Napoleon and the Art of Leadership: How a Flawed Genius Changed the History of Europe and the World

By William Nester

This deep dive into the mind of the complex, controversial political and military leader is “a great addition to the field of Napoleonics” (Journal of Military History).

No historical figure has provoked more controversy than Napoleon Bonaparte. Was he an enlightened ruler or brutal tyrant? An insatiable warmonger or a defender of France against the aggression of the other great powers? Kind or cruel, farsighted or blinkered, a sophisticate or a philistine, a builder or a destroyer? Napoleon was at once all that his partisans laud, his enemies condemn, and much more. He remains fascinating, because he so dramatically changed the course of history and had such a complex, paradoxical character.

One thing is certain: If the art of leadership is about getting what one wants, then Napoleon was among history’s greatest masters. He understood and asserted the dynamic relationship among military, economic, diplomatic, technological, cultural, psychological—and thus political—power. War was the medium through which he was able to demonstrate his innate skills, leading his armies to victories across Europe. He overthrew France’s corrupt republican government in a coup, then asserted near dictatorial powers. Those powers were then wielded with great dexterity in transforming France from feudalism to modernity with a new law code, canals, roads, ports, schools, factories, national bank, currency, and standard weights and measures. With those successes, he convinced the Senate to proclaim him France’s emperor and even got the pope to preside over his coronation. He reorganized swaths of Europe into new states and placed his brothers and sisters on the thrones.

This is Napoleon as has never been seen before. No previous book has explored his seething labyrinth of a mind more deeply and broadly or revealed more of its complex, provocative, and paradoxical dimensions. Napoleon has never before spoken so thoroughly about his life and times through the pages of a book, nor has an author so deftly examined the veracity or mendacity of his words. Within are dimensions of Napoleon that may charm, appall, or perplex, many buried for two centuries and brought to light for the first time. Napoleon and the Art of Leadership is a psychologically penetrating study of the man who had such a profound effect on the world around him that the entire era still bears his name.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Mar 3, 2021
• ISBN: 9781526782793

William Nester

Dr. William Nester, a Professor at the Department of Government and Politics, St. John’s University, New York, is the author of thirty-seven books on history and politics. His book George Rogers Clark: I Glory in War won the Army Historical Foundation's best biography award for 2013, and Titan: The Art of British Power in the Age of Revolution and Napoleon, won the New York Military Affairs Symposium's 2016 Arthur Goodzeit Book Award.

Book preview

NAPOLEON AND THE ART OF LEADERSHIP

NAPOLEON AND THE ART OF LEADERSHIP

HOW A FLAWED GENIUS CHANGED THE HISTORY OF EUROPE AND THE WORLD

William Nester

Foreword by

John Grehan

First published in Great Britain in 2020 by

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Contents

Acknowledgements

List of Illustrations

Foreword

Maps

Introduction Napoleon and the Art of Power 1

Chapter 1 The Rebel

Chapter 2 The Master of Italy

Chapter 3 The Pharaoh

Chapter 4 The Usurper

Chapter 5 The Peacemaker

Chapter 6 The New World Dreamer

Chapter 7 The Great Reformer

Chapter 8 The Reluctant Belligerent

Chapter 9 The Spymaster

Chapter 10 The Emperor

Chapter 11 The Sun of Austerlitz

Chapter 12 The Ghost of Frederick

Chapter 13 The Kingmaker

Chapter 14 The Sisyphus of the Peninsula

Chapter 15 The Gatekeeper of Vienna

Chapter 16 The Antichrist

Chapter 17 The Titan

Chapter 18 The Lord of the Kremlin

Chapter 19 The Dying Gaul

Chapter 20 The Odysseus

Chapter 21 The Prometheus

Endnotes

Bibliography

Plates

Acknowledgements

Iwant to express my deep gratitude and pleasure at having had the opportunity to work with the outstanding Frontline editorial team of Lisa Hoosan, Stephen Chumbley, John Grehan, and Martin Mace, who were always as kind as they were I am especially grateful to Stephen for accenting all the French names and words, and to Martin for finding and captioning all the wonderful illustrations.

I would also like to thank Jason Petho for his wonderful maps.

List of Illustrations

1. Twenty-seven-year-old General Bonaparte would, in less than eight years’ time, become Emperor of the French and the most powerful man in Europe.

2. Bianchi’s lithograph of a young Captain Bonaparte explaining to senior officers how the Siege of Toulon could be won.

3. Pont de Lodi, 10 Mai 1796 by Charles Etienne Pierre Motte.

4. Thomas Charles Naudet’s drawing of Bonaparte leading his troops across the bridge at Arcole in November 1796.

5. General Bonaparte at Lanato in 1796 by Lordereau.

6. Bonaparte in Egypt.

7. Bonaparte reviewing his Consular Guard.

8. Bonaparte leading his troops at the Battle of Marengo.

9. Bonaparte in his full Consular regalia.

10. The displays erected to celebrate the coronation of Napoleon Bonaparte and Josephine as Imperial majesties.

11. Even Napoleon’s divorce from Josephine was an elaborate affair full of poignancy and high drama.

12. A portrait of Napoleon drawn just before he embarked on his disastrous Russian campaign.

13. J. Baillie’s Napoleon and Son .

14. A scene depicting Napoleon’s triumphant return to Paris in March 1815.

15. Napoleon retreating after the Battle of Waterloo.

16. Napoleon on the deck of HMS Bellerophon in Plymouth Sound awaiting his banishment to St Helena.

Foreword

Leadership techniques have long been studied and are well known. Indeed, many who will read this book will have attended man-management courses and practised and role-played all manner of workplace and possibly even battlefield scenarios. Yet we have all seen that regardless of how many skills or techniques have been taught and understood, some people are simply, seemingly innately, better leaders than others – and no finer example of this can be found than Napoleon Bonaparte.

Adored by vast numbers who followed him unquestioningly, even enthusiastically, into battle, he was also loathed by many and the royalist flame was never wholly extinguished in some regions of France during his period in power. The imperial crown sat uncertainly upon his far from regal head and remained there only as long as his army stood victorious on the battlefield.

