How old were you when you realized everything you thought you knew about him was right-wing Anglo propaganda?

How old were you when you realized everything you thought you knew about him was right-wing Anglo propaganda?

What does the right-wing Anglo propaganda that you speak of consist of?

>right wing

brainlet detected

>Anglos
>right-wing
pick one.

That Napoleon was an exceptionally oppressive leader, that Napoleon wanted to subjugate his enemies, and that Napoleon was self-interested monarch.

All of this is much applicable to his reactionary enemies in Britain, Russia, and Spain. Yet these kingdoms are always portrayed as heroic defenders of freedom and justice.

In the US and UK we usually learn about the poor Spaniard rebels executed by Napoleon during wartime, but the textbooks usually leave out the fact that these gangs were hoping to reverse Napoleon's liberal reforms and reassert feudalism.

>Britian
>reactionary
The most liberal power on the continent sans maybe Netherlands.

He's the reason margarine exists.

Absolutely not. The British had their own liberal tradition dating back to the Civil War, but Napoleon was leading the most radically enlightened state in the world at the time of his ascension.

Britain worried that Napoelon's liberating desires would disrupt their trade interests in the rest of Europe, so they banded together with absolute monarchs in less developed countries who sought to protect their feudal properties from any revolutionary incursion.

In the classic Anglo style, British language of representative government and the rule of law meant nothing when there interests were threatened by more authentic democrats.

The men executed in this painting, despite their sad faces, aren't random innocents picked up for a village ; They were insurgents who killed french soldiers. Only men who were caught bearing arms were sentenced to the firing squad.

Such logic. Killing anyone with firearms means anyone with firearms is forced to fight. Instant rebellion in a pot. No wonder the French lost.

>No wonder the French lost

They lost to the Russian weather tho
Not to Spanish gorillas

I don't think it's fair to lump Britain in with Russia and Spain - Britain had a parliamentary liberal tradition going back centuries (serfdom abolished in the 16th century). But I take your point.

When learning about Napoleon, I learnt about him in the context of the period 1789-1815, so learning about the earlier Revolution, Jacobin govt, Terror etc. naturally put Napoleon in a much better light.

I don't believe Napoleon was an *oppressive* leader, although he did extort a great deal of wealth from his conquered territories (as was the European norm), he also censored press and artistic freedom to a great extent.

I definitely don't think Napoleon was a self-interested monarch - why else would he decide to escape from his cushy position on Elba with a generous salary and 600-man personal army? But then again I wasn't really taught that he was self-interested: perhaps the curriculum in Britain has changed.

>these gangs were hoping to reverse Napoleon's liberal reforms and reassert feudalism.
so were they the good guys?

Russian weather can't account for the entirety of the failure of his campaign of 1812 tho. Many historians see Borodino as the turning point in the campaign.

Russians baited Napoleon into Moscow and refused to surrender, knowing that he would have to turn back eventually as they burned a good deal of the city before leaving. It was after this moment that winter truly fucked Napoleon, on his retreat through Russia.

>durrr I pretend to like feudal poverty and arbitrary rule because I want people to know how edgy and right-wing I am

Hmm, not sure about this.

If anything the French were worried that they wouldn't be able to meaningfully damage Britain on the field (no land border) or on sea (Nile 1798, Trafalgar 1805) so naturally the only way they could attempt to damage them was commercially, hence the Continental System.

But continental European nations were so dependent on British trade that they just said fuck the continental system, which was why Napoleon invaded Portugal in 1807 and later Russia in 1812.

A good chunk of the historiography is positive imo, excepting the death toll

I want to root for the French and say "I wish Napoleon won" but I honestly hate them both so goddamn much

>Russians are immune to weather

Why though? It has been 200+ years.

Until I started studying him properly, the only propaganda I knew was that he was short (and he's still short, just not for his time). Anyway, these days I realize he's not as bad as British history portrays him, nor is he as enlightened and benevolent as the Bonapartists on this board portray him.

Nah, he was stupid.

He wanted too much clay in Europe for France and that was unacceptable for the rest of Europe.

Should have conformed to annexing Belgium and nothing more.