Napoleon's personality and interesting facts. Napoleon Bonaparte: interesting facts. Napoleon Bonaparte interesting facts
12.09.2017
Napoleon is one of the most significant names in history. Everyone must have heard a lot about Napoleon Bonaparte, but there are also a number of facts that are not told to anyone in history lessons in schools.
Napoleon Bonaparte tops the short list of people who are most responsible for how the modern world came to be. On May 18, 1804, this medium-sized man rose from a small artillery officer from a remote island to the rank of emperor, which Europeans had not enjoyed since Roman times.
His years of rule dramatically changed European politics, from obeying the code of new laws set out in the Napoleonic Code to which side of the streets traffic would take place in most of Europe. Before Napoleon, the whole world lived by its own rules, after him it was completely different.
Scientists interested in the history of Napoleon's life were able to find strange and even unusual things and moments from his biography, we will consider them in more detail.
Napoleon wrote his novel
About a year before the coup and the establishment of the dictatorship, Napoleon wrote his first novel, which he called Clisson et Eugénie (Clisson and Eugenie). The novel tells the story of an army officer who fell in love with the girl of his dreams and quickly married her.
However, military duty obliges officer Clisson to come out of retirement in order to go to serve at the front. His wife Eugenie does not waste any time - she is cheating on him with his best friend. Upon learning this, Clisson simply gives up, and he decides to die the death of a hero in battle. The complete book was not published until after Napoleon's death.
Napoleon could have died exploring the shores of Australia
In 1785, Napoleon was about to sail around the world under the command of Jean-Francois de Galaup, Comte de Laperouse. Shortly before the start of the French Revolution, La Perouse combined two ships to explore the coasts of Australia, the Solomon Islands, Alaska and California.
La Perouse approved a team of 220 people for his voyage, but Napoleon was not included in this list of participants due to his missing the last training camp. Napoleon was taken by surprise by the refusal, because he was really good at mathematics, was the best student in the military academy class in artillery and had almost professional skills in sailing.
Another surprise for Napoleon was prepared by the news that reached France a few years later - the La Perouse expedition disappeared without a trace. It is likely that both ships of the expedition in 1788 were found on a coral reef. None of La Perouse's crews ever returned home.
Napoleon had an ear for music
Many people have ear problems, but when you are the absolute ruler of France, you can do whatever you want and no one can tell you to stop doing it.
According to numerous sources, Napoleon had no ear for music at all - whenever he was irritable or nervous, he hummed a strange tune that was like a mixture of muttering and buzzing. His good friend Betsy Balcombe wrote in her diary: “When Bonaparte was nervous, he became too irritable - he began to abstract and walk around the room singing rather strange songs, and these cases were far from isolated. How many times I tried to understand what he sings or what melody he sings, I never succeeded. Yes, Napoleon, most likely, was simply not destined to become a musician.
Napoleon was a card cheat
Napoleon Bonaparte was a skilled general and his reputation made him a genius on the battlefield among other generals. However, like most "geniuses", his success was more than just an innate skill - success was a hoax.
His strategy, which he developed to find the enemy's weak points and exploit all available advantages, was little used during his exile on the Elbe, where he turned it into a chronic cheat in card games with his companions.
According to a lady who knew him at the time:
“When Napoleon realized that he was starting to lose at cards, he would not hesitate to deceive his opponents, and when everyone began to recognize the deception, Napoleon swept all the money from the table into his pockets and left. In most cases, when another game was scheduled that day, he gave all the money he had taken to his valet the next day to distribute to the owners.
Why are Napoleon's hands always shown hidden in his pockets?
No image of Napoleon is complete without understanding his pose for portraits. Put one foot forward, turn three-quarters of a turn to the side and insert your right hand into your pocket, and, voila, you are in the pose of Napoleon Bonaparte himself.
The chosen pose for most of the portraits of Napoleon is not a whim of the artists. Napoleon himself always chose one single pose. Hidden hands in pockets tell us that Napoleon was unusually vain, and he always kept his hands in his pockets out of habit to keep them warm and safe.