Napoleon, though, certainly had the common touch. He made a point of knowing and remembering, the names of some of his ‘grognards’ of the Old Guard which had a tremendous effect on their loyalty, but in the days before the advent of mass communications the only other means by which he could influence people was through the issuing of highly evocative bulletins. Through these he could appeal to the French people’s growing spirit of nationalism and of their quest for the ever-elusive ‘glorie’. Of course, not everyone was convinced with Napoleon’s stirring calls to arms in the advancement or defence of ‘La patrie’ and the phrase ‘to lie like a bulletin’ was common currency. Yet, by appealing to French hearts rather than French heads, he was able to carry the nation with him, creating, at least in part, a meritocracy which gave perhaps a little more than just a passing nod to liberty, equality and fraternity.

Possibly the most obvious example of this was his creation of the Légion d’honneur, the highest award which could be bestowed upon an individual in France which, at least in theory, was open to anyone from whatever rank in the military or society whom it was felt merited such a distinction. The reasoning behind the creation of this order of merit was explained by Napoleon when the value of such medals was questioned: ‘You call these baubles, well, it is with baubles that men are led … Do you think that you would be able to make men fight by reasoning? Never. That is good only for the scholar in his study. The soldier needs glory, distinctions, rewards.’

Napoleon rose to become the most powerful man in Europe and the methods by which he achieved such a status and how he wielded the power he had amassed, is the subject of William Nester’s insightful study. Rather than merely retelling the rise and fall of history’s most enigmatic figure, as so many books have in the past, Professor Nestor has undertaken an investigation into not just the methods Napoleon adopted in his quest for power, but how he employed that power as much for the good of the sans-culottes as for the perpetuation of the Bonaparte dynasty.

In this study, William Nester makes his case by quoting Napoleon’s very own highly revealing words. The Corsican Napoleon struggled to master the French language, his spelling was poor and his handwriting barely legible, yet William Nester has found and pieced together a huge number of the great man’s words and those ascribed to him by others.

For those unfamiliar with Napoleon and his place in history who are looking to understand how the son of an Italian lawyer from an island in the Mediterranean became the Emperor of the French and the most feared as well as the most admired man in Europe, there is no better place to look than in here. For those who know that story well, this book is a lavish indulgence – an opportunity to luxuriate in the sharp phrases and the sharp tongue of Napoleon Bonaparte.

John Grehan

Storrington

October 2019

Maps

Map 1. Europe, January 1799.

Map 2. Europe, July 1803

Map 3. Europe, September 1806

Map 4. Europe, March 1810.

Map 5. Europe, May 1812.

Map 6. Europe, June 1815.

Introduction

Napoleon and the Art of Power

‘I was never truly my master, but was always governed by circumstances … I was never so foolish as to want to twist events to my system, but instead adapted my system to unforeseen events.’

‘The most beautiful title on earth is to be born French … I want to raise the glory of the name France so high that it will become the envy of all nations.’

‘I wanted deeply to plant our doctrines, our administration and our codes for Europe’s regeneration … I had vast and numerous projects all calculated for the well-being of humanity … I have been condemned for having an iron hand, but that ignores my goal.’

‘A statesman’s heart must be in his head.’

‘The essential secret of lawmaking is knowing how to draw support even from those one intends to regulate.’

‘A prince’s first duty, without doubt, is do what the people want, but what the people want is nearly never what they say they want.’

‘Men who have changed the world have never succeeded by winning over leaders but always by moving the masses. The first way is by resorting to intrigue and only leads to secondary results; the second way is the march of genius and changes the face of the world.’

‘When I wanted to set aside an issue, I closed that drawer and I opened another. They did not at all mix and it did not at all fatigue me to go from one to another.’

‘I reflect philosophically on the times when I had to do the work of Providence … I truly see how often luck entered into the destinies of those who I governed’.

‘Peace is an empty word. It is a glorious peace that we want.’

‘To conquer is nothing; one must profit from the success … The art consists in making one’s success in war pay for itself.’

‘I lend as much to a manufacturer as his number of workers because they are going to be without work. The vital consequence of this loan must be that the manufacturer stays in business.’

‘Diplomacy is inseparable from war.’

‘I think that you understand my system of war. England this year borrowed a billion.

We must exhaust their expenses.’

‘The smallest circumstances can lead to the greatest events.’

‘The truest truths … are so hard to obtain for history … There are so many truths!’

Power is the ability to get what one wants. One’s power rises with the scale of one’s ambitions and the ability to realize them versus others with conflicting ends and means. That is the conscious assertion of power. Then there is unintended power. Like the Sorcerer’s Apprentice, asserting power can inadvertently set in motion forces that change the world for the better, the worse or some mix of the two. By these measures, Napoleon Bonaparte was among history’s most powerful individuals.

No one surpassed Napoleon’s understanding and mastery of a virtuous cycle of power composed of interdependent military, economic, administrative, diplomatic, cultural, psychological and, thus, political dimensions. Success in one realm was enhanced by success in others; failure in one by failure in others. For instance, he famously said: ‘The art consists in making one’s success in war pay for itself’ and ‘To conquer is nothing; one must profit from the success.’¹ He understood the distinctions and relationships among hard, soft and smart power in which hard power is physical like armies, navies, factories and farms; soft power is psychological like leadership, strategy, tactics, values and beliefs; and smart power is choosing to assert or develop the appropriate sources of hard and soft power to get what one wants.² He understood that all power is relative and limited in varying ways and degrees.

Yet, ultimately, Napoleon failed spectacularly at the art of power. The near-absolute power he amassed as emperor and through his dazzling military victories warped him. He believed that he was invincible and could do no wrong and he intimidated into tight-lipped silence anyone in his entourage who suggested otherwise. And for that he is among history’s most controversial figures, an inkblot test for the beholders. Admirers applaud his military and administrative genius that advanced the modernization of France and Europe. Critics deplore him as a megalomaniac whose decisions led to devastation or outright death for hundreds of thousands of people. And both are right.³

