Boney of contention

If we let a figure like Napoleon – as controversial now as he was in his day – become a caricature hero we may as well forget about history offering valuable lessons.

Napoleon was many things: brilliant general, enlightened despot, dictator, megalomaniac, disseminator of humanitarian European values, genius, flawed man. It is easy to romanticise him but we should never do it in such a way that we forget the reality of the man and become incapable of distinguishing his successes from his failure. Simple he most certainly was not.