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Question About Sanity and Napoleon

Discussion in 'BBS Hangout' started by Manny Ramirez, Mar 6, 2003.

  1. Manny Ramirez

    Manny Ramirez The Music Man

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    This is a question that really only the older members can answer here because this was prevalent in the 60s and 70s and even before that.

    Why did crazy people think they were Napoleon or why was a crazy person called a "Napoleon"?

    I bring up the great Bugs Bunny cartoon of 1954 called "Napoleon Bunny-Part" in which Bugs battles Napoleon. At the end, it looks like Napoleon is about to get Bugs when 2 guys in white suits come and drag him away to the nuthouse not believing that he really IS Napoleon.

    There for the longest time I didn't really think anything about that except that it was a little odd that cartoon ended that way.

    However, I then remembered the great novelty song of the 60s, "They're Coming to Take Me Away, Haha" which was by, yep, you guessed it, Napoleon XIV.

    So, as usual, I thought of this place as the one that could answer this question for me.
     
  2. Mulder

    Mulder Contributing Member

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    My Dad worked in Psyc ward in college and he said that when people flip out and think that they are someone else, it is usually either Jesus Christ, Napoleon Bonaparte, or for women Joan of Arc.
     
  3. MacBeth

    MacBeth Member

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    Napoleon was just one of the more popular dellusional persona transferences...along with God, Jesus Christ, Julius Caeser, and others. There is little definable reason why Napoleon, other than the facts that he was extremely identifiable, much glorified/vilified, and was percieved to have very distinct personality and behvioural characterisitcs.
     
  4. Manny Ramirez

    Manny Ramirez The Music Man

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    Okay, that makes sense to me.

    Thanks Mulder and JAG!!
     
  5. JuanValdez

    JuanValdez Contributing Member

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    I'm not satisfied. I know that Napoleon is a typical subject for a megalomaniac, but why is it such a popular notion in pop-culture references? I think there must have been some particular depiction that artists are referring to, even if they don't know they are referring to it. Perhaps it is the Bugs Bunny episode described.
     
  6. AntiSonic

    AntiSonic Member

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    Baxter Stockman is in an asylum with Napoleon in an early Ninja Turtles episode.
     
  7. Mulder

    Mulder Contributing Member

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    It cooks up an intriguing fictional scenario -- that Napoleon actually escapes Waterloo, leaving a double behind in his place. The real Napoleon travels to Paris and lives under as assumed name while waiting to take power again. Meanwhile, the double refuses to admit he's a fake, and dies with the world believing that he's the real Napoleon.

    Satisfied now?

    P.S....

    Late one night at the insane asylum, an inmate shouted, "I am Napoleon!"

    Another one said, "How do you know?"

    The first inmate said, "God told me!"

    A voice from another room shouted, "I did not!"
     
    #7 Mulder, Mar 6, 2003
    Last edited: Mar 6, 2003
  8. SmeggySmeg

    SmeggySmeg Contributing Member

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    bit like someone thinking they are Manny Ramirez
     
  9. Invisible Fan

    Invisible Fan Contributing Member

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    I thought it was because he was a short little guy who, at the time, took over one of the most influencial countries in the world.
     
  10. MacBeth

    MacBeth Member

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    He wasn't even all that short...by the standards of the day. Another bi-product of the monarchial propoganda of the day...He would have been in the lower middle range...
     
  11. Invisible Fan

    Invisible Fan Contributing Member

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    Like Bush having big monkey ears? :)

    5'2" is pretty short. How tall was the average person in those days?
     
  12. Manny Ramirez

    Manny Ramirez The Music Man

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    LOL
     
  13. Two Sandwiches

    Two Sandwiches Contributing Member

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    We were learning about him in my history class....I know he kinda went insane himself. He began believing that he was God, in a way. That's what cost him his huge empire in France. He went to Russia right before winter and told his men not to bring any winter stuff because they would be back before winter. They got to Moscow in the middle of winter and had to march back. He took something like 6000 men and ended up with about 1000. He also took over France and had so much self-confidence he declared himself emperor in a country that just had a revolution to get rid of kings!

    And that concludes your history lesson from Mr. Snubbed.... ;)
     
  14. MacBeth

    MacBeth Member

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    Ummm...no.

