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

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.

 

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.