Was Napoleon Bonaparte good or bad? What do you think?

Discussion in 'Off-topic Discussion' started by Resilience personified, Sep 22, 2021.

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  1. Napoleon Bonaparte has done some good things as well as bad things. What is your opinion about him? Just talking about this because today I read about him.
     
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  2. onceaking

    onceaking Fapstronaut

    I'm sure I could find name some good things he did but initially, I can only think of how he brought in the Civil Code of 1804 which did away with the reforms in divorce and family law. I don't think this was good because it took away the freedom that women had gotten by the reforms.
     
  3. But civil code removed all the feudal systems.
     
  4. Civil code removed serfdom
     
  5. onceaking

    onceaking Fapstronaut

    But was the feudal system all that bad?

    I should say that I'm fresh off writing an essay on how the French Revolution changed gender roles and the family so that influences my answer. My research didn't cover much of Napolean and my main focus was on the roles of women and the family in the revolution. What I did find out was that the Civil Code did fulfil many of the revolutionary goals (such as creating unified law, establishing private property, and freedom of contracts). Seems to me the reforms to family law were well-intended but poorly executed so maybe it's understandable he did away with them. But I think the Divorce Law of 1792 was a good thing that made society fairer and it seems to me Napolean wasn't in favour of that.

    Having said that my study of history tells me no one is really all good or all bad. Like you said the Civil Code did some good. The fact is Napolean was alive at an extraordinary time in history and nothing he did was as bad as the Reign of Terror.
     
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  6. onceaking

    onceaking Fapstronaut

    Do you think he would have led so many wars if he wasn't alive during the French Revolution?
     
    Perseverance 16 likes this.
  7. That's right all of us have shades of Grey. And yeah the reign of terror was the second worst thing in the history
     
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  8. Even Alexander The great lead so many wars but still people call him great that's because war were common in that era
     
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  9. Who told moral categories only make sense in context of religion? I was just wanted to know people's opinion on the things he did.
    Everything needn't be "scientific".
     
  10. According to me the Civil Code was one of the good things he did. But he brought back slavery and monarchy which was really bad. Also he focused more on invading in later times and hence lost the support, got defeated and sent to exile.
     
  11. My question was were his actions good for the society.
     
  12. SethLCU

    SethLCU Fapstronaut

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    most of the time he was in the defensive tough, what he can be blamed for is the nonsentical invasion of spain, restoration of slavery and his anti-women stance.(also abandoning his army to die in egypt, like wtf?)
     
  13. HelperX

    HelperX Fapstronaut

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    As someone already said, he lead many wars trying to conquer as much land as he could, obviously he wasn't good.
     
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  14. Then what about Alexander The Great
     
  15. Meshuga

    Meshuga Fapstronaut

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    Empire creates a strong central government, which can both support and oppress the citizens inside its borders. Empire is bloody and violent on the edges, but peaceful inside. By taking territory and unifying it under central rule, it might be a large conflict that ends dozens of small future conflicts and results in less bloodshed, over time.

    I don't know much about Napoleon. I'm American, and home schooled what's more, so I kind of skipped that world stage of history since America was busy doing her own things. All I know from that standpoint is Napoleon sold the Louisiana Territory to Jefferson before he could get it approved by Congress, but it was a good move so they let it slide, proving laws and principles get us only so far. I'm also a literature guy, and I know Napoleon ran a meritocratic operation, which led to promoting the son of a French nobleman and a Haitian slave, Alexandre-Thomas Davy de la Pailleterie , to the rank of General-in-Chief. His son was Alexander Dumas, who wrote "The Count of Monte Cristo" and "The Three Musketeers," among many others. So, huzzah for a small step in racial equality, I guess.

    Napoleon also invented the Martini, so I suppose from an alcoholic and James Bond standpoint, Good? Yeah, forget all the war and bloodshed and repeal of women's rights. Napoleon was a good guy.
     
    Last edited: Sep 23, 2021
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  16. SethLCU

    SethLCU Fapstronaut

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    I finally got around to reading the biography of that guy and napoleon did not really have anything to do with promoting alexandre dumas to his rank in fact after napoleon obtained power for the first time dumas never again commanded the number of troops he once did(napoleon in fact despised him), he issued a set of racist laws that among other things forbid interracial marriage, ended the previous government experiment on color blind education and "in the armies that General Dumas once led, suddenly the very concept of a black soldier commanding white troops was impossible—a black general of division or general-in-chief of an army, unimaginable.”
     
