Why Napoleons Still a Problem in France

BY BRIAN EADS / MAY 8, 2014 2:59 PM EDT

Under a clear blue sky, the Emperor Napoleon, wearing his trademark black felt bicorne hat, green tunic,
white breeches and riding boots, emerges at the top of a stone staircase and, with a steady gaze and a
salute, acknowledges the thousands assembled in the cobbled courtyard below.
Behind him are his generals, clad in gaudy uniforms and plumed hats, with swords strapped to their
waists. Stood at attention or on horseback in the courtyard are several hundred Imperial Guardsmen in
their bearskin shakos, many sporting a gold earring, a sign of their elite status.
The veterans of the Old Guard were Napoleons favorite troops. He nicknamed them Les Grognards
the grumblersbecause they were bold enough to complain in front of him. Beyond them, crowding the
square and the neighboring streets, stand around 40,000 ordinary French citizens.
The stocky Corsican has ruled France for 15 years, the last 10 as Emperor of the French, and his armies
have conquered much of Europe. Now, after defeat on the battlefield by a coalition of rival nations, the
occupation of Paris and his abdication, Napoleon is about to deliver an emotional farewell to those who
have remained loyal.
The setting is the main courtyard of the magnificent chteau of Fontainebleau, one hour south of Paris.
The date is April 20, 2014.
In real life, Napoleon is Franck Samson, a French lawyer who, with the aid of a black wig, bears a
striking resemblance to Bonaparte and has played the part for a decade. Like Samson, all the generals, the
Imperial Guard, other regiments and the camp followers in period costume, 500 in all, are unpaid
enthusiasts who spend thousands of euros on their sumptuous outfits.
As Napoleon Bonaparte slowly descends the sweeping staircase, he is met by cries of Vive
lEmpereur! Vive lEmpereur!
With men like you, our cause is not lost, the faux Napoleon tells his latter-day followers. By stepping
down and going into exile on the tiny Mediterranean island of Elba, he is sacrificing his own interests for
the interests of France, he says. Farewell, my children. I want to press all of you to my heart.
But Vive lEmpereur! is not a cry that echoes throughout France much anymore. Not everyone is a fan,
then or now. In the spring of 1814, as Napoleon traveled through southern France en route to exile, he was
jeered by onlookers. His lust for power had left more than 1 million French dead. People were weary of
war.
The following year, like the Terminator, Napoleon was back. But only for a brief 100 days before his final
defeat at Waterloo and a second exile, on Saint Helena, a speck of land in the South Atlantic, where he
died.
Two hundred years on, the French still cannot agree on whether Napoleon was a hero or a villain.
The divide is generally down political party lines, says professor Peter Hicks, a British historian with
the Napolon Foundation in Paris. On the left, theres the black legend of Bonaparte as an ogre. On the
right, there is the golden legend of a strong leader who created durable institutions.

French politicians and institutions in particular appear nervous about marking the 200th anniversary of
Napoleons exile. The cost of the Fontainebleau farewell and scores of related events over three
weekends was shouldered not by the central government in Paris but by the local chteau, a historic
monument and UNESCO World Heritage site, and the town of Fontainebleau.
While the 200th anniversary of the French Revolution that toppled the monarchy and delivered thousands
to death by guillotine was officially celebrated in 1989, Napoleonic anniversaries are neither officially
marked nor celebrated. For example, a decade ago, the president and prime ministerat the time, Jacques
Chirac and Dominque de Villepinboycotted a ceremony marking the 200th anniversary of the battle of
Austerlitz, Napoleons greatest military victory.
Its almost as if Napoleon Bonaparte is not part of the national story, Hicks tells Newsweek.
In 2010 an opinion poll in France asked who was the most important man in French history. Napoleon
came second, behind General Charles de Gaulle, who led France from exile during the German
occupation in World War II and served as a postwar president.
On the streets of Paris, there are just two statues of Napoleon. One stands beneath the clock tower at Les
Invalides (a military hospital), the other atop a column in the Place Vendme. Napoleons red marble
tomb, in a crypt under the Invalides dome, is magnificent, perhaps because his remains were interred
there during Frances Second Empire, when his nephew, Napoleon III, was on the throne.
There are no squares, nor places, nor boulevards named for Napoleon and only one narrow street, the rue
Bonaparte, running from the Luxembourg Gardens to the River Seine. And, that, too, is thanks to
Napoleon III.
He is not given enough respect, Samson, the Napoleon look-alike, tells Newsweek. Napoleon rebuilt
France. On balance, his legacy is positive. But the Republic dislikes what is not Republican.
Jacques-Olivier Boudon, a history professor at Paris-Sorbonne University and president of the Napolon
Institute, explained that French public opinion remains deeply divided over Napoleon, with, on the one
hand, those who admire the great man, the conqueror, the military leader and, on the other, those who see
him as a bloodthirsty tyrant, the gravedigger of the revolution. Politicians in France rarely refer to
Napoleon for fear of being accused of authoritarian temptations, or not being good Republicans.
The row was enlivened in March when Lionel Jospin, the Socialist former prime minister, published The
Napoleonic Evil, which topped the best-seller lists and triggered a stormy debate. I am intrigued by the
gap between the glory of Napoleon and the actual results he delivered in France and Europe, Jospin tells
Newsweek.
He says Napoleon was an obvious failurebad for France and the rest of Europe. When he was shown
the door, France was isolated, beaten, occupied, dominated, hated and smaller than before. Whats more,
Napoleon smothered the forces of emancipation awakened by the French and American revolutions and
enabled the survival and restoration of monarchies.
Some of the legacies with which Napoleon is credited, including the Civil Code, the comprehensive legal
system replacing a hodgepodge of feudal laws, were proposed during the revolution, Jospin argues,
though he acknowledges that Napoleon actually delivered them.
He guaranteed some principles of the revolution and, at the same time, changed its course, finished it and
betrayed it, Jospin tells Newsweek. For instance, Napoleon reintroduced slavery in French colonies,
revived a system that allowed the rich to dodge conscription in the military and did nothing to advance
gender equality.

