This name immediately brings to mind his numerous battles and wars. Napoleon Bonaparte is a commander whom Suvorov put on a par with Caesar and Hannibal. Immediately after the campaign of 1796-97, when there was no Ulm and Austerlitz, Jena and Wagram. August 15 marks the 250th anniversary of the birth of Napoleon.
Not a single person who is interested in military history, as well as history in general, can pass such a date. The island of Corsica, which even in our era of world communications remains something like a terra incognita, has endowed the history of the New Time with perhaps the most extraordinary hero. Perhaps many have succeeded in surpassing him as a politician and statesman, some as a strategist, but the greatest of the generals in the history of Napoleon is recognized by all without reservations.
Yes, the first thing that comes to mind when talking about Napoleon is numerous victories and rather rare defeats. The defeats and failures of General Bonaparte, the first consul and emperor Napoleon I, are devoted to the ongoing series of publications on the Military Review website. For our readers, Napoleon in the role of a unique master of military affairs must be no less interesting than as the emperor of the French and reformer of Europe.
Someone said about him that Napoleon was even greater in his defeats than in his brilliant victories. This is hardly worth arguing with, although one cannot but take into account that the end result of all these victories was an unconditional defeat. Life, more like an ancient legend, ended with solitary confinement on a distant island in the middle of the ocean. The "little fugitive", who more than once managed to leave in time, where a complete collapse awaited him, was never able to make his last escape from Saint Helena.
But the fact that he knew how to fight like no one else, at least in his time, is an indisputable fact. The Duke of Wellington, when Napoleon, having taken Charleroi with his army, literally cut off the British from the Prussians, dropped in a conversation with Blucher: "This man does honor to the war."
Little fugitive
Very soon after these words of the English aristocrat, who became the last of the victors of Napoleon, he had to leave the defeated army in an attempt to save the throne and France, which could again be "surrendered to the Bourbons." In the end, it all ended on the English ship and the island of St. Helena. The very last escape from which, as already mentioned, never happened.
Meanwhile, this urge to flee was one of certain features, one might say, "chips" of Napoleon. Everyone knows how he left Egypt, leaving an army dwindling from disease and hunger to General Kleber, one of his potential rivals. It is also known how Napoleon left Russia immediately after crossing the Berezina, having received news of the conspiracy of General Male. From Spain, seemingly also defeated, Napoleon broke to prevent the Austrian invasion of Bavaria.
As an escape, however, more tactical, Napoleon's maneuver towards Troyes in the 1814 campaign can also be regarded. He was ready to leave Paris to himself, moving the capital to Orleans. But under the threat of an allied offensive, Napoleon, having thrown his army on Berthier, urgently drove to Paris with a headquarters and a small escort. At Fontainebleau, he arrived in a postal card with only five officers, reached Esson, where he met a courier with the news of the surrender of the capital.
Finally, few people know that even before Toulon, Vandemierre and the Italian campaign, Napoleon fled to Corsica several times, and not only for family affairs and recreation, but also for the sake of politics. Immediately taking the side of the Revolution, Bonaparte fell out with all the local patriots. In addition, his brother Lucien added fuel to the fire, who managed not only to become a member of the Convention, but also to accuse the Corsican leader Paoli of counter-revolutionary activities.
In the end, it all ended with the complete "divorce" of Napoleon from Paoli, the evacuation of the Bonaparte family to the continent, and a fate more abruptly than any French novel. In fact, as a young officer, Napoleon Buonaparte did not in any way overwork himself with service - in six years he managed to spend thirty-two months on various kinds of vacations, which, incidentally, speaks more about the morals and level of discipline in the royal army of Louis XVI. Napoleon will visit Corsica only once again - returning from the Egyptian expedition in 1799, he will be here for a week to wait out the storm.
