What do you think of Napoleon Bonaparte?

[Sir Percy Ware-Armitage]

Removed by yours truly. It seems the passage flew like a lead balloon. Let's leave it and I would appreciate if the quote of the said ill conceive post are from the board. Thanks. No more "comedy" from Sir P.

 

[pbehn]

The French exhibit irritating verbal and non-verbal (the famous French pout concluded with an onomatopic "boff" then back to the pout) propensities which one seldom encounters elsewhere in Europe. If another observer includes their attitudinal cultural supremacism (from the intellectual grenouilles class who believe their patrie is the Greece of our epoch),very few would find most grenouilles likeable.

Cherio!

Sir P.

Eh?

 

[Crimea_River]

Rather harsh methinks.

 

[pbehn]

Mr Bonaparte was not French he was Corsican, in the time of Napoleon only about 10% of the population spoke what we would now recognise as French. Like many dictators he was ruthless with grand visions, much of what we think of as French today is a product of his era. He played a big part in making France one of Europe's great states and also changed all of European politics. For that he is a great historical figure but to me he was too much of a tyrant.

 

[Sir Percy Ware-Armitage]

Rather harsh methinks.

Indeed, I concede my words were quite harsh. Pity! However, my grenouilles encounters confirmed the stated remarks.

Cherio!

Sir P.

 

[pbehn]

Indeed, I concede my words were quite harsh. Pity! However, my grenouilles encounters confirmed the stated remarks.

Cherio!

Sir P.

"Grenouilles" was an insult in Robespierres French court, aimed at people whose behaviour resembled grenoilles de marais. I am sure you impressed them.

 

[swampyankee]

I'm not just talking about military matters. How Napoleon shaped history in many differant ways. Even Archaeology.

Far Out Question: Would he have liked Aviation Warfare in his tactics, or not?

He was only a 100 years too early to be able to witness what airplanes could acomplish in battle.

Napoleon's major, lasting, and largely positive contributions were the spread of the metric system and of the Civil Code, which is still the basis for the legal system of many of the countries of the European mainland. I think he also, as a side effect, promoted the idea of officer promotion by merit, vs birth: France and many of the Continental countries forbade officers' commissions except to members of the nobility (that is, the arms bearing class); Britain had no such restrictions.

 

[swampyankee]

Bonaparte was a short bas*tard with severe penis envy and a bad terminal case of gonnorea...

Napoleon was of average height for the time and place (French poids were larger than English feet). Interestingly, Napoleon was a French subject before the Revolution (ancien regime France did not have citizens; it had subjects), as he was born in Corsica. Like many of the subjects of the French kings, French was not his first language; that was Corsican: he spoke French with an accent his entire life.

Positives? Spread of the Civil Code and the metric system. Many of the countries he invaded returned to the idea of meritocracy and the ideal of the rule of law applying to everyone, instead of local nobles doing whatever the hell they wanted to to their tenants. These ideals, which were not consistently followed by Napoleon, who may not have even believed in them, fueled most pro-democracy movements in Europe for a century.

Negatives? He killed a lot of people, many of them French, and brought forth the repressive Holy Alliance which would, quite cheerfully, have invaded and dismembered the USA and did destroy the nations of Poland, Venice, and the independence of every republic in Italy.

 

[Capt. Vick]

...not short for a man of his day, great dancer and a hell of a card player!

 

[Sir Percy Ware-Armitage]

"Grenouilles" was an insult in Robespierres French court, aimed at people whose behaviour resembled grenoilles de marais. I am sure you impressed them.

It was mostly tongue in cheek


Sir P.

 

[pbehn]

It was mostly tongue in cheek


Sir P.

Maybe, it just comes across as unpleasant and ill informed. I have no idea if your prejudice is against French people or French speakers, I speak French and lived in France for a long time.

 

[Sir Percy Ware-Armitage]

Maybe, it just comes across as unpleasant and ill informed. I have no idea if your prejudice is against French people or French speakers, I speak French and lived in France for a long time.

I know and I understand very well your point of view. In fact, the post in question is truly the words of Sir Percy Ware-Average (is picture adorns my posts), who, as a character is very much a man of his time (please refer to "Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines" which is one of my favorite comedies). BTW, I'm a Francophone from Canada and my wife is British. We both appreciate such blackguards and toffs like Sir Percy with their class prejudices (especially back then) and all the baggage that goes with it. Sorry for all the possible misunderstandings.