Character and Power

Napoleon was at once a man of his time who eventually transcended it. He was born during the Ancien Régime and came of age during the Revolution. He was a man of thought and action, a progressive and a despot, a builder and a destroyer, cruel and caring, decisive and fatalistic, ruthless and forgiving, rational and sentimental, generous and austere, a cynic and a romantic, a humanist and a brute. At age 25, he described himself as having ‘a fiery imagination, a cold mind, a bizarre heart and a melancholy inclination that can shine among men like a meteor then disappear like one’.⁴ He exuded a charisma that inspired zealous devotion and sacrifices from his followers. Arthur Wellesley, the Duke of Wellington marvelled that: ‘His hat on a battlefield is worth 40,000 men.’⁵ To his legions of admirers and himself, he exemplified different symbolic characters from mythology and history as his life unfolded. He was a Young Werther as a lonely precocious teenager, a Hannibal in Italy, an Alexander in Egypt, a Caesar as First Consul, a Charlemagne as emperor, a Sisyphus in the Peninsula, a David in his naval war against Britain, a Xenophon in his Russian retreat, an Odysseus from Elba and a Prometheus on St Helena. Indeed, among his sources of political power was his ability to promote all these glorifying images of himself.⁶

He led a charmed life. He emerged from around fifty battles with three light wounds when all around him men were gunned down or blown to bits. A redcoat bayoneted his thigh at Toulon in 1793; a spent musket ball bruised his ankle at Ratisbonne in 1809; and another spent musket ball bruised his arm at Aspern-Essling in 1809. Over the decades he had eighteen horses killed or wounded under him.⁷ His closest brush with death off a battlefield was ‘the infernal machine’, or cart bomb, that exploded just seconds after his coach bypassed it in 1800. Guards prevented an Austrian patriot from plunging a dagger into him in 1809.

He is certainly among history’s most recognizable figures. He was lean and fierce-looking, with penetrating large bluish grey-eyes, shoulder-length dark chestnut hair, high cheekbones, a long straight nose, slightly pursed lips and a jutting jaw as a youth and young man. Then after he seized power in 1799 his body and face steadily fattened while he cut his hair short and combed it over his retreating hairline. Contrary to the legend and complex, he was actually about 5ft 6in, his era’s average height. French was his second language and his heavy Corsican accent gradually lightened but never disappeared.⁸

No matter how much power he amassed, he was always an outsider, a Corsican upstart who dared to crown himself emperor. In doing so, he trapped himself in a paradox:

France badly understands my position. Five or six families share Europe’s thrones and they view with unhappiness that a Corsican came to sit among them. I can only maintain myself by force. I can never accustom them to regard me as their equal without holding them under my yoke. My empire is destroyed if I cease being dreaded … They do not at all like me, but they fear me and that is sufficient. Anywhere and everywhere I only rule by the fear that I inspire. If I abandon this system I would soon be deposed. There is my system and the motives of my conduct.⁹

He overcompensated for his outsider stigma by asserting every effort to become the ultimate insider as the absolute ruler of an empire that engulfed ever more of Europe.

Even his worst critics might acknowledge that he had some laudable traits. He was among history’s most curious men. Indeed, his desire and capacity to absorb knowledge was insatiable. He was obsessed with learning more about anything that interested him, which was pretty much everything. He carefully studied reports and the greater their complexity, the more carefully he scrutinized them: ‘I have the habit of often rereading the states of situations. I love to find there information that I looked for.’¹⁰ He insisted to his subordinates that ‘it is so important for me to know not just where my battalions are, but also my companies’.¹¹ Interior Minister Jean-Antoine Chaptal, who secretly despised him, marvelled that in meetings with experts ‘he continually questioned, asking for definitions and meanings of words and provoked discussions until he had formed his opinion’.¹² The Austrian Prince Clemens von Metternich loved talking with Napoleon:

What at first struck me was the remarkable perspicuity and grand simplicity of his mind and its processes. Conversation with him always had charm for me … Seizing the essential points of subjects, stripping them of useless accessories, developing his thought and never ceasing to elaborate till he had made it perfectly clear and conclusive, always finding the fitting word or inventing ones where the image of language had not created it … Yet he did not fail to listen to the remarks and objections addressed to him. He accepted them, questioned them or opposed them without … overstepping the bounds of a business conversation and I have never felt the least difficulty in saying to him what I believed to be the truth, even when it was not likely to please him.¹³

Few people could ever match his astonishing ability both to grand strategize and micromanage, to connect dots and think outside boxes. He had an equally astonishing ability to compartmentalize: ‘When I wanted to set aside an issue, I closed that drawer and I opened another. They did not at all mix and it did not at all fatigue me to go from one to another.’¹⁴ He relaxed by filling his brain with details and statistics then applying them to solve problems. On campaign, he escaped briefly from the horrors of war by spotlighting a faraway time and place to ameliorate. For instance, he generated many of his ideas for promoting the arts and sciences during his military campaigns. Once he decided, he acted decisively.

He was a workaholic. He almost always had to be doing something that he deemed constructive: ‘Work is my element. I was born and constituted for work.’¹⁵ Yet, although he drove his key advisors as relentlessly as he drove himself, he recognized that everyone could endure only so much hard labour and stress. He then encouraged them to relax and enjoy themselves after they had fulfilled each day’s duties. He gave a family member this advice: ‘It was always useful, for all sorts of reasons, to see a little of the world and to indulge oneself … and lead a wiser life.’¹⁶

As for his own entertainment, he enjoyed attending tragic history plays or concerts by renowned singers. Hunting on horseback burned off some of his excess energy. When he was restless at night, he might summon an aide to join him in roaming incognito the streets of Paris or wherever else he was. He was a voracious reader, especially of history, but if something struck him as nonsense, he might toss the book out the window. When he was happy and free from official duties, he sometimes expressed his feelings by whistling or even singing, although he could not carry a tune. He was a maladroit dancer and did not enjoy balls, except for masques where he was quickly spotted striding through the throng, observing everyone, his hands locked behind his back. He adored children and was probably at his happiest romping with them. He was addicted to snuff and frequently paused in whatever he was doing to snort a pinch. He luxuriated in long hot baths followed by vigorous massages. He conformed to the importance of dressing for the occasion, including increasingly elaborate costumes of state as his power swelled, but he preferred wearing a simple dark green chasseur à cheval’s jacket over a white shirt, waistcoat and pants on campaign or otherwise a dark blue grenadier à pied’s jacket. He was no gourmet; he wolfed down simple meals accompanied by a glass or two of diluted red Chambertin wine. When he laughed it was usually from irony rather than mirth.¹⁷