He also crowned himself emperor, but the genuine kings who surrounded him were not convinced.
Always a warrior first, he tried to represent himself as a Caesar, and he wears a Roman toga on the basreliefs in his tomb. His coronation crown, a laurel wreath made of gold, sent the same message. His icon,
the eagle, was also borrowed from Rome.
But Caesars legitimacy depended on military victories. Ultimately, Napoleon suffered too many defeats.
Professor Chris Clark, a Cambridge University historian, goes even further than Jospin. Napoleon was
not a French patriothe was first a Corsican and later an imperial figure, a journey in which he bypassed
any deep affiliation with the French nation, Clark tells Newsweek. His relationship with the French
Revolution is deeply ambivalent. Did he stabilize it or shut it down? He seems to have done both. He
rejected democracy, he suffocated the representative dimension of politics, and he created a culture of
courtly display.
A month before crowning himself emperor, Napoleon sought approval for establishing an empire from the
French in a plebiscite; 3,572,329 voted in favor, 2,567 against. If that landslide resembles an election in
North Korea, well, this was no secret ballot. Each yes or no was recorded, along with the name and
address of the voter. Evidently, an overwhelming majority knew which side their baguette was buttered
on.
His extravagant coronation in Notre Dame in December 1804 cost 8.5 million francs, or $8.5 million in
todays money. He made his brothers, sisters and stepchildren kings, queens, princes and princesses and
created a Napoleonic aristocracy numbering 3,500. By any measure, it was a bizarre progression for
someone often described as a child of the Revolution.
Napoleon enthusiasts tell a different story. David Chanteranne, editor of a magazine published by
Napolonic Memory, Frances oldest and largest Napoleonic association, cites some of Napoleons
achievements: the Civil Code, the Council of State, the Bank of France, the National Audit office, a
centralized and coherent administrative system, lyces, universities, centers of advanced learning known
as cole normal, chambers of commerce, the metric system and freedom of religion.
These were ambitions unachieved during the chaos of the revolution, Chanteranne tells Newsweek. He
was a savior of France. If there had been no Napoleon, the Republic would not have survived.
As it is, these institutions continue to function and underpin French society. Indeed, many were copied in
countries conquered by Napoleon, such as Italy, Germany and Poland, and laid the foundations for the
modern state.
Frances foremost Napoleonic scholar, Jean Tulard, agrees that Bonaparte was the architect of modern
France. And I would say also ptissier [a cake and pastry maker] because of the administrative
millefeuille that we inherited. (Oddly enough, in North America the multilayered mille-feuille cake is
called a napoleon.)
If Napoleon had not crushed a Royalist rebellion and seized power in 1799, the French monarchy and
feudalism would have returned, Tulard says. Like Cincinnatus in ancient Rome, Napoleon wanted a
dictatorship of public salvation. He gets all the power, and, when the project is finished, he returns to his
plough.
In the event, the old order was never restored in France. When Louis XVIII became emperor in 1814, he
served as a constitutional monarch.
Stphane Gugan, curator of the Muse dOrsay in Paris, which, among other First Empire artworks,
houses a plaster model of Napoleon dressed as a Roman emperor astride a horse, describes Frances
fascination with him as a national illness.

The people who met him were fascinated by his charm. And today, even the most hostile to Napoleon
also face this charm. So there is a difficulty to apprehend the duality of this character. He was born from
the revolution, he extended and finished it, and after 1804 he turns into a despot, a dictator, Gugan tells
Newsweek.
In France, Gugan says, there is a kind of nostalgia, not for dictatorship but for strong leaders. Our age is
suffering a lack of imagination and political utopia, he says.
Whats more, the French are not the only ones fascinated by Napoleon. Hundreds of groups worldwide
study, discuss and venerate him; stage re-enactments of his battles in costume; throw lavish balls; and
stage events.
J. David Markham, a North American scholar and president of the International Napoleonic Society, says
the French fascination with Napoleon is perfectly reasonable. The whole world is fascinated. More
books have been written about him than anyone in history, Markham tells Newsweek.
As prices of Napoleonic memorabilia continue to rise at auctions in Europe and North America, a distinct
shortage of items for sale has emerged. A lock of Napoleons hair, a ring and other relics were recently
stolen from a museum in Melbourne, Australia. At an auction in France, the soiled nightshirt in which he
died was withdrawn after descendants of the original owners became afraid it would be sold to a foreigner
and leave France. They won a court injunction preventing its sale.
Will the fascination with Napoleon continue for another 200 years? In France, at least, enthusiasm looks
set to diminish. Napoleon and his exploits are scarcely mentioned in French schools anymore.
In the past, history was the study of great men and women. Today the focus of teaching is on trends,
issues and movements. France in 1800 is no longer about Louis XVI and Napoleon Bonaparte. Its about
the industrial revolution, says Chanteranne. Man does not make history. History makes men.