There are historical figures whose portrayals have been tarnished by those who had opposed them and their ideals.
As the saying goes, the victors write the history books.
In some instances, such as the infamous cases of dictators like Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin, the ill reputations are fairly well founded. In his zeal to modernize Russia, Stalin actually slaughtered far more of his own people than Hitler ever did. However, while Stalin disposed of any opposition to his regime regardless of creed, Hitler earned an even worse reputation for industrializing mass murder and specifically targeting for total annihilation Jewish people, along of course with anyone else who opposed his new order.
Stalin actually remains a source of division in Russia, where many actually see him as a glorious leader who built a great nation from all but nothing. Apparently they don't mind the millions of Russians whose lives were lost along that path — perhaps to their perspective the brutal ends justified the means.
However, in Germany Hitler largely remains — despite scattered support from fringe neo-Nazi groups — a despot whose delusions of grandeur embroiled Europe in a devastating and completely unnecessary conflict that disastrously brought the proud nation crumbling to its knees.
But there is another famous dictator who has unfairly been compared to tyrants like Hitler and Stalin.
He is none other than the Emperor of France who rose from the ashes of that nation's bloody revolution in the late 1700s — Napoleon Bonaparte. A man of relatively humble origins from a middle class, his rise would never have even been possible in other European monarchies that oppressed their citizens in favour of a feudal system that placed people in positions of power based not on merit or achievement but merely inheritance and lineage.
There are some historians who regard Napoleon as a ruthless, warmongering conqueror. Others, however, raise important points that defend the emperor's legacy as being among the greatest in the annals of human history.
After Napoleon essentially saved the revolution from counter-revolutionary forces that sought to reinstitute the monarchy, the new fledging French government was quick to see The Little Corporal's — as he became known early in his career — potential.
As the revolutionary spirit that sought to free the common person from the shackles of oppressive monarchies had at the time failed to spread throughout the rest of Europe, France and its new government found itself surrounded on all sides by hostile regimes that sought nothing less than its complete and utter subjugation.
Largely funded by the British, whose monarchy felt threatened by the prospect of revolution, seven coalitions were formed over the span of about a decade to crush Napoleon and the new French Republic. The early wars that forged Napoleon's reputation as one of military history's greatest strategists and tacticians were all defensive. Even later in his career, when he made the ill-advised decisions to invade Portugal, Spain, and ultimately Russia — his downfall — Napoleon's arm was twisted by Europe's monarchies that had no interest in suing for peace.
Even upon his final exile, Europe had been irreversibly changed — for the better. There would be no return to the dark days of feudalism. Among the many signs Napoleon was not the despicable dictator some would describe him as was the emperor's progressive code of laws, which remains in large part the foundation of modern law in Europe.
It just goes to show that history doesn't always smile favourably upon the vanquished, despite whatever good they potentially fought for.
Simon Ducatel is the editor of the Sundre Round Up.
