Why do people hate napoleon

Explanation please? Thespitron People hate Napoleon because Napoleon stole quarante cakes. And that's terrible. Well there's the general hate some countries like Germany and Great Britain have for him, due to them being his main enemies and all. Due to the US's more Anglo-centric relations, it's my own theory that the British opinion of Napoleon leaked over to the US media, where it's been the main negative cultural depiction of him ever since.

He's still very popular in France, and Poland, what with freeing the Poles for a while and all. I myself like the man a lot, though I do admit he had more then his share of flaws. But even then I admire his positive qualities more then I hate his negatives.

There's a lack of really good 'Napoleon wins' timelines that don't portray his reign as some pseudo-fascist nightmare, save for Zach's excellent Pax Napoleonica, which is a real shame.

Wolfpaw Banned. He squandered a generation of French--to say nothing of other European peoples--in a series of relentless, expensive, and self-aggrandizing conflicts. Wolfpaw said:. Click to expand Inhato Banned. Aside from what's been said he not only continued the trend of bucking the established system, but, for a brief time, United more of Europe under a single polity than any time since the Roman Empire.

Last edited: Nov 19, Solroc Banned. I actually like Napoleon, despite being American. His military tactics were some of the best of his day, excluding the Peninsular War and his march to Moscow. He helped push through a comprehensive law code that genuinely looked out for his people and made sure those who did wrong were brought to justice.

In the end, his ego became his downfall and that's probably why I dislike him. But he really was a revolutionary at heart; however, like all revolutionaries he couldn't stay away from the poisonous taste of power. Everywhere he went, he liberated Jews from the ghettos. I have no problem with Emperor Napoleon whatsoever. I mean, sure, to impose war onto human beings is not considerate, it inflicts death and destruction and suffering. The row was enlivened in March when Lionel Jospin, the Socialist former prime minister, published The Napoleonic Evil, which topped the best-seller lists and triggered a stormy debate.

He says Napoleon was "an obvious failure" — bad for France and the rest of Europe. When he was shown the door, France was isolated, beaten, occupied, dominated, hated and smaller than before. What's more, Napoleon smothered the forces of emancipation awakened by the French and American revolutions and enabled the survival and restoration of monarchies. Some of the legacies with which Napoleon is credited, including the Civil Code, the comprehensive legal system replacing a hodgepodge of feudal laws, were proposed during the revolution, Jospin argues, though he acknowledges that Napoleon actually delivered them.

For instance, Napoleon reintroduced slavery in French colonies, revived a system that allowed the rich to dodge conscription in the military and did nothing to advance gender equality. He also crowned himself emperor, but the genuine kings who surrounded him were not convinced.

Always a warrior first, he tried to represent himself as a Caesar, and he wears a Roman toga on the bas-reliefs in his tomb. His coronation crown, a laurel wreath made of gold, sent the same message.

His icon, the eagle, was also borrowed from Rome. But Caesar's legitimacy depended on military victories.

Ultimately, Napoleon suffered too many defeats. Did he stabilise it or shut it down? He seems to have done both. He rejected democracy, he suffocated the representative dimension of politics, and he created a culture of courtly display. A month before crowning himself emperor, Napoleon sought approval for establishing an empire from the French in a plebiscite; 3,, voted in favour, 2, against. If that landslide resembles an election in North Korea, well, this was no secret ballot.

Each "yes" or "no" was recorded, along with the name and address of the voter. Evidently, an overwhelming majority knew which side their baguette was buttered on. His extravagant coronation in Notre Dame in December cost 8.

He made his brothers, sisters and stepchildren kings, queens, princes and princesses, and created a Napoleonic aristocracy numbering 3, By any measure, it was a bizarre progression for someone often described as "a child of the Revolution". And she passed on her fascination with France to me. This Offbeat France travel blog goes beyond the baguette -— we explore curiosities, oddities and mysteries, searching for legends and backstories, all wrapped up in a passion for history.

Along with plenty of food stops and many castles — I am French, after all. As an Amazon Associate offbeat france earns from qualifying purchases. Napoleon crossing the Alps on his way to beat the Austrians at Marengo Source. Napoleon stands before the Sphinx in Egypt, long blamed for the structure's missing nose. Not so. New historical evidence points to an earlier destruction in the 15th century.

Napoleon crowns himself in According to legend, rather than let the Pope crown him, he grabbed the crown and put it on his own head. Napoleon's retreat from Russia Source.

Napoleon leaves his exile on Elba for what will become his Hundred Days of second rule Source. Thereafter he made sure that every campaign made a profit. It was the two that did not—his Spanish venture and the invasion of Russia in —that were to prove his undoing.

Empress Josephine and Napoleon after their divorce. The other thing that unnerved him in revolutionary Paris was the sexual license that accompanied the relief following the end of the Terror. His own sexual experience was desolate, and his attitude defensively puritan. He first had sex at 18, with a prostitute, and the next morning he wrote up the experience as though it had been a scientific experiment. It was only when he had been set up with Josephine, an accomplished courtesan six years his senior, that he discovered the joys of sex and thought he had gone to heaven.

He married her, but she cheated on him outrageously, which only confirmed his original attitude. The conviction that women needed to be controlled would also only have confirmed him in his urge to micromanage and control all human activity. His sexual insecurity and distrust of women only deepened his unwillingness or inability to engage with others, hampering his diplomatic relations, which he saw as showdowns in which he had to be seen to win. The combination of this fear of being seen as weak in negotiations with his desire to extract as much money from the defeated party meant that every treaty he ever made left the other side hungry for revenge.

He drove such a hard and humiliating bargain with Austria in after Austerlitz that the Austrians were bound to try and retrieve some of their lost provinces, and they made war again in Although he defeated them again and imposed an even harsher peace on them, the episode had prevented him from pacifying Spain, with fatal consequences—and it meant Austria would participate in his downfall. He would be even more excited by that of his second wife, the Austrian archduchess Marie-Louise. By then Napoleon was master of Europe, having crowned himself Emperor and placed several of his siblings on thrones.

But while he derived satisfaction from associating with older royals and forcing them to marry members of his family, he remained pathetically aware that they secretly despised him as a commoner. This profoundly affected his behavior and his policy, and goes a long way to explaining its disastrous course. A portrait of Napoleon after his abdication in