Oh! dear Ron you sure have started one here
Your "great man" has been glorified and equally demonised ever since his demise. He was seen as the saviour and preserver of the Revolution and as the traitor of it's most fundamental ideals.Some saw him as the veritable soul of the French people while for others he was simply an opportunistic foreigner.
He introduced the concept of total war and conscription with the ideal that it was the duty of ordinary citizens to fight. This concept led to the US Civil War and indirectly WWI & II and those participants who adopted his model quickly realised that by targeting and decimating the civilian population vastly reduced the fighting capacity of their enemy.
He was without doubt a military genius but when he made mistakes they were catastrophic. No one has ever given me a viable explanation of what on earth he hoped to gain by invading Russia-instigated simply because the Czar would not participate in his Continental blockade because of the adverse effects it was having on the Russian economy.
Was he barbaric? Well he didn't exactly cover himself with glory during his Egyptian campaign, one example was Jaffa where his soldiers slaughtered over 2000 Turks as they tried to surrender and spent the next three days in a free for all blood fest slaughtering every single inhabitant of the city including a further 3000 Turkish soldier prisoners. If his army had not been weakened by the plague history would have shown a repeat performance of the above had they taken the fortress at Acre.
But he rid Europe of the corrupt aristocracy and opened the eyes of the down trodden ordinary citizen to the ideals of a true democracy that became a model for the world. His suppression of the tyranny (at the time) of the Holy Roman Catholic Church allowed freedom of expression which would have resulted in death under previous regimes.
His sponsorship of scientific exploration led directly to major discoveries that simply would not have been allowed by the church. He inspired a flourish in art, literature, law and politics. He instituted the metric system which has had a profound influence across the whole of Europe. His Napoleonic Codes (Civil Laws) are still in effect in France, Italy and even Louisiana where I believe they still use the Napoleonic term "parish" instead of "county" (As an aside the Louisiana Purchase you guys got from him was a pretty good deal at three cents an acre
)
So all in all Ron in my humble opinion your "Great Man" is a bit of a mixed bag but it is a fact that history is darn more interesting because of him.
Reb
