In Impromptus today, I begin with Trump and his latest, or some of his latest. I continue with Giuliani, China, golf, and other matters. I end with Napoleon. There is a movie out, as you may know. And the usual Napoleonic wars are taking place — I mean, arguments about Napoleon.
I would like to quote from my column and then expand.
Me, I’m betwixt and between. I have mentioned this before. Two of my most trusted historians and biographers are Paul Johnson and Andrew Roberts. They have both biographed Napoleon. Johnson is against, very much against — portraying Napoleon as the forerunner to, and model for, the egomaniacal dictators who blighted and bloodied the 20th century. Roberts gives the case for the defense. For admiration.
And when your gurus disagree, what do you do? Think for yourself? Perish the thought.
Couple of nights ago, I was re-reading Johnson on Napoleon. I wanted some relief from present political dramas. (Not sure I got any.) He is interesting, he is stirring, on pro-Napoleon propaganda. (Johnson is interesting and stirring on pretty much everything.) He believes that Napoleon is the beneficiary of a gargantuan, unrelenting propaganda machine.
Anyway, let me quote from Johnson’s concluding paragraph (a paragraph that covers about a page and a half):
No dictator of the tragic twentieth century — from Lenin, Stalin, and Mao Zedong to pygmy tyrants like Kim Il Sung, Castro, Perón, Mengistu, Saddam Hussein, Ceausescu, and Gadhafi — was without distinctive echoes of the Napoleonic prototype. It is curious indeed that Bonaparte, in his lifetime, quite failed to destroy legitimist Europe. In the end, he provoked the Congress of Vienna, which refounded legitimism so firmly that it lasted another century until, in the First World War, it destroyed itself. Instead, the evil great evils of Bonapartism — the deification of force and war, the all-powerful centralized state, the use of cultural propaganda to apotheosize the autocrat, the marshaling of entire peoples in the pursuit of personal and ideological power — came to hateful maturity only in the twentieth century, which will go down in history as the Age of Infamy. It is well to remember the truth about the man whose example gave rise to it all, to strip away the myth and reveal the reality.
I first read this book when it was published, about 20 years ago. I think I visited Paris not long after. I wrote Johnson to say that I had stopped in Les Invalides, to stare at Napoleon’s tomb — not as Hitler had, in wonder and awe, but to make sure the lil’ corporal was still dead.
But let me say again: Andrew Roberts is to be heard, on Napoleon and every other subject he writes about. His biography is here. Johnson’s, a slim volume, a brief life, is here. For my appreciation of Johnson, who passed away about a year ago, go here. And once more, my humble column today is here.
Later.
P.S. The heading over this post is, of course, an homage to this brilliant book.