Dan Snow's History Hit - 1. Napoleon: The Early Years

Episode Date: November 20, 2023

He clawed his way to the zenith of power with a relentless determination that few could fathom... he conquered empires, destroyed armies and out of the smouldering rubble of the revolution made himself the Emperor of the French; his name was Napoleon Bonaparte.Was Napoleon destined for greatness, or was just in the right place at the right time? Well, Biographer Andrew Roberts, author of Napoleon the Great says its both. In the first episode of this four-part series, Andrew and Dan pick through Napoleon's years growing up on the island of Corsica to his military education in France that instilled in him the discipline, skills and spirit that made him a solitary and cerebral individual but a charismatic leader of men. They explore the impact of childhood bullying, his sexual awakening in the French Revolution and his early belief that he was destined to change the world.Produced by Mariana Des Forges, Freddy Chick and edited by Dougal Patmore.Discover the past with exclusive history documentaries and ad-free podcasts presented by world-renowned historians from History Hit. Watch them on your smart TV or on the go with your mobile device. Get 50% off your first 3 months with code DANSNOW - sign up now for your 14-day free trial http://access.historyhit.com/checkout?code=dansnow&plan=monthly.We'd love to hear from you! You can email the podcast at [e-mail] can take part in our listener survey here.

December the 2nd, 1805. A cold winter wind sweeps the rolling landscape between the town of Brno and the village of Austernitz in what is today the Czech Republic. There's a blanket of morning fog that shrouds 68,000 men of Napoleon's Grande Armée. A bit of luck, perhaps a little by design. It provides the perfect cover for his troops, who wait quietly in disciplined formations. Behind them lies the frozen ponds and the waters of the Goldbach Stream. On a ridge to the east, the combined forces of the Russian and Austrian empires, a coalition of nearly 90,000 men, determined to crush France's nouveau emperor. They're an intimidating adversary.

By this point, Napoleon's already made his name as a formidable commander, a great strategist. He's humiliated the Austrians in Italy. He's invaded and occupied Egypt. And today, the 2nd December, is the anniversary of his coronation. The day on which he crowned himself, in Paris, Emperor of the French. The battle that unfolded that day at Austerlitz saw Napoleon play his enemies like a game of chess. They attacked him right where he had intended and he struck back with a devastating deliberation and overwhelming local superiority. By the end of the day, his enemies were in disarray, the field

carpeted with the dead and dying, a mound of captured enemy standards thrown at the French Emperor's feet. His outnumbered, footsore, hungry army a long way from home had won, and it's often thought to be his finest victory. This clash of empires on the fields of Austerlitz has etched Napoleon's name into the pantheon of military greats. I often find it hard to imagine great military commanders as children. But Napoleon was once a child, obviously. He was born on the French island of Corsica.

He'd been bullied mercilessly at school by his peers, mostly for his poor French. His first language was Corsican and then Italian. But somehow that instilled in him a desire to be better, to outsmart, to win, to outthink and outfight his contemporaries. He clawed his way to the zenith of power with a relentless determination and self-belief that few could fathom. You may have heard that there's a little movie coming out this week starring Joaquin Phoenix Napoleon, directed by one Ridley Scott. And we know that either before you go and see that or after, you're going to go to Wikipedia and dig further into Napoleon's life. Was he a genius? or a tyrant? Did he really come from nothing and conquer everything?

Did his love for Josephine embolden him or destroy him? Here on Dan Snow's History, we've done the hard work for you. Over the next four episodes, I'll be gathering some of the leading experts on Napoleon from his biographer, Andrew Roberts, military historian, Dr. Zach White, to sex historian, Dr. Kate Lister, to unravel Napoleon Bonaparte, the man, the myth, the commander. Most accounts of Napoleon's life begin with the siege of Toulon in 1793, when Napoleon was just 24. But if you think about it, by Waterloo he was 46 and he was dead at 51. So the first 24 years before Toulon account for half of his entire existence on this planet. So in this first episode, we're going to go back to the beginning. We're going to look into

