Napoleon: Hero or Devil

Here is my l33t essay on Napoleon:


There are many conflicted views on Napoleon. Was he the greatest leader France ever had, or did he take over France for the power it gave him?
Napoleon was a gifted military leader, its true, but by all accounts was an insufferable egotist. In the article “Napoleon-Hero or Devil?” it has an excerpt from his own writings that says:
“Had I succeeded, I should have died with the reputation of the greatest man that ever existed. As it is, although I have failed, I shall be considered as an extraordinary man. My elevation was unparalleled, because unaccompanied by crime. I have fought fifty pitched battles, almost all of which I have gained. I have framed and carried into effect a code of laws that will carry my name to the most distant ages. From nothing, I raised myself to be the most powerful monarch in the world. Europe was at my feet…”
If he thought that highly of himself and only cared about being known in the future, who’s to say that he would care enough about a whole country to try to better it just for the sake of the French people?
It’s really difficult to believe that Napoleon achieved power so he could better France. I think he bettered France so he could achieve power. France wouldn’t have been a very good country to rule after the Revolution. There was a dearth of order, it was divided, and the population was reduced drastically. If the country is powerful, the monarch is powerful. Napoleon saw this and acted on that principle. I think he also knew he needed to get the approval of the people to get far, and that’s why he kept the reforms that the majority of the French people wanted. This way they wouldn’t rebel and overthrow him prematurely, before he had a chance to achieve his goals of absolute power. Proof of this theory comes from Napoleon’s own words: “I love power. But it is as an artist that I love it. I love it as a musician loves his violin, to draw out its sounds and chords and harmonies.” Napoleon actually has numerous quotes about his love for power. Another one is “Power is my mistress. I have worked too hard at her conquest to allow anyone to take her away from me.”
Napoleon said “I can no longer obey; I have tasted command, and I cannot give it up.” He was so hungry for power and to be in command that he lost sight of what was really important: the welfare of France.
Obviously, power was important to Napoleon. He wanted power, and he recognized the opportunity to achieve it in the aftermath of the revolution. The military leaders higher than he in rank were émigrés, political refugees, and wouldn’t stand in his way in his quest to the top. The path to greatness was wide open to him.
Napoleon was accepted into a military academy at age nine. He was in the military until his exile in 1814. He was taught from a young age how to kill people. That would have a negative effect on someone, especially an impressionable young child.
“The word 'impossible' is not in my dictionary.” Napoleon’s disastrous defeats at Russia and Egypt prove he was too eager to gain power and territory and didn’t think through what he was doing. Evidently, the word impossible wasn’t in his dictionary, but maybe it should have been.
Napoleon was also ambitious. By some accounts, insatiably ambitious. He wanted as many victories as he could achieve, and as much territory as he could gain. Ambition could blind a person to the needs of the people he was supposed to be ruling. His ambition was ultimately his downfall, as he kept searching for more territory to gain until he finally lost a battle, and he lost brutally. Before his famous invasion of Russia, Napoleon believed that "A single blow delivered at the heart of the Russian Empire, at Moscow the Great, at Moscow the Holy, will instantly put this whole blind, apathetic mass at my mercy." He didn’t think through what he was doing, and what strategies the enemy could have. He thought he was so great that he would be in and out of Russia, and by the end of his invasion, Russia would be begging for mercy. As a result of his rashness, he lost approximately 400, 000 men from the Russian force, and the Russian winter.
Napoleon was also defeated soundly in Egypt. He didn’t have a particular reason for it. Ostensibly it was to gain territory, and his own memoirs state the reason simply as “glory.” At the end of his invasion of Egypt, his army suffered the loss of 1,700 lives. No British vessels were lost, and the British force lost only 218 men.
This just in the pursuit of glory.
Napoleon was ambitious, egotistical, and wanted to be remembered to “the distant ages.” His hunger for power and alleged desire to make life in France better for his people could not have been balanced. This is why I believe he wasn’t the hero everyone thinks he is, that he used the desire to make France great as a pretext for his hunger for power.

I got 92 on it. Yay!