According to Betsy, the same young woman who tried to come to terms with his singing, Napoleon's hands were very beautiful, his knuckles dimpled like a child's, and his fingers were beautifully shaped and tapered subtly to the nails, which were also perfect.
Napoleon was a pimp
When he did not hide his hands in his pockets, Napoleon was dangerous to be around. According to the memoirs of Constant Vairy, who spent a lot of time surrounded by the emperor during his time in power, Napoleon "in moments of his good mood" could easily pinch various intimate places of the people around him - nose, ears and others.
Others have written that Napoleon pinched women's noses as a prank, pulled back the cheeks of friends until they were on the verge of tears, and even pulled on the chins of babies until he was repelled by the mothers of the children.
Napoleon survived two suicide attempts
Great people are often out of control, and Napoleon was no exception. Bonaparte, as emperor, often flew into a rage, sometimes throwing heavy objects at his ministers and other subordinates. These attacks began to bring even more destruction after his fate changed significantly, and the countries of Europe began to oppose him. It seems that the fear of defeat was fatal to him.
During his time in power, Napoleon was within seconds of committing suicide a couple of times. The first time was opium, which he usually carried in a vial around his neck. He appears to have taken a lethal dose in 1812 after the Cossacks seized the imperial territories during the Russian campaign.
After a crushing defeat in Russia and a disastrous final battle that resulted in all of the emperor's enemies gathering together and attacking his retreating army—Napoleon decided it was time to end his suffering and took several times more opium than the previous time. However, Napoleon had taken opium before, only in small doses for many years, and after the last dose, which, in his opinion, should have brought eternal rest, it instead brought him only health complications.
Later, on the Elbe, he also tried to commit another suicide with a pistol, but his faithful servant managed to pour out the gunpowder and the shot did not happen.
The name of Napoleon Bonaparte became a household name not only due to his intelligence and military talent, but also due to the incredible ambitions, as well as the fast and dizzying career of its owner. Having begun military service at the age of 16, after a series of brilliant victories, at the age of 24 he already becomes a general, and at 34 an emperor. Also, among the features and skills of Bonaparte, there were many extraordinary ones. It is believed that he read at a tremendous speed - about two thousand words per minute, could sleep for two to three hours a day for a long time, and remembered thousands of soldiers by name.
Napoleon was very embarrassed by his small stature and loose, effeminate physique. As a result of such an inferiority complex in his headquarters, all the officers were undersized and well-fed, and tall and slender fellows had no chance of making a career.
During the wedding night of Napoleon and Josephine, the young people were so carried away that Josephine's dog thought that her mistress had been attacked, broke into the bedroom and bit Napoleon on the leg.
There is a known case when Napoleon found a sleeping soldier at his post, and instead of putting him on trial, he himself took the sleeping weapon and replaced him at his post. Such an act testifies not so much to kindness as to an outstanding mind and sober calculation - acts of this kind help to quickly and permanently gain popularity among the soldiers.
During the Egyptian campaign, Napoleon completely unexpectedly abandons his army and hastily returns to Paris. He brings with him a giant statue of Set, which, as it was believed, opens the way for its owner to unlimited power. An interesting fact is that during the war of 1812, when the statue was transported along the Seine, an accident occurred and the statue drowned. Chronologically, it was after this event that the turning point in the war came and Napoleon began to rapidly lose his influence and power.
Another interesting fact is connected with the war in Russia in the life of Napoleon. One day, after watching the play "Oedipus" with Tsar Alexander I, Napoleon went to bed, but the night turned out to be terrible. He dreamed of a huge bear tearing open his chest and devouring his insides. Years later, the dream was remembered, and it became clear that the dream plot with Russia the bear turned out to be prophetic.
