Napoleon-Why the hate?

I don't know. I have a hard time seeing Napoleon as that different from Tsar Alexander, or Pitt the Elder, or most politicians of his day. Expansion through force of arms was how it was done. He just was super good at it.

You think I like those guys? :p

(Actually one does have to feel sympathetic to poor Alex given all the crap he went through; but the British ruling classes were, as we know, just plain bastards.)

Like I said, a great man: extremely competent and no warlord. But he still let his ego kills thousands of people.
 
Napoleon planned to invade England. He was only stopped by the presence of the Royal Navy in the English Channel. That, my friends, is why he was loathed in England and Scotland.

Any would-be invader of England is thoroughly hated - Caesar, Monmouth, Napoleon, Hitler.

Successful invaders were generally unpopular - Claudius had little impact, Hengist, Horsa and Cerdic the Saxon, were loathed by the Welsh, but not by the Anglo-Saxons.

William of Normandy is hated by everybody except the Anglo-Norman peerage.

William of Orange was liked as a liberator, but in Ireland...the mind boggles.

Bonnie Prince Charlie was romantic (good) but he invaded England and lost (bad).

Does that help you?

I must admit, that being Dutch, when I see the name William of Orange, that I think of prince William the Silent, also a kind of liberator for the role he played in the Dutch Revolt; but (once I saw Ireland) you obviously meant king-stadtholder William III of Orange (the third English king and the third Dutch stadtholder to be named William).

Regarding Napoleon some mixed thoughts, for instance since the Netherlands was and is a trading his continental system was disastrous and hated. Furthermore annexing the Netherlands to his French Empire in 1810, also doesn't help his popularity, whereas his brother king Louis Napoleon of Holland actually was quite popular.
 
Last edited:

Wolfpaw

Banned
The man compensated for being short by making himself Emperor of the French (despite being French himself only on a technicality) and attempting to conquer Europe.
Wasn't he not that short? Somewhere around 5'7" which IIRC was average back then.
 
Wow, thanks for all the replies! From what I've read in this thread, he was no different than most other absolute monarchs of the time, just the degree of his success seems to have made him an easy target for vilification. Is that a fair summary?
 
Wow, thanks for all the replies! From what I've read in this thread, he was no different than most other absolute monarchs of the time, just the degree of his success seems to have made him an easy target for vilification. Is that a fair summary?
In my opinion its not that it made him an easy target, but it made him a larger target.

Every military leader has his share of hate, since that what war is, among his contemporaries, which is then passed down through generations. However due to Napoleon's success, notability and impact, obviously he's going to have more people hating him than someone a lot more minor.
 
Do non-Brits hate Napoleon? Aside from some joking about him being short and the hand in the coat, I don't see him being portrayed negatively all that much. He was a conqueror, but I think you'd be hard-pressed to find many people who consider him worse than your average warmongering early modern ruler.
 
Do non-Brits hate Napoleon? Aside from some joking about him being short and the hand in the coat, I don't see him being portrayed negatively all that much. He was a conqueror, but I think you'd be hard-pressed to find many people who consider him worse than your average warmongering early modern ruler.

I don't know any British person who has ever said "I hate Napoleon".

If he is mentioned at all it is usually jokes about him being short, wearing a stupid hat and walking around with his hand tucked into his coat and turning down sex with Josephine.

I guess pretty soon Hitler will be seen as just a man with greasy hair, a funny moustache and an inability to stop his arm from sticking up in the air.
 
Attempting to reimpose slavery, making women's testimony inadmissable in court and going back on his promise to spread republicanism throughout Europe in order to give his incompetent siblings cushy jobs does it for me.
 
Wow, thanks for all the replies! From what I've read in this thread, he was no different than most other absolute monarchs of the time, just the degree of his success seems to have made him an easy target for vilification. Is that a fair summary?

With the important difference that he conquered countries beyond his state's tradtional/pretended domains, and this have an impact on Napoleon's image beyond french fortiers.


[Do non-Brits hate Napoleon?

Yes, Napoleonic wars only affected Britain. Indeed, Britain was the more affected country, not like those dirty continentals.
 
I've always liked Napoleon, despite being American maybe because I'm a American of French-Canadian descent maybe that has some thing do due with it I don't known.
 

scholar

Banned
I've always liked Napoleon, he is in fact one of my top ten favorite personages inside history. Being a man who's interests are firmly entrenched in history far more ancient than the enlightenment era, I do not find nearly as much fault with Napoleon's more autocratic actions. Especially after the embarrassment that was the first french republic. Anyone who doesn't like him for destroying that abomination should really look up, exactly, what the hell was going on under that regime. Further, I have a minor soft spot for Louis XVI as he was a monarch that was in way over his head who tried to appeal to the common man and the nobility to make France strong again during the epitome of the little ice age as well as ruling a country left in ruinous debt by his forefathers.
 
I've always liked Napoleon, he is in fact one of my top ten favorite personages inside history. Being a man who's interests are firmly entrenched in history far more ancient than the enlightenment era, I do not find nearly as much fault with Napoleon's more autocratic actions. Especially after the embarrassment that was the first french republic. Anyone who doesn't like him for destroying that abomination should really look up, exactly, what the hell was going on under that regime. Further, I have a minor soft spot for Louis XVI as he was a monarch that was in way over his head who tried to appeal to the common man and the nobility to make France strong again during the epitome of the little ice age as well as ruling a country left in ruinous debt by his forefathers.

Destroying it and replacing it with self-serving autocracy...decisions, decisions. Can I just side with the opponents of both?

Napoleon was probably not more tyrannical than Louis XIV, but that's hardly grounds for praise.
 
Top