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Napoleon Bonaparte: 10 Things You Probably Weren’t Told in Class

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Napoleon Bonaparte as First Consul, painted by Antoine-Jean Gros in 1803.
Napoleon in 1803, painted as First Consul by Antoine-Jean Gros. The pose already came with plenty of ego built in.

Napoleon Bonaparte is one of history’s most overfamiliar characters. The bicorne hat, the hand in the jacket and the Waterloo ending have become shortcuts. But behind them are facts that are stranger than the caricature: he was around 1.68 meters tall, hunted rabbits, crowned himself, sold Louisiana and spent years shaping his own public image.

Ten facts behind the icon

The height myth grew from British propaganda and different French and British measurement units. His 1804 coronation at Notre-Dame placed the crown on his own head. His Egyptian campaign brought scholars as well as soldiers, and the Rosetta Stone was discovered there in 1799. In 1803 he sold Louisiana to the United States for $15 million.

Arc du Carrousel in Paris, a monument connected to Napoleon’s imperial image.
The Arc du Carrousel in Paris: a monumental postcard from the Empire’s image-making machine.
Statue of Napoleon Bonaparte in Paris at Les Invalides.
A Napoleon statue in Paris: the man of flesh and blood became bronze, a very French way not to disappear.
Handwritten letter signed by Napoleon Bonaparte dated April 19, 1798.
A handwritten letter signed by Napoleon in 1798: when he was not moving armies, he was moving paper too.
A documentary that revisits the man with historical context instead of stopping at the hat.
Infographic with ten facts about Napoleon Bonaparte, from his height myth to Saint Helena.
Ten facts to separate the documented Napoleon from the character made by propaganda.

After the legend

After escaping exile on Elba, Napoleon ruled France again for one hundred days before Waterloo in 1815. He died in exile on Saint Helena in 1821; the arsenic-poisoning theory remains disputed. His real history is not smaller than the myth. It is more complicated, and therefore more interesting.

Sources consulted for this article