Founders - #294 Napoleon

Starting point is 00:00:00 It surprised none who knew him well that in old age, Rockefeller compared himself to Napoleon. The revelation came while vacationing in France, not far from a spot where the general had won a great victory. A casual remark from a companion led to an extraordinary soliloquy, Rockefeller's longest on record. This is what he said. It is hard to imagine Napoleon as a businessman, but I have thought that if he had applied himself to commerce, he would have been the greatest businessman the world has ever known. My, what a genius for organization. He also had what I've always regarded as the prime necessity for large success in any enterprise. That is a thorough understanding of men and ability to inspire in them confidence in him

Starting point is 00:00:42 and confidence in themselves. See the men he picked as marshals, and the heights to which they rose under his inspiration and leadership. It is by such traits as these that men get the work of the world done. It is all a battlefield. Napoleon, without the able marshals he had about him, would not have been the master of his age. He went into a battle with the knowledge that his marshals could be depended on, that in a given situation they could be relied upon to do the necessary things. Their devotion to him coupled with their enthusiasm, that's another great attribute, and the qualities with which his influence upon them brought out won the fight. Another thing about Napoleon was his humanity.

Starting point is 00:01:26 I mean humanity in the broad sense, of course. He came direct from the ranks of the people. There was none of that stagnant blood of nobility or royalty in his veins. That's where he had the advantage over the monarchs of Europe to begin with. He could think quicker and along more individual and original lines than any of them. The men whom he had to combat didn't understand either him or the people, and it is always hard to successfully control what you don't understand. Napoleon didn't play the game as they understood it. And then, coming direct from the people, he had their sympathy.

Starting point is 00:02:02 He appealed to their imaginations. Europe had not yet been educated to the fact that it could get along without any kings at all. Leaders of their own kind were few, and that made it easier for Napoleon to rise to the heights with which he attained. A Napoleon would be impossible in our day. There are too many able and ambitious rivals to hold in check one who aimed too high. That is not an excerpt from the book that I'm going to talk to you about today. That is actually an excerpt from a book that I read a few months ago.

Starting point is 00:02:32 It's all the way back on episode 254. It is called John D. The Founding Fathers of the Rockefellers, and it was written by David Freeman Hawk. The book that I'm going to talk to you about today is Napoleon, a concise biography, and it was written by David A. Bell. And real quick, before I jump into the book, I'm doing an in-person meetup in Miami with Shane Parrish from the Farnham Street Blog and the Knowledge Project podcast. It is going to be on the night of April 18th. Shane set up a landing page where you can enter your email if you are

Starting point is 00:02:58 interested in attending, and I will leave that link down below in case you want to come. Okay, so I want to start with the inside cover of the book because I think it gives a fantastic overview of Napoleon and the author's perspective of Napoleon. And he writes, Napoleon's astounding life and military genius have captured imaginations for two centuries. That excerpt I just read to you where Rockefeller is commenting on his admiration for Napoleon, he said that over 100 years ago. And among history's greatest entrepreneurs, Rockefeller is not alone in his admiration for Napoleon. The reason I'm reading this biography, and this is probably going to be the first of many biographies of Napoleon I read, is because Napoleon's mentioned so many times took over, to Aristotle Onassis, to Bill Gates, to Andrew Carnegie.

Starting point is 00:03:48 The list of founders and entrepreneurs from history that studied Napoleon is very, very long. So back to this. Napoleon's astounding life and military genius have captured imaginations for two centuries. Now, award-winning historian David Bell provides this succinct and elegant portrait, offering an original and lively account of Napoleon's dazzling career and firmly situating him in the historical context of revolutionary France. This book is 113 pages long, and the author tells us later why he chose to do such a concise biography of Napoleon. Bell emphasizes the astonishing sense of human possibility for both good and ill that

Starting point is 00:04:22 Napoleon represented. By his late 20s, he was already one of the greatest generals in European history. At 30, he had become absolute master of Europe's most powerful country. In his early 40s, he ruled a European empire mightier than any since Rome, fighting wars that changed the shape of the continent. But his fall was epic as well, leading him to spend his last years in miserable exile. Out of Bell's engaging analysis emerges the image of an ambitious and charismatic man, one who affirmed his right to rule in the name of the revolutionary principles of popular sovereignty and civic equality, but also as a conquering hero. Highlighting the importance of the 1789 French Revolution and Napoleon's political formation,

Starting point is 00:05:01 this concise biography offers a new interpretation of his life and rule. The revolution made possible Napoleon's unprecedented concentration of political authority and his success in mobilizing human and material resources. That's actually an important part that we'll talk about in a little bit. You can actually think about that in the context of building a business today. What is damaging traditional hierarchies and opening new ways to climb fast? Back to this overview, it also gave birth to a radically new, intense form of warfare. Without the massive political upheaval of the revolution, Napoleon could not have fought his wars. Without the wars, he could not have seized and held onto power. Though he betrayed much of

Starting point is 00:05:39 the revolutionary heritage of liberty and equality and ultimately ruled as an autocrat, his life and career were indeed revolutionary. So the book starts out saying, hey, there's a ton of biographies of Napoleon. Why do we need another one? Why did you choose to write another one? And his reason, David Bell's reason for writing is why I'm doing the book. It says it is hardly surprising that over the past two centuries, Napoleon has attracted legions of biographers. His life was enormously important, endlessly fascinating, and connected to some of the most controversial and constantly reinterpreted events in the world history.

