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NAPOLEON with dr. Michael Rowe · The Smart Cookies podcast

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  Dr. Michael Rowe is a reader in modern European history at King's College London, where he's
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  been teaching since 2004, which is also the year when he was elected Fellow of the Royal
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  Historical Society. Over the last two decades, he has published extensively on the period
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  of the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars. He's also delivered a brilliant series of podcast
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  lectures on Napoleon for the Historical Association. Michael, welcome. Thanks, Azza.
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  Before we dig into Napoleon's life and his deeds, and of course Ridley Scott's
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  polarizing movie, I'd like us to address one thing. Literally two seconds after I first
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  contacted you via email last week, the YouTube algorithm was immediately so kind as to serve
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  me a debate between two Napoleon biographers. I believe Adam Zamoyski and Andrew Roberts slugging
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  it over the question whether Napoleon was great or not. Andrew Roberts said that Napoleon was not
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  just a military genius, but that he was, I quote, enlightenment on horseback. While his opponent,
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  Adam Zamoyski, said that he essentially ruined France's position in Europe and that the man was,
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  I quote again, a prude who brought his small town morality into public life. So I thought it would
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  be interesting to begin the episode by asking you which side of this historical judgment you fall on.
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  Was Napoleon indeed great? Yeah, I mean, what's wrong with small town morality?
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  Yeah, I think he is great. And I think he's great because he's primarily a great institution
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  builder. Okay, so I don't think he ruins France. In many ways, he kind of produces the France that
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  we know today, with things like the civil code, with the administration, the whole kind of institutional
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  edifice, okay, things which are not going to be necessarily celebrated in the film because he wants
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  to see a film about bureaucrats kind of coming up with an administrative template. But yeah,
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  that's a kind of legacy which Napoleon himself talks about when he's in exile.
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  He's a great general. He wins more battles and he loses, he loses the war overall. But he's also
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  a little man, okay, and I don't mean that in a physical sense. He's kind of maybe a little bit
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  below average height, but he's the person from a fairly humble background who kind of makes it,
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  more than makes it, reaches the top. And I think that's an example to a lot of people afterwards,
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  okay, after 1815, that you can achieve where your talents, and I guess fate takes you,
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  and it doesn't depend upon your birth. And I think that's kind of inspiring for a lot of people
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  after 1815. And it's pretty new. You begin your podcast lectures on Napoleon's rise to power by
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  explaining that after the French Revolution of 1789, there was a sort of a vacuum. I believe you
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  say that there was a demand for such a figure as Napoleon to appear. Does that mean that any sort of
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  a strong man or a general taking over would have a similar trajectory? And it was more about timing
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  than anything else? Or did Napoleon possess a set of unique qualities that enabled him to
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  set his meteoric rise in motion? Yeah, I mean, I think France would have ended up with a Napoleon-like
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  figure, okay, and there are several contenders in the 1790s. Young generals, young kind of people
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  have made their career in the military. They're in their sort of like 20s, so way more junior than
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  you'd expect a general to be. And you can look at these things in terms of supply and demand,
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  okay, kind of economics. And there is a demand for a Napoleon kind of figure in late 1790s France.
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  And there's a kind of an oversupply. And Napoleon kind of makes it its partly through luck. He
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  himself believes in luck. You know, he's a bit superstitious there. He's not, he's not entirely
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  a man of the Enlightenment. He believes in luck that he's also a great general. And there are
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  other great generals, you know, they're good at tactics, they're good at operations and strategy
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  and logistics and inspiring their troops to follow them. He's good at that. I think what he brings
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  possibly uniquely to the mix, he's a great self publicist, you know, he does his great actions,
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  but then he also broadcasts about great actions he's done. And he does some actions which aren't so
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  great, you know, like Egypt, where he essentially kind of loses, but he manages to spin that into
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  a into a kind of great achievement. So he surrounds himself with publicists and artists and so on.
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  So he's very good at propaganda. And I think that that that is maybe that combination. Okay,
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  you're demanding a hero. You need a talented general, but you also need somebody that kind
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  of convinces you that he's a great general. Napoleon kind of ticks those boxes.
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  How did he market himself? I mean, what exactly did that even mean at the end of the 18th century?
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  Well, you need to, you know, you need to make use of a printing press. And okay, the printing press
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  is an old invention. It goes back much further. But Napoleon, but it's becoming kind of cheaper to
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  produce prints and, you know, the population of France and indeed of Europe more widely is
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  becoming more literate and is more able to kind of afford pamphlets, visual images.
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  He patronizes great artists, people like Antoine Gros, who produces these wonderful kind of
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  paintings of Napoleon, which maybe only a few people see, but then you get kind of like cheap
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  kind of copies, essentially, which are produced. So all of that. And, you know, he's very good at
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  kind of language as well. You know, he writes these kind of short, I guess you'd call them kind of
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  pithy declarations, proclamations to his troops and to civilians. So he's very, he's a good communicator
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  in that sense. He's not a great orator, I think, when it comes to actually speaking to people in
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  an assembly there, he kind of falls down. But he's very good at kind of speaking to a wider
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  audience through the use of what we would call the press. Did he have an accent when he was
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  speaking French, like a Corsican accent? He does have an accent. And his writing is kind of like
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  full of spelling mistakes, not that sort of matters very much, because, you know, when you're
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  important, you can kind of dictate things to secretaries. And they kind of tied it up a little
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  bit. Yeah. So I think his oratory skills are not brilliant. And that actually leads to the
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  problems that, you know, one crucial moment when he does his coup d'etat in 1799, and he kind of,
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  he appears before the assembly and tries to get them to basically vote themselves out of existence.
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  And the oratory and all that is kind of completely, you know, awful. And, you know,
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  basically has to call in the guards to clear the assembly, or his brother does anyway.
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  You said that he was making use of the printing press and newspapers. Was there a relative,
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  how should I put it, freedom of press? How tolerant was he of criticism?
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  Well, he's not tolerant of criticism. But, you know, he is, he is entering into a very vibrant
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  kind of print culture in Paris. You know, one of the things that the revolutionaries do do,
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  at least initially, is to basically get rid of kind of censorship laws. So you get a fairly free
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  press. And then it sort of tightens up at various points. But yeah, he can make use of that kind
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  of talent pool of journalists and publicists and printers, which have sort of come of age.
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  And again, it's a supply and demand, you know, these people need to sell these are commercial
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  kind of, you know, commercial outfits, okay, they need to, they need to sell news and they need to
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  sell their kind of prints. And so they need a hero as well, they need, they need a, and Napoleon is
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  great there, you know, what was some of some of his other undisputed talents, you mentioned that
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  he was a great military strategist, and that he was great at marketing and being a propagandist.
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  Did he have like a good memory? Or was he a charismatic person? Was it easy for him to attract
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  followers? Yeah, I think it is. He does seem to have that and charisma is such a, it's kind of
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  one of those very term. Yeah, it's elusive, you know, what you don't have a tick box of 10 things
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  than in your charismatic. He does seem to have that, you know, it's one of those things which is
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  hard to recreate because we haven't got any film of him or recordings or see how he moves or those
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  kind of things. So it's really, you get it, I guess indirectly as a historian and see what other
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  people write and I guess how they act. And he does have this capacity to attract, you know, really
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  talented people around him. And that's interesting that that must count as one of those things where
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  you say, yeah, he probably is kind of great because that must be a definition of great leadership.
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  Yeah, I mean, he remembers the names of the ordinary soldiers. He will kind of make a point of
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  greeting them, maybe tweaking their ear or their cheek in a kind of familiar kind of way on a
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  parade and say, you know, I kind of remember you, how you're doing kind of thing. That sort of
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  personal touch. So he does that. But he also, and I think that interesting manages to combine it with
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  a degree of detachment. Okay, I do the familiar stuff, but I am nonetheless, not you. I'm kind of
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  separate. I'm this kind of great figure. So he's a bit of a stickler for things like kind of etiquette.
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  Protocol. Protocol. Yeah, yeah, you know, he's not the kind of guy where he would really tolerate
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  it, but you just go up to him and pat him on the back and say, you know, hi, Napoleon, how you're
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  doing, you know, he can do that to you. But he will he starts to behave a little bit monarchical,
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  even before he, you know, kind of sees his power in in France in 1799. And of course,
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  this is regime then develops, he becomes ever more monarchical and and kind of stickler.
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  First, the formality in protocol. Do we have any anecdotes about what happens when people,
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  you know, don't treat him the way he expects to be treated, when they don't follow protocol?