It is a well-known fact that Napoleon was poisoned with arsenic. But were they poisoned? At that time, arsenic was used quite widely for both industrial and medical purposes. It is possible that Napoleon simply became a victim of charlatans or conscientiously mistaken doctors who prescribed drugs containing arsenic to him. Another version suggests that Napoleon was afraid that he would be poisoned, and, in accordance with the popular theory of the time, voluntarily took small doses of arsenic in order to develop immunity to the poison. Naturally, such a procedure would inevitably end tragically.
Napoleon wasn't just another crazy dictator who wanted to control all of Europe, although of course you have every reason to think so. In fact, Napoleon was a much more complex person than you were told in class at school. Among other things, he helped the conquered states to embark on the path of democracy, and also gave his descendants the opportunity to rule a renewed and expanded empire. He passionately loved his wife Josephine, but left her in order to marry a young lady of royal blood, who could give him the heirs that the empire so needed. Although he treated his second wife with kindness and understanding, during his exile on Elba, he resorted to threats to kidnap her when she refused to join him. Below you will learn about ten more interesting and exciting facts from the life of this incredible man.
10 Napoleon's Real Name Was Different
At birth, he was given the Corsican name Napoleone di Buonaparte. But since Corsica had been part of France for a year at the time of his birth, that was enough to change the course of history. In his early twenties, Napoleon changed his name and surname to sound closer to the French, being completely absorbed in dreams of a military career. However, this did not allow him to escape being reminded of his origins, and nicknames such as "the little Corsican" and "the Corsican dictator" haunted him for the rest of his life.
9. He knew next to nothing about tactics
Napoleon did not become a military genius overnight - he had to study long and hard. At the age of nine, Napoleon entered a religious school in mainland France to learn French. He later went to the military school in Brienne, where he spent five years studying before he was able to get into the military academy of Paris. After his father's death, Napoleon's family fell into poverty and he was able to complete the two-year training program in just one year to save money. He became the first Corsican who managed to graduate from the Military Academy.
8. Napoleon was an ardent nationalist, but not in favor of France
From 1789 to 1793, Napoleon officially supported the Corsican revolutionaries in their struggle against French domination, despite the fact that he himself was an officer in the French army at that time. It was a rather difficult situation as the French Revolution broke out in 1789. In Corsica, three sides fought among themselves at once: royalists, revolutionaries and Jacobins, whom Napoleon supported. He even managed for some time to lead an uprising against the French army, but after a quarrel with one of the leaders of Corsica, he moved to France and abandoned this business. He later wrote the following about it: “When the nation perished, I was born. 30,000 Frenchmen were thrown up on our shores, drowning the throne of freedom in waves of blood. This hideous sight was the first thing I saw."
7. Napoleon was still young when he became famous
Napoleon's military career developed quite rapidly. In 1795, he saved the government from counter-revolutionary forces, thanks to which he was immediately promoted and was appointed commander of the internal troops and military adviser. And he was only 26 years old. The following year, he was given command of the army of Italy (don't let the name fool you - the army had nothing to do with territorial Italy). Napoleon quickly corrected this misunderstanding with the name, scoring a number of key victories against the Habsburgs. The victories brought him great fame and power in France. Returning there, he managed to launch two new newspapers and even stage his first coup d'état in 1797, which was aimed at destroying the remaining royalists in the government.
6. Napoleon's supposed small stature was just a product of British propaganda.
During the time of Napoleon, France used a unit of length called the "royal foot". It was equal to the length of the leg of the king, who at the moment was at the throne. According to this system of measurement, Napoleon's height was 5 feet 6 inches, which, translated into British feet, was 5 feet and 3 and a half inches. However, the average height of the French in those days was just the same 5 feet 3 inches, so Napoleon was even slightly taller than the average resident of France. Napoleon's small stature was just British propaganda, representing him as a little man, always angry because nature had deprived him of his high stature.
