Was he, as his detractors claim, a megalomaniac dictator – the precursor of such 20th-century monsters as Hitler, Stalin and Mussolini? Or was he a statesman, lawgiver and great warrior who, on the Roman model that Napoleon so admired, like Caesar and Augustus, brought order where there was none?Īndrew Roberts begins his entertaining and deeply forensic examination of Napoleon by teasing us, somewhat coyly, about where he is going to go with these arguments. The recent return to the fray of Nicolas Sarkozy, whose diminutive stature matches that of the pocket-size emperor, is only the latest manifestation of this phenomenon.įor most of his biographers, however, French or otherwise, Napoleon Bonaparte remains a puzzle. This is an almost superstitious belief that every now and then a populist and charismatic figure will come to save France from chaos. Most significantly, Napoleon still haunts French political life in the form of the cult of bonapartisme.
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