Metternich described his dual nature: ‘Napoleon had two faces. In private he was easygoing and manageable … As a statesman he never admitted a single sentiment, decided neither from affection nor hate. He crushed or swept away his enemies without considering anything other than what was necessary for doing so.’¹⁸ His criticisms of those who failed him cut to the bone. Yet, after he vented his anger, he was usually swift to forgive in return for the miscreant’s profuse apologies and promises to do better. He amply rewarded and never forgot those who played decisive roles in his political and military victories. For instance, speaking in the third person, he said this of General Charles Augereau who was critical in winning the 1796 Battle of Castiglione: ‘That day was the most beautiful in the life of that general. Napoleon has never since wanted to forget it.’¹⁹ He was often gracious and affectionate. Typical were these words to General Henri Clarke, then an envoy to the Kingdom of Etruria: ‘I learned that your daughter had married. I wish her happiness in all events.’²⁰

Napoleon genuinely felt the pain of others, especially when they suffered the loss of a loved one and he wrote them very moving letters of condolence. To the widow of Admiral François Brueys, killed during the Battle of the Nile, he shared these consoling words:

Your husband was killed by a cannon shot while fighting aboard his ship. He died without suffering in the sweetest death, that most envied by warriors. I vividly sense your sorrow. The moment that we separate ourselves from that which we love is terrible; it isolates us from the earth … The faculties of the soul are annihilated. All that remains for us in the universe is to cross a nightmare that changes everything. One feels in this situation that nothing obliges us to keep living, that it would be better to die. Yet, after this first thought, one presses one’s children to one’s heart, with tears, with tender sentiments revived by nature and one lives for one’s children. Yes, Madame, you will cry with them, you will raise them from childhood, cultivate their youths, speak to them of their father … with … maternal love.²¹

A hyper-awareness of life’s mingled sublimity, absurdity and brevity shadowed Napoleon. That aching understanding spurred him to do whatever he could to fulfil his dreams with what time he had; it was mostly exhilarating but at times plunged him into despair. He was especially vulnerable and revealing during his early obsessive love for Josephine. Just before his 1796 Italian campaign, he confessed his ‘need to be consoled. It is in writing you … that I can vent my sorrow. What is our future? What is our past? Where are we now? … We are born, we live, we die amidst marvels. Is it surprising that priests, astrologers and charlatans profit from this … singular drive to parade our ideas and assert our wills?’ What prompted this bout of existential agony was the death of Felix Chauvet, his commissary chief and close friend. Chauvet literally haunted Bonaparte: ‘I see his shadow … his breath in the air; his soul is in the clouds where my destiny has been determined. Inconsolable I shed tears for our friendship and he tells me that I have already cried enough.’ The loss of Chauvet deepened his love and need for Josephine: ‘Soul of my existence, send me a letter with each courier. I don’t know how otherwise to live.’²²

War demands that a man bottle up his emotions, that he steel himself against not just witnessing but committing the most horrific acts of killing and maiming or ordering others to do so. Yet, like any human being, Napoleon could not remain unmoved by the gruesome results, especially those inflicted by his decisions. A week after the bloodbath at Eylau, he wrote Josephine that ‘the country is covered with dead and wounded … One suffers and the soul is oppressed to see so many victims.’²³ An experience during his first Italian campaign triggered his pent-up emotions. A battle had raged that day and he could not sleep. It was a beautiful moonlit night. Restless, he asked some aides to stretch their legs with him:

Suddenly a dog rose beside a cadaver and rushed us howling mournfully then abruptly returned to the cadaver. He licked his master’s face then rushed us again. He was at once trying to revive and avenge his master … Nothing on any of my battlefields provoked a similar impression. I stopped unwillingly to contemplate this spectacle. This man, I told myself, had friends … and here all had abandoned him except his dog. What a lesson nature gave us with a dog as a medium … I had without emotion commanded battles … Dry-eyed I had observed manoeuvres that led to great losses among us. Yet I was moved by a dog’s cries of sorrow! What is certain is that … I better understood Achilles in tears rendering Hector’s body to Priam.²⁴

Of the array of ways to influence others, one was beyond even Napoleon’s protean powers. No nation, even the French with their venomous ‘ridicule’, came close to matching the British art of lampoon. The British excelled exuberantly at searing and sneering words and cartoons and Napoleon was their bull’s eye during his years in power. He was terribly thin-skinned and the ceaseless and merciless barrage of calumnies by Britain’s satirical writers and artists infuriated him, compounded by his inability to retaliate.²⁵ Indeed, to get that monkey off his back, he was even willing to subordinate geopolitics. In 1805, he insisted to the Prussian King Frederick William that ‘any peace with England … must carry the clause of ceasing to give exile to the Bourbons and the émigrés and to restrain the injuries of its writers. These injuries are reprehensible … If one tolerates them in silence they give an exclusive privilege to a nation that knows how to extract privilege from everyone.’²⁶ Protecting one’s power justified these measures because ‘ridicule is more fatal to those in authority than their mistakes’.²⁷

Where character ends and personality begins is not easily discerned, but Napoleon’s latter was far less laudable than his former. Simply put, he was a control freak. It was not easy being around him because he continually sought to manipulate people like pawns. For that ‘no one was at ease in Napoleon’s society except himself’, recalled Chaptal. Indeed, one could not enjoy a true discussion with him because he reacted to those who challenged his views ‘with humiliation rather than debate’. He then tried to smooth over any hard feelings ‘with a false air of bonhomie’.²⁸ Louis Bourrienne, a former secretary, was just as critical: ‘He had everything required … to be a pleasant man, except the wish to do so. He was far too domineering to attract people.’ However, Napoleon could, ‘when removed from the political world … be sensitive, good and capable of showing pity. He liked children very much … He could be genial and even most indulgent as far as human weaknesses were concerned.’²⁹ The saying that no man is a hero to his butler was not true for Napoleon’s. Louis Constant usually found his master kind, generous, down-to-earth and fun-loving. At the same time, ‘being with the emperor was like living in the middle of a whirlwind succession of rapid, stunning events’.³⁰

