Is Napolean a Conservative icon?

Regarding the 'Enlightenment on horseback' phrase, sounds cool but I believe that there was no Enlightenment, more of a Darkening.

There were scientific and technological advances, the industrial revolution and many new attempts at political movements. But a true Enlightenment is a spiritual good as well as a material advance. The last few centuries in the West have been a concerted effort to discard faith (God) and try to survive on the rational alone. To the point that the so called Enlightenment of today doesn't know the difference between a man and a woman. The use of the word 'enlightenment' was a propaganda term used by secularists to add the veneer of respectability and righteousness to their Godless experience. They were the self anointed enlightened ones, except that they have now run out of steam.

I have always been sceptical of most historical labels like the dark ages, the Reformation, the Enlightenment etc. But they are useful categories so people know what period we are talking about.


Modern or post modernists who are into trans ideology also reject much of the Enlightenment but on different grounds. To them its a white male sexist classist colonial enterprise. They often reject perfectly sound ideas like science, the concept of objective truth, tolerance , constitutional rule , democracy etc.

The Enlightenment wasn't all bad. It was flawed but was also a reaction to the slaughter of the religious wars of the 16th and 17th century. Post modernism has pushed it off the centre stage and is a more insidious force.

I've always seen him as a force for modernisation, centralization, and rationalization. Therefore an enemy.

He was at least not anti-religious like so many of the revolutionaries. Indeed he seems to have rejected revolutionary "Year Zero" thinking in general.

I like Chesterton's lines:

I knew no harm of Bonaparte and plenty of the Squire,
And for to fight the Frenchman I did not much desire;
But I did bash their baggonets because they came arrayed
To straighten out the crooked road an English drunkard made,
Where you and I went down the lane with ale-mugs in our hands,
The night we went to Glastonbury by way of Goodwin Sands.

I like the line spoken by one character in The Ragged-Trousered Philantropists by Robert Tresseli: "I don't want to be henlightened into darkness!" Nevertheless of course Cato makes a good point that there were many fine aspects to the Enlightenment. If only human beings did not have the propensity to swing from extreme to extreme...

 

I've gone through a couple of Napoleon phases, reading biographies from both angles: hate (Philip Dwyer) and love (Michael Broers).

I have to say my opinion is almost entirely negative. I see very little to admire in a man whom I consider to be the greatest opportunist in history. He seems to have been driven by almost nothing other than personal ambition and vanity. Many are unaware that he was a dedicated Corsican nationalist until into his 20s, often expressing his hated of France and all things French. Only when the main Corsican leader, Paoli, turned against Bonaparte and his family did Napoleon realise his only future lay with 'the oppressor'.

In a lifetime of battles, only on one occasion was he known to have expressed horror at French casualties, when he suffered his first 'draw' against the Prussians, which he was shocked by - apart from that he seemed utterly oblivious to the carnage and death he brought to Europe. Men were just fodder for his glory.

He was far more akin to Caesar and Alexander than to modern figures like Hitler and Stalin. Ambition and desire for fame were the engines, not ideology. His mania for uniformity and centralisation can be seen on one level as expression of a monomaniac desire to regulate and control. 

Not that I care much for the other countries involved. I think the nations who came out with the most repute are Spain and Russia. The former for its wonderful guerrilla war and the latter for its steadfastness in Russia and then campaigning all the way to Paris. As with WW2, the Anglocentric universe tends to underplay the Russian contribution, focusing instead on the Hundred Days and Waterloo, which were in terms of the bigger picture pretty much a mere epilogue. 

If you want French titans, I'll take De Gaulle over N any day!

I went to Barbie on Mark Kermode's recommendation. I have lost faith in Mark Kermode's recommendations. [/quote]





I missed out on that recommendation and on Barbie itself. I had planned to go with some friends but we settled on Oppenheimer instead.

I missed out on that recommendation and on Barbie itself. I had planned to go with some friends but we settled on Oppenheimer instead. [/quote]





Another hit credit to Klaus Barbie? Starring a well paid act in the lead role? Perhaps the next zeitgeist enterprise as Schwab Productions goes from clarity to clarity, or darkness to darkness...

As a boy I had a artistic-romantic admiration, without great examination of his history,I think it subconsciously still lingers on in microcosm. I mentioned before the beautifully bound The Art of War and Power (2018,Arcturus),which I bought a few years ago- although Napoleon is himself credited as the author, the footnotes surpass his maxims greatly- the book mostly highlights thematic artwork, including less reproduced works like an awkward group by Horace Vernet of Bonaparte inspecting imperial guard in 1806, where the three main figures on horseback are seen from behind in various turns.

The death of Henry Kissinger happens to almost coincide with the release of the film; Antichrist-speculation existed about both men in their respective heydays. Without making definitive judgement,it could certainly be said that both in their own way could be accused of trivializing human lives and the sovereignty of smaller nations when it came to meeting their world order objectives.
A news service recently listed a largely unremembered 1920s silent film about Napoleon's younger life and early victories as one of the 20 greatest epics ever made (if anyone can manage to lip-read for a couple of hours.)