Napoleon I, Emperor of the French, has become a worldwide cultural icon generally associated with tactical brilliance, ambition, and political power. His distinctive features and costume have made him a very recognisable figure in popular culture. A major figure in history of France and Europe, Napolean is known for the scope of his military conquests as well as his ultimate defeats. His two exiles provide further historical intrigue.
Napolean has been portrayed in many works of fiction, his depiction varying greatly with the author's perception of the historical character. On the one hand, Napoleon has become a worldwide cultural icon who symbolises military genius and political power. For example, in the 1927 film Napoléon, young general Bonaparte is portrayed as a heroic visionary. On the other hand, he has often been reduced to a stock character and has frequently been depicted as a short and "petty tyrant", sometimes comically so.
Origin and construction of the Napoleonic myth Napoleon Bonaparte is the primary architect of his own legend. In his work "Napoléon journaliste," writes: "Bonaparte, and later Napoleon, directed all the publicity at his disposal solely towards himself and for his exclusive benefit".Antonin Périvier, "Napoléon journaliste", 1918, p. 37. From the First Italian Campaign in 1797, he established propaganda in his favor by publishing bulletins in Italy intended to glorify his military actions and influence public opinion. On July 20, the "Courier of the Army of Italy" appeared, followed on August 10 by "France as Seen by the Army of Italy," and in Paris, the "Journal of Bonaparte and Virtuous Men," which was published under the initiative of his brothers Joseph and Lucien on February 19, 1797. In these publications, he highlighted his actions and commented on the political situation in France. They included dithyrambic epigraphs such as: in the Courier, "Bonaparte flies like lightning and strikes like thunder. He is everywhere and sees everything; he is the envoy of the great nation," and in the Journal of Bonaparte: "Hannibal slept in Capua, but the active Bonaparte does not sleep in Mantua".Jean Tulard, "Le mythe de Napoléon", Paris, Armand Colin, coll. « Mythes » (no 2), 1971 , pp. 32–33. These newspapers and the propaganda they spread in France helped distinguish Bonaparte from other generals of the Republic and contributed to the rise of his popularity in public opinion.
Maurice Duverger emphasizes the importance of the propaganda orchestrated by Napoleon, the parades, and celebrations surrounding his victories in the functioning of his regime: the people and courtiers repeated that the rain would stop and the sun would appear when he showed himself. "Napoleon continues to fascinate all theorists of political power; is it not because his dictatorship appears singularly modern? His authority takes on a charismatic character that aligns with our modern cult of personality.Maurice Duverger, Dictatures et légitimité, PUF, 1982, https://www.google.fr/books/edition/Dictatures_et_l%C3%A9gitimit%C3%A9/9q92DwAAQBAJ?hl=fr&gbpv=1&dq=culte+de+la+personnalit%C3%A9,+napol%C3%A9on&pg=PT300&printsec=frontcover" This cult is widely propagated by the soldiers of the Grande Armée, who rely on the emperor in the most difficult moments, but also by the clergy, who, from the Concordat of 1801, present Napoleon as the envoy of providence.Maurice Choury, Les grognards et Napoléon, Perrin, 1968https://www.google.fr/books/edition/Les_grognards_et_Napol%C3%A9on/l8dXDwAAQBAJ?hl=fr&gbpv=1&dq=culte+de+la+personnalit%C3%A9,+napol%C3%A9on&pg=PT39&printsec=frontcover
Fine art Art contributes to the Napoleonic legend during the emperor's lifetime through propaganda paintings, sculptures, engravings, or prints by artists such as David or Antoine-Jean Gros, among others. Paintings created after Napoleon's life, or even long after his death, mostly express a nostalgia for France under Napoleon. For example, Édouard Detaille's "The Dream" (which is now in the Musée d'Orsay in Paris) depicted in a highly patriotic allegory French soldiers from 1870 sleeping, with the distant memory of the victorious Grande Armée in the clouds. This type of painting, showing nostalgia for a victorious and united France, is one of the foundations of the Napoleonic legend, as they all visually represent the increasingly distant memory of a mythical France.
Literature and theatre
Literature 'The Memorial of Saint Helena,' a masterpiece of propaganda first published in 1823 (after Napoleon's death in 1821) by Emmanuel de Las Cases, revives the golden legend and lays the foundations of Bonapartism.Frédéric Bluche, Le bonapartisme, coll. « Que sais-je ? », éd. Presses universitaires de France (PUF), 1981, p. 48.