Napoleon had several deep and enduring friendships with men he had bonded with as a fellow young officer before power warped him, although he was most intimate with his older brother Joseph, who he called ‘his best friend’.³¹ His closest army friends were Christophe Duroc, Louis Desaix, Jean Bessières, Andoche Junot, Jean Savary and Jean Lannes. Being his friend was a continual series of challenges. First, he outranked them from the time he commanded the Army of Italy and the gap between them widened as he became First Consul and then Emperor; only Duroc continued to use the informal ‘tu’ rather than the formal ‘vous’ for you. Second, he expected and demanded more from them than from his other subordinates. He especially valued Junot and Savary for their loyalty, zeal and ruthlessness and employed them for special military or diplomatic operations. He did not hesitate to blister them when they failed. A typical letter read: ‘I can only see with the greatest pain your conduct in this circumstance … You know me well enough to know that I do not at all sin in being too indulgent toward my friends.’³² War presents the ultimate conflict of interests between friends. A commander must lead or send them to potential death. That duty makes one’s sorrow even worse when they are killed. Napoleon wept shamelessly when Desaix, Lannes, Bessières and Duroc died on campaign with him. He tried to assuage his grief by reasoning that: ‘To live is to suffer and the true man always struggles to accept that.’³³

As for women, during his life, Napoleon fell deeply in love with several and in lust with many more. For him ‘the ideal happiness was perfect love with each elevated by the other furtively, mysteriously and inexplicably’.³⁴ He perceived and behaved toward women through a traditional mindset. A woman’s role was to provide men with pleasure and care, to lighten life’s burdens with her beauty, kindness, sensuality, humour and devotion. He discouraged his sister Pauline from expressing any jealousy with her husband, apparently for his unfaithfulness: ‘For a busy man any whining is insufferable. A wife must be good and complaisant and must not demand anything. Your husband is currently truly deserving of the title my brother by the glory he has acquired. Be constantly united by love and tender friendship.’³⁵ Not surprisingly, given his character and career, he saw romance as a struggle for power that could tilt either way, given the strengths of each person’s character and gender. His strategy in love as in war was to attack the other’s weakest point, for women, their insecurities: ‘To be loved, women must doubt and fear the extent and duration of their empire.’³⁶ He loved no one more than Josephine:

It is true that I hate intriguing women beyond anything. I am accustomed to good, sweet and complaisant women, those are the ones I love. If they spoiled me, it is not my fault … Throw this letter into the fire so that I will not be condemned as your husband … You see that I love good women, naïve and sweet, which you personify.³⁷

Although he firmly believed in and practised the double standard toward infidelity, he forgave Josephine for her lovers while he was fighting in Italy and Egypt.

Napoleon profoundly understood psychology. What one did with one’s life depended on the dynamic among one’s unique character, the circumstances in which one lived and the resulting choices one made:

Without doubt, each man … must develop his character through education, but this must be grounded on what nature has given him. Otherwise he runs the risk of losing those advantages, without obtaining the character that he sought … The course of life for each must be, after all, the evident result … of his character.³⁸

Yet character was not destiny. At times good men make bad decisions and bad men make good decisions. At times self-interest helps others and altruism hurts others. Each choice depends on how one perceives and reacts to complex, changing situations:

Man hardly ever acts according to his character, but by secret momentary passions that emerge from his heart’s deepest recesses … What is true is that man is very difficult to know and must be judged by his actions … In fact, men have their virtues and vices, their heroism and their perversity and are generally neither good or bad, but … each is shaped by his nature, education and fate.³⁹

For instance, Napoleon greatly admired George Washington as a general and statesman, yet recognized that Washington’s life could not be a model for his own nor his life a model for Washington. What they shared was that each man was the product and eventual master of unique psychological, historic, cultural, economic, strategic and thus political circumstances. Their respective characters and cultures differed so greatly that they could never have changed places:

After I took power, there were those who wanted me to be a Washington: their words counted for nothing since they were said ignorant of the importance of time, place, men and situations. If I were in America, I would willingly be a Washington and I would have done little good … And if he would have found himself in France … I would have defied him to be himself … For myself I could only have been a crowned Washington.⁴⁰

Belief and behaviour are inseparable. Either we act on our beliefs or pretend that we do. What did Napoleon believe in other than himself? He was driven to find meaning and make his mark on the world with what time he had because ‘life is a dream that soon dissolves’.⁴¹ One value surpassed all: ‘Death is nothing. But to live vanquished and without glory is to die every day.’⁴² He wrote to Admiral Antoine Thevenard that he had the sad duty of informing him that a cannon ball had killed his son, but ‘he died without suffering and with honour’ which was ‘the only consolation to soften a father’s sorrow. Death eventually devours each of us … Happy are those who die on the field of battle! They will live eternally in the memory of posterity.’⁴³ Glory was won by committing extraordinary deeds for one’s country. Although Napoleon was fiercely Corsican as a youth, he became even more fiercely French from his young manhood. He proudly proclaimed that: ‘The most beautiful title on earth is to be born French … I want to raise the glory of the name France so high that it will become the envy of all nations.’⁴⁴ He came to believe that the destinies of himself and France were inseparable. He most vividly expressed that belief in an extraordinary letter he wrote Foreign Minister Charles Talleyrand in October 1797. He was confident that France ‘will be Europe’s great nation and arbitrator for a long time … We hold the balance of power in Europe; we can tilt that balance as we want and even, if such is our destiny … we will achieve great results that only overheated imaginations and enthusiasms can foresee and that one man, cool, constant and reasonable, will achieve that.’⁴⁵ By then, he was certain that he knew exactly who that one man would be.

