Napoleon: A Life

by Andrew Roberts

As an army officer, Napoleon believed in centralized control within a recognized hierarchical chain of command and the importance of maintaining high morale. Order in matters of administration and education was vital. He had a deep, instinctive distaste for anything which looked like a mutinous canaille (mob). None of these feelings was to change much during the French Revolution, or, indeed, for the rest of his life.

For Napoleon to convince Europe of the essential superiority of the French model of government, he would need active collaboration and not mere submission. He could win the war, but his administrators would have to move in swiftly afterwards to win the peace. As zealous leaders of what they truly considered to be a new form of civilization – although the actual word ‘civilization’ itself had only entered the French lexicon in the 1760s and was very little used in the Napoleonic era – the French revolutionary elites genuinely believed they were advancing the welfare of Europe under French leadership.

Napoleon taught ordinary people that they could make history, and convinced his followers they were taking part in an adventure, a pageant, an experiment, an epic whose splendour would draw the attention of posterity for centuries to come.

Placing oneself in the limelight while seeming modestly to edge away from it is one of the most skilful of all political moves, and Napoleon had mastered it perfectly.

Just because the freedom of the legislature was circumscribed did not mean that the Napoleonic regime didn’t listen.

The regime heard people’s complaints well enough; it just didn’t provide them with any means of amplifying criticism and there was little possibility of concerted political opposition.