Two hundred years ago, the 5 may 1821, died, on the island of Sant'Elena, Napoleon Bonaparte. It is enough to look at a geographical map to realize that from that rock lost in the middle of the Atlantic the French Emperor had no chance of repeating the escape he had made from Elba, where he had been confined after his first fall in 1814 On that occasion, his return to France, from the landing onwards, had been a triumphal journey towards Paris. The troops sent by Louis XVIII to stop him went over to his side.
After defeating him a Waterloo the British, his implacable enemies, hadn't wanted to take any chances. in Saint Helena – under close surveillance – Napoleon stayed for well six years before returning the soul to the "Massimo Fattor". Legends have been built around his death, and have remained so. Years after his remains were repatriated with all honors. The funeral services, on December 15, 1840, were an apotheosis. The remains were interred in Paris at "Les Invalides".
Napoleon represents in the collective memory the example of Size of which the DNA of the French is imbued. True military genius, his career was accompanied by victories that went down in history. But the defeats were devastating. In 1805, in the battle of Trafalgar, the English fleet, under the leadership of Horace Nelson, reconfirmed his dominion over the seas by inflicting a defeat on Napoleon's fleet from which he never recovered. But the real disaster was the Russian campaign, begun in 1812 with an army of 500 men, of which only 12 returned home.
An endless series of books have been written about Napoleon, hundreds of films made. The greatest actors in the history of cinema have given their faces to the Emperor. The effigy of him "dazzling in throne" is shown off in an unspecified number of portraits and paintings in which his victorious battles and the glories of his empire are illustrated. Up to the solitude of Sant'Elena, with one's gaze turned to the impassable horizon of the ocean.
In unfortunate times of cancel culture even in France (albeit without the idiotic extremism of the Anglo-Saxon countries) it was questioned, just in view of the anniversary, the greatness of Napoleon. Indeed, today's revisionists have discovered hot water. Alessandro Manzoni – “struck and astonished” by the announcement of Napoleon's death – had already asked himself the crucial question: “Was it true glory? Posterity will judge". In fact, only decades if not centuries later is it possible to give a serene judgment of a personality who upset the course of "two centuries armed against each other".
The Emperor of the French he was certainly a warmonger, responsible for the death and suffering of many soldiers (millions?) from France and other opposing countries. It was a nepotist because he placed his family on a throne (moreover without receiving gratitude in return, because many of them did not hesitate to abandon him in disgrace). Of course he was too a male chauvinist, a molester: attitudes considered today among the most serious to the point of leading to the uncovering of tombs, desecrating statues, macerating books.
Judging the protagonists of history, one should know how to distinguish between what, in their actions, was the child of their time and what served to carry forward – albeit amid a thousand contradictions – the progress of humanity. Napoleon was not only the one who liquid - with the Napoleon Code from 1805 – the residues of feudalism and the ancien régime, thus guaranteeing the development of free trade and the affirmation of new legal relationships between people. We cannot forget that the principles of the French Revolution, the republican ideals, also traveled with the Armies of the Grand Corso, while the regimes of Absolutism collapsed.
His enemies didn't just form coalitions and field armies to defeat him militarily. But they wanted to cancel the systems that had arisen following his victories. The Congress of Vienna redrew the map of Europe according to the principles of the Restoration, Legitimism and Absolutism. While the first "carbonara" conspiracies and uprisings were organized by people who inspired their action to the values that the French armies had disseminated throughout the Old Continent. Another Napoleon (in this case III) - incidentally - had a significant role in contributing to the unification of Italy.