those years. See, I'm joined by the brilliant historian, the biographer, Andrew Roberts, Lord Andrew Roberts, author of Napoleon the Great, to go back to the early years of Napoleon. Andrew, great to have you back on the podcast. Thank you. Great to be back on. Now, in the commercial, the advertisement for the Napoleon film, it said he came from nothing and conquered everything. Let's just park the conquering everything aside for a second. Where did Napoleon come from? How obscure was his birth, actually? He was an actual aristocrat. He wouldn't have had the free education at the expense of the king had he not been an aristocrat, had what was called 16 quarterings. So you were

able to show your aristocracy back at least 250 years, which the Bonaparte family could. There was a little bit of eliding once or twice, it strikes me. The Bonaparte, essentially, Corsica doesn't really have an aristocracy at the time of his birth. But nonetheless, if anyone's an aristocrat, he comes from an impoverished aristocratic family. So it's not true to say that he came from nothing. And what is it to be Corsican in the French world of the 18th century? Extremely dangerous, because Corsica doesn't become part of France until 1768, when they essentially buy it from Genoa. And so the year before Napoleon was born, Corsica wasn't even French. So the identity, the national identity of Corsica is a very complex one. And it's one that can be seen in Napoleon himself, who is very conflicted

about it. He doesn't really truly think of himself as French until he's in his early 20s, until the French Revolution. Because he flirts with Corsican nationalism, doesn't he? He's he flirts with Corsican nationalism, doesn't he? He's rather proud of being Corsican. Well, his father was the secretary to Pasquale Paoli, the great Corsican leader, the person who's considered the father of the Corsican nation, the person who gives the constitution to Corsica. And so, Yes, he's a fierce Corsican nationalist to the point that he writes short stories when he's in his teens about killing Frenchmen. The idea that he eventually becomes emperor of the French is a kind of grand irony. How would he have been referred to as a

child? He would have sounded more Italian than French. Yes, Nabuolioni. And of course, Buonaparte. So it's a far cry from the Napoleon Bonaparte that we think of today. He spoke Italian as well as French and, of course, couldn't dialect too. So all in all, he was very much a sort of multinational figure. Is there something, I'm getting a little flight of fancy here, is there something interesting, and I know he's not a sort of 20th century dictator,

but it's curious, isn't it? Stalin, Hitler, Napoleon, they all came from places very much outside the traditional imperial centre of the countries, the empires they went on to dominate. Is there something going on there, or am I being a bit too clever? No, I think so, And you can go back. I mean, one thinks of Alexander the Great as a Greek,

but of course he was Macedonian. And there are lots of examples in the ancient world as well of this happening. Really, nationalism is so much a 19th century concept that we tend to push it back and to equate people in the past as having been one thing or another, whereas somebody like Napoleon would have thought of himself as several things, until, of course, he becomes French at the time of the revolution and then never sees himself as anything other than French and gets angry with people who call him Corsican. So his early life, many brothers and sisters, an important local family, no overabundance of cash. Any sign of genius at this point? What's going on in his childhood? Yes, there are lots of children. His father is a rather

down-at-heel barrister, essentially, and charming, good-natured, good-looking, but not really much of a go-getter. Unlike his mother, Madame Mère, who does push her husband and later Napoleon on in life. The family boasted that they never had to buy their own olive oil or bread. So they had enough olive trees and so on to be able to survive. You go around their house in Ajaccio in Corsica, which actually nowadays has an extra floor on it. So it's a bit grander than it was when Napoleon was born. But they were well-to-do. They had a house near the cathedral, which is where Napoleon's uncle, Cardinal Fesh, was archbishop. And so they were a well-to-do family, but there was no sign at all that the young Napoleon was ever going to become an emperor.

So in 1755, Corsica declared themselves Republic. Now, fascinatingly, I was reading Linda Colley's book the other day about written constitutions. Corsica actually had one of the first written constitutions in the world Of course, she had one of the first written constitutions in the world. It was at the forefront of the 18th century Enlightenment thinking around setting out the principles of government. It didn't last though, did it? But his family were quite intimately connected with that moment of independence and sovereignty. They were. And actually, the best historian of all of this is Boswell. James Boswell, who was a friend of Pasquale Paoli, who wrote this great Enlightenment constitution that you