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  How does he react to these situations? I'm not sure if there are many examples of that.
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  Maybe they just don't dare, you know, I, I assume they would be banished from courts, you know,
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  it's not it's not kind of like one of those regimes which, you know, would simply kill
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  somebody's not like a kind of worst of tyrants that we're used to. But, you know, he will make
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  comments. I mean, this comment you made about the prudishness at the beginning is kind of,
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  well, it's Adam Zamoyski, you're quoting there. Yes. You know, he does kind of make comments
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  if women at court, maybe a bit underdressed or whatever, revealing a bit too much,
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  you know, make comment, you know, aren't you feeling the cold or something like that,
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  some kind of snide remark to embarrass. So he's, he's a little bit kind of conservative on those
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  kind of things. And he wants things to be kind of correct and ordered. And he doesn't like,
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  he doesn't like public embarrassment or scandal. So I think there's a, there's a degree of care
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  which needs to go into things like protocol to prevent some embarrassing moments where then
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  people can possibly mock you. That he's not very good at taking, you know, he, he, he, he, he,
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  he won't sort of laugh at himself. And that's maybe not such a great quality of his.
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  We talked about how difficult it is to discern if he was charismatic or not in person. What do
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  people who are maybe not French and met him say about him, say about meeting him? Finding an
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  objective source of course is, is difficult because people have a kind of like, you know,
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  strong views on Napoleon one way or the other. And I mean, I suppose one of the people that
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  doesn't know him best is, is a very interesting figure from this period, somebody called Metonich,
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  Clemens von Metonich, who's the Austrian Chancellor, a foreign minister, basically in charge of
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  Austria from 1809 onwards. But he's also ambassador to Paris in the years before that. And he meets,
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  he has a lot of meetings with Napoleon and probably the foreigner, I guess, who's probably had most
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  interaction with, with Napoleon at a kind of professional level would be Metonich. And I think
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  from what he writes, you get the sense that Napoleon is quite good at manipulating his interlocutor.
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  You know, he does this kind of passive aggressive type of thing. And you're not quite sure if he's
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  really angry and having a tantrum or whether it's just a bit of a kind of a show to pressurize you.
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  And then he will turn on the charm. You know, there's the stories about him kind of throwing,
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  taking off his hat and throwing on the floor and kind of stamping on it. And, you know,
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  he does these kind of things during negotiations. But is it something which is just a show?
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  He puts it on and off like an actor. So, yeah, I mean, I think he can do charm. I mean,
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  another interesting source is of a sort of correspondence of people like Marie Louise,
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  the second Empress, whom he marries in 1810. And in there he comes across actually as a very kind of
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  a positive person, you know, somebody who could be quite charming and, you know, have a degree of
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  empathy for somebody who like him had been a foreigner, essentially, in a nice in France.
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  And, you know, French elite society isn't always very accepting of foreigners. Indeed,
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  it probably isn't most of the time. And he kind of eases her into into that kind of life. So,
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  I think his personal characteristics are really very interesting. They're really interesting
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  because they're they kind of to an extent contradictory.
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  All right, we got to go to Napoleon the military man. If we look at the entire entirety of his
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  military record, all the battles he ever participated in as a general from spectacular winds such as
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  Austerlitz to crushing defeats such as Waterloo, when all is said and done, was Napoleon an
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  undeniably brilliant commander or not really? Or was he a bit overhyped?
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  Yeah, I mean, military people tend to sort of divide things up, okay, into into what they would
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  call strategy. So that's the overall kind of geopolitical picture, what you're trying to achieve.
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  What is the big idea? And there I think Napoleon does kind of fall down. I mean, I think he's
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  he's not a great strategist. And I think his strategy is essentially aimed at defeating Britain
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  using, you know, kind of economic warfare, blockading the entire continent, which means in a sense
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  kind of subjecting to your will, a vast number of other European powers. And that just seems to be
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  kind of utterly unrealistic. But I think, you know, at a lower level, you've got what military people
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  call about operations, you know, moving armies around, you know, on a battlefield and over a
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  slightly bigger territory. And I think they're Napoleon's absolutely brilliant. And, you know,
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  you reference Austerlitz. And it's, and there's a battle actually just before Austerlitz, which in
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  many ways is even more interesting, because it's not a particularly bloody operation. But he through
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  moving troops, moving units of the larger French army, the subdivisions known as corps, he moves
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  them all the way from the Channel Coast down into southern Germany. And he uses speed, he plans, you
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  know, which routes they're going to take, and he essentially encircles the Austrians before they
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  know what's hit them. And that's absolutely brilliant. And it's kind of studied, you know,
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  the the polemic operational art, it's studied in military academies, you know, after the
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  polemic wars, as kind of this is this is near perfection, some of it. This is this is what
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  you need to try and aspire to as a as a military commander.
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  All right, you analyzed one of his biggest victories. What if you tell us what, for example,
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  which flaws does one of his defeats expose of him as a military leader? Water, for example.
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  Is it what you said about him that he's not a great strategist?
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  Yeah, I think that's that's part of a problem. I mean, when you say, you know, spectacular defeats,
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  I mean, he has spectacular victories like Austerlitz norm, but I don't think he has really
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  spectacular defeats in the sense that, you know, even even battles like Waterloo,
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  you know, which he loses are as Wellington says, you know, is a close run thing.
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  Napoleon isn't somehow, you know, suddenly surrounded and and then sort of like loses
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  the battle within an hour or so without pretty much firing a shot. So he doesn't he doesn't
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  have those kind of catastrophes. Yeah, looking at Waterloo, part of a problem is that he needs to,
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  you know, win that battle fast. It rains. It means you can't attack the British as soon as you want to.
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  I think there's also a problem that, you know, if you're good at anything, people will then start
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  to sort of copy you. So a lot of his best victories are sort of earlier on. Austerlitz is fairly early
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  on, I guess, 1805. But then if you look at his his battles after that, you find that the Allied
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  power start to up their game. And they become kind of harder opponents, you know, they start to develop
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  what we call the core system, you know, sub the way you organize your army and subdivide it.
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  I think his enemies start to become actually better motivated, especially the Prussians,
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  you know, they just basically just hate the French guts and, you know, determined. And there's that
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  kind of level of determination there on the other side and skill, and also numbers, which
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  make it harder for Napoleon. So yeah, the later Napoleon is is maybe less
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  spectacularly successful than the earlier one, possibly with the exception of the campaign
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  in France in early 1840. But, you know, there he's fighting on home soil and he's got what
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  military people call interior lines of communication. So it's easier for him to maneuver.
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  And there he's, you know, he does have a some of that kind of old flair, if you like, from
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  from his earlier years shows itself. But, you know, the Allies have got the numbers and he hasn't by
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  then. One of the common criticisms that I read is that he had insufficient regard for the lives
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  of his soldiers, and that his battle tactics led to an extremely high number of casualties that he
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  was kind of reckless and sloppy with the lives of his men. Would you agree with that?
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  Yes, I think I would. And this this, there is this kind of very controversial meeting between
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  Metonich and Napoleon in 1813 in Dresden, when the Austrians are trying to mediate. And it's a
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  very long meeting. And the only record we have is Metonich. But he he kind of reports Napoleon as
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  of having made some comments along the lines, he doesn't care about the lives of, you know,
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  100,000 or maybe a million, certainly 100,000 of his troops, it's kind of like nothing. So
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  okay, maybe we have to be a little bit careful there, because you can't always trust Metonich.
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  But his actions speak to that. And you get these kind of frontal assault kind of battles,
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  like wagram in 1809 and Borodino, and to an extent even Waterloo, which are kind of bloodbaths.
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  And, you know, the French by this time have mastered a very efficient form of military
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  conscription, where you can raise very large numbers of troops. And you have these sort of
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  intakes of young men, people around 20, every year. And you can just kind of replace your losses. And
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  one gets a sense that Napoleon can be a little bit lazy when it comes to worrying about casualties.
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  That's an interesting way of putting it. Yeah. You wouldn't have been able to
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  have done that in the 18th century when you have these sort of small professional armies, you know,
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  had you suffered losses of that scale, you wouldn't have had an army anymore, and you kind of lost
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  a war. So you have to be more careful, you have to husband your resources, that perhaps introduces
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  a certain caution into 18th century warfare, which in the Napoleonic period, you don't really need to
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  have. And, you know, it's, you can raise perhaps 100,000 troops, you know, annually, when annually
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  intake it. And so you get this kind of war machine. You know, I'd compare it a bit like to a tsunami,
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  okay, a tsunami wave is not short, it's very long, you know, the water keeps on coming.