    He never went insane...he never thought he was God, just that he was incredibly brilliant, which he was. Put it this way; before his 100 Days, when he escaped from Elba, and landed in Southern France, the members of the Congress of Vienna,( ie. all the other monarchies of Europe) immediately declared war on him...not went to arrest him, declared war. He was that dangerous..and it was openly aknowledged that no single nation could hope to defeat him...he was simply the greatest military leader of the modern age, maybe of all time. When he landed in Southern France, the re-established French monarchy sent tropps against him, and meanwhile all the people of France were flocking to his banner..when he met the King's troops in a mountain pass he walked out in front of his own troops, opened his coat, and said to the Royal army sent to defeat him " Any man who wishes to kill your Emperor, here I am!"...at which point the Royal army cheered him, and joined him...this happened twice more, before he sent a letter to the King saying " Please stop sending armies against me...I have enough."

    He didn't declare himself Emperor..he was elected Emperor, and in a completely open vote...not a Hussein like vote, it was in no way influenced...Understand, he was unlike anything we have seen in our lifetime; imagine Churchill's prestige post WWII in England and multiply it by 40...People wrote symphonies about him...he was more popular than a combination of the Beatles, Michael Jordan and JFK...anything he turned his mind to, in whatever field, he was brilliant at...Faced with the legal chaos of the Revolutionary years, he wrote the Napoleonic code, still the legal foundation for law in several advanced nations, and even in Louisiana...Faced with having to supply his army over long periods in the European campaigns, he invented canned food...He invented the system of postal organization ( street address numbers starting at a central point, even numbers of the west, odd on the east,etc.) that is in effect all over the Western world today...He redesigned Paris, making it the model for cities for the next hundred years...it goes on, and on...and then there was his greatest area of genius; military strategy and tactis... I cannot describe to you how unbeleivably superior he was to anyone in the world, and this in an age of warfare, where the best minds went into that field as a matter of course. He was a man among boys, and there has never been a man like him.

    And the reason he changed from strictly democratic to 'Emperor' was, at his chore, he was a soldier, and more interested in efficiency than ideals. And the French Revolution was chaos itself, with new Constitutions writen every few months, coups and counter coups annually, a new calender, administrative chaos within, and beset without by the reigning powers of Europe terrified that if the French democracy succeeded, there would be revolution everywhere...and, like with Augustus, the people of France wanted Napoleon to establish order, even if it sacrificed some of the ideals of the Revolution...understand too, that he maintained a much more responsible goverment than was practiced anywhere in Europe at the time, this was not despotism, but was far closer to Democracy that anything surrounding France had seen since the fall of the Roman Republic...But he did lose the support of many of the idealists, particularly among the world-wide artists and academics, who before this saw him as the Messiah of European Democracy...He was a genius, fallible yes, but incredibly popular, virtually unbeatable in battle, lucky and prescient in political life, and seemingly blessed above anyone around him...

    But yes, he was fallible. The Russian campaign wasn't the God-like parade you seem to think it was, it was a fairly standard campaign, except the Russians did something we now know to be S.O.P. for them, but wasn't common at the time; they retreated and burned everything. And he didn't tell his men casually to wear summer clothing; an army on the march, especially one that moves as fast as his did, is economical in everything it carries, and the additional 15-25 lbs/man winter gear would have cost would have been, under the circumstances as he knew them, a remarkably negative factor of logisitics. Remember he wasn't looking to 'annex' Russia...Napoleon had changed warfare in that way, following slightly in Frederick the Great's footsteps; he didn't even want to go to Moscow; he merely sought to destroy his enemies capacity to make war by killing their army in the field in a major battle or two..The problem he encountered was that the Russians had learned..like the Romans with Hannibal, they realized that trying to defeat Napoleon in battle was suicide..They had faced him at Austerlitz with another national army, the Prussians alongside, and he had destroyed them with the kind of military brilliance that is still taught today. So they reteated...and retreated...and burned..so Napoleon had to go to Moscow, because only Moscow would force the Russians to fight; he was right, they finally had to defend their capitol, and he destroyed them at Borodino....and he took a virtually deserted city, and then winter hit, and in Russia, winter is their greatest weapon, and his Grande Armee, which was 600, 000 strong, not 6, 000...was almost anihilated on the way back, with Cossak raids and frostbite, and hypothermia...

    But, no...the kind of pop history taught about him today, as demonstrated in your post, is innacurate, and largely a reflection of the propoganda monarchial Europe circulated about him to counter the popularity of his name, and the danger of his cause...
     
