Dan Snow
e’ve all been there. Every nation has skeletons. History is a sorry roll-call of atrocities, as genocidal young men gave free reign to their darkest urges. A king we style “the Lionheart”, whose proud statue stands next to Parliament, slaughtered thousands of Muslim hostages before the walls of Acre; centuries later millions of abducted Africans were crammed on to filth-covered orlop decks and put to work as slaves, by men who smile at us from Gainsboroughs.
Americans annihilated a race of people as they forged a vast empire, called it a nation and said it was destiny. Even our unimpeachable, tree-hugging brethren in the Nordic countries were once ironsided warriors whose dragonships penetrated Europe’s great rivers like poison moving through arteries. This year Germany is yet again being made to confront its gigantic historic crimes with another round of anniversaries, of the liberation of Auschwitz, and its final defeat.
Now France, too, is finding itself in the unwelcome position of confronting anniversaries in which it is cast as the aggressor. Two hundred years ago this month, the deposed Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte was rampaging north to Paris, intent on seizing back power. He had chosen to go out in a blaze of glory rather than risk death by a thousand ignominious slights in exile.
Better to die with sword in hand, he said grandly. Brave words, coming from one who knew that he would almost certainly not die of a sword thrust to the guts on a battlefield among a carpet of dead and wounded boys, his ears echoing with screams of agony and loss – a fate which now awaited thousands of others, condemned by his ambition.
In 1815, Europe agreed on little. The furious King of Prussia even challenged the lead Austrian negotiator at the Congress of Vienna, the post-war carve up of Europe, to a duel. Yet they were as one when it came to Bonaparte. Napoleon was an unacceptable threat to European stability. He embodied a terrifying mix of age-old French expansionism married to a fresh, visceral, liberal stirring that, combined, spelt the absolute destruction of ancien régimes. The Russians, Austrians, Prussians, Dutch, British, Spanish and many others combined to ensure that Europe would not be dragged back into the abyss of appalling violence that had scarred the previous decades.
They were successful. At the battle of Waterloo, a rapidly assembled allied army from the UK, Low Countries and several German principalities, under the command of the Duke of Wellington, fought a tenacious defence, buying time for the Prussian army to crash into Napoleon’s eastern flank.
Victory was total. Waterloo entered our lexicon as a reverse from which there is no possible salvation. Expensive, ponderous, jealousy-ridden, but effective. It is not surprising that Europe today seeks quietly to celebrate this achievement. An innocuous €2 coin will be minted. The French have gone bananas. It is fascinating. They presumably think Angela Merkel should be forced to sit through unending interpretative dance on D-day beaches to atone for Germany’s aggression, but when Germany and others dream up a coin to mark the end of Napoleon, a man who occupied Berlin, looted Frederick the Great’s tomb, treated Germany as today a student treats their parents’ fridge, well, that is totalement inacceptable.
Many people, understandably, are sympathetic to anyone, even Napoleon, who threatened the continued domination of Europe by a caste of befeathered Emperors and Prince Bishops. However, as 1918 was to show, the violent removal of this anachronistic vestige did not lead to fully fledged Lockean liberal states springing like Athena from the forehead of Zeus.
It is true that Napoleon Bonaparte, as a politician, favoured the application of enlightenment principles in government, having little time for religion and other medieval practices. But he was also responsible for the deaths of millions of men, women and children across Europe and beyond. He was a military dictator. A brilliant, utterly brutal and callous one. He, alone in European history, conquered an empire that stretched from Portugal to Moscow. His cunning, speed, firepower, concentration of overwhelming force, charisma, energy and ability to inspire loyalty made him virtually unbeatable. However, the rapacious reality of his rule belied his lofty ideas. The financial costs of his conquests were imposed on the defeated. His men scoured the landscape for supplies, like locusts leaving famine in their wake. Cities were sacked, women raped, treasures looted. His siblings and cronies were installed on thrones in client kingdoms, and flowery hereditary titles were bestowed with abandon.
In battle he sacrificed men like a chess master does his pawns. He abandoned his own army in the depths of a Russian winter; in Egypt he bolted, leaving another entire army to rot. He counted not the cost. When he needed to he unleashed massive, bludgeoning attacks against enemy strongpoints, sending his loyal followers into the teeth of withering enemy fire while cynically boasting that his men “will fight long and hard for a bit of coloured ribbon”.
Napoleon, Caesar, Clive, perhaps even Churchill, are heroes for an age that is past. An age of empires and armies, of conquest and power. We can be awe-struck by their brilliance and the sheer scale of their ambition, but we should be grateful that we no longer live in a world which allows them to dominate and mobilise entire societies.
Napoleon was a brilliant commander, an able administrator, a man who bent to the arc of history with the heat of his desire. But also a man who made legions of widows, orphans and invalids as he pursued his version of destiny. What nation that bore the highest toll of casualties? You guessed it, France. The French should learn to marvel, but not admire. They should let us have our coin and perhaps even slip one into their own wallets. Dan and Peter Snow’s ‘The Battle of Waterloo Experience’ is out on May 7