5. No one can say exactly how Napoleon died.
Ever since 1821, the year of Napoleon's death, there have been two different opinions about exactly how he died. Some believe that he was poisoned by Count Montolon, who poured arsenic on him. This opinion is confirmed by the fact that when his body was transported in 1840, it turned out to be in surprisingly good condition, and arsenic is one of the well-known preservatives. But after samples of his hair were tested for arsenic, the results were extremely inconclusive. Traces of arsenic, which was used in the manufacture of rat poison, were found in his hair, but St. Helena at that time was suffering from an invasion of rats, and could easily be poisoned by them. Another opinion cites autopsy results, signed by at least seven doctors, which state that Napoleon died of stomach cancer. The history of his family also proves the correctness of this theory: Napoleon's grandfather, father, his brother Lucien and his three sisters died of stomach cancer.
4. He managed to write a short romantic story
His story, Clisson and Eugenie, has clear parallels with his real life, when he had a romantic relationship with a woman named Eugenia Clari, also known under the pseudonym Desiree. In Napoleon's story, a war-weary French revolutionary soldier meets and falls in love with Eugenia in a public bath. After Clisson leaves the service, she and Evgenia get married and become parents. After some time, the war comes to their peaceful corner, and Clisson feels obliged to stand up for the homeland. During one of the battles, Clisson is wounded and he sends his comrade to Eugenia with a request to give her a letter. Instead, he seduces her and she stops writing letters to Clisson. Heartbroken, Clisson writes a final letter to his unfaithful wife and her new lover, and deliberately steps out into enemy fire to finally die. In reality, Desiree went much further than her book character. By marrying a former French general who was awarded the title of heir to the Swedish throne, she became Queen of Norway and Sweden.
3. We were only able to learn hieroglyphs because Napoleon wanted to take over Egypt.
Napoleon's expedition to Egypt brought scientists a magnificent discovery - the famous Rosetta Stone with three identical texts in different languages. It was he who helped scientists decipher the inscriptions made during the time of Ancient Egypt. Unfortunately for Napoleon, the British recaptured Egypt in 1801. The French general Menou tried to defend his rights to the Rosetta stone, trying to smuggle it with him to France. However, the stone went to the British, as they were the winning side.
2. He believed that his touch could heal the sick
Once Napoleon visited soldiers suffering from the plague during the siege of a city in Syria to dispel rumors that he allegedly poisoned them (yes, even in those days there were conspiracy theorists). Thus, Napoleon ended up in a local hospital to kill two birds with one stone: to convince the soldiers of his innocence and cheer them up by showing that the plague is not so terrible, since he, their commander, is not afraid to get infected. At the same time, the famous picture was painted, which depicts Napoleon touching the sick and dying and imitating the gestures of healers.
1. Napoleon loved cats
You must have heard that Napoleon was mortally afraid of cats. In fact, everything was not so. It was his nephew, Napoleon III, who suffered from ailurophobia, and not at all the great emperor. Our Napoleon was rather superstitious, and, like many Europeans, he believed that black cats bring misfortune. What's more, during his time in exile on St. Helena, Napoleon adopted a kitten, whom he named Ben. Ben and Napoleon were inseparable and spent a lot of time together. Thus, one of the greatest conquerors in history was a true cat lover and romantic writer.
There were few rumors about Napoleon Bonaparte, some of which are fiction, while others are true. Napoleon is a man of power. He sought to achieve his goals by any goals, because of which he made many enemies. Even during his lifetime, Bonaparte was composed of many legends in order to spoil his personality. It was not difficult then to “get to” the truth, but in our time it is much more difficult to distinguish a “fairy tale” from reality.
Napoleon is a writer?
There were rumors that the ruler had written his own novel. This is not entirely true.
Napoleon wrote only a story, consisting of 9 pages. This work is called Clissant and Eugenie. Moreover, the emperor was not going to advertise his work. He only shared his story with his close people, who subsequently smashed his work to the masses. Historians claim that he dedicated this story to Dame Eugenie Desiree Klarn, with whom he was in love. True, the emperor did not have a long relationship with this lady, as a result of which everything resulted in such a literary work.