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  It's deep. And this kind of conscription system that Napoleon presides over, just kind of like
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  you just add more and more manpower to make up your losses. I think Napoleon probably overestimates
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  what French society is capable of, and it does create a very bad mood in France to save at least by
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  1813, a degree of war wearing us. And you start to get this narrative emerging that Napoleon's a kind
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  of ogre, who imposes a blood tax upon French society, and has no problem about, you know,
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  killing people's sons for no purpose, these callous. And I think that's a very damaging, you know,
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  it's a damaging narrative.
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  Metternich is probably not going to report on that. But did Napoleon ever show any sort of sorrow
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  about the vast numbers of dead soldiers in his gondarmes?
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  I don't think on that kind of global level, I think he could really be quite sort of callous there.
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  So he doesn't admit, he's not very good at admitting to kind of errors or defeats, or that he,
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  you know, was responsible for vast numbers of deaths. Whether he did, you know, in his head,
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  I guess we'll never know, but there's no evidence for that. And yeah, I mean, I think he could show
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  empathy at a personal level. And I mentioned this about Marie Louise and their other examples.
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  But I think when it comes to that kind of global, you know, dealing with tens of thousands or hundreds
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  of thousands of troops, yeah, I'm sure he's sorry that he lost them, but that's because he hasn't
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  got an army then in 1813, he has to create a new one. So I mean, it's geopolitically problematic
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  if you lose, you know, 600,000 troops in one go. But you don't get a kind of like a reflection or
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  sense that this is, this is a kind of like a great moral sort of problem. But it's something you
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  should kind of reflect upon and maybe, you know, change either your policies so that there aren't
• 24:39
  those losses or your tactics. And you do get these kind of like frontal assault type of battles,
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  which really are bloodbaths and pretty much unprecedented, you know, in terms of the number
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  of losses, you know, maybe where 30, 40% of people are casualties on one side or the other,
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  like Borodino, Waterloo is a bit like that as well. Absolutely incredible battles.
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  I don't know where I read this anecdote or if it's even true, I really can't remember right now,
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  but I read somewhere a story about Napoleon after one of his battles seeing a dead soldier
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  and then a dog sitting behind his dead owner who was the soldier and then Napoleon was kind of moved
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  by the fact that this dead soldier didn't have any of his family or friends there to mourn him.
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  He only had this dog, his loyal dog there and Napoleon kind of writes in one of his correspondence
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  that, yeah, I can't believe that I command thousands of people to their deaths and I'm
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  completely cold, but I am moved now at the sight of this dog mourning his master. Is that a real
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  story? I don't know, but I think it is actually credible and it's plausible, but I've also seen
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  stories where he said, you know, to stretch your bearers, you know, that soldier's no good anymore,
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  you know, tip him into the ditch, you've, you know, try and save somebody who can actually be saved,
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  you know, so you get that kind of callousness as well. So I don't know what you do with those
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  anecdotes. Do you add them up? Are there more humane anecdotes than not? Or is it somebody who depends
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  on his mood? I mean, I think he is capable of showing emotion, Napoleon, and I guess we all
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  have our mood swings, maybe, you know, pity certain things, but then can be callous in other situations
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  that is maybe the human condition. Makes sense. Once he was firmly in power, what was his aim?
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  Is it possible to ever truly discern whether he believed that he is working for the welfare of
• 27:00
  French people or just for his own glory? I suppose both can be true at the same time as well.
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  Yeah, I mean, I think that one gets a sense of Napoleon and his regime that there's a bit of a
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  kind of, like a little bit of a whole, a vacuum where there should be an idea, something you
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  couldn't necessarily say about Lenin or Stalin who've got a kind of like a, you know, Marxist
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  ideology or the Third Reich, I guess, we've got this kind of racial ideology, you know,
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  what the Nazi policy is basically, what their objective is. But with the Napoleonic,
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  the Napoleonic Empire seems to be a bit of a, you know, a bit tricky. There's a bit of this
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  ideological gap. What is the long term kind of objective? I think something which is shorter
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  term is to simply survive. Okay, and, you know, the 1790s, you've got these multiple regime changes
• 27:56
  in France as you get constitutional monarchy, and then you get a kind of a, the Jacobine
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  Republic and then a more moderate Republic, which goes through various kind of sub components. And
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  none of them last for more than a few years. So I think the immediate objective is to actually
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  have a regime which is going to last. And then you've got this whole problem, what happens if
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  Napoleon dies? You know, he's assassinated. And there are quite serious attempts on his life
• 28:25
  at various points. And that is kind of worrying, I think, for Napoleon and it's worrying for the
• 28:31
  people around him. Does it mean that the Bourbons are going to come back? And then everything that
• 28:38
  the revolution achieved is going to be reversed. So I think the regime is struggling to legitimize
• 28:45
  itself. So that's, I think it's kind of, let's say, called it midterm objective is to any regime
• 28:55
  needs that, you know, it needs to have a buy-in from a population. No regime can sustain itself
• 29:02
  simply through brute force and power. And yeah, this then becomes an issue when Josephine can't
• 29:09
  produce an heir, because the only realistic way, I think as far as Napoleon sees it, is to have a
• 29:15
  dynasty and to be able to pass things on to a successor who people will then accept. And
• 29:23
  Josephine can't produce an heir. Then he has this Habsburg marriage in 1810. And but it's too late,
• 29:30
  you know, that the son is born in 1811, Napoleon's getting old, you're going to have a boy emperor,
• 29:37
  I guess. So then what? So it's, yeah, it's an issue. But, you know, kind of other objectives,
• 29:47
  I think it is to bring France together. And that's maybe a positive quality about this regime.
• 29:52
  France being basically sectarianized, you've got the Republicans, the blue, that's their kind of
• 29:58
  color and the white, which is the royalist Catholic, and they'd been fighting a civil war in France
• 30:05
  in the 1790s, partly about religion. And in a way, what you're dealing with with Napoleon is a
• 30:13
  centrist kind of regime, which I think from today's perspective is actually very interesting,
• 30:19
  because there's, you know, there's a sense of society today, in much of a Western world at
• 30:23
  least, is sort of becoming kind of completely divided between two groups, you know, we call it
• 30:29
  culture wars, I guess. And that, you know, why am I not saying that Napoleon is the answer to that,
• 30:35
  kind of like a radical kind of center. But in many ways, that is what he is. And he tries to bring in
• 30:41
  people from both camps. So you got people like Foucher, his infamous minister of police, who's
• 30:49
  a former Jacobin, so kind of like a, you know, very much a man of a revolution. But you've also
• 30:53
  got people like Talley-Rhin, who is really a monarchist at heart, and who has sort of grown up
• 30:58
  in the aristocratic world of the old regime, who's Napoleon's foreign minister. So he kind of says,
• 31:04
  you know, I kind of think, I'll forget about what you did in the 1790s, I don't really care about
• 31:09
  that. As long as you, you know, you're a talented person, you're willing to serve me loyally. And
• 31:15
  then you become part of this kind of fairly big Napoleon tent you're brought in.
• 31:21
  What an interesting analogy that I've never heard that before, that Napoleon was actually
• 31:29
  more of a centrist figure. I always imagined him as some sort of like a radical monarch,
• 31:35
  or a radical emperor, like one or the other, but not as this like this centrist force that's
• 31:42
  actually bringing both camps together. So what the Catholics saw him as a friend to them, and also
• 31:49
  the revolutionary saw him as sort of an ally as well. How did that work? Just dynamic.
• 31:55
  It works with a great deal of management and kind of problems attached to it. And yeah, I mean,
• 32:02
  you know, it's partly through what politicians kind of always do, which is you speak with forked
• 32:09
  tongue. You say one thing to one kind of group of people and a slightly different thing to another
• 32:15
  group of people. And you know, when you're in front of a sort of Catholic audience or in a
• 32:19
  Catholic part of France, you will stress your role as a restorer of religion. And you'd point to,
• 32:26
  you know, one of his greater achievements politically, which was to have that piece of the
• 32:30
  Catholic Church, you know, the Concordat, which he signs with the Pope, Pius VII, which restores
• 32:37
  a kind of religious stability to France. If you're in a more Republican area or a Republican
• 32:45
  audience, you will stress the fact that you've preserved, you know, the essence of a revolution,
• 32:50
  equality before the law, the whole kind of property settlement, you know, where where
• 32:56
  church lands and to a degree, noble lands, but maybe church lands have been seized by the state
• 33:01
  and then auctioned off, that you're not going to reverse that. And as you can imagine, you know,
• 33:06
  a lot of property owners in France are really worried about that one. So yeah, but it's a problem. And
• 33:13
  for example, in the army, you've got a lot of Republican sentiment, including among the generals,
• 33:19
  and they really don't like that return to monarchy in 1804. And they're not very keen on the Concordat.