As for religion, he was a deist who believed in a supernatural force that somehow eons ago created the universe but thereafter largely let it run itself by natural forces.⁴⁶ Yet for mysterious reasons at times an element of that divinity known as Providence intercedes in human affairs, aiding a select few for great achievements: ‘I reflect philosophically on the times when I had to do the work of Providence.’ Then there was often another mysterious force that interceded: ‘I truly see how often luck entered into the destinies of those who I governed.’⁴⁷ Fate in the form of Providence or luck prevailed over an individual’s will: ‘The truth is that I have never been the master of my actions. I had plenty of plans but I was never free to execute a single one … I was never truly my master, but was always governed by circumstances … I was never so foolish as to want to twist events to my system, but instead adapted my system to events.’⁴⁸ He was constantly aware of the web of relations that entangle each of us in which ‘the seemingly smallest event can have the greatest results’.⁴⁹ He famously told Talleyrand that: ‘From triumph to defeat is but a single step. I saw … that a nullity always decided the greatest events.’⁵⁰ That reality made acting decisively even more pressing because: ‘In politics as in war, the lost moment never returns.’⁵¹

Tragically, as Napoleon’s power rose, his mind closed. At some point after he became emperor, his ministers no longer advised him but merely implemented his decrees. Chaptal explained that:

Once Bonaparte had an idea, true or false, his opinion ruled his conduct … and he no longer consulted anyone or he consulted but no longer took anyone’s opinion … He sharply mocked those with opinions different from his own … Napoleon paralyzed all those who surrounded him. He wanted no one to share his own glory. He believed in no talent but his own … He monopolized everything. He attributed everything to himself.⁵²

He justified all this by insisting that ‘I am not accustomed to finding my political opinions in the advice of others … I know more in my little finger than they know in all their heads together.’⁵³ Hubris was Napoleon’s Achilles heel. Victories bloated and twisted his ego until his ambitions exceeded even his astonishing abilities. Then the devastating defeats began and eventually destroyed all that he had created.

Governance and Power

Napoleon is known for his maxims. What is not widely known is that his maxims for governance are as numerous as those for war. His most succinct was this: ‘The art of government consists in punishing bad and rewarding good men.’⁵⁴ Good government begins with related values and behaviours: ‘It is only with prudence, wisdom and much dexterity that one can overcome all obstacles and achieve great goals; otherwise, one will not achieve anything.’⁵⁵ Although how Napoleon governed was inspired more by Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan than Jean Jacques Rousseau’s General Will, he recognized that ultimately even an emperor must be subject to the law and serve the people: ‘To know how to command one must know how to obey.’⁵⁶ The motive for doing so was self-serving rather than altruistic: ‘Men who have changed the world have never succeeded by winning over leaders but always by moving the masses. The first way is by resorting to intrigue and only leads to secondary results; the second way is the march of genius and changes the face of the world.’⁵⁷ Ideally there was a balance between liberty and order: ‘In France all that is not forbidden is permitted and nothing can be forbidden except by law, by the courts or by the police acting on behalf of morality and public order.’⁵⁸ That still gave authorities plenty of wriggle-room to forbid what they did not like.

No one rules a realm alone. Putting the right people in the right places was critical to his art of governance. His secretary, Agathon Fain, explained: ‘A single thought dominated the emperor in his choices, the need to surround himself with useful men.’⁵⁹ The worth of government bureaucracies was inseparable from the worth of the men who ran them. He reminded his officials that ‘all institutions have two faces, one beneficial, the other not’.⁶⁰ Good government involved a dexterous rather than heavy hand to strike the proper balance between doing too much or too little: ‘The great art consists in doing each year only what must be done.’⁶¹ In dealing with sensitive political matters, generally ‘one should treat it softly’ and ‘not reveal the government’s hand’.⁶² And sometimes the best policy was doing nothing. He once issued this advice: ‘In affairs of this nature, the great art is to know how to wait.’⁶³ That is no easy task for most people, especially someone as impatient as Napoleon.

The play or role may not have been the only thing, but it was essential. His maxim ‘to be a king one must act like a king’ applied to any level of leadership.⁶⁴ He understood that all politics involves theatre. Convincingly playing an appropriate role is among the many ways to get what one wants from others. One’s audiences expand with one’s roles on broader political stages.

Like Machiavelli, he believed that political stability depended more on being feared than loved, although both were vital: ‘The people need firm magistrates who know how to inspire esteem and fear.’⁶⁵ As for fear, although he had a short fuse, how he expressed his rage was usually carefully calculated: ‘When one of my ministers or some other grand personage made a serious mistake … that should truly make me angry … I was always careful about how I arranged the scene for the recipient and any witnesses … Things work better when a salutary fear circulates in the social body’s veins. I can punish less and reap more … without having done too much harm.’⁶⁶

A united, efficient, problem-solving government was a vital element of national security. At age 26, then General Bonaparte offered these principles to the struggling Genoan republic:

You are divided against yourselves and have left the field free for malevolent enemies to attack your liberty. Stifle your hatreds and reunite all your efforts if you want to avoid terrible evils to your country. The kings watch with pleasure and perhaps foment disunion in your government, which ruins your trade, deprives the masses of your nation of equality and establishes privileges and prejudices … Never lose sight that if you pit religion against liberty, most people will embrace the former … You must not govern with excess just as you must not let yourselves perish with weakness. Enlighten the people … Inspire love from your fellow citizens and the esteem of Europe.⁶⁷

Enlisting popular support was critical. How that was done involved ‘knowing how to draw support even from those one intends to regulate. And the trinkets given to do so present several advantages. At this point in civilization, it is appropriate to elicit support from the multitude to command one’s respect. One can satisfy the vanity of the weak without alienating the strong-minded.’⁶⁸ The people’s so-called general will was fickle and shallow. This meant that ‘a prince’s first duty, without doubt, is to do what the people want, but what the people want is nearly never what they think they want’.⁶⁹ Spider-like, he wove a powerful and intricate web of personal, legal and institutional relationships that depended on and so obeyed him. His critic Germaine de Staël paid him this grudging tribute: ‘Never has a man known how to multiply ties of dependence more cleverly than Bonaparte.’⁷⁰

He greatly respected public opinion’s potential power to work for or against him: ‘Public opinion is an invisible, mysterious, overwhelming power; nothing is more mobile, vague or strong; and however capricious it may be, it is … reasonable and just more often than one thinks.’⁷¹ Indeed he even believed that ‘Government founds and propels itself on public opinion … that reasons and calculates everything’.⁷² He asserted that ‘France was not just a family, not just a feeling, but also an opinion’.⁷³ Through his secret police, he kept a cupped ear to mutterings in salons, cafes and workshops.

