2023-08-30 20:02:38
The same thing happens with the opinion about Napoleon Bonaparte as with the nose: each one has his own. Adolf Hitler, who turned his after-dinner gatherings into a sort of ‘Save me’ from the thirties, defined him in front of his guests as “a leader worthy of being revered” who promoted the Gallic people to the Olympus of history. Meanwhile, Thomas Jefferson, a contemporary of the Corsican, saw him as a “miserable man who caused more pain and suffering in the world than any other being who had previously lived”; a guy who “destroyed the liberties of his homeland” by “his maniacal ambition and his tyrannical spirit” and who “caused the deaths of between five and ten million humans.”
These are just two examples of the thousands of bickering that have danced around the Little Corso; or rather Gran Corso, because he wasn’t a Lilliputian hair either politically or in carving. And it doesn’t look like the list is going to shrink over the decades. The last to join it has been Ridley Scott, architect of what he claims to be the definitive ‘biopic’ of Napoleon. In a recent interview, the director fueled the fire of a longstanding controversy among historians with a single sentence: «I compare him to Hitler and Stalin. He did a lot of bad things, but, at the same time, he stood out for his courage ».
absurd comparison
Was the privateering a despot comparable to the two great dictators of the 20th century? The answer is offered by the doctor of History Alexander Mikaberidze from the United States. The co-founder of the Georgia Napoleonic Society and author of works such as ‘The Battle of Borodino’ y ‘The Napoleonic Wars’ (both from the publisher wake up iron) responds to ABC after sunset; the typical obligations of time differences: «We can, and historians do, debate whether or not he was a tyrant, but the truth is that he was not a Hitler-Stalin-style mass murderer nor did he create a totalitarian system that repressed brutally millions of people.
Mikaberidze does not hold back. If he has to smack his colleagues, he does it without qualms. And the same thing he does with the journalists who, unwary, ask him about the analogies between the members of this trio: «Looking for similarities between them is an exercise in intellectual laziness; Has no sense. These individuals were not similar in social status, education, political and military career, or personal experiences. Would you compare Mozart with Freddy Mercury? He is not without reason; France of the 18th century, reforming and imbued with the spirit of the Enlightenment, has little to do with that Germany stung by international mistreatment in the Great War or that USSR heir to a thousand revolutionary governments.
That doubt offends seems to be a fact in the case of Mikaberidze. It almost hurts him to try to compare dictators to Napoleon who “founded secret police that persecuted political dissidents, systematically murdered minorities and advocated the establishment of racial supremacy linked to state ideology.” That, without counting the purges promoted from the pinnacle of power –Hitler started his in 1934 with the Night of the Long Knives, while Stalin did the same in 1936– or with the creation of concentration camps. “Bonaparte designed a pre-modern police state with a tight surveillance system, but he was not as intrusive as the Nazis or the Soviets,” he insists.
light and dark
All in all, the expert flees from the classic black and white. He is clear that we cannot equate Napoleon with Hitler and Stalin, but also that privateering was a precursor to the dictatorships of the 20th century. At least, in the way he conceived of his State: “He gave France a form of enlightened despotism masked by a facade of democratic ideals.” Society, innocent, believed that it could influence the government, when everything was governed by it; something similar to what happened later with the parties established by the German and Soviet leaders. “In addition, he did not share many of the ideals of the French Revolution and some of his reforms were a step backwards with respect to revolutionary achievements,” he says.
Alexander Mikaberidze
ABC
The bloodiest example was given in 1802, when Napoleon crushed the rebellion of the natives of Haiti and restored slavery to the island. «It was a stain on his legacy, but he knew it well. In his last days, in Santa Elena, he admitted that he had made a mistake by not declaring the region free, but he had to do it due to pressure from the colonial businessmen”, he adds. In return, Mikaberidze enumerates a very long list of reforms and innovative institutions created by the privateering: “The Bank of France, the vaccination campaigns, the Labor Courts, the Imperial University…”. He stops at the twenty-seventh, but remembers that there are many more: “Can we say the same about Hitler and Stalin? What did they do that still survives?”
The conclusion, Mikaberidze sentence, is that Napoleon established a kind of enlightened despotism; that cocktail that combined traditional absolutism with the new regenerative ideas that were shaking Europe. «His had nothing to do with totalitarianism. Yes, it brought with it a bureaucratic government controlled by a central power, more efficient methods of tax collection and military recruitment, and greater police control, but also a new legal system that reflected the revolutionary ideals of secularism, equality before the law, religious tolerance and private property,” he concludes. The problem is that, as usually happens, the cinema has spread that its only thing was wars. But we trust that Scott will not replicate this mistake.
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