Napoléon I

From Philosopedia

Napoléon I (1769–1821)

Napoléon Bonaparte, the son of Carlo and Letizia Bonaparte (or Buonaparte), may have been caricatured by Gillray in England as but a deformed megalomaniacal dwarf. But in France he has always been an icon. Known as “the Little Corporal,” the Corsican-born future emperor of the French first attracted notice by his part in dislodging the British from Toulon (1793); thereafter, he had a series of major military and political victories.

The Napoléonic legend, the picture of a liberal conqueror spreading the French Revolution throughout Europe, was a potent factor in French history and helped make his nephew French emperor as Napoléon III. Few will deny that Napoléon was one of the greatest military leaders in history, that he dominated European history between 1800 and 1815, a period known as the Napoléonic Era. But as noted by Alan Schom in Napoléon Bonaparte (1997), Napoléon was such a war-maker that he disillusioned many.

Beethoven, for example, removed the dedication of the “Eroica” after Napoléon declared himself Emperor, in 1804.

In Catholic France, he made peace with the Church by the Concordat of 1801, which reestablished the church in France. This neutralized the anti-revolutionary priests who had encouraged peasant unrest.

Meanwhile, Napoléon declared that France had finished with the “romance of the revolution.” Lord Rosebery, who made a study, The Last Phase, of Napoléon’s position as regards religion showed that especially in his later years Napoléon did not believe in the divinity of Christ or in a future life. Joseph McCabe remarks of this, "Catholics boast that at the end he asked for the sacraments. In doing so, however, he gave his friends the excuse that 'there is so much that one does not know.' "

James A. Haught holds that Napoléon “was an agnostic during his years of triumph, but that as he neared death, broken by captivity, he uttered religious declarations.” Prior to that, he had these views:

• I would believe in a religion if it existed ever since the beginning of time, but when I consider Socrates, Plato, Mahomet, I no longer believe. All religions have been made by men.

• A soul? Give my watch to a savage, and he will think it has a soul. . . . If I have a soul, then pigs and dogs also have souls.

• If I had believed in a God of rewards and punishments, I might have lost courage in battle.

• I do not think Jesus Christ ever existed.

• It remains an open question whether Christ ever lived.

Napoléon died of cancer on St. Helena and was buried there. In 1840, he body was returned to France, first being checked by a physician, Dr. Guillard, who found “the features of the Emperor were so little changed that his face was instantly recognized by those who had known him when alive. His entire person presented the appearance of one recently interred.” The beard and nails had grown after death, however, his face was puffy, and the skin was “soft and supple.” His heart and entrails were preserved in two silver vessels in the coffin.

Although many called him “the Little Corporal” - he was 5’ 6” - many democrats called him “the Little Prick.” Dr. John K. Lattimer, a retired urologist at the Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center in New York City, is something of an expert on the latter accusation. When Lattimer was contacted by the descendants of Ange Paul Vignali, a priest and doctor who had attended Napoléon on St. Helena and who conducted the autopsy when the Emperor died in 1821, he learned that in exile Napoléon had scorned Vignali, a fellow Corsican and “about twenty years ago I bought several things from the family, including the urological relic.” That relic, explained the eighty-year-old urologist, is Napoléon’s phallus.

{CE; JM; PA; The New York Times, 9 July 1994; TYD}