Starting point is 00:06:10 It was also an extraordinarily well-documented life. So why then this book? While the current crop of biographies has many virtues, concision is not among them. And then he goes and lists some examples of some popular recently written biographies of Napoleon. One's 1,600 pages, another one's 1,000 pages, one's 600 pages. And so then David says,

Starting point is 00:06:30 not only do many readers not have the time and patience for such tomes, but it's all too easy to get lost in the welter of details. My book has been written for readers who want an accurate, readable portrait of Napoleon that incorporates the results of recent research, but is also concise. And so this is something that you and I have talked about in the past. I love biographies. I love reading them. I'm a biography nut, to use the word of Charlie Munger. But at the same time, I think you can drastically expand the amount of biographies that people read by making them

Starting point is 00:06:56 shorter. There's a writer named Paul Johnson, who I just found out, sadly, passed away recently. I've read three or four books of his on the podcast. One of my favorite books I ever read for the podcast was actually his biography of Churchill. Churchill also has a ton of biographies written about him. And yet Paul's biography of Churchill is fantastic. I think it's like 180, 190 pages. That was episode 225. I also read Paul's biography on Socrates, which is episode 252, and his biography on Mozart, which is episode 240. I think every single one of his biographies was around 200 pages. And so what I think these books do is they give you a reasonable time commitment.

Starting point is 00:07:29 You can see, hey, once you finish this book, you can read it in a weekend, say, hey, I want to learn more about Napoleon, which is how I feel. It's like, okay, well, then I can go on to these 500. I actually have a biography of Napoleon I haven't read yet. I think it's close to 700 pages. And so I hope to see a bunch of other biographies like this written. Let's jump into a bit of Napoleon theater that's going to take place between his two different exiles. So before this, Napoleon had been removed from power, exiled on an island, then he decides he's going to escape and he's going to take back his throne. And that's where we pick it up. On the other side of the fight is a slightly larger number of men, dirty, tired tired and hungry,

Starting point is 00:08:05 who have spent the past week marching more than 200 miles from the coast and who have the seemingly absurd ambition of making it all the way to Paris and seizing control of the country. Their chances of success would appear minimal, but they have one enormous advantage. He is in their midst wearing an old gray army jacket, speaking French with a thick Corsican accent. He is the man that all the men on the field, from both sides, had once sworn to die for, Napoleon Bonaparte. It had been the better part of a year since Napoleon fell from power, but the French are having a hard time forgetting him. He is, after all, the man who,

Starting point is 00:08:42 born in obscurity, acquired the greatest military reputation of any European military commander in centuries, while still in his 20s. At 30, he ruled France, and at 40, he dominated Europe as no individual had since Charlemagne. The wars he fought had changed the map of Europe forever, but his fall had been as spectacular and swift as his rise, and his 45th birthday saw him in exile on a tiny Italian island. And so let me just interrupt this real quick. The reason I'm reading all this to you is because Napoleon controlled the message inside and outside his organization. It reminded me of what we learned about Julius Caesar. Actually, that was a book written by Paul Johnson, too. That was all this book called Heroes from Alexander the Great

Starting point is 00:09:24 and Julius Caesar to Churchill and de Gaulle. That was episode 226. And Napoleon, like Caesar before him, knew the power of stories, and he made sure to control the story. The author is going to consider what Napoleon is about to do here. He calls it stage management. And it was very effective because this is a story that has been told over and over again for the past 200 years. And so it's known that he meets up with this other, his former French army. And as the armies are facing each other, Napoleon goes to the front of the crowd and appears to be willingly to sacrifice his life. And so what we found out

Starting point is 00:09:55 later is that he knew that the opposing army was never going to shoot at him. So let me read this part to you. As the armies face each other, Napoleon orders his men to lower their weapons. He steps forward out in front of his own troops and within 20 feet of the opposing army, soldiers of the fifth, he cries out to them. I am your emperor. Acknowledge me. He walks a few more steps and in a dramatic gesture opens his coat, exposing his chest as a target. If there is any soldier among you who wants to kill his emperor, here I am.

Starting point is 00:10:23 Somewhere in the opposing lines, a voice can be heard ordering men to open fire, but no one does. And then a different cry is heard. Long live the emperor. A single voice at first, but immediately repeated by others. The entire battalion is shouting the words, and as they do, they throw down their weapons. Napoleon smiles at his small army, which has just doubled in size. He prepares to move onward. And so it says this stage management is important for understanding Napoleon's life. From his first campaigns, he knew the importance of actively crafting his image in all available media. So what is the available media in the late 1700s to early 1800s when this is all taking place?