    #14 MacBeth, Mar 7, 2003
    Last edited: Mar 7, 2003
  15. Two Sandwiches

    Two Sandwiches Contributing Member

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    I think you got it right.;) I was just going by what the teacher taught me, and what it seemed like to me....
     
  16. sosorox

    sosorox Member

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    I did a 12 page report on Napoleon last year, and MacBeth speaks the truth, this man was a genius, a pure genius. I could compare his War Machine only to the WWII Nazi War Machine, but I feel Napoleon's could win if they were to battle in the same era.
     
  17. Puedlfor

    Puedlfor Contributing Member

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    A few things :

    1) Napoleon was a genius, but clearly given to megalomaniacal tendencies. The events of July 20th, 1804 are some of the first inklings where this shown through.

    2) France under Napoleon was not anything like a democracy. I've got to disagree strenously here. He broke the Paris Mob by firing grape-loaded cannon into them, he established a secret police to spy on Royalists and republican conspirators, he tore down the schooling system, ridding it of any liberal arts, philosophy, etc. The only thing left was history, and that focused on Charlamagne. He cast the ballots for the entire military in the plebescite that named him Emperor - this was hardly a democracy.

    3) Napoleon was a military genius, but he himself said that we "only have a limited time for war", and after Austerlitz, Napoleon's wits seemd to dull considerably. More and more, Napoleon ignored the subtelty that had been his calling card, and went to bludgeon his enemies into submission.

    3) The Battle of Borondino was hardly a resounding victory. Both sides took tremendous causalties, but the Russians were able to leave the field with 90,000 men, and nearly the entirety of their artillery intact. And the winter did not kill his campaign, the Grande Armee was hardly grand anyways, as it was composed of more than half non-french troops, but by the time he reached moscow, his army had been reduced almost to a quarter of its previous size by battle, and disease, helped spread by the swamps and the Russian Summer.

    In fact, I feel I could convincingly argue that it was not the Russian winter that had the most calamitous effects on Napoleon, but the Russian summer that hurt him more. and I won't eve get into the enormous strategic blunders Napoleon made at the time.
     
  18. MacBeth

    MacBeth Member

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    1) I assume you are talking about his decision to place the crown on his head? I'm not sure how that supports megalomania...and have seen little of it in his own writings from St. Helene...have you read them? An enormous ego? Yes, but in no way altering his perception of reality...

    2) The 'whiff of grapeshot' occured when he was only an artillery officer looking for work, and while on the Royalist side, so I fail to see what it had to do with his later version of responsible government. And the ballot en masse was decided for him, and with the full support of the Army, who were actually the first to declare him Imperator ( Romanized pre-cursor to Emperor) long before the issue ever went before the public. But as for your other claims, while I have minro qualifiers, I would say generally I agree..but I said it was relative, remember. I admited he sacrificed some of the democratic ideals he originally espoused, and while I understand his desire for order with respect to the external threats, and the numerous foreign-contrived asssassination attempts, I feel as an idealist that this was something of a betrayal.

    3) I would heartily disagree..Jenna, the Crossing at Austerdadt...there are several incredible examples of military genius which proceed Austerlitz. Even the Waterloo campaign was brilliant, and had it not been for Ney's two remarkable errors ( Quatre-Bras and the unsupported cavalry charge ) he would have won probably his most staggering victory.

    4) Borondino was, I agree, not an example of Napoleon's usual brilliance, but was a more traditional frontal assault which relied on superior numbers to overwhelm their enemy...However, I would hardly call it a draw.Casualties were very disparate, and the French were concede victory on the day. And the Grande Armee was always composed thus...it wasn't called that until he had incorporated the auxiliaries. Re: your point about the summer/winter, I have heard this argument before, but the accounts don't usually make the argument that the disease was a greater determinant, only that it was a factor. Remember that disease is a standard result of mass armies being confined to life on the march together, and usually account for more casualtied than enemy fire...that wasn't that much of a deviation from the norm, but what happened in the winter was nearly unprecedented. I seriously enjoy discussing this, though...What has inspired your interest in the subject?
     
  19. Special Patrol Group

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    That's 5'2" French. 5'6-7" English.

    He was about average.
     
  20. Two Sandwiches

    Two Sandwiches Contributing Member

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    If you are talking about the crown....he wasn't a believer of any religion(aetheist)(sp?). I don't think he really honored the pope because of this.
     

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