• 33:25
  So that creates tensions. There's a degree of tension actually about the Habsburg match in
• 33:36
  1810. You know, that seems to be burying the revolution and, you know, hey, look, she's the
• 33:43
  great niece of Marie Antoinette. You seem to be back to the 1770s and 1780s. So that creates a bit
• 33:51
  of worry on the Republican side. When it comes to the monarchists, you know, they hate the fact
• 33:59
  that he bumps off the Ducs d'Angiènes in 1804, you know, this kind of like figure from the French
• 34:05
  royal family, who basically kidnaps and kills. So, yeah, it's a bit of a balancing act. If you're
• 34:13
  a centrist, you've always got that problem of not, I guess, gravitating too much to one end or the
• 34:19
  other, and maybe becoming dependent just on one faction and alienating the other side.
• 34:25
  So his communication skills come handy here as well.
• 34:28
  Yeah, I think they do. Mind you, I think, you know, in many ways he is becoming more of a kind
• 34:36
  of traditional monarchist figure in many ways towards the end. It, I guess, his sense becomes a bit
• 34:43
  megalomaniac. There's some really interesting architectural kind of plans for remodeling of
• 34:51
  parts of Paris in the later Napoleonic Empire. And, you know, you start to think this looks a bit
• 34:58
  like Albert Spears Berlin, for some of it. Right, Germania. Yeah, a little bit. You know, it's sort
• 35:04
  of Napoleonic Germania. And they don't really come to fruition because there's no time, there's no
• 35:10
  money. You know, it's the same story. But you think, you know, what exactly is going on here?
• 35:16
  How much popular support did Napoleon enjoy? It must be fluctuating, of course. But for example,
• 35:26
  how did people react when he came back from the first exile? Were they greeting him on the streets,
• 35:32
  or were they pelting him with rotten eggs? Yeah, I mean, it depends where you would travel. And,
• 35:38
  you know, they're parts of southern France where they would have been worse than rotten eggs, I
• 35:42
  think. But he kind of avoids those sort of royal hysteria on his march back to Paris. So he's not
• 35:48
  stupid. He has got a kind of like a political geography of France in his head. But other areas,
• 35:54
  yeah, he's welcomed. And despite the massive casualties that came from conscription, like you
• 36:01
  said. Yeah, I mean, I think that doesn't help. But, you know, people's memories are often a bit
• 36:06
  short. And the Bourbons who come back in the figure of Louis XVIII,
• 36:16
  haven't done themselves favours that they've started to marginalise, you know, some Bonapartist
• 36:23
  figures. And, you know, it's a kind of problem. Ultimately, the Bourbons have come back in the
• 36:30
  baggage train of the Allied armies. And that doesn't look good, I guess, from a French patriotic
• 36:37
  perspective. And they never really lived that down, that problem. It's, I think Louis XVIII isn't a
• 36:48
  bad king, as it happens. I mean, he's, in many ways, he's a bit of a centrist as well, unlike his
• 36:53
  brother, who becomes Charles Tent, who's kind of like an extreme ultra royalist. And Louis XVIII,
• 37:01
  I think, realises that France has changed after 1789. And you have to kind of rule from the middle
• 37:08
  ground. But it's really hard to do that. It's really hard to rule France from the middle ground
• 37:15
  for the next 200 years, in many ways. How did the heads of these old European royal houses
• 37:23
  view Napoleon? It's one of those things where, again, sources become a little bit of an issue,
• 37:28
  because they maybe think that don't write it down, you know. And I think, my general sense is that we
• 37:35
  underestimate the openness of Europe's elites, you know, and that they're actually more adaptable than
• 37:41
  we give them credit for, which is why they kind of last so long. You know, something which is
• 37:46
  completely static and can't bring in new people, incorporate them is a problem. Yeah. And I think,
• 37:55
  you know, we'll talk maybe about Ridley Scott's film a bit later, but, you know, the Wellington
• 38:00
  character in that, I think just looks to be like a pantomime toff, you know, he's, it's a bit of a
• 38:06
  caricature. Maybe Wellington is a bit like that, mind you. But I think, I don't think you can say
• 38:12
  he's a representative of the European elites as a whole. And, you know, why do I say that? Well,
• 38:20
  I think of a beginning actually, you said that they view him with contempt. I think
• 38:24
  a lot of them actually view him as a good thing, because he seems to have been somebody who has
• 38:28
  actually brought order to France and has somehow tamed the revolution, possibly terminated it,
• 38:34
  but at the very least kind of, you know, brought a kind of degree of order to France. Yeah. And
• 38:40
  it's a kind of a, you know, recognizably monarchical regime. And maybe this is somebody who now is
• 38:46
  going to kind of like calm those revolutionary waters, which have kind of lacked across the front
• 38:51
  ears and sort of undermined our own states. So yeah, I think that is in many ways positive. And
• 39:02
  the bonaparte start to kind of integrate themselves into, into the various kind of royal
• 39:08
  houses, you know, especially some of the German princely families. Jero marries a German princess,
• 39:16
  that's Napoleon's youngest brother, you know, would be a good example of that. And,
• 39:23
  you know, we have to remember that you can't reduce your appear in geopolitics this period to
• 39:29
  princes versus revolution or princes versus Napoleon. A lot of these princes have kind of
• 39:35
  problems amongst each other and rivalries and, you know, wars from the past and memories and that.
• 39:40
  And, you know, if you're, if you're a sort of minor prince in one of these German states, for
• 39:45
  example, what better thing than to take out an insurance policy by marrying a daughter to a
• 39:51
  bonaparte? Okay, you probably marry another daughter to baby into the Russian royal family. And even
• 39:57
  in Wittenberg, for example, is connected to Britain, the Napoleonic France and Russia. So it's,
• 40:02
  it's, it means whoever wins, you're going to have some kind of protector, I guess, at the peace
• 40:07
  conference. So they think cover all bases in a sense. Absolutely. Yeah, you've got free insurance
• 40:12
  policies, which kind of cover, you know, various eventualities. So that, that to me speaks of
• 40:18
  pragmatism, maybe deep down, I think he's a bit inferior. But, you know, the thing is that that's
• 40:25
  going to wash off after a generation. And, you know, the bonaparte now, of course, they're not in power,
• 40:32
  but they're part of that kind of like network of European Royals, who you will see in sort of
• 40:38
  Hello magazine or whatever. You know, they kind of part of that kind of club. And it doesn't take
• 40:44
  long for them to be part of that kind of club. You mentioned Josephine, we have to talk about her.
