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 l’Empereur! Vive
l’Empereur! ”
“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 l’Empereur! ” 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 Napoléon
Foundation in Paris. “On the left, there’s 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 Napoleon’s
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 château, 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 minister—at the time, Jacques Chirac and Dominque de
Villepin—boycotted a ceremony marking the 200th anniversary of the battle of
Austerlitz, Napoleon’s greatest military victory.
It’s 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 Vendôme. Napoleon’s red
marble tomb, in a crypt under the Invalides dome, is magnificent, perhaps
because his remains were interred there during France’s 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.
Newsweek
“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 Napoléon 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
failure”—bad for France and the rest of Europe. When he was shown the door,
France was isolated, beaten, occupied, dominated, hated and smaller than before.
What’s 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
bas-reliefs 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 Caesar’s 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
patriot—he 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 today’s 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 Napoléonic Memory,
France’s oldest and largest Napoleonic association, cites some of Napoleon’s
achievements: the Civil Code, the Council of State, the Bank of France, the
National Audit office, a centralized and coherent administrative system, lycées,
universities, centers of advanced learning known as école 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.
Hundreds of groups
worldwide study, discuss and venerate Napoleon. Frederic Stevens/Getty
France’s foremost Napoleonic scholar,
Jean Tulard, agrees that Bonaparte was the architect of modern France. “And I
would say also pâtissier [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.
Stéphane Guégan, curator of the Musée
d’Orsay in Paris, which, among other First Empire artworks, houses a plaster
model of Napoleon dressed as a Roman emperor astride a horse, describes France’s
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,” Guégan tells
Newsweek .
In France, Guégan 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.
What’s 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 Napoleon’s 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.
It’s about the industrial revolution,” says Chanteranne. “Man does not make
history. History makes men.”