Starting point is 00:11:01 Print, painting, sculpture, oratory, and even architecture. It is no coincidence that so many images of the man have achieved iconic status. And even though I've never read a biography of Napoleon before, I've heard so many remarkable stories repeated about him over the years, 200 years after they occurred. Napoleon crafted all these images quite deliberately. He was a product of the first great modern age of celebrity, and he understood viscerally how to manage celebrity in the service of power. And this point is so important that the author immediately repeats it. It is vital to

Starting point is 00:11:35 understand this point about Napoleon from the start, because it is all too easy to see him as a pure force and freak of nature who imposed himself on the world through sheer boldness and brilliance. Bold and brilliant he was, but he was also shrewd. And so at this point in history, you're seeing for the first time political figures actually learning to appeal directly to ordinary citizens to gain power. These are the revolutionaries trying to replace the monarchs. The way I would compare this to today is our ability to talk directly to our customers. And so Napoleon did this obviously externally, right, to the people that he's trying to rule, but he also did this internally to the political military organization that he was trying

Starting point is 00:12:11 to build, the one that actually gave him power. And so when I get to this point where it says, hey, political figures learn to appeal directly to ordinary citizens to gain power, there's another guy, I'm going to skip over his name, was not the only prominent revolutionary who used the printing press, right, the technology of their day, the printing press to forge intense bonds of attachment with his followers. And so something that comes up again and again in these biographies I read is the importance of having a shared base of knowledge with your team. And in many cases, that's sharing information, that's reading the same books, that's the memos and letters that you write your team. But the thought that popped to my mind, right, when they use the word, hey, they're using the printing press to forge intense bonds of attachment with his followers. What I wrote down is the company should have private internal podcasts.

Starting point is 00:12:53 I believe that podcasting is the printing press for the spoken word. When building intense bonds of attachment with your team, voice is going to be a lot more powerful than the written word. So then they go into what they call the defining experience of Napoleon's childhood. And that is when he is sent to an austere military boarding school at the age of nine. And this is in France. He says he spent five years at the school without once returning home. The hazing he received from his fellow students on account of his accent, his fierce loyalty to Corsica, and a first name unfamiliar to French ears. Scholars have speculated endlessly about the effects of the experience on

Starting point is 00:13:29 his character, and it is indeed likely that he derived considerable resilience and self-sufficiency from it. There was another effect. Like countless lonely children before and after, Napoleon found comfort and companionship in books. And so this is a habit that Napoleon shared with many of history's greatest entrepreneurs, this habit of intense reading. By adolescence, the habit of intense reading had already become deeply ingrained. I live like a bear, always alone in my small room with my books, he said. They were my only friends. He kept copious reading notes in a file of obscure words that might lend weight to his own writings.

Starting point is 00:14:01 And in some of these writings, there's definitely a bit of irony, considering what he becomes later in life. One of his works, one of his written works contain lines that coming from one of the most ambitious men in history appear more than a little ironic. He wrote, ambition, like all disordered passions, is a violent and unthinking delirium.

Starting point is 00:14:20 Like a fire fed by a pitless wind, it only burns out after having consumed everything in its path. That sounds like a young Napoleon is describing an old Napoleon. So after graduating school, he receives his first post in the French army. He received his first posting where he read obsessively in his room. And even by this young age, people around him, including his family members who hadn't seen him for a while, knew that he was different and that he had an intensity and a drive that was in many ways abnormal and superhuman.

Starting point is 00:14:49 So his father dies. He has to go home to Corsica and settle the affairs. And it says the family soon came to recognize him rather than his gentle older brother as its real leader. Indeed, his younger brother soon grasped the intensity of Napoleon's drive. This is what his brother said about Napoleon when he's in his early 20s. I've always detected in Napoleon an ambition. He seems inclined to be a tyrant, and I think that he would be one if he were king. What made it possible for

Starting point is 00:15:15 Napoleon to follow the path of overweening ambition was the French Revolution. There's a great line in Game of Thrones where Littlefinger says chaos is a ladder. The French Revolution causes chaos that Napoleon's going to use as a ladder to climb. So it says, in an instant, everything had changed. From the depths of this nation, an electric spark had exploded. The revolution was overturning age-old hierarchies and giving worldwide prominence to previously obscure figure. Sounds like what the Internet is doing today, doesn't it? And so in 1792 to 1793, so he'd be around 23, 24 years old at the time, it says Napoleon gained his first taste of combat. And then it continued over the next two to three years. They proved

Starting point is 00:15:50 crucial for Napoleon. Napoleon showed political ruthlessness immediately. That word ruthlessness and ruthless is probably said, I don't know, half a dozen times to describe Napoleon in various time, various different states of his life, like ages of his life and in different activities, not only in the battlefield, but also in the political arena as well. That is something that the author repeats over and over again, just the depth of the ruthlessness that Napoleon possessed. He also demonstrated his tremendous energy and military acumen by effectively reorganizing the artillery, identifying a crucial weak point in his opponent's defenses, and leading the attack against it personally. He demonstrated genuine physical courage, receiving a bayonet wound to the thigh and having a horse

Starting point is 00:16:30 shot out from under him. He was just 24 years old. So then to go on describing other battles and other tactics that Napoleon used, and again, we see that word, once again, the combination of skill, energy, and ruthlessness and sheer luck had served Napoleon so well. And so he wins a series of battles over the next few years. By the time he's 26, he's named to the command of the third smallest army in France. And so he's reflecting on this point of his life later on, and listen to how he describes his mid-20s self. More than 20 years after defeating the Austrian army, Napoleon confided to the tiny group of people that were accompanying him in exile that only after that battle, quote, did I believe myself to be a superior man. And did the ambition come to me of executing the great things which so far had been occupying my thoughts only as a fantastic dream?