• 40:51
  I understand we actually have quite a lot of private letters Napoleon wrote to her,
• 40:56
  less the other way around, because people say that she wasn't as smitten as he was. But there's
• 41:03
  still a lot of speculation about their relationship. And the story that's usually told is that she was
• 41:07
  the older, more experienced sort of femme fatale and who wrapped this poor smitten little man around
• 41:15
  her fingers. But what do we actually really know about their relationship? Yeah, I mean,
• 41:22
  I will sort of see Napoleon at the beginning as this kind of like the awkward man, you know,
• 41:28
  slightly geeky guy in the in the in the in the party sort of brooding in the corner and
• 41:35
  existentialist. Yeah, right. And the socializes kind of, you know, maybe you're sort of laughing at
• 41:41
  this slightly geeky character who sort of is a bit awkward. And Josephine is not like that. She's
• 41:47
  the kind of like very much the inset. The soul of the party. Yeah, yeah. And I think it's,
• 41:56
  I mean, of course, paintings are going to be kind of very flattering. And, you know, I think she
• 42:00
  does have a bit of a tooth decay issue, which is maybe partly from her kind of heritage, you know,
• 42:08
  for which she's born in the Caribbean. And I think one of the things you probably would have
• 42:12
  done is to kind of like suck on kind of sugar and that you know, that rocks her teeth away. So,
• 42:19
  yeah, I don't know how you do that if you're making a film, you know, you'd have to get somebody
• 42:25
  to kind of produce that kind of effect, I suppose. So I suppose what I'm saying is, yeah,
• 42:30
  I think a lot of it is is not necessarily her beauty, but her charm. And, you know, one one
• 42:36
  maybe thinks of what has been written about Cleopatra, you know, it's not necessarily that
• 42:43
  it's a physical beauty, which then find attractive, but that kind of charm. And again,
• 42:50
  it's a kind of form of charisma, isn't it, something which is difficult exactly to define,
• 42:56
  but you kind of know it when you see it sort of thing. Yeah, I mean, he needs probably her more
• 43:02
  than she needs him initially. But she eases him into a career which very rapidly takes off. So I
• 43:11
  think that's the power dynamic between the couple obviously changes. Yeah, I mean, it's pretty clear
• 43:19
  that she is unfaithful to him. But mind you, he's not completely faithful to her. But I guess the
• 43:27
  social attitudes of attire was that it's probably okay for the man to be unfaithful more than for
• 43:33
  the woman to be unfaithful. I think she's a traumatized individual. I would say post traumatic
• 43:42
  stress disorder after all she's been in effect on death row, she's seen her husband Guiletty and
• 43:47
  she's barely doing the revolution, right, during the revolution. And I think that to an extent comes
• 43:52
  across in the film in Ridley Scott and that's one of the better parts of it. I think it shows where
• 43:59
  she is coming from. And you've got this group of people, Josephine is amongst them, who can say
• 44:07
  we've survived. We're going to live life to the full now because there's no point really holding
• 44:13
  back because do it while you can kind of attitude, which you get in that sort of directory, that
• 44:21
  regime where she's a leading social figure. But it's a regime which also has a reputation for being
• 44:29
  a little bit decadent and being perhaps promiscuous and too open, I guess, when it comes to kind of
• 44:36
  sexual politics. And this is where I think Adam Samoiseki's point about Napoleon being a bit
• 44:43
  of a prude. The Napoleonic regime, to an extent, tries to clamp down a little bit on some of that.
• 44:49
  It's for another older historical analogy, you think of Augustus and Rome.
• 44:54
  Emperor Augustus. Right. Exactly. He doesn't want this regime to look kind of promiscuous,
• 45:02
  scandal. There are ones, but he tries to minimize it or hush it up or whatever.
• 45:10
  We know what happens to regimes, I guess, which get that kind of stigma of being kind of both
• 45:17
  corrupt financially but also morally. It can be politically very damaging and history is littered
• 45:23
  with examples of regimes which, to an extent, collapse because of public perceptions like that.
• 45:30
  How much power did Josephine wield as the Empress, if any?
• 45:34
  She does have a degree of power. And we think of Napoleonic France as being this
• 45:42
  incredibly modern bureaucratic state where appointments to senior positions is just about
• 45:50
  how good you are professionally. But yeah, I mean, she does wield a degree of influence
• 45:56
  when it comes to appointments. And you might talk about a sort of Bohane clan.
• 46:04
  So it becomes a little bit factionalized, elite kind of politics in the Napoleonic France.
• 46:11
  And so if you're a prefect and you've got a kind of link with the Empress or with her ladies and
• 46:19
  waiting or something like that, that gives you a little bit of an advantage, all other things
• 46:25
  being equal. But she's not going to have a voice in kind of grand strategy. Do we march on Austria
• 46:32
  or do we attack Russia at this point or anything like that? How do we defeat Britain?
• 46:36
  She's not going to get a voice there. I think something one has to remember is that
• 46:45
  in the late 18th century, you start to get a very negative view emerging in France and maybe
• 46:50
  further a field about women being involved in politics. And a lot of this is what Marie Antoinette
• 46:57
  becomes a victim of, that real sentiment that she is manipulating things, behind the scenes,
• 47:03
  manipulating her husband, labor 16th, who is a weak ruler and allows himself to be dominated
• 47:09
  by his wife. And this becomes a kind of trope. It produces a lot of pamphlets about why you
• 47:17
  shouldn't have women in politics. And you get these sort of interesting publications, you might say
• 47:23
  bizarre, misogynist, saying a history of all the women in political leadership positions
• 47:31
  since Messalina of ancient Rome. And then they kind of have all these horrible women like Catherine
• 47:37
  de Medici and that, and it's, you know, poisoners and manipulative kind of figures. So Napoleon,
• 47:43
  again, is a, he's a political animal. So I think he knows what it would do to his regime to, you
• 47:49
  know, if it's, if it's clear that he's being bossed around by his wife on policy issues,
• 47:53
  that that would be a kind of catastrophic image to present in this period. But also he's not,
• 47:59
  I guess, you know, psychologically, it's not the kind of type of person's going to be
• 48:04
  bossed around by anyone. So certainly not when it comes to higher politics.
• 48:10
  How did she take the fact that Napoleon had to remarry, and that she lost her status as the
• 48:16
  Empress? Yeah, I mean, I did, she doesn't take it very well as you can guess. And so there's this
• 48:22
  terrible scene where they go through the divorce and I think she faints at one point. And it's
• 48:27
  really a very unpleasant, painful kind of process. I mean, beyond the actual divorce itself, which is
• 48:37
  the blow, she does, you know, she, she, she's not thrown out onto the street or anything. She gets
• 48:43
  a, you know, a very big pension and a palace, probably more than one palace. And, you know,
• 48:50
  she retains her title and you almost get a sense it's going to be more of a problem for the new
• 48:55
  Empress and then you've got this kind of ex-Emperor or still Empress kind of like lurking there on
• 49:01
  the outskirts of Paris, who Napoleon, you know, still has a bond with. How's that going to kind
• 49:09
  of work, you know, it's, it's a little bit awkward. It's, I don't know if it's unprecedented, but,
• 49:17
  you know, history's so long and diverse, you tend to get precedence for anything, but I'm,
• 49:23
  I'm not sure there is one for that. You know, how do you manage that? I mean, Henry VIII, if I guess
• 49:29
  you, well, I suppose he, well, no, that isn't really a precedent, is it? Maybe with Catherine of
• 49:33
  Aragon it is. But, you know, she's, she's just shunted into the background in a very brutal way.
• 49:39
  Napoleon doesn't behave that way to Josephine. You know, there is that bond, I think, of respect
• 49:46
  and affection, which, which continues. Okay, after Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo, would you say that
• 49:56
  France was better or worse off than it was before him? I mean, are you asking, would it
• 50:05
  been better had Napoleon I, Waterloo, you'd have had a Bonapartist regime continuing all the way
• 50:11
  through or? No, the state of France before Napoleon's ascension to power and the state of France
• 50:17
  after he was defeated with all the casualties and all the reforms. Yeah. How does it balance out?
• 50:23
  I mean, I think you can look at that at a kind of institutional level,
• 50:29
  and then it doesn't look like a political level. Institutional level, it's good. Okay, France is,
• 50:36
  is fit for purpose to face the rest of the 19th century, and even beyond, which is, you know,
• 50:42
  you can see that they don't really make massive institutional reforms, but the departmental
• 50:47
  system, the way that France is governed and policed and taxed and the Bank of France and the
• 50:53
  education system, the lice, the baccalaureate, the state apparatus, the state apparatus. Yeah.
• 50:59
  So that's, that's all great. And the, the Bourbons, they keep it and then the, the Orleanists,
• 51:04
  they keep it and then the second empire to an extent the third republic. So it kind of lasts
• 51:09
  all the way through and a lot of it is still there today, you know, I think politically,
• 51:14
  it's a problem. And I think any regime after Napoleon in France has got a problem, partly
• 51:23
  of living up to that kind of aura of glory of this of France being, you know, this, this power,
• 51:30
  which is, is feared and is essentially the top power in Europe, you know, globally. And every
• 51:37
  regime after 1815 struggles with that to live up to those kind of exaggerated, I would say,
• 51:44
  expectations, exaggerated partly because things are going against France at a fairly profound
• 51:51
  level, you know, but demographically France is, is, is kind of being is out being outperformed
• 51:58
  by pretty much everyone else in the 19th century. So it's just it's sort of economic demographic
• 52:02
  kind of weight is in decline. So, you know, the trouble is that French regimes after 1815,
• 52:10
  often have a sort of overambitious kind of foreign policy and no more than with Napoleon,
• 52:16
  a third Napoleon's nephew, you know, that has an additional problem and that he's called Napoleon.
• 52:21
  So that gets him elected because he's got name recognition. But it also is a problem because
• 52:26
  people expect him to behave like a Napoleon. And Napoleon doesn't just have a kind of become
• 52:33
  like a giant Switzerland, okay, you know, having a very defensive kind of Pacific foreign policy.
