NAPOLEON BONAPARTE 1761-1821

As with most historical characters, to understand their contributions to the world at large one needs to scan the breadth their whole life account and not be satisfied with the confines of biased commentary by the odd teacher or indeed high school history text, the advent of the Internet has done wonders to the accessibility of information on a lot of aspects, issues and characters, a search on the name Napoleon gave me close to 2.5 million hits and that's how much you have to sift through for starters before you decide on your own where in a historical context you place Napoleon Bonaparte, but then again that only creates the unenviable position of separating the legend from the man himself. The man was born in the Corsican islands in the Mediterranean Sea and ended by meteoric rise to be the Emperor of France through obvious ruthless efficiency; so my take is reduced to a few quotes from him that I find rather farsighted:

On China:

"Let China sleep, For when she awakes, let the nations tremble." shes awake now isnt she?

Napoleon's own opinion of his career is best stated in the following quotation:

"I closed the gulf of anarchy and brought order out of chaos. I rewarded merit regardless of birth or wealth, wherever I found it. I abolished feudalism and restored equality to all regardless of religion and before the law. I fought the decrepit monarchies of the Old Regime because the alternative was the destruction of all this. I purified the Revolution." Well, I'leave that to you, but my minds made up, like Hitler mass produced the VW Beetle so that all 'his' people could afford it Napoleon also had his positives and definitely was a lesser evil in direct comparison by virtue of time period lived in and the perception of most reasonable and ordinary people.... and to trivialities he didnt have that horrible moustache!