The Sad End of Napoleon Bonaparte

It's arguable that Napoleon Bonaparte was the most able person who ever lived.  

All know he was a military genius.  But I refer to his ability generally; of what it was about him that distinguished him from others in terms of talents, not merely what made him a great general.

By all accounts, his memory was vast.  He could recognize people he had met years previously and recall the circumstances of their meeting in detail. I'm not sure whether he had what's called  "photographic memory" but what he read in reports and correspondence he didn't forget, sometimes much to the chagrin of those that prepared or were mentioned in the reports.

He could focus on matters which were presented to him for decision intensely, and without being distracted by anything else.  He compared his mind to a cupboard:  "Different subjects and different affairs are arranged in my head as in a cupboard.  When I wish to interrupt one train of thought, I shut that drawer and open another.  Do I wish to sleep?  I simply shut all the drawers and there I am--asleep." This intensity of directed thought to a problem must have been of great advantage to him.

He could also, however, manage while doing one thing, regardless of its significance and complexity, to address other things, sometimes minutia.  It seems that micromanagement for him was not a liability, but something easily achieved, and that he excelled at it.  He had enormous energy, and worked extremely hard.  He would dictate on different matters to several writers at the same time.  Those who worked with him found themselves exhausted when he was still eager to continue.  What he could accomplish and the speed in which he accomplished it amazed people.  He apparently slept for no more than 4 hours a day.  While dressing after sleeping he would sometimes tear his own clothing in his impatience to go about his day.

It was apparently this eruption of nervous energy which led him to indulge in long, hot baths--the only thing known to relax him.

He could also charm just about anyone.  He inspired real devotion in his soldiers and in others.  

He had all the qualities which could, and did in most cases, make him a superb chief executive of a nation and military commander.  He was remarkable.  B.H. Liddell-Hart, in his book Strategy, wrote that he thought generals like Napoleon and Frederick the Great had the advantage over other great captains because they were also chiefs of state.  What he overlooked, I think, is that at least in the case of Napoleon he was always highly involved in affairs of state, not just on the battles, even when on the battlefield or in his campaigns.  Running a state and leading an army at the same time would, to me, be more challenging than leading an army.

He died when 51 years old, exiled to the island of St. Helena in the middle of the Atlantic ocean, months travel from anywhere else on the Earth.  He lived there for 6 years, closely watched and guarded in isolation.  

It would have been a dreary exile for someone who had so much energy, let alone someone who had ruled Europe for years.  It seems that for a time he was as active as he could be on St. Helena, riding and walking about the island, preparing his memoirs.  He visited and had visitors.  Then, especially after Sir Hudson Lowe arrived at the island to take on the duties of governor, he gradually stopped doing most anything at all.  Sometimes the old energy would return, and he would take on the role of master gardener or landscape artist, laying the foundation for the lovely gardens which still grace the area around Longwood House.  But for the most part, his life became grim and boring, always seeing and interacting with the same small set of people, cooped up in a damp house on a damp, windy plain.  He spent more and more time in his small bedroom on one of the two camp beds that he brought with him to the island.

The English seemed to have chosen for him a place and style of exile which was the most painful available for someone of his characteristics.  They clearly had enough of him, as had all of Europe, and his escape from prior exile on the island of Elba no doubt made them wary of putting him anywhere close to that continent.  But the place, together with the petty and seemingly meaningless restrictions placed on him when escape was nearly inconceivable strikes one as cruel, or perhaps mere reckless indifference combined with spite.

A cruel end for such a man.  He nonetheless managed in combination with those exiled with him to create a glorious legend which survives to this day; the new Prometheus.  He was right to say that his jailors would be known to history only because of their treatment of him.  Was that his greatest achievement?

I can't help but wonder if it would have been possible for him to be more the First Consul, recreating the French nation from the ruins of the Revolution, and less the Emperor.  Then he may have remained a wondrously capable creator rather than a destroyer. But would he have been able to refrain from war?  Was war pushed upon him in some cases at least, and could he have devoted himself to civil pursuits only?  What would he have achieved then?  Was the world deprived of his extraordinary ability by circumstances or did he himself choose to devote them to his own glory?  He was certainly careful of his own glory.  He is compared by some to a condottiere, and to an extent was similar to the leaders of the Medicis, Sforzas and Borgias in their promotion of their families (which he came to regret) but I think he was more "entirely out of Plutarch" as was said of him by Paoli.

It's regrettable that he didn't address these questions while stuck on his rock in the middle of the ocean.  