• 52:38
  So France over extends itself at various points. And that leads to sort of catastrophic setbacks
• 52:44
  and defeats in the 19th century. So yeah, politically really problematic the legacy.
• 52:50
  But I wouldn't even say it's Napoleon's fort. I mean, it's, it's, it's there after 1789, I guess.
• 52:59
  Administratively, the kind of the operating system of a French state. Yeah, that's really
• 53:06
  France is a good place after 1815. Because I've heard a lot of times being said that
• 53:12
  Napoleon's ultimate defeat kind of sets up the stage for Britain to take over and become this huge
• 53:19
  power empire where the sun never sets. Yeah, I mean, it does kind of clear things out of a way
• 53:26
  for Britain. You know, and you get that sort of Pax Britannica in the 19th century, sort of 1815 to,
• 53:33
  to I guess 1914, more or less. I suppose what I would say there is Britain is kind of that seems
• 53:42
  to be British trajectory anyway. And Britain does very well in the 18th century, you know,
• 53:49
  you got the Seven Years War, where it gets North America and you know, the Indian subcontinent.
• 53:54
  And then people think, oh, it loses a 13 colonies, you know, that Britain is going to be a kind of
• 53:59
  minor power. And you know, the Austrian projose of second basically writes Britain off in the early
• 54:04
  1780s because of the loss of America. But it proves actually not to be a fundamental loss
• 54:11
  in many ways. It isn't. And Britain has got kind of a lot of things going for it, the structure of
• 54:17
  its own state and its tax raising capacity, its economic kind of strength, which is based partly,
• 54:25
  of course, on the slave trade, partly on, you know, industrial development, technological
• 54:31
  development. So I'm wondering if Napoleon hadn't happened. You know, I don't see that trajectory
• 54:39
  actually having changed very much. And I just don't see how Napoleon could have defeated Britain.
• 54:47
  I think it's it's it started to move into this kind of slightly different plane. You know, we
• 54:52
  would call maybe industrial, whereas France is still sort of pre industrial. So it would be
• 54:58
  like trying to defeat the United States in the mid 20th century in a way, I just don't see how it
• 55:04
  conceivably could have really been done. A lot of historians lay discharge that Napoleon's
• 55:12
  expansionist foreign policy led to the deaths of up to six million people. I heard one figure
• 55:18
  they say in Europe, which admittedly is not a good look. Would you think that
• 55:24
  Europeans would be I mean, European states would be fighting even without Napoleon,
• 55:28
  or is this legitimate criticism? Yeah, I think they would be. And I mean, the evidence is,
• 55:34
  you know, that they'd been fighting all the way up to Napoleon.
• 55:39
  And, you know, and these these great kind of powers, you know, Europe is a jungle in the 18th
• 55:45
  century and probably other periods as well. And the French Revolution, it's you shouldn't think,
• 55:51
  okay, peace, harmony, French Revolution happens, then war. The French Revolution happens,
• 55:58
  you know, at a time when there's a war between Russia and the Austrians versus the Ottomans
• 56:03
  with the Swedes coming in. So I mean, and that's not necessarily unusual. Poland gets partitioned
• 56:09
  out of existence by by these old regime powers and, you know, violence is used in these kind of
• 56:15
  processes. So, yeah, let's put Napoleon into that kind of context. I think where you the case for
• 56:26
  the prosecution against Napoleon would be that yeah, his his wars are then particularly bloody.
• 56:33
  Part of that is because of French state before Napoleon starts to, you know, invent a form of
• 56:37
  conscription, which means you can produce much bigger armies and then everyone else has to
• 56:41
  respond. So even there without Napoleon, you'd have had bigger European armies fighting bloodier
• 56:47
  battles. So even if he's personally not around to make any decisions that would have been the case.
• 56:52
  But yeah, I think he maxes out that kind of that kind of losing like some soldiers. Yeah,
• 57:01
  right. And I think Europe as a whole is kind of shocked and war weary after 1815. And I think
• 57:08
  what what is interesting is that you don't really get a major European war for a very long time after
• 57:14
  1815. So 1815 ends a sequence which doesn't start in 1792, but starts way earlier. I don't know how
• 57:22
  far back you need to go. But then you get this period where if you like European aggressive
• 57:28
  impulses are sort of directed outwards, you know, places like Algeria, I guess, after 1830 and,
• 57:34
  you know, to to oversees. And then you get, yeah, you get the Crimean War, but that's a bit on the
• 57:39
  periphery. And it's not, it's not a global, not really a global conflict. I mean, they're subfighting
• 57:45
  the Pacific, even there, but it's not massive. Okay, compared to the Napoleonic Wars. And then
• 57:51
  you get these short wars in the 1860s about German Italian unification 1870, 71, the real next
• 57:59
  massive war involving everyone basically, who's important is 1914 to 1918 to get a century of
• 58:07
  relative peace in Europe. And that's that is unusual.
• 58:14
  I wanted to ask you this before we start discussing the movie. Would you agree that in a way Napoleon
• 58:20
  will always remain a bit of an open vessel in the sense that our evaluation of him also depends on
• 58:27
  our vantage point? For example, in Britain, quite understandably, he's always been a bit of a boogey
• 58:32
  man. And comparisons to Hitler sometimes can still be heard. On the other hand, I come from a place
• 58:40
  where Napoleon is remembered as well, pretty much one of the good lads, like I'm originally Slovenian,
• 58:45
  and in Ljubljana, our capital city, we have, I believe, the only monument to Napoleon outside of
• 58:51
  France or one of the only ones. And it wasn't put there by him or the French, but by us. More than
• 58:56
  100 years after his death, it's actually really close to my parents house. It's quite awesome.
• 59:03
  It's an obelisk. Now during his campaigns, Napoleon, of course, tore these lands from Austria and
• 59:09
  called them Illyrian provinces. But what his rule was really kind of remembered for was a whole set
• 59:15
  of liberating new rights for the majority of the populace, liberating for the times, of course.
• 59:22
  And as well as the fact that for the first time, Slovenian language became an official language
• 59:28
  in Slovenian lands, which was a big deal. Anyway, once these reforms were implemented,
• 59:34
  the Austrians couldn't just roll them back once they took over again. So they had a profound and
• 59:39
  lasting effect in the collective memory. So in our high school history class, we probably hear
• 59:45
  something else about Napoleon than what an English teenager would hear in theirs.
• 59:52
  Yeah, I mean, in a way, I kind of straddle both camps so that part of my family background is
• 59:59
  British. So I guess they would have probably hated Napoleon going back to that period. And I don't
• 1:00:04
  know if they fought against it or not, but some of them must have done, I guess. And part of my
• 1:00:08
  background is from Varinland, that's a Western part of Germany, where again, Napoleon was seen
• 1:00:14
  much more positively and rather like in Slovenia, a lot of those institutions like the Civil Code,
• 1:00:19
  you know, that they're admired and respected, and they don't like the Prussians trying to come in
• 1:00:24
  and change that. So I kind of see both sides of that argument. I mean, I think on the British side,
• 1:00:31
  it's sad to say, I think that there's a great deal of neglect. And that's an even bigger insult,
• 1:00:38
  if you way, if it's not only not ridiculed or criticized or condemned, but you're kind of ignored.
• 1:00:44
  And so it's not a huge part, I think, of the curriculum. You know, I don't get the sense
• 1:00:51
  by children, daughters there in that kind of age going from the school system. They haven't really
• 1:00:57
  had much exposure to Napoleon. So he's kind of ignored. Yeah, I mean, there were people in
• 1:01:05
  Britain at the time that sort of admire Napoleon, you know, he's this great kind of romantic figure.
• 1:01:11
  And I think what helps Napoleon in that period is that, you know, a lot of the other governments,
• 1:01:17
  especially after 1815, become very reactionary and repressive. And that happens in Britain as well.
• 1:01:22
  And then Napoleon is seen as somebody who's a disruptor. But yeah, I mean, every generation,
• 1:01:28
  I guess, looks at Napoleon in a slightly different way. And, you know, now,
• 1:01:33
  where things like Black Lives Matter, debates about slavery, Napoleon doesn't look quite as good,
• 1:01:40
  you know, right, he does reintroduce. Yeah, and, you know, reintroduction of slavery or
• 1:01:47
  partial reintroduction. So there's a lot of debate there about Napoleon and his sort of
• 1:01:51
  interaction with the world outside of Europe. Is he is he a kind of like a European imperialist?
