honoring his young age of 24 when he was promoted to brigadier general overnight for liberating the French port of Toulon from a British fleet.
The British, however, had successfully caricaturized Napoleon as a dwarf in their wildly popular cartoons.** I am amused by social media folks who still buy into this kind of stale disinformation. But then, once popularized, even stale disinformation has legs.
Let's get serious about Napoleon.
Defeated in Waterloo though, Napoleon did have won big on creating a national identity of and for the French people who had all along been living in the shadow of the Bourbon dynasty.
Napoleon, a Corsican outsider, gave rise to French nationalism which in turn founded a forward-looking French nation in due course of history.
Also, for the very first time in modern history, a citizens' king strutted his stuff on a stage known to Shakespeare as the world.
How come yesterday's Napoleon has no problem seducing today's French?
Ask the British and they would say, "The French are simply as pathetic as Napoleon was."
Ask me and I would say the following:
Compared to his male contemporaries, the real Napoleon was of average height (5'6")* Yes, he was called le petit caporal (the little corporal). But that was a cute nickname honoring his young age of 24 when he was promoted to brigadier general overnight for liberating the French port of Toulon from a British fleet.
The British, however, had successfully caricaturized Napoleon as a dwarf in their wildly popular cartoons.** I am amused by social media folks who still buy into this kind of stale disinformation. But then, once popularized, even stale disinformation has legs.
Let's get serious about Napoleon.
Defeated in Waterloo though, Napoleon did have won big on creating a national identity of and for the French people who had all along been living in the shadow of the Bourbon dynasty.
Napoleon, a Corsican outsider, gave rise to French nationalism which in turn founded a forward-looking French nation in due course of history.
Also, for the very first time in modern history, a citizens' king strutted his stuff on a stage known to Shakespeare as the world.
France can never forget Napoleon's kiss.
Author: renqiulan
*https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2023/11/22/napoleon-short-myth/
**Englishman James Gillray (1756-1815), a political cartoonist, ran a spectacular campaign of caricaturing Napoleon.
长身大面（大胡子），似乎是军队的偏爱。