Why on Earth was Napoleon treated to leniently?
- Thread starter RedRalph
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schlaufuchs
Break My Heart
LightSpectra
me autem minui
We have to go back!
EnglishEdward
Deity
Napoleon was certainly not a war criminal by the standards of his time.
There is little real evidence of him ordering massacres or tortures.
Yes a few rebels or guerrillas not wearing uniforms may have been guillotined,
hung or shot; but that was quite normal then; and compared with the post
revolutiinary guillotining and the Paris mob; he was comparatively civilised.
Ajidica
High Quality Person
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Besides, you know, invading many countries just to salve his ego and plunge Spain into a brutal guerilla war.
The good Nappy did domesticaly was kind of overshadowed by his uncontrolable ego that sent him into war with everyone in Europe.
Ajidica
High Quality Person
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I thought France invaded them?Meh. Consider it retribution for all those countries invading France a couple years earlier.
If you are referring to the War of the First Coalition, France declared war on Austria for perceived dynastic mettling (the former Queen of France was German, it was suspected Austria would attempt to overthrow the Republic and re-establish a monarchy). The other powers (Prussia, Britain, Russia, etc.) declared war on France after action had begun, mostly after King Louis XVI's execution. Early battles took place mostly on French soil, besides a few successes in the Austrian Netherlands.
Pangur Bán
Deconstructed
The simple answer is that killing him would have made peace impossible. Seems odd, as he was a foreigner who killed more French through irresponsible leadership than Hitler did through enmity ... but that's how logical patriotism is.
There were very legitimate fears that France would explode into guerrilla warfare upon the Bourbon Restoration, especially the Second Restoration. The ultraroyalists treated the people so poorly that were practically begging to be overthrown.
Considering that the official reason that he was a monster was because his people had executed a monarch, and that he was still a national hero in France, not to mention that he was beaten by gentlemen who would have considered executing a defeated enemy to be the height of bad manners, the treatment makes a lot of sense - especially the second time when any pretence of giving him simply a reduced territory was lost and it became clear that he was being essentially marooned.
Traitorfish
The Tighnahulish Kid
Not at all. The French do not traditionally regard nationality as something that can exclusively be bred into a person, but something that can be acquired- as demonstrated by the French habit of attempting to inflict it upon the non-French nationalities within their own borders. Napoleon may have been a Corsican by birth, be he was widely regarded as the model of a patriotic Frenchman, and, in his era, that was what really mattered.
Aw, c'mon, it's not his fault that the half-witted Spanish peasants actually tried to defend the monarchy. They brought that one on themselves.
LightSpectra
me autem minui
Could also be that Frenchmen were pillaging their land and raping their women, to which the cause of national defense was symbolized by their head of state.
Traitorfish
The Tighnahulish Kid
At least Joe was a constitutional monarch. Better than the priest-ridden Bourbons, by any measure!After Nappy replaced their king with his inept brother.
Well, granted, the French didn't exactly the whole episode with what you'd call elegance.
LightSpectra
me autem minui
Indeed. Guerra y cuchillo, and all that. Which isn't to say that the Portuguese and British were saints, but at least they were supposed to leave Spain when the war was over.
By the way, this is mostly right. The reasons for the outbreak of the 1792 war are a bit more complex. For instance, the revolutionary French were basically tearing the concept of sovereignty (that they were deploying against the various other European governments) into tiny little pieces by intervening in several neighboring Imperial principalities, declaring claims on more of them, and ripping the Imperial law that still partially governed the eastern portion of France into small bits. Also, they kinda annexed the Church lands around Avignon and the Emperor was kinda obligated to get cheesed off about that.
But yeah, the basic sequence of events is about right: France declares war on Austria, Austria forms various alliances with other powers. Funnily enough, the biggest advocates of war against the revolutionaries to crush the revolution were Gustav III, Yekaterina Velikaya, and Edmund Burke. And the Swedes, the Brits, and the Russians notably didn't have to do a whole lot of actual fighting. (Also, Burke's views were about as far from mainstream in Parliament, let alone the actual government, as you could get without being John Wilkes.) Leopold II, bless his heart, mostly wanted to try to contain the situation, leave well enough alone, and prevent Austria from hemorrhaging money and manpower like it had under Josef II.
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