Was Napoleon Positive or Negative for France Overall

[GloryofGreece]

The French Revolution devolved into a Reign of Terror, thousands of commoners guillotined, some wealthy men and the King dead, tons of emigrates, civil unrest, civil war really, a dysfunctional Directory (small Oligarchy really), etc. etc. Napoleon saved Toulon, Paris, and was a successful commander in many defensive wars before gaining the Consulate. Was Napoleon gaining leadership of the French state when he did a good thing even in hindsight?

[Speaker to Animals]

Napoleon killed more Frenchman in battle than Jacobin could ever dream of slaughtering in their guillotine.

In reality, he was more like a Hitler. Or more accurately, Hitler was more like a Napoleon than the antichrist persona he has taken on in the popular zeitgeist today.

[Hwen Hoshino]

Napoleon killed more Frenchman in battle than Jacobin could ever dream of slaughtering in their guillotine.

In reality, he was more like a Hitler. Or more accurately, Hitler was more like a Napoleon than the antichrist persona he has taken on in the popular zeitgeist today.

He was antichrist because he was outside of the western norm for his era.

[GloryofGreece]

Napoleon killed more Frenchman in battle than Jacobin could ever dream of slaughtering in their guillotine.

In reality, he was more like a Hitler. Or more accurately, Hitler was more like a Napoleon than the antichrist persona he has taken on in the popular zeitgeist today.

So the fact that Napoleon was involved in 7 wars and 5 were defensive means nothing? Hitler was not very analogues to Napoleon. Napoleon rose to his position through the military and through winning major campaigns that were defensive in nature. Napoleon stopped the killing of political opponents and simply exiled them as a matter of policy. Also the i'd argue French people benefited from his Code and meritocratic educational programs.

[Speaker to Animals]

Napoleon killed more Frenchman in battle than Jacobin could ever dream of slaughtering in their guillotine.

In reality, he was more like a Hitler. Or more accurately, Hitler was more like a Napoleon than the antichrist persona he has taken on in the popular zeitgeist today.

So the fact that Napoleon was involved in 7 wars and 5 were defensive means nothing? Hitler was not very analogues to Napoleon. Napoleon rose to his position through the military and through winning major campaigns that were defensive in nature. Napoleon stopped the killing of political opponents and simply exiled them as a matter of policy. Also the i'd argue French people benefited from his Code and meritocratic educational programs.

You are making distinctions without a difference here.

[GloryofGreece]

Napoleon killed more Frenchman in battle than Jacobin could ever dream of slaughtering in their guillotine.

In reality, he was more like a Hitler. Or more accurately, Hitler was more like a Napoleon than the antichrist persona he has taken on in the popular zeitgeist today.

So the fact that Napoleon was involved in 7 wars and 5 were defensive means nothing? Hitler was not very analogues to Napoleon. Napoleon rose to his position through the military and through winning major campaigns that were defensive in nature. Napoleon stopped the killing of political opponents and simply exiled them as a matter of policy. Also the i'd argue French people benefited from his Code and meritocratic educational programs.

You are making distinctions without a difference here.

With that line of thinking it would be fair to say you pretty much think all Kings, dictators, etc. are the same whether its Alexander, Caesar, Napoleon, Hitler etc.? History and people and leaders are way to nuanced to brush that broadly.

[Speaker to Animals]

Alexander, Caesar, and Hitler were all comparable people. There exists no comparison between them and the average king. Don't waste your time with the ideology. Just look at the man. The ideology and that other stuff you try to make meaningless distinctions out of have no bearing.

This is why comparing people to them can be so ludicrous. If people want to claim so-and-so is a fascist, them compare so-and-so to somebody like Pinochet or Franco.

Guys like Alexander, Caesar, and Hitler are a strange kind of phenomenon. We could sit here and write a treatise on why such men can emerge from a group of people, but they constitute their own unique class of individual which really is quite independent of the underlying ideology they may have represented.

[Speaker to Animals]

If you really want to understand it, I think Hitler laid it out pretty well. Few people want to listen to it, though, so most people just repeat this platitudinous sloganeering and fixation on ideology. If you read what he was saying about his own rise to power, he spoke of himself as the embodiment of the German people (the one's he represented and not the ones he was out to eliminate anyway). It's as if a group of people bound by kin, language, and culture can collectively will to existence a man who embodies the collective in an individual. Or maybe it's more accurate to state that a man can rise to power because he somehow inherently knows how to become that embodiment. Difficult to argue either way. But when Hitler shouted "Hitler is Germany; Germany is Hitler", he wasn't really wrong.

Napoleon was a similar character.

Julius Caesar was a similar character.

Alexander was a similar character.

Imagine a nation of people somehow coalesce into a single person and they are looking for a fight. That's what happens.

[GloryofGreece]

If you really want to understand it, I think Hitler laid it out pretty well. Few people want to listen to it, though, so most people just repeat this platitudinous sloganeering and fixation on ideology. If you read what he was saying about his own rise to power, he spoke of himself as the embodiment of the German people (the one's he represented and not the ones he was out to eliminate anyway). It's as if a group of people bound by kin, language, and culture can collectively will to existence a man who embodies the collective in an individual. Or maybe it's more accurate to state that a man can rise to power because he somehow inherently knows how to become that embodiment. Difficult to argue either way. But when Hitler shouted "Hitler is Germany; Germany is Hitler", he wasn't really wrong.

Napoleon was a similar character.

Julius Caesar was a similar character.

Alexander was a similar character.

Imagine a nation of people somehow coalesce into a single person and they are looking for a fight. That's what happens.

I hear what you're saying but wasn't some of the above's circumstances very different and even the events or violence around them was carried out much differently for varied reasons. I mean Caesar killed tons of Romans and was involved in civil war forever. Alexander not so much. Napoleon as the head of state wasn't directly fighting other Frenchmen etc. Hitler was invading other nations/areas that he claimed were threats, while Alexander was going after trying to become Achilles.

[Mercury]

The circumstances and events were, of course, different, yet the men had similar characteristics, and represented similar things for their respective peoples.