Napoleon Bonaparte's height

There is a general belief that Napoleon Bonaparte was unusually short, and that he is therefore part of the common perception that dictators tend to be short people who make up for it by being particularly unpleasant to everybody else and conquering as many countries as they can. But, in Napoleon’s case, is this true?

Short dictators

Dictators are short people, aren’t they? Joseph Stalin was 5 foot 5 inches, as was Vladimir Lenin. Mussolini was 5 foot 6, Adolf Hitler was 5 foot 8 (not particularly short, but only average for a German of his time) and Kim Jong Il was a mere 5 foot 3 (perhaps an unfair comparison, given that Koreans are not particularly tall people anyway).

By contrast, democratic western leaders are tall and well-built, and thus so assured of their stature that they don’t have to get nasty and start invading their neighbours just to get their own back on the unfairness of life. Hence you have General de Gaulle at 6 foot 5, Abraham Lincoln at 6 foot 4 and F D Roosevelt at 6 foot 2.

However, the many exceptions to these trends would seem to cast a dampener on the general theory. There have been many tall dictators, including Fidel Castro at 6 foot 3, Saddam Hussein at 6 foot 2 and Idi Amin at 6 foot 4. There have also been some notable short non-dictators, such as Winston Churchill at 5 foot 6.

Napoleon Bonaparte

Napoleon has certainly been part of the “lack of height equals dictatorial tendencies” myth. The story that has gained common currency is that he was only 5 foot 2 inches tall, and that he wore thick-soled boots to make himself look taller. But was this true?

The idea that Napoleon was on the small side derives from a 1910 French biography of Napoleon that contained the statement: “Napoleon was of mediocre stature (about 5 foot 2 inches) and well built”. This implies that he was short and tubby.

However, this statement does not agree with British accounts that give his height as 5 foot 6 or 5 foot 7. These include the opinions of contemporaries who were in regular contact with Napoleon during his exile on St Helena after the Battle of Waterloo in 1815. That said, his official height at his death in 1821 was given in French sources as being 5 foot 2.

A difference of measurement

There is every reason to believe that both the French and British measurements of Napoleon’s height were correct. How was this possible? The answer is that the French and British foot were not the same, with the French foot being slightly longer than the British foot. A height of 5 foot 2 in France would be equivalent to 5 foot 6 in Britain.

The system of weights and measures in France was reformed in 1799 with the introduction of the metric system. Napoleon would have been 30 years old at the time, so it is not surprising that his early contemporaries would have estimated his height in the old style.

There was also a hiatus from about 1812 to 1837 during which the new system fell out of favour and people reverted to the old measurements. When Napoleon died in 1821 it would therefore have been natural to give his height in French feet and inches.

So there we have it. At a British height of 5 foot 6 Napoleon would not have appeared to be particularly short, especially as the average height of a Frenchman at that time was around 5 foot 5.

He would, however, have fitted in well as a member of the short dictators club as mentioned above. Had they been contemporaries, he would have been able to look Lenin and Stalin in the eye and only been slightly overshadowed by Hitler!

© John Welford

Napoleon Bonaparte's escape from Elba

On 26^th February 1815 Napoleon Bonaparte escaped from his exile on the island of Elba and began his “100 days” revival that would end with final defeat at the Battle of Waterloo.

After a series of defeats, Napoleon had been forced to abdicate on 6^th April 1814. The allies sent him to Elba, a small island in the Mediterranean between Corsica and northern Italy. He was allowed to retain the title of Emperor, but his empire now constituted a mere 75 square miles of hills and coastal bays. He could have lived in retirement in some degree of luxury, having been granted a stipend of two million francs a year, but he had other ideas.

He was worried by the rumours he heard that some of his enemies were planning to send him much further afield. Another concern was that he was separated from his wife, Marie-Louise, who he believed was being kept from him by the new rulers in France. However, what he did not know was that Marie-Louise was heartily glad to have parted company with him and was happily involved in a liaison with an Austrian count.

So, on the evening of 26^th February, Napoleon gave his captors the slip and, accompanied by some 800 loyal soldiers, left the island in a fleet of sailing boats that landed on the coast of France near Cannes on 1^st March.

Gathering supporters as he went, Napoleon marched towards Paris. The recently restored King Louis XVIII fled, and Napoleon was once again the Emperor of France.

After his defeat at Waterloo on 18^th June 1815 the allies did not make the same mistake again. This time Napoleon was sent somewhere far less luxurious and much more escape-proof, namely the South Atlantic island of St Helena, where he died in May 1821.

© John Welford

Captain Bonaparte's rapid promotion

On 22nd December 1793 a young captain of artillery named Napoleon Bonaparte received an early Christmas present, namely promotion to brigadier general. He was being noticed in high places and his ascent to absolute power in France had started.

Napoleon had merited this acclaim, when aged only 24, as a result of his actions during the siege of Toulon, a naval base on France’s Mediterranean coast. The base was in the hands of royalists who had invited an Anglo-Spanish fleet to make use of its facilities. The revolutionary government in Paris was determined to get it back.

The siege began on 28th August with the main targets being the forts that overlooked the harbour. When these were eventually captured, Captain Bonaparte used them to bombard the English ships in the harbour, which were forced to retreat. This happened on 18th December, after which the victorious revolutionaries swarmed into the town and killed any royalists who had not managed to escape.

Bonaparte’s promotion bypassed six military ranks in one go. However, it should also be remembered that he was one of a relatively small number of professional soldiers in the revolutionary army. The French Revolution had been largely a middle-class affair that threw people from all sorts of backgrounds into the fray, so army brigades had therefore been commanded by former accountants, dentists and businessmen. Finding a commander who really knew what he was doing was a huge boost for the new government, hence Bonaparte’s rapid rise.