Cheers!

Denis

 

[pbehn]

I know and I understand very well your point of view. In fact, the post in question is truly the words of Sir Percy Ware-Average (is picture adorns my posts), who, as a character is very much a man of his time (please refer to "Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines" which is one of my favorite comedies). BTW, I'm a Francophone from Canada and my wife is British. We both appreciate such blackguards and toffs like Sir Percy with their class prejudices (especially back then) and all the baggage that goes with it. Sorry for all the possible misunderstandings.

Cheers!

Denis

Are you posting as yourself or some character in a movie?

 

[Sir Percy Ware-Armitage]

Are you posting as yourself or some character in a movie?

In the previous case, it was Sir Percy who blasted the French. When I post seriously it's always me however, I use his name. Indeed, he's a character in the movie. The film is very amusing like a Clouseau/Pink Panther comedy. You should see how the Italians and the Germans are caricatured. Insane! Plus the old planes are wonderful.


youtube those magnificent men in their flying machines germans - Bing video

 

[pbehn]

Grow up


You are like a stream of bats piss.

 

[DerAdlerIstGelandet]

Play nice everyone.

 

[pbehn]

Play nice everyone.

I merely meant that he shines out like a shaft of shimmering golden light when all around is darkness.


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UxXW6tfl2Y0





The idea that you can insult people and excuse it by saying it is a quote is ffffing ridiculous.

 

[DerAdlerIstGelandet]

The idea that you can insult people and excuse it by saying it is a quote is ffffing ridiculous.

I do not disagree with you. Nor will it be tolerated.

Two wrongs however do not make a right...

 

[parsifal]

On the one hand, Napoleon's policies created the foundation for much of France's legal and social system today. For instance, the Code Napoleon is the French civil code. It forbids privileges based on birth and allows freedom of religion among other things. The metric system was also promoted and spread by Napoleon. Napoleon's efforts to emancipate the Jews of France and allow them to leave the ghettos to which they were previously constrained also represents an important advance. Politically, those who view Napoleon in a favorable light would argue that he put an end to a period of lawlessness and chaos in France.

Critics of Napoleon insist that his ultimate legacy was bankruptcy and territorial losses for France. France's colonial losses during the period of Napoleon's rule are viewed to have weakened it significantly vis-a-vis England. Napoleon also restored slavery in France's overseas colonies. Finally, his wars are estimated to have caused millions of military and civilian deaths in France and Europe.

A counter-argument would be that Napoleon was not responsible for the wars in which he fought -- after the French Revolution, the monarchies of Europe were bent on restoring the Bourbons to the French throne and formed coalition after coalition against France to achieve this goal. Britain's position was slightly different and I will post a review I found that I think deals with the anglo french relationship further on.

How is Napoleon is remembered in France today? Many argue that Napoleon is generally viewed in a favorable light, if only because so many monuments and landmarks in France still bear his mark, they were not torn down after his era passed. To give a few examples, the boulevards surrounding Paris are named after Napoleon's marshals, the Arc de Triomphe is a tribute to his victories and the Place de la Concorde a tribute to his conquest of Egypt. He is buried in the Invalides, one of the most recognizable and opulent buildings in Paris. Many prominent streets are named after his military victories (Rivoli, Castiglione, Iena bridge, Austerlitz, Friedland, Wagram...). If he were considered a "neurotic dictator," this would surely not be the case. There is no Gazala or Kharkov street in Germany for example. Sometimes it is the way you embark on your military achievement, and for whom, that makes the difference between a "good" and 'bad" conflict.

That said, there is some ambiguity with regard to commemorating Napoleon. The 200th anniversary of the great victory of Austerlitz was not officially celebrated in 2005 (the Brits, however, certainly celebrated the anniversary of Trafalgar a year before that). Napoleon certainly does not have the same iconic status as Charles de Gaulle in political circles. Some of his more controversial decisions may be the reason for this (his reinstatement of slavery makes him rather unpopular in France's overseas territories...). He does however have prominent admirers, such as de Villepin (former prime minister) and Valery Giscard d'Estaing (former president), both of whom have written books on him.

