Napoleon Bonaparte was pretty freakin sweet. Throughout the course of his 15 year dominance over France, the total number of "wins" that he racked up definitely outnumber the total number of "fails." The same could probably be said for Robespierre. Nevertheless, we have here a pretty massive fail on Napoleon's part. The story begins in Corsica, where Napoleon was born to a low level noble family. After a rather high class military and intellectual education, Napoleon's gigantic ambition sent him to France, where he landed the position of Lieutenant in the French army. His exceptional work in a battle for Toulon against the British and his stone-cold-badass achievement of bringing the crazed Parisian mob to a halt (seriously, the "wins" just keep adding up) earned him some major street cred, and the French government decided to assign him the daunting task of invading Britain. He decided to go for Egypt first, messed up pretty badly, and ran away. When he returned to France, his terrific ambition kicked in again and he had his eyes set on taking over the already weak French Directory. A single coup d' etat later, and we have Napoleon, the first consul. Here's where the "wins" start flowing in, folks. A near complete domination over Europe established Napoleon as the first modern dictator ever. Hell yes, bitches. Just as things were looking up, however, they started to fall apart. The Russians' refusal to accept Napoleon's Continental System, a blockade on British trade (that rhymed), led to a very costly war for his Grand Army, and once his forces were weakened, Napoleon's entire empire began to crumble.
But wait. Napoleon Bonaparte isn't done kicking ass. After all the countries that he had previously dominated finally got rid of Napoleon and banished him to Elba (a small island off of Italy), he made a really, really gnarly comeback. "Soldiers of the fifth regiment, I am your Emperor...If there is a man among you who would kill his Emperor, here I am!" shouted Napoleon to a group of troops ready to kill him upon his return to France. Instead of killing him, this brilliant display of awesomeness put Napoleon right back on top. Yet again, however, it wouldn't last. What could have been a gigantic Comeback Win turned out to be a huge Comeback Fail. His forces were defeated again by a combined Prussian and British army, and Napoleon was banished St. Helena, this time for good.
Warfare is a fascinating subject. Despite the dubious morality of using violence to achieve personal or political aims. It remains that conflict has been used to do just that throughout recorded history.
ReplyDeleteYour article is very well done, a good read.