On Monday, September 16, 2019 at 5:32:45 PM UTC-4, Keith Bleddyn wrote:
>
> I’ve long been puzzled by Churchill’s admiration for Napoleon, a man he
> described as “a great emperor and warrior..."
I forwarded your question to Andrew Roberts, author of *Napoleon the Great,*
who
asks me to post this excerpt from his speech at the British Embassy in
Paris on being awarded the Grand Prix of the Fondation Napoleon:
"As an English Tory, I was expecting not to like Napoleon when I took up my
pen, the man whom many Britons of the generation older than me still called
‘Bonaparte’, or even occasionally ‘Boney’. Yet it was one of the most
enjoyable parts of researching this book to discover that of course the
Emperor had a hugely engaging personality and attractive character, and
particularly that he had a deliciously dry, ironic wit. This made the job
of researching his life a great pleasure, as I was always looking to where
the next Napoleonic joke would come from. My favourite of them all was when
the Grand Almoner of France, the Archbishop de Rohan, wrote an extremely
oleaginous letter to Napoleon at the time of the Coronation, comparing him
to Jesus and saying that he wished he had the opportunity to die for the
Emperor. ‘Please pay the Archbishop Fr.12,000,’ Napoleon noted in the
margin of the letter, ‘*out of the theatrical fund.'*
*"*The reason that I entitled my book *Napoleon the Great* was because far
too many British historians persist in seeing only the dictator in his, and
not the positive aspects of the man I like to think of as the Enlightenment
on horseback. The builder, the educator, the encourager of science and
industry, the self-made man, the thinker, the writer, the giant and the
genius. Instead my countrymen only see the soldier, the conqueror, the
invader. They blame all the Napoleonic Wars on him – ignoring his pleas for
peace and despite the fact that many more wars were declared on France by
the seven coalitions than he declared against others.
"In the words of George Home, a midshipman aboard HMS *Bellerophon*,
Napoleon ‘showed us what one little human creature like ourselves could
accomplish in a span so short.’"
>
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
"ChurchillChat" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email
to [email protected].
To view this discussion on the web visit
https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/churchillchat/8331125c-3695-4f80-93c7-ee0b5a1bdbd8%40googlegroups.com.