Ultimately, though he is not celebrated as a national hero, I would argue that Napoleon is remembered in a fairly positive light in the minds of the French people, and that his imprint on modern France is unavoidable.

Napoleon – the impact on Anglo French perceptions

Anglo-French rivalry was, of course, a long-standing feature of European diplomatic and commercial relations during the eighteenth century, to the point where some historians refer to the Napoleonic Wars as the last phase of the 'Second Hundred Years' War' that only finally, and decisively, came to an end at the battle of Waterloo.

One of the more interesting aspects of this rivalry is that, according to Semmel, Napoleon's France provided Britain with a yardstick by which it could measure its own national character. Napoleon, argues Semmel, 'unsettled Britons' certitudes about their enemy and themselves'. Indeed, Napoleon's own character and ethnic identity were so open to interpretation that he is said to have inaugurated a 'new, more equivocal phase in British thinking about France'in the process. Napoleon has tended to be used as a kind of mirror. Depending on who was looking into it, the image was seen as either a positive or a negative reflection of the British political system. Put another way, Napoleon was such an ambiguous character that political commentators in Britain, depending on whether they were radicals or loyalists, could see in him either tyrant or liberal, either legitimate or illegitimate ruler, either sans-culotte or destroyer of the Revolution. In fact, the British found many different ways of interpreting Napoleon, but for now, we should just bring out some of the more important ideas contained in Semmel's work.

First, Napoleon complicated British thinking about its own national identity. In the opening chapter of the book, the reader gets a detailed analysis of the types of epithets that were used to describe Napoleon. 'Corsican usurper' was one of the more common. This questioned Napoleon's legitimacy not only because of his ethnic origins – he was born outside of France – but also the means by which he had attained power. That much is pretty straightforward. Semmel takes this a little further, however, by arguing that as a consequence, Napoleon 'unsettled relations', and complicated the 'traditional dichotomies drawn between Britain and France', and in so doing, blurred British conceptions of national identity. If we accept Semmel's argument, reasonable enough in itself, we are left wondering what implications this has for the development of British national identity.

If Napoleon threw Britons' perceptions of themselves into doubt, if Napoleon raised questions about Britain's own destiny, then this is important, according to Semmel, because it was at the origins of a debate about political legitimacy and constitutional reform in Britain.

Questions over Napoleon's legitimacy – largely arising out of the manner in which he came to power, that is, through a coup, and what the British referred to as the transformation of a republic into a military dictatorship – led radicals and reformers to question George III's right to rule, but it also led to questions about the English Revolution of 1688, as well as the Hanoverian succession. The British, after all, went through their own crisis of legitimacy, in part brought about by George III's mental illness, when a regency was established in 1811.

British radicals used Napoleon 'as a cudgel' with which they rebuked their own rulers. They continued to question their own rulers even after it was evident that Napoleon was defeated. One of the last chapters in the book, covering the period between Napoleon's first abdication (1814) and his death while in exile on St Helena (1821), roughly coincides with a period of radicalism and protest against state corruption in Britain.

Loyalists (as opposed to radicals), on the other hand, were often able to use Napoleon to defend the British monarchy, but even they seem to have been permeated by self-doubt and anxiety. Loyalist pamphlets during the invasion scare of 1803, for example, often questioned the nature of the English character (the subject of much of chapter 2) to the point where Semmel concludes that the British self-portrait was 'ambivalent, problematic, and troubled'. In this part of his study, Semmel uses contemporary English broadsides and caricatures (most of them anti-Napoleonic) as a window not only onto popular English conceptions of Napoleon, but also onto the 'deep unease of the loyalist mind'. As the author is all too aware, however, these broadsides (many examples of which are given) were not of the people, but rather addressed to them. It is difficult, therefore, to get a sense of what people thought of either the broadsides or Napoleon, although the broadsides seem to express an underlying fear that Britain had somehow reached its peak and was now in decline. The conclusion drawn by Semmel is that a 'deep, seemingly inescapable anxiety over the state of the British nation ran rampant' in the early years of Napoleon's reign.

 

[swampyankee]

...Although the Treaty of Paris did place reparations on France relatively larger than those placed on Germany by Versailles. France paid.