Napoleon Bonaparte

As for living off the land, that deserves nuancing because he was the only one who tried to minimise the suffering of civilians (he compensated those whose houses were destroyed for example) and his preparations included as much provision of food as possible. Living off the land was a last resort when the commissariat broke down. Compare that with the Prussian or Russian forces who wantonly destroyed everything in their path !

Fair play to you and your encyclopedic knowledge of Napoleons personal account of his career, with your additional background reading of the accounts of his apologists, however I feel you admire this guy to the point of worship. It is a common phenomenon. However I feel you need to look at the other side of the argument before drawing your conclusions.

AJP Taylor, Cronin and Asprey are not Napoleonic "apologists".

And I was looking at the other side of the argument when I drew my conclusions. Hence the admiration for the one guy who tried to limit the damage caused by a revolution he found himself in the middle of and of wars he didn't start.

As Napoleon said himself,"The truth is but a set of lies agreed upon", so I suppose that means we all have our own truths dependant on the information we recieve. I have read a lot about Napoleon and my French wife and her brothers, who attended top Parisian schools founded by the man himself, are all of the opinion he was a dictator. I only mention this so you do not assume that I present the english view!

Most of the Parisian schools you mentioned teach the doctored version of History that the dwarfs in power like people to believe in order to justify their dictatorship. People like your wife and brothers in law tend to change their minds if they do their own reading based on period accounts.

Wellington was a highly questinable person and politician but a good general. The monarchy is a smile on a dog!

A smile on a dog ?

My advice is to remember that the abject barbarisms you're talking about were the reaction to a treasonous attack on French troops organised by imams who wanted to take advantage of the fact that he'd kicked out the Mamelukes in order to take power. Despite his generals demanding that he burn the mosques in retribution for the wounded and civilians (French and Egyptian alike) who had been slaughtered in the hospitals, he refused and only executed those bearing arms.

@royalsteven He was 5"6 in British imperial measurements and the wars he fought began 7 years before he came to power. The sad part is that he gets accused of warmongering today by people who don't know their History and just look at the map