He did not believe in a free press, at least for France and its empire: ‘It is too stupid to have newspapers with all the disadvantages of liberty of the press without any advantages and that by malevolence or incompetence, spread rumours that alarm commerce and act on England’s behalf.’⁷⁴ Then as now the mass public eagerly consumed sensational stories and celebrated charismatic criminals as folk heroes. He despised that dimension of human nature. He repeatedly tried and failed to get newspapers to stop catering to the beetle-browed throng with salacious stories.⁷⁵ He sought a more sophisticated press: ‘Newspapers today critique nothing in the sense of condemning mediocrity, of ameliorating inexperience, of encouraging budding merit, of re-establishing desire for great models: all that they publish are made to discourage, to destroy. Perhaps the Interior Minister can intervene to remedy that.’ Yet he recognized the danger that too much government interference could have the opposite effect, stifling any criticism of anything and falling into ‘nothing grander than panegyrism and authors of awful works that already inundate us’.⁷⁶ He tried to justify his policy with these partly apologetic, partly Orwellian words to Police Chief Joseph Fouché: ‘While I wish that censorship did not exist … I am obliged to guard … public liberty … I do not want censorship … but I do not want to be responsible for the stupidities that they can print.’⁷⁷ The Moniteur became his government’s quasi-official newspaper by printing favourable stories along with his army bulletins and other messages.

Public officials should be as honest as they were efficient. He launched periodic crackdowns against those who exploited public resources for private gain: ‘I will be pitiless against corrupt agents … A man punished severely … and delivered to the vengeance of the laws spares the lives of countless people and avoids calamities.’⁷⁸ Yet here he did not always practise what he preached. He had an astonishing mind for all kinds of calculations, including finance. He was a very skilled investor both for himself and France. In those days there was no wall of separation between one’s private interests and public duties, so he shamelessly enriched himself through insider trading.

In government, there are formal powers of institutions, laws and regulations and then there are informal powers of custom, culture and charisma. The latter often trump the former, as Napoleon was well aware. He was frustrated when his informal powers fell short of his formal powers: ‘Intrigues were sometimes so adroit … and … so closely aligned that my efforts, with the best intentions in the world, had to be a veritable lottery … The vice is thus in the nature of one’s position, in the force of things.’⁷⁹ He paid a grudging tribute to the power ‘of women in his court … their secret dispositions, their views, their hopes … in diverse salons’ that undermined his authority by ‘deploring the brutality of the emperor’s manners, the harshness of his words, the ugliness of his person … to ridicule … These little advantages conflict much with power.’⁸⁰

Napoleon understood that culture and politics are inseparable. Like individuals, each country has its own unique character, called a culture. The art of governing cultures and characters alike depends on discerning and manipulating the unique features of each. He had some scathing observations about his own nation: ‘Much of French character involves exaggerating, complaining and distorting that which discontents them.’⁸¹ Yet he found a key to ruling the French:

One can obtain anything from France by the lure of danger … Valour and the love of glory are instinctively part of being French, a type of sixth sense. How many times in the heat of battle did I stop and contemplate my young conscripts who threw themselves in the fray for the first time. Honour and courage oozed from all their pores.⁸²

He forged unity and inspired sacrifices by appealing to their patriotism: ‘They knew from me one key question and goal: Do you want to be a good Frenchmen with me? And with the affirmative I led each into a defile without a left or a right, obliging them to march straight ahead for the nation’s honour, glory and splendour.’⁸³

Then there was the issue of personal security for those who governed. Among his warnings to his brother Joseph, after crowning him the King of Naples, was to guard against being poisoned by his cooks or waiters, to keep his bedroom door guarded and locked at night and to open it only at the voice of his most trusted aide. He cited his own precautions as a model: ‘You have followed my private life enough to know how much, even in France, I always keep around me only my most trusted and venerable soldiers.’⁸⁴

Prosperity and Power

Napoleon believed that, ultimately, good governance was about bettering the lives of most people, both their standard of living and quality of life. That was at once an end and, more vitally, a means to enhance national power. A nation’s relative power was critically related to the prosperity or poverty of its people.

As with all other dimensions of power, he was an economic pragmatist rather than theorist.⁸⁵ The key question was how to create and distribute more wealth and thus power for individuals and the state. The key answer was to establish a dynamic whereby economic wealth and power steadily enhanced and perpetuated themselves. Determining just how to do that was the priceless challenge. One thing was certain – the state’s economic role was essential. States and markets were inseparable. The public and private sectors could both create or destroy wealth. Ideally, they partnered to create wealth. Making money depended on spending it.

He scoffed contemptuously at liberal economic theory personified in Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations, published in 1776 and his French disciple Jean-Baptiste Say and his Treatise on Political Economy of 1803. His economic views and policies were hardly original, but an elaboration of the mercantilism developed by Maximilien Béthune, duc de Sully under Louis XIII and Jean-Baptiste Colbert under Louis XIV. The real world trumped the notion that free trade, by ‘embracing all classes would inspire imaginations and motivate people, is completely identical with equality, would naturally lead to independence and, under this relationship, would uphold much better our modern system’.⁸⁶ He deplored the notion that greed is good, that as businessmen gorged at their economic feast, crumbs might trickle down to others. Indeed, he believed that ‘business withered the soul’.⁸⁷ History revealed that the freer a market, the sooner it self-destructed. Big economic fish gobbled up the smaller fry and then each other, resulting in oligopolies or outright monopolies that gouged consumers with sky-high prices. Greed bloated real estate and stock markets into bubbles that fear popped, impoverishing all except those who bailed out in time. As for international commerce, unilaterally practising free trade was folly’s height, a self-destructive form of disarmament that let foreign industries conquer one’s own industries and transfer wealth from one’s country to that rival country. The British could champion free trade only because their Industrial Revolution churned out cheap products that they dumped in foreign markets to bankrupt competitors.⁸⁸

Napoleon was clearly a man far ahead of his time in knowing that when the private sector self-destructed, the public sector had to spend more to revive the economy. For instance, when the economy faltered in late 1806, he tried to stimulate it ‘with subsidies of 500,000 francs each month during 1807 to make work for manufacturing’. He asked Archchancellor Jean Cambacérès ‘what manner must be employed to realize my goal which is the least onerous to the public treasury?’⁸⁹ He understood and acted on the reality that some businesses were too big to fail and thus the government had to rescue them. During an economic crisis in 1807, he explained to Interior Minister Jean-Baptiste Champagny his criteria for determining who was worthy of emergency loans:

My goal is not to prevent such a company from bankruptcy … but to prevent such a manufacturer from closing … I will judge your operations on this principle … I lend as much to a manufacturer as his number of workers because they are going to be without work. The vital consequence of this loan must be that the manufacturer stays in business.⁹⁰

A vital government duty was partnering with entrepreneurs to foster the most diverse and dynamic economy possible. He distinguished between investors and speculators and tried to encourage the former who mostly made useful things, while stifling the latter who mostly played financial shell games and bilked the gullible. The key was enticing investments in infrastructure, industries and inventions with various subsidies like grants, low interest loans or tax cuts that enticed private investors. Who got what depended on the economic sector’s relative importance to the needs of individuals and the nation, ‘first agriculture, then industry, … and finally commerce’.⁹¹ To better promote economic development, he established a series of institutions including the Bank of France, Stock Exchange, Court of Accounts, Chamber of Commerce, Land Registry, Statistics Office, Commercial Law Code and Ministry of Manufacturing and Commerce.

