“” I am convinced, my ancestor would never have entered the legend without his death in Sant’Elena. Its existence was like a meteorite. The island on the Atlantic Ocean was his grave, but at the same time it rocked its myth and epic “. This is what Jean Christophe, prince Napoléon, said in an interview with the French weekly ‘Point de vue’. descendant from Jérome brother of the French emperor, remembering the illustrious ancestor, in the celebrations of the 200th anniversary of his death.
And on the recent controversies related to the Napoleonic experience, ‘pour ou contre’ la cancel culture explained: “after all, remembering Napoleon means celebrating the history of France, a moment of national pride, especially today in this very difficult period. Undoubtedly the emperor has made mistakes, no one wants to deny or justify them – he continued – but perhaps we should try to understand the historical moment, the era in which the emperor lived, so different from ours. Difficult, if not impossible – added Jean – Christophe Napoléon – to judge a person who lived two centuries ago in the light of the principles and ideals of the 21st ”
Regarding the reintroduction of slavery and the wars that caused millions of deaths, Jean-Christophe Napoléon added: “the emperor himself acknowledged his mistakes in St. Helena and in 1805 he enabled the slave trade, then with regard to conflicts which inflamed the old continent – recalled the descendant of the emperor – let’s not forget that until 1810 it was a question of wars in defense of the borders and of France against foreign coalitions worried about the propagation of the ideas of the French Revolution “.
During the long interview he recalled again how his illustrious ancestor “laid the foundations for the creation of democracy in the country, of a contemporary France by creating the prefectures, the Chamber of Commerce, the Bank of France, working on the civil and penal code. , establishing schools and high schools … erecting the Arc de triomphe, the Vendome column and even, for the first time, inserting the house number in the streets “.