Napoleon

[brad]

I have been listening to a really good Napoleon podcast lately. He was a pretty interesting person. They also talk a lot about the little details of Corsica.

There are a lot of things about Napoleon that I never knew, for example, did you know that Napoleon and his men were the ones that discovered the Rosetta Stone?

Check it out on iTunes (search for Napoleon) or on the web here:

http://napoleon.thepodcastnetwork.com/

The first couple of episodes are especially good.

[Ricardo]

he ordered 3 invasions to my country ¬¬

[Deepwaters]

Originally Posted by qwertyytrewq

he ordered 3 invasions to my country ¬¬

Yeah, that kind of crap was the really bad thing about him; he was always invading one country or another.

Other than that, as dictators go he was pretty cool. I couldn't get the podcast from your link, though, Brad.

[Ricardo]

yeah right . It aggravated (?) our economical crisis because the armies were always pillaging and destroying the cities, made us be in war against Spain and France, the king and the royal family left Portugal to Brazil, which leaded to their independence and put in risk ours...

He must have been a good leader for sure

[brad]

yeah, thats the bad thing about being a dictator. you always end up pissing some people off

[Deepwaters]

You've got to take everything in the context of the time. His laws and policies were, compared to the monarchies prevalent in most countries in Europe then, enlightened and benign. He laid down a structure of law that's still the basis for law in France today, although considerably modified (also in the State of Louisiana). His career probably advanced the overthrow of monarchies and the wave of republicanism in Europe by a long way, and cemented the Revolution in France so that the monarchic restoration never really had a chance to succeed.

Two really bad things about him: he was aggressively militaristic (more so than he had to be), and he was arrogant and hubristic to the max. That's what brought him down in the end.

Portugal got hit with one of his bad qualities and never saw the good ones. That doesn't mean the good ones didn't exist.

[Alizee_is_Scottish!]

He had to cancel his invasion of Britain due to unforseen circumstances. (So we helped by doing all the fighting in Portugal - sorry qwertyytrewq )

Military wise, Napoleon is classed as a genius by some of the gretatest writers in military theory (Clausewitz and Jomini spring to mind), and he did do a lot of good for France. Although he did ruin somewhat by bankrupting her, losing the overseas colonies and causing millions of deaths.

It was only when the coalition armies started copying the French style of warfare that Napoleon was finally defeated - the Prussians returning to battle at Waterloo being the prime example (as opposed to retreating along their lines of communication).

[Deepwaters]

Originally Posted by Alizee_is_Scottish!

losing the overseas colonies

Of course, over here we kind of like him for that.

[Alizee_is_Scottish!]

Originally Posted by Deepwaters

Of course, over here we kind of like him for that.

Ah, but maybe you missed out on Alizée visiting because of it. Surely that would be worth an extra 250 years of colonial rule.

[Ricardo]

All the invasions were because of our alliance with the British and they "helped" us fighting in Portugal. And they started to live here and "reign" it, that's why we were almost losing our independence.

Well, I know he had great qualities too, but we can't afford to him too much eheh