Starting point is 00:17:20 So this idea was like before I saw this as just this crazy, you know, far-fetched dream to know I'm going to go and make it a reality leads to this. Very few human beings have ever experienced what Napoleon did between mid 1796 and late 1799. At the start of this period, just 26 years old, he was already an important French general, but still just one of several. Three and a half years later, he was, without exaggeration, the new Caesar. And this reminded me of the quote from Littlefinger from Game of Thrones, chaos is a ladder. And this is the French Revolution is the ladder that he's going to use. It was the French Revolution that made this stupefying ascent possible. The revolution badly damaged the traditional hierarchies of French society, opening the door to radically new forms of social mobility. So his

Starting point is 00:18:03 case, it's social mobility, it's political power, it's war. In our case, how can we use this to build businesses today that could not have existed previously? And I love this part because you and I have talked about this over and over again, that many times in these stories, we see it's the right place, the right person, the right place with the right set of skills at the right time in history. And that's exactly the case with Napoleon. But history is not a matter of impersonal forces, and nothing ensured that an individual would come along to exploit the changes as fully and spectacularly as Napoleon. Many are the historical opportunities that have been lost for lack of talent or vision. In Napoleon's case, the man met his hour. And then it goes into description, the fact that his genius was of two sorts. He was a military and a political genius.

Starting point is 00:18:44 He had genuinely extraordinary mental abilities, a nearly photographic memory, the ability to visualize the positions of thousands of men in battle, details about munitions and supplies. He could see in a moment how to maneuver everything for maximum effect. I double underline that sentence. Let me read it to you again. He could see in a moment how to maneuver everything for maximum effect. A classic Napoleonic tactic involved dividing his resources into a number of groups 10 miles or more distant from each other, followed by rapid forced marches to bring them together at a single strategic spot. These moves disrupted enemy operations. The goal was not simply to outmaneuver enemies,

Starting point is 00:19:22 but to smash their armies entirely. Napoleon's genius in this respect depended in turn on a ferocious stamina, which he possessed in abundance. This is how Ralph Waldo Emerson described Napoleon. Napoleon was a man of stone and iron. That is a crazy description about a human being. He was a man of stone and iron. And we'll see that he was also paying attention to details. You could even say maybe a bit of a micromanager. In these two years, 1796 and 1797 alone, Napoleon wrote or dictated nearly 2,000 letters on everything from the number of carts needed to carry a regiment's paperwork to the position of drummer boys in a marching column. He required little sleep, routinely rising soon after midnight and working through

Starting point is 00:20:06 to the next evening with only a short nap to refresh himself. His political genius was just as important. Napoleon understood far better than his rivals that in a newly democratic age, political success depended on forging a bond with ordinary people. This is what you and I have talked about a few times so far in this podcast. I would also note what I wrote down when I got to the section the first time that I read this book, the idea that Napoleon understood far better

Starting point is 00:20:33 than his rivals that in a newly democratic age, political success depended on forging a bond with ordinary people. Rockefeller noted this about Napoleon too. Then a few pages later, it goes into how he managed in his organization. He made frequent addresses directly to his troops, to his people, praising their bravery. He doled out medals by the

Starting point is 00:20:50 barrelful. He distributed a hundred specially engraved sabers for valiant acts of heroism. He knows human nature. He knows we all go, what did Mary Kay Ash, right? Who founded her cosmetic empire. Don't worry. I'm going to read a biography of her soon. I think her autobiography, as a matter of fact. She built this gigantic cosmetic empire, and she said, everybody goes through life with an invisible sign around their neck that says, make me feel important, make me feel special. This is exactly what Napoleon is doing at this point in history. He distributes 100 specially engraved sabers for valiant acts.

Starting point is 00:21:23 He appealed to the soldier's sense of pride and destiny. The fatherland has the right to expect great things of you. All of you wish to be able to say with pride upon returning to your villages, I was part of the conquering army of Italy. And so I want to pause on that one line. I want to go back to it real quick. He appealed to the soldier's sense of pride and destiny. I've actually seen this two other times came to mind when I read this book, Jeff Bezos and General Patton.

Starting point is 00:21:47 If you haven't gone and I've watched General Patton's speech, his speech to the Third Army, no joke, hundreds of times. I shouldn't admit this publicly, but sometimes I start my day with it to get me fired up. But at the end of the speech, he talks about he's like, listen, when you get home from this war, right, many years from now, you're going to be sitting there with your grandson on your lap and you're going to be able to tell him what you accomplished, right? He uses a different language. Patton uses vastly different language than what I just said there. But that's the general, like, like what he's appealing to. It's like, you know, you're making a sacrifice now as a young man. Just think of when you're old, like you survive and you're an older man and your grandson's sitting on your lap and you tell him that, you know, you rode with General Patton in the Third Army. This is what you accomplished.

