Napoleon the Revolutionary?
On Bourgeois Cultural Poverty
I don’t want to turn this substack into an outlet for cultural critique so I will keep this brief (and free). We already know bourgeois culture is bankrupt, but every so often it shoots itself in the foot. I recently watched Ridley Scott’s new film Napoleon and I felt the need to air my praise and grievances here because they are relevant to revolutionary history. Spoiler alert: there are no spoilers if you already know the story of Napoleon Bonaparte.
When confronted with the history of Napoleon, people are often puzzled about how to characterize him—was he a good or bad guy? Some say good because he emerged from the French Revolution, but others say bad because he assumed the title of Emperor and tried to take over Europe. Indeed, bourgeois republicanism has attached such a negative connotation to the title “Emperor” that any utterance of it reeks of ambition and authoritarianism. The contradiction of the historical account is so clear that it seems almost manufactured.
Yet, when it comes to Napoleon, I maintain that he was a revolutionary through and through. Although, to be clear, he was not a working-class Revolutionary, he was very much a bourgeois revolutionary. It is vital to understand this in order to appreciate my critique of the film because it is precisely this ambiguity that sabotaged Scott’s historicism.
When the French Revolution broke out in 1789, the revolutionaries understood that all vestiges of the Ancien Regime had to go. At first, the Bourgois revolutionaries balked at persecuting the aristocracy, but as the revolution went on many aristocrats fled France to the safe spaces of monarchal Europe– Austria, Holland, Russia, and yes, England. From there, and even within France, they actively organized counter-revolution. By 1792/3 much of Europe was already at war with France, seeking to restore the Monarchy and destroy the Revolutionary achievements. The Revolutionaries understood that they were threatened from within and without, but the problem was that they could not settle on a lasting form of government. Over time the people lost confidence in political leaders, who increasingly lost control of enforcing the law.
Enter the general.
I can spare you a lecture on the emergence of Napoleon from Artillery officer to First Consul but suffice it to say that when he became one of three consuls in 1799 it was in the interest of preserving the Revolution. Napoleon had the unwavering support of the soldiers—a detail that the film really loses sight of—so the republican consuls knew they needed him for enforcement and defense. (Instead, the film depicts the soldiers as moronic, gullible, and slavish). The problem was that the consul system was slow and entropic: while the three leaders worked to create, enforce, and establish a new country, counter-revolution and foreign invasion threatened to obliterate the entire project. Napoleon understood this, and in the interest of urgently defending the revolution and preserving the new bourgeois order from the aristocratic restoration, France declared him emperor. Hence, decisions were to be concentrated in a single man to streamline priorities. It’s important to note that the French people voted on both his position as First Consul and his assumption of Emperor. He had a mandate.
This is a difficult concept for American audiences to grasp, I think. How could an Emperor be revolutionary? Examining the legal reforms enacted by Napoleon adds some clarity. The Napoleonic reforms created the Lycée education system independent of the Church, they guaranteed individual rights, freedom of belief, equality before the law, abolished ‘secret’ laws, prohibited judges from denying justice, and practically abolished the French feudal system. Napoleon was not a working-class revolutionary, but he was certainly a bourgeois revolutionary and any good historical materialist knows the necessity of a bourgeois revolution as a precursor to a working-class revolution.
The film starts with the execution of Marie Antoinette because bourgeois culture today, to protect itself, moralizes revolutionary violence. Scott depicts Antoinette enduring the wrath of the crowd, weirdly upholding the dignity of this aristocrat who contributed to the destitution of thousands of regular Frenchmen. The writers and director would have you believe that the violence of the revolution was unjustified, yet one could argue that Scott’s ability to make such a film wouldn’t be possible without the revolutionary overthrow of the Old Regime. Even at the end of the film, before the credits, the screen shows how many people died for France in the Napoleonic Wars, posing the question—was it all worth it? Were the deaths of thousands worth the ambition of a single man? Well, a single man—no, but the defense of revolution—absolutely. It depends on how you frame the narrative. The immediate restoration of the aristocracy after Napoleon is all the evidence you need. The truth is that the bourgeois, capitalist order we currently live under was built on violence, but because they fear violent working-class revolution, that record must be rejected and expunged. Nowadays it seems like only the violence of the American Revolution was justified.
Finally, Napoleon’s conquest of Europe wasn’t some blood-thirsty rampage for ambition. In taking over Europe, Napoleon also exported revolutionary ideas through the Napoleonic Code. This is why the Emperors of Europe were so threatened by him—he endangered their autocratic prerogative. One only needs to consider why every major Emperor of Europe ganged up on the Revolution and Napoleon, and why, by 1848, Revolutions popped off in just about every major region to which Napoleon introduced legal, educational, and civil reforms.
The film obviously does not depict Napoleon as a revolutionary but rather focuses on his ambitions and his soft heart. The bourgeois depiction of a bourgeois hero is thus fundamentally confused: on the one hand, he is depicted as a great man troubled by his destiny and held back by the people around him. On the other hand, the film conflates aristocratic culture with the bourgeois cultural order Napoleon fostered. Yes, Napoleon restored noble titles, but the Revolution also significantly changed the culture of government and high society. Instead, in the film high society is no different than Aristocratic high society and the Napoleonic reforms go unmentioned because elaborating on them would mean humanizing the protagonist.
Like all films today, this one is laden with our own cultural zeitgeist. Josephine, Napoleon’s lover is depicted as a ‘slut’ (to use his word) who is reformed in the name of Napoleon’s ambition. Her role is greatly exaggerated, as all ‘great man’ narratives today are subsumed under the (often exaggerated) ‘great women’ reality—perhaps that was the victory second-wave feminism wanted all along. I am waiting for a film about Lenin that attributes all his failures and successes to Krupskaya.
Finally, the film takes a decidedly British interpretation of the history. Emperor Alexander I of Russia is depicted as a young pretty boy who is himself ambitious and lustful, even though Alexander I ‘the Angelic’ was really neither of those things. In 2023, with Russia as enemy number one (or maybe two) Scott couldn’t help himself in presenting Alexander as the bizarro Napoleon—after all, those pesky Russians have always been menacing! In truth, Alexander I acquiesced command over the Russian army to General Kutuzov (not in the film), and when Napoleon was defeated in the battle of Paris in 1814, it was Alexander I who marched through Paris as liberator. None of this is in the film, instead, we get implications that Josephine slept with Alexander, and this battle of the minds between the Duke of Wellington and Napoleon at Waterloo. The myth that Britain vanquished Napoleon is as much of a myth as the one that Americans vanquished Hitler.
However, the real strengths of the movie are in the acting and the visuals. As expected, Joaquin Phoenix nailed the role of Napoleon, and Vanessa Kirby played a convincing Josephine. Although his character was misrepresented, Edouard Philipponnat played a great Emperor Alexander. I love it when historical movies render shots from paintings, and this film is loaded with them. My favorite is the scene when Napoleon is in Moscow, and he looks out to see the city burning (like Ivan Aivazovsky’s famous painting), and the coronation scene pulled directly from Jacques-Louis David’s painting. While the visuals are stunning, the battle scenes are not as great as I expected.
Overall the film was enjoyable but confusing. It seemed like every scene jumped another year, so unless you already know the story of Napoleon it can be difficult to follow. More importantly, the film reveals a certain cultural melancholy of our time, where the bourgeoise seems comfortable rejecting the heroes of its past. The bourgeois cultural poverty that I am trying to describe is one that is just as aimless as capitalism. We are force-fed sex and vanity to distract us from the historical necessity and reality of violence. I maintain that Napoleon was a revolutionary, although not the one we need today, but the one France needed in its day.