It’s Napoleon’s birthday! Light the candles this 15 August. Why is this important? Because, in Britain, we are still just a little bit obsessed by the guy despite beating him at Trafalgar and Waterloo. He is, of course, one of the giants of history, with an ambition that brought him to the pinnacle of power in Europe. But why have we always found him so fascinating?
After the battle of Waterloo, the Duke of Wellington famously described his victory as, “the nearest run thing you ever saw in your life”. A modest statement that only helped to confirm Napoleon’s reputation as a strategic genius. Napoleon, of course, was anything but modest. Not content with being declared First Consul of France in 1799 (or Year 8 as the revolutionary calendar had it), by 1804 he had restyled himself Emperor. His propaganda machine depicted him as a Greek God or a Roman conqueror in the style of Julius Caesar. Everyone should see my favourite depiction of Napoleon at Wellington’s home, Apsley House in London where a larger than life marble figure of Napoleon – naked - fills the staircase hall – this one was a bit much even for Napoleon and the Duke of Wellington nabbed it from a store house at the Louvre to give his interior décor an attention-grabbing adornment.
Wellington was not the only man to fill his house with souvenirs of the fallen Emperor of the French. The interest in objects associated with Napoleon started right after Waterloo. In 1815, the impresario William Bullock made a tidy profit charging people to see Napoleon’s carriage, “Mr Bullock’s room constantly filled with company, and at least a hundred thousand persons have already gratified themselves by sitting in the very chariot which once held Napoleon le Grand” gushed the Monthly Magazine in July 1816. After Napoleon died in exile on St Helena in 1821, British collectors started snapping up his possessions. The contents of Longwood, the house in which he was a prisoner of the British seem to have been the easiest to get hold of. The Earl of Carnarvon bought Napoleon’s griffin emblazoned desk, taken from Fontainebleau to St Helena and now sitting happily next to the English furniture of Highclere Castle’s Library. Sir Walter Scott acquired his blotter for his collection at Abbotsford in the Borders. John Powell Powell of Quex Park (now part of the Powell-Cotton Museum) was the proud purchaser of Napoleon’s watch and compass. These objects were still desirable for the next generation at the end of the century. The most complete collection of the furnishings used by Napoleon at Longwood (even the window shutters) ended up at Dalmeny House near Edinburgh where the Prime Minister, Archibald 5th Lord Rosebery was a Napoleon scholar with a passion for the man and his legacy.
Napoleon’s lasting appeal is that you can view him both as a man of the people (he was an outsider who rose to be Emperor) or as a man of power (he created an Empire that straddled Europe and revolutionised the institutions that supported it). France still has his legal system, the Code Napoleon, and French schools still teach the baccalauréat he introduced. He even introduced a new public holiday to celebrate his birthday. He was born on the catholic Feast of the Assumption, considered a good omen by his family, but all those religious holidays had been axed by the French revolutionary government. Napoleon reintroduced the 15 August holiday as Saint Neopolus Day – Neopolus, apparently an early Christian martyr, seems to have been invented as a near homonym for Napoleon.
Today, 15 August has gone back to Assumption Day. So although nothing he did fits the self-deprecating modesty usually displayed by the British heroes we most admire, there is something about Napoleon the British have never been able to resist. You can look into his face today at Bowood in Wiltshire where one of the rare bronze death masks of Napoleon was brought to the house by Emilie, wife of the 4th Marquess of Lansdowne, whose father had been Napoleon’s aide-de-camp. It’s a strong face and now would be a good time to go and meet him, 250 years after his birth.