After watching the epic film "Napoleon", the question in my mind was: what would Napoleon say about himself?
At the age of 10, Napoleon entered the French Cadet School in Briena. He once said that he was born to be a soldier, and he was born to give orders.
Napoleon's military achievements were due to the legacy of the French Revolution: conscription, the use of war to feed the war, the flexible and flexible formation of "divisions", and the tactics of dense columns and skirmishers plus infantry artillery. These existed before him, but he used them best, executed them the most thoroughly, and conquered almost all of Europe.
Napoleon's greatest pride was the Italian campaign. At that time, the French army was small in number, under-equipped, poorly fed and dressed, but he defeated four Austrian armies in a row and threatened the city of Vienna at the age of 27. He has won many times because his actions are as swift as his thoughts, and he does not drag his feet. At that time, the French army maintained 120 steps per minute on the march and in battle, but the enemy insisted on the traditional rule of 70 steps per minute. Napoleon could quickly mobilize, divide and conquer the enemy, and also concentrate his attacking forces at selected points at any time.
Everyone has idols. Alexander was Napoleon's idol, and the Prussian king Frederick the Great was a military genius in his mouth, and nothing else was worth mentioning. Napoleon admired Frederick the Great's agility and decisiveness, and his frequent surprise defeat of his enemies. Napoleon was the practitioner of these principles, and the greatest applicator of them.
Between 1796 and 1815, Napoleon fought 58 battles for 19 years, winning 49 and losing 9, six of which occurred after the failure of the 1812 expedition to Moscow. His Minister of the Interior, Sharptar, said in his memoirs that Napoleon, who was never seen again with clarity of mind and resolute character, found him often whimsical and had strange ideas. He gets tired from riding a horse easily, and used to eat for less than 10 minutes, but now he likes to stay at the table. Napoleon also blamed the defeat on the betrayal and incompetence of the generals. Complaining is a common human disease, and Napoleon was no exception
The Road to Empire: Napoleon on the Road to the Supreme Power describes his journey in detail.
It can be said that the starting point of Napoleon's psychological fall from the altar was 1812, not the Battle of Waterloo in 1815. The Duke of Wellington led the LinkedIn Prussia army to defeat Napoleon at Waterloo. But only once did Napoleon praise Wellington's talent. During the Peninsular War, the Duke of Wellington knew that he could not resist the French army, and once withdrew from Lisbon, Portugal, and all the supplies along the 80 miles were looted by him, and the French army was held back by the strong wall. When Napoleon found out, he said, "This is a character." He knew how to put the enemy to death without fighting. In Europe, only me and Wellington are capable of doing that. ”
In fact, Napoleon did not look down on Wellington in his bones. Unexpectedly, Wellington's fortified wilderness was once again copied during Napoleon's expedition to Moscow. This time he lost miserably, lost the army, and lost the mentality. Sharptal said that of Napoleon's hundred brain nerves, at most only half were healthy.
Napoleon's prestige and popularity reached its peak during the First Consul, and he claimed that the emperor and queen had monopoly power and unlimited ambitions, and tried to dominate the world in vain.
In several battles in 1814, Napoleon painfully discovered that the French, in order to get rid of his rule, preferred to invite foreigners, that is, the anti-French allies. This was the deep-seated reason why Napoleon eventually went to defeat, and even if he won at Waterloo, his reign would not last. If he had known, this would probably be the last thing he wanted to see.
Finally, I would like to recommend the book that made this article, The Road to Empire: Napoleon on the Road to the Supreme Power, which satisfies my desire to know all the details of Napoleon. For this great man, no amount of detail is enough, and you will never have a tome of Napoleon's biography missing from your bookshelf, and this seems to have become to some extent the ultimate meaning of reading: to stimulate interest, to get to the roots, to go up and down, to find information clumsily, to always be like a child who is not satisfied