Somehow, I’d never reblogged this classic TPP post until this summer, when I did a retrospective look back at TPP’s Greatest Hits; “Napoleonic Christmas” came in as “Track III” on that list.  This post got picked up by a conservative news aggregator back in 2019, which caused its views to skyrocket.

I have always possessed a certain fascination with France and the French, and Napoleon is easily the most fascinating Frenchman of all.  That’s somewhat ironic considering he was a Corsican, from an island that belonged to an Italian city-state until said city-state needed to settle some debts with France and handed over the island in lieu of payment.  The Bonaparte family was from a line of minor Italian nobility, and were fiercely in favor of Corsican independence.

Funny how that works:  an Italian from a nationalistic Corsican family became the greatest political and military figure in modern French history.  We can never know what might become of a life.

As I’ve learned more about Napoleon, I disagree more with Andrew Roberts’s assessment of Napoleon in the linked video.  While Napoleon may have been responding to declarations of war by going on the offensive, he also had clear designs to stretch his influence all the way to India.  Indeed, he sought to emulate his hero, Alexander the Great.  The French also mercilessly plundered the cultural and artistic heritage of Italy in the process.

Regardless, Napoleon is a fascinating and complicated figure, and if he doesn’t earn our admiration, he certainly earned our grudging respect.

With that, here is 23 December 2019’s “Napoleonic Christmas“:

Read More »