Bonaparte could have become a writer, he had the makings of it. At an early age, he already aspired to write his own works. And at the age of 17, he even took one of them to the publishing house. True, when the publishing house became interested in his talent, Napoleon was no longer interested in the career of a literary creator - he became an officer. Also, somehow the ruler sent his work to the competition of the Lyon Academy. At first, no one was interested in his work, but when Napoleon became an illustrious officer, the academy returned his copy of his work. Bonaparte, without thinking for a long time, threw it into the trash, believing that writing was just a mistake of the past.
Emperor's Water Adventures
Together with his army, the emperor in 1798 went through Egypt to Syria. Passing near the wells of Moses, Napoleon decided to visit one of them, since the Red Sea was at low tide and the weather was calm. When it was already evening and it was necessary to return back, the sea began to rage. It was impossible to find the right way under the night light. The water enveloped any sign of the road that the army had taken to this place. Then Bonaparte came up with a cunning plan. He was surrounded by an army in such a way that water practically did not fall on the emperor. The soldiers moved forward in a “circle” until the sea knocked them down and forced them to swim. In general, no one was hurt as a result of this story. The soldiers escaped with only wet uniforms. Napoleon himself did not consider such a trip a mistake of his curiosity, and later he even somehow joked that if the army and its ruler had not been able to get out of the Red Sea, the priests would have praised God for such a noble act.
Napoleon and the "attack" on the Sphinx
There was a legend that when the emperor's army was in Egypt and practiced firing from cannons, due to inattention, the shot hit the statue of the sphinx, as a result of which it destroyed its nose. Naturally, this legend is a miserable fiction. In 1755, a certain Frederick Louis Nordin had already provided a drawing that the statue had no nose. And such a journey of the emperor with his army took place at the end of the 17th century.
Moreover, this legend "spread" relatively recently - in the twentieth century, but historians and researchers quickly refuted it.
“We don’t take the wounded with us!”
During the battles on Jaffa in Egypt, Napoleon's army was defeated, so the emperor decided to retreat. And what is most interesting, he sent all the wounded forward. Some of the wounded were infected with the plague, so there was no chance of their salvation, moreover, they could infect other soldiers. Bonaparte understood that if the tormented soldiers were left now, they would soon be captured by the Turks. To prevent this from happening, the emperor turned to the doctor Janet, so that he would save them from torment. But the doctor refused to "finish off" the soldiers. The ruler also did not want to leave the wounded soldiers, so he remained along with his rest of the army next to Jaffa.
Who would have thought that because of what happened, Bonaparte would seriously damage his reputation. There were a lot of rumors about how cruelly the emperor treated his soldiers. Moreover, even many French residents believed in this myth. No matter how hard the emperor tried, he never managed to convince anyone that he had not poisoned any of his soldiers, even soldiers who had the plague.
“Where is the Egyptian ruler?”
According to legend, in 1940, the cleaners of the museum in Paris, because of their illiteracy, simply lowered the ashes of Cleopatra into the sewer. This ashes, according to history, was owned by the emperor of France himself. But in this story there is one snag - the grave of Cleopatra. Not a single museum has it, and at the same time it has not been lost in any museum. Initially, it simply didn’t exist, so it’s even impossible to boldly say that at the moment it exists at all, or existed in 1940.
Also, the legend is connected with the fact that there were rumors about the looting of Bonaparte's army in Egypt. In reality, the emperor did not rob anything. He only sent a team of scientists to Egypt in order for them to study various artifacts and monuments. Of course, the French ruler failed to conquer this state, but after what happened, many other countries began to take an interest in Egypt. Consequently, the robberies began around this period. True, France did not even have anything to do with them, but for some reason all the blame was laid on Bonaparte.
"Prophetic dream" of a soldier
The legend says that before the battle of Marenko, General Henri Christian Michel de Stengel turned to Napoleon. The general went to the ruler and told him about his terrible dream, in which tomorrow he would die in a fierce battle at the hands of a Croatian soldier. Stengel asked Napoleon to personally save him from the death of the enemy, that is, kill him personally. The emperor, of course, refused his request. The next day, Bonaparte learned that the general had been killed by a Croatian soldier. Because of what happened, Napoleon could not forget the prophetic dream of his subject for the rest of his life, and this incident did not allow him to find peace until his death.