Russian trace
Like many other conquerors, he had to stumble over Russia. However, he stumbled, it seems, after all, in Spain, but in Russia, rather, he was stuck up to his throat. Under the Berezina, he got out of our endless snow-covered expanses just like out of a swamp. And let the ardent Bonapartists count the crossing among his victories, as, incidentally, Borodino, Maloyaroslavets, and Krasny …
The Russians are still trying to figure out a kind of "Napoleon's code", which, like the devil, drove him to a distant northern country. The Russian campaign is, in someone's opinion, just a series of continuous triumphs, with an apotheosis in the form of the capture of the first capital - Moscow. But how then can one explain why, as a result of a series of victories, the great commander managed to squander the most powerful in history, the 600-thousandth Great Army?
In Russia, fortunately, it never occurred to anyone to erect a monument to Napoleon. Although in comparison with Mannerheim and even with Kolchak, he could well have won. To the fallen French soldiers and officers - this is, please, as much as you like. But still, in comparison with other conquerors of Russia, Napoleon definitely wins.
Isn't that why we in Russia, neither in official history, nor in journalism, even in yellow, did not succeed in trying to somehow impose parallels between Napoleon and Hitler on the public? A different scale, different plans. Napoleon, although he was called in propaganda not only a "usurper", but also a "cannibal", and the ideas that the "Fuhrer" brought to the Russian land would not have come to mind.
Much more appropriate could be parallels with Stalin, who, after all, also "put an end" in the Great Revolution, but somehow it did not work out. Although, judging by the way France became under Napoleon and Russia under Stalin, the desire to draw parallels becomes simply obsessive.
However, it is known that Academician Tarle was not just given carte blanche so that, singing the heroes of 1812, not to mold Napoleon into the image of a "world villain". As a result, the famous historian's Napoleon turned out to be somewhat prettier than Kutuzov and even more so, Emperor Alexander I.
For a long time it was not very customary for us to directly oppose Alexander the Blessed to the Emperor of the French. But today his leading role in the victory over Napoleon is no longer hushed up. No, the main role, of course, was played by the Russian army, but in those great years, without the rare persistence of the sovereign, it would still hardly have reached Paris.
At the same time, it was in Russia that something like a kind of "cult of Napoleon" took shape, although at times it is simply amazing. Here is Bonapartism, which was once literally ill with the “Reds”, from some Colonel Muravyov to Trotsky and Tukhachevsky, and “Whites,” from Kornilov to Wrangel. There is also an irresistible craving for the Empire style - the imperial, which was easily adopted by the entire Stalinist culture.
Among other things, there is respect for the most, perhaps, worthy of all conquerors or just opponents who tried to conquer us. And, perhaps, a latent understanding that with such a French ally Russia, already a hundred years before the World War and the Entente, could “fit into Europe” in a completely different way.
Genius games
Few doubt that Napoleon was a genius. Like any other genius - not like everyone else. At the same time, it is in the image of Napoleon that almost all the positive and negative qualities that ordinary people have are concentrated. And the fact that he spent the most essential part of his life in battles and campaigns only revealed all these qualities more fully.
For some reason, it is generally accepted that he was a parvenu - an upstart, although the Corsican family of Buonaparte, perhaps, was no less ancient than the Bourbons, and certainly older than the family of the Romanov boyars. Although this was not at all annoying to Alexander Pavlovich Romanov, who never forgave Napoleon for too frank a hint of participation in parricide.
Another thing is that fate more than once provided Napoleon from the Bonaparte family with unique opportunities, which he truly brilliantly used. Until rock turned away from him. He himself understood this perfectly, saying once: “No matter how great my material power was, my spiritual power was even greater. It came down to magic."
At the same time, at first, fate was by no means always favorable to this chosen one. He repeatedly suffered setbacks long before the first military defeats, in his studies, at work, in the political struggle in his native Corsica, although he quickly cooled to insular patriotism.
But only his military failures, as well as the biographies of Napoleon's victors, which the Military Review tries to consider in detail in his publications, can serve as especially fertile material for researchers and readers. Among those who are interested in at least getting closer to solving the notorious "Napoleon's code".
