Ideas Are Easy

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by Icelander

He managed to construct armies which were the envy of the world, despite the guillotine having destroyed the existing officer corps and identity of what had previously served as the military of France and forge a French national identity out of multiple nations who spoke related, but not identical languages, while administering such minor trifles as reforming the entire legal code (so well it still forms the basis for not only French law, but a lot of European legal codes, as well as Lousiana's), re-creating a functioning executive and legislative arms of the state from the mess after the Revolution, and fight most of the world to a standstill at worst, but more often his opponents were left abjectly defeated. These are several lifetimes worth of glorious success in disparate fields, and he did them all at the same time, over a couple of decades.

Only the fact that the Royal Navy managed to win at sea and thus let the vast wealth of the British Empire continue to flow allowed the British to continually prop up new coalitions against him. His problem wasn't strategy, it was that he neglected to be a great Admiral in addition to all his other gifts.

And that France didn't happen to have even as much as one decent Admiral at hand, largely, of course, because the guillotine had destroyed them or they'd fled to avoid it, and while Napoleon could identify and train Marshals and Generals from wharf rats and rogues, he didn't have the same preternatural capability with sea-going officers. And even if he could identify the right men, war at sea was more technical and complicated.

There are many boy generals in history, as talent genuinely seems to be able to trump experience, especially in warfare at close range and personal, but few boy admirals. It takes a couple of decades to learn everything you need to know to organize and control a blockade like the Royal Navy enforced on all the ports Napoleon controlled and neither France nor Spain turned up an Admiral who could break it.

Edit: To be clear, everything Naoleon did, he did for the glory of France and himself. That's not really a good enough reason to kill, to most modern people, and while he did defend his country from attacks which legally and morally he could justify using force against, after he repelled attacks, he went right on to attack back and take everything he could.

He was a conqueror, with the morals of an Emperor of old, a Greek hero, or Roman general who seizes the laurel wreath. Popular history often neglects to point out his total ruthlessness, which modern people shy away from, but which Alexander the Great, Pompeius Magnus, C. Iulius Caesar, or Achilles, if he had existed, would have accounted a virtue.

If he had lived and fought for Chile, there would have been a Chilean Empire. And it would have been ruled by Emperor Napoleon I, with everyone who objected, even those who freed him, killed without a trace of guilt. And he would say, as he said of France, "I have dethroned no one. I found the crown in the gutter. I picked it up and the people put it on my head." And it would be true, because he would make it true. One of the ways he was good at Empires was his skilful use of propaganda.

Actually the armies were constructed by the younger generation of the Bourbon army after the Seven Years War. They were just not allowed to put their ideas into practice because the kings were reasonably aware of the need to make sure which direction their men's muskets were going to be pointed. Be that as it may if building an army was the definition of a great strategist then McClellan would be a great strategist and not Grant. The point was that Bonaparte could win battles but could not make all his battlefield victories add up to winning a war. That is the definition of being a good tactician but a bad strategist.