mentioned, went around Corsica and writes a rather wonderful book about it. It was published in 1768, the year before Napoleon was born. We do have a good sense of what Corsica was like before Napoleon was born. Yes, it was a place of great pride in its constitution and its people. Of course, there was a dark side to it all. The vendetta was a very powerful aspect of Corsican politics in the mid-18th century. It was a place that was almost impossible to govern because of the small villages in the mountainous regions that couldn't be got to. The French found it tremendously difficult to actually impose their

control and will on Corsica. They could only really do it in the ports, but Ajaccio, where the Bonapartes grew up, was a port, and so that helped. On that note, I think it's so interesting how with our idea of the modern state, and we look at big maps, the Roman Empire and the French Empire and the British Empire, and we see these big, great swathes of blue and pink and red, there would have been great chunks of the planet still largely living beyond the state, I think, until quite recently. I think they probably still are. I mean, China being another example, up until 1949, it was very much regionally, you know, locally governed. And there are lots of areas where the central state writ doesn't rule very far.

You're listening to Dan Snow's History It. There's more to come. To be continued... who were rarely the best of friends, murder, rebellions, and crusades. Find out who we really were by subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. But they feel French presence. They would experience sort of taxation things like that and in the end napoleon leaves his family by when you think about it his brothers and sisters my goodness the future crown heads of europe among them napoleon put them all on various thrones but he ends up heading off to france to pursue a career as a military officer. How does that come about?

Yes, because of his aristocratic background, he's allowed to have free education at the expense of the French state. And that is really the thing that makes Napoleon. He is a huge autodidact. He goes to these French military academies, really from the age of about nine to 17. And in that long period away from his parents, and they didn't come to visit him either, his character was built. And he was a huge reader. He loved reading history, ancient history, biography, and so on. And he started to see himself as potentially at least one of the sort of great men and women who change history. Yeah, well, listen, that's very relatable. I felt that at age 13 as well. But in some cases, I was wrong.

Napoleon was right. So he's there. He's studying. He's reading ferociously. Alexander the Great, Caesar, a lot of classical authors, I take it. That's right. Exactly. All of them.

authors, I take it. That's right, exactly, all of them. And actually some more modern authors, because of course, these military academies are, especially at the time that he was there, still smarting from the French defeat in the Seven Years' War, they have to try to inculcate in their students a sense of French greatness. And so they are also taught French history, or at least the most positive sides of French history. And also, of course, they read military books. And so he has got, for the time at least, a fairly wide education. It's not just Greek and Latin and so on. He also does mathematics, very important for an artillery officer, as you can imagine, and some of the natural sciences too.

So, yes, speaking of artillery, artillery was a branch of the 18th century military where you had to know what you were doing. It was in the British Army, you couldn't purchase rank. It was a technical scientific, more like being in the Navy, I suppose. Was he drawn to the artillery because of this learning he was doing, or was it because he wasn't posh enough to go into one of the grander cavalry or infantry units? A bit of both. He wasn't posh enough to go into one of the grand cavalry or infantry units? A bit of both. He wasn't posh enough, or at least he was posh enough, but they didn't have the money for it. You had to live a certain lifestyle that his father simply couldn't afford. That and his capacity for mathematics, which edged him towards the artillery anyway, because as you can imagine, the whole process of positioning a gun, firing it, and then most importantly, firing the next round and to actually hit what you were originally attempting to, required a good deal of knowledge of trigonometry and so on.

And he had that. And he turned out to be an extremely good artillery officer, as of course he discovered later in so many battles. But he's also aromantic, as you've referred to. He's writing short stories and he goes on to write novels and things. So he's got an interesting mix. He's rather capacious in his interest because he's writing novels about Korskens killing Frenchmen, Korska's place on his own within the great world historical outlook. How do you think he would have come across to his fellow students? Perhaps a little bit weird, the way in which he would totally compartmentalize his thoughts and life. And you see this all the way through his life. It's extraordinary how

he was able to concentrate entirely on whatever he was doing and then turn immediately to something completely different. And as I say, you get it later on where he's in the sort of burning ashes of Moscow, and he's writing the rules and regulations of a girls' school for Saint-Denis in 1812. There are so many examples of that. On the eve of the Battle of Austerlitz, he wrote the rules for the Comédie-Française. To be able to stop thinking about one thing and think about something completely different was something that you see in Napoleon all through his life. And he had that in his education and childhood as well. And the stuff he's writing is very strange. Some of it is, as you say, blood and thunder. And then, of course, there's a love story,