• 1:01:56
  And is he a racist? Those kind of questions? Is he, you know, what about women, other minority
• 1:02:04
  groups? And it's a bit of a mixed bag, you know, when it comes to Jews, for example, yeah, I mean,
• 1:02:11
  he opens up ghettos in places like Rome, you know, and it does seem to be a tolerant regime
• 1:02:17
  when it comes to religion. When it comes to things like homosexuality, it's sort of it's
• 1:02:24
  relatively tolerant. So these are the kind of questions which are being asked by by students
• 1:02:30
  now that's on the agenda. And you didn't really have very much reflection about these things when
• 1:02:35
  it came to Napoleon in the past, when there were other debates, you know, going on. And I don't know
• 1:02:42
  in 10, 20 years time where the debates will be then. And I think in many ways, the ambiguities
• 1:02:49
  and complexities of a Napoleonic regime, which reflect the ambiguities and complexities of
• 1:02:55
  the world, which is transitioning from the early modern from a kind of very hierarchical structure
• 1:03:00
  about bloodlines and established religions to the world we are kind of used to today.
• 1:03:06
  It's a very complex transition. And, you know, we're still debating, I think, those complexities,
• 1:03:12
  some of them, you know, what are the hierarchies, what are appropriate hierarchies, should there
• 1:03:16
  be any hierarchies? How do we manage power imbalances, all of that kind of stuff, you know.
• 1:03:23
  Well, if you want a lesson on how that works and comes into being in our modern period,
• 1:03:28
  well, look at the Napoleonic period. Last but not least, time is pressing. So we have to
• 1:03:36
  talk about Ridley Scott's film, which already managed to ruffle some feathers, particularly
• 1:03:40
  in France, where the critics have labeled the film as very pro-British and very anti-French.
• 1:03:47
  On top of this, the movie has been panned for its many historical inaccuracies.
• 1:03:53
  You've seen the film. What did you think of it?
• 1:03:56
  Yeah, I have to admit, I really didn't like it. And I wish there'd have been next store watching
• 1:04:00
  kind of Hunger Games 4, I think, which was... Wow! Okay, you came out guns blazing.
• 1:04:07
  Yeah, my daughter was watching that with her friend. I thought, okay, you know,
• 1:04:13
  I didn't like it. I didn't think actually of a British chemo across that positively. I mean,
• 1:04:18
  they came across as I mentioned, as like, Pantamine, Toph kind of figures. I thought profoundly
• 1:04:23
  unsympathetic in a way. And I didn't like it, I think, for a couple of reasons. And one,
• 1:04:30
  actually, is less about historical inaccuracy or not. But it was, I just thought it was a little
• 1:04:36
  bit too ambitious and trying to cover 30 years of his life. So I thought technically, that wasn't
• 1:04:43
  great, in that you just had these kind of like fragments, these episodes, going from 1793 to
• 1:04:52
  Napoleon's death in 1821. And I think I would have liked to have seen a film which was maybe a
• 1:04:57
  little bit more focused and allowed the characters to develop more. So that's almost looking at the
• 1:05:03
  film as a non-Napoleonic specialist, as somebody who's actually I quite like kind of...
• 1:05:10
  Historical epigraphists. Yeah, I do like them. I should admit, I didn't like Gladiator very much,
• 1:05:17
  which was Ridley Scott as well. But... Okay, I love that movie for disclosure.
• 1:05:21
  But I really do like Ridley Scott's The Dualist, which is a lesser well-known film,
• 1:05:28
  19... I think it's his first major film, which if you want to say which captures the kind of essence
• 1:05:34
  of the Napoleonic period, I'd recommend to everyone to watch The Dualist. It's based on a true story
• 1:05:39
  as well, which is great. It's these two dualists that meet every 10 years, right? Yeah, every
• 1:05:44
  few years. Every few years or whatever. These kind of obsessives, when it comes to the cult of
• 1:05:50
  honour, which I think infuses Napoleonine on. So Ridley Scott knows about the period. He can do the
• 1:05:55
  period. But yeah, so I didn't like the way the film was structured. And then I just think it
• 1:06:00
  doesn't get the feel right of the period. And yeah, I'm not necessarily a stickler for historical
• 1:06:07
  accuracy, because I think there's something called artistic licence. And you can sometimes take
• 1:06:11
  liberties with facts that then you do speak to a wider or bigger truth. So you can do that.
• 1:06:19
  But why have French artillery shell the pyramids? Because it's a good shot. It looks amazing.
• 1:06:28
  It's a good shot. But why do that? Because there's so many amazing things you could have done
• 1:06:33
  drawing on what actually happened in the Napoleonic period about doing things like that.
• 1:06:38
  I thought those kind of sex scenes with Josephine a bit bizarre. That didn't seem to ring true to
• 1:06:46
  me. And this Andra dining room table of servants present, I don't think so. Those things just
• 1:06:56
  didn't feel kind of authentic to me and were a bit mildly off-putting. I had a bit of a problem.
• 1:07:06
  I mean, I like Joaquin Phoenix a lot. I think he's a good actor. But it did seem to me a bit...
• 1:07:13
  It's not only old for the role. And of course, remember, Josephine is about six years old
• 1:07:19
  of a Napoleon. Whereas when you look at the actors in the film, it's more than reversed.
• 1:07:25
  So is there a bit of a casting issue there? And the Napoleon never seems to age. I mean,
• 1:07:31
  it's just is kind of like uniform and hat changes a bit. And maybe even worse, he doesn't seem to
• 1:07:37
  develop much as a character. I would have liked to have seen more of that. I wouldn't join the
• 1:07:44
  French in saying, oh, it's just kind of like pro-British. Because I think it's in many ways,
• 1:07:49
  it's just a technically a bit of a disappointing film, I thought. And yeah, I'm sure they see it
• 1:07:55
  as just like kind of Gilroy and Crookshaan, another Anglo-Saxon kind of, you know, whacking the French
• 1:08:02
  kind of part of that genre, which I don't think is what Ridley's got. I don't think the French,
• 1:08:07
  do they appear that bad? I didn't get. I mean, I think the Napoleon appears bad, but yeah.
• 1:08:14
  Well, this is how Ridley Scott responded to the criticisms about historical accuracy. I do apologize
• 1:08:19
  for the profanity, but these are my friends with these words, not mine. He said the following,
• 1:08:23
  when I have issues with historians, I ask, excuse me, mate, were you there? No, well,
• 1:08:28
  shut the fuck up then. I mean, that is quite an amusing response, not not very articulated, but
• 1:08:36
  we can deny that the man's passion is there for the film, at least. Yeah. Yeah, that's a good thing.
• 1:08:42
  I mean, that's that's good. And as I said, I respect his knowledge of that period in the field,
• 1:08:47
  because I've seen a dualist, which as I say is up there with films like D'Anton, you know, the
• 1:08:53
  early 1980s, which I think really captures the terror. So he can do it. But I'm not sure. Well,
• 1:09:00
  you know, he says that historians were there. I'm glad I wasn't there during those kind of scenes
• 1:09:05
  with Napoleon and Josephine getting intimate. And of course, yeah, I mean, historians weren't
• 1:09:13
  there, but they do read people at work. And, you know, okay, it's not a serious argument.
• 1:09:20
  It's not serious. And as I said, I mean, I'm not particularly worried if, you know, the coronation
• 1:09:24
  was was it was longer than a few minutes, which is how it's portrayed as. But, you know, the idea
• 1:09:29
  that Napoleon kind of crowns himself. And he does say not during the ceremony, but in another context,
• 1:09:35
  he picked the crown out of a gutter. I think that was fair, you know, it's good artistic license,
• 1:09:39
  it's visually it, but it actually gets the essence right that that that scene. And
• 1:09:45
  what about the battle scenes? What did you think of those?
• 1:09:50
  Kind of okay, but you know, again, you know, one measures it with other films and
• 1:09:55
  a film I really like is Waterloo 1970. And I've forgotten the director's name. I think Ukrainian
• 1:10:02
  director, it was it was Rod Steiger plays Napoleon in that and Christopher Plummer is
• 1:10:10
  Wellington, basically the whole film or most of the film is devoted to Battle of Waterloo.
• 1:10:16
  And that is filmed using I think a large, you know, a large number of extras are actually provided by
• 1:10:23
  the Soviet Army, believe it or not, including authentic cavalry units. And those battle scenes
• 1:10:28
  are absolutely amazing. You know, they've got that kind of scale that grandeur, but they also
• 1:10:34
  somehow haven't got that AI generated kind of look about them. Now, I don't know to what extent
• 1:10:40
  that was used in Ridley Scott. So, yeah, kind of okay, but there are a lot of and yeah, they're
• 1:10:51
  inaccuracies and some of those too. I think Waterloo is, you know, I had the pleasure of
• 1:10:57
  actually visiting the battlefield earlier in the year. And Wellington is very good at using the
• 1:11:03
  reverse slope. So he kind of like concentrates most of his army behind the slope so you can't see it.