© John Welford

Andreas Hofer, a rebel against Napoleon Bonaparte

On 20^th February 1810 Andreas Hofer was executed by firing squad, on the orders of Napoleon Bonaparte.

Andreas Hofer was an innkeeper who lived in the Tyrol, which is the westernmost part of present-day Austria. In Hofer’s time the Tyrol was part of the Austrian Empire which was coming under severe pressure from France to cede control of it to Bavaria, which was part of Napoleon’s growing European Empire. This is what happened in 1809, much to Hofer’s disgust.

Hofer led an insurrection and defeated the Bavarians at the battle of Berg Isel, after which he declared himself Commander in Chief of the Tyrol, headquartered at Innsbruck. Emperor Franz agreed to take the Tyrol back under his protection, but this did not please Napoleon who once again demanded that the province be ceded to Bavaria.

Andreas Hofer continued his resistance, which led Napoleon to put a price on his head. Hofer was eventually tracked down to a shepherd’s hut in the mountains, from where he was taken barefoot in the snow to Mantua, in northern Italy.

After a rigged trial Andreas Hofer was sentenced to death, although his judges did not seem to be particularly keen on having the sentence carried out. However, Hofer’s fate was sealed when Napoleon sent a message demanding to know the date set for the execution. 

That date was 20^th February, when Hofer bravely faced the firing squad – refusing a blindfold and himself giving the order to fire. His remains were taken back to Innsbruck 13 years later and his memory is still revered in the Tyrol.

© John Welford

Napoleon's divorce from Josephine, 1809

On 15^th December 1809 Napoleon Bonaparte divorced his wife of 13 years, Josephine de Beauharnais, so that he could marry a younger woman who might be able to produce an heir for him. She was 46 at the time, whereas Napoleon was only 40 and he had his eye on an 18-year-old Austrian princess, Marie Louise, who was unaware of his plan until it was presented to her as a done deal.

Although the marriage of Napoleon and Josephine appeared happy enough on the surface, Napoleon refused to let sentiment rule reality. As he said to Josephine: “In politics there is no heart, only head”. He announced his intention to her over dinner, just a few weeks before the divorce took place. Josephine screamed in horror at the idea, but had no choice but to comply with the wishes of the most powerful man in Europe.

The divorce papers were signed in Napoleon’s study, after which a tearful Josephine left on the arm of her daughter (by her first marriage) Hortense. She moved to the palace of Malmaison where she died five years later.

An ironical aspect of Napoleon’s somewhat cynical move is that his wish to ensure that another Napoleon became the Emperor of France was fulfilled not by any heir born to Marie Louise but by a grandson of Josephine de Beauharnais. This was Napoleon III, the son of Hortense, who became ruler of the Second Empire in 1852 and was eventually overthrown in 1870 after the Franco-Prussian War.

© John Welford

Josephine de Beauharnais becomes Josephine Bonaparte, 1796

9^th March 1796 was the day on which Napoleon Bonaparte, rapidly rising through the ranks of the French military, married Josephine Tascher de la Pagerie in a civil ceremony. She was the widow of a victim of the guillotine and had retained his name of de Beauharnais.

Napoleon was very conscious of the age disparity between them in that she was 32 and he was 26. However, they got round the difficulty, and stopped tongues wagging, by lying about their ages. Josephine trimmed three years off her age and Napoleon increased his by two, by the simple expedient of borrowing his brother’s birth certificate for the occasion. Presumably nobody needed proof for Josephine’s claim – if she said she was 29 she was 29 and that was the end of it!

It is common practice in France for weddings to be in two parts, with the legally necessary civil ceremony often followed by one blessed by the Church. However, Josephine had to wait a long time to walk up the aisle – it happened only in December 1804, shortly before Napoleon was due to be crowned Emperor by the pope.

© John Welford

The rise and fall of Marshall Ney

On 6^th December 1815 Marshal Michel Ney was executed by firing squad in the courtyard of the Palais Luxembourg, Paris. He refused to wear a blindfold and gave the order in person for the soldiers to shoot.

The rise of Marshall Ney

Michel Ney, born in 1769, had been a provincial civil servant of lowly origins until he decided to join the army, through which he made rapid promotion during the French Revolutionary Wars, displaying considerable personal bravery at a number of major engagements. Indeed, Napoleon Bonaparte was to call him “the bravest of the brave”.

Ney received his marshal’s baton in 1804 and was a loyal general to Napoleon. He commanded the rearguard during the 1812 retreat from Moscow and was popularly regarded as the last Frenchman to leave Russian soil.

However, it was Ney who led the “revolt of the Marshals” in 1814 when it became clear that Napoleon’s reign was over. Ney demanded that Napoleon should abdicate, which he did.

Marshal Ney’s reward was to be given promotion by the incoming restored king, Louis XVIII, who clearly recognised Ney’s genius as a general, despite his previous loyalty to Napoleon. When Napoleon escaped from his exile on Elba and began his march towards Paris, Ney set off with a force to counter the threat.

The fall of Marshall Ney

However, when Ney met Napoleon at Auxerre he switched sides again and supported Napoleon’s return to power.

Ney was an important commander at the Battle of Waterloo on 18^th June 1815, although he made a fatal mistake in not ordering captured cannon to be “spiked” so that they could not be used if recaptured, which is in fact what happened.

Ney was subsequently arrested and tried by the victorious royalists for the offence of treason, and his execution swiftly followed the guilty verdict.

However, there is a twist to the story because rumours circulated that the troops of the firing squad only fired blanks and Marshal Ney faked his death and escaped to the United States, where he worked for many years as a schoolmaster named Peter Stuart Ney. As with all conspiracy theories, this one must be taken with a large dose of salt!

© John Welford