Starting point is 00:22:30 Jeff Bezos also says this in Amazon. He's like, listen, we're trying to build something here, the building of Amazon, something that we can be proud of, so proud of that we're going to tell our grandchildren about it. And he says his follow up line to that is fantastic. He's like, such things are not meant to be easy. And so we see Napoleon's version of that here. He's appealing to their sense of pride and destiny. The fatherland has the right to expect great things of you. All of you wish to be able to stay with pride upon returning to your villages. I was part of that. It goes on. Napoleon took care to remain personally approachable by his soldiers. Napoleon ensured that everyone back home knew of

Starting point is 00:23:04 his exploits and appreciated his brilliance. This goes back to the stage, what they call it, stagecraft. This idea that he utilized all forms of media, controlled the message, make sure that his version of events got spread far and wide. And to accomplish this goal,

Starting point is 00:23:18 there's a great sentence here that just blew my mind. It says, Napoleon founded two French language newspapers to report on his conquest. I got, that's crazy says Napoleon founded two French language newspapers to report on his conquest. That's crazy. He founded two French language newspapers to report on his conquest. On the back cover of the book, they're describing another book that David Bell wrote. And I think it applies to this book too. It says he has a gift for storytelling and a flair for the weird, unfamiliar fact. I love the weird, unfamiliar facts. Those are the ones that you tend to remember. And so over the next several years, he has wild success.

Starting point is 00:23:50 But then we start to see, remember, he has a strategic, this like parabolic rise, and then this swift fall from power. And part of the problem was he started getting high on his own supply. So he winds up conquering Egypt. And listen to how he's talking. Napoleon was utterly entranced with Egypt. Here he was, not yet 30 years old, standing in triumph where Alexander and Caesar had stood before him. And this is what he said. In Egypt, I found myself freed from the obstacles of an irksome civilization. I was full of dreams. I saw myself

Starting point is 00:24:20 founding a religion, marching into Asia, riding an elephant. Already in his mind, he's passed from soldier to general to emperor, and now he is a godlike figure in his own mind. And so he goes back to France. They overthrow the government. He's going to be in charge. He's actually on a, it says they would replace the regime with three temporary executive, what they called councils. Napoleon is one of the three.

Starting point is 00:24:42 And it says these three men then oversaw the drafting of yet another constitution for the Battle of the Republic. The coup was the fourth coup in a little more than two years, yet no single political figure in France possessed anything like Napoleon's personal appeal and charisma. Napoleon was something new and the keenest observers understood it. And so they go more into detail about this part a few years after. And this is what I meant. One of his fatal flaws is getting high on his own supply. I'm going to pull out one sentence here that really jumped out at me. I'll get there in one second.

Starting point is 00:25:13 By the fall of 1799, the French had lived through a solid decade of revolutionary turmoil. Large-scale violence with a total death toll of more than 300,000, a change of regime nearly every year, repeated bouts of hyperinflation, and near economic collapse. Threats of foreign invasion. Napoleon, with his instinct and genius for propaganda, exploited his achievements for everything that they were worth.

Starting point is 00:25:36 Talked about spreading the message through poets, songwriters, painters, sculptors. The propaganda worked. And the problem was, the propaganda starts working on his own mind. And so he starts out as a revolutionary and then turns into a monarch. He insisted on yet another new constitution, the fifth in 11 years, which transformed him into consul for life and gave him the ability to choose his successor.

Starting point is 00:25:54 It was a clear move towards monarchy. And many times the author makes the point that Napoleon starts to, it's almost like Animal Farm by George Orwell, where what you're seeking to replace, you wind up morphing into over time. So it says, the regime he created between 1799 and 1804 was authoritarian, illiberal, and undemocratic. And another mention that he's getting high on his own supply, he had a self-confidence that had long ago passed the boundaries of hubris. And this is where he takes it one step further. He's like, well, I'm not going to be a king. I'm going to be an emperor. Napoleon took a step that forever changed his relationship to his country and to his image in history. He literally put a crown on his head. He became

Starting point is 00:26:32 not a king, but an emperor. It is worth remembering that even more than a decade after the French Revolution, Europe remained dominated by conservative monarchies. To have them treat him as an honorable equal, Napoleon genuinely believed that he had to become a monarch himself. And we already discussed the fact that Napoleon knew that symbolism was a very powerful thing. We also discussed the fact that he was a reader, an intense reader of history, constantly comparing himself to people like Caesar, Charlemagne, Alexander the Great. And we see that again when this coronation ceremony that he's placing for himself, he actually goes and gets a pope to play a role in the coronation. It says Pope Pius VII took part so as to highlight the