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  17. Meshuga

    Meshuga Fapstronaut

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    Well then. Bonaparte was a worse tool than Beau Brummel.
     
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  18. Buonaparte (yes I refuse to use his pretentious French spell of his name) certainly was a brilliant general. But his love for war led to a lot of people dying needlessly. Just like every other "conqueror". He may have spread Enlightenment ideas which ameliorated to some extent the oppression of the ancien regime countries, but a lot of innocent people paid a huge cost.

    Also... Buonaparte was kind of a hypocrite. Back in his youth in Corsica when he and Joseph called themselves the Gracchi brothers after the famous Roman reformers during Rome's Senate period he was a dye-in-the-wool Jacobite, against any form of oppression even slavery. Years later when Toussaint Loverture defeated the British and the Spanish in Haiti declared himself governor and sent off a nice letter to Napoleone, Napoleone instead sent an invasion force to defeat him and reinstitute slavery on the island. It's a good thing he lost... but the war devastated the country and an argument can be made that the effects of this are still being felt in that country today.
     
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  19. matt2k12

    matt2k12 Fapstronaut

    if you really want to know, read "War and Peace" by Tolstoi. Best Book ever written. Let's you understand that Napoleon was neither a brilliant general, nor a "good" man, nor, actually, an "evil" man.
    History tends to blow up people's personas or diminish them, because it is people with opinions that live after them, who write about them, and especially before the 20th century historians were - to put it bluntly - a bunch of self righteous, proud and arrogant preachers. Seldomly you can read a historian piece from that time without what in literature we refer to as "pathos" or even "eros". It's full of exaggeration.
    History is written by the winners, also. Do not forget that.
    Also, remember the saying: "As long rabbits do not have historians, history will only tell about them rogues."
    Scrutinize, question everything you hear, and more than reading the words and into the meaning, ask yourself this: why are those words and meanings put there. If you can do so, successfully, you can detect bias and untruth everywhere.
    So, in other words, what I'm trying to say is simply: your question is pretty silly.

    Go to Page 1410, 1667 and read the whole chapter, it will give you the answer:
    https://planetpdf.com/planetpdf/pdfs/free_ebooks/War_and_Peace_NT.pdf

    While this was taking place in Petersburg the French had already passed Smolensk and were drawing nearer and nearer to Moscow. Napoleon’s historian Thiers, like other of his historians, trying to justify his hero says that he was drawn to the walls of Moscow against his will. He is as right as other historians who look for the explanation of historic events in the will of one man; he is as right as the Russian historians who maintain that Napoleon was drawn to Moscow by the skill of the Russian commanders. Here besides the law of retrospection, which regards all the past as a preparation for events that subsequently occur, the law of reciprocity comes in, confusing the whole matter...
     
    Last edited: Oct 29, 2021
    Perseverance 16 likes this.
  20. Tbh I was always tempted to skip those sections of the book. Tolstoy is a great writer but I found him tiresome when he talks philosophy, especially the philosophy of history. I think there is merit in his thesis that events have their own cause and impetus irrespective of the people that play the parts in them; but I think he overstates it. Its all a bit too teleological for me. That events happen and express themselves through actors that move them to their inevitable ends. I think Tolstoy may have let his own perspective of looking back on the events he was describing and knowing how they turned out bleed into what he had to say about them.

    I on the other hand think there is more freedom in what happens, the end is not so clear and there are really opportunity for people in positions of power to make changes. Napoleone could have made a real difference for Haiti I think by recognizing Toussaint Loverture and working with him instead of throwing the country into bloody war again and destroying the country. He could have made the peace of Amiens a lasting peace by agreeing to open trade relationships with Britain, then let the stability and popularity of France and all things French spread the ideas of the Enlightenment more organically. His ambition got the better of him though. Tolstoy might have said that the events that were happening would not have chosen Napoleone if he didn't have that ambition because they needed to work themselves out through him (mass movement of people east, then counter movement of people west) but again I feel this puts too much emphasis on the end.

    That's how I read him at least, feel free to push back on anything I said.
     

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