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Comment by suction | Hacker News Reader

In France, you mostly see him as a caricature nowadays. In general, the urge to see people as war heroes, regardless of their abilities or achievements or who they thought against, is almost absent in continental Europe, especially compared to the US and England.

I guess the reason being WW1 + WW2 are being considered as absolutely horrifying wars, and Napoleon's invasions are seen as ruthless acts that created the imbalanced situation that led to two world wars.

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"In France, you mostly see him as a caricature nowadays." Certainly not, not for 60% of French people at least, if you check the polling regarding the last ceremony.

"Napoleon's invasions […] created the imbalanced situation that led to two world wars." what? That's quite a stretch you're proposing here.

Tho, in my biased sample, French I talked with were not shocked at that that Napoleon is remember negatively where I am from. They took it as understandable that parts of world he came through will see him destruction from abroad.

Oddly, Americans got offended over idea of Napolean not being hero or worth praise. On HN there was even pearl clutching about "judging past by current standards", but he was disliked significantly more at his time (of course, for us it is past irrelevant history for them it was death of close ones, property destruction and hunger).

"Judging [the] past by current standards" sounds like the person you were talking to may not have cared so much about Napoleon, as much as they care about all the cheap statues of literal Confederate slave-owners and defenders of slavery that got reactionarily dotted over the American South. There's been a big movement over the past decade in America to tear them down (IMHO, rightfully so) and a lot of people consider that "rewriting history" (which is rich considering the history of the Lost Cause).

While he certainly did invade and conquer, France was at war with the major powers of Europe before he came to power. The revolutionary government declared the Rhine as the natural border of France, laying claim to parts west of it. Also, the other powers didn't want the revolutionary ideals spreading. I find this ironic since Britain at that time had a more democratic system than others and still it opposed revolutionary ideals.

That is white washing the imperialist nature of Napoleon. A continent dominated by France was not in the best interest of England just as a continent dominated by Germany wasn't a hundred years later.

With the exception of Poland I think but we might be a bit biased due to the whole independence thing (however brief it was). People aren't disillusioned and the shit that happened isn't necessarily ignored but the overall sentiment is very positive I would say. He's even explicitly mentioned in the second verse of our anthem

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