Starting point is 00:27:11 comparison Napoleon wanted to draw between himself and another emperor of the West, Charlemagne, who was crowned by a pope a thousand years before Napoleon. And so now that he's the emperor, listen to how he's talking, an empire was infinitely more expandable in ways that a nation state was not, signaling that Napoleon's ambitions as a conqueror had, with the resumption of war, increased by yet another degree of magnitude. As he would later confide, I wanted to rule the world. Who wouldn't have in my place? Amid the glitter of the coronation ceremony, this is very fascinating actually, amid the glitter of the coronation ceremony, this is very fascinating, actually. Amid the glitter of the coronation ceremony, one glimpse of the older, less pompous Napoleon could still be found. He turned to his brother Joseph and whispered, grinning, he was smiling

Starting point is 00:27:55 when he says this, if Papa could see us now, but in coming years, this older Napoleon would be seen less and less. And so there's just two paragraphs here. And really, what jumps out at me, there's two quotes I thought of. One, one of my favorite books, I can't believe I randomly, if I remember correctly, stumbled upon it in a bookstore. It is actually a, it's episode 251. It's called Ben Franklin and George Washington, the founding partnership, or Franklin and Washington, the founding partnership. And what was so interesting about it was a focus on the constant intersection of the lives between Ben Franklin and George Washington. And so there's something in,

Starting point is 00:28:31 there's a story in that book of this battle that George Washington was involved in in his early career that is gonna make me think about Napoleon picking a fight that he can't possibly win here. I'll get there in a minute. So it says, the fatal disadvantage France had at sea in comparison with Great Britain. Napoleon could build ships. He could put men in

Starting point is 00:28:48 sailor's uniforms. But developing a powerful navy required another ingredient, expertise. And here France fell terribly short. Even the lowest ranking sailor in the age of sail required far more skill and experience than an ordinary land soldier in order to serve effectively. Officers, so naval officers, required years of specialized training. British naval officers generally started when they were young boys. If you're an elephant, you can't jump in the ocean and think that you're going to beat them. France, with a far less developed maritime tradition, simply could not match the British in this crucial arena. And so this idea where you should only be competing or building a business around where you have an edge.

Starting point is 00:29:32 So there's actually the no left on that page. And then I'll get to the Washington and Franklin thing was something I learned from Ed Thorpe. This is all the way back on episode 222 in his fantastic autobiography, A Man for All Markets. And he talks about what he learned as 50 years as an entrepreneur and investor. And he says the surest ways to get rich is to play games, to play those games or make those investments where you have an edge. Napoleon and the French do not have an edge at sea against Britain. And what it made me think of was there's the American war with the Native Americans. So you have like the British

Starting point is 00:30:02 colonists at the time. This is before America was America. And they're fighting the Native Americans that are there. And I think at this time is happening. Washington is like 21 or 22 years old. And so he winds up surviving one of these battles, comes back and is telling the people, the British, the British are sending their soldiers over to fight the Native Americans. And they're in like full regalia. They're like marching through the woods. They're doing they're they're fighting wars as they fought in Europe. And Washington's like, you guys can't do that. They're like marching through the woods or doing their they're fighting wars as they fought in Europe. And Washington's like, you guys can't do that. You're going to die. This is a completely different game over here. You can't just say, hey, I'm good at European land warfare and I'm going to export it to the frontier of America at this point.

Starting point is 00:30:35 And so they don't heed his warnings and they get absolutely routed and destroyed. And there's a line in that book is just absolutely fantastic writing. And it reminds me to only compete where I have an edge. You might as well send a cow in pursuit of a rabbit. The Indians were accustomed to these woods. Can you build an edge and advantage over your competitors to the point where competing with you is so futile, is as futile as a cow pursuing a rabbit? Another tactic that Napoleon used a few times was that he would fake weakness to lure his competitor pursuing a rabbit. Another tactic that Napoleon used a few times

Starting point is 00:31:05 was that he would fake weakness to lure his competitor into a trap. Appear weak to conceal a strength. That's a very interesting idea. It was here that Napoleon won perhaps his most brilliant victory. After surveying the field the day before, he deliberately weakened his right flank

Starting point is 00:31:19 in the hope of drawing a massive attack by the Allies that would leave their center vulnerable. The next morning, the Allies took his bait. By the end of the day, the French had completed a ruthless, there's that word again, completed a ruthless destruction of the enemy forces. At this point in the story, he is 36 years old, and he is not concealing the fact that complete European domination is his goal. I must make all the peoples of Europe into a single people

Starting point is 00:31:46 and Paris the capital of the world. It was a stunning ambition. Napoleon is the opposite of most people. Most people put artificial limits, limits that don't actually exist on themselves in their lives. Napoleon appears to not believe he had any limits at all. In fact, it made me think of one of my favorite quotes by Bruce Lee. It used to be the wallpaper on my laptop. If you always put limits on everything you do, it will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only

Starting point is 00:32:13 plateaus and you must not stay there. You must go beyond them. And then what I found interesting is this is during his like rapid expansion. He's emperor. He's fighting wars on multiple fronts. But the author makes the point a few times that I think is important to like pause and really think about what he's saying here, because he mentions this over and over again, that things are not as they appear from the outside. We see this with large companies. They look like, oh, they can't possibly, they have so many resources. They have so many people they can't possibly be competed with or even overtaken. And the history of business and history of entrepreneurship is very clear about that.