a rather sort of erotic semi-thriller he brings out. He writes about losing his virginity at one point to a prostitute in the Palais Royal. He's a very, very strange man, really, when he's in his 20s. How does the French Revolution make him French, as you referred to earlier? So he's still thinking about Corsican nationalism quite a lot in his teens. And then, well, the French Revolution happens when he's about 20. Exactly, when he's 20. And he later said that if you can see what a 20-year-old thinks about the world, you'll understand his views for the rest of his life. And what Napoleon was thinking about was essentially dumping his Corsican background

and his political beliefs, his nationalistic political beliefs. his Corsican background and his political beliefs, his nationalistic political beliefs. And totally understandable, after a decade in France, being educated in the French system, he thought of himself as a Frenchman. He thought of France as being at the forefront of the progressive views that the Enlightenment showed. And he wanted to be involved in that, especially although he despised the mob, always despised the mob. One of the things about his success really was that he took the mob out of French politics from about 1795 through to the end of his career 20 years later. He was still in favour of the idea of the nation, the people. It's just that he actually despised the people when they acted in a chaotic fashion.

Speaking of chaotic, I mean, he's involved in the sort of ferment of the French Revolution from the beginning. He goes back to Corsica, he seems to take a lot of time off, he's got plenty of time to travel. And there is this bizarre moment in Corsica, isn't it, where people are deciding between a vision of independence from France or embracing the ideals of the French Revolution and joining France. And Napoleon is in the middle of that. So he's into politics already. That's right. And he, of course, one of the things about the French Revolution in terms of the French army, when he's by now an officer in the French army, is that it essentially decapitates, in many cases,

literally, the whole upper officer corps of the French army. Suddenly, people who are in their 20s have an opportunity to leapfrog their senior officers and get into really important positions. He was a lieutenant colonel of, it was only a volunteers regiment, but nonetheless, he was still only in his early twenties when he was made a lieutenant colonel, which would have been very difficult for anyone outside the actual French aristocracy to have achieved, unless you have this entire wiping out of the senior part of the French officer corps by the revolution. We think his first battle is in Corsica, and it's a bit of a flop, is it? So he's playing street politics in Corsica. That's right. In Bonifacio, where he's

stationed, there's an attack on an island called Maddalena, and it fails. It's not his fault. He's not in charge. He's not in overall charge, but he does learn a few things about what not to do. I think it's a very important aspect in early years. You see it with Wellington, of course, as well, don't you, with that? He said, that's a quote from him, isn't it, in Holland? He said, I learned what not to do, which is something. Yes, absolutely. And it really is. So he starts off in this position where he is essentially trying to impose the will of France on his home island, which certainly doesn't want it, and which has the strength, because of the weakness of France during the revolution, to throw the French off the island. That's what happens to him and his

family. They're literally given 24 hours to get off the island before and go to France. 24 hours to get off the island before and go to France. And then the house is sort of attacked by the mob and gutted and so on. So it's a very nerve wracking situation for him in the summer of 1793. Does being thrown off Corsica end his dalliance with sort of Corsica full stop? I mean, he hardly ever goes back. I think, does he go back once or twice in his life? Goes back once on the way back from the Egyptian campaign, but just spends a couple of nights, doesn't stay long. Of course, with the rest of the family, however, when Corsica is retaken by the French in 1796, he orders his elder brother Joseph to rebuild the house and generally to sort of smarten the place up. In his will in 1821,

he said that if his body was not going to be taken back to the side of the Seine, essentially Les Invalides, he'd like it to go to the Ajaccio Cathedral. But other than that, he doesn't spend any time thinking about Corsica really at all. He set his sights on far grander visions by then. The decision is sort of made for him. His family have been thrown at Korska. He is fully committed to the French revolution at this point. Let's take it up to Toulon, I suppose. So he's back in France. He's in the south of France. The geography of that is quite important because he is on hand, therefore, when there's the great crisis when the French Royalist resistance with foreign allies sees France's leading naval base at Toulon and Napoleon sort of nearby.

