The Little Corsican Ogre, Part 1

[David Flin]

Following discussions on the forum, @Redolegna has answered some questions about the myths of Napoleon Bonaparte.

The article can be found here.

 

[Alex Richards]

Napoleon's cultural identity feels very much like a microcosm of the wider situation in Europe at the time, and does offer some intriguing options- possibly my favourite might be 'Napoleon as military saviour of the Corsican Republic'- though it's an interesting question as to whether he'd have ever felt satisfied with just Corsica.

 

[David Flin]

though it's an interesting question as to whether he'd have ever felt satisfied with just Corsica.

My guess is that, like Alexander, one could adapt the title of a James Bond film: "The World is Not Enough."

 

[varyar]

Napoleon's cultural identity feels very much like a microcosm of the wider situation in Europe at the time, and does offer some intriguing options- possibly my favourite might be 'Napoleon as military saviour of the Corsican Republic'- though it's an interesting question as to whether he'd have ever felt satisfied with just Corsica.

I don't know how likely it is (probably extremely unlikely), but I've sometimes wondered what would happen if Napoleon decided to become the savior of Genoa. I admit to a fondness for the improbable situation of the Italian maritime states surviving somehow.

 

[Yellow Turban]

Don't think Napoleon was born with an insatiable desire to conquer Europe that couldn't be shackled and his rise can't really be separated from the material conditions of the First French Republic so if he stays in Corsica he's probably just an interesting historical footnote.

 

[RyanF]

The Gallipoli metaphor for Napoleon's early campaigns does lead to the question of which Kiwi will take over the British Empire in 1923.

 

[Thande]

My guess is that, like Alexander, one could adapt the title of a James Bond film: "The World is Not Enough."

Which is appropriate, seeing as the Bond use is taken from the motto's use by the real-life Bond family, who in turn purloined it from a Spanish building in Cuba where it had originally been chosen by King Philip II, someone who also had world-conquering ambitions.




Given here in Latin as Non Sufficit Orbis, given with word order switched in Bond's coat of arms as seen in "On Her Majesty's Secret Service".

 

[frustrated progressive]

If we wanted to go in for “lazy parallelism”, one could imagine a young Napoleon having gone off into Ottoman service, the Revolution hits his family slightly differently so it embitters him against the Republic, and a few years down the line he’s helping to command the defense of Egypt against a French invasion.

 

[Redolegna]

Don't think Napoleon was born with an insatiable desire to conquer Europe that couldn't be shackled and his rise can't really be separated from the material conditions of the First French Republic so if he stays in Corsica he's probably just an interesting historical footnote.

If he stays in Corsica, that's because he and his family would have made peace with Paoli, so he probably gets a leg-up in the military or political set-up, and while not commanding the resources of the French Republic, the latter has no fleet left after Toulon, so it's possible his tactical acumen prevents further attempts at conquering the place again and the Anglo-Corsican Kingdom endures. Minor in the grand scheme of thing, not quite footnote.

Napoleon's cultural identity feels very much like a microcosm of the wider situation in Europe at the time, and does offer some intriguing options- possibly my favourite might be 'Napoleon as military saviour of the Corsican Republic'- though it's an interesting question as to whether he'd have ever felt satisfied with just Corsica.

He'd probably have bigger appetites, but he does not have the resources for it, unless somehow the British are impressed and give him a commission and even then he'll face so many hurdles that he could only overcome because of the very peculiar climate of the 1790s in France.

I don't know how likely it is (probably extremely unlikely), but I've sometimes wondered what would happen if Napoleon decided to become the savior of Genoa. I admit to a fondness for the improbable situation of the Italian maritime states surviving somehow.

Even without the outright sale the year before his birth, it feels like Genoa's days in Corsica were done and there are few Corsicans who'd identify with it.

 

[ChrisNuttall]

In 1814, Chateaubriand portrayed him thus with the immemorialy French royal family in a pamphlet entitled Of Buonaparte and the Bourbons. He chose to publish it courageously after the fighting was over and Napoléon several dozens of kilometres away, about to abdicate, and with several hundred thousand troops standing between the two of them.

A masterpiece of understatement <grin>

 

[Redolegna]

I had to do an oral presentation on it. I was less than impressed, but the lecturer was a big fan of it. He wrote that Louis XVIII said it was worth 100,000 men. Colour me even more dubious about that.

As far as I'm concerned, he does a great job of showing what clinical depression is in a novella of his, René, but of course does not have the words to name it. My answer to him is pop a Prozac, spare us the rest. Romanticism untempered by Hugo's vibrant social concerns.

 

[Death's Companion]

Very interesting stuff.