Starting point is 00:32:44 As they grow, they get more bureaucratic. They open up a larger surface area for small, focused teams to attack. And so I just want to read this part, and then it brought to mind something I heard Jeff Bezos say that I think is really interesting. Impressive as it was from the outside, the empire was increasingly coming to resemble a skyscraper built in haste without a proper foundation. It did not help that Napoleon, after his victories of 1805 and 1806, felt himself virtually invincible. And what I thought of was like, well, you see this sometimes with companies where they grow so fast, but they're really, it's a shaky foundation. And one thing that history's greatest entrepreneurs have in common is the fact that they build for durability. They

Starting point is 00:33:24 want to build a company that is around for a long time. And so Jeff Bezos has this speech where he says, great things take time. He says, we know from our past experiences that big things start small. The biggest oak starts from an acorn. If you want to do anything new, you've got to be willing to let the acorn grow into a little sapling and then into a small tree. And then maybe one day it'll be a big business on its own. You can't skip steps. You have to put one foot in front of the other. Things take time. There are no shortcuts, but you want to do those steps with passion and ferocity. And so he's expanding way too fast. He's unbelievably arrogant. He thinks he's going to be emperor of the entire

Starting point is 00:34:02 world. And then you add on another disadvantage. And all these disadvantages are going to compound. In the next five years, he's going to be thrown out of when his fall happens. And one of the disadvantages is his physical decline. This physical decline is, I'll read you quotes in a few minutes, this physical decline directly leads to his downfall later on. You have to take care of your body. You have to take care of your health. Larry Miller, episode 168, he wrote this fantastic autobiography as he was dying. His body was literally shutting down as he's writing the book.

Starting point is 00:34:35 It's called Driven, an Autobiography. I think everybody should listen to episode 168 because it's a cautionary tale. It's what happens when you don't take care of your health. You don't have any fun. You prioritize work over personal relationships, and you're one of the richest people. And in fact, I think he might have been the richest person in the state of Utah at the time he's writing the book. And yet he's like, hey, don't do what I did. That's a crazy story. Like that book is absolutely, it's a must read in my opinion. But anyways, this idea of you have to take care of your health. Napoleon was now 40 years old and was growing slower. The once nervously thin revolutionary was getting stout and he suffered from increasingly severe urinary infections and possible pituitary disorder, as well as what might

Starting point is 00:35:11 have been mild epileptic fits. And a few pages later, the author brings up this idea. It's like, hey, this is a shaky from the outside. It looks like the empire is formidable. It's actually on shaky ground. And you really think about what's happening. It's like, one is formidable. It's actually on shaky ground. And you really think about what's happening. It's like, one, he's creating something that's too large to manage, right? And then he's becoming more like what he replaced. This reminded me of how startups, successful startups, then eventually transform into large, bloated companies.

Starting point is 00:35:40 And then eventually they're overtaken by a startup. And the cycle just goes on and on and on. And we're just kind of replaying old ideas and old scenarios over and over again with new generations. So it says the empire was continuing to expand. The need to mobilize even larger populations to staff and supply the ever more bloated armies fed the unsteady expansion of the area under direct imperial control. Napoleon's system was springing new holes faster than he could plug them. However large and powerful his empire looked from the outside, and however great the conquest it was already trying to digest, it was certain that wars would continue. And oh my goodness, on the next few pages is the

Starting point is 00:36:18 most highlights and notes that I have for the entire book. And this is where he decides to invade Russia. And so the first note I have is poor reading comprehension. Do not get high off your own supply. It is not you. It is the work. So what does that mean? What did I read to spawn that thought? When Napoleon crossed into Russian territory,

Starting point is 00:36:38 he brought along some potentially disturbing reading. Voltaire's History of Charles VII. It told the story of a king of Sweden, the most admired military leader of his time, which is exactly what Napoleon is at this point in his life, right? Who had invaded Russia a century before. But Charles' army, weakened by disease and sheer exhaustion after an 18-month trek through hostile territory, came to grief in the decisive battle, which proved so disastrous that it sealed Sweden's decline as a military power. Presumably, Napoleon took Voltaire's work with him, or book with him,

Starting point is 00:37:11 in the hope of avoiding Charles' mistakes. At one point, early in the campaign, he told an aide, we shall not repeat the folly of Charles VII, but he does, that's what I meant by poor reading comprehension, but in the end, he proved a very bad reader. Second mistake, do not give your competition time to prepare. Bad boys move in silence. Unfortunately, Napoleon had given the Russians a long time to prepare. As early as 1810, so that's what, two, two and a half years before he invades, right? As early as 1810, they had foreseen the coming invasion and pondered the most likely means of defeating it.