• 1:11:08
  No, that wasn't done in the film. So, yeah, I mean, you make a vow of what you will.
• 1:11:14
  What about the ice lake scene? That was not a real thing, was it?
• 1:11:18
  It wasn't, but I think something like that happens either at Elau or Freedland, which is 1807.
• 1:11:23
  So there is authenticity.
• 1:11:26
  Well, you do get some Napoleonic battles where people kind of fall into freezing water and the
• 1:11:31
  French retreat at Beretsino is like that. So, fair enough, I would say that's within the parameters
• 1:11:37
  of artistic license. And I mean, what is good is it shows the real horrors of war, you know, and
• 1:11:43
  it shows you the heroism but also the bloodshed. And I think that is, for me, a more interesting
• 1:11:50
  balance to kind of strike because, yeah, we live in an age which has a very low kind of
• 1:11:57
  torrent threshold for that kind of thing. But on the other hand, at the time, you did have this kind
• 1:12:01
  of cult of glory and heroism. And I think you have to kind of recognize that. And I think the film
• 1:12:08
  brings that out. And yet the uniforms are spectacular and the cavalry. What I don't like about some
• 1:12:14
  of the older films is I'm sure a lot of horses die in making some of those early, you know,
• 1:12:19
  crippled. And I'm sure that these days that kind of authenticity isn't allowed, you know,
• 1:12:24
  ethically wouldn't be approved. And thank God for that.
• 1:12:28
  One of the main problems I had with the film was that Joaquin Phoenix's choice to portray him as
• 1:12:32
  this kind of almost a boring little average Joe or something who's devoid of any charisma and who
• 1:12:39
  just happens to be good at fighting. And I love Joaquin Phoenix. Usually he's one of my favorite
• 1:12:44
  actors. So that was a choice that he made, an artistic choice. They made with the director,
• 1:12:51
  probably. But I have trouble believing that if Napoleon was just sort of almost like a drab
• 1:12:56
  aparat chik or something, hundreds of thousands would follow him to the ends of the earth.
• 1:13:01
  Literally, like, I didn't seem it didn't seem credible. Yeah, that was that I thought as well.
• 1:13:08
  You know, why would people in large numbers follow him, as you say, to the ends of the earth
• 1:13:14
  and sacrifice themselves, you know, willingly. And you get this, you know, there's a degree
• 1:13:19
  of memoir literature and letters and correspondence that survives from the Polonic Army. And you
• 1:13:24
  get these kind of like comments, you know, we loved our marshals, but the emperor, we were
• 1:13:29
  worshiped as a god knows kind of like things. And yeah, I couldn't, I couldn't, I couldn't
• 1:13:35
  worship that Napoleon, which we, we were exposed to over the last few days, as you say, he's a
• 1:13:41
  bit, he's a bit weird in certain ways. And not in a positive sense. I think, yeah, if I were
• 1:13:48
  Napoleon, I would, I would not like that film myself, because it's everyone is a ballad of
• 1:13:54
  negative and positive kind of characteristics are seen by by outsiders. And I think there was
• 1:14:00
  a little bit too much on the negative and maybe the positive, maybe not enough there. So
• 1:14:07
  maybe I'd be a little bit with a French on that part here of their criticism.
• 1:14:13
  In the film, he's quite humorless. And I wanted to ask you this before, did Napoleon have a sense
• 1:14:18
  of humor?
• 1:14:19
  I think you could do sarcasm, if you call that as the lowest form of humor, they say.
• 1:14:26
  Okay, yeah, I mean, I think that, you know, calling Tanerran a pile of shit and suit stockings
• 1:14:30
  is pretty, is pretty cool. Because I think it does to an extent sum him up, you know, that
• 1:14:36
  kind of elegance, but inside the he can be a bit shitty and a bit.
• 1:14:42
  That's pretty awesome.
• 1:14:43
  To be honest, we can take that box. Normally, Tanerran was quite good at kind of those kind
• 1:14:49
  of insults as well. He's Bonneau. But then he got he got outgunned on that particular occasion.
• 1:14:56
  Last question. Did Napoleon suffer from the Napoleon complex?
• 1:15:00
  Go on, we enter that kind of psycho history type of thing. And he was bullied as a cadet and made
• 1:15:10
  fun of because he was short and had a funny, you know, funny, really short.
• 1:15:14
  You said that he was a little bit below average height.
• 1:15:17
  Yeah, I thought that this has been debunked over and over again.
• 1:15:20
  So I wanted to ask you.
• 1:15:21
  And I don't know, I'm sure we'll get response.
• 1:15:23
  I think you're right.
• 1:15:25
  And you look at world leaders today in relative terms, well, people have actually commented on
• 1:15:31
  McCoy, he wouldn't stand out, I don't think, as being somebody who people would kind of like
• 1:15:39
  stare at. I mean, I think part of this is British propaganda at the time, you know,
• 1:15:43
  Guillory and Cruikshank. It's a great period. That's Napoleon's great misfortune.
• 1:15:48
  I think it's a great period.
• 1:15:49
  It's a great tradition of British cartoonism. And they portray him as kind of like midget,
• 1:15:57
  you know, this almost skito sized kind of object, you know, kind of poking John Ball,
• 1:16:03
  who's, you know, this huge character. And so I think that's part of it.
• 1:16:10
  So, yeah, there might be something going on there that he's just kind of
• 1:16:15
  had to always kind of fight his way through his sort of siblings and his older brother and assert
• 1:16:20
  himself. And, but you know, how do we know it's this nature, nurture kind of debate,
• 1:16:26
  isn't it? I mean, I don't know if it's been proven one way or the other.
• 1:16:31
  I suppose that the tragedy from the Napoleon's point of view is that those were the things
• 1:16:35
  which got him to the top.
• 1:16:38
  You could have made it to the top without having those kind of questions.
• 1:16:42
  You could have made it to the top without having those kind of qualities.
• 1:16:46
  But there are also the things which get him from the top back down to the bottom.
• 1:16:51
  You know, he just can't be integrated into some kind of stable order, which is polycentric,
• 1:16:59
  you know, a kind of what Europe is, you know, a variety of great powers and no one is ever
• 1:17:05
  going to dominate everyone else for a long time. So that's a that's that makes him a kind of
• 1:17:11
  tragic figure, I guess, somebody who's bound to to fall at the end. That maybe could have
• 1:17:16
  brought out a little bit more, actually, that that sort of tragedy.
• 1:17:22
  What a great way to wrap up the conversation, Michael. Thank you.
• 1:17:25
  Where can people follow your work? Do you have any social media?
• 1:17:28
  I'm a bit neglectful of that. So I mean, the best thing is just to look me up on Kings College,
• 1:17:34
  London, webpage and and yeah, and LinkedIn, I'm afraid it's those more boring academic
• 1:17:40
  kind of areas. But yeah, yeah, if you type in, I guess, Michael Rowe on YouTube, I've done a
• 1:17:48
  few kind of casts. I did a recording with the BBC in our time with Melvin Bragg, which discusses the
• 1:17:56
  invasion of Russia, you know, that kind of climactic episode along with a couple of other
• 1:18:01
  historians. So yeah, that's the unfortunate we couldn't talk about that. But maybe next time,
• 1:18:08
  if you're up to it, I would be super grateful. Great. If we can do this again, you're such a
• 1:18:14
  wealth of knowledge. It's such a privilege to have this conversation. It was absolutely splendid.
• 1:18:18
  Thank you so much. Zaza, thanks for those kind words and for putting this together.
• 1:18:22
  Hey, thank you for listening. First and foremost, a massive, massive thank you to my producers,
• 1:18:28
  Lorenzo, Jureciuk, Carmen, Veronica, Mila and Tai Chi, you legends rock without you. This podcast
• 1:18:36
  would not have been possible at all. Thank you so much for the rest of you. If you enjoyed listening
• 1:18:42
  to the episode, please follow and subscribe on Spotify, Apple podcasts and YouTube. And of
• 1:18:48
  course, if you'd like to become a patron as well, go to Patreon, type smart cookies in there and
• 1:18:56
  become one. All right. Thanks a lot. Bye. Bye.