The Other Man of Steel

"Stalin" was a name chosen in the days before the so-called October Revolution; so-called as it actually took place in November according to the modern calendar subsequently adopted.  It means "steel", as all or most now know.  I suppose that makes him the first Man of Steel.  The other one, a/k/a "Superman", was created in 1933 according to the invaluable Wikipedia--by high school students in Cleveland.

Stalin was, once, something like a high school student himself.  He was once other things as well, before he became Stalin.   He wrote romantic poetry in his native Georgian about his native Georgia, which it seems was considered rather good (the poetry, I mean).  A romantic boy he may have been. He was not a romantic man, however.  He was once a Georgian patriot, and came to be against Georgian nationalism, indeed nationalism of all kinds which endangered the unity of the Soviet Union. In fact, he came to extol Russians over the members of other nationalities subsumed by the Soviet Union.  He was a seminarian who came to believe in God, if he did believe in God, as something no seminarian would recognize as God.

Whatever he was, he came to be a monster, though not a mere monster as sometimes maintained.  He was often underestimated by Lenin, by Trotsky and others in the party and out of it, it seems to their regret.  He survived them all.  Sometimes he survived them by being responsible for their deaths, sometimes their imprisonment in the Gulag, sometimes he simply rendered them harmless or made them puppets of his will.  He never forgot a sleight and rejoiced in destroying those who thought him a lesser man or lesser intellect. 

Lenin was a special case.  Stalin wouldn't hesitate to disagree with him even while he was alive.  Lenin even criticized Stalin and warned that he was inclined to accumulate power, but he criticized Stalin's great rival and enemy, Trotsky as well.  It seems Stalin admired and respected Lenin in some ways, but in any case knew that he had become a totem of Marxism, the Revolution and  Bolshevism and in that respect could not be challenged.  Lenin also conveniently died in the 1920s, while Stalin was on the rise but not yet claiming the summit of power.

All  evidence indicates that Stalin was a highly intelligent man, and I think we underestimate him still by thinking him to be "only" evil.  We tend to attribute evil to the Devil, or upbringing and environment, or psychological deficiencies.  But people do evil things not just because they're bad, or immoral, due to some inherent defect or by being influenced by a malevolent supernatural power. 

Stalin was even cultured, in his own peculiar way and patronized certain writers, again in his own peculiar way, rebuking them when he thought appropriate.  He was not known as a great political thinker, but he read extensively.  He worked very hard.  He was a very able negotiator, as became known to the Western powers during and after the Second World War.

It's an amusing exercise to compare great tyrants and despots.  Napoleon had his own romantic youth, and was an ardent Corsican patriot, but turned away from such childish things.  Corsica became as unimportant to him as Georgia became to Stalin.  Napoleon had no artistic pretensions, so far as I know, though like Stalin he had his favorite artists.  He was an enormously hard worker and read constantly.  He had a vast memory and formidable intellect.  Goethe famously said Napoleon was as intelligent as a man could be without wisdom, and as great as a man can be without virtue. 

Hitler was a failed artist, but it seems he differed from Stalin and Napoleon in various respects.  He wasn't a hard worker, and may be called lazy in comparison.  His intellect doesn't seem to have been impressive.  And yet he's credited by such as B.H. Liddell-Hart with insight into military tactics and as being behind the Blitzkrieg and an astute proponent of the "indirect approach" to strategy, for a time, at least.  Before his descent into madness or drug-induced irrationality and mania.

All three men were alike in their ruthlessness, though, in pursuit of their goals.  That much seems clear.  The ruthlessness of Stalin and Hitler is particularly striking and horrifying because in pursuing their goals they sanctioned the deliberate and coldly planned death of millions.  Napoleon's wars caused a great deal of death and suffering as well, but Stalin and Hitler inflicted death not merely in war, but even more in the pursuit of ideological ends.

There is a difference, I think, between war and the planned annihilation of millions apart from war to achieve ideological or other ends.  Stalin was responsible for the deaths of millions through starvation and by other means in the effort to modernize industry and collectivize agricultural production in the Soviet Union.  He was responsible for the deaths, incarceration, persecution of peasants, kulaks, Cossacks, professionals and intelligentsia, all of which he deemed necessary under Marxist-Leninist theory.  It seems evident that he sincerely believed what he did was required in order to make the Soviet Union a great power and in the pursuit of the goals of the October Revolution.  While he was a vengeful man, it's not the case that he killed only because of personal hate or animosity or to achieve absolute power.

The fanatical pursuit of ideological goals regardless of consequences to others is far more destructive than hate or ambition, particularly where fanaticism is combined with ability.  Stalin was a fanatic and a talented one.  There's no doubt that he hated many within the party and wanted absolute power over it and the Soviet Union itself but he is truly monstrous because he was a true believer, and as such he thought that those who didn't believe as he did should be destroyed.