True, Stengel was killed four years before the battle of Marengo, in Mondovi. And this fact refutes the rest of the story. Moreover, they also said that the last words of Napoleon were associated with the deceased general. However, no, not a single historian can say with accuracy what the emperor said before his death, and there are disputes about this to this day. It is possible that before his death, the emperor turned to his other generals, and not specifically to Stengel. But even if he uttered words related specifically to this general, then there is nothing surprising, because Bonaparte was delirious before his death.
"Family Misunderstandings"
The emperor's wife, Josephine de Beauharnais, had a daughter, Hortense. For Napoleon, she became beloved and dear, only the Bonaparte family did not treat such an unexpected daughter of Napoleon very well. And in order to destroy this hostility, Beauharnais decided that Hortense should marry Louis, the son of the French ruler. At first, Bonaparte was against such actions, but later agreed. True, it was already too late, the love feelings between Louis and Hortensia faded away, and no one was going to force them to marry. Josephine hoped that if the son of Bonaparte and her daughter had a child, then he could become Napoleon's heir.
As a result of such confusion around the emperor's family, at least a lot of rumors began related to the fact that Hortense's child was from Napoleon. And that Bonaparte's wife herself advocated such a relationship. Moreover, even some people from the emperor's family sought to bring these rumors to the masses.
"Napoleon's New Life"
In 1815, Napoleon was sent to Saint Helena. And according to history, he did not leave this island until his death. But after almost a century, a man named M. Omersa began to assert that with a high probability, it was not a French ruler who lived in it, but a man who looked like Napoleon. According to him, Bonaparte grew a beard and went to Verona, where he lived a quiet life. And once, in an attempt to see his son, the guards shot the emperor, and, of course, none of the guards could even imagine that he had killed the French ruler himself. It is impossible to refute this legend with accuracy, because there are no facts that would definitely confirm the presence of the emperor on the island of St. Helena. But the doubt lies in the fact that the story says that Napoleon stayed on the island for six whole years. Is it really possible, even for a talented "actor", to play the role of Napoleon for such a period?
"The sweet death"
Many legends and rumors were spread by propagandists in order to inspire fierce hatred for Napoleon Bonaparte in society. Many of these legends perished before they began to exist, while some believe in others to this day.
The essence of one such legend is that once a subject of the emperor prepared him poisoned coffee. However, Napoleon's cook noticed that the woman had mixed something into his drink, so he suggested that he give up coffee. The emperor himself decided to verify this in a cruel way. He invited a subject and ordered her to drink coffee. She drank, and before her death admitted that she really tried to poison the emperor due to the fact that when she was still young, Napoleon "took advantage" of her.
There are a lot of stories about women rejected by Napoleon and how they tried to take revenge on him. But a few of them are true. This story is, of course, fiction.
The topic of "Napoleon Bonaparte" is very extensive. Almost any researcher of the life of this outstanding person finds something new for himself. The main thing is the ability to separate the facts from life from the gossip of ill-wishers and the intrigues of enemies.
Family
In fact, the parents of the future emperor of the French can be considered not very wealthy peasants, but having a noble coat of arms. Briefly about the family and Napoleon, we can say the following:
Indisputable is the genius of Napoleon Bonaparte as a military leader and political figure, who made a lot of efforts to achieve success:
Many legends, gossip and speculation are associated with the life of most famous people. Especially many myths were invented about Napoleon Bonaparte, and among them it is already difficult to distinguish truth from lies:
Interesting facts about Napoleon Bonapartin end with his death. The burial place in 1821 of the emperor of France until 1840 was guarded by English sentries. 19 years after his death, his sealed three-layer lead coffin was opened. The clothes of the deceased practically decayed, and the body almost did not rot. Maybe because arsenic is a good preservative?