To finance public investments, he raised both taxes and efficiency. He generated greater savings and thus money by reorganizing and streamlining government. He created wealth and thus revenue by investing in infrastructure like canals, roads, ports and bridges. These instructions captured his ends and means: ‘All that will not demand an immense amount of money. Disorder and waste prevent us from doing anything. The best proclamation that can be made is when people see the work that will be accomplished. But above all we need money. Procure it from a thousand available sources.’⁹²

He recognized the importance of Britain’s ongoing Industrial Revolution and longed for France to emulate and eventually surpass its rival. However, to succeed, an industrial revolution had to be proceeded by a perceptual revolution: ‘Formerly, one only understood property to be land.’ Then came related revolutions in how to make and manage things: ‘And, for failing to recognize this grand revolution in property, for obstinately closing one’s eyes on such truths, one makes such stupidities today and exposes oneself to upheavals. The world has suffered a grand displacement.’⁹³

Exports were Britain’s engine of economic growth and literally and figuratively the bottom line of its military power and he wanted French exports similarly to serve French power: ‘Commercial relations with neutral countries advantage her; she is eager for any way to prosper. Grand, strong and rich, she is satisfied when, by her commerce and that of neutrals, exports can boost her agriculture and manufacturing.’⁹⁴ His dream of the day when France exceeded Britain in trade power was impossible as long as the war persisted. France was trapped in a vicious cycle whereby the Royal Navy bottled up both France’s war and merchant ships in port, thus leaving French sailors, ships and production to atrophy, while further empowering British merchants to extract wealth from around the world, all of which bolstered the blockade and widened the economic chasm between Britain and France.⁹⁵ Ending the war with Britain was critical to French prosperity: ‘If we force that government to peace, the advantages that we will procure for our commerce in the two worlds will be a great step toward consolidating our liberty and public good.’⁹⁶

Interior Minister Chaptal, who was otherwise among Napoleon’s unrelenting critics, grudgingly gave his economic policies high marks:

Napoleon rendered grand service to industry. It was under his reign that we attained the degree of prosperity that we enjoy today … that for the first time our industrial products for price and quality competed in all the markets of Europe … This rapid industrial progress was principally due to the prohibition of foreign products and the severe vigilance with which they were repressed.⁹⁷

The flip side of that progress was Napoleon’s one grand delusion when it came to economic policy. He believed that he could bring Britain to its knees by shutting Europe’s markets to it with his Continental System. The ‘logic’ of his belief led him to war against Portugal, Spain and Russia and eventually to his downfall.

Diplomacy and Power

Napoleon provided insights into both pursuits when he declared: ‘Diplomacy is inseparable from war.’⁹⁸ As in war, he devised grand diplomatic strategies only after immersing himself in a myriad of details.⁹⁹ His need to know was insatiable. In early 1806, he wrote to Talleyrand that ‘I want to put regularity in my foreign affairs work. Thus, it is suitable that you send me every day, after you have read them, all the letters from my ambassadors and foreign agents, my intention being to read all their correspondence.’¹⁰⁰

He understood that ‘peace is a marriage that depends on a union of wills’.¹⁰¹ Diplomacy involves developing that will in an opponent who is reluctant to give up. To get what one wants through diplomacy, silence can be as important as talk, emotion as important as reason, concessions as important as threats, symbols as important as substance. Among his repertoire of diplomatic strategies, he wielded one persistently. In diplomacy as in war, he sought to divide and conquer alliances, governments and groups alike. He spotlighted and played off their ancient hatreds and ongoing rivalries. He sowed distrust, dissent and favours. He might extend an olive branch to one minister, faction or country while threatening another. He might give a king a face-saving way to bow to his demands by identifying some pro-English faction in his court that betrayed him and his realm in return for English gold. He offered this advice to one of his ambassadors: ‘It is necessary to march softly and with reserve and never do what is not contained in one’s instructions because it is impossible for an isolated envoy to appreciate the influence of his operations on the general system. Europe forms a system and all that one does is but a speck linked with others; it is necessary to act in concert.’¹⁰²

His tactical plans to his diplomats, even masters like Talleyrand, were often as intricate as those to his generals. He was adept at bending foreign ambassadors to his will with subtle, persistent psychological pressure. For instance, during peace talks between France and Austria in early 1801, he instructed his brother Joseph to treat Foreign Minister Louis Cobenzl ‘like an ordinary minister. In the movements of these negotiations he lacks character … He should not be lodged and it would not be suitable if you showed him the same intimacy as during his first visit. He should understand that he should come only to lift all obstacles to conclude the peace and not to gain time.’¹⁰³

He appreciated that diplomacy was a struggle for hearts and minds with one’s counterparts for a broader audience that always included the other government and populace along with usually all other key governments and peoples. For instance, as the resumption of war with Britain loomed in May 1803, he cautioned General Jean Lannes, his ambassador in Lisbon, in trying to entice Portugal from its alliance with Britain, ‘to display the greatest moderation. Conform to the customs of the country … In meeting with the ministers … express … moderate and pacific sentiments.’¹⁰⁴

Napoleon was his own most trusted diplomat just as he was his own must trusted general. He loved matching wits with adversaries to talk them into conceding things they treasured. To that end, in what can be called the ‘Napoleon treatment’, he unleashed a barrage of arguments, promises, threats, reason, emotion and appeals to the loftiest ideals and vilest motives; he persisted until