Napoleon a Warmonger?

The popular accusation against Napoleon was that he was a warmonger, as the new film lists the number of dead during his campaigns. Not so says Adam Zamoyski.

In January 2021 on Radio 4 I heard ‘On this day in 1799 William Pitt introduced Income Tax for the first time, in order to fund the war against Napoleon.’

Fact: on 9 January 1799 this country was at war with the French Republic, and ‘Napoleon’ was General Bonaparte, in Cairo, superintending the collection of taxes in the newly acquired French protectorate of Egypt.

The bicentenary of Napoleon’s death was 5th May 2021, and it is surely time to ditch some of the assumptions inherited from two centuries of prejudice and nationalist narrative.

One I find particularly irritating is the widely held conviction that Napoleon was an incorrigible warmonger who plunged an otherwise peaceful world into conflicts which resulted in untold suffering and the death of hundreds of thousands. One does not have to be an admirer of the man to see the absurdity of this.

Equally absurd is the widespread use of the phrase ‘Napoleonic Wars’ to cover all or most of the hostilities in Europe and its colonies between 1792 and 1815. He did not start them and as soon as he was in a position to do so he did his utmost to put an end to them – on his terms, yes, but has any victorious power ever sought to do otherwise?