Jaffa Material

I totaly agree, and you forget India

We're not allowed to mention that, because... Napoleon....

If you want to mention it, I’m sure we would find it very interesting, but it would be another thread/topic, as this one was about Jaffa (and therefore about Napoleon)

What we shouldn’t do is fall into the trap of moral equivalence. “Everybody did it” is neither a defence or an explanation. Particularly if you are holding up the perpetrator as a paragon, lawgiver, genius and basically good person everywhere else.

Nor should you interpret examining this instance of poor behaviour on Napoleon’s part an attack and simultaneously an exoneration of everyone else on the planet. Of course it isn’t. Pointing out that one historical figure was complex with weaknesses and dark sides does not turn others into saints. But it doesn’t take away from the poor behaviour either.

It goes to the heart of this thread. For some there is no length they will not go to. No depth they will not sink to. No excuse they will not furnish. No attacks they will not make. Anything, but anything to preserve the blinding glory of their hero. I’m not just talking about Napoleon here, there is plenty of hero worship to go around on all sides on a range of military figures, in this period and beyond.

I’d just like to point out that the persons these people are defending are not real. They are airbrushed caricatures of the real person. If we want to discover them we need to stop with these tired old tit for tat arguments.

The OP fell into this “playbook” and it always ends up in the same place. Someone eventually interpreting an “assault” on their hero as a personal insult and then the decent into ad hominem attacks. “Haters” “Anglo-phones””jingoists””Fanboys” “fawners”etc etc.

It’s not only tiresome and boring, I think it drives people away from an interest in our hobby. Shouldn’t we all have that desire to be open tolerant and welcoming?

“It’s only wrong when Napoleon does it” is a prime example of what I’m taking about. It’s snide, sarcastic, self indulgent and above all wrong. “It’s wrong when everybody does it, and that includes Napoleon because we hold him to the same standards as everyone else” is the real explanation.

I’ve avoided the movie. Perhaps I loved the Rod Steiger portrayal too much!

I haven’t heard it called “black legend”, but I wouldn’t expect every biography I read to be a full on critique. Would be nice though if they could bear turning down the incandescent saintly halo a bit so we get an outside chance of seeing a human being. For example, with a straight face Cronin assures us that the Egyptian expedition was to liberate the Egyptians from the Mamelukes and their Turkish overlords by making them a French colony. An interesting take on conquest and colonisation. Apparently it’s only good when Napoleon does it.

Of various types I must have North of a couple of dozen biographies of Napoleon. I think those that take the “greatest man of the age” tack are doing Napoleon the man a bit of a disservice. There was a a much more complex, flawed and therefore remarkable person underneath.

So I didn’t find Cronin’s biography to be an intimate one, despite the tag line. At the end of it I found I knew plenty of things about him, but didn’t know Napoleon at all. It’s like he failed to turn up.

I suppose if you base your biography on a persons own words and those of their acolytes only it’s going to come across like that.

>"For example, with a straight face Cronin assures us that the Egyptian expedition was to liberate the Egyptians from the Mamelukes and their Turkish overlords by making them a French colony. An interesting take on conquest and colonisation. Apparently it’s only good when Napoleon does it."<

In other words, the same excuse Britain used in India.

Actually Talleyrand was supposed to go and work all this out with the Ottomans, but he never went.

Thing is Tom you are going to be hard pushed to find a British historian willing to peddle that notion today. In fact if we Brits are taught anything about our Imperial past, it is that we are to be ashamed of it.