He's in exactly the right place at the right time. This also, of course, is very useful for great historical figures, isn't it? You see it again and again, to be at the key place at the right time, there's a great deal of luck involved. He is put in charge of the artillery, not least because the last person who was in charge of the artillery at Toulon wasn't very good. He immediately spots the key place called Liguelette, which has to be captured because if it is, it commands the inner harbour at Toulon. It means that the French will be able to fire heated cannonballs down on the Royal Navy and the Neapolitan fleet and the rest of the coalition vessels and force them out into the outer harbour and ultimately into the Mediterranean. There's this coup de loi that he has at a key moment in December 1793,

and it allows him to essentially win the struggle for Toulon, which is absolutely vital because it's the great naval base for the French Navy. It was before and still is today. So that's fascinating. So only a few months after he's kicked out of Corsica, as you say, luck and timing and geographical positioning essential. And also his politics can be trusted. You see, this is the whole thing about why the Allies are in too long in the first place is because they're trying to encourage the Royalists in Southern France to rise up against the revolution. And Napoleon has proved that he's a sound revolutionary. He can be trusted

politically because there's a lot of deep-seated worry. It's not paranoia because it's genuine worry that the people fighting for the French army might change sides. Whereas this is a guy who's lost everything. He's been kicked out of Corsica for his revolutionary ideals. I guess that's how it appears. And his best friend is Augustin Robespierre, who is the brother of Maximilian Robespierre. And he's writing pro-Jacobin stuff as well, including a book called The Supper at Beaucar. Yes, he writes this funny pamphlet, this book, doesn't he, where he sort of talks. It's a conversation he had when he was trying to win people over to the revolutionary cause, and it gets published in Paris.

Precisely. And so they know in Paris, they can trust this chap, even though he has got aristocratic background, he can be trusted. And all they need to do is to check out whether or not he's a very good artilleryman. And at Toulon, he proves that he is. And it's fascinating. I think this about Cromwell all the time. It's like gardening. You turn over the soil dramatically or the gardening slash the First World War, and suddenly you get this amazing bloom of wildflowers and seeds that have been exposed to the air. There are Napoleons and Cromwells lurking around in every society, and 99.99% of them don't get their chance to turn into dictators. But given the right tumult, the right conditions, one will emerge. It's fascinating. Yes, it is, isn't it? And it seems so often in history that the key thing is that what we should

somehow manage to do is to find in democratic societies how we can find not dictators, clearly, but people who have capacity and genius and somehow bring them out without having to turn over all the earth. Well, I don't know what you're talking about. Lots of people of capacity and genius, evidently in public life at the moment, particularly in the second chamber of our legislature. That's right. Thank you, Dan. I agree. So we're going to do another podcast where we talk about the sort of myth and reality of Napoleon, how great should we call him. But thank you very much for coming on this one

and talking about the background of this remarkable figure. Thank you. By the summer of 1793, amidst the chaos of war and revolution, the young audacious artillery officer, Napoleon, stood ready on the cusp of greatness. And that cusp of greatness bit is the thing I find so fascinating. What really strikes me listening to Andrew was the remarkable sense of self-belief that drove Napoleon, that self-belief that allowed him to embrace the opportunities that were about to come his way as if they were preordained.

Perhaps many of us feel that we were destined for greatness, but few of us get the breaks. And even fewer of us have the talent to make good on those breaks when they do come our way. There's also one other thing that I keep thinking about with the young Bonaparte. He was clearly an isolated, troubled young man. He wasn't popular and charismatic. And yet when he came to command men, they loved him. He discovered a kind of charisma. They hurled themselves at enemy bayonets for him. It's a paradox. Perhaps we see it with other leaders now I think of it. The private awkwardness, but the public strength, charisma, confidence. In the next episode of this podcast, we're going to look at Napoleon,

the commander. We're going to look at Napoleon the Commander. We're going to delve into the battles that made his name, from his glorious victories in Italy, Austerlitz and other places, to his crushing defeats in the Eastern Mediterranean. And of course, a final one on those Belgian fields outside Waterloo. get the next episode tomorrow folks by following dan snow's history wherever you get your podcasts goodbye Thank you.