Napoléon

[Portrait of Marie Walewska - François Gérard - 1810. Oil on canvas. 241 cm × 162 cm (95 in × 64 in). To be found at the Army Museum in Paris. Lifted from Wikipedia]

It is time to draw the excursion into Napoléonic affairs, kicked on in June and reported at references 2 and 3, to a close - not having finished the book at reference 1, but having read quite large chunks of it. A book which is much more about the man's private affairs than his public affairs.

My starting point is that while he no doubt did a lot that was good in the French civil department, and that he was the best general of his day, his lust for battles, glory and power, quite apart from upsetting a lot of other Europeans, at a time when nationalism was just getting underway, resulted in a large number of excess deaths, guessing, in a small number of millions. In any event, less than ten.

In the present account, Napoléon did not do very well in his private affairs. He was badly let down by his first wife, Josephine, and although he divorced her for dynastic reasons, he did look after her, generously, for the rest of her life. And he looked after her children. His second wife, married young for dynastic reasons, left him, taking their son with her, as soon as the going got rough. He perhaps did best with his Polish lady, Maria Walewska, who at least took the trouble to come and see him on Elba. His various children - listed at reference 4 - were a mixed lot. His child by his second wife, died young. An earlier bastard died old, a drunk and a gambler. His child with the Polish lady had a respectable career as a diplomat and politician.

His own family was a fairly hopeless lot, greedy with it.

His marshals, mostly with him since the beginning, mostly from modest backgrounds, when push came to shove, were most interested in living comfortably in their palaces and estates - and doing their best to keep them at the restoration which followed. They had lost a lot of their young taste for blood and thunder; for campaigns and battles for glory.

Like most successful men, he had a huge amount of energy and a huge capacity for work.

It might be accounted a failing that he was too indulgent with those near him who behaved badly. He could and should have done more to reign them in.

While his last adventure, the escape from Elba and the 100 days, was something of a prodigy. But was also very expensive in blood and treasure. Dumping him in St. Helena was both effective and decent - in all the circumstances.

A book which did well in its day, and seems to have been part of a drive to rehabilitate the man, subject to waves of posthumous favour and disfavour. It has a large Internet presence now.

PS 1: has anyone attempted to add up the total number of weighted, lost life years that Napoléon clocked up? Perhaps, by way of comparison, of the same order as those lost in the Bengal famine of the Second World War, an arguably avoidable catastrophe on our watch. For which see reference 5.

PS 2: the portrait included above seems oddly familiar, although search of the archive turns up nothing for 'walewska'. Perhaps the familiarity is with portraits of that time, often posed in much the same way.

PS 3: I happened to notice that my telephone was a bit full this (Wednesday) morning, full enough that I ought to do something about it. And I find that learning how to manage storage on my telephone is even worse than learning how to use the controls on our new Polo - with the reporting of use of storage by Samsung being very confusing, never mind trying to do anything about it. But I think I have managed to delete a lot of my images from 2023 and 2024, which does seem to have created some headroom. Maybe Apple do rather better on this front.

References

Reference 1: Napoléon intime - Arthur-Lévy - 1892. Collection Nelson.

Reference 2: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/06/trolleys-864-and-865.html.

Reference 3: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/06/lady-day.html.

Reference 4: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napoleon.

Reference 5: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/11/the-bengal-famine-of-1943.html.

Group search key: napoleon. Still not sure, without checking, about searching and accents.