Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures
- List of Maps
- List of Tables
- List of Contributors
- Preface
- List of Abbreviations
- Part I Introduction
- Part II Empires and Bureaucracy in World-Historical Perspective
- Part III From Late Antiquity to the Middle Ages
- Part IV From the Age of European Expansion to the End of Empires
- 12 Magistrates to Administrators, Composite Monarchy to Fiscal-Military Empire: Empire and Bureaucracy in the Spanish Monarchy, c.1492–1825
- 13 Britain's Overseas Empire before 1780: Overwhelmingly Successful and Bureaucratically Challenged
- 14 ‘Les Enfants du Siècle’: An Empire of Young Professionals and the Creation of a Bureaucratic, Imperial Ethos in Napoleonic Europe
- 15 Bureaucracy, Power and Violence in Colonial India: The Role of Indian Subalterns
- 16 From Chief to Technocrat: Labour and Colonial Authority in Post–World War II Africa
- 17 The Unintended Consequences of Bureaucratic ‘Modernization’ in Post–World War II British Africa
- Part V Afterword
- Index
14 - ‘Les Enfants du Siècle’: An Empire of Young Professionals and the Creation of a Bureaucratic, Imperial Ethos in Napoleonic Europe
from Part IV - From the Age of European Expansion to the End of Empires
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2016
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures
- List of Maps
- List of Tables
- List of Contributors
- Preface
- List of Abbreviations
- Part I Introduction
- Part II Empires and Bureaucracy in World-Historical Perspective
- Part III From Late Antiquity to the Middle Ages
- Part IV From the Age of European Expansion to the End of Empires
- 12 Magistrates to Administrators, Composite Monarchy to Fiscal-Military Empire: Empire and Bureaucracy in the Spanish Monarchy, c.1492–1825
- 13 Britain's Overseas Empire before 1780: Overwhelmingly Successful and Bureaucratically Challenged
- 14 ‘Les Enfants du Siècle’: An Empire of Young Professionals and the Creation of a Bureaucratic, Imperial Ethos in Napoleonic Europe
- 15 Bureaucracy, Power and Violence in Colonial India: The Role of Indian Subalterns
- 16 From Chief to Technocrat: Labour and Colonial Authority in Post–World War II Africa
- 17 The Unintended Consequences of Bureaucratic ‘Modernization’ in Post–World War II British Africa
- Part V Afterword
- Index
Summary
The Myth of the Charismatic Military Dictatorship
There is an art that conceals art, of which only the exceptional individual is capable. Napoleon I was one such person. He knew how to cultivate his own image, how to win battles and how to persuade contemporaries and posterity of his singular talents. Military success and personal magnetism win attention, but they can also conceal much. Napoleon was much more than a soldier or a romantic icon. He knew about power, not just glory, and power is often a prosaic, silent force. It must be cultivated; it rests on cooperation, on consensus and on clarity in purpose and execution. To gain power is not at all the same as to be able to wield it effectively. Perhaps it was Napoleon's real genius to understand this. His rise and fall were not brought about by the same methods as his tenure of power in Europe between 1799 and 1815. Thus, the true nature of his regime is not to be found in its rise or fall, but in the manner of its government.
Napoleon was, without doubt, the greatest and most successful military commander in European history, just as he was also the most charismatic figure of his times. His military conquests, at the strategic level, and his battlefield victories, on the tactical level, ensured his status as a soldier whose campaigns are still studied for their practical lessons in modern military academies, and they are written about in terms of their present value for serving soldiers, as much as for their historical impact. In like manner, Napoleon is the most written about figure in European history, after Hitler. His meteoric career and the enigmatic personality that drove it are, indeed, the stuff of legend, and a legend he was the first to cultivate by means of an ardent publicity machine he had created from a very early point in his career. When these two elements, military brilliance and personal greatness, are taken together, the cumulative impact is enough to mesmerise friend and foe alike.
The soberest of historians, as well as the legions of hagiographers and demonizers, have been led to see his political creation, the first Napoleonic empire, in exactly these terms. The presence of the man himself at the apex of the state had to signify charismatic leadership as the essence of the regime.
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- Empires and Bureaucracy in World HistoryFrom Late Antiquity to the Twentieth Century, pp. 344 - 363Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2016
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