Remembering that Napoleon reinstated slavery in France

This is really key here. There's a trend to hold people of the past up to standards of the present, but the world was extremely different then. Before the advent of farming machines and nitrogen fixation, labor dictated the power of a nation, labor relations and unions weren't a big thing, and a huge majority of the population worked in agriculture. Because there were no nuclear weapons capable of destroying the entire planet, superpowers commonly fought for resources, meaning the surviving nations had to be strong. The world is different.

Slavery absolutely existed in mainland France under the Romans. The coronation of Charlemagne made the popes feel empowered to order Christians to stop enslaving other Christians or selling the latter outside Europe. Believe it or not, Venetian slave traders used to kidnap civilians in Rome and sell them to the Arabs. The growing influence of the papacy lead to the gradual replacement of chattel slavery by serfdom around the tenth century. Finally, in 1315, bonded labor was abolished in France by Louis X, proclaiming that "France means freedom".

A similar process transpired in England, with slavery abolished by William the Conqueror and serfdom dying out in the fifteenth century as courts refused to enforce the contracts.

Unfortunately, all of this brilliant progress was undone in a desperate Europe facing a massive Ottoman invasion at the dawn of American colonization which led Popes and Emperors to authorize horrific measures, that ultimately corrupted the European conscience and led to a new era of slavery and genocide.

The Ottomans cannot carry all the blame, but remembering that "we" (qua the West) built our system of racism from a position of weakness may help persuade some people to let it go away. I think. Who knows?

There is nothing fundamentally wrong with government people being middle class either, in an ideal economy, bourgeoisie is the most common kind of citizen.

Isaac Newton dealt in slaves, Euler worked directly under the order of a bloody dictator... yet we can still talk and study their life, right?

Remember, we will all look terrible in 200 years from now, maybe because we use gasoline, or eat meat, or buy products made by children, or our capitalism, or our positino towards sex change or racial equality or whatever will shock people's future ethics and morale value. Maybe when I went shopping this morning I committed 15 cardinal sins of the future.

The same things could be said of most kings, queens and emperors of Europe across the ages. Reigns without mercy, enslaving and conquering, abusing and torturing, yet they cemented the future and a good portion of the institutions they set up are still in use today in one form or another. And yet people still honour their memory and their legacy.

Napoleon's reign caught up because the state was in trouble at the end of the XVIII century (insecurity, lack of funds, a general state of disarray). The rapid change in political structure -with all its instabilities- after the Revolution made (some) people yearn for stability. And thus Napoleon seized power through a coup.

And that's how the country got governed by a dictator, who proclaimed himself Emperor and started to chip away at people's freedoms in the name of stability.

A somewhat still-current cautionary tale...