Starting point is 00:37:49 Note number three, do not let other people dictate your game. If it's good for your competitors, avoid it. What does that mean? The Russians wrote a planning memo. The key to defeating Napoleon, they said, was to plan and pursue a war exactly contrary to what the enemy wants. In other words, to avoid the sort of major battle that could destroy the Russian army. This is what they do instead. There's a fantastic, it's remarkable how many times this repeats. So you got Charles VII, 100 years earlier, running into the same tactics. Then you have Napoleon in the 19, what is this? Excuse me, 1812. Dan Carlin of Hardcore History has a fantastic podcast called The Ghost of Ausfront. Very similar tactics that the Russians used on the Germans in World War II as well. And so what did they do? Instead of direct combat,

Starting point is 00:38:30 right, the goal was gaining time and drawing out the war as long as possible. If Napoleon came, the Russians would retreat into the depths of their vast country, destroying supplies as they went. And the Russians had competent commanders, including the legendary 66-year-old Mikhail. There's no way, you know, I'm not pronouncing the same correctly. I'm just going to call him Mikhail. So he's 66 years old. He's, first of all, successful and survived. So you know he has something like there's knowledge in his head, even though the fact that he took a bullet to the head.

Starting point is 00:38:59 Despite the fact that a musket ball had passed clean through his head nearly 40 years before. He had formidable tactical skills. Note number four. This is all on the same page. This is remarkable. Napoleon went from being young, quick, and agile to old, fat, and slow. Businesses do this too. Napoleon faced other obstacles. The very size of his army made it harder for him to control and maneuver than the forces he had commanded earlier in his career. The problems of ruling a huge and troubled empire pressed in on him, distracting him from the campaign. Another note I left on the other page, the distracted do not beat the focused. That's not going to happen. And his health hobbled him more and more. This is what I mentioned earlier. You got to take care of your

Starting point is 00:39:40 health that this these disadvantages are going to compound and lead to his downfall. And his health hobbled him more and more. Napoleon was virtually incapacitated in several battles against the Russians. The weather finally posed a variety of problems from the start. Dan Garland in that fantastic podcast series, The Ghost of Osfront, talks about they call the Russian winter General Winter. They thought it was one of their best military assets, the fact that it was just so cold there. Back to this idea that Napoleon went from being young, quick, and agile to old, fat, and slow. So he finally confronts the main Russian force. He was shaking with fever and urinary pain. He remained behind the lines and directed his

Starting point is 00:40:19 forces with a caution that the younger Napoleon would have scorned. After that battle, the French march into Moscow and find it largely deserted. Between disease and death, Napoleon had already caution that the younger Napoleon would have scorned. After that battle, the French march into Moscow and find it largely deserted. Between disease and death, Napoleon had already lost more than a third of his men. The Russians also light fire to Moscow. On purpose, the fire left Moscow uninhabitable, forcing the French army to withdraw. Napoleon made the matters much worse by delaying the army's departure for nearly a month, believing his men had plenty of time before winter set in. Instead, one of the coldest winters on record began earlier than usual. This is crazy. Temperatures fell to lower than 35 degrees below zero. The French retreat from Moscow has deservedly gone

Starting point is 00:40:54 down in history as one of the greatest military catastrophes of all time. Napoleon's forces were ill-prepared for the murderous cold. This is the crazy thing that I thought of when I got to this part and annoyed myself. It's's like success is never permanent. Think about this. The same person that built the empire destroyed it. And so let's go into a description of the murderous cold. Frostbite seized appendages. Snow glare induced temporary blindness.

Starting point is 00:41:18 Each morning the sun rose on the frost covered corpses of men who had fallen asleep and frozen solid in the night. Horses dead and living were devoured raw, while desperate soldiers sought warmth in the animals' eviscerated bellies. Of the original 650,000-strong force, barely 85,000 men made it back out of Russia. Napoleon's aura of invincibility had disappeared. And eventually, Napoleon is forcibly removed from power, and we see by his actions that if you love what you do, the only exit strategy is death. Napoleon now had no choice but to abdicate unconditionally. A few days later, seized by despair, he tried to kill himself by swallowing a sachet of poison he had carried with him since the Russian campaign. But the drugs had lost their potency and succeeded only in making him violently ill.

Starting point is 00:42:15 The former master of total war had finally become its victim. Yet he still had one act to perform, his most remarkable of all, the Hundred Days. Less than a year after leaving France, Napoleon would return in secret, rally his supporters, and seize power for a second time. He would restore the empire, resuscitate his grand army, and march across the frontier to confront his enemies. Only after his defeat at Waterloo would his fall from power become permanent. And that is where I'll leave it for the full story. I highly recommend picking up this wonderfully concise biography.

Starting point is 00:42:52 You can read it in a weekend. If you buy the book using the link that's in the show notes in your podcast player, you'll be supporting this podcast at the same time. If you haven't yet signed up for Founders Premium, I'm making AMA episodes on this private podcast feed. I'm recording the fourth one that should be out a few days after you hear this.

Starting point is 00:43:07 And you can access those episodes by using the link that's in the show notes, your podcast player and available at founderspodcast.com. If you want to join my free email newsletter where I email my top 10 highlights of every book that I read, that link is also down below and available at founderspodcast.com.

Starting point is 00:43:23 That is 294 books down, 1,000 to go. And I'll talk to you again soon.

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Founders - #294 Napoleon

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