Famous novelist Honoré de Balzac illustrates the admiration of the French and many Europeans by writing in "A Conversation Between Eleven O'Clock and Midnight," an excerpt from "Contes Bruns": "Who will ever explain, depict, or understand Napoleon? A man represented with his arms folded, and who did everything, who was the greatest force ever known, the most concentrated, the most mordant, the most acid of all forces; a singular genius who carried armed civilization in every direction without fixing it anywhere; a man who could do everything because he willed everything; a prodigious phenomenon of will, conquering an illness by a battle, and yet doomed to die of disease in bed after living in the midst of ball and bullets; a man with a code and a sword in his brain, word and deed; a clear-sighted spirit that foresaw everything but his own fall; a capricious politician who risked men by handfuls out of economy, and who spared three heads—those of Talleyrand, of Pozzo de Borgo, and of Metternich, diplomatists whose death would have saved the French Empire, and who seemed to him of greater weight than thousands of soldiers; a man to whom nature, as a rare privilege, had given a heart in a frame of bronze; mirthful and kind at midnight amid women, and next morning manipulating Europe as a young girl might amuse herself by splashing water in her bath! Hypocritical and generous; loving tawdriness and simplicity; devoid of taste, but protecting the arts; and in spite of these antitheses, really great in everything by instinct or by temperament; Caesar at five-and-twenty, Cromwell at thirty; and then, like my grocer buried in Père Lachaise, a good husband and a good father. In short, he improvised public works, empires, kings, codes, verses, a romance—and all with more range than precision. Did he not aim at making all Europe France? And after making us weigh on the earth in such a way as to change the laws of gravitation, he left us poorer than on the day when he first laid hands on us; while he, who had taken an empire by his name, lost his name on the frontier of his empire in a sea of blood and soldiers. A man all thought and all action, who comprehended Desaix and Fouché."https:// Another study of woman, Honoré De Balzac. Translated by Ellen Marriage and Clara Bell, Project Gutenberg, www.gutenberg.org/files/1714/1714-h/1714-h.htm
Napoleon plays an indirect yet utterly important part in Alexandre Dumas' novel The Count of Monte Cristo. The novel starts in 1815 with Napoleon exiled on the island of Elba. Here we learn that he hands a letter to the protagonist Edmond Dantès to give to one of his chief (fictional) supporters in Paris - Noirtier De Villefort, the president of a Bonapartist club. Dantès is unaware that Villefort is an agent of the exiled Emperor and that the letter Napoleon handed him contained instructions and plans about Napoleon's planned return to Paris. Dantès' rivals include Mr. Danglars, his long-time unspoken rival and shipmate, who first reports Dantès to the authorities as a Bonapartist, and Gérard De Villefort, the opportunistic son of Noirtier and staunch royalist, who, in order to protect his father from being outed as a Bonapartist, burns the letter and uses its former existence to frame Dantès and have him imprisoned in the Château d'If until his escape after 14 years and seeks vengeance upon those who wronged him.
Napoleon features prominently in the BBC Doctor Who Past Doctor Adventure World Game, in which the Second Doctor must avert a plot to change history so that Napoleon is victorious. In an alternate timeline created by the assassination of the Duke of Wellington prior to Waterloo, Napoleon is persuaded to march on to Russia after the victory at Waterloo, but he dies shortly afterwards, his empire having become so overextended that the various countries collapse back into the separate nations they were before, thus degenerating into a state of perpetual warfare. (This situation is made worse due to the intervention of the Doctor's old enemies the Players).
Other depictions of Napoleon in literature include: Stanley from A Streetcar Named Desire invokes the Napoleonic Code while speaking with Blanche. The pig in Animal Farm who wrests control of Jones's farm from the other animals and becomes a tyrant is named Napoleon. Julien Sorel from The Red and the Black by Stendhal has to hide a portrait of Napoleon. Vengeance Is Mine (1899) by Andrew Balfour is a novel revolving around Napoleon's exploits during the Hundred Days and the Battle of Waterloo.Daniel D. McGarry, Sarah Harriman White, Historical Fiction Guide: Annotated Chronological, Geographical, and Topical List of Five Thousand Selected Historical Novels. Scarecrow Press, New York, 1963 (pp. 255–70) Moreton Hall's novel General George (1903) focuses on the Pichegru Conspiracy plot to assassinate Napoleon. The Thunderer (1927) by L. Adams Beck (writing as "E. Barrington") is a historical novel revolving around the romance between Napoleon and Joséphine. St Helena (1936) by R. C. Sherriff So Great A Man (1937) by "David Pilgrim" (a pseudonym for John Palmer and Hilary St George Saunders) depicts Napoleon's life in the years 1808–1809. In Thomas B. Costain's historical novel The Last Love (1963), a dying Napoleon, banished to St. Helena, tells his story to his lone companion, a girl who acts as his English translator. Napoleon is an important character in Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace, where considerable space is devoted to Tolstoy's interpretation of his historical role. He consequently also appears in the adaptations and films of this novel, listed in the following section. Napoleon appears briefly in the first section of Victor Hugo's Les Misérables, and is extensively referenced in later sections. Noel B. Gerson's novel Emperor's Ladies (1959) focuses on Napoleon's marriage to Marie Louise of Austria. Bernard Cornwell's novel Sharpe's Devil features a meeting between Napoleon and the fictional Richard Sharpe. He is featured in the manga Eikou no Napoleon – Eroica, written by manga artist Riyoko Ikeda. C. S. Forester's Hornblower series of novels are mostly set during the Napoleonic Wars, in particular book 9 of the series, Commodore Hornblower focusing on the French invasion of Russia and the subsequent defence of Riga from the period of 1812 onwards, and book 10 Lord Hornblower dealing with events in France up to the defeat of Napoleon by the Duke of Wellington at Waterloo. Napoleon is a main character in Ruth McKenney's novel Mirage (1956), set during the campaign in Egypt. Napoleon is one of the two main characters in Simon Scarrow's The Revolution Quartet, which details Napoleon's life from his birth to his defeat at the Battle of Waterloo alongside that of Arthur Wellesley's. In an Archie comic story featuring Jughead Jones, he is inadvertently transported by ambulance to a mental hospital. At first he protests, but relents upon hearing how well the patients are fed. When a nurse asks for his name, he replies "Napoleon Bonaparte." A later update changed this to him saying "You know who I am, Sonic